live laugh love

It's interesting that my posts were all about cards so far, since I consider myself more as a scrapbooker than a card maker. But I really have fun of making cards since I discovered the stamping world.

Anyway, I made a scrapbook page last night. My Mom and my son were having such a good time together. Although I couldn't remember why they were laughing so hard, I laughed along whenever I looked at these pictures.

I just couldn't take a good picture of it though......

The title was cut with the Circut Songbird Cartridge. It's my favorite fond since I can weld the letter very easily with Gypsy. The sun and rainbow are from the Create A Critter and stamped with the Peachy Keen face Stamps.

Thank you for looking and have a great day!

Entering for Sketch Along Tuesdays December 28th Challenge at Frosted Designs.

Happy Bling New Year!

I rarely use glitters since I don't like the clean-up. Stickles are fun, but they are hard to get even. SO I was really happy when I got my new Sakura stardust glitter pens.

I used to work at a private owned company and the secretary lady liked writing with all kinds of gel/glaze/glitter pens. And she got permission from the boss to buy those as office supplies for us:). So when I received my order from Amazon, I was surprised that I have used these before. But I just never realize that I can use them to dress up the cards or scrapbooks until I watch the StampTV. Sigh......

Anyway, here is my card using lots of glitter pens

I had this Clip Art design for a while now. My son was born in October in 2009 and I thought this cute image will work so well for the 2010 New Year's card. But I never had the time crafting with the new born baby. So I'm very glad that I could make the card for 2011 now.

Here is a close look

I have put up all the glitters and blings that I could handle. ^^

Thank you for looking and wish you all the best in the New Year!

Cardstock: PTI Ivory, PTI white, DCWV spring stack

Clip Art: Sunshine Graphics

Other: Nestabilities Label Eight, PTI buttons, Pop Dots, Sakura glitter pens,

Recollections Rhinestone Stickers

Entering for Simon Says stamp Challenge: Time for Party/ Celebrate.

Just A Note

I received my first Gina K design order on Monday. I order the lovely labels stamp set and it was my first time of using the cling type of stamps. They worked very well and the cleaning is easier than the clear stamps. Also I ordered her pure luxury cardstock in white and base weight in Ivory. The pure luxury cardstock was so smooth and velvet when touching and I couldn't take my hand off it. So I decided to make a one-layer card.

I used the CPS card sketch 184 and here is another look:

This was actually the second one I made. The black embossing powder was not very forgiving as clear ones. And when I blew on it, I got bubbles all over the image after heat embossed. I guess I blew too hard ^^

And I ordered the tonic paper cutter from Joann since my little cricut trimmer couldn't handle the heavy cardstock very well. I'm really getting well equipped.

Stamp: PTI Signature Series: Dress Form

Cardstock: Gina K Design PL white

Ink: VersaMark

Other: Black embossing powder, Nestabilities label eight

Joy to the flower

I have always been thinking about making a square card, so I was very happy to see the Mojo Monday 171 sketch.

Did the heat embossing again, and it's getting better. Thank you very much, Star and Viv, for the dry sheet tip!

CLose up on the shimmer of the Brilliance Rocket Red Gold Ink

Since my principle was to use up the scraps before cutting up any new pieces, so I was somehow limited by the color choices. And not only the blue flower was the only color I had, but also it was the only flower left from a scrapbooking kit. Also I think a different color embossing powder may work better, but I'm still waiting for the package........

Well, it may not be perfect, but it made me always feel that the next one will be better.^^

Cardstock: PTI stamper's select, pure poppy, enhanced evening,

Pattern paper: PTI distressed dots

Stamps: PTI Dot spot, Signature Series: flower

Ink: Brilliance Rocket Red Gold, Mediterranean Blue, Versamark

Other: Nestabilities Label One, Clear Embossing Powder

Sweetest Wishes

I was making some wrapped Hershey nuggets for the holiday gifts. Then I saw the color challenge at My Pink Stamper, and Ms. Robyn asked us to use blue, green and brown.

So here is what I came up with:

I was so addicted to heat embossing these days, so I got to embossed the pretty dragonfly :P

Inside the box, there were 12 pieces of wrapped chocolate and I quite like the way these three colors blended.

I already made two boxes before I saw the challenge. One is pink, and I made it with my 3 years old niece in my mind.

The inside

The other is blue, and I made it with my son in mind. But I always try to add some feminine touch on his stuff ^^

The inside

My boy is 14 month old and he is a super active and impatient little guy. My husband said he would just destroy the box since it's kind of tight. But I don't mind that much and I really wish to teach him to be a little more patient with a box of treat. And I will put animal crackers in his box.

Now, I will need to go back and make a few more boxes. Wish you a fabulous sunny day!

Hello Sunshine!

It had been raining for four days in a row here in SoCal. And the weather forecast said the rain will continue through Wednesday :(

I didn't plan to play this time since the holiday is just around the corner. But when I looked at the Mojo Monday's sketch 170, I totally fell love with it . The half circle on the right corner looked just like a sun raising up. Nothing could beat that up in this weather, right?

The tree was embossed (again) with clear embossing powder, it didn't show very well on the light shade of the cardstock. But I felt this lighter green represnting the washed green leaves very well, so I chose the Papertrey Ink's spring moss over the ripe avocado.

So nice to see the bright sun and blue sky, right? ^^

You'd better watch out ^^

Today I continued practicing my heat embossing technique. I made the card using Mojo Monday's Challenge 169 sketch. And also submit it for My Pink Stamper's Day 6 Challenge.

I think a big and simple image stamp may work better when shaking off the excess embossing powder, but I don't own any stamp like that yet. Also I don't own any proper painting brushes. SOOOO I had to use some my old makeup brushes :P

Boy, my hand sharked badly when I was dusting. I was so scared to ruin it. Thank goodness it looked better this time. I also heard about anti-static cloth but I need to find where to order that first.

I really like the Brilliance pearlescent inks. I used to think that I could just skipped the the heat embossing, but I guess not now.

I could hear the jingling when looking at this card, and have you been good this year? ^^

Steep, Stir & Enjoy

I started scrap booking about 6 years ago, but I was more like arranging things neatly on a page with a template, instead of creating something nice on my own. Lately I was so impressed by the work of all those genius stampers and I started collecting stamps last month. But sadly I found myself almost only use the sentiments of a stamp set.

It was raining this morning and was very cold even the heater was running. So I served myself some tea and felt so much better. After I got comfortable, I read some talented crafter's blogs and then decided to try my brand new embossing heat gun.

This should be a good starting point since I bought the heating gun last month, and it was still in it's original package. And I also have one jar of clearing embossing powder which was in the same brand new status. I played with the tea cup image from Papertrey Ink's Tea For Two additions set.

I was totally Amazed when I saw the embossing powder started melting. Oh, so much fun!

Anyway I thought I could stamp the image repeatedly as the background. But I had no idea how to arrange that nicely on a piece of paper. But I went ahead anyway, got to have a starting point, right?

But the result was not so perfect. I couldn't tap off the powder completely and apparently it couldn't be put on the card by itself alone as I planed.

However I already cut the paper according to my plan and I surely wouldn't waste them. So I stamped the tea pot, heat emboss it and then die cut it out. It's just so hard for me to tap all the excess powder off, so the tea pot wasn't perfect either. Sign....

But I just ignored that and pop it up to hide the imperfect tea cup in the middle.

The I glued on a ribbon knot, which covered the imperfection of the bottom tea cup.

NOW, it's presentable.

And I'm really happy that I was able to make something beyond the cricut cuts. What was that they were always saying? "Clean and Simple", right? ^^

Hi-Ya! Color Challenge

There is a color challenge going on my pink stamper right now, and Ms. Robyn asked for projects made of two hues of blue, two hues of pink and black.

So here is mine work:

The focal tag was on of the decorative tags on gypsy wondering cartridge. I used two hues of blue there.

The cute mushroom was from the gypsy smiley card. I used two kinds of pink on her body. And just want to show my love of pink, I put up a pink button as well.

The sentiment was from papertreyink's hand written note and I really love this stamp set.

Finally, the black. This is when I had to cut a good piece of paper and I made my choice carefully. I finally picked the coredinations' white wash cardstock and use one with the black backing. Then I run it through my cuttlebug to emboss it. Then I found that I used the wrong side of the paper!

The reason this was called white wash is because you can get other colors when sanded through the white cardstock. Otherwise it would be called Black Magic, right?

Darn......

Anyway, I didn't get my expected white pattern through black, not even the black through white either. But this pure and kind of shiny black matting added some earth tone to this fun card. I hope Ms. Robyn will like it and think it was so worth it too, *wink*.

Let's Face It Fridays - Paper Bag Challenge

I just bought my Peachy Keen stamps last week and I love the challenges on their website. Just right for me, wanting to play with my new toys, but don't know what to make.

I actually bought their stamps for the Create a Critter. Everybody loves this cartridge, and same here, and very much. I have made many cuts before and the stamped face brought the cute animals so much life! Love it!

Now back to the challenge.

This IS a challenge to me...First of all, we don't have any lunch bag in the house. Then I thought about the paper bag from Trader Joe's, but those were tooooo big. I was just about to give up before I found this small paper bag from Yankee candle. It looked very like a paper grocery bag and its size is 8 by 8 in., just perfect.

With the help of the beloved Gypsy, I was able to use my piles of scraps for all the elements. And I could also hide the cuts and use the face stamps. It's such an easy and fun project since everything is just from one imagine.

Details:

The penguin was cut at 2.8, and stamped with the medium size face stamp. I felt a large stamp may work too, but I don't own one.

And everything else was cut at 2.5 in. , but the real imagine was not true to the dial size.

The snow house is a bit taller than 2.5 in.

The fish's real size is about 1.5 inch. I wasn't about to cut them at first, since they looked ugly to me on the handbook. But I wanted my cute penguin to at least have some food.......so I cut two and stamped the faces as well. Then they turned to be too cute to be food !

I think that's all for today's challenge project. Oh, I did cut a good paper today...hurt.....sign..... The matting paper was from Joann's 12*12 harvest and holiday stack and was cut at 7.75 by 7.75. Again, I think it's so worth it, *wink* .

Peachy Keen Stamps Challenge 42 :: Emboss Its

(CLICK TO SEE A LARGER PICTURE)

I made the beer mug first using the cricut smiley cards cartridge on Gypsy. The face was hided and then stamped with a Peachy Keen face Stamp. And the foam was embossed with the cuttlebug folder. Since I used the white wash paper from Coredinations, so it has a purple hue after sanded.

I wanted to make a card to enter this challenge, so I cut two tag at different sizes from the songbird cartridge. I used the big one for the focal image and the small one for the sentiment. And the stamp is from Papertreyink's Handwritten notes. I then embossed the big tag as well using the same embossing folder.

Everything was cut using my scraps, except the matting paper, which is from PapertreyInk's distressed dots. It's always painful for me to cut a piece of new paper, but I think it's so worth it. ^-^