Special Reason Sweet Baby Girl Page

I've been busy doing a little scrapbooking this past week. Why is it that every time I get busy with a project (especially scrapbooking!) it looks like a tornado went through my studio!?

I swear....every flat surface is covered with a pile of supplies. Because I just have to pull out everything that could possibly work on my pages, and then decide nope, don't need that! I even had to drag in an extra table for my DSP!

Look at my messy desk...I end up with just enough space to barely work. Then I spend way too much of my precious stampin' time searching for things that I misplaced. It drives me nuts!  Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this! OK...rant over, and my space has been cleaned, so time to share my page.


I had a  "special reason" in mind when I purchased the Special Reason Bundle...creating some pages featuring our new grand daughter. I decided to use one of my favorite photos I took of her during our first official photo shoot for my first page. She was wearing a little purple headband...so I wanted to use purple on my layout...off to a good start!

I thought so...until I searched through stacks and stacks of beautiful paper (part of the reason for mess!) looking for the perfect print to use with the photo...only to realize I'm seriously lacking in DSP featuring a shade of purple anywhere near close to the headband! How could that be? Purple is one of my favorite colors, and I have enough pretty patterned paper to open a scrapbook store! (Don't tell my husband!) So I decided I needed to make my own Designer Series Paper.

Right now the closest shade that Stampin' Up! carries to the headband is Wisteria Wonder. I like the way it looks with Sahara Sand...which is featured in the lace printed paper from the Falling In Love pack, so I went with those two colors for this page.

In addition to the Special Reason stamp set I used Timeless Textures, Gorgous Grunge and Jar of Love (tiny flower and leaves) to create my own patterned paper. The tiny flower from Jar of Love is a smooth, solid image so I used the kissing technique with the burlap image in Timeless Textures to add some texture so they better coordinated with the flowers in the Special Reason stamp set. I die cut some of the leaves from the Mint Macaron Glimmer Paper that was available during SAB to add a little sparkle. I love that this set has a stamp and framelits to create layered labels, used here to record her name & age.

I used the retired Pennent Punch to create part of the title. I stamped the word "sweet" using the retired Occasions Alphabet set and punched them out with 1/2" Circle Punch. I made the bow using Wisteria Wonder Seam Binding Ribbon. I miss having the seam binding ribbon in the catalog...sure glad I stocked up on that before it retired.

Speaking of retiring...today is the day we find out which items in the current catalog will be retiring. Even after so many years as a SU! demo, I still have a hard time saying goodbye to my favorites. That's why I end up keeping most of my old sets!

Special Reason Pair

Back in the early days SU! carried very little DSP. If you wanted background paper to compliment the main stamped image on your project you had to create it yourself.  So when stamping with my new Special Reason set, I decided to go "old school" and have some fun creating my own DSP.

I love that this set has smaller versions of the flower & leaf, so it really lends itself well to creating a smaller background like I did fr these cards. As you can see, I used two color combos. The first one uses Bermuda Bay & Island Indigo for the flowers and Mint Macaron with Wild Wasabi for the leaves.

The second card features Melon Mambo & Rich Razzleberry flowers. On each of the handstamped background papers I lightly inked over the design using the line image from Gorgeous Grunge inked in Sahara Sand, along with a few ink spotches thrown in for good measure.

For the solid color strip on the left of each card I used the great new Hexagons Dynamic Embossing Folder. I just love the deeply embossed pattern it leaves...don't you? If you don't have this one yet, I highly recommend it! 

Thanks for visiting..have a great weekend!

Embellished Circle Circus

It's Friday! You know what that means? Time for a Stamp Something challenge! This week we are continuing on with our favorites theme, and to play along you just need to stamp something and use your favorite embellishment(s). For me, it's hard to pick just one embellishment...but if pressed, I guess it would be ribbon. I LOVE the new polka-dotted grosgrain ribbon and I also love using brads...so that is what I used for embellishments on my card for this weeks challenge.

I had part of a "one sheet wonder" sitting on my desk I had stamped back when the pre-order stuff first came in using this years In Colors, so I used that. Circle Circus is a great set to stamp a one sheet wonder. I also love to use my punches to create embellishments. I used a couple of my circle punches and punched out the large Razzleberry circle, layered it and embellished it with a Filigree Brad and a Certainly Celery brad in the center. That's what I really like about the Filigree brads...you can use the silver brads that come with them or swap out a colored or rhinestone brad to match your project.

Stamps: Circle Circus
Cardstock: Bermuda Blue, Melon Mambo, Certainly Celery,Razzleberry Lemonade designer paper
Ink: Bermuda Blue, Melon Mambo, Certainly Celery, Rich Razzleberry
Accessories: 1-3/4" & 1-3/8" Circle punches, Bermuda Blue polka-dotted grosgrain ribbon, Filigree brads, Soft Subtle Brads, Mat Pack, Polka-dot Texturz Plate

Hope you'll play along with us this week at Stamp Something! Have a great weekend!

Razzleberry Circus

Yesterday my friend came over and we played with our new SU! goodies. She had gotten the new Circle Circus set, so I was excited to try that one out. I stamped a few sheets of white card stock with my favorite new In Colors and this fun new set. Here's a card I created out of a strip cut from the patterned paper I made.
Colors used: Rich Razzleberry, Soft Suede, Melon Mambo & Bermuda Bay. Can you guess which color is my favorite? I love any and all shades of purple...so I LOVE Razzleberry...Melon Mambo & Bermuda Blue are tied for 2nd, then Soft Suede. I like Dusty Durango, but it is pretty close to Really Rust. I think Curry needs to grow on me yet.


Besides letting me play with her new stamps, check out the cute birthday set she gave me yesterday.

The flowers are layered with glittered centers. I love the cute little bag with the scalloped flap! It held a container of purple Dew Drops which I had been looking for at the scrapbook convention we had just attended. Thanks again Rachel...I love it! You can see more of my talented friends work on her new blog.

Thanks for stopping by!

Big & Little Flowers

My Mother-in-law recently got the Big Flowers and Little Flowers sets, so last time we got together for a fun stamping afternoon we tried them out. I thought these sets would be perfect for creating a one sheet wonder. So that's what I did. I used two different color schemes and went to town stamping my own patterned paper.


The first card uses Pretty in Pink, Close to Cocoa and Soft Sky. I really like these colors together! At the top of the card I used the Spot On jumbo wheel. The flowers work well with the circle and scallop punches. For a little different look to the scallop circle I just punched a hole in the middle of each scallop.


The other color scheme I used was Groovy Guava, Purely Pomegranate & Soft Sky. For this card I used a sheet of Guava that I had embossed with my upline's Cuttlebug when we were together a while back. I had it in my stash and thought it would work perfect with this set. I also used the So Many Scallops - "so sweet of you" stamp which I inked in Guava and then r'nr in Pomegranate.


These are such cute sets! I had fun using them.