Online Exclusives · Sketchy Fridays

Sketchy Fridays: Birthday Blossoms

Happy Friday! We have made it to the end of the week. And it was quite an exciting day for me. In the middle of a big work meeting today, we had a medical emergency. There’s nothing like someone crumpling in their chair to get the ol’ adrenaline pumping! Luckily, we could rouse the person and get them on their way for a medical evaluation pretty quickly. And on top of the excitement of the work day, it seems that the weather in our area is ramping up to make for an exciting evening. I hope it turns out to just be rain. I’m not sure my poor heart can handle anymore crazy adrenaline rushes today.

But on to our crafty fun for today. We are having another Sketchy Friday (even more appropriate than I originally intended!). For those of you who are new here, Sketchy Fridays is a weekly series where we use a card sketch to design our featured card.

This week’s card is based on the Freshly Made Sketches #722 sketch. A sketch like this one is the perfect way to use busy patterns and/or scraps. In our case, we’re doing both!

We get started on today’s card with a base of white cardstock. Since we’re using a lot of pattern, we want a nice neutral backdrop. A sheet of the Easter Joy pattern paper serves as our background. For the three diagonal corner strips, we combine the floral foil from the Pleasant Patterns pack, the pink sheet from Garden Textures, and the small floral foiled sheet from the Lovely & Beautiful pack. The two competing floral patterns are broken up with the solid textured sheet from Garden Textures. I wanted all of our fun patterns to show through, so the sentiment from the Fabulous Sayings set is stamped on vellum in Versamark and then heat embossed in gold. Before adhering our sentiment, we add a few floral bunches on either side from the Easter Time ephemera pack and then adhere the sentiment over them with glue dots. We finish things off with some pearlized faceted circles.

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Botanicals · florals · Online Exclusives

Floral Hello

Welcome in, friends, on this very soggy day. We experienced some record-breaking rainfall in our area yesterday, which made yesterday’s commute home very interesting and is sure to impact this morning’s commute, as well.

Today is going to be a two-post day since my evening didn’t go quite as planned yesterday — I’ll tell you a bit more about that later. This week, we’re tipping our hats to spring with all of our projects. And today we’re letting the brand new Flowers Fair background stamp and the Delicate Dreams foiled paper take center stage.

We get started with a base of white cardstock. A sheet of the small floral patterned paper from the new Delicate Dreams paper pack serves as the backdrop for our focal panel. The focal panel starts with a quarter-panel of Cloud Cover cardstock where we stamp the new Flowers Fair image in black. Using a combination of Pretty in Pink, Berry Burst, and Lost Lagoon Stampin’ Blend markers, the image is colored in. The panel is cut down to size for our card front using the Branching Out dies. I wrapped some of the new Berry Burst shiny ribbon around the midsection of the panel and then adhered the sentiment panel over it. The sentiment panel starts with a mat of the Earthen Toned metallic paper that is cut with the larger sentiment die from the Words of Beauty set. The sentiment panel is cut from white cardstock with the smaller sentiment die from the same die set. Then we carefully stamp the sentiment using a combination of stamps from the Wonderful Thoughts stamp set using Blackberry Bliss ink. We finish things off with our embellishments — a dash of Wink of Stella to the lighter pink flowers, some smaller iridescent pearls to the sentiment panel, and a few metallic dots on either side of our focal panel.

I really love how this card came together. And this is truly one of those instances where the whole design evolved as I went and pulled new crafty goodness that I wanted to be sure to include.

Now how about a little backstory on how my evening didn’t go to plan. Aside from the exceedingly long and rainy commute home, one of the feral kitties we’ve been feeding finally returned to our porch last night in between bands of rain. Yes, we’re some of those crazy cat people!

She’s quite young — likely approaching her first season — and super friendly. While she’s naturally skittish, if she figures out that you’re one of the nice ones, she sticks to you like glue and just wants all the pets. We’re calling her Ava. So needless to say, we quickly began formulating a plan to try to catch her the next time she appeared so that we could get her vetted, fixed, and put up for adoption through our local rescue group.

Last night, she was being pursued by a suitor in our driveway and I went outside to see if I could call her up. I called once and she came running — suitor hot on her tail….until he caught sight of me. After she snacked for a bit and got lots of pets, I swooped her up and brought her inside with our feral momma kitty who is close to her release date. So she got to stay safe and dry during last night’s torrential rains and we’re now making plans to find her a happy home.

Hopefully this evening will be a little less eventful and I can bring you the card I have in mind for today. As always, thanks for popping in and I hope you’re enjoying this week’s series so far!

Products used in today’s card:
Basic White, Cloud Cover cardstock
Delicate Dreams, Earthen Toned metallic DSP
Branching Out, Words of Beauty dies
Flowers Fair, Wonderful Thoughts stamps
Stampin’ Blends
Wink of Stella
Berry Burst shiny ribbon
Iridescent basic pearls, metallic dots
Dimensionals

Botanicals · Online Exclusives

Blooming Birthday

Howdy, friends! Welcome back. Second semester of school is always busy for us as the kiddo’s extracurricular activities really pick up and start overlapping. This weekend was one of those overlapping weekends as we met ourselves coming & going! But we got to spend it together, which is always fun and worthwhile.

Needless to say, I needed a weekend from my weekend and by the time I got a card made yesterday evening, I too pooped to sit down and write anything about it! So here we are in a brand new week with a brand new design theme — spring. I don’t know about where you are, but here in North Texas it’s already feeling like spring. Our weekend temps were in the 80s and everything is blooming & budding. So it only seemed appropriate to throw a spotlight on spring this week, which is perfect since there are so many awesome new things in the shop that a perfectly spring! Have you gotten a chance to take a look yet?

So our first spring card this week uses the brand new Delicate Dreams foiled paper. We get started with a base of Crumb Cake cardstock. Our focal panel is a sheet of the new Delicate Dreams floral paper that is matted with some earthen toned metallic paper to really bring out the coppery foil elements of this gorgeous patterned paper. The panel is wrapped with some Misty Moonlight & silver bordered ribbon that is then tied in a neat bow. To add a pop of additional color, I added a bow of the new Berry Burst shiny ribbon to add a second bow. We finish things off with our sentiment panel which uses the smaller decorative elements from the 2025 Advent Calendar. The sentiment from the Simply Said stamp set is stamped in Blackberry Bliss ink on the circular panel and then the diecut floral edging is adhered with glue dots. Some purple fine shimmer gems add a shimmery touch to the floral centers around the sentiment edge. A few extra metallic gems in opposing corners tie everything together and draw the eye across our card front.

There are so many wonderful new spring-inspired goodies in the shop. I hope you’ll drop in each day this week to see them all!

Products used:
Crumb Cake cardstock
Delicate Dreams, Earthen Toned metallic DSP
Simply Said stamps
2025 Advent Calendar
Berry Burst shimmer, Misty Moonlight & silver edged ribbon
Purple fine shimmer, metallic gems
Dimensionals

Coming Soon · Online Exclusives · Sketchy Fridays

Sketchy Fridays: Little Howl-lo

Happy Friday! We finally made it. You know, it’s so funny. I was in a work meeting today and we were all talking about how the last two weeks have felt like a month and it’s just been CRAZY. Anybody else been in the boat? BUT we’re finally to the weekend and get a little breather.

And I thought this was the perfect opportunity to have a Sketchy Friday. What do you think? For those of you who are new here, Sketchy Fridays is a weekly series where we use a card sketch to design our featured card.

Funny enough, I was drawn to a sketch that I used the last time I hosted a Sketchy Fridays post. Clearly, it must be a good one! Soooo this week’s card is based on the Freshly Made Sketches #706 sketch. As I was trying to find a sketch to go with the idea in my head to best show off the adorable new bundle called Cutest Crew, this one caught my eye. So here we go.

We get started with a neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. Our focal panel sits on a background of the brand new Garden Textures foil that will release next week. The base of the focal panel is a combination of a neutral geometric pattern from the Autumn Toile paper pack with a border of Earthen Toned metallic paper and adhered to the card front with dimensionals. The focal panel starts with a banner of Crumb Cake cardstock cut with the Nested Essentials dies. We heat emboss our sentiment from the new Cutest Crew stamp set in copper. Our cute band of doggos is from the new Cutest Crew stamp & die bundle releasing next week. We start by stamping the band of merry furballs onto white in black ink and then color them with an assortment of Stampin’ Blends, including Crumb Cake, Basic Gray, Basic Black, and a few others. The puppers are adhered to our focal panel with dimensionals. The full focal panel is adhered to the larger base with dimensionals over some Gray Granite variegated trim and Cloud Cover baker’s twine from the 2025 Advent Calendar. We finish thigs off with some opal rounds on opposite corners of our sentiment to draw our eyes across our adorable scene.

We’re rounding out our critter series tomorrow. Do you have any critter favorites that might be in my crafty stash? Drop me some suggestions and see if yours makes the cut!

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Coming Soon · L2S Group Instahop · Online Exclusives

Purrrfect Day

Happy Thursday, friends! We are almost through this week and on to the weekend. I’m super excited to bring you today’s card design because we’re getting sneak peeks at several new Stampin’ Up! goodies coming your way next week with the new Online Exclusives release. This week, our design theme is all about our favorite critters and there are some adorable critters coming your way! We’re pairing up the brand NEW Cutest Crew stamp & die bundle with the Easter Joy foil papers to bring together this adorably cheerful card. Let’s see how it all comes together!

We get started with a nice neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. It works well to bring out the pastels in the patterned papers without competing with them. (And trust me, I tried all kinds of colors as the base layer and the neutral worked the best!). Our background layer is a fun multicolor cross pattern from the Easter Joy foiled paper pack. There’s just enough peeking out around the edges to add some interest and pizzazz without taking away from the focal panel scene.

And speaking of our focal panel. We get started with the focal panel mat which is a brand new patterned foil paper coming your way next week in the Garden Textures foil pack. This panel is cut with the largest arch in the Everyday Arches die set. I chose the Blueberry Bushel sheet to help our focal panel stand out against our patterned background, and it also works to help the pastels in our scene pop. Our focal panel on which we’re building our scene is one of the ready-made panels in the Easter Joy paper pack. I used the next-smallest die in the Everyday Arches set to cut it out.

And then we get started with our cute kitties who are enjoying a romp on the grassy hill chasing butterflies. These adorable felines are part of the new Cutest Crew stamp set & die bundle releasing next week. I stamped the kittens on white cardstock and then used a combination of Stampin’ Blends to color them before using the coordinating dies and paper snips to cut them out. They adhered to the scene with a combination of glue dots and dimensionals to give lots of depth of scene. The butterflies are cut from Lemon Lolly pastel shimmer paper and adhered with glue dots. The sentiment from the Unforgettable Times ephemera pack is adhered over Secret Sea bordered ribbon using dimensionals. A double layer helps the sentiment to really stand above everything else and catch the eye. We finish things off with some flowers from the new garden epoxy dots pack and some pops of twinkle with the pearlized faeted circles.

Isn’t this super fun? We’re going to get a peek at a few more critters tomorrow as we return to the lazy days of breezy summers. I hope you’ll drop in and see what cutie critters are up next!

Today’s card is a part of the Luv 2 Stamp Group Instagram Hop, which goes live at 9 AM Pacific Time (PST).  Click here to head over to my Instagram feed at 9 AM Pacific/11 AM Central and check out what the other demos in our L2S Group have created for you today! 

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Outdoor Adventure

Great Adventure

There is no greater appropriate post title than today’s. Wouldn’t you agree?! Life is truly a great adventure. And every day is a surprise. Will it go as planned or will something off-the-wall come up? Adventure indeed!

Speaking of adventures, this week we’re taking a trek through our crafty stash to create outdoorsy-themed projects. And today we’re getting a better look at the brand new stamp and die bundle that released this week called Outdoor Adventure. We have another clean and simple design today — just combining our new bundle with ink and paper to create this fun design.

We get started with a base of Secret Sea cardstock. I had a small mountain panel leftover from a card-making session several weeks ago using the Light & Wonder dies that works perfectly with the design I had in mind today and it just so happened to be the perfect size to serve as the focal panel. We stamp some stands of evergreen trees using the new Outdoor Adventure stamps. They’re stamped in Pretty Peacock on Lost Lagoon and then cut with the coordinating die from the Outdoor Adventure die set. Next we stamp our focal point — the wolf — with Gray Granite ink on Smoky Slate cardstock and then diecut with the coordinating die. I arranged the sentiment from Outdoor Adventure on a single block and stamped all at once in Secret Sea in the bottom-left corner of the focal panel. And then we set to work assembling. I alternated the trees behind and in front of the focal panel and adhered the panel to the card front with dimensionals. The wolf is positioned below the center set of trees and above the sentiment, giving the look that our majestic wolf is strolling across the flat at the base of the rise of the mountain. A few iridescent frosted dots finish things off perfectly with an ethereal twinkle in the opposing corners.

What do you think of this clean & simple design? I was tickled when my scrap turned out to be an even better element in the design than I thought it might be! I hope you’ll drop in tomorrow to see where else we might go on our woodland trek this week.

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Online Exclusives · Outdoor Adventure

Let’s Explore

Howdy, friends, and welcome in! Today is an exciting day. It’s new product release day! Have you checked out all of the new Online Exclusive items in my store? So much good stuff there!

As we continue our trek through the woods this week, we’re getting another peek at a *new* bundle of products — the Outdoor Adventure stamps & dies. We’re pairing up this new set of products with the Timeless Plaid paper to create a fun masculine design.

We get started with a base of Crumb Cake cardstock. Our backdrop is a sheet of the Timeless Plaid paper cut with the largest Perennial Postage die. The focal panel is a sheet of the Gathering Together paper cut with the Textured Notes dies. The two panels are adhered to our card base with dimensionals. We create our trekking footprints with Crumb Cake cardstock and the Outdoor Adventure footprint dies. They’re adhered to our focal panel with glue dots. The sentiment panel is a sheet of Cajun Craze on which we stamp our sentiment from the Outdoor Adventure stamp set in Cajun Craze ink and then diecut with the Textured Notes dies before adhering over our footprints with dimensionals. I used a twist of Cajun Craze linen thread to create a bundle of climbing rope that is adhered in the bottom-right corner of our focal panel. The sign post is created with a combination of Crumb Cake and Country Woods papers using the Outdoor Adventure dies and then adhered to our focal panel with dimensionals. A few Cajun Craze & gold dots finish things off with a touch of sparkly interest.

I hope you’ll pop in tomorrow to see what else some of the new SU! Online Exclusives can lend to our trek through the woods!

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Beautiful Pumpkins · Peaceful Garden · Sketchy Fridays

Sketchy Fridays: BIG thanks

Happy Sketchy Fridays, everyone, and welcome to the weekend! Except it’s Saturday, but we’re all good with that, right? *snicker* My week could be summed up by lions and tigers and bears, oh my! We had a major cloud data migration at my office over last weekend and everything that could go wrong did go wrong. So we were having to make due with alternative ways of accessing e-mail and cloud files all week, and let’s just say that it’s been a mess! In and amongst all of that, we’re hosting a big educational conference in our office next week annnnnnd naturally all of my spreadsheets and files were a part of the data migration. *sigh* So it’s been a little challenging at the office this week, to say the least!

BUT here I am on Saturday bringing you the Sketchy Fridays card because it was just going to be too cute not to make & share! For those of you who are new here, Sketchy Fridays is a weekly series where we use a card sketch to design our featured card.

This week’s card is based on the Freshly Made Sketches #706 sketch. As soon as I saw it, I already had an idea in mind and that made it an easy choice! And we’re turning it on its head, so to speak, to make it landscape. Today’s design features the new Online Exclusives Beautiful Pumpkins bundle.

We get started with a neutral base of white cardstock. Our front panel backdrop is a sheet of the gold foiled script paper from the Nature’s Sweetness paper pack. The focal panel is a combination of two sheets of the Gathering Together paper – the Cajun Craze small leaf pattern and the gold foiled fall foliage pattern. It’s mounted to the card front with dimensionals. The sentiment from the *new* 12 Days of Crafting Advent Calendar stamp set is heat embossed in black at the top of the panel. I wanted the pumpkins to have more texture and interest than what the stamps alone would provide, so I selected several of the woodgrain patterns from the Country Woods paper pack and used the detail stamp from the Beautiful Pumpkins set and a coordinating, but light, color on top of each woodgrain and then used the coordinating dies to cut out each one. The pumpkin stems are also cut from one of the darker woodgrain patterns from the Country Woods paper pack. I tried several different colors for the leaves and vines before settling on the Old Olive sheet from the Season of Elegance paper pack. We give the pumpkins lots of depth of field by adhering them with varying heights of dimensionals. And we finish things off with some gold low profile dots.

I’ll be closing out this week’s design series with some home decor. I hope you’ll drop back by later to check it out.

Product List
Coming Soon · Gathering Together · Online Exclusives

Give Thanks

Happy rainy Saturday, crafty friends. Here in N. Texas, it’s the perfect day to spend in the craft room as we sit and enjoy a cup of tea while listening to the pitter-patter of the raindrops falling and soft (or not-so-soft) rumbles of thunder.

We’re rounding out our design series this week which has featured sneak peeks of upcoming Online Exclusive releases of Gathering Together and Beautiful Pumpkins that will be live in my shop on Tuesday! Today, we’re using the Gathering Together suite to create a lovely home decor project. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you have maybe seen a post or two here and there about our family table prayers. And today’s featured project is a fall refresh for our framed prayer.

I’m continuing to use the 6×6 tabletop frame I bought off Amazon. I used a sheet of the Gathering Together patterned paper as the backdrop and cut it down to 6×6 to fit in the frame. Everything gets started with the selected scripture we’re using as the prayer. I used my computer to type it up and print it onto Crumb Cake cardstock and then cut it out using the Spotlight on Nature dies. It’s adhered in the center with dimensionals. Using the Gathering Moments stamps, I stamped both large and small leaves in a variety of colors onto Very Vanilla cardstock and then used the coordinating dies to cut them out. I also stamped some fronds of greenery and acorns onto Crumb Cake cardstock then diecut them with the coordinating dies from Gathering Moments set. I arranged these around the circular sentiment panel to create a wreath and adhered them all at varying heights with a combination of tear-n-tape and dimensionals. For some pops of sparkle, I cut some leafy fronds from gold foil paper and Old Olive glimmer paper using the Peace on Earth dies (another Tuesday release) and tucked them in and around the fall foliage wreath. I added a small bow of Mossy Meadow & Gold ribbon at the top and finished things off with a few Cajun Craze foil dots.

What do you think? All in all, this comes together really quickly. It’s really striking in person, and I’m super pleased with how this turned out. I think I’m going to make a few more to display in my booth at an upcoming craft show.

Next week, we’re going to jump ahead just a little and have a Christmas sneak peek as I show you some fabulous goodies that will be available to you in Tuesday’s release. I hope you’ll drop in and see what’s in store!

Products used in today’s project:
6×6 frame
Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake cardstock
Gathering Together (coming Tues), Old Olive glimmer (retired), gold foil DSP
Gathering Moments stamps & dies (coming Tues)
Peace on Earth (coming Tues), Spotlight on Nature dies
Mossy Meadow & gold ribbon
Cajun Craze foil dots (coming Tues)
Dimensionals
Adhesives

Beautiful Pumpkins · Coming Soon · Gathering Together · Online Exclusives

Height of Friendship

Happy Friday, everybody! I’m super excited to be (legitimately) wearing long sleeves & pants today as we’ve had our first major cool front of the season push through here in N. Texas. We’re not expected to get out of the 80s today. And if you’re at all familiar with Texas in August, well, this is quite a treat!

It’s definitely feeling like fall here which makes this week’s card theme all the more apropos. We’re working with the new Online Exclusive suite by Stampin’ Up! called Gathering Together. And once again, we’re pairing it up with the new Beautiful Pumpkins bundle to create a fun fall card design. All of the new products are set to drop on Tuesday, and everything is really and truly a must see!

Today’s card gets started with a base of Crumb Cake cardstock. I chose a sheet of the woodgrain pattern from the Gathering Together paper pack as the background for this design. The Beautiful Pumpkins stamps and dies create our focal image section. The pumpkins are stamped on Very Vanilla cardstock and cut with the coordinating dies. I decided to the use the Season of Elegance sheet for the vines and leaves because I loved the little touch of shimmery gold peeking out between the stacked pumpkins. The stem is cut from Crumb Cake and a lovely bow of gold trim sits atop the heap of gourds. Just for funsies, I added a mushroom from the Gathering Moments bundle that I had leftover from earlier this week to add a fun and whimsical detail at the bottom of the tower. The sentiment from Beautiful Pumpkins is stamped on Crumb Cake and diecut with the Mixed Labels die using the extension method. It sits atop some Mossy Meadow & Gold ribbon, which helps tie all of our focal elements together. We finish things off with some Shades of Green hexagons.

Tomorrow we’ll be finishing off this week’s series of sneak peeks at the upcoming fall products release. I hope you’ll drop in and see how we finish things off….it’s sure to be a showstopper!

Products used in today’s card:
Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla cardstock
Gathering Together (coming Tues), Season of Elegance DSP
Beautiful Pumpkins bundle (coming Tues)
Gathering Moments bundle (coming Tues)
Mossy Meadow & Gold ribbon, gold trim
Shades of Green hexagons
Dimensionals
Adhesives