Botanicals

Blooming Thanks

Happy Monday, everybody! I hope your week is off to a good start. I feel like the weekend went by in a flash. Anyone else hate the spring time change as much as I do?? I don’t know what it is about springing forward but it just doesn’t sit well with me. My poor body is doomed to be confused by the whole thing for at least another month. But onward and upward, I guess, right?

This week we are onward & upward to a new design theme. Except I would more call it a repeat theme with a twist. I enjoyed last week’s florals series in honor of spring so much and had many more ideas I didn’t get to that I decided it needed another week. So here we are enjoying another week of spring florals BUT we’re adding the twist of using a different sketch each day to get started. Today we’re pairing up the Lovely & Beautiful paper with Sketch 717 from the folks over at Freshly Made Sketches.

Our beautiful patterned paper is driving the bus on our color scheme today. We get started with a card base of Petal Pink cardstock. Our background is a sheet of the Calypso Coral floral pattern from the Lovely & Beautiful pack. Our front overlay panel is a sheet of vellum that folds over our card front and covers the sentiment panel and has one oversized flower in the center. When the see-through panel is closed, it nicely compliments the smaller foiled floral pattern underneath. We add some metallic gems and gold striped ribbon to this front-facing panel.

The smaller panel is the medium floral pattern with gold foiling and actually serves as our hidden sentiment panel. The sentiment from the With You in Mind stamp set is stamped in Versamark over the center flower in gold and is then heat set. Some pearlized faceted dots are added across the panel to draw the eye down and across.

What do you think of this fun variation on the sketch? I love the breezy feel of this card design. Can’t you just imagine yourself running in a field of wildflowers that are softly blowing in the wind? I hope you’ll drop in tomorrow to see what fun products we put together with our new design sketch!

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Botanicals · Online Exclusives

Sending Blossoms of Love

Welcome to the weekend, everyone! It’s a rainy Saturday here in North Texas. And while I have lots of things on the outside spring to-do list, the indoor activities won out today. I started the day providing music for a funeral and then spent the afternoon at the kiddo’s Academic Pentathlon district meet, where he placed individually in Literature and then took several medals with his team. And before hitting the home to-do list, I’ve stolen a little time in the craft room to bring some of my own sunshine to this overall dreary day.

This week, we’ve been letting spring inspire our designs. And today is all about the gorgeous Lovely & Beautiful patterned paper, along with a few other things from the crafty stash, and a sketch as we create this beautiful encouragement card.

Because I’ve got a list of things to do, I wanted to create a beautiful card but without a lot of time spent on designing from the ground up. And what helps the most in those situations? For me, sketches are a must! So we’re using #719 by the Freshly Made Sketches team to make quick work of today’s card.

We get started with a base of Fresh Freesia cardstock. A sheet of the small floral pattern from the Lovely & Beautiful paper pack serves as our background pattern. A strip of Fresh Freesia helps break up our busy patterned background and we spruce it up just a touch by machine embossing our strip with the Beautiful Patterns embossing folder. From a scrap of one of the larger floral patterned sheets from the Lovely & Beautiful pack, I cut a gorgeous peony and adhered it on the left with dimensionals. The sentiment from the Fabulous Sayings stamp set is stamped in Versamark and then heat embossed in gold before being diecut with the Nested Essentials banner die using the extension method to get it just the right size. The vellum sentiment panel is adhered over the flower with mini glue dots. We finish things off with some pearlized faceted gems for just a touch of twinkle.

There are so many more beautiful spring florals in the current Stampin’ Up! lineup that I think we’re going to continue it for one more week. Do you have any current floral-y favorites you’d like to see? Maybe they’re in my stash. Drop me some suggestions in the comments! Until then, see you next week.

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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 · Online Exclusives

Delicate Thoughts

Welcome back for today’s bonus post. This week’s theme is all about spring as things here in my area are certainly starting to feel like spring, including last night’s storms! But with spring showers come spring flowers and isn’t that what we’re all in for?! Today’s bonus card is showcasing more of the Delicate Dreams suite as we pair the Delicate Dreams and Delicate Designs foil papers to create this lovely thinking of you design.

The layout for today’s card uses Sketch 276 from the Freshly Made Sketches team as the starting point. We get started with a base of Misty Moonlight cardstock. Our base layer combines the small blue floral pattern from the Delicate Dreams pack and the leaf pattern from the Delicate Designs pack and then separated with some Misty Moonlight and silver edged ribbon in a faux book binding look. Our focal panel plays double duty as our sentiment panel. The sentiment from With You In Mind is stamped in Versamark on vellum and then heat embossed with copper. The panel is cut with the Label Me Grateful panel die and then adhered over some leaf fronds cut with the same die set from a combination of earthen toned metallic and blue garden textures foil sheets. We finish things off with a combination of metallic gems on our sentiment panel and then blue opal rounds surrounding our focal panel.

This paper is just so beautiful that I keep turning to it. But I promise I’ll be branching out into some other goodies in the crafty stash tomorrow as we continue our spring design series! Hope to see you then!

Edited to add: would you like to know what happens when you get in a hurry to post your card because you’re so excited about how it turns out? You forget to actually insert it in your post. DOH!

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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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scene building

Peaceful Sunrise

Welcome to the midweek. I can’t decide if this week is moving slowly or swiftly. What about you? In some ways it’s hard to believe it’s Wednesday but then again I feel like it should be Friday already. Today’s card seems awfully fitting under those circumstances!

This week, we’re pulling out all the critters in our crafty stash. And today I just couldn’t resist the mom and fawn from the Autumn Trees die set. I’ve paired them up with the new Aspen Grove stamp set to create this peaceful scene with lots of layers of beautiful color.

We get started with a nice neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. To pull out all of the subtle colors in the pre-dawn sky, I chose a sheet of the Pool Party glimmer paper from the pastel shimmer paper pack as the mat for the focal panel. To build the scene on our focal panel, we start with the Aspen Grove stamp set. The aspen tree trunks are stamped in several different colors, including Early Espresso, Gray Granite, and Smoky Slate, to create the shading you often see if those trunks. To keep the leaves a truer green, I opted to shade the sky in the background next. Using small blending brushes, I applied a combination of Cloud Cover, Daffodil Delight, Timid Tiger, Strawberry Slush, and Fresh Freesia to create the beautiful colors of a pre-dawn sky — just before the sun peeks over the horizon. Then we stamp our canopy of leaves so that those greens stay nice and crisp over the sky. A combination of Soft Sea Foam and Old Olive worked well. Our doe and fawn images are cut from a scrap of Crumb Cake and tucked in the opening in the trees using dimensionals. The sentiment from the Prayers & Promises stamp set is stamped in Cloud Cover on white cardstock and then cut out with the Traditional Labels dies. The sentiment is tucked in the top-right corner and adhered over a twist of the brand new Berry Burst shiny ribbon that will release next week. Several layers of dimensionals help the sentiment panel stand tall above the ribbon and really catch your eye in the scene. A few opal rounds finish things off with a subtle twinkle.

Tomorrow is the Luv 2 Stamp Group Instahop day, and I can’t wait to show you a brand new and absolutely adorable critter bundle. I hope you’ll drop in and see!

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Easter

Bunny Hunt

Welcome back, crafty friends, on this sunny Tuesday here in North Texas. I know that some of you may find yourselves under a significant snowfall and maybe aren’t seeing the sun just yet. And if that’s you, I’m wishing you some sunny days ahead really soon!

This week, we’re designing around the critters in our crafty stash. And today’s card is a no-stamp, no-sentiment design. We’re pairing up the super cute Easter Joy paper with the Easter Time ephemera.

We get started with a base of Pretty in Pink cardstock. Our focal panel starts with one of the ready-made scenes from the Easter Joy paper pack that has been cut down to size using the Textured Notes dies and adhered to our card front panel with dimensionals. We build our bunny hunting eggs scene using the Easter Time ephemera pack — a combination of bunny, flowers, and decorated egg. These are all adhered to the scene with dimensionals to give depth and interest to the scene. We finish things off with some Garden epoxy dots, which are NEW and will be releasing next week, and some of the pink foiled gems.

What do you think of this super simple card? It comes together in just minutes, which is nice when you’re in a hurry. But I’m always a little leery of designing one without a sentiment, even when the theme is obvious. What are your thoughts on that?

I hope you’ll tune in tomorrow to see where our critter theme takes us next!

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