Lego Birthday card using Itty Bitty Banners from Stampin' Up!

Hi there My Stamping Friends, I hope you're having a fantastic week. Ours has been packed! One thing we did was attend a birthday party last night for my daughter's classmate that was turning 5. He was having a lego themed party and I wanted to make him a card that fit his theme so I went to Stampin Connection (the demo only site full of ideas, samples and instructions) and found a lego card made by a fellow demonstrator named Teresa Hyde. I CASED it pretty closely since the colors and layout were perfect for what I needed, and I used Stampin' Up! Bitty Banners from Stampin' Up!.

So, what do you think? Next time I'll place the legos on the card before I do the shading with the gel pen, so I can make sure the shading all goes in the same direction.

Don't forget that today is the last day to shop from the current catalog and retiring list. You can shop online and get a discount by clicking here http://www.stampinup.com/ECWeb/CategoryPage.aspx?categoryid=736 Tomorrow (Friday) is the first day we can order from the new catalog.

Have a fantastic day.
Rose-Ellen

Musical Note cards for Teacher Apprecation Week using Stampin' Up! Music Notes Wheel

It was Teacher Appreciation Week in our area last week and that is our time to show all our teachers a little extra love. My daughter Samantha plays the clarinet, so I wanted to make sure that her music teacher was included on the list of teachers that received our Teacher Appreciation gifts. Since I know a lot of teachers, I know that they write a LOT of Thank You notes at the end of the school year so I thought I would make them some Stampin' Up! thank you notes. One of my other daughters, Jordan, takes piano lessons and when she saw me making the musical note cards  (get it, musical note....note cards....sometimes I crack myself up!!) and asked if I could make her a card to write out to her piano teacher. I'll share more of the teacher gifts over the next few posts but today I wanted to share the cards I made for the music teachers.

I'm having Samantha deliver the note cards to her clarinet teacher so unfortunatly I'll miss her reaction, but I was there when Jordan handed over her card to her piano teacher. She wrote him a note about how much she loved piano and how happy she was that HE was her teacher. It was very sweet; misspellings and all. And then, he raised himself up ANOTHER notch in her eyes. He actually sat down at the piano and played the music, or at least the parts he could see, from the front of the card and it sounded beautiful. I wish you could have been here (well, not really cause it would have been a packed room and my house isn't that big, but you know what I mean).

This is where I give KUDOS to Stampin' Up! They went out of their way to make sure that the Music Notes wheel had ACTUAL music on it. Imagine how embarrassing it could have been to have the teacher sit down and try to play some random notes that were just put there for 'looks'. I'm so impressed that once again Stampin' Up! is proving to be such a wonderful company.

For this project I used:
Crumb Cake cardstock
Very Vanilla cardstock
Crumb Cake ink
Chocolate Chip ink
Music Notes wheel
Sentiment Stamp from a retired set called Just A Note
circle punch
sponge (for an aged look)
3-1/4 x 3-1/4 mini envelopes
Big Shot
Top Note Die
Hand-Penned Holidays from the 2011-2012 Holiday Mini

I hope you enjoy the cards and feel free to leave a comment. I LOVE reading them. They really make my day.

Have a wonderful creative day!
Rose-Ellen

Betsy's Blossoms and Itty Bitty Banners by Stampin' Up!

I was so, so, so stinkin' excited to get my box of sneak peek goodies that I ordered from Stampin' Up! this week (an awesome benefit of being a demonstrator is that we get to order products one month before they are available to the public).I wish I could show you photos of all the products in my box of goodies, but at this point, I'm only allowed to show projects, not products.

I finally got a few minutes to stamp and play around for a bit on Sunday and here is what I came up with.

I had several frames that I picked up at a craft store years ago, sitting on my desk (honestly, they were waiting to go in the donation box) and as soon as I saw this wonderfully colorful Designer Series Paper from from the Floral District pack, I knew I had to alter the frame. I cut the