The 12 Kits of Occasions - June '14

Well here we are half way through 2014!

What a better way to celebrate than the June installment of  The 12 Kits of Occasions!

Marybeth was our hostess this month with the perfect theme for summertime, weddings and anniversaries. The kits were full of the most gorgeous shimmery papers and die cuts. I have so much left over to play with once I see what the rest of the team has done.  Absolutely perfect colours for the themes.

I have five cards to share with you today.
I am also submitting these to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge Anything Goes!







I finally broke out my Papertrey Shaker + Sprinkles kit. Easy peasy shaker card!!







I took a close up so you could see the gorgeous paper!

On the window sill:

Make sure you visit the 12 Kits blog to see what the rest of the team has done with this month's kit!

Tag You're It and an Exciting Announcement!

Have you heard? There is a brand new challenge blog created by Jackie Rockwell!

A challenge blog that is all about tags!

Today is the day that the Design Team is being announced over on the Tag You're It blog.

I am so excited to share with you that I am one of the designers.

We are kicking off  the challenge blog today by introducing you to the entire design team and inviting you to play along with our warm-up mini challenge!

This 5 day challenge is based on this tag by Karin Akesdotter who won our Guest Designer search.

This is how I was inspired by Karin's Tag. 

Playing with some new stamps and dies from Clearly Besotted.

Head over to the Tag You're It blog to seethe entire new Design Team and to see the fantastic projects they have created to inspire you and also instructions on how to play along with us.

CFC #133 - Summer Lovin'

Time for another challenge at CAS-ual Fridays!

Your challenge is to create a clean and simple project that use hearts in 'summer colours'!

What can you win?

A guest spot on the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps blog,

the winner of this challenge will also get a yummy prize from our fabulous sponsor!

Please give a woot woot for:

And that yummy prize is...

This is how I was inspired by the challenge...

Head over to CAS-ual Fridays to see what the rest of the team has to inspire you and to link up!

Have a wonderful weekend, I can't wait to see what you do.

Teacher Gifts

My kids do not do teacher gifts anymore. In University it would be considered a bribe in high school it isn't really done, at least not as a senior.  I wish that all the awesome school themed stamps and designs were available when my kids were small and we were doing teacher gifts for all the teachers.

My daughter, however, did a two credit co-op this past semester in a JK/SK class as she wants to follow in my footsteps and be a teacher. Last week on her last day, "Miss Brooklyn" came home with 25 handmade cards from her students.  She will never throw them away, I know that. Yesterday was the SK graduation so she went back for the festivities and wanted to take a gift for the teachers she worked with as well as the SERT and the EA. We had planned on making sets of thank you card for each, but Brooklyn decided that she would like to give each of them some of my cards (since I have so many of them). So she selected an assortment of birthday, thank you, sympathy, all occasion and get well cards. We packaged them up along with envelopes in glassine bags, tied them with bakers twine and created thank you tags for the fronts.

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Out of my Comfort Zone...

I am a CAS card designer and I don't like getting my hands sticky!

However, part of my New Years Resolution was to try new things to reach outside of my comfort zone. 

When I saw Laura Bassen`s awesome video about colouring embossing paste posted on the Simon Says blog at the end of May I filed it as something I must try.  I love to learn new techniques from Laura.  As soon as I saw Donna Mikasa`s card and Guest Design at Time Out Challenges I knew that now was the time to try this. I have a lot of Distress Inks, but not a lot of the newer colours.  So shopping for ink was necessary, the closest store that sells Distress Ink is in Toronto. So last Friday evening my daughter and I headed into the city. An hour and 15 to get there, made it by there by 8:00 and although I wasn`t able to get the colours I was looking for in large pads this is what I got:

A shopping problem? Maybe.

Here is Donna's gorgeous card!

So I gave the technique a try, not perfect by any means, but really fun and I love the texture.  I topped it off by creating a dimensional sentiment, also not perfect, and some die cut sequins. I am also submitting this to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes!

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CCC #101

Time for this week's new Cue Card at CASology!

I backed each letter of this large speech bubble wood veneer laser cut with colours of the rainbow.

1.  One main image--speech bubble

2.  Lots of open space

3.  Limited layers & embellishments

4.  Quick & easy to recreate

Head on over to CASology today to learn what the 'cue card' means to you, how you can play along and see the all the cards created by the Design Team to inspire you.

Melissa Chipperfield

Tracey McNeely (that's me)

Jen Wills

Ardyth Percy-Robb

Judy Marino

Meghan McMillan

Gillian Ross

Kimberly Weiner

Joyce Mehrberg

May Sukyong Park

colourQ #247 and The Challenge #9

Happy Tuesday and tie for this week's new colour palette from the colourQ!

I mimicked the pattern from this sweet dress on the focal panel of my card and used Lesley's  sketch from The Challenge! I also used score lines instead of background paper.

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