Major Mojo - Verve July Week 1

I have been having such a great time playing with all my new stamps I haven't taken the time to post anything here to share. My bad! One of my recent purchases were several sets from Verve. I discovered that Verve posts a weekly "Sketch with a Twist" on Splitcoast Stampers. This first card was my initial design for the 1st week of July's sketch. The twist was to use distressing.
The colors are SU's Mellow Moss, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla and Bashful Blue. The Chocolate Chip panel was embossed with a Quickutz Embossing folder, punched with a Fiskars Embossing Border Punch then highlighted with Brilliance Galaxy Gold. The Very Vanilla panel, the ribbon slide label and the Fleur de Lis were cut and embossed with Spellbinders dies.

While I liked this card, I thought I could take it up a notch so I cut the ribbon slide label from Chocolate Chip, embossed the sentiment in gold and used a gold organdy ribbon. I also tucked the Fleur de Lis behind the upper right corner of the Very Vanilla panel.Tomorrow I will be posting the card I made using the Sketch with a Twist for the 2nd week of July.

Until then...

Wonderful Day

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. So far, July has been really busy. Besides the usual "stuff" Wednesday was the heart specialist with my father-in-law and then the pharmacy, Thursday was heading south to the dentist for me in the morning then heading north in the afternoon with my husband for him to donate platelets not to mention battling a horrendous rainstorm all the way home from Ogden. We had a cook out on Friday and got to watch the fireworks. Our town always does them on July 3rd so they don't compete with the next town over. We had a rather good view from our front yard. Saturday was spent up at our son's trying to track down an electrical problem and helping our daughter-in-law with her craft room then home and watching the next town's fireworks from the backyard. Today... blessed peace. It was truly a day of rest!
Sometime during this crazy week, I received my very first order of Verve stamps. Love their designs and their customer service. Somehow I managed to order 2 sets of Floral Symphony instead of one of them and one Grateful Elegance but Verve is doing an exchange. I love it when correcting my mistakes is so easy.

This afternoon I got to open up my new stamps and play. This card was made with Verve's Wishful Elegance and Miracles Blossom. SU inks were Blue Bayou, Wild Wasabi and Sahara Sand on SU River Rock, Soft Sky and Sahara Sand cardstock. Ribbon is from SU, sentiment is Printworks and the die cuts were done with Spellbinders plain and scalloped octagons. I am really looking forward to using the other sets I ordered as well as Verve's Anniversary Blog Hop on August 1st.

Garden Update

It amazes me how much the gardens have changed in what seems like such a short time. The Serenity Garden has gone from Spring to Summer mode. The vegetable garden is growing strong and needs 2 more trellises. My husband designed and built the first one for my Butternut Squash. Isn't it wonderful? He plans on making 2 more before the cucumbers get much bigger. And my poor Robin is sitting on the nest looking so bored. She won't be bored much longer though.

Where have I been?!?

Recently I went a little crazy... OK, crazier than usual... and placed my first order with Papertrey Ink. I am now the proud owner of 13 of their stamp sets. I told you I went crazy! But where have I been that I am just now getting into Papertrey Ink? Their stamps are fabulous and I had such a blast yesterday playing with their Vintage Picnic, Vintage Picnic Sentiments and Guide Lines. I need to practice a bit to get used to lining them up right and I need to get used to wearing this brace on my hand but, all in all, I am just tickled with this card.


First I tried the Wrinkle Free Distress Technique on Curious Iridescent Cryogen White 89# Cover. It is the same as SU's Shimmery White. My first 3 attempts were way too dark. Sherry Cheever I am not! I used Worn Lipstick, Dusty Concord and Shabby Shutters Distress Ink and finally put a strip of the Shappy Shutters along the center of my non-stick sheet with just a square of the Worn Lipstick and Dusty Concord on each side of the strip. I then switched to SU's Regal Rose, Certainly Celery and Lavender Lace to stamp the background design with Guide Lines. I could stamp with that set all day! The combinations are endless.

I stamped the picnic basket and flowers with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink onto another piece of the same cardstock and colored with my Prismacolor markers - Violet Mist, Parma Violet, Avacado, Light Olive, Pink and Magenta. Cut the basket out with a Spellbinders circle die, cut and embossed a Certainly Celery frame using the same circle die and an inverted scallop circle inside and mounted it all to a Rose Red piece cut with a Spellbinders Labels 3 die.

Next came the Certainly Celery strip edged with a Martha Stewart Border Punch, mounted to a wider strip of Rose Red, wrapped with ribbon and tied in a bow. This was mounted to the left side of my background and then the basket piece was centered in the remaining area and the sentiment stamped underneath in black.

June Stamp Club

I didn't go to Club this month since my hand was immobilized and I couldn't stamp. The project was fabulous so I hope to be able to do it soon and share. In the meantime, this is the card I did for our Swap. The theme was summer and what better way to depict the season than with strawberries, cherries and watermelon. Yummmm!

The frame was stamped in Memento Black and colored with an olive Prismacolor marker. The fruit, from the retired SU stamp set Fabulous Fruits, was stamped with SU Real Red and Garden Green. The sentiment, stamped in black, is from SU's Happy Harmony. The whole piece was trimmed with a deckle scissor and mounted to a Real Red card.
This frame stamp (unmounted) was picked up in Puyallup, WA at least 7 or 8 years ago. If anyone recognizes it, please let me know what stamp company it came from.

When I’m Not Stamping

I have been very busy these past 2 months with a lot of things other than stamping. My "pot" garden is doing very well and I have already had several salads from it. The Serenity Garden is doing extremely well especially with all the rain we have been having although the snails have been having a field day with my Hostas. For several years we have been planning to replace the grass and weeds on our parking strip with something that does not require any maintenance or water and will not be affected by all the road salt that the plows toss on there every winter. Finally, this year, as an Anniversary gift, we purchased several thousand pounds of red sandstone pavers. We were going to use red gravel but after losing several shear pins on our snow blower while clearing our neighbor's sidewalk because of the gravel in her parking strip, we decided to go with the pavers. It was backbreaking work and took us a few weeks to complete but our efforts were well worth it. When we were about halfway through the project we decided that it was too flat and boring so we purchased a few large sandstone rocks to add some interest. Then it poured rain and water shot out of all the gopher tunnels so we needed to relocate the downspout to our rain gutters. Once we did that we realized that our rain gutters had seen better days so we replaced those. Who knows what we'll find next! Any one making a run up to Idaho for lottery tickets?