Wildflower Kids. New Release. They’ve gone DIGI! *gasp!*
Be here or be square. left in the dust. out of the loop. …well, just be here!
So you can buy some 
By Shopping here
I will see YOU tomorrow!
Ciao for now,
I was trying to think of alternatives to more Halloween cards, and thought if I could somehow make a sturdy tag…my vision would come to life (insert evil laugh here…muahahahahah).
Sorry ;)
A trip down the stationary aisle at the dollar store led me to these self laminating pockets, made for business cards. A trip down the aisle of the craft supplies led me to a keychain ring…and so my tag was born!
Poor Frank, I had to cut off a bit of his feet, and then I punched a whole right through his head!
Oh well, it adds to the Halloween theme.
I cut my black cardstock to fit within the pocket, and added some Bo Bunny Boo Crew Halloween Paper to create the background.
Frankenstein is
from the Wildflower Kids premiere release of Ghoul Friends, available at Stamp Happens. In the set you also get Rye as a vampire, and Violet dressed as a cat…how perfect will 3 of these little tags be!
I coloured Frank with my prismas and Baby Oil.
For the other side of the tag, I printed my sentiment on the computer and used the candy corn and the bat from the Ghoul Friends set to add to it.
This is for my Godson Ethan…so what if he’s only 7 months old, since it’s laminated, he can us this on his Halloween Bag for a long time!
I punched the whole and inserted the eyelet with my giant Crop-o-dile and then added the keychain and some ribbons to match the paper.
I also wanted to add that if you missed my video tutorial about how to tie bows with wire ribbon, scroll down or click HERE; I wanted to mention if you want a larger bow you’re going to
1) make the tails longer
2) make the loops bigger
and 3) add more loops.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Happy Tuesday!
Ciao for now,
Ok, be nice- here’s my first video tutorial.
This came to be after I shared my Explosion box and there were some questions about how to tie the bow.
I use these bows for my Christmas wreaths and tree; Christmas presents; birthday presents and even made them for my friend’s wedding.
I learned how to make these bows while I was working in a Flower Shop when I was in University.
Here we go!
Here's a picture of the blue bow on a small jewellery box; the bow is a bit large for this box, but it's just an example.
First I tied the ribbon around the box and made a small knot, so that I have something to wrap the wire from my bow around:
Then I attached the bow by tying the wire ribbon around my knot.
Here's an orange bow on the same box, just taped on; again it's a bit too big but it was the only box I could find...it's just to give you an idea.
Try it and let me know how it goes! Feel free to email any questions to me: apaperbuffet@rogers.com
As I said, the hardest part is learning to hold the ribbon in your hand.
Still can't get it? Don't worry, I'll be adding some bows to my Etsy store over the next few weeks. They will be reasonably priced, will ship flat ('cuz you can fluff 'em when you get them) and will be incredible for your holiday gifts; you'll be able to impress all your family and friends...I won't tell if you don't.
As the hostess with the mostest would say, "it's a good thing" ;)
Happy Monday!
Ciao for now,
As I was cruising the aisles of Michaels looking for some double pointed knitting needles, Basic Grey Ambrosia paper called my name. I swear I heard it. Who was I to argue with the gorgeous paper?
Hop in my shopping basket BG!
I’m completely in the fall spirit this weekend, with my yummy Beet soup I made yesterday and now this Ambrosia paper. A few weeks ago I picked up a few stamps in the dollar bin at Michaels and have been very eager to use them.
Ambrosia paper and tree stamps are a match made in heaven.
I used the sketch from Taylor’s Cupcake sketch challenge (you can go and play along here).
It’s a really straight forward sketch that can be kept simple or made ornate. I decided to keep this one simple, but I have a few other cards to make so I might play around with it.
I used SU Grey cardstock for the base and realized the BG Ambrosia paper matched SU Mostly Mustard perfectly! I distressed all the edges with TH Tea Dye distress ink…I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. I always find my edges are too harsh, so I’m stamping off my sponge before I hit the paper and it’s helping a lot.
The main image was stamped on SU Very Vanilla and created 
using the Rock’N’Roll technique; first stamped in SU Mostly Mustard, then I rolled the edges in SU Ruby Red.
I added some tiny rhinestones in orange and yellow…don’t look to closely, the Crystal Effects wasn’t dry when I took the picture. I’m incredibly impatient when it comes to letting things dry…that’s why Stickles and I don’t get along so well!
I added some BG buttons to the bottom, tied with some white string that I rubbed with more Tea Dye ink to take away some whiteness.
Happy Sunday!
Ciao for now,
EDITED TO ADD:
Here’s another card using the same sketch, but I made it into (my first) gate fold card. The card is a bit smaller than I intended it to be (4 1/4” wide by 8 1/2” long), but it’s a baby card, so it’s cute to be small, right?
I used SU Tempting Turquoise for the base, BG Lime Ricky DP and SU Yo-Yo Yellow.
Stamp is from MFT Baby on Board.
Today is a very glum fall day, a bit cool, and overcast. However, it is the perfect day for stamping (and movie watching while stamping).
I’m 75% done the wedding menu cards for my friend and I’m hoping to finish them up after dinner…which brings me to the new recipe I’m going to try.
While I was searching for a knitting pattern (yeah, I know, like I need another hobby to take up my time) I stumbled across the blog A Year of Marriage and found a recipe for Beet Soup in Acorn Squash bowls.
I love her blog, so clean and crisp and got really excited about trying this recipe. My dad is Polish/Ukrainian, and even though I didn’t like it as a kid, I now really really like Borscht (beet soup). My dad uses my Grandma’s recipe and I called home yesterday to request some for Thanksgiving weekend.
I picked up everything I needed at the grocery store and I’ll be starting in about an hour- so I’ll let you know how it goes.
I also wanted to share that since I upgraded my JS-Kit to Echo, I haven’t been receiving any email notices of comments on my blog; which likely also means if I’ve written back to you from your comment, you may not be getting them either.
I’ve tried everything they recommend on their FAQ site, but it’s not working, so I’ve sent off an email, but since it’s Saturday, I likely won’t get an answer until next week. This after spending 45 minutes on the phone with my ISP because my secondary email account wasn’t working…sheesh!
Hope you’re all having a fabulous Saturday…did you see all the new Stamp Insanity stamps we previewed yesterday? Did you visit Stamp Happens? the exclusive shop to get Wildflower Kids and Stamp Insanity stamps? I thought so :)
Happy Saturday!
EDITED TO ADD: 
This soup is sooo yummy!
I couldn’t eat my whole ‘bowl’, it’s really filling.
I did tweak the recipe, using beef broth plus one veggie bouillon cube for a bit more flavour, and more closely to borscht.
Try it, it’s perfect for a fall day!
Ciao for now,
Today is the 2nd major release of Stamp Insanity, available exclusively at Stamp Happens!
There are three sets being released today, Halloween Henry, Morgan’s Spell and Morgan’s Love.
All are fabulous and you can hop around to the DT Stampin Sistahs to get some inspiration before you fill up your shopping bag and get inky!
Here we go!
This project was created using the Halloween Henry set, which includes a main Henry image and lots of sentiments. I decided to go a little non-traditional with this project and think back to my days of Trick-or-Treating.
I was inspired by my Dad. Yes, believe it or not ;) See, he had a notorious habit of getting my sister and I to look away, and he’d lovingly steal food off of our plates. It was just for fun, we certainly weren’t fighting over food at the dinner table.
What holiday could be more fun to sneak some treats from the kids…Halloween of course! My sister and I would come home from our rounds and separate all of our candy. My Dad got the little packages of peanuts, my Mom got those caramel kisses candy (you know, the toffee like ones in the black and orange wrappers…the ones you love or hate!), and we, my sister and I, got the rest of our loot.
Since we had a Dad with a sweet tooth, and we were routinely told “if you don’t have your name on it…it’s fair game”…we learned pretty quickly to take inventory of our sweets.
So when I received the Halloween Henry set and saw this sentiment, I knew exactly what I was going to create…
Halloween Inventory Cards!
I tried to think of the major categories of goodies and wrote them out ...with an “Everything Else” category at the bottom for good measure.
I stamped some bats from the set and added some Black Onyx glitter.
mmmmm Candy!
Materials: Stamp Insanity Halloween Henry set; Bo Bunny Boo Crew DP; Black and Green American Craft cardstock; MS Black Onyx glitter; Sharpie and a ruler
So now that you’re in the Halloween mood, hop along to the rest of the Stampin Sistahs to see what they’ve done with the new Stamp Insanity releases!
Senior Sistahs
DT Sistahs
Alyssa ~ Deb ~ Donna ~ Gayle ~ Jacquie ~ Leigh-Ann ~ Sarabeth
Happy Friday!
Ciao for now,
Shimmerz are a little hard to find up here in the Great White North. I had obviously heard about them, but hadn’t tried them before. I love sparkly things, but always grab my glitter when I need some bling.
I was really excited when Tonya over at Stamp Happens told us part of our DT duties will reviewing products, and one of them is Shimmerz.
I received Lilac Shimmerz a few weeks ago. Ok, I will say I don’t tend to use a lot of purple in my cards. I have, on occasion, but it’s not a colour I use a lot. My Boo Witchy card just happened to be sitting on my table, and I had coloured her with purple hair.
So I shook my Shimmerz and got out a paintbrush. An put wayyyy too much on the brush. But after I spread it around, I liked the effect.
I still have to be careful how much I put on the brush; I was a little sad I lost some of the depth I had created when I coloured her hair.
The next project I made to specifically use the Lilac Shimmerz, so I used tones of purple and plum; and a very lovely butterfly from my DT Stampin Sistah Donna. Here’s the before:
And the after- on the light purple parts:
One thing about Shimmerz- they’re hard to photograph.
My Stampin Sistah Sarabeth mentioned using Shimmerz to paint paper flowers…so I tried that, leaving one side white so you could see the difference.
Sorry for the dark picture, but when I tried to fix it, it made the Shimmerz look goopy, and it’s definitely not goopy.
I like the effect it’s added to the flower, and it’s nice to be able to add a colour to the white flower to make them customized to your project; I think it’d be more cost effective to buy the Shimmerz in a variety of colours versus flowers in random colours. You could do so much more with the Shimmerz for a variety of different projects.
Overall- I like the Shimmerz, and happy I had a chance to play with the Lilac shade. I do find myself looking to see if I can apply something purple on a project so I can use Shimmerz.
I’ll be ordering some Shimmerz in some more neutral colours (Angel Wings or Buttercream..or maybe Candlelight…). Want to know where I’m going to get them?
Stamp Happens of course! Follow the link for the whole store, and HERE’S the link to the Shimmerz page (and if you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll always know about the great deals and monthly discount!)
Some of the Stampin Sistah’s are reviewing their shade of Shimmerz and let you know what they thought of the product.
Check ‘em out!
Alyssa ~ Deb ~ Donna ~ Gayle ~ Jacquie ~ Leigh-Ann~ Sarabeth
Ciao for now,
PS- DON’T FORGET!
There’s a new Stamp Insanity release tomorrow! There are three new sets that will be available exclusively in the Stamp Happens store on Friday- Halloween Henry, Morgan’s Spell and Morgan’s Love.
So make sure to come back and see what we’ve been working on!
Tesa, this one’s for you ;)
So a few weeks ago, I shared a card I made with The Character Cafe’s character Pumpkin Petra.
I also stated that I felt a special connection to Petra because I was once a pumpkin for Halloween; we filled the pumpkin with plastic grocery bags to fill it out….which also caused a ‘swoosh-crinkle-swoosh’ noise when I walked.
My Dad scanned the pic and sent it to me; so here is me as a pumpkin and my sister as a bunny. Both costumes were made by my Mom, and she made our treat bags as well.
What you don’t see is that we had to put on our winter coats to go out…growing up in Northern Ontario, all Halloween costumes are made to fit a snowsuit underneath, or you wear one on top! (no, we don’t have snow at Halloween, but it’s only about 10 degrees Celsius, so you need a coat).
Happy Tuesday!
Ciao for now,
Another fangtastic release from Stamp Insanity! ok, sorry, I haven’t used a pun in a long time, so humour me.
Make sure to check back tomorrow to see what the Stampin Sistah’s have created using the new Halloween sets.
I’ll give you a hint…my project includes counting. And candy.
Curious? come back tomorrow!
Happy Tuesday!
Ciao for now,
**edited to add** ok, so I was just so excited I was jumping the gun. Release day isn't until FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25TH. So you're just going to have to wait. So there. ;)
whohoo! it’s here!
Get ready for some very cute, must-have stamps!
Introducing Wildflower Kids Rubber stamps co-created by Tonya of Stamp Happens and Jen of Deconstructing Jen.
These rubber stamps are deeply etched and give a really clear, crisp image.
They cling mount on acrylic blocks so they’re super easy to store away, not taking up much room as well (just like the equally fabulous Stamp Insanity stamps that we Stampin Sistah’s introduced last week.
The first release includes two sets, Ghoul Friends and Free Broom Rides and is Halloween Themed, so it’s perfect timing!
Here’s my card using the Ghoul Friends vampire image:
Isn’t he just adorable??
We’ve nicknamed him ‘Little Edward’…hmm I wonder why? ;)
This is my first card coloured using Prismacolours and the Gamsol technique- I used baby oil because Gamsol was sold out at Michaels…so be nice! I figured if I’m going to invest in Copics one day, I should learn how to colour!
These images are great for colouring, and check out the Bat- I added googly eyes! Fun, eh?
I wanted to make our little vamp a dapper young man, so I used Crystal Effects on his cape and used Pearl Effects for his buttons. Here’s a close up:
I added Crystal Effects to his eyes too, to add a little ‘sparkle’.
Paper is Bazzil grape for the base, Blackbird for the mat and Bo Bunny Boo Crew is the DP. I know this card is a bit plain, only the bat and some brads to snazz it up, but I really wanted the image to be the main focus.
I can’t make up my mind about how to do the inside, I could add candy corn, or “Happy Halloween” or “Trick or Treat” ….or one of the other ghoul friends- you can do SO much with this set!
Now, you know what you need to do:
First check out all the inspiration of the Stamp Sistahs:
Senior Sistahs:
Fellow Sistahs:
Alyssa ~ Deb ~ Donna ~ Gayle ~ Jacquie ~ Leigh-Ann ~ Sarabeth
And then, grab your shopping shoes and head on over to Stamp Happens to get this set before they’re all gone! Make sure to sign-up for the newsletter to get in on the deals!
I’ll be out of town today and tomorrow so when I get back I’ll be doing some blog hopping to see my Sistah’s creations and hope to see you there too!
Happy Wednesday!
Ciao for now,
Only one more sleep until the premier release of Wildflower Kids stamps available exclusively at Stamp Happens!
The stamps are super cute and so much fun to work with. The first release is Halloween themed, which is perfect timing!
Make sure to check back tomorrow to see what we Stampin Sistahs have been busy creating, bookmark the Stamp Happens shop page and get ready to do some shopping!
See you tomorrow!
Ciao for now,
As I sat on my couch last night, with a warm buttery bowl of just-popped popcorn minding my own business, I heard a very loud KABOOM!
I turned my head to my microwave and thought, oh crap.
With my left ear ringing (the microwave is to my left of where I was sitting) I walked over and cautiously opened the door. Truth be told, I stood behind the swinging door to the kitchen for fear of shrapnel. It was as I suspected, the glass plate exploded and cracked.
I inherited this microwave 5 years ago from my Nonna (Italian for grandmother) when she bought a new fan-dangled microwave with a toaster in it for her newly renovated kitchen. Yes, her microwave has a toaster in it. More like on it. It’s to the right of the control panel. Weird. But I digress.
It is likely it was with my Nonna and Nonno (grandfather) for at least 5 years before it came to live with me, so this microwave is a bit ancient according to technology standards. Of course you know what that means. Replacement plates? I think not.
I do what I always do when I need help…call Mom.
“How necessary is the glass plate in the microwave?”
“hmmm, I’ll ask your Father.
mumble mumble mumble.
Go buy a new microwave. You’ll never find one for that beast”.
Mom very lovingly hauled out the flyers from the paper, (from a city 6 hours away) and told me where the sales were; I was simultaneously on the internet looking for the same deals (flyers? hello, Google!).
As I asked her if I should invest in a convection microwave and we debated the pros and cons, I saw the price to a convection microwave; $779.00! I’ll pass; I have an oven. Thanks.
She found a few deals, I found a few deals; we debated size and features- “the EXT 560 model features a standard kitchen timer, whether you’re timing a pot on the stove, or a long-distance telephone call, you’ll love this feature”
Who times a telephone call on the microwave?
I wailed it wasn’t fair for the glass plate to crack before the ancient beast died itself. I hate that I’ll have to replace it when it still works. We investigated buying a smaller plate off of EBay, but then realized the beast is probably throwing out radiation like nobody’s business, so a new microwave was in my best interest.
Of course I have to go shopping for a microwave on one of my busiest work weeks. This is like when my coffee maker died 1 day after my mom left from visiting after my leg surgery. Hobbling around on crutches and trying to shop for a coffee maker is not fun.
I swung by Costco on my way home from a meeting and picked up this beauty. I decided on another Sanyo, seen as the beast lasted at least 10 years, and it was only $89.99, I figured it couldn’t be all that bad.
Stainless steel inside and out. I’m already cringing at the fingerprints. Next trip to Costco will be for the Stainless steel cleaner.
At least I have a nice big box to make a new photo light box out of.
What can I say, I’m a ‘glass half-full’ kinda gal.
Happy Monday.
Ciao for now,
I had quite a few lovely comments on a card I made last week, and in particular about the punched butterfly I made
I’ve found these butterflies are the perfect way to use up some of my scraps, and I just love what they can add to a project.
Want some? No problem!
I’ve listed 5 sets in my Etsy store in various colours, I’ve done all the hard work so you can enjoy these little beaded beauties. Bundle them and save on shipping!
Click on the picture and it will link you to that listing on the A Paper Buffet store.
Using Basic Grey Ambrosia Paper
Shades of green and MS patterned paper
Shades of pink
Shades of purple
So Saffron DP and Bashful Blue
I’ve got some projects to work on next week- another big release you guys are going to LOVE! and some serious blog hopping to catch up on.
Happy Saturday!
Ciao for now,
First, my apologies for this post going up so late today….not a very good way to leave a DT team! yikes.
I hope my fellow DT members will forgive me…that dang ‘real’ job has gotten in the way. I need to play the lotto so I can retire…, with everyone else, right?
I thought it might be nice for me to recap The Character Creations projects I’ve created over the course of my DT tenure to show how versatile digi stamps really are.
So were we go!
#1 Cupcake Pewter, coloured with watercolours
#2 Fairybelle, my personal favourite
# 3- Syd the Golfer
#4 Wedding card- I was surprised and delighted with all the comments on this card- I’m not the only one who hates Groovy Guava!
#5 Lemonade Ty- ok, maybe this one is my favourite
#6 Sunflower
#7 Bertie And Friend
#8 Keep Out
#9 Flower Ziggy
#10 Boo Witchy
#10b- Boo Witchy Pizza Boxes
#11- Pumpkin Petra
#12- Angelica Pizza Box
And that’s what The Character Cafe stamps can do!
I would like to thank all the DT members and Kendra and Kelly for a wonderful 3 months; I have learned quite a bit and enjoyed getting to know each and every one of you and your families.
I now pass the torch to the next DT, to begin in October. I cannot wait to see what The Character Cafe store adds next!
Have one final hop along to all my DT lovlies- in the side bar- and check out what they’ve done.
Happy {finally} Friday!
Ciao for now,
