CASE: collaged word background

I mentioned in my previous post that I had a custom order for birthday cards, 2 feminine, and 4 masculine.  I’ve always struggled with masculine cards; I want to add flowers, or ribbon or rhinestones to everything.  The simple designs I do like for masculine cards…I tend to repeat them. I was searching around the blogosphere for some inspiration, and stumbled upon My Paper Secret.  Cristina has some amazing projects! I really love her style.  I found this post about creating a card with sentiments from several sets.  I thought this would make a really great masculine card, and used a colour challenge of green (SU Pear...

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Chocolate Mint {FTL 129}

I’ve been a little obsessed  drawn to the colours brown, teal and ivory lately.  Most of it has to do with this gorgeous My Mind’s Eye: Fine and Dandy paper I picked up last week.  Another order of birthday cards came in, 2 feminine and 4 masculine.  I did what I do best…the girly cards first! I used the Clean and Simple Fall to Layout 129; I guess I didn’t really stick to the “simple” part because I kept adding layers, but this paper is so beautiful I had to use as much of it as I could.   Both cards use Chocolate Chip as the base, and a Baja Breeze as a mat.  The sentiments are stamped on Very Vanilla, cut...

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You Capture: The letter “L”

This week’s You Capture is all about the letter L. I really wanted to use my lomo photograph of the love sculpture in NYC I took on my trip before Christmas…but that would be cheating since I’ve already taken the picture. Looking for something with the letter L to shoot, I tripped over my laundry basket. Laundry. I hate laundry. To be honest, it has nothing to do with trucking it to the basement of the building to use the washing machines and dryers. Although I do wish this building had some sort of system to tell you when all the machines are occupied before you leave your apartment, so you don’t haul your basket down there, only to haul...

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My new found love for Crumb Cake.

No, not the dessert, although I do enjoy a good coffee cake. A few months ago, Stampin’ Up (SU)introduced new colours to the line, replacing some of the standards. One of my favourite card bases is Kraft, just like the brown Kraft paper. It coordinates with so many other colours, and is great for both masculine and feminine cards. Wouldn’t you know, they replaced Kraft with Crumb Cake. They also introduced matching ink and, I believe, a marker for the Crumb Cake colour. I know what you’re thinking…Steph, it looks the same. So if it looks the same, why did they change it!?!? And it’s not the same. I went on a protest. I wanted nothing to...

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You Capture: Warmth

It’s been forever and a day since I’ve been able to play along with the You Capture challenge at I should be folding laundry.  I’m determined to get back into it, and practice more photography. Unfortunately a weekly photo challenge doesn’t suit my new found love for shooting film, so I’m using my lovely Sony HX1 digital. This week’s theme is ‘warmth’ and it seems very fitting for a number of reasons.  We had two glorious days of spring weather this past week, but Friday night, the wind started to howl and we’re back below zero. We’re also expecting 15-25 cm of snow starting this afternoon (that’s 6-10” of snow for my non-metric friends)....

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Remembering Vancouver 2010

While most of my blog revolves around paper, those of you who have been following me since the beginning know that there’s something else that makes me smile…the Olympics. I shared with you last year my trip to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.  This week marks the one year anniversary of one of the most successful Olympics in Canadian history, and the Games that unified the country.  Red mittens were seen around the world and became the unofficial symbol of the Games.       I had the time of my life in Vancouver 2010, I still have a hard time putting the experience into words.  It was a dream come true,...

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Collaged Nestibility background

I’m a huge fan of Spellbinders Nestibilities.  It’s rare that I make a card without using one die-cut from my growing collection. I can’t recall where I saw this idea, but it’s stuck with me and I finally had the chance to try it out. I used scraps of paper left over from the Love edition pillow boxes I made for my Etsy shop , and arranged/adhered them on a piece of cardstock.  Then I used one of my Nestibilities to cut out the collage, and it created a great background for this card. This is a great way to use up scraps of patterned paper, while creating a unique background or focal point to the card. I’m already making little...

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Green and Grey and oh so sweet

Last week I received a call from a local customer (I highly recommend registering your business with Google places) who needed a Congratulations card for a best friend who is expecting her first baby.  My customer told me her friend’s favourite colour is green, and she loves trees.  They don’t know if the baby is a boy or a girl, and I had free reign to make this card as heavy and bulky as I wanted because it was being shipped Fed-Ex. As soon as my customer mentioned trees, I thought of one of my favourite Inkadinkadoo stamps, with three small birds in a tree.  I thought it fit perfectly because the three little birds are a little...

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Fresh start for February: How to organize your business ideas one day at a time

Balancing an online shop with a full-time job, family, friends and household commitments can be difficult at the best of times.  In addition to creating our products, we have to photograph them, edit them, , write product descriptions, list them, promote them… Then you actually make a sale and an entirely different process plays out…blah, blah, blah. I get distracted very easily.  Quite often while looking for paper for one card, I find something else that inspires a completely different idea/product/theme, etc.  I have a thousand sticky notes with ideas, sketches, and to-do lists. Last Christmas season I started using a Whiteboard,...

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