Happy Easter everyone!  Here is a card I had fun making!  Not that I made up the design myself, I copied it from one made by another demonstrator, Olive Barnes, on Stamper’s Showcase, on the Stampin’ Up! demo website the other day.

I used the A Good Egg stamp set to stamp the egg, colored it in with markers and then adhered Dazzling Diamonds Glitter over the whole egg using the Two-Way Glue Pen.  The egg is popped up with Dimensionals on the Wild Wasabi cardstock.  I also used the Priceless Classy Brass Template to emboss a few designs on the card.

And here is a cute little basket and scallop-covered York Peppermint Patties, courtesy of Cambria’s tutorial on Splitcoaststampers, also using A Good Egg stamp set.  They can really be made for any season or occasion just by changing the colors and stamp images.  I used the Flowers For You Designer Paper on the basket.  My demo friend Anne and I made these together the other day and although they are very simple to make, we managed to make it as complicated as possible!  I think every time I look at this basket I will remember all the laughs and giggles we had over putting these together!

This is the azalea bush on one end of the front of the house.  Unfortunately, this burst of blooms faces the house next door and doesn’t show as much from the front!  But it is just gorgeous!  If you click on the photo you should get an enlargement.  Every March Houston holds the annual Azalea Trail where you get to visit a few beautiful houses and gardens in the River Oaks area.  This is one outing my husband and I have always gone on every year that we have lived here, which now is twenty-five years.  Some years we carried a baby or brought all the kids if we had to, or if we were really in luck, found a babysitter and also got to have a nice lunch out alone afterwards.  We went last Friday afternoon, an unusually cold and windy day in Houston, but the sun had come out. We wore winter coats and the River Oaks Garden Club hostesses got to wear their long fur coats!

Right now Stampin’ Up! is offering a special pack of Wild Wasabi card stock.  The pack includes 16 sheets of 4-1/2″ x 11-1/2″ Wild Wasabi textured card stock that has been scored at 1-1/8″ and 5-5/8″.  I finally got mine out the other night to see what I could make.  It is a little bit bigger than what would fit in our SU envelopes, so I just trimmed it down a bit in order to fit.  I decided to make a pocket card, using just a little strip of the “Summer Picnic” Designer Paper from the Occasions Mini.  For the front of the card, I played around with the Sale-A-Bration Rub Ons.  Once you get started you can barely stop!  I used a few punches, as you can see, such as the Corner Rounder on all the corners and the Round Tab punch for the tab on the pull-out card.  Since I forgot to put ribbon around the folded down part, I just added a little bow with a glue dot.  It was a fun and easy card to make!  Even the little green butterfly in the corner is a rub on!  With the Sale-A-Bration set you get 4 colors!  Cute!

Just playing around with the SAB stamp set "Merci" and the beautiful Le Jardin Designer Paper.  For the layers I used Bashful Blue, Certainly Celery, and Always Artichoke card stock.  I stamped a second flower, cut it out, and adhered it over the stamped flower with a Dimensional.  Trying to keep it simple, I just used some Antique Brass Hodgepodge Hardware brads.  I did a little sponging with Always Artichoke on the flower layer and the oval "merci".  Click on the photo for a close-up.  Sale-A-Bration ends on March 17th, so if you don’t have this beautiful Sale-A-Bration stamp set yet, be sure to contact me!

Recently I began taking an online course on card design by Julie Ebersole at My Creative Classroom.

Our first lesson was about "Inspiration", wherever you find it…I happened to find mine in an IKEA ad that came in the mail!  I’ve seen a lot of green in stores and ads and magazines lately. 

The first photo is my "safe" choice with tying just a white ribbon around the strip, but what I really wanted to do is the second photo with the flower.  I received several favorable comments on it so I guess it was okay!

I used several stamp sets on the strip, as well as the flower!

Which one do you like better?  See if you can find something to inspire the look of your next card!