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There is excitement in Houston today as the Houston Texans football team play their first playoff game this afternoon at Reliant Stadium! They are playing the Cincinnati Bengals. The Texans are a relatively new team, ten years old, and haven't made it to the playoffs....until now! So everyone is very excited and optimistic!
In honor of the Houston Texans, I made this spirit card in My Digital Studio, the Stampin' Up! software program for digital papercrafting. I made my own "designer paper" background by typing "Houston Texans" in a text box, changing the color to white, lowering the opacity, and copying and pasting the text box all over the page! Since I didn't have a football digital stamp, I was able to go to Stampin' Up! and order it online and have the download in seconds! Really cool!!
The big red circle is from a free download Stampin' Up! is offering on their Facebook page! If you scroll down through the posts and find it and take a short easy survey, you too can get this free download....it's more than the circle!! Go to the Stampin' Up! Facebook page HERE.
The football is actually a little tricky....it comes as just the black outline as you can see in the "motion" footballs being thrown! In order to add color digitally, you have to add punches that match the shape of the football, add color to them and then send them "behind" the football. Not hard, you just have to know to do that!
I can teach you all about My Digital Studio and direct you to even more resources as well as any other Stampin' Up! products....stamps, inks, papers, accessories, gifts and home decor items. Stamping offers so much variety and so much inspiration for creativity! Sign up for my mailing list in the upper left and keep up with the latest stamping news. Or contact me at Karen@Karenstamps.com for more information about having fun stamping!
Lots of birthdays in our family recently and mostly male! I think I mailed my other son's card before photographing it, but my other little boy's birthday is today! Okay, he's not so little any more, but you know how it is...when you are a mother, our children really never grow up in our hearts!
I wasn't feeling so creative when I made this card, and of course was in a hurry to get it in the mail at the last minute.
It often seems to be a challenge to come up with a "male" card, but look how easy this one is! I just used the Postage Stamp Punch#122344 and scraps of Halloween paper, Frightful Sight #122351 on a card base of Cajun Craze. So don't put your Halloween paper away just because it is close to Thanksgiving! Turn it over, look at the parts without a Halloween image, just see what you can use! The squares are each popped up on Stampin' Dimensionals.
Here is the inside:
This stamp is from the stamp set "Bring On the Cake", available in wood- or clear-mount.
This would be a great card for either you to make or have your kids make for Dad on Father's Day! You can use My Digital Studio, as I did, or you can stamp with the All in the Family stamp set #113488. Either let the children design it or let them color it in after you make it! With this stamp set, All in the Family, they can each make their own personalized card!
Father's Day is June 19th so it is time to be making Father's Day cards. There are plenty of Stampin' Up! ideas for Father's Day cards...just look through your Stampin' Up! Idea Book & Catalog and you'll find a great resource of ideas, even if you change the paper or color or saying. Sometimes I am surprised myself at how easy it is to be inspired by looking through the catalog.
I had so much fun making this card! The clouds are made by punching out the solid piece on the Blossom Bouquet Triple Layer Punch#122464 (the first image on the left of the punch), laying it on your paper and then sponging off the edges a little bit with a little bit of ink. I used Bashful Blue. Just move it around until you have your sky how you like it! You just want to be a little more careful than I was and not get much ink on your sails! For the water I just sponged on some Night of Navy ink. To emphasize the waves, I used my White Gel Pen #105021 so my sea may look a little stormy! Everyone should order this Sail Away stamp #123013...great for masculine cards and gifts, summertime themes, nautical themes, general occasions.
You will want to order the Baker's Twine in the Summer Mini (page 10) because it is really trendy right now and certainly easy to use.
And to finish off my card I stamped a greeting from Teeny Tiny Wishes, punched with the Modern Label Punch. With the two little gold brads on it, it seemed to just "make" the card when I attached it!
This was a simple card to make (and my eyes were dilated from the eye doctor so I could barely see what I was doing!) and just one of those that I LOVED when I got finished! Isn't rubber stamping grand??!
Order your retiring stamps and accessories today at my Online Store!
This is a swap card I received at the Stampin' Up! Convention this summer, made by Julia G. from California. I thought it would be perfect to showcase today on Veterans Day, a day set aside to honor military veterans.
This card uses the stamp set Courage for the main image, the set Service & Sacrifice for the sentiment, and in the background on the Brilliant Blue the wheel Hero. You can find all of these stamps on page 67 of the Idea Book & Catalog.
You can read all about Veterans Day by clicking HERE.
I had purchased this stamp set, Autumn Splendor, in the Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini, thinking about our upcoming (at the time) New England fall foliage trip. I knew it would make beautiful cards and scrapbook pages with fall colored leaves. Here is a card I made. I stamped the leaf with Basic Brown ink so I could watercolor the leaf with my Aquapainter and Watercolor Crayons to give it the fall colors. Then I painted over the leaf with the new Shimmer Paint in the Holiday Mini (Champagne Mist). The shimmer kind of covered the colors of the leaf but I think it still turned out well and I hope you can see the shimmer in the photos. You'll love the new Shimmer Paint! If you need any suggestions or tips on using it, please email me.
The card base is made with Dusty Durango card stock and the Designer Paper layer is Autumn Meadows from the Holiday Mini. Those are actually the two sides of the paper you see in the photo! The ribbon is Dusty Durango polka dot turned around so you just see the solid side. And for a greeting I used Teeny Tiny Wishes punched out with the Oval Punch and layered on the Scallop Oval Punch. You'll notice the leaf layer is sponged on the side, which I do think adds a lot....but just so you know, I decided to do the sponging after somehow getting extra ink from my fingers on the edges of the card. See! There are no mistakes in stamping! You can probably click on the photos to see them enlarged.
For those of you scrambling at the last minute for a Father's Day card, here is one I must made and it only took me probably five minutes....and you don't even have to think up the design! This old stamp set, "Lovely As A Tree" has been around a long time and we always hold our breath at retirement time thinking it might go. Fortunately, it is still here and is such a versatile set, especially when you need a masculine card.
On this card I just used Kraft as the card base, stamped with some Close to Cocoa leaves, lightly (stamping off first after inking up). The tree is stamped with Basic Brown and literally scribbled in with some markers, Close to Cocoa for the tree trunk and various greens for the leaves. A little sponging if you want around the edges, layer, adhere, and you have a card. You can stamp "Happy Father's Day" on the inside or write your own message. Of course you could add some ribbon or hemp twine or any other embellishments to jazz it up, but most fathers won't want it jazzed up!
Here's my Father's Day card for my husband! I haven't used this set very much even though I like it a lot, so decided a few stamped beers would make a good card this year! The base of the card is Kraft cardstock, the designer paper "Manchester", great for masculine cards. If he wouldn't have come home earlier than I expected, I would have covered the beer steins with Crystal Effects to look like glass....but too late now! I colored the beer with my Watercolor Crayons, with a little shadow of gray around the foam. The inside has the "Happy Father's Day greeting from "All Holidays", a stamp set I just received FREE from Stampin' Up! for my Sale-A-Bration award. It's possible to earn free stamps as a demo! And who doesn't like FREE?!
Looking for some small Easter treats to give as gifts or to mail? If you have the Big Shot, you have so many possibilities! And it doesn't take long to make something very cute! In this project, I used the Scallop Envelope die and glued four of the envelopes together into a basket. You can either leave it plain like that, or for a little extra strength or design, wrap some designer paper around your basket. In this project, I used the beautiful new Parisian Breeze Specialty DSP which already has some extra weight to the paper. Just put the bottom together by alternating the flaps (like you might on a box) and make yourself a handle. I secured the handle with the new "Flower Assortment" brads on each side of the basket. I used the oval punches to make the Easter eggs on the front.
So maybe he's not a "boy" anymore at age 23, but he will always be MY little boy! Here's a card I made for Eric for his birthday. Sometimes it is difficult to think of a card to make for any male. Some stampers even do swaps for male cards just to get a selection of ideas. I forget how it came to mind, but somehow I came up with the idea of making a card with a Yellowstone National Park theme after our memorable trip there this summer. I had even tracked down the retired set "DD Pines" to use for those Yellowstone scrapbook pages I still plan to make! (we'll see!) Long ago I had learned to make a diorama card, which actually folds down flat for mailing, and while they look impressive and are decorative, they are actually easy to make. So here is the Diorama card I made with the retired DD Pines, plus the ever-useful "Lovely As a Tree" stamp set....talk about a great "male" set!
It's difficult to tell from this angle, but that is a moose in the foreground and a bear in the background! You can see some of the "Lovely As a Tree" trees stamps on the inside layers of the card and the "Pines" tree stamped, embossed, and cut out adhered to the front with dimensionals.
Here is a view of the inside:
You can see how I cut out both the moose and the bear and attached them to the middle part and the back part with dimensionals.
And here is just another view of the front, maybe with better lighting.
If you want directions on making this easy diorama card, which you can adapt to any theme, just email me!
Halloween has always been extra special at our house because our youngest son was born the night before Halloween, just missing being a pumpkin or goblin by about 45 minutes. I remember when I was pregnant with him seeing the cutest little Halloween t-shirt in one of the store windows at the Galleria and thinking if he had actually been born on Halloween I should really have that shirt for my Halloween baby. Didn't happen, which probably was a good thing for him, because he doesn't have to exactly share his birthday with a holiday. But of course his birthday parties were always Halloween-themed, which made them extra fun. I just wish I was into Stampin' Up! back when my kids were little because of SO many opportunities for gifts, party favors, invitations, note cards, etc. If you have little ones, you really should get into stamping because you will have many opportunities to be creative!
I love this Pun Fun stamp set, but especially loved this rocket for my son. When I started looking for ideas for this card, I came across this Pyramid card made by Trina on Splitcoast. You can find different pyramid template lots of places on the internet, but I loved the colors Trina used on her card. I added a Jumbo Eyelet for the window on the rocket and some stars, punched with the large and small star punches.....all found in the Stampin' Up! catalog, of course.... and also added a velcro dot just under that front flap to hold it closed. The pattern I used showed a slit but I couldn't figure that out. The card had to be mailed so it had to be flat. I hope he can figure out how to assemble when he receives it!
Rather than purchase the expensive pack of way-too-many graduation announcements from the university (and because I am a stamper!) I decided to make my own for my son's college graduation. I almost forgot about it so it was a last minute deal. Somehow I was inspired to do a pocket card style using the "Great Grads" stamp set. Rather than use the G in the stamp set in the center of the graduation medallion, I chose to emboss the UT with copper embossing powder and punch it out to put on the medallion. I also used some of the designer paper I had previously purchased at the University Coop in a UT scrapbooking pack. I also wanted it to coordinate with my graduation card for him. I hope this will inspire you to add your personal touch to your own events by making your own announcements, invitations, etc. Supplies and ideas are easy to get....just contact me!
