Sites of the week

***Before I get started on my Saturday ramblings, I must point you in the direction of a COOL new product find. Check out how to SCENT your cards and projects HERE . I love the fact that I will be able to scent my baby cards like baby powder! I’m definitely putting some others on my wish list, too!!***

YAY!!! It’s Saturday and that means I have another SKETCH FOR YOU TO TRY! This one was more challenging for me than some of the others. You will notice that I used the same “theme” as last week. I really like that paper and am hooked on owls at the moment.
Instead of having a Guest Designer page, {which at this point in time I still need to edit, but it’s late as I am writing this so bear with me} I am asking a stamper that I admire to join me and my stampin’ buds to create a sample that is featured here for the SFYTT for a month. For the month of February, BETHANY PAULL will be joining us on our Saturday SFYTTs. YAY!!

A little bit about Bethany, in her own words…
Hello! I’m Bethany Paull, your very excited Guest Designer this month. I must admit, talking about myself may be my least favorite thing, but I guess it comes with the territory today. I grew up in the country, about an hour-and-a-half east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania until I got married at the very young age of nineteen. It’s certainly not something I’d recommend, but I have been lucky enough to enjoy that wedded bliss for ten years now. Since then my husband, Josh, and I have been living in the suburbs, and I’ve had a few brief, shall we call them careers, ranging from waiting tables to trading mutual funds. Currently, I work very part time helping my in-laws with the accounting for their small business.

I was introduced to stamping just over five years ago at a Stampin’ Up! workshop. Nobody was too surprised when I fell in love immediately. I’d been hoarding paper and stationary since I was a kid, and now I finally had something to do with it all. For a while, I added Stampin’ Up! demonstrator to my reportoire. It took a few years, but I finally started venturing beyond Stampin’ Up! and have found yet more fabulous products to add to a constantly growing collection. I do some design work for Verve Visual stamps, maintain my blog It’s Not All Black & White, and mainly stamp for my own enjoyment. It’s so gratifying to come up with a unique and beautiful piece of art when I don’t possess any of the traditional art skills.

Here’s the SKETCH FOR YOU TO TRY…

***When uploading to SCS, please use the keyword SFYTT***Be sure to link it in a comment here :)***

Here’s Bethany’s sample {thanks Bethany!!!}…

Stamps: Birds Galore (Inkadinkado); Little Lady (Papertrey Ink)
Ink: spring pansy, purple hydrangea, thatched straw, red magic, tea leaves (VersaMagic)
Paper: white (Papertrey Ink); pale plum, perfect plum, old olive (Stampin’ Up!); pearlized white (Paper Accents)
Accessories: Gemstones (Hero Arts); purple Sharpie; Dashes Dots & Checks ribbon; Cuttlebug Stylized Flowers embossing folder; 2 scalloped scissors (ProvoCraft); dimensionals

Here’s my sample {hoo hoo}…

Stamps: Owls from Stampendous; Background from Cornish Heritage Farms; Sentiment from A Muse
Ink: Brilliance Graphite Black; VersaMark; Copic Markers
Paper: Chocolate Chip, Old Olive; PaperTrey White; Basic Grey DP
Other: Punches, Bellas Baubles; Felt Flower; Nestabilities

Carole, Shannan and Susan also have great samples for you to check out {just click on their names}.

Last Friday was part of my week of Anything But A Card {ABC}, so I guess I can call this one the first official ABC Friday. YAY!! Earlier this week I ran over to Hobby Lobby to pick up a replacement ink pad and happened to wander into their plastic container dept. I love containers. Big, small, round, square…you name it. I found these cute little plastic containers for 67 CENTS!! A container, something that I can alter and fill AND under a buck. My heart was all a flutter!! So I picked up a few and came home and got to work. I have about a gazillion ideas in my head for these, but this is the first one that made it to production. BTW-This bottle holds almost a whole bag of Red Hots!! The sentiment is from PaperTrey and is on a small scallop oval {the yellow Marvy one} punch. The puffy felt heart is also from Hobby Lobby. I picked those up a while ago when the Valentine’s stuff first started to arrive. The bottle top is exactly 1 inch, so a one inch punched circle fit perfectly.
See you here tomorrow for another Sketch For You To Try and the announcement of February’s Guest Designer, who will be playing along on each of Feb.’s sketches. YAY!!
***Also, if you are interested in being a Verve Guest Designer, be sure to see the post from yesterday!!!***