Sites of the week

Today is the first day of the Verve Project Parade. Each {week}day until September 11 a DT member will be posting a creation to go along with this month’s theme, Happiness for Hostess, on the Verve blog. Today is my turn and this is what I made for a hostess gift…

I have had this travel coffee mug in my stash of alterables for a very long time. I knew that the perfect time to use it would come sooner or later! I chose to do a matching tag on glassine bag filled with chocolate goodies, too. I used the sets Delightful & Delicious and Cup of Life to create this gifty set. Here are a couple detail shots…

I got the idea of doing the stitched ribbon rosette from THIS post on Lisa Johnson’s blog where she uses this ribbon to create a ruffled edge. I broke out my hot glue gun again to attach the ends, and to adhere it to the tag. Gotta tell ya, I love my hot glue gun. I use it A LOT!

Be sure to check out the Verve blog, and all the details about chances to win gift certificates <--plural-- to the Verve Stamps store.

Hooray for Saturday! This morning we are going to spend some time {again} rearranging furniture and prepping the nursery. So far we have a crib, changing table and rocker. Next month we will be adding a dresser, too. The “hard” part is that it is also going to remain part playroom. I almost feel like drawing a line down the middle of the room…LOL! The nursery will eventually convert fully into a playroom when baby boy del Muro moves into his “big boy” room, which is right next to Ellie’s room. I feel very fortunate that we have the space to do this, but it sure is a pain in the meantime! I will have pics up soon of the “new and improved” {can there really be such a thing…think about that one!} office/studio space. I love the new area that Tony and I are sharing. It just makes sense that we have it set up like that! After we get the nursery all set up, I will have pics of that, too.

Anyways, on to the SKETCH FOR YOU TO TRY…

This is honestly one of my favorite sketches EVER! I really hope that you will play along and see all the possibilities, too. I had originally planned {and actually did have one ready to go} to put a image on the panel that says “butterfly wishes” repeatedly. Then, I remember the Cuttlebug die that I got from the Bella store and thought that it would be fun to pair it with the sentiment. All of the DP and the green pearls are from the Bella store, too…

Designer of the Month, Megan, flipped the sketch and came up with this ever so darling card with Papertrey stamps…

When uploading to SCS or PCP, please use the keyword “SFYTT”. Don’t forget to link your project in the comments section on this post, too. I have moderation turned on, so if you don’t see your link right away…it’s ok! I just have to go in and approve it. Be sure to check out my SFYTT sisters, too…

Amy Rohl
Amy Sheffer
Susan Liles
Kelly Lunceford
Carole Burrage

KABOOM…that’s what we woke up to this morning. I short, but quite fierce {lightning and thunder wise} came roaring through at about 6:30 this morning. Of course, the was the morning that Tony had to leave early to work and pretty much was driving the same direction as the storm. If you’ve ever seen Texans drive in the rain, you know why I wasn’t thrilled about that! (In my humble opinion)…Texans have trouble driving even when it’s sunny and nice out, so when you throw a little of that wet stuff into the mix it only compounds their idiotness. I make no apologies for my opinion on this, especially since I was honked at and swerved around last week…while sitting at a red light. Yes, the sweet little dearie blew her horn and continued on into the intersection where she is lucky that she did not get desecrated from the East and West.

Anyways, it’s Bellarific Friday, so let’s get rollin’ on that! This is my card from this week’s this sketch challenge, using Rollanda Ketto…

This is my card from last week’s sketch, that I haven’t shown yet bc I took a little break from blogging earlier in the week. Would you believe that I actually had family call me to ask if everything was ok, since I wasn’t posting? LOL! This card uses the Bella Baby Buggy Bumper stamp {say that 5 times fast!}

Be sure to check out all the creations for this week’s challenge over on the Bella blog. There is even a chance to win a few bucks to spend in the Bella store. Challenges are announced each Monday. Hope you will play along!

It’s the 20th of the month and that means that the new Taylored Expressions Key Ingredients Kit is now available. There is now new options regarding ordering this kit…

Taylored Expressions is offering both of these on a monthly charge basis rather than having to pay it all up front. So now you can craft on a budget with fabulously coordinated supplies! How cool is that? Sign up for the subscription service to receive the Key Ingredients kits released the 20th of each month for just $15.95 a month plus shipping for the 3 month subscription. Or for the best value, you can purchase the 6 month subscription for just $14.95 a month plus shipping and as a BONUS Taylor will include 2 Perfect Package Card Boxes ($5.95 value) FREE if you order by August 25th! Of course all of the KI kits are also available for individual purchase ($16.95 each) while they last. Click here to read about all the benefits for Subscribers.

You can almost call these kits “no brainers.” LOL! Well, for us, at least. I am sure that Taylor spends hours putting together the best coordinating cardstock, designer papers, ribbon and embellishments. You can create many cards almost effortlessly because of how easy it is to pair up all the coordinating pieces. One of the challenges issued to us this month was to create a card that could be made in 10 minutes or less. At first I kind of freaked out about that stipulation, but it was so easy peasy! This is what I came up with…

That’s a rub-on in the middle. I wouldn’t considered myself a fan of rub-ons because I can never get them to come out perfectly, but this one was easy peasy. I guess I have been buying the cheapo ones that don’t work as well!! LOL! I “enhanced” the rub-on with a few of the rhinestones that come in the kit. On the top of the card, I added some of the cardstock, designer paper and ribbon that comes with it, too. Like I said, easy peasy!!

You can check out more of the Baker’s Dozen creations using the Key Ingredients Subscription, just click on their name…
Sankari Wegman
Dawn Easton
Denise Marzec
Laurie Schmidlin
Karen Motz
Taylor VanBruggen

Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that Jessice Griffin is giving away a DAR-LING gift tin away on HER BLOG. Super duper cute!

No, I am not switching over to ABC Monday, but it just seemed fitting for today since I have a couple ABC projects to show. These are from the new releases from Verve Stamps. Some of you may have seen these if you were at the Verve release party.

This first one is from Delightful and Delicious…

My inspiration for this project is Starbucks {duh, right?}. I wanted to use the coffee theme with their {general} colors to create a gift set to give a girl friend. Inside the cello bag are chocolate covered espresso malt balls {say that five times fast!}. Oh boy do these smell DE-LISH! I made tag to match the card and then attached one of the key fob Starbucks gift cards with a ball/chain. You’ll notice that I mixed fancier embellishments {the frosted bonbons from Stamping Bella} with a button tied off with twine. I like the look of mixing these two styles! Note that it really can’t be done on a large scale. For the card, I broke out my crimper to create “wrap” like you would put around your cup. You’ll notice that I paper pierced just the bottom half of the circle, using a plastic canvas circle.

This next project is a gift set using the set, A Cup of Life…

This gift set is really quite simple. I made a fancy tag to dress up what otherwise might be a pretty dull giftie. I found the tea cup at Goodwill for 75cents and then added some shortbread cookies and a couple bags of tea. the shortbread cookies were already wrapped in cellophane, but I went ahead and put them in another cello bag so that I could easily tie on the tag. It’s kind of difficult to tell by pictures, but on the tea pot, I cut out the center part and mounted it on dimensional glue dots. Also, you can see that I used some of the same paper {Papertrey polka dot} and embellishments {Bella’s bonbons and buttons with twine}. I had a lot of these elements sitting on my desk from the coffee set and figured if I liked them on that set, that they would go well on this one. I mixed up placement and use a little to create an original project.

Like many of you, I am relishing this last week before school starts. Lots to do and gotta get all that summer fun in before the madness starts Have a great week!