Sites of the week

Happy Friday! Well, I forgot to bring my camera to school yesterday so I didn’t get any pics of my classroom. I got to meet some of my students and they are very, ummm… ambitious 4 year olds. They were all very sweet and I know that I am going to have my hands full {in a good way} this year. I did get some pics of my “new” stamping area, though. Those pics are below my Gertie Lulu card. I am loving the Lulus from Bella! I **just** got mine the other day. I have seen a lot of creations with them and it was driving me crazy that they were “In Transit.” Anyways, here she is…

Gertie Lulu paired with this week’s Bellarific Sketch…

I have to admit that I wasn’t too crazy about this sketch when I saw it at first, but it really is a good one!!…Thanks Meahni! I “adjusted” the sentiment panel a bit, so it’s just an embellishment panel {flower from Jillibean Soup…my last one!}. I’m ok with it just like that!

Now, onto the “new” stamping space. I put new in quotes because it’s not really new to me. I have been in this room for a few months, but Tony has moved his office in. Believe it, or not I was the one to suggest it. It really just made sense because we are turning the old office/playroom into a nursery/playroom and then a dedicated playroom {with a guest bed}. Why a bed in the playroom? I am beginning to think that guest rooms are OV-ER RA-TED, but I feel the need to have somewhere for someone to crash if need be. Blah, Blah, Blah…stamping space pics…

My “half” is on the right hand side of the above pic.

I’ll go ahead and answer this here because every time I post my stamp space pics I get asked…the ribbon containers are from Target. Tony got them for me in the Christmas section a couple years ago {thanks, man!}. I have found them a couple times in the storage container area. You can’t see in the pic, but the ribbon containers are 2 deep on the shelf. I thought that this would annoy me, but it’s actually worked out very well. It’s all sorted my color and a little by brand. I have the PTI ribbon separated…not as a shrine to PTI, but because it’s convenient to keep these colors separated. I also have my SU! colors in a separate container. I don’t access those as much and they don’t fit as nicely in my sweet lil’ containers. In even another container is what didn’t fit in the other containers. I also have loose ribbon in another container. Yes, I have a little obsession with ribbon! The black desk attached to the cubed bookcase is from Ikea and I hope to get more {larger} pieces from this line to eventually replace the bookcases {which will end up in the playroom one day}.

Alright, I’m going to enjoy today and take a minute to relax a bit. See you tomorrow for another SKETCH FOR YOU TO TRY!

NOTE: There is one more spot in my Copic 2 class on Saturday. Call Scrapper’s Boutique for more details.

Greetings from the sweltering heat of North Texas. I drove past the high school yesterday afternoon and their message board read 108degrees. So much for the “cooler back to school weather.” I set up my preschool classroom {for the most part, anyways} yesterday, too. I forgot how much fun it was to set up a room and prep for kiddos. I love the curriculum…the color red, circles, various “me/family” activities and apples. It’s gonna be so much fun! I know that some of you are thinking “blech,” but I am really looking forward to the lil’ 4 year olds coming to class!

This has been a very happy mail week for me so far! Yesterday I got some new Bella stamps…YAY! Although, these cards don’t have any of the new rubber on them I will have some of those for you in the very near future. I do have 2 cards using the Ketto line to show today. I truly love this line! From how they are selling at my LSS, you love them to. So without further adieu…

Agnes Ketto…

I wasn’t sure if the pink and red were going to work, but I LOVE the way it came out! I am gonna have to put this into my notes to put these colors together again! The Bella baubles were added almost an afterthought. I was sitting there staring at the card and wondering what it needed. It needed baubles. When in doubt…bauble!

and Lulu Ketto…

I used a trio of buttons along with a die cut from my Slice Basics 3 design card. The 3 white bon bons from Bella, as well.

Well, I have another busy day ahead of me and lots of projects to work on. See you tomorrow

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!

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!