Sites of the week

Happy FIRST birthday to YOUR NEXT STAMP!! What a wonderful and significant milestone for a company! I love these stamps and can’t wait for many years to come of cute images to play with! Congrats to Karen and the YNS Crew! In celebration of their first birthday, YNS has organized a celebratory blog hop. I am the second person along your YNS birthday journey, so if you didn’t come here from Karen’s blog, take a lil’ rewind and peek at what she has in store for you!!

My card uses a very fun new ELLIE…Berry Patch Ellie! Of course I have to love it because it has my little girls name, but it’s also so stinkin’ cuuute!

We have not one but two grand prizes for you to win - two lucky winners will be drawn at random to each receive a $25 gift certificate to spend on YNS stamps! WOW! As the prize is so fantastic, we are going to make you work a little to enter, LOL! Each Starlet and Guest Starlet {like me!} have a letter hiding in their blog post. All you need to do is gather these letters, rearrange them to form a 3-word phrase, and then email this phrase to Karen. All correct entries will be entered into the grand prize draw. So make sure you hop around every blog and remember to leave a comment at every stop too.

MY SECRET LETTER IS… i

All that cake must have affected Karen as she has gone a little crazy and is holding a 20% off sale for the duration of the hop {from today thru August 11th} - the crazy part is that everything will be reduced by 20%, including items already on sale! I’m not sure when (or even if!) this will happen again, so make sure you hop on over to the YNS store once you’ve completed the hop and fill your basket!

Ok, time for you to keep on hopping along! Off ya go to the talented Simonne for more YNS cuteness!

Happy Saturday Everyone! Today is Ellie’s PURPLE PARTY AT THE PARK! It’s a purple themed birthday party at one of the coolest parks that I have been to. We are all pretty excited about it! I promise pictures of the fun, as well as my cookies and cupcakes are coming!

Today’s sketch is sponsored by the oh-so-cute stamp company YOUR NEXT STAMP! I love their Fhiona and Ellie {of course!} stamps! As a prize to one very lucky participant this week YNS is giving away all 10 mini Fhionas and an Ellie of the winner’s choice!…WOWZAS!

AND…SFYTT fans get 15% off their orders by using the code “SFYTT15″ THANK YOU YNS!!!

Here is this week’s sketch…

Here’s my birthday card to Ellie using, Ellie Loves to Bake {my Ellie really loves to help me in the kitchen…just don’t ask her to try anything new!!}.

I tweaked it a little…

A couple detail shots…

BTW, the word “Ellie” was stamped using my super favoritest alpha set, TCP’s Coolvetica!!

Sandra MacLean has a beautifully colored card using this sketch…

Want more fabby samples of the sketch? Check out what the SFYTT sisters have for in store…you might just cathc a glimpse at some more of those uber cute Your Next Stamp images…

Susan Liles
Amy Rohl
Amy Sheffer
Leigh O’Brien
Megan Lock
Amber Hight
Sony Christoph
Jodi Collins
Kelly Lunceford
Jenn Diercks

Post your creations to the link system below. If you do not have a blog, but would like to be eligible to win the fabby YNS prize package, simply {directly} link your creation in the comments section. When uploading to online galleries, please use the keyword SFYTT. Thanks and good luck!!!

Welcome to your next stop along the Your Next Stamp {YNS} blog hop. Since this is a hop…

You should have started HERE at Cabio’s blog and arrived on my blog via Maylee’s blog HERE. When you leave you’ll be hoppin’ along to Maureen’s blog HERE {I’ll link it down at the bottom, too}.

For this hop, you have a chance to win $50 in YNS Stamps by just leaving a comment at each stop along the hop by Sunday, June 13th at midnight EST. Good Luck!!

Here’s my Father’s Day card using Ethan out on the Pond {part of the Fhiona line that I love so much}.

It’s hard to tell from the pic, but the blue paper is actually polka dotted. I love polka dots, but they aren’t exactly masculine, but I think this paper does the trick, especially since the image is a little cute-sy. I chose red and orange cardstock to compliment the way that I colored the image and I used black cardstock to make it all “POP.”

I think I will be stashing this layout for future use, too!!

Ok, I’ll stop my yapping and let you get hopping along to Maureen’s blog. Happy hopping!!

I actually have a bunch of new stuff to show you, but I can’t…yet! I’ll be pre-posting a bunch of stuff in the next few days for the next couple of weeks. Of course, I will be popping in with some new baby posts, too! I’ve seen a couple people do this and I kinda like the idea of taking a look back at the year just past and “reviewing” cards/projects done. I’ve chosen a favorite card or project for each month. I’m not even sure that “favorite” is the best word to use here because I view each of the company’s stamps differently, but anyways, here it goes {BTW…I’ve linked each of the original posts and be sure to click on the pics for a larger view, too}…

January 2009

February 2009

March 2009

April 2009

May 2009

June 2009

July 2009

August 2009

September 2009

October 2009

November 2009

December 2009

eeek…that was harder than I thought it would be!! I wanted to pick 2 or 3 for each month!!

If I haven’t mentioned it before {and I have}, I am lovin’ the stamps from Your Next Stamp, especially the Fhiona line. I am also in the midst of needing a 12 step group for blog hopping. I think this is the last one that I have in the line up for a while, but you never know what might come up!!

So, it’s a hop. Meaning that you should have started on the YNS Blog, come here from Maylee’s blog and then when you are done here, you’ll be hoppin’ on over to Simmone’s blog.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I got this set! Susan’s daughter is a lil’ gymnast and I thought that it would be fun to make a flat card with hair bow attached. As for additional ideas, I think these would be a super cute addition to anyone’s craft show table or a fun stocking stuffer.

Here’s the {flat} card without the bow…

And, with the bow {I found several video tutorials on YouTube}…

Detail of how I attached the bow to the card…

Now you’re off to Simmone’s blog to keep on hoppin’! Have fun enjoying all the creations along the way!