Winner winner Chicken Dinner!

well, not a chicken dinner, but of two crafty giveaways this weekend!! wooo! Gee... things happen in 3s.. maybe I should buy a lottery ticket?

First off, my name was picked as the random winner for July at SOS, and then I was chosen as the winner of the week 2 getaway at PaperGrace Designs! SO I will have a pad of Basic Grey's Lauderdale 6x6 paper pad (so bright & lovely!) and a Tim Holtz Visual Artistry stamp set coming my way from the SOS peeps, and I need to pick a Gina K stamp set as my prize from Papergrace Designs' contest. Not sure which I'll pick, but I like "Oh Boy!" and "Gnome One Like You"..

I have been crafting a bit, but no pictures yet. Nothing secretive, just lazy :P Hope to have a few to show you soon!

Check out this giveaway!

My friend Lisa at Papergrace Designs is having a Grand Opening Celebration, and this week you can win a Gina K stamp set up to $24.95 in value! Go check her blog out and enter to win this great prize!

Check out Papergrace Designs Grand Opening!!

I have an awesome tweep named Lisa, and she's got a wicked month of grand opening giveaways on her blog - Papergrace Designs. This week's prizes are $25 gift certificates to My Favorite Things and $25 gift certificate to Pixie Dust Paperie! Sweeet, huh?

now go... go quickly. and tell her Chelle sent you. MWAH!

First SOS challenge & a couple shout-outs

Well, first the shout-outs. Back when SOS was announced, they did a Design Team (DT) call... and TWO of my uber-crafty tweeps were chosen to be on the DT! Yay! Give Leslie (The Crooked Stamper) & Lisa (PaperGrace Designs) some love!!THEN.. a few days after the SOS DT was announced, it was announced that another uber-crafty tweep of mine had been chosen to be on the Clearsnap DT! Yay! On top of that, this gal was recently crowned one of the 2011 Stamping Royalty Winners. (how cool is THAT??) Give MaryDawn (My Pink Mexico) some lurve too!

Moving right along. So my lurvely friends on the SOS DT chose ribbon as the focus of hte first challenge. Hmm, ribbon. Nope, don't have much of that.. I mean, it only lines the walls of my cave, half my desktop, and a drawer in my paper holder thing. see? there's a bit of overlap in the first two shots, but that's about 8 feet of ribbon on top row, a plethora of SU ribbon holders & a bin of ribbon on the desk, and another 4 feet of ribbon on the bottom row. And then there's the drawer. So ya, ribbon? I've got it.

 

 

The idea behind challenge 1 is to use either the oldest ribbon, or what you have the most of. I'm not sure what hte oldest ribbon I have is, but I know that the pack I used is definitely one of the oldest I have... I didn't take a pic of it before hand, but at one point, the card held six BRIGHT colors of grosgrain ribbon - yellow, green, pink, turquoise, orange & purple. The turquoise & yellow had been used already, but the other four still remained. I decided to weave the pink, orange & green which are quite close to the SU colors of Melon Mambo, Tangerine Tango & Wild Wasabi, and attached the woven piece to a Wild Wasabi cardbase. Then I was stumped. The only thing I kept coming back to was a (really bright) welcome mat. So I cut a mat of melon mambo, and used my SU Movers & Shapers to cut a heart in the approximate middle. I wanted to put a bow & small sentiment on the card too, but I had used all the ribbon in those three colors, so I found a very similar orange grosgrain in my stash and used that to tie the bow around the mat. I then used my Versamarker to stamp {welcome home} from a retired set in teh corner & embossed it with the SU Wild Wasabi embossing powder. Et voilà!

I know it's not my greatest card ever, but it's kinda growing on me. It's a bit plain, but with all the color, I don't know I'd want it much busier, y'know? I think I'll write "home is where the heart is" on the inside, and it will go to the next person who buys a new place.

So there. I've played along. Hopefully I can keep up with the challenges from here on!

FRED - a progressive card blog hop (and blog candy)

Fred? Fred the Blog Hop? If this is the first you're hearing of this term, it's a newly coined acronym that stands for Friends Rock Every Day (thanks Dreena!)

The blog hop is a short one, only 9 blogs total. If you haven't come here from Lisa's, then I suggest you start from the beginning and go see Lydia at Understand Blue and check out how Fred has progressed (and why we did this in the first place).

This is the card I received from Lisa... so pretty, and yet I needed to add something AND leave room for two others to do the same. I had a pretty short time frame to do this in too, as time in my craft cave is definitely limited these days...

What could I add to a sympathy card that was simple, and fit in with the rest of the card? i started looking at my (piles of) stamps, and at some "spare parts" and saw a butterfly. And it was just 'right'. Of course, it was entirely the wrong color, but that's easily fixed. I pulled out the Great Friend stamp set, and stamped the butterfly in versamark on Pretty in Pink, and then embossed it with Iridescent Ice pearlescent (non-SU) embossing powder. Et voilà! I used stampin' dimensionals to make it look like the wings were flying, signed the inside & back and then packed it up to send out.

I send the card on to Dreena, whose blog is the next stop on this Fred blog hop!

To recap: Blog stops are:
1) Lydia Fielder
2) Dana Keith
3) Mary Dawn Quirindongo
4) Leslie Hanna
5) Lisa Adametz
6) ME!
7) Dreena Guptill
8) Tara Liddicoat
9) Sue Farrant - Fred's home. Not an official blog stop, but she's written a post about Fred anyway, so we'll count it here :)

And I said there'd be blog candy too, right? Well how about this. Leave me a comment telling me whose element on the progressive card to this point has been your favorite and why.Winner will be picked at random from all received, and will win some MSCrafts 12x12 paper packs (the ones in this pic... none have been opened yet), the Stampin' Up Elegant Lines embossing folder (I found an extra in the cave. OOPS!) and some yet-to-be-determined ribbon. because lordy. this girl has enough ribbon to wrap up the world.

ETA: any comments posted before Saturday at midnight ADT (11:00pm Saturday, EST) will be eligible for bpig candy. Winner will be drawn Sunday(-ish... i do have a small child at home, y'know. time kind of escapes me sometimes...)

New Challenge Blog...

I noticed Leslie's post today about a new blog, so I checked it out, and what a fab idea. Shopping our Stash is a weekly challenge blog that challenges us hoarders stampers to use what we've been 'saving for the right moment' and use it to make the fabu cards we've been waiting for! And to celebrate, they're giving away BLOG CANDY! some 6x6 Basic Grey paper, stamps, etc. You can see details in this post.

 Also, as of today, I am no longer a Stampin' Up! demo... I let my demoship lapse, because I couldn't keep up with quarterly minimums, etc, especially where I'm my best customer. Plus, in the last year, so much has gone on, that I haven't been able to devote any time to the business. or crafting in general. So I just spent some time going through my stamps & Big Shot stuff deciding what to weed out/put up for sale. if there's a stamp set or something you're looking for - let me know! A list will be posted shortly, I have a few people to contact first. But this blog/challenge comes at a good time for me. I have a bunch of sets that haven't seen ink in ages that I want to keep, and a sh!t-ton of paper (card stock & DSP), so might as well use 'em...

So go, check out SOS & keep your eyes peeled for my stamp sale list... coming up soon.

I think I found my mojo!

I made *FIVE* cards last night. FIVE! I think the key was using new sets.  First I made a few cards using a set from a new Stampy company founded by one of the girls I've met through twitter. I won LawnFawn's "Critters in the Burbs" set at hte beginning of the month, and it finally arrived this week (don't get me started on the postal system...). Unfortunately I've had some friends lose beloved pets in the last few weeks, so used it for a not-so-happy reason - pet sympathy cards. Hard cards to make, but this is what I came up with... Love the tree stamp, and the cat & dog are super cute. I used some of the SAB paper for the top of the tree, and sponged a bit of ink in the tree before I put down the paper pierced 'leaves'.  The stamps are clear polymer stamps,a nd they're FABULOUS quality. I really liked how they stamped. way to go, Kelly Marie!!

Then I moved on to make a few baby cards using Fox & Friends ($24.95w/$19.95c in the Occasions Mini). This is a card for a family that just had 2 baby boys... I put the owl there to represent their big brother, and wrote in the "whooo" speech bubble. Inside it says "...are these two cute little monkeys??" tee hee. I slay me.

Then a couple more baby cards, for some babes born earlier this month - a boy & a girl. The cards are essentially the same, I just flipped colors for the base & mat depending on boy or girl. I'm really happy with how they turned out. I cannot believe that I have had this stamp set for a while now and finally inked it up last night. My bad for sure. Many more plans to use this set in the future.

I still have a long list of cards to make, hopefully I'll get to finish off another 'chunk' of cards tomorrow.

Clippo cards!

My friend Alexandria owns Clippopotamus - a great children's accessory line out of Pickering, ON. Back in the fall, she'd asked me to make some cards for her clippos, to sell at the Children's Trunk Sale, and I willingly obliged.

When I got the new Something Sweet set (which coordinates with the Sweet Treat cups!) I got to thinking.... 'I wonder if these will fit a clippo...' so I spoke to Alexandria, made up some prototypes, and she sent me some Clippos to try. And... partial success!

Here is a pic of a set o Tiny Ones clippos inside the treat cup portion of a baby card..

(next time I'll stamp the sentiment in brown...)

Isn't it cute?? Love that rattle, and the awesome possum sparkly brown paper too. (Sending Love Specialty Designer Paper - also in the Occasions Mini)

For Alexandria's reference, here are the Tiny Ones & Little Ones clips in the cup... Love the Tiny Ones in there - too bad the Little Ones won't work too...

Alice in Paris loves Art and Tea...

and she's offering a chance to win a ticket to see Paul McCartney in Halifax - this Saturday!!

As part of the contest, you had to buy a print from Alice in Paris' Etsy store, so I did. I've loved her stuff for a while anyway, this was just the nudge I needed :P Soon, Dragonfly Dreamer will be hanging on my kitchen wall - isn't it pretty?

Have you seen obleek?

If you have, great! If not, check it out!

For those of you not in the know, obleek is a company run by my friend Katie in Edmonton. She does all sorts of design work, but her most recent venture has been making totes, diaper & lunch bags, camera straps and such. She uses fabulous material, everything is fully lined and/or padded where necessary.

This is a picture of my obleek lunch bag - isn't it purty?? the fabric is so pretty & vibrant - makes me happy. Plus, bringing my lunch every day in this funky bag is WAY cooler (and much more eco-friendly!) than using a frigging Sobey's bag. So check out obleek on etsy, and tell Katie Chelle sent you!

I heart etsy...

There is just so much cool stuff on there - I'm in awe of all the craftiness. I bought my laptop bag there, a print, some java jackets, and most recently - recycled Scrabble-tile pendants.

The pendants are from HomeStudio Pendants, and they arrived this week. They're perfect, and for a Scrabble lover like me, the Scrabble-ness is extra awesome. They had a Buy 3 - get one free! promotion when I bought them (Dec 1, and I received them less than 2 weeks later from the US. Sweet!), so I bought the one pictured in this post, one as a gift, and the other two I will probably keep on my keychain.

So thanks, HomeStudio. Can't wait to wear my new pendant!! I'll be back I'm sure :D

Not my crafting, but...

THIS cannot go unlinked. How unfriggingbelievable is that? The last picture especially. Super huge props to those crazy, crazy knitters (and crochet-ers). It's like Anne's felted baby rings, but even cooler (and Anne's stuff is pretty friggin cool, IMO).

As an aside of sorts... if anyone who's local wants to, or just CAN, teach me to knit, I'm intrigued. Probably for after Christmas, but still intrigued. Thanks :)