My poor blog has been sadly neglected, including my monthly image swap cards from 2024. I have three left to post and two are ready to share with you here today.

The first one up is our June image, with a challenge to make a birthday card. I can’t tell you how long I worked to get the colors just right on these flowers and the hummingbird! But, love how it turned out. The stamp came from Northwoods Rubber Stamps and is “Hummingbird and Morning Glory Circle”.

And, finally our July image. This was a MFT Pure Innocence selection called “Holiday Cheer”. It was so much fun to work with this adorable image. For this card, I took inspiration from the paper for my color selection and I think it turned out beautifully! Nothing like a great paper collection to bring everything together!

Feels good to get these cards posted. They have been hanging around in my craft room for way longer than they ought to!

See you soon, crafters!

It’s Day 5, my last day, of posts using the new products over at Riley and Company. We shall call today Food and Drink day, since all the sentiments have something to do with one or the other. And, these are three of my favorite new creations (I know, I always say that…can’t I love them all?).

First up, another “let’s play with flowers” creation. So versatile, these floral dies are. The new product on this card is the sentiment, Too Early for Coffee (pfft, never). So many places I could go with this! But, I chose to haul out my lovely Coffee Cups die set, which I haven’t used that often, and create this lovely ode to coffee. the florals on here come form a couple of Riley and Company sets, including Floral Frame, Fancy Ferns and Just Flowers.

This sentiment is I’ll Have a Latte (yes please). I happen to be a fan of lattes and regularly feel I can’t function without one (or simply coffee) early in the morning. So I knew that I had to find a way to express my love of this morning enriching beverage. The fun and funky paper has been exposed with the Heart Outline die and I’ve used the Coffee Heartbeat on this one as well.

Last card for you! Moving on from “drink” and over to “food”! I LOVE a good Charcuterie! And while they’re especially good all fancy and prepared for you, they are also EQUALLY outstanding when they just emerge from the fridge as a pile of “things”. It’s the simple things in life, friends!

This card has been created using the Brick Wall die. This die has more of a vertical orientation, so I just took my scissors to it in a couple of key areas and made it horizontal. Easy peasy! Add my loaf of bread (from the Dress Up Professional set) and my new Note Sayings and it’s ready to go!

Can we just stop to say how wonderful this Note Sayings set is? I have all sorts of uses for this die! You will for sure see it again!

And that’s it for my creations this New Release. Please head on over to Riley and Company and check out the goods. Thanks for stopping by.

More fun with Riley and Company! We’re celebrating their August New Release with great product inspiration!

Today I have for you this new sentiment, I Call My Bathroom Jim. Okay, listen…I”m always a fan of sentiments that suggest I don’t NEED to actually exercise with only a few minor modifications to the way I think about things. This sentiment is the perfect example. Here, Helen and Alice are sharing the secrets so that they can both avoid unnecessary physical activity. You need more ideas like this? Just check out the Diet Torture section!

I love how this card turned out! At first, I wasn’t sure how to use this sentiment. But, we all have days where we feel a little…um, not so smart…and there is no doubt that the best medicine is a Huge Hug! And so, this card idea was born. I’ve layered both the Birch Trees Background and Spring Birch Trees dies together to get this beautiful forest – uh, yes I will use this idea again! The new sentiment featured here is appropriately called Little Red Riding Hood.

And last one for today great mystery of life, Why Do Eggs Come in Styrofoam. This card has been created using the Easter Eggs die from Riley and Company. I also went through my Dress Up stamp collection to find every tool imaginable to break open that batter pack!

Basic Dress Up Riley has found that the Professional (axe and rolling pin), Crafters and Sports (bat and golf club) set were most useful. Sorry, no chainsaw found.

Head on over to Riley and Company and check out all their new release products!

Every time there is a new Riley and Company release, a theme tends to emerge! I’ve been happy to share with you my favourite new products, plus some new Halloween products. Today we have what I happily call “that thing called life”.

Let’s start out talking about nutrition. If you can call Cap’N Crunch nutritious?? This sentiment made me giggle. I neither eat Cap’n Crunch nor drink Captain Morgan…but some days I DO want to be a pirate. Here, my pirate has been created with the wonderful Halloween Dress Up set and our adorable Basic Dress Up Possum.

The great background to this card was created with the Karen Burniston Pirate Borders. I’ve had these for awhile and have never used them before. They are adorable, easy to use and make a great impression!

Moving on through our “that thing called life” theme, we find this Life is Not a Box of Chocolates sentiment. When I saw this sentiment, I knew that I had to find a way to get my Fruit dies from the last release to work as jalapeno peppers! It took a bit, but I’m happy with how they turned out! I’ve also included the pepper stamp from the new Dress Up Southwest set and thought that this Feel Better Soon sentiment was most appropriate for this lovely stamped advice!

Last for today, let’s talk about the topic of sleep. Oh yes, a few of you will relate to The Problem with Crafting! I’ve done this a few too many times. Here, I’ve used Stamping Riley against the Village Silhouette die. My night sky accents come from the Fluffy Clouds set and Overlay Stars.

That’s it for today! Thanks for stopping by to check out my work again. I appreciate you!

I’m back with some more new products from Riley and Company! I’m thrilled to share with you some of my work using their new sentiments and dies!

I’m not the biggest fan of Halloween. But it’s always nice to know that you have a great company, whose work you love thinks differently of this holiday than you and produces gorgeous dies that make Halloween cards for even the biggest Halloween grinch. Here are a couple of the new Halloween-themed products!

This sentiment leans on the cute side of Halloween (which I love!). What a Night to Be a Witch fits with so many of Riley’s images and dies, but I’ chose to pair it with these ones. I was going for a “look inside the witch’s house” vibe with the Brick Wall Background and accents from Corner Cobweb. The Hanging Bats are also new and were the perfect final accent for my witchy lair! And, of course I had to use the Dress Up Halloween 2 stamp set for the broom and cauldron.

Next up, this adorableness! Love this new October 31 diecut! It’s a perfect fit for a card, but would also work very well for scrapbooking pages. This two-piece die also comes with a background shadow.

I’ve paired it with the new I Gotta Get My Sheet Together sentiment, and the 3 Little Ghosts die. I admit, these ghosties are pretty adorable!!

And, a final Halloween card for today! You can tell my Halloween style leans to cutsie. I saw this sentiment and knew I had to make a playful penguin for my card. The new Web Background provides the perfect “mood music”. I’ve constructed my adorable penguin with the Basic Dress Up Panda and accessories from Dress Up Halloween and Dress Up Sports Accessories. The sentiment here is Reasons Why Halloween is the Best. You’ll find the halloween script over at the Karen Burniston website.

I thought nothing could ever top my favourite Basic Dress Up Riley, but those Pandas??? CUUUUTTEEE!

And that’s it for my Halloween inspiration! But there’s plenty more from my fellow Design Team members. Check out the Riley and Company New Release sections and check out the product galleries.

Hello Everyone! Many of my blog readers will know that Riley and Company is one of my favourite stamp companies! I fell in love with their adorable little moose YEARS ago, but since then they’ve added so many great new characters, images, snarky sentiments and most recently, a die cut line called “Cut-Ups”.

Earlier this year, I rejoined their Design Team. I’m honoured to be a part of a team with these other talented designers and look forward to playing with the new products every couple of months!

Today, you can now order their most recent new products! Their August 2024 release is now live and this release has 10 great new dies and 21 brand new sentiments! Here’s a selection of some of the new (and old) products on their website. It will take me a few days to share everything, but I’m starting with some of my favourite new products from this release!

First up, this cute sentiment!! I mean, how can you not relate to this??? I’ve paired Cute Texts in the Morning with the Circle Background Cut-Up and Retro Suzie image. It just wasn’t “enough” for me, so I added a few gift packages from the Dress Up Ugly Sweater set. They’re so easy to cut out with the matching dies and took this card from drab to FAB!

*just a note, these word bubble dies are currently on clearance on the site. They work wonderfully with the Riley sentiments!

When I first say this sentiment, called You are Good with Ketchup, it was love at first read! But how to use it??? It gave me the opportunity to use my creativity with this punch art dragon (who turned out super cute!). The knight comes from a Karen Burniston set, Knight and Dragon. Also used in this card is the clouds from the Riley and Company Cloud Background Cut-Up.

I think one of my biggest addictions right now is creating fun floral pieces. I’m so happy that Riley and Company added a few floral die-cuts to their inventory. To frame this new sentiment, My Crazy Friend, I used two Cut-Up dies. The first is Fancy Ferns which provides excellent greenery options for your cards and scrapbook pages. And, the flowers are from Leaf Frame. Die cuts like this are always a bit intimidated, requiring multiple passes of the diecut machine to get the required pieces. But it’s always worth the effort!

The other new product on this card is the Candle Background. I’m not sure I did it justice, but please check out the product gallery for more wonderful ways to use it.

Three great cards to start out this week! Please head on over to Riley and Company and check out their New Release section to see all the great new products and product inspiration!

Here we go again with another monthly post! This month, Patti chose our image and it’s SUPER cute!! It’s called “Full of Love” from Stampin’ Up.

For my card, I picked out these cool papers and then used the colours to make my soft bouquet. This is a very “me” colour scheme, so I adore this card!

Claire also went rooting through the paper stack to find her inspiration. What I loved about her is her willingness to be bold with the flower colours. Look at those blue leave! And, the add of the white gel pen perfectly finished it off.

That’s it for a bit! We have our June image next, but as I write this (in late May)…we don’t have it yet! But, we’ll get it inked up and posted as soon as we can.

Here we are, back again! It’s time to share the April card creations with our Monthly Image Swap selection. Claire joins me in the swap this year, which means double the fun, double the creativity each and every month.

This image is from Your Next Stamp and is called “You Lift Me Up”, chosen by Terry! Claire and I discovered that this month, our cards were going to each other (how fun!). We happened to be at an all day crop together, so we decided to set up a bit of a barrier between our two tables (using our shared supplies) and agreed to craft in secrecy and exchange cards once we were done.

I’m kicking it off this month, since I think I’ve posted Claire’s projects first before this! I love the bright colours of these papers, which gave me my inspiration.

And here is Claire’s card! She mixed and matched a bit, but isn’t it funny that we picked very similar patterns (but different colors!). I just love the detail she put on her clouds. The one learning experience was how she did her ribbon. She had already put the back panel down, but we both discussed what other approaches could have been used to avoid snipping those ribbons.

That’s it for April!! May is coming right up.