Cottage Lane Stamper

Have you ever started out with the inside of a card first?  LOL! Well that's what happened with this card. This stamp set "The Gang's All Meer"   is from the Sale-a-bration catalog so you can't buy it, only get it with a qualifying purchase and it is DEFINITELY a favorite with stampers!  They are adorable aren't they? With their sweet disposition they remind me of my middle grandson when he smiles. Click here for list of supplies On to my "creation process".  I had created the inside of a card that I made last weekend with this cute stamp set and then realized it was going the wrong direction , portrait instead of landscape.  DUH! So being the Dutchman I am, (well at least half) and not wanting to wasted it, I decided to to create the front of a card to go with the inside. I found a card on Pinterest and tweaked it a bit to make it my own.  This in itself was a project itself.  I felt like I was back to the beginning of my ...

On this cloudy, gloomy cold day in Minnesota there was a little bit of sunshine for a few hours.  Our team got together to share ideas, tips and tricks about the thing we all have a passion for STAMPING! Our fearless leader and her "cohort" put together 5 different cards to make.  Only a couple were for the more avid stamper, the others were pretty quick and easy.  Here they are for your Saturday inspiration! Peaceful Poppies Suite   Best Dress Suite   Lovely Lilypad - SAB The Gang's All Meer - SAB Music From the Heart Two of the cards, Lovely Lilypad and The Gang's All Meer are Sale-a-Bration (SAB) items, and can only be earned with a qualifying purchase.  The other three are all from our 2020 Mini catalog.  Which is your favorite?  I goofed up on one, can you tell which one it is?  Hope these give you a little inspiration for this gloomy Saturday (I h...

Do you have a "gear head" in your family?  My dad was one, I hung out with them as a teenager and one has married into my family. This is the week of my son-in-law's birthday. He love's his Chevy's, so did my dad.  He's a great husband.  I couldn't have picked out a better husband for my daughter, if I would have had any say in it.  Haha!  And he's a great father. Matt is always working on his cars or doing woodworking (he's a talented woodworker) and is constantly busy with the projects my daughter has for him.  He's actually a software engineer and also a train lover but I've probably given him enough train cards. My son-in-law and daughter sure have given me some beautiful grandsons.  But most of all my grandson's are polite.  Which is hard to find.  When we were out to lunch on his birthday date, one of my grandson's, waited for me to get back to the table before he started eating.  How many 7 year old boys would do that?...

When I look at this card, with the water lilies,  I think of a day at the spa. Wouldn't that be nice on this cold Minnesota winter day!   So I chose the sentiment from the Tropical Oasis Suite . Click here to purchase the supplies I had thought about making a card with this set last night before I went to bed.  Do you ever have dreams about something you thought about right before you to sleep?  I won't tell you about the bizarre dreams I had about making this card.  I can tell you about a dream I had about Terry Steinbach, a baseball player for the Minnesota Twins.  He grew up in the New Ulm, where I raised my kids. I remember in my dream telling someone about the time Terry was home for Thanksgiving. My son, who was about 9 at the time, went to Terry's house with his friend, whose grandmother was Terry's parents' neighbor. The boys went up to the door, asked to see Terry and if he would sign a ball the friend had.  Terry not only did...

This month in class we did a product class where we made 3 cards from the same suite, Peaceful Poppies in the 2020 Mini catalog. I just haven't been able to put it away yet!  This suite has so many beautiful elements to it the options are endless.  So this morning at 3:00 a.m. and unable to sleep I wandered into my craft room, as I often do when I can't sleep, everything was still laying out on my table and decided to play around with the suite some more. Don't you love sweet and simple cards?  This one uses just some DSP, I also used the left over strips from Wednesday's card class and stamped the sentiment on it.  It's the center strip in the middle when I cut the DSP into 4" x 5 1/4" pieces for our simple DSP card.  I also used a left over strip of Old Olive where the 2 pieces come together. I ran it through my die cutting machine with the Subtles 3D embossing folder, to give it a little texture. Wednesday's class card ...

When I saw this next card, by Diane Hughes, I fell in love with it!  So elegant.  It takes a little bit of die cutting but well worth the result.  I am absolutely in love with everything in this suite. Especially the little poppy sequins! The back of the flowers are vellum from the Perennial Essence suite in the Annual catalog.  I love this vellum, since I don't have to color it.  The DSP vellum package comes with Daffodil Delight, Old Olive and Petal Pink.  We used both the Old Olive and the Daffodil Delight vellum in this card.  If you don't have the colored vellum you can use regular vellum and color the background with Stampin' Blend alcohol markers.  I prefer these over the Stampin' Write markers since they dry faster and tend to streak less. You could also sponge the backs, just make sure that you wipe off the excess ink with a tissue.  This card is probably for the more avid stamper.  For class I had the dies for th...

Our second card for the January product class is pretty easy also. The Peaceful Poppies Suite has 2 stamp sets, one with images and another with sentiments and 2 die sets that are give you a mind boggling amount of options for card designs! Take a look at this suite!   Peaceful Poppies Suite .  I absolutely adore everything in this suite!  Including the "Peaceful Poppies Elements " that we are featuring in this suite, the flowers at the bottom of the wreath. They are die cut from heavy cardstock and you get 8 of them in the kit.  You also get two sheets of embossed water color sheets, two sheets of embossed vellum sheets, two black sheets of embossed labels and two sheets of die cut images. The card we made has a tone on tone (stamping the image with the same color ink as the cardstock) background layer.  Die cutting the wreath, punching a 2" circle, stamped with the sentiment and a little bit of linen thread.  Very quick and easy to put t...

This month's card class I tried something different, a "Product Class", where I used different pieces from one suite for all three cards.  I had put a post on my Facebook Group page "Cottage Lane Stamper & Friends" asking what people would enjoy doing in class.  Doing a product class was first with all who participate in the poll. The suite I chose is one of my favorites from the 2020 Mini Catalog, which debuted on Jan 3, 2020 and goes through June 2, 2020 the "Peaceful Poppies Suite". I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE everything in this suite!  The papers are gorgeous.  This DSP is so beautiful on it's own it really doesn't need much to make a great card! I tried to choose cards that used different elements.  One  card, this one, was super easy, using DSP.   The second had a little more going on featuring one of the dies in the Peaceful Moments die set.  The third card was for more ardent stampers involving a little more die cutting, an...