The Gang's All Meer! Happy Birthday!

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 card making life. Eyeballing things not measuring my stamped image cardstock so all my layers were too big. TRIM, TRIM, TRIM. Guess I was getting too big for my britches!

Then I tried to create some "ground" for the little Meer cats so they weren't "floating" in the air.  Well, those all went in the garbage!  Too dark!

Here's my end result.  I love the little lizard, so I featured him in two of the squares, I wanted him in all three but I see forgot him in one of them. I also gave them all blue eyes because all my grandsons have beautiful blue eyes.

For a list of all the products I used (except the stamp set) click HERE.

What do you think?  What is you favorite set from the Sale-a-bration catalog?

Some Saturday Inspiration

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 hope it's sunny where you are).  The few hours I got to spend with my fellow demos was definitely a day brightener!

If you want to join us let me know and I can tell you how join us.  During Sale-a-bration is the absolute best time to join!!!! It's when I did and most of my team.  You save about $30 and get some wonderful extra gifts!

Take care and may God bless. 

Thanks for stopping in!

Geared Up Birthday

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?  He's 9 now but still polite and considerate.  Most importantly, to me, they have been brought up in the church.

Back to the card. :-)

I'm not sure if the stamp in "Geared Up Garage" is  a Chevy, but it looks like a classic card.  I CASE'd this from a card I found on Pinterest another stamp company. I liked the basic layout and changed it up a bit.  Also added some gears from silver foil.  I love how they reflected on the table.

Don't tell anyone but I accidentally smudge the sentiment right after I stamped it. Grrr! Then I thought, mechanics always are getting their smeary fingerprints on the everything; I know, my dad was a truck driver. So I just used the smudgy stamp that's in the set and added some more to the sentiment label!  And that's what we do!  Turn our "happy accidents" in to our card design.  Right!

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you have a great day!

Lovely Lilypad - Rest & Relax

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 that, but also brought a ball for my son, signed it AND a glove for my son!!!!  What a wonderful person.  How many celebrities would do that today for two boys who wandered up to the door?  It was a wonderful memory. But I digress. :-)

This Lovely Lilypad set is from the Sale-a-bration catalog, which means it's an exclusive set only available with a qualifying purchase.
The un-bizarre (probably not a word) part of my dream about this set was stamping it on watercolor paper and regular Whisper White.

Click here to purchase supplies

Here they are side by side.  Can you tell which is the watercolor stamp and which is the direct stamp?  I think I like the watercolor image best.  Which is your favorite?

Click here to purchase supplies

The unique thing about this stamp set is that the stamps are reversible.  One side is a background splash,  the reverse side has the image. The  image does not match with the background splash on the other side.  So don't drive yourself crazy trying to get them to match up!

For both cards I stamped off the solid background side once before stamping the image. The image is stamped full strength.  On the watercolor paper image, I used my aqua painter to blend the image.  I think the sentiment, from Timeless Tropical, goes really great with this card.  The sequins are left over from another time and catalog.

What are your favorites from the Sale-a-bration and Mini Catalogs? I still have a couple things on my list.  :-)

Thanks for stopping in!



Images: Stampin' Up!®

Peaceful Poppies Inspiration

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

I tried out the a flower and two leaves from the Peaceful Poppies Elements.  I chose the embossed flowers on the watercolor paper and sponged them with Crushed Curry and Mossy Meadow.   I'm not a big user of black some I'm on the fence about the black sentiment, stamped in White Craft ink.

I tried another watercolor element, this time the small grouping of flowers, like in the card above.  The frame is actually a piece of scrap that we punched the circles out for the wreath in another card from Wednesday's class.  Do you save pieces from punches or dies to hopefully reuse the negative piece later?  I'm such a hoarder!

Wednesday's wreath card

This is another take using the wreath and I used a die from the Painted Labels die set for the sentiment.  What do you think? Like it?

Ok, I thought about taking a photo as I was making this card, but since it was about 4:00 in the morning by this time, I didn't feel like taking photos.  But..... the the Pool Party Nested Labels die piece is actually cut out of the bottom Pool Party layer.  The center gets covered up with DSP and no one is the wiser about something missing from the layer.

This card also has flowers from the Peaceful Poppies Elements.  These are the vellum flowers and I sponged them with Poppy Parade and Old Olive.  I think this is my favorite card.

So what do you think?  I know the Peaceful Poppies Suite is a little on the high side, price wise but you really get a lot of bang for your buck with this one. The possibilities are endless!   Everything on these cards is from the suite, except the Nested Label dies on the last card and the oval die on the Crushed Curry card.

Check back later, I'm going to play some more with this suite. My ideas are simmering.  Haha!  I also think I need some sleep.

When do you do your best creating?  

January 2020 Product class: Peaceful Moments vellum flowers

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 the vellum in one basket and for the cardstock in another basket.  I did this for myself when die cutting everything. It made it much easier for me to keep track of.

If you like this card and would like to make it for yourself, you can find a PDF with instructions, dimensions and supplies join my FB Group page: Cottage Lane Stamper & Friends and find it under the "files" section on the left hand side. To go right to the store and shop click here!

Would love to hear if you give this card a try!

Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend with me. 

Images: Stampin' Up!®

January 2020 Class Card: Painted Poppies stamp set & Painted Labels dies

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 together.

Here's a video of me putting the card together for the first time.

Would love to hear if you give this card a try!  For a quick list of supplies and store click here.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend with me. 

Images: Stampin' Up!©

January Card Class: Peaceful Poppies Suite

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, and keeping track of pieces.  It was a little more difficult but produced beautiful results!!!

This is the first card. A quick and easy card using just the gorgeous Peaceful Poppies DSP and a die cut label.

Here's a little video I put together when I made the card the first time.

The great thing is you can make 6 cards very quickly from the one sheet of DSP!  Change your sentiment and have a supply of cards on had for those last minute occasions! 

Click here to take you right to the store for the list of supplies. Or go to my FB group page, Cottage Lane Stamper & Friends for a list of the supplies, dimensions and instructions.  

Would love to hear if you give this card a try!

Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend with me.  

Images: Stampin' Up!©