Jasmine is about to pounce

Here is another scrapbook page, using My Digital Studio. I'm gonna do a few posts in a row of my crazy beagle... hope you don't mind.

This page features her in a trip to Ohio. We were at my dad's place which is in the middle of nowhere in Southern Ohio. He had just gotten a new kitten and Jasmine was taunting it. She loves to chase and tease cats.... so this one was no exception. I love the main photo-- her eyes and her stance. She's ready to pounce.

This page uses several elements. It has a Going Grey cardstock background. It has black grosgrain ribbon and a silver decorator brad. The heart is from one of the Simply Scrappin' kits and I just added her name. As you can see, when you create these pages digitally, you are using the same Stampin' Up! projects you would use if you were creating a 3-dimmensional version of it. It's very fun! Once I print this out, I'll probably add the silver brad on top of the image to give some texture. It's a very simple page, but I love it.

Digital Jasmine

Here is another digital scrapbook page... this one of my sweet girl Jasmine. This page has a lot of different elements that are available in the My Digital Scrapbook software. I used a cardstock background (rather than designer paper), I used a punch below the word "sweetness", ribbon and brad embellishments and the dog stamp from the "Man's Best Friend" set. The possibilities are endless with this program.

MDS at the Beach

Another digital scrapbooking page using My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up! This page highlights a beach trip to Emerald Isle with my best friends and their kids. I'm having so much fun using this software, organizing photos that have sat around for years. I'm excited to print these pages out and then add some real embelishments to finish them up. If you want to know more about this fun project or the MDS software, let me know.

My Digital Studio

I've been playing around withe new digital scrapbooking software from Stampin' Up! called My Digital studio. I'm having a blast! This is a great package... lots of options, colors, images and it's pretty user friendly.
I love playing on the computer, designing and creating so this is a fabulous fit for me. The worry is that I will become all consumed and forget about stamping!

If you'd like more information on this great new product, just let me know.

What I'm up to

I wanted to share a little about my latest endeavor. My mom, friend and I are all doing a 21 cleanse called Standard Process. It was recommended to me by my fabulous chiropractors who have done it several times with great results. My main goal was to improve my sleeping and try to find a little relief from joint pain due to fibromyalgia. The secondary goal was to lose some weight. This particular cleanse is not only known to improve chronic health issues, but also jump start your metabolism, curb cravings and lose weight.

We looked into several cleanses and decided on this one for the following reasons. First, it was recommended and my chiropractors are resources if I need anything or have problems. Actually there is a group of about 8 of us from the practice who are all doing it together. Second, some of the others I looked at involved liquefying everything you eat and I know myself and I need to chew! Lastly, many of the others involved colonics and enemas and although I was committed to doing this, let's just say... I wasn't that committed.

With this cleanse, you eat only fresh fruits and veggies, brown rice and lentils, for the first 10 days. Then you add in lean protein-- chicken, fish and eggs. You also take supplements and drink two protein shakes a day. And, you drink tons, and I mean TONS of water.

So we all started a week later than the others because I had the H1N1 flu and I didn't want to do this on top of the weakness of the flu. To be honest I wasn't 100% sure I'd be able to do this... but we're on day 9 now and doing great. I had some serious cravings days 2-4. Day 2 I would have died for chocolate cake and I could have hurt someone for a bagel on day 4! Carbs, carbs, carbs! But since then it's gotten much better and the cravings aren't as bad. However, I will tell you that I'm dreaming about chicken and cannot wait until Thursday when I can have it!

So what have I learned?
1- I am completely obsessed with food-- and my booty shows it! I think about it all the time. It's really ridiculous. And, since I can't eat anything I want now, I've not been thinking about it so much.
2- There really are very few veggie only recipes. Everything I've made has had a different name and different process, but ended up being veggies over rice.
3- It all works better if you exercise.
4- I come from a long line of food lovers-- dang genes.
5- I have a very very very tiny bladder!

And what are my goals?
1- I want to lose as much weight as possible. 5 lbs so far. YEAH ME!
2- Everyone has their weakness and mine is sweets... I tend to eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I want to start thinking of sweets as a treat and eat cake for birthdays-- not lunch!
3- Continue to drink more water and exercise.
4- I plan to continue to eat a large portion of veggies every single day. They are actually quite good and fill you up.

They say that it takes 21 days to break habits, so I'm hoping that I can start looking at food as sustenance, rather than a hobby. I'll keep you posted!


Now on to the card-- a simple card today with a cute little masked chickie!
This is called a Criss-Cross card and you can find the directions here. For this card I used Summer Sun cardstock and layered designer paper from the Night and Day series on top. I made a belly band out of Summer Sun and did a scallop along the bottom with the Scallop Edge punch and added some narrow black grosgrain ribbon. For the insert I created a Whisper White card, layered on Basic Black. Then I stamped the little chick in Basic Black and colored it in with markers. The tab was punched out of Summer Sun cardstock and the greeting "Twick or Tweet" was stamped in Basic Black. I added three black brads on top of the tab and was finished. Enjoy!

Trick or Treat

Isn't this the cutest thing! This is the second card that I did for last month's clubs. It's a perfect Halloween treat and uses the Pumpkin Patch stamp set and the Sweet Treat cup in the middle.

The best way to make this card is to stamp the grass in Old Olive ink on textured Old Olive cardstock and adhere it to the bottom of the white piece. Then punch a 1 3/4" circle in the very middle, just above the grass. Then stamp your pumpkins in Only Orange, Basic Black and Old Olive.

Next, put a little adhesive on the back, around your punched out circle and insert your Sweet Treat cup. With the piece upside down, add candy corn (or whatever you want) into the cup and pull the sticky off the rim of the back of the cup. Put a small piece of cardstock over the circle to cover it up so the candy won't fall out. Next adhere the entire thing to the layer of Basic Black cardstock.

The card is Only Orange cardstock, layered on a piece of Basic Black. Add a small piece of torn polka dot paper from the Day and Night DSP set on the left side. Also add some narrow black grossgrain ribbon and threat the tag through it before tying it. Then add your pumpkin piece and you are done.

Thanksgiving Leaves

Today I have another sample using the Autumn DSP and the Falling Leaves set. This is a card I did for my clubs last month and they really liked it.

First, I added the two papers from the Autumn Meadows DSP pack. Then I stamped three of the leaves from the set in Really Rust, Taken with Teal and Chocolate Chip and punched them out with the large oval punch. I punched out three oval scallops in Chocolate Chip and backed the leaves on them. Then for texture I added the gold brads at the top of each leaf and put them on the card with dimensionals. Lastly I added the greeting and the wide grosgrain ribbon in Chocolate Chip. These will be my Thanksgiving cards this year.

Falling Leaves Quilt

I really like this card. It's simple in design, but time consuming in that it involved sewing.

This simple quilt design has three components; pieces from the Autumn Meadows DSP, leaves from the Falling Leaves set stamped in a variety of colors on Very Vanilla cardstock, and colored squares with leaves from the same set stamped in Versamark. I used the small square punch to punch out 12 squares using these three designs. I adhered them down on a Chocolate Chip card and then sewed a zig zag stitch all the way around, to make it look quilted.

The greeting is also from the Falling Leaves set and is stamped in Chocolate Chip, punched out with the small oval punch and layered on a chocolate chip scallop oval. The last element, to add some texture, is the narrow chocolate chip ribbon.

Hope you like!

Enjoy Every Bite...

I bet you wondered if I fell off the face of the earth? Well, I'm still here. I got slammed with the swine flu and was down for the count for almost 2 weeks. I hope none of my stampin' friends gets this nasty bug. It's not fun. But, I'm back... and have lots of new samples from the Holiday Mini to share with you. Let's start with Halloween samples... my favorite holiday!
I love this skeleton. I think the dog hanging off him is too funny. This set is called Twick or Tweet. We did this card at a recent new-mini catalog class I held and it was a hit.

This card is Old Olive, with a layer of Elegant Eggplant. Corners are all rounded, to go along with the circle focal point. The designer paper is from Cast a Spell DPS and the is just folded randomly accordion style. The Eggplant rick-rack (ribbon) is from one of the designer ribbon sets.

I cut out the Kraft and Basic Black circles prior to the class. We stamped the skeleton in Black on the Kraft circle. This skeleton has some spooky looking eyes, so I added the googlie-eyes to make it more fun, and less scary. Then we stamped the dog again on Whisper White cardstock and colored him in with Really Rust ink with the Aqua Painter. We added him to the skeleton with a dimensional. Then I added three black brads on the left of the circle. The words "It's Halloween, Enjoy Every Bite" are stamped in Basic Black on Whisper White cardstock and added to the left side of the circle.

Fun card. I love this set and this card. Happy Halloween.

New Mini Available and New Card

I'm so excited. The new winter mini is now available for purchases. There are so many great things in this mini-- including the new digital scrapbooking software. This is going to be so awesome for me. I've told you before that I don't scrapbook enough because I'm a little OCD and a perfectionist so each page can take me 2+ hours... which gets me nowhere. I do like to do computer design so I think this is going to be perfect for me. The digital software is not available to order until October 1st, so as my grams would say, hold your taters for just a little longer.

On another note, I have not been stamping at all and I've vowed to get in the craft room and play tonight. So, hopefully, I'll have something fun and new from the mini to show you tomorrow. But in the meantime, here is another sample from the For All You Do set.
This is a 5x5" Whisper White card that features the Square Scallop BigShot die in Elegant Eggplant. Above that is a layer of Certainly Celery and then a layer of white, both of which are corner rounded. The images are from the For All You Do Set and are stamped in Certainly Celery and Elegant Eggplant. The butterfly is two stamps, one is the butterfly, stamped in Almost Amethyst, and the second is the dots, stamped in Elegant Eggplant. I then cut the butterfly out, folded up the wings, and mounted it on the card. The ribbon, added for some texture, is the wide grosgrain in Celery. It probably could use a greeting, but I put it inside instead of gaudy-ing up the front.

Set: For All You Do
Ink: Certainly Celery, Elegant Eggplant, Almost Amethyst
Cardstock: Whisper White, Certainly Celery, Elegant Eggplant
Accessories: Square Scallop Die, Corner Rounder, Celery Wide Grosgrain Ribbon