Thinking of You.....

Wednesday!! It's the half-way point everyone!  I am SO excited for the weekend--Saturday I will be attending the Stampin' Up Minneapolis Regional.  WHEEEE!!!!  I love Stampin' Up events, and I'm sure this one will not disappoint.  I am meeting up with some of the girls I met at Convention this past summer (Hi Ladies!!!) and I can't wait to see them, as well as see what Stampin' Up has in store for all of us.  I do know they will be featuring the Nature Walk set out of the new mini--I LOVE this set.

Today, I have another card I CASED (can't remember from where--but thank you!!) and changed just a slight bit.  I borrowed the color palette of Melon Mambo, Pumpkin Pie, and Basic Black.  I also used the Aviary set.   I love this set--the little owls and birds and whimsical cages are so cute!  I changed it up by using the striped paper with my scallop border, and adding a Thinking of You sentiment instead of the plain border, and Hello that was used on the original card.  I am waiting for Spring and using these bright colors and fun set helped bring it around.  

Thanks for checking in!

Happy Stampin!

SUO Challenge #12-Wheelin' Around

Hey Everyone!!!

  Welcome to the 12th edition of Stampin' Up Only challenges.  Our challenge this time was to use a Stampin' Around wheel in our design.  Every time I dust off my wheels I wonder why I don't incorporate them in to my crafting more often.  They are SO easy to use and so much fun!!  

  For our challenge this time, I used the Neighborhood Jumbo Wheel.  I inked it in Basic Black and wheeled it along a Very Vanilla card strip.  The base of my card is a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 piece of Very Vanilla layered with a 4 x 5 1/4 piece of Real  Red.  On that I layered two pieces of Play Date Designer Series Paper, and put my strip with the wheeled images over the seam of those two papers.  You can't really see it here, but I popped up the blue and red house with a couple dimensionals and then added Enjoy (on another piece of Play Date paper) punched out with the small oval punch.  Enjoy is from the new Spring Mini set You're a Gem.

  This is going to go with a gift I'm putting together for a co-worker who just bought a house.  :)  He always appreciates the cards I make for office birthdays and different things, so I know he will like getting an "Enjoy Your New House" card.  

  Thanks for checking in with me today.  Lots more inspiration for all of you over at our site.  Come check it out and play along with us, I can't wait to see what you all create.  

Happy Stampin!

A Note of Thanks

Hello Readers!!

  Today this thank you card is appropriate!  I owe a big THANK YOU to my sister Emily for being my own personal shopping consultant yesterday.   I had not one but TWO special occasion outfits (complete with shoes and jewelry) to find and she helped me make some outstanding choices, and got me to try some things on I might otherwise not have.  I'm glad I did because I LOVE everything we came back with.  

  One of my husband's best friends from college is getting married in April.  It is going to be an evening wedding at a really nice hotel in North Carolina.  My husband is in the wedding, therefore will be wearing a tux, so I wanted to make sure I was dressed appropriately.  Not only will we have the wedding to go to, but also the groom's dinner the night before at a really nice Italian restaurant.  (He comes from an Italian family)  Anyway--my sister helped me choose two fabulous outfits, and that is no small feat.  Thanks Em!!

  For this card, I basically cased a card I saw out on the internet.  I changed it by using a different ribbon (Crumb Cake taffeta) and I stamped the Baja Breeze strip using the Fleur de Lis from the Bliss set available through Sale-a-Bration.  This is a set you will want to add to your collection!!  The sentiment I also changed, and is from Thank You Kindly (another set you can get for FREE from Sale-a-Bration--it's my "go to" Thank You set)  Just a basic, clean and simple, thank you, but I'm reallly happ with ho they turned out.  Very easy to mass produce--I made myself up a set of them so I had them on hand to send out as the occasions arose.  Em--coming soon to a mailbox near you!  

  Thanks for checking in with me today!  Hope you all had a great weekend.  :)

Happy Stampin!

A Book for Emily

Happy Friday!!!

  Today I have for all of you a book that I made as part of my sister, Emily's, birthday last week.  I posted about the card I made her here last week, and this is one of the other little handmade things I had for her on her special day.

For this book, I used Love Letter paper again--see, SO versitile!  Vintagey, classic, elegant style.   I used the spiral notebook punch to fit the paper to the bound edge, and Tombow glue to hold it down.  I used the largest of the scallop circle punches, layered a 1 3/8ths circle of Newsprint, an Designer Tag Punch of the Love Letter Paper, and a Very Vanilla 1 1/4 circle stamped with the E from Lovely Letters.  Along the spine of the book I tied pieces of Basic Black satin ribbon.  I don't know what she plans to use the book for, but she loved it :)  On the back I just used another piece of the houndstooth pattern and stamped my "Hand Stamped by Amy Fink" stamp on a Very Vanilla Designer Tag punch.

Hope you all have a great weekend!  Wish us luck as we weed through our basement.  :)  Our local Savers store is going to love us after this weekend!!!  Whatever you do with yours, enjoy, and I'll see you all back here on Monday.

Happy Stampin!

All About Me-Wedding

Good Thursday Morning Fellow Readers!

  Since most of you said you enjoyed my scrapbook layouts, I thought I'd show you a few this week.  This one is another page in my album I'm putting together, and it's going to feature pictures of our wedding.  I used the Love Letter paper.  Have you guys tried this one yet?  LOVE it.  So simple and elegant.  In the class I taught last weekend, one of the women was using it to do an album about her Dad who passed away recently.  It looked so classy with pictures from the early 1900's.  Later in the month my Grandma and I have a date to go through old pictures at her house, and this paper, along with the Newsprint paper are my top choices for the album I plan to make from the pictures I collect at her house :)  

Anyways--I chose this for our wedding because it's simple and elegant.  We got married in December, at a resort on the North Shore of Lake Superior.  It was an early evening wedding, and we were saying our vows just as the sun was setting looking out over Lake Superior.  Pastor Quello married us, and he has been a friend of our family's since I was a little kid.  In fact Pastor Quello and his wife, Sharon, are my sister's Godparents.  It was SO cold the week we got married.  Steam rose off the lake each morning.  My uncle took our pictures for us, he does photography as a side business, and we got some beautiful pictures.  My Mom did a great job ensuring that the room looked exactly how we wanted it, my mother-in-law hired a bagpiper to pipe us out of the ceremony and in to our reception, my sister and Mitch's brother stood up for us, Alex helped my Dad walk me down the aisle, my father-in-law and a friend set off fireworks for us, and my father/daughter dance with my Dad was one of my favorite memories of the day.  It was a wonderful weekend, I would do it all again!             

  I'll be sure to share pictures of this album when I have my photos in it, too.  Here's one of us as we walk up the aisle--Mr. and Mrs.   :)  Thanks for checking in with me today! 

Happy Stampin!

All About Me-Holidays

Wednesday already!!!  We're halfway through the work week everyone!!! :)  This weekend my Mom and Dad are coming up from the Twin Cities--their plan is to take our  Little Munchkins for us for the day so that Mitch and I can start cleaning/organizing our basement.  It's amazing how much more you can get done in a couple hours when your little "helpers" are out doing something else.  My parents are SUPER excited for some time with them, and the boys always love when Grandpa Dave and Grandma Linda are in town.

This is a picture of 1/2 of my holiday layout in my All About Me book.  This is the left hand side, the right hand side, is a mirror image of this one.  I used Crumb Cake as my background.  In fact, I used it in all of my pages--I like the background paper to be "quiet" so that the page itself can shine.  I also like to make my pages "mirror" each other--one of my quirks!  For this I used a traditional color scheme of Old Olive and Cherry Cobbler.  I added in a strip of Newsprint paper because I like the feel it adds.  

For this layout my plan is to do Christmas Past and Christmas Present.  Christmas Past will include pictures and favorite memories from my Christmases as a kid.  My Mom has given me a few pieces of Christmas Decor that were my favorites as a kid.  When I had Alex, I got our Santa Cookie Mouse.  This was a candle stick holder that has an adorable little mouse asleep in a sleeping bag waiting for Santa.  We used to leave our cookies for Santa on that plate as a kid and now my boys get to do that, too.  This year she gave me a set of three ceramic elves that used to watch over my sister and me during the holiday season.  I plan to include some pictures of those in my layout.  For Christmas Present, I am going to talk about how Christmas is different now that I have a family of my own.  

Thanks for stopping in today!  I'd love to hear what you think of today's layout, and any favorites you have from your holiday seasons, past or present.  :)

Happy Stampin!

You're Invited......

Hi Everyone!

  Here is the 2nd option I created for my Mom's co-worker.  I featured the first option in this post.  I don't know Kelly well, so I created two fairly different options in her requested colors of chocolate and pink.  This one is a much more clean and simple version using Early Espresso and Pretty in Pink as the colors.  I again used the hearts from I Heart Hearts--this is such a great set!  I used some of the polka dot pattern of the Pretty in Pink paper from the Brights DSP pack and this card came together pretty quickly with the help of some punches, too.   Here's a look at the inside.   Kelly liked both options she said, the invites are for her cousin's bridal shower, and her style was more the 1st option--that was my favorite, too.  :)  

I'll be back tomorrow with a couple peeks at the layouts I worked on in my Saturday's All About Me class.  Have any of you done an All About Me album?  If so--I'd love to see your layouts, or ideas for your pages.  Thanks for checking in with me!

Happy Stampin!