Herringbone with Designer Series Paper

Brian King has a quick video tutorial on his blog on making this herringbone background using strips of DSP. He uses strips of the same size but I had a packet that was just a lot of strips of varying sizes and so I just used what I had. The expression comes from the Occasions Alphabet and the little heart from Take it To Heart stamp sets. The label is cut using Apothecary Framelits. I made four herringbone background cards; those 12 inch strips go a long way!
Then I had just a few more strips left and used them to make these two cards:

Finally used up that pack of DSP scraps.

Christmas Designs

These are the remaining cards from the shoebox party; all with a Christmas theme. The top three were designed by nieces, three sisters. One niece designed the two middle cards so the youngest sister could come and create with us. I love the hexagon punch tree on top and the Gorgeous Grunge tree below. Creative ways to use non-holiday supplies.
The third card had a similar layout to mine. Sometimes it is eerie how alike we can all be!
The bottom card was made at our hostess' station. She's not even related to us but we have come to just treat her like one of the family. She had lots of paper and shapes and stamped images and stamp sets out for us to make a card. She was a great hostess, inviting us to come early for soup and sandwiches. She had lots of liquid refreshments, too and pumpkin gooey butter cake. A new twist on a St. Louis favorite! I hope we keep planning these parties. We always come up with some memorable expressions and plot ways to drive each other crazy!

ho! ho! ho!

This card is a CASE from Dawn Olchefske. It uses one of the Apothecary Framelits to make the Santa's beard. Just cut the largest framelit in the set using Whisper White Cardstock and then cut it in half to make the beard. The stamped expression is from the FREE hostess Good Greetings stamp set. It is full of fun expressions and is available through October 31st.
The belt and buckle are pieces of Basic Black card stock, a strip for the belt and another punched square for the piece in the buckle. The buckle is a size larger punched square of silver glimmer paper. The card is so stinking cute and easy!
Today is the last day the Apothecary framelits and glimmer paper on offered at a special price in the weekly deals.

Age Awareness

Here's another card using the Age Awareness photopolymer stamp set. I love how easily you can mix and match the expressions when using photopolymer sets. The Designer Series Paper is from the Flowerpot pack. One of my siblings has a birthday this month and since he's a bit older than me (not quite 14 years) I just had to rub it in a bit. The inside expression says, "You look way better at this age than I thought you would." It also comes in the Age Awareness stamp set. And he does look pretty good for his age... all my oldest sibs do. Hope it's in the genes!

 The first three cards today use the same basic layout. I just used different stamp sets, framelits, punches, embossing folders, layers to change them up a bit. Thanks a Ton card is made using a past Sale-a-Bration stamp set called Patterned Occasions, retired Comfort Cafe Designer Series Paper, Vine Street embossing folder (also a retired Sale-a-Bration item), retired Midnight Muse 3/8" stitched satin ribbon and Chalk Talk Framelits (129983).

More Comfort Cafe DSP with Summer Starfruit 3/8" stitched satin ribbon (retired). But in this card I used the Apothecary Accents framelits (127003) as the layer behind my expression and embossed both that layer and the Soft Suede card stock layer with the Fancy Fan embossing folder (127751). The expression comes from the Lots of Thanks stamp set (129690 c, 129687 w). The card below is essentially the same except I used the Curly Label (119851) and Petite Curly Label (129405) punches for the expression layer and used the Fancy Fan embossing folder but flipped the card stock to the opposite side. The expression comes from the Pretty Petites stamp set (another retired Sale-a-Bration set). 

 I was about to throw the rest of my scraps away when I realized a few pieces were big enough to use with the Petite Curly Label punch. I'm telling you it's not easy for me to throw these scraps away!
So, I layered the punched DSP on pieces of card stock punched with the Postage Label punch (122344). The little flower was punched with the Boho Blossoms punch (119858). The flower center is from the Neutrals Candy Dots (130934) If you look closely you will see I got out my Simply Scored tools (122334) and used the Borders Plate (126192) to add some embossed designs below the punched squares. The expression is from the retired Simply Sketched hostess set.