Great Layout for Large Images

 I have so many pieces of Designer Series Paper that have beautiful large images on them. I hesitate to use them because they are so pretty as a whole. Most of the time the flip side is a small pattern and that is what I wind up using. A couple of weeks ago Mojo Monday blog shared this layout and it was an "Aha moment" for me. I grabbed some of those large pattern pieces and made these cards.

I wanted to share the inside of the poppy card. I love how it mimics the front. This is one of the many reasons I use Stampin' Up! for my paper crafting projects; everything coordinates!

And let me share a fun trick for stamping different portions of an expression on two different areas. For the poppy card the first part of the expression is stamped on the outside. Then I cleaned that part of the stamp and dried it. But if you've tried this you know it is really hard to get it completely dry so you don't have a shadow of that portion when you ink the rest and stamp it elsewhere. In the past I've tried to use the sticky portion of a sticky note on it. But this time I used a little washi tape. Works great and peels right off when you are finished. Thanks to Linda Heller for that tip!

Sympathy Cards

 Here are two cards using the Something Borrowed Designer Series Paper, My use certainly doesn't go along with the name of this DSP, but I was in need of some more masculine looking sympathy cards. The top card was my first attempt. It uses a couple of retired stamp sets and the new White Jute Ribbon. I like it but still wasn't quite as masculine as I wanted. So I used a different patter of the paper in the card below and paired it with the retired Herringbone embossing folder. Both cards use the white embossing powder. I have finally put the powder away!

Buzzin' with Scraps

Decided it was time to use up some scraps... why can't I just throw things away! The stampin' table was just TOO cluttered and I had no desire to add more pieces of card stock, ribbon, etc. to my files. So, as I cleaned the area I made cards; which only cluttered the table even more!

Some of the scraps were left over shower invitations... so I salvaged the dry embossed portion and made a few occasions cards.

Many of these cards use little frames which are the scraps after my sister, Mary used my Big Shot to cut out some small shapes. I have a whole stack of the "frames"; so if you get cards from me you're going to see them again!

Two evenings a month I volunteer at a retirement home. I have a made some great friends there and we have fun making cards together. This is one of the cards I designed for them to make last week.

This is a modification of the card we made at the retirment center. I used some retired Wild Wasabi Grosgrain ribbon. That was another "challenge" I gave myself... "use up some of the ribbon stash!"

Well, back to the clean up!