Celebrate your inner princess

My starting point for this card was the adorable Martha Stewart Crown Punch. You can't have a crown without jewels, so I added pink Twinkle Stickers. I knew that I wanted to use the "Celebrate Your Inner Princess" sentiment by A Muse with it.

I thought a strip of A Muse Shimmer Couture Damask would fit the feel that I was trying to acheive. I added some satin ribbon by PaperTrey Ink in Raspberry.

I tried a number of different card bases, but finally opted for a dark gray textured by SU!. Going so dark is unusual for me!

Have a great weekend!

Random convo with Jesse

Here's a messenger conversation I had with my husband this morning. We're discussing meeting up at Elsa's swimming lessons:

Krystie: If you beat me to the pool...

Jesse: What if I beat you when I get there?

Krystie: Then I would hope that one of the handsome swim instructors would rescue me, kick your a$$, and make passionate love to me on the pile of styrofoam noodles while you weep.

Jesse: Would that they were real noodles. Now that would be fun.

He cracks me up. :)

Pajama Party Challenge #4 - Color Challenge

For the final challenge of the A Muse Lounge Pajama Party, Glenda gave us a fun color challenge, red, black and white!

In addition to my A Muse stamps, I used a little trim by Martha Stewart.

I hope you had fun tonight if you played or followed along with the challenges!

Pajama Party Challenge #3 - OLC

Moving on to the third A Muse Pajama Party challenge tonight....we're making OLCs with Geeta!





I've wanted to ink up this little calendar and this was the perfect opportunity! I popped the main image on dot, added a bit of ribbon and sentiment. Super easy!





Thanks, Geeta, for a fun challenge! Glenda is next with our final challenge for the evening!

Pajama Party Challenge #2 - Best Friends

I'm hosting the second challenge tonight for the A Muse Lounge Pajama Party! The theme is a card for your best friend!

My BFF and I usually talk online these days, so I thought about this cute computer image would be appropriate.

The computer and the heart are cut out and popped. I think she'll like it. :)

Geeta is hosting the next challenge.....back in a bit!

Pajama Party Challenge #1 - Celebrity Crush

Tonight is a pajama party over at the A Muse Lounge! There will be four challenges tonight. The first is hosted by Jennie and the theme is your celebrity crush!

Mine is yummy Don Draper from Mad Men! As in the picture, he drinks...a LOT. I was inspired to make a drink-themed retro-ish card.

I must confess though, my real, number one celebrity crush is Alexander Skarsgard from True Blood. HAVE MERCY, that man is gorgeous! He would have been easy, because A Muse has the vampire stuff, but I knew that all of the Twi-hards would be doing Edward cards already. I wanted to do something a little different.

I hope you're playing along tonight! I'll be back soon with another challenge, one that *I* am hosting!

Modern Wood Block - Two Ways

**2nd post today, scroll down for my Tuesday Trigger challenge card**

Several of the girls over in the A Muse lounge were talking about doing a little challenge. We were each going to pick one stamp and make several cards with it.

I've been wanting to play around with Modern Wood Block and thought this would be a good opportunity!

I'm going to show you a couple of simple ones today and I'll be back tomorrow with another!

For this first card, I stamped in different colors, then punched them out.

I love an ultra-simple card.

The wood grain gives a little interest to this 2-minute card.

I'm obsessed with this label punch! I love how Thank You RM fits so nicely on there.

Thanks for looking, see you tomorrow!

Tuesday Trigger Challenge

I was checking out the Moxie Fab blog and the latest Tuesday Trigger challenge. I was an awe of the inspiration image this week!

Gorgeous inspiration, right?!? I went to my work table with the following notes in my mind:

1. Lots of white

2. Floral pattern on brown/kraft

3. Pop of teal or turquoise

4. Tiny bit of black

5. Soft and feminine

Inspiration challenges are truly challenging for me. I almost always use my stamp image as the starting point for my projects. Starting a card with colors and an overall feel is a totally different thing, and I feel like I worked a new muscle or something!

I used Solid Zinnia, Thank You RM, a white notecard, and ribbon by A Muse Artstamps. I also used Kraft and Turquoise paper, and white craft ink by SU! I hope you like it! I'll have another challenge card to show you today if the kiddies will let me get to it!

Elsa's instructions for feeling better

I just wanted to pop in and show you this sweet little drawing that Elsa made for her brother. Tuffy's not feeling well, he's been sick for a couple of weeks and over the weekend was diagnosed with pneumonia. Poor little guy! He's doing better today, the antibiotics are kicking in.

Anyway, Elsa brought this picture to me and said "Here, Mommy, this is for Tuffy, to show him how to feel better!" Pretty sweet. :)

In other Elsa news, I painted her fingernails blue, which is the coolest thing of her life. Also, she got a new bathing suit with ruffles on the back, which she will bring to your attention by sticking her bum at you and yelling "LOOK!". (ETA: That's how I landed Jesse!)

Before you go thinking that she's a girly-girl, I'll tell you that she cried big tears last night because we couldn't find any slug eggs to look at under her new microscope.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you're having a YES day and not a NO day!

A Muse RAKs

One of my New Year's resolutions is to send more cards, especially B.R.A.K.s*. I know how much I love getting cards from my online friends, I hope that I can brighten some one's day!

You might recognize the card on the far left, I showed it to you on a previous post. It's such a simple design to mass produce, I thought it would be great for my January cards! The A Muse sentiment is "You are what you eat, so eat something sweet!" The punch is also sold by A Muse. The felt cupcakes are by Martha Stewart.

I'm focusing most of my efforts on the B.R.A.K. group at the A Muse Lounge. There are a few DD Alumni, Great Swap Girls, and others that I hope to include, as well. Ideally, I'd like to make one design to use per month. We'll see how it goes!

Have a great week! :)

*B.R.A.K. = Birthday Random Act of Kindness. When card makers refer to R.A.K.s or B.R.A.K.s, they generally mean cards.

Zinnia Thanks - Take 1

I love the flowers, I love the layout, I love the colors, but I'm not sure I executed it properly. Having the yellow flowers together with jewels in the center...well....there's a li'l bit of a boobie thing happening. I want to try another version with one of the flowers in gray, which I think would be really pretty! Unfortunately, I can't try it right now. My craft stuff is all packed up because we're having some electrical work done that will cause a big, dusty mess. I'll have to wait a few days to play!

I hope you're having a great weekend!

The stamps are by A Muse, Solid Zinnia and Big Thanks.

I used clear twinkle stickers, also by A Muse

Ink is Versamagic in Perfect Plumeria and Colorbox in Yellow Cadmium.

Textured paper by SU! Razzleberry (?)

Leaf Trio Definition

I've had this SU! set for a while now, Define Your Life, and I've hardly used it. I thought it would work well with the A Muse Leaves Trio and Mini Flower, and you know I have to take every opportunity to use my Big Bl stamp! I think I use it on at least half of my cards!

I also want to thank you for all of the sweet comments on my A Muse Sea of Love release projects. There is some crazy talent on that design team, and being the newest member, it can all be intimidating. I appreciate your comments so much!

Thanks for stopping by!

Simple Sea of Love

This is a super-quick little OLC. I used Coral, Clownfish, and Seas the Day. These are all from the new release by A Muse, called Sea of Love.

Thanks for stopping by, have a good day! :)

Sea of Love release day!

I'm a day late on this post, it was supposed to be my final amuse bouche. I tried to get it done all day yesterday, but Tuffy is sick and he was NOT having it! On to the project:

When I saw this sentiment, I immediately thought of how perfect it would be with a little gift of Hershey's Kisses!

Paper engineering is not my gig. I like packaging that is super simple. I made this with a white notecard that comes pre-scored. All I did was score 1" from the middle, and on the other side, cut 1" off of the end. Punch edges, close with ribbon. Done!

For the heart, I used a Marvy punch. (The pink one.) It needed something, so I used the Fancy Borders clear set to give it a little somethin'. Over the Pucker Up sentiment, I stamped Tiny Heart a few times. I used the new TuTu Pink sheer polka-dot ribbon.

You can finally see the entire release...it's all available on the A Muse site! Happy shopping!

A Muse Lounge Challenge - Perfect 10

I made this for the January challenge over at the A Muse Lounge. The theme is "Perfect 10". Since it's 2010, the challenge is to use 10 things to create your card.

Here's my list:

1. vanilla base
2. brown matte
3. white layer
4. Modern Wood Block stamp
5. Dill Stamp
6. Miss You stamp
7. wheat versamagic ink
8. brown brilliance ink
9. brown copic to color twinkle stickers
10. twinkle stickers - 10 of them! ;)

The Dill stem is embellished with 10 twinkle stickers. Did you know that you can use your copics to color the clear stickers any color? That's what I did here!

I used Modern Wood Block background and finished with the Miss You MA sentiment.