Pam is Awesome!

I have a nephew and a niece in the Air Force (nephew is at the Dover Air Base and my niece is in Japan) and a nephew in the National Guard who is currently serving in Afghanistan. I saw a few wonderful cards in Pam's gallery on Splitcoast, and asked her if she wanted to trade some images so I could make a few cards to send to my niece and nephews. Instead of working out a trade, Pam sent me all these images along with the awesome card! I was blown away, the quality of the images is superb, and I have more than enough to make a few cards to send to them and their fellow troops. There's a link to Pam's blog in my sidebar...she's a wonderful artist and quite inspiring. Thanks, Pam! :)

The Secret to Having It All...

Yet another find at the home improvement center! I picked up some tiles at Lowe's for only 37 cents each!! I couldn't believe how inexpensive they were!!

This is my first shot at stamping on tiles. I learned this technique at Splitcoast, and it's so easy to do! The results are phenomenal for how easy it is. All I did was stamp the flower (from SU's Long Stemmed set, which is one of my favorite retirees) and colored it with fine point Sharpies. To dry it a little faster, I used my heat gun. My only tip here is that you have to be careful because the top of the tile stays relatively cool but the rest of the tile heats up. I learned this by trying to pick it up too quick!! Ouch!! After I set the color, I chose this sentiment from SU's set "Friendship Flowers" which reads "The secret to having it all is believing that you already do." I love the simplicity of this one, and i have another one up there waiting for me to play tonight...

Thanks for reading. I'm kind of liking this whole blog thing. It's definitely inspiring me to do more!!

Wonderful Moon Gift Tag

Hello all!

I am remodeling my kitchen and my husband and I went to look at some countertops at our local home improvement center. As I'm standing there looking at the formica samples I am struck with how utterly sweet these little samples would be with some altering and embellishing! I took home a ton of them (both for sampling in the kitchen and for stamping on later!) and this is one of the tags I came up with. This is a stamp I had in my drawer for forever (is it Inkadinkadoo?) that I love but never really found the perfect use for until now. The flowers in the background is from SU's Baroque Motifs set, and the wonderful you sentiment is from SU's Wonderful You set. The ink is olive green Staz-On (stamped off twice for the flowers) and the sentiment is actually embossed using gold EP and Versamark. I wasn't sure if it would stick or not, but it did very well. I stuck a few stickles in the middle of some of the flowers, and added the ribbon scraps with a little metal spiral. I really love how it came out and I especially love that it basically cost me nothing--it was all scraps and supplies I had laying around. So next time you're at the home improvement store, take a swing by the kitchen countertops and see what inspirations you'll find that have nothing to do with a kitchen!

Maybe I'll give this a shot...

I've been thinking about doing a blog for a while, so I thought what the heck. Might as well give it a shot. Might take me a while to get used to this, but there are so many great papercrafting blogs out there, and I wanted to give it a shot. Besides, I wanted to get one before Patti (my stamping partner-in-crime) did! :)

A little about me: I'm married to the most wonderful and supportive husband and have two crazy dogs. I'm also a great aunt to two of the most beautiful little girls in the world. When I'm not stamping, swooning over my great nieces or studying (I'm a student on top of it all) I work full time managing two group homes for adults with developmental disabilities. Patti always says if you love your job you never work a day in your life, and I can honestly say I LOVE MY JOB. It is rewarding beyond belief, and I couldn't picture myself doing anything else. I'm also a photographer and enjoy spending time in the great outdoors, especially at the beach or in the woods. Most of all, though, I love to stamp.

So, as i start out on this venture, any suggestions from time-tested bloggers are more than welcome, and I hope you'll all like what I come up with in the weeks ahead. Thanks for reading!

-Jen Z.