My Mother's Day Card

Welcome back, after all the excitement of last week's Blog Hop!  After making several more cards, I decided to stick with this one for my Mum.  She loves all flowers, whether in the garden or in a vase.  I embossed the frame by using the Oval die cut from Spellbinders.  The vase stamp is from Sparkle N Sprinkle Vase Set 265 which I stamped with Memento Tuxedo black ink and colored in with Copics.  The blue background paper is just blue cardstock with Versamark applied to the edges and then heat embossed with Sparkle Embossing Powder.  I make my own glittery backgrounds with this Embossing Powder all the time - It just adds so much bling!  I added a little Stickles to the flowers and wrapped a little, blue, squiggly, sparkly ribbon around the bottom!  Ok, got to get it to the post office, so that it'll arrive in time - Catch you later!

Untraditional Mother's Day Winners

Thank you all so much for taking part in the Sparkle N Sprinkle Untraditional Mother's Day Blog Hop.  A special personal thanks to all who took the time to leave comments for me - very encouraging for my first blog hop.  I hope now that you have "met" me, you will come back again and visit me soon!  And now drumroll ......... here are the names of the winners. 

SNS UNTRADITIONAL MOTHER'S DAY BLOG HOP

Well a warm hello from a finally unfrozen NJ - hope you're all enjoying the first signs of Spring (no need to rub it in, you Floridians!).  If you have hopped over from Patti White's blog, then you are on the right bunny trail.  If, however, you have "hopped" over a few, might I suggest that you turn around and take your cute little cotton tail back to the beginning, http://sparklensprinkle.com/blog/ so you won't miss a hare!!

Here is a photo of my token crocus clump that comes up annually, despite the New Jersey deer which only ate them down to the roots once this year (I covered them in human hair, so that I could take the photo!).  They always signify the start of Spring for my family!  "Mummy, the crocuses are back!!"

So here I am getting ready for my first Blog Hop - hope you are all as excited as I am.  I know, you're all saying, "What's the big deal?  It's only a Blog Hop."  Remember - I'm not even on Facebook yet!!! (LOL)  Maybe soon.  OK, so now on to business.

For this Blog Hop, we are doing an untraditional Mother's Day theme.  So right there, I didn't listen.  My three MD cards are all quite traditional.  Not sure which one my "Mum" is getting, but since Mothering Sunday is on April 3rd in the UK this year I had better decide quickly - don't you think?  And no she doesn't blog either - so we're OK - she's in the UK! 

Anyway, on to the Blog Hop.  Did you know that Sparkle N Sprinkle is now a preferred partner with Spellbinders?  That means some of our new sets, are made to fit very nicely into some of the Spellbinders die sets.   For the Mother's Day Blog Hop, I chose to use one of those such Combo Sets.  It's set 429 the Blossoms - Nestibilities Combo.  Oh how easy (not to mention fun!) is this going to be!!

So here we go with my first card: Happy Mother's Day Blossoms

So, this is my most "untraditional" card.  Not sure why I did this, maybe because I thought it sounded untraditional for a flowery card, but I decided to start with a black and white background.  I made masks of the three flowers I was going to use, and covered the black cardstock with flowers embossed with White Detail Embossing Powder.  Actually, it looked really pretty just like that, but, of course, I couldn't stop there!  I stamped the flowers in Memento Black Ink and colored them in with Copic markers.  Still not bold enough!  So after cutting them out, I covered the flowers with Versamark Ink and heat embossed with Clear powder - twice!!  You'll find the complete instructions here.

Now on to the more feminine side of me.  Next is my Stripes and Blossoms card:

For this card, I decided to go mono-chromatic, so I used double-sided cardstock.  It was a two-tone pink cardstock.  For the card's background, I made my own glitter paper - I covered strips of both colors of the cardstock with Super Adhesive Sheets.  I took off the protective backing and applied Sparkling Snow Glitter to the entire piece.

I just love the way it twinkles - don't you?  I love this technique, because when you need some pizzazz , but want to stay in the same color family - it's a no-brainer!  I made my flowers out of white, and the two tone pink cardstock, and embossed them with Petal Pink EP and Melon Twist EP. 

Here is a more detailed shot of the dimensions on the card, which I achieved by using different height dimensionals.  Complete details for this card are right here.

Hope you're enjoying being with me on my first Blog Hop (actually I'm enjoying doing this way more than I imagined I would).  So I'll just keep going!! - I see that little Energizer Bunny is still hopping! - but at least he's going in the right direction this time!

... And now on to my final card - Mother's Day Jar. While at Stamp Fest (right before going on the cruise) I was looking around the booth and for some reason one of our other new sets Fill the Jar just jumped out at me and "screamed" to be filled with flowers!!  I think this may be my favorite of the three (maybe my Mum's MD card too - what do you think?).

So I decided to take the Large Jar from the Fill the Jar set and take it to another level!  I suppose after you're finished with your dryer sheets, you clean off the lint screen and throw it in the garbage?  Well don't do that anymore!  You need to give it a quick iron (oh, do stop complaining - the effect you get is way worth it!).  Stamp the Large Jar and Happy Mother's Day in Memento Ink then cover in a piece of the Super Adhesive Sheets.  Stick down the dryer sheet and apply Sparkling Snow glitter to the surface and burnish it in with your finger.  Cut out - now you have a frosted jar! Isn't that cool!

The flowers were stamped on white cardstock with Versamark and then heat embossed with Melon Twist, Morning Glory, Petal Pink and Princess Rose Embossing Powders.  I used green raffia for the stems.  Here is a close-up photo to show how, by using different heights of dimensionals, the flowers take on the look of a real posie popping out of the jar.  For the complete directions on how to make a Mother's Day Jar, just click here! 

I'm so glad you took the time to be part of my first Blog Hop.  I hope you have enjoyed seeing my projects, along with all the other beautiful cards presented by my fellow Sparkle Team designers.  So for now, I bid you a fond farewell and hope to see you back real soon!  After leaving a comment on my blog, hop on over to the blog of the last, but certainly not least - the one and only - Donna Ellis, to see what lovely creation she has to s(hare) with you. Here is the address to her burrow!  http://creativesmiles2.blogspot.com/   With all those lucky rabbit feet out there - I wonder who will win the prize!  Good luck!

The Shiraz Group

Well, I just received a lovely comment from one of our dinner buddies on the Cruise.  (How did she find me? - Still not sure how this blog thing works!)  Anyway, she reminded me of our wonderful time together - which would only have been slightly better had they had a certain bottle of Shiraz on the ship!  Those that were there, know what I mean!  Anyway those little napkin animals, "almost" made up for the lack of the Shiraz!  Don't you think so, Lois?  Scroll down for the photo!

Stage Fright!

Well here I am, out there on the middle of my stage - completely unprepared and "choking" for want of a better word!  I've been meaning to do this blogging thing for such a long time - actually really since last September when I was asked if I would be interested in doing a Blog Hop with Sparkle N Sprinkle, whose design team I am part of, and Spellbinders.  Needless to say, back then my SNS mentor Donna Ellis said - "Oh don't worry, we'll just  put it on the SNS blog!!  Great I thought, I can hide behind the curtains - problem solved, or so I thought!

There have been several blogs on Sparkle N Sprinkle since then, none of which have I participated in because of my inability to get up and speak in front of a crowd!!  I never was a "real" stage parent! 

Then Hogmanay came around and the little prompter inside my head went off.  "You can do this" - so my New Year's Resolution was put into place.  In 2011,  I would become a Blogger!  So here I am, trying to get this up and running before the next official Sparkle N Sprinkle Blog Hop on March 24th, which of course I'll be expecting you to join.  I just want to thank all the team at Sparkle N sprinkle for their encouragement and gentle shoving to get me onto the middle of my very own stage.  So I guess I'd better get on with my rehearsals!  Here's to Opening Night and hopefully I won't break a leg!