Cutesy Cover Gift Box

I have a quick but fun post to share with you all today. By now you are aware that Lauren Meader has begun her first pre-release of a few items. Her new store, My Time Made Easy, is be up and running full speed ahead and she's working out the "kinks" before the full and grand opening, slated for January 3 (at this time).

I wanted to show you another one of the Pretty Packages© Lauren has come up with - this one is called "Cutesy Cover" ©MTME . (If you think of a Crayola Crayon box you'll get the idea behind this one.)

I printed off  my Cutesy Cover ©MTME template onto some high quality white cardstock. I then added the fabulous new Pretty Printables© paper, using both The 12 Days of Snowflakes© and That Hit the Spot©. Aren't they just adorable? I wanted to add a little "POP" so some red ribbon did the trick. I chose to use two buttons and some embroidery floss to close my box but you can also tuck in the flap if you prefer. I also added a double layer punched snowflake with a red rhinestone center. Here's a close up of the front so you can see some of the details:

Can't ask for anything cuter or easier than this. My gift card just tucked into the box (I removed it from the card hanger first) - cute as a button, and makes that little extra something special just that - SPECIAL. This paper goes with EVERYTHING - there are SO many colors to choose from - I LOVE them and so will you!

SO - pop over to the store, My Time Made Easy and check it out! If you make projects with the Pretty Printables© or Pretty Packages© I'd love to see them - leave me a comment and I'll check out your blog. Have a GRRRREEEAT Day!

Pinch Me...

...I think I'm dreaming!!! Depending on how you arrived at my blog will depend on whether or not you have ANY clue as to why I said to PINCH ME! If you got here via Lauren Meader's blog then you know why you are here and you'll know what my news is. If by some other means or because you are a follower (thank you by the way) then this may be NEW news to you :-)

Lauren Meader announced recently on her blog that she is starting her own company. She will be designing her own line of stamps, new fabulous and unique templates, called Pretty Packages© and will also have a whole new offering of Pretty Printables© (digital paper) for this brand new company which is called My Time Made Easy (don't you just love it!?) You can read all about Lauren's dream and announcement --> here.

Meanwhile... I got this super amazing invitation to become a member of Lauren's Design Team for My Time Made Easy and I STILL have to pinch myself to believe it's true. I am so honored and humbled and EXCITED by this invitation -- I will do my best to make Lauren and her products SHINE! SO - here we go - I'll share my first project with you then give you more info about me at the end...

Our first new Pretty Package© from My Time Made Easy is called In a Pinch ©MTME! Here's my "reveal photo" that Lauren used to announce us:

Now is that just the CUTEST little package or what? I used three Pretty Printables © digital papers, (12 Days of Snowflakes, That Hit the Spot and Throw Me a Line), to decorate my In a Pinch box. I chose a pink color palette because the gift that is going INTO the box is this lovely pink scarf that I picked up as one of a set of goodies for an "angel tree" gift for a young girl. You can see why the template has this clever name - the middle of the top part folds in to create this adorable shape. It's also generously sized - a large hand lotion from Bath and Body would also fit! A piece of satin ribbon ties off the pinched-in middle and is finished off with a bow. I added a band of soft pink pom poms to keep with the "snow" theme and to coordinate with the soft pink fabric of the scarf and besides, pom poms are "IN!" LOL Finally, I used some fun snowflake embellishments that I adhered to punched Regal Rose snowflakes (MS punch).

Of course I had to make a matching card and those brand new digital papers Pretty Printables © are fabulous (designed by the amazing Kristin Beuter!!!). Lauren will be releasing some brand new STAMPS in January and you are going to love, love, love them. You will see how beautifully everything coordinates!! Since the In a Pinch is a pre-release Lauren has not yet released her stamp line so I used my Magnolia stamp called Snowie With Bells for my image on the card. Since this is a gift for a young girl how could she NOT love Snowie...!?

Here's a close up of Snowie and check out that great paper! It's SO fun and pretty and easy to print one or several sheets. The darker pink of the striped paper coordinated quite nicely with my SU Regal Rose. I carried over some of the elements from my In a Pinch gift box to my card; the snowflake embellishments, the satin bow and then I added some adorable mini jingle bells to coordinate with the bells that Snowie is holding.

Finally, here are a couple of close up photos. First is the sentiment on the top of the "In a Pinch" Pretty Package ©. I stamped this Gina K sentiment from Very Merry Christmas and cut it out with my petite oval nestie - inked the paper with some Pretty in Pink SU ink and then added a whole second oval punch underneath. It's popped up with dimensionals. The top of the In a Pinch is perfectly sized to accommodate a sentiment or other embellishments!

Next is a close up of the front of the box so you can see more of the GORGEOUS paper, the fun pom poms and the other two digi papers along with the satin bow.

Lastly, Lauren asked us to share a little about ourselves so here's some info about me:

I actually started stampin the first time about 25 years ago when I bought my own unmounted rubber images and my DH made me blocks of wood to mount them on. Then I had children and "life" took over until about 8 years ago when I began scrapbooking. I did that intensely for 3 years and took a break. Then I stumbled upon Stampin Up from a girlfriend who was a papercrafter. I rekindled my love of stamping and have been going strong in the past 3 years. I discovered Lauren's amazing blog many, many months ago, I started a blog, I began to enter various challenges and I was part of Lauren's My Time To Create Challenge team for several months. I have been a CenterStage Spotlight Designer for StampTV and a Guest Designer for Theresa Momber as well. Finally, I recently had a hand in establishing a brand new challenge site called Just Us Girls! Life is good - my hobby is fun and I hope in some small way I can inspire you AND that you will fall in love with Lauren's designs and products as I have already!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see more of you in the future.
PS - stay tuned for another idea using another new product from Lauren... It will be posted after this post goes live to you all.

Autumn Beauty "Scraplings"

Do you know what a "scrapling" is? Even though I've been stampin for several years I had not heard that term. Apparently it means a little card made from "scraps". (Duh?!?) There doesn't appear to be a standard size for scraplings but I decided to try one - ok several! *grin* I had quite a few scraps of vanilla CS from a recent project so I went with cards that were 2 x 4-1/4 (some scraplings are only 1-1/2 x 4.) I also had some scraps of Apple Diamonds digital paper from Theresa Momber's new All About Autumn paper so I set out with those two items and my new Autumn Beauty stamp set to make some scraplings.

Here's the set I came up with - now aren't those just the cutest darn things? I've usually make 3x3 cards when I need just a note but I'm IN LOVE with these little darlings - I included a snap of them with one of them in my hand so you can get a visual size reference.

Now - these little notes are just the perfect size to tuck into a lunch box or briefcase, to lay on a pillow, to set on a keyboard or desk or punch a hole and tie on as a tag on a gift bag and in doing so you wouldn't need an envelope. BUT, I really wanted to figure out how to make an envelope for these. I turned to a video tutorial by Lauren Meader (click here) on how to make a custom sized envelope and they turned out great.

Envelope Instructions: For my scrapling which measures 2 x 4-1/4 I cut my envelope paper to 3-1/4 x 10-1/2 (don't use cardstock - it will make the envie too bulky - I just used really nice quality paper and printed my digi paper borderless - or use a DP.)

Score the 3-1/4" side 1/2 from both edges all the way down
Score the 10-1/2" edge at 3" and 7-1/2" (I made the 3" section my TOP because I wanted the sunflowers on the top folded piece.)

Cut away the excess from top and bottom.
Trim top inside corners of the 1/2" scored parts if desired
*(see pic further down of the envie with the card inside it to see what I mean about trimming the inside corners.)
Punch top edge with your favorite border punch.



Apply adhesive to bottom flap edges (I use 1/8" scor-tape so it won't let go)







*(You can see where I cut away the inside corners.)
Fold, tape, insert scrapling!

If you are giving these away as a gift you can add a small piece of scor-tape just under the flap so the recipient can seal the envie before giving it.



Four finished envelopes... Remember these cannot be mailed. I did stamp two of the envelopes with the small sunflower image - it just so happened that the way the digi paper was cut then folded two of them had plain fronts - sunflower stamp to the rescue! I stamped off once in brown then stamped three images - no time to cut, mask but they are still cute in the corner.

All packaged up as a simple little gift (although THIS batch will probably be MY gift to me to be able to use these myself.)

Want some more eye candy? Theresa has two more super Guest Designers this month and they are both sharing some fabulous ideas with you today as well. Check out Karen Knegten's page on Stamp TV and Jennie Harper's blog. Both of them have some Autumn Beauty to share with everyone as well. :-)

Thanks for looking and heartfelt thanks to Theresa for the invitation to Guest Design for her. I love this set and hope you will try it yourself. You won't be disappointed.

Mojo Monday #90

Time for another Mojo Monday sketch. I can't believe it's on #90 already! WOW!

This week I used some digital paper from Gina K Designs - this one is called Softly Spring and was designed by the very talented Emily Giovanni. I used Papertrey Ink's Smokey Shadow to mat the digi papers so it would not be quite as stark as black.


I flipped the sketch on it's side - added some ribbon and a few glitter dots (Gina K) and one of my favorite sentiment from Verve - it's a quote by Oprah and was exactly what I needed for this card for a friend. I love having the Mojo sketches to keep my layouts fresh :-) Before I discovered sketches I notice that all of my previous cards were kind of "boring" LOL.

Thanks for visiting! Have a super week.

MyTime to Create Sketch Challenge

Hello all! It's time for another SKETCH Challenge from the incredible Lauren Meader. We hope you will play along and create a card using this sketch. We'd love to see what you create. Be sure to link to the Mr. Linky on Lauren's blog when you are done.

I am super impressed with the latest set of digital paper from Gina K Designs called " Special Fathers Red Digital Paper". I guess I've been in a "masculine mode" lately - working on a couple of masculine challenges or perhaps because Father's Day is around the corner. In any case, I came up with this card using 3 of the papers in the digital paper pack to create this super simple dad's day card. It's hard to tell from this photo but the layers are all popped up with dimensionals so there is a lot of depth to it IRL. I did not include a sentiment on the front (as called for in the sketch) because the background paper from the digital set is so full of words and sentiments. There are sentiments stamped on the inside but I didn't photograph the inside. The "ribbon" is a strip of one of the digi papers.

If you've never tried digital paper it's totally cool! You buy it for a VERY reasonable price (if you want to try some FREE digital papers from Gina K click here) and then you have it for forever. You print it right onto paper or cardstock on your printer. You can print as many copies as you need and you can print ONLY the papers you want. Super fun and economical way to add some amazing designer papers to your stash. I love it and this particular set is really great!!

The anchor image is from Gina K's Guiding Light set. I colored with Copics then masked the anchor and sponged in a complimentary burgundy ink from SU.

The My Time Design Team has some additional inspiration to share with you so be sure to check them out then come create with us.

Lauren Meader
Dawn Easton
MacKenzie Bruckler
Maria Levine
Tamara Harder
Kendra
Alicia
Dana
Lisa
Odette
Jennifer
Tracey
Kristen
Pam (that's me! no link necessary LOL)

Thanks for stopping by and have a super weekend.

Digital Paper!!

Wow what can be better than FREE PAPER??? You heard me - Gina K Designs has introduced more fabulous digital papers and for a short time they are FREE! Now what is really cool is that you can print these beautiful prints on your home inkjet printer (I print mine on 80lb cardstock and they are beautiful) any time you want. How fab is that? SO here is a card I made with some of the digi paper (it's not a complicated card - I was short on time) but can you tell how many layers I have? If you guessed 5 you are wrong - there are THREE layers - the green bubbles base, a digi paper design I did on my computers (featuring yellow and pink floral BG, golden floral script and green bubbles ovals), and the vanilla oval with my image. Speaking of image - this was created with the thumping technique as explained by Gina K herself on her brand new StampTV! Come check it out - contests and challenges and lots of inspiration from her FAB design team.

Ok so I tried one more digital paper layer only ALL of them are on one sheet - except the more mustard CS card itself and the vanilla oval on top :-) Added a drop shadow in Photoshop to make the other layers look a bit more real.

Thanks for stopping by! {{Hugs}} n Smiles :-)