Create With M.E.

Wildflower Meadow~Nature at it's Best

I am sitting outside this morning while I post this to my blog.  I just told my eldest daughter that I feel so blessed to live here.  I sometimes need to pinch myself.  It's like living in a little piece of heaven.  I get to hear natures music instead of horns and cars everyday. I live in a rural area of Illinois where yes the ground is flat but the grass is green!  I think that is why I love the nature stamps so well.

Here is a new one featuring a Wildflower Meadow which just happens to be it's name!  I like the silhouetted feel to this card.  It's a tone on tone look but highlights the little hummingbird (which I am waiting to see here anyday now)

This card is going to go to a dear friend who is in the hospital this week. I sure hope it brightens her day and as soon as she gets out I hope she will come for a visit to enjoy the real thing in my backyard.

The Stamps and products featured are from the new catalog which will go live on May 31st.  Remember if you want to get your hands on these new products now there is a way.  Visit my post here for more details.

Wax Paper Resist Technique~Texture or no Texture?

I learned a new fun technique last week and had the opportunity to share it this last weekend with some of my fellow demonstrators at our group meeting.  I guess it's called wax paper resist.  Well, that is what I am going to call it.  I know in the "olden" days we used to wad our wax paper up and then iron it onto glossy cardstock and then brayer over it.  Now we have texture folders to run the wax paper through.  So much texture! 

Here is a sample of one card I made after I had cut out a framelet thinking that was what I wanted to use but I loved the frame so much I made it into a card instead.

 

I left the glare on my picture today so you could see that it is on glossy paper and their is no actual texture just the look of texture.  As much as I love the texture plates with the overall texture what I like about this technique is it looks so shabby chic because some places catch the ink more than others.

So how did I do it? I ran a piece of wax paper through an embossing folder.  Overall textures seems to work the best.  Then sandwich this between two sheets of glossy paper with the glossy sides in.  Iron this sandwich on both sides.  Remove the wax paper and toss it, then brayer the glossy cardstock with the classic ink color of your choice.  Take a paper towel and wipe off any extra ink.  Voila that's it!  Cut it, punch it, big shot it or use it as is!  Here is another sample I made using many different texture folders.

There are 4 different beautiful textures on this card.  I almost forgot to let you know I learned it originally from France Martin. Now remember today at midnight is the last day to get free shipping on your Stampin' Up! order.  Order today to take advantage of this rare opportunity.

 

 

My Digital Studio~Not just for Scrapbooking.

Not by any means.  Actually I am known to do very little scrapbooking.  <gasp> But I love My Digital Studio and I use it for lots of fun crafting.  Yesterday I held my club meeting and we had a lot of fun making the bracelets I showed you last week here.  We also spent some time crafting a cute bookmark.  There were two little girls who joined us so I thought this was something they would be able to use and us busy moms and grandmas always need some way to mark our spot!

The image is right from a My Digital Studio download called Book Buddies.  All I had to do was shrink it down to fit a 1" circle punch and color it.  So easy to add color to the stamps with My Digital Studio. Ask me how!

So we punched them out, ran our Soda Pop Tops through the Big Shot to turn down the edges.  We adhered the 1" circle inside.  Added a bead of crystal effects all around the edge and sprinkled on some bright colored beads.  Adhere all of this to a giant paperclip with hot glue.  The finishing touch is the cute little daffodil delight ribbon bow.  Attach it with a mini glue dot.  Look what my favorite childhood book is.  Anyone who knows M.E. knows this is my favorite all time story.

Just wanted to throw a shout out to all the great people that came to club last night.  I think we had 13 in attendance and they were so involved in painting their bracelets they hardly had time to look up!

Take a look at My Digital Studio it's a phenomenal program.  Not ready to take the plunge Download your FREE trial here.

Cookies~Stampin' Up! Style

Today I bowl.  I really enjoy the ladies I bowl with so I try every holiday to make them a little treat, Stampin' Up! style. See how I matched the colors of the Conversation hearts with the paper by using Whisper White Craft ink on the Cardstock.  Gave them the dusty look of the candy hearts.  CUTE!

So after I made them these cute little treats today I thought "hmm, I want to make some cookies!"

I love cookies and happen to have a package of these

These are Freeze Dried Raspberries you get them at the Organic food market, local Coop, or a Fresh Market. Because I know you are going to ask. I usually use Strawberries in my coookies but I happen to be out.  What I do is run them through my food processor until they are dust and, in this case, I then tapped them through a sieve so I didn't get the seeds which is what you see in the bottom of this empty package before I threw it away.  I only wanted some beautiful delicious red powder for my cookies.  When you use this no food coloring is needed and no extra flavoring although I did use some strawberry extract in place of the vanilla in my cookie recipe.  I used the recipe off of the Stampin' Up! package that comes with your cookie presses when you purchase them from M.E.

I promise to post the recipe as soon as I get home but right now I have to go bowl a 300....yeah right who am I fooling....

Edited to add Recipe:

Sugared Shortbread

1 Cup salted Butter softened to room temperature

1/2 Cup granulated sugar plus additional for rolling

1/2 Cup powdered Sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla (or flavoring of choice)

1/4 Cup cornstarch

1 3/4 Cup all-purpose flour

1pkg of freeze dried fruit of choice in food processor until a fine powder.  I put mine through a sieve to remove seeds.  I used raspberries but have also used strawberries and both are delicious. 

Preheat oven to 350° Cream butter, 1/2 Cup granulated sugar and powdered sugar; beat until fluffy.  Add vanilla, cornstarch and flour and mix well.  Now is when I would add my "fruit flour". 

Roll Dough into 1-1/4" balls and roll in granulated sugar. (You can color your sugar with food coloring at this point if you want) Place 3" apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and press with Sweet Pressed Cookie Stamp.  I always dip mine in flour and tap off extra on side of container between every cookie so it doesn't stick.  Bake 15-17 minutes Check after 14 minutes. or until bottom of cookie is very lightly browned.  Makes approximately 16 cookies (I always double with good results)

 

 

 

 

That's the Ticket~Your Ticket for LOVE!

You want to really impress that special someone this Valentine's Day? This is your ticket to show them how much you LOVE them! Here is an easel card using some awesome goodies from the Spring Catalog.  I had a different card all ready to show you today but after I designed this card in my head last night laying in bed.  You do that don't you?  This morning I got right down to business and made this card in "real life" ;) and just had to share it with you immediately!  We are going to make it tonight in my monthly card class because I love it so much and I know that my stamping friends will love it too!

 

Look at all the fun goodies on it.  You can see after I took the picture above and I was zooming in for a close-up I thought "gee that card really needs something else" and so I added the little pearl inside the heart.  Just what it needed to look finished in my opinion. 

You've still got just enough time to place your valentine card supply order.  Do it today on my website: www.CreateWithME.stampinup.net for all your stamping supply needs. 

Perfect Heart Shaped Valentines~Use your Petal Cone Die

I remember folding my construction paper in half in grade school and drawing that half heart shape before cutting it out.  I was always anxious to see what shape my heart might take.  Was it going to be fat and squatty? Was it going to be long and skinny or maybe just maybe was this time going to be the perfect heart shape?  Not too short, not too tall, the lobes would they be nice and plump?  I get that warm feeling in my heart just thinking about how after 45+ years I still get that feeling when I craft something.  I know you probably have that feeling too or you wouldn't be looking at ideas on my blog...am I right? Leave me a comment and tell me one of your early crafting memories.  I'd love to hear them.

Well, now with my Stampin' Up! supplies I get to make the perfect heart shape every time. 

I cut 2 sheets of Primrose petal cardstock (look at this paper it kind of reminds you of our old red construction paper in a way so I thought it would be perfect!) with the Petal Cone die. 

I removed the tab off of one of the heart shapes (what it looks like before being assembled into a cone) and using Sticky strip on the other I attached them together with the tab on the back of my card.  I embellished it with all kinds of fun layers.  Some More Amore Designer Series Paper, half of a paper doilly, a couple of stamped hearts.  The Primrose Petal Love stamp on the front is one of the new single stamps.  I added a fun arrow clip from the Hung Up Cute Clips #129389 from the Spring Catalog.  Maybe you would want to add one of the hearts from the elements set that is GREAT too!  Both are perfect for this card.  I finished it off with some Pool Party seam binding ribbon made into a bow.  Cute!

The red heart in the back is trimmed from the More Amore paper.  You get 2 full sheets of these laser cut hearts. 1 sheet is real red and white and the other sheet is Primrose Petal with white on the back.  I could see even jazzing this up a bit with pearls or rhinestones...the possibilities are endless!

 

 

Ghoulish Googlies~It's just what the stampers ordered.

I got invited to go stamp with some old friends and some new friends Saturday while they were together for the day stamping and scrapping.  I wanted to show them a couple of GREAT projects that I saw while I was in Salt Lake City at the Stampin' Up! convention.  They were looking for a little more than cards this day so I had just the right projects.  Here is one of them.

 

 

This project was made with the new Ghoulish Googlies Designer Kit $7.95 for all this...

I added a couple other supplies such as the shaker frames and a snippet of window sheet along with a little embossing powder.  I mixed black embossing powder with some irridescent ice powder for a little glimmer magic. 

I inked up the new chevron folder with versamark and ran the bag through the Big Shot then sprinkled it with my "magic" mixed embossing powder and heat set it with the new heat tool.  Love that new tool, it has two settings so you can use it to dry ink now without the paper curling up.  How cool is that?!

Then I created the shaker as shown.  Everyone loved it especially when I pulled out the special treat I made for them.  My delicious Crispix mix (recipe posted here) to fill their bags.

If you want to see the adorable magnet board we also made "LIKE" M.E. on Facebook here: 

Create With M.E.-Stampin' Up! demonstrator M.E. Stites

Order your Ghoulish Googlies Designer kit in time for your Halloween get togethers by clicking on the Order now button on my blog.

Sunflowers~Paper Mimics Nature

I created this card for my swaps for the Stampin' Up! convention.  Forgive the hand in the photo but I was trying to snap pics quickly the evening before I left for Salt Lake City to post on my Facebook Page and to post here for you. You can follow my Stampin' Up! page on Facebook by clicking on the Facebook link in the side bar. 

I looked and looked and could not find my original inspiration for this card.  If it was your card please email me and I am happy to give you credit.  I had seen this idea for cutting a card from the Floral Framelits and took off with it.  I added lots of texture and wanted it to look realistic so I did some distressing and "scrunching" on the petals.

Here is how you would start your base card...

Place your framelit on your paper so it's hanging off the folded edge as shown above.  That will create the actual card. This is a half sheet of 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper cut on the short side. On my swaps that I made for convention I tried to be frugal with my paper by still giving folks the idea but not the full card so they got just a quarter of a sheet of cardstock to give them the idea of how to make it into a full card.

This is what it looks like when you do the full card.

Then I got to work with a new product that is coming out in the August Holiday Mini catalog.  It's a new sandable paper that has a different colored core.  You emboss it with your folder then sand it with a sanding block and voila' you get a beautiful look.  Here is the before and after look

What a difference! I love how it all pops! 

Here are a couple of shots of all my pieces for the swap.  I made 100 of them.  It's always kind of a mess when it's in progress but always fun when they are all put together.  Here are a couple of messy pics.

Lot's of butterflies!

 

Then I took 20 of those card bases and made the butterflies into pins by punching 2 extra butterflies (not stamped) out of the same Pumpkin Pie paper and gluing them together with our "green lid" glue or Tombow liquid adhesive as it's officially called.  Then I covered the top of the butterfly with crystal effects.  I love crystal effects it makes everything get all shiny and beautiful.  To finish out my butterflies I put a little wire antenae on them, a pin back and a jeweled rhinestone.  Then I punched a couple holes in my card and pinned them on.  I am hoping to trade these for some adorable 3-D items.  I have never taken the time to make 3-D items so I am looking forward to trading them. Here are a few shots of the butterfly pins along with the completed project.

Close up so you can see the shine! 

Here is how I attached the pin backs

Here is the completed pin card, so pretty out in nature!

There was a struggle between M.E. and both of my girls on which card was "the" card.  Here were the choices....my choice won out!  Ha.  Actually my youngest Abby helped me so she made her's her way and I made mine my way.  I think they were both good choices. 

 

 

M.E.'s 3C's~It's a garden "marker" party!

This morning I held my 3C's class.  Coffee, Cookies and Cards..but we had tea, cake and made garden goodies instead! Oh Well, doesn't really matter what it was called it was FUN!   I had seen markers before that were cute but last week a fellow demonstrator shared hers and boy were they a step up and I had to make some and then share them with my friends and this class was the perfect event to do it at. 

 

Here Meg and Charlotte are having fun embellishing their markers.

Kathleen and Rhonda are hard at work on theirs.

What a beautiful day to spend with some beautiful women.  All smiles!

Here are a couple of close up's of the markers the girls made.

Rhonda made hers a very colorful array of beads and brads.  Just lovely.  Her garden will thank her!

This is a fun one using the lattice die. 

If you are intriqued and want to see how to cut and emboss metal sheeting on your big shot there are instructions with pictures here

Here are a couple of my favorites in my garden pot. I didn't think I needed that elegant bird die...HA!  

SO Cute!

My friend Julie took hers and put it on her mom's grave right after class.  What a sweet idea.

 

 

Big Shot Adhesive Sheets~A sticker stituation

I have had a lot of fun since pulling out my adhesive sheets for my last blog posted card.  This time I am getting ready for my hubby's BIG birthday.  Even though it's my big birthday only 16 days after his I will choose to focus on his birthday since it comes first and he will be fifty first!  Ha Ha.

Here I cut the big shot adhesive sheets with my number dies and created stickers out of the numbers 5 and 0 and then covered them with fine black glitter. Then I have to make sure everybody who sees it  knows the importance of this BIG birthday!  tehehe