Big Changes / PPCC #34

Welcome to another Paper Craft Crew Card Sketch.  We were supposed to do a spring or Easter card this week.  I think my little bunnies meet that criteria!

I love the little bunnies from the Storybook Kit!

If you visited the Stampin' Up digital website (http://www.mydigitalstudio.net/home) today, you saw a BIG change!  I was surprised when I went there.   Here is the news from SU:

MDS.net Redesigned!

Here's a review of what's new:

• A new Homepage
• The old homepage can now be found under the Inspiration tab
• A new Learning page replaces the old Training sections (SU is still working on updating the content there, but you can expect to see all of Holly's new training videos there shortly.)
• A new footer so that you can navigate the site easier, with links to the old Resources and Q/A pages

There are still more changes to be made but go visit and see how different it looks!  Happy designing!

Another Free Download

Digital Download Tuesday!!!  And another FREEBIE! 

Are you constructing a birthday party soon? Let the BDAY Under Construction Ensemble help you create:

•Invitations
•Cupcake holders
•Candy bar wraps
•Water bottle labels
•A banner
•Thank you cards
•And more!

AND a FREEBIE construction cone favor!  How easy it is to plan a party with MDS!!

Free Download

BDay Under Construction Ensemble

Top Notch Woodcut - Digital Download  $3.95 - #133896

BIG CHANGES WITH MDS!!

1.  The name of the software is now MDS. Now, you might be asking yourself, didn’t it just change to MDS 2 last year? Yep, it sure did.


2.  SU is lowering the price! What has been known as MDS 2+ is now $19.95 US/$24.95 CAN and will be called . . . yes, you guessed it, MDS. It’s the same great software and content at a fantastic new price.

3.  Coming soon: all of you who have been holding onto the original My Digital Studio software will be able to upgrade for FREE.

Also -

■  SU will still offer a free 30-day trial version of the MDS software for anyone who had not previously tried the MDS 2 Trial.


■  The original My Digital Studio software (not the product line) is going away, including support for it. The free upgrade will be available soon!

■  MDS 2 (the software that didn’t have much content) is going away.

■  You can still get the software on a disc (item 130647) or as a download (item 130646).  Just keep in mind the disc will say MDS 2+ on it because it will take SU awhile to switch everything out.

March Stamp Club Cards

I am waiting for my Tuesday Stamp Club gals.  They should be arriving in about an hour.  So, I thought I would share the cards we will be making.  I am concentrating on Easter and will let them choose which ones they want to make this month.

Using the Single Stamp - Ears to You and Melon Mambo ink - easy one.

Easel Card

 The Easel Card will be the most difficult for them to make but it is really easy when you figure it all out.  I used Blush Bossom card stock (retired).  The Cross is made from the Lattice Die (Elegant Eggplant).  The leaves are punched with the Bird Punch.  I used Nestabilities for the oval and ran it through the Dotted Embossing Folder.  The flower in the center is from the Flower Trim in the mini catalog (pg. 5).  I love these flowers!  They come in Vanilla but it is so easy to die them.  You can color them with markers or reinkers or just smush them into your ink pad.  For the ones we are using today, I just cut about 12 flowers from the card and sprayed them with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and 5-6 drops of reinker.  I mixed it up in my Stampin' Spritzers (big catalog, pg 179).  They are a good deal - you get 2 bottles for $2.95.  I have several that I have mixed different colors into. 

Easter Blessings is also a Single Stamp in the mini catalog (pg 24) as are the doilies (pg  5).  Another deal!  24 doilies for $2.95!  I used a background from A Good Egg stamp (retired) on the Eggplant card.

This card makes me smile and think of SPRING!

 I am trying to make the best of the Sale-a-bration stamps - only a few more days!!  This one uses Bloomin' Marvelous.  I stamped the flowers in some retiring in-colors - Island Indigo, Calypso Coral, Lucky Limeade and non retiring, Summer Starfruit.  I cut 1" of the Sale-a-bration DSP for the bottom and wrapped a small piece of ribbon around it.  My club ladies will be able to choose from the ribbon from Sale-a-bration - Pool Party, Is. Indigo or Calypso Coral.

Another Sale-a-bration - my favorite!  This one is Feeling Sentimental and I thought the That's the Ticket stamp went with it perfectly!

For this card I used the Natural Composition DSP.  Wow!  I just got this DSP - don't know what took me so long.  It's great - it is a heavy weight paper and the patterns are already embossed on the paper and glossy.  I sponged Soft Suede around the edges and sponged Vanilla on the center of the paper and made that embossing POP! 

Fun Weekend

My leprechaun owl - I put him in my customer's orders this month.

Happy St Patrick's Day!  We didn't go anywhere today - decided to forego the green beer or listening to bagpipes.  I was too tired and had too much to do to get ready for club next week.  I went to Quarterly this weekend in Lenoir.  Marianne, Debbie and I went together and had a great time!  We were up until midnight working on our shoebox swaps.  I was proud of Marianne - she had been awake since 3:30 AM and by midnight, I was having to hold her up!  But when we got back to the hotel, I gave her a good laugh.  I always take my shower at night so I got ready to get in the shower when I realized I didn't have a shower cap.  What's a girl to do?  Improvise!  I took the plastic bag for laundry and put it on my head!  Marianne had to take a picture and send it to Ashley who sent her a text back to tell her that was an emergency and we'd better head for home.  Saturday morning we hit the decks running.   It was a full fast paced day with lots of laughter, sharing and learning new tricks with our stamps.  I have lots of pictures I'll be sharing with you of our swaps and cards.  Saturday was also Marianne's birthday.  I gave her the MDS photobook I made for her of our trip to Texas last March.  I've been dying to give it to her and was glad her birthday finally came so I could.  She loved it!
 

Birthday Card I made for Marianne - flower is made from the Heart Punch

Here is the card I made for my shoebox swap:

I embossed the Daffodil Delight with the Honeycomb Folder and mounted it on a black card.  I embossed a few hexagons from black cardstock, cut them out and glued them to the daffodil card.  Then I stamped the little bee from Collage Curios (in the spring mini).  I smashed the bottle cap with the Big Shot.  I punched the script from the Collage Curios with the 1" punch; punched the daffodil circle with the 3/4" circle and the bee with the 1/2" circle.  After putting them all together, I put Crystal Effects over the top and adhered it to the card with a tad of Crystal Effects.

MDS Challenge 2 - Multiple Photo Box

I can't believe I forgot to post this - I wrote it but just now found it in my Drafts so guess I didn't share.

Our MDS challenge last week was to use one photo with multiple photo boxes.

Here is mine:

What you need to do for this effect is:

•Create the number of photo boxes you want (create one and copy and paste)
•Group the photo boxes
•Apply drop shadow and mat
•Drag and drop photo into the boxes - they should all turn blue.

Here is a video by Heather Summers - http://www.youtube.com/watch

Feeling Sentimental

Sale-a-bration will be over before we know it.  If you want to get a free stamp set, punch, DSP or digital download, you need to place your $50 order by next Friday, March 22.  I love the Feeling Sentimental stamp set.   I made this card of the telephone booth (don't think that is what is called in England though - telephone box???  not sure).  I used my daubers to ink up the edges of the card.  I used French Foilage to stamp the "dots" and script. The bottom of the card is torn with a piece of Early Espresso torn and adhered to the bottom.  I used daubers to color the trill ribbon (retired) and frayed the ends.

We had a nice evening.  We had free tickets for the Charlotte Checkers hocket game (thanks to the Golden Boys) and invited some friends to come along with us.  We drove downtown Charlotte right at 5:00 p.m. and surprisingly, there was no traffic back-up on I-77 which shocked all of us.  We had dinner at a nice Irish bar / restaurant (yummy fish & chips!) and then walked over to the game.  The Checkers lost by one but it was a good game anyway.

Papercraft Crew Challenge

Hello Everyone,

Here is this weeks challenge sketch we are working with at the Paper Craft Crew. St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner and the Paper Craft Crew is celebrating it in this week's challenge #33 with their theme of St. Patrick's Day.  I was inspired by a couple of different things I'd seen on Pinterest to make this card.  I made the card using MDS2.  I wasn't sure whether I had a shamrock or not but after doing a search with the Global Search feature, I found the circular stamp with the shamrock in the middle.  So .... I just cropped that shamrock out, enlarged it, colored it green, lowered the opacity and put it behind the saying. 

Here is the sketch we were working with:



Hope you will hop on over to the Paper Craft Crew page and check out the other members version of St. Patrick's Day.

Today was not a great day for me!  I am hoping tomorrow is much better.  I started off with not being able to sleep well last night which is unusual for me.  I had to get up pretty early this morning to go to the Soup Kitchen.  We were scheduled to make taco salad today, a pretty easy meal or so I thought.  The local Chipolte restaurant had donated the meat so we put it in pans to heat up - it was already cooked so that was not a problem.  They were supposed to have the rest of the ingredients for us for the salad - cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream, salsa, chips, etc.  Well, the guy in charge couldn't remember what I had told him I was making so they didn't have anything taken out for us.  We were ok with lettuce and tomatoes - had plenty to cut up.  But the cheese and sour cream was frozen.  The cheese was actually an off-brand Velveeta type cheese - not cheddar that we could grate.  So we rigged up a double boiler and eventually got the cheese to melt.  The salsa they brought me consisted of 2 cans of salsa and 2 jars of marinara sauce!  I don't think so!  They tried to tell me it would be fine.  I was not putting marinara sauce in my salsa not to mention only 2 cans for approximately 150 people?????  So I rummaged around and found a box full of cans of Rotel tomatoes that I added to the salsa along with some plain tomatoes.  The sour cream ended up, after it melted, being the consistency of a thin cream.  Then there was the matter of the chips.  I was told a couple of weeks ago that they had large taco shells.  My plan was to just break them up in the salad.  Turns out what they called taco shells was actually flatbread.  Unbelievable!  So we took several packages and cut them up into strips, put a little cooking oil on them and salt and baked them.  They were ok.  Just as we were getting ready to serve, they brought us two boxes full of Dorito chips!  Much better!  We served about 135 people today and they all seemed to like the meal.   I don't think those people at the Soup Kitchen have ever been to Texas and had a real Tex-Mex Taco Salad.  It was nothing like we made today!

Remember I told you about the new montly kit that SU is offering?   Well if you haven't joined Paper Pumpkin yet  and wanna get a closer look first .... No worries - you can give Paper Pumpkin a try for one month with the Try It kit!  It's now available for order.

Here's the Try It kit info:

•$16.95 -plus shipping. (Item #132600).

•Includes stamps, a clear block, ink, paper, and accessories.

•It's all cut, measured, and ready-with instructions included.

Try it - I know you'll want Paper Pumpkin to visit your doorstep every month!



Tuesday was Digital Download Day - one of my favorite days!  Get in touch with your inner awesomeness this week with our latest downloads. 

Check out the Made to Be Awesome Framable. Download it. Print it. Frame it. 

If you've ever asked yourself what does, "LOL, BRB, IMO, or YNK" mean, then check out the FTW Stamp Brush Set. (You'll thank us later when you actually understand what your favorite teenagers are saying.)  I have to admit, I didn't know a lot of them!!

And, once you've caught up with all the lingo, use the Seriously Teen Kit to document teen life-epic style.

FTW Stamp Brush Set - $5.95

 

Seriously Teen Digital Kit - $9.95

Made to be Awesome template and stamps - $2.95

Henry Says "It's Your Birthday"

Hope you had a great weekend.  The weather here was really nice.  Spring is just a few weeks away!  Hope you remembered to "spring forward."  Isn't it a pain to have to go around your house and change all the clocks?  Sonny and I each have a clock radio on our bedside tables.  I remembered to change mine but Sonny didn't change his until this morning.  It was so confusing during the night.  I'm one of those people who wake up during the night and have to know what time it is.  I just had to make sure I was checking the correct clock! 

I spent most of Sunday working on entering my retired stamps into Evernote.  I had just about used up all my data for the month so I went ahead and joined as a premium member for a month.  It was only $5 and worth it to get them all in.  I am finding out that I have way too many flower stamps!  I think my number is at about 80 sets that have a flower or two in them so far!!  Guess this is also a drawback about entering all of them - I now know I have way too many stamps!!  I will be selling a bunch of them in May when Stampers Alley has their Used Stamp Sale.

I just love this little elephant!


Henry Says

 I stamped Henry on some retired DSP.  The pennants and the elephant are popped up with dimensionals.  Don't you think this little guy would make someone smile on their birthday?

I used the Tasteful Trim sizzix die to cut a piece of Melon Mambo for the inside of the card.

Pop Up Posies

How do you like my new blog heading?  I saw a similar blog heading on another site where you have to purchase the download for your blog and decided I could re-create it with MDS.  It took me a couple days to get the recoloring and layering done but it was fun to do.

A reminder - if you would like to get the very first issue of Stampin' Up's Paper Pumpkin - the creative project that will be delivered directly to your door - you need to sign up by Sunday.  Check it out HERE.

I have been working on my projects for the Quarterly meeting in a couple of weeks.  I am participating in a card swap, 3D swap, shoebox swap as well as doing a presentation on MDS.

Today I played around with the Pop Up Posies kit offered in the Spring Mini catalog.  There is so much you can do with it and you get a lot of elements.


Here is the first card I made using the Calypso Coral and Baja Breeze flowers.  I sprayed them with water to "fluff" them up a bit.

For the second card, I used the same layout but used the cupcake liner elements to make my flower.  I used my dauber to color the ends of the flower with Poppy Parade.

The only thing I would do different on the two cards is to use my paper pricker and templates to prick holes around the die cutout.  That would add a little "pizzaz" to them I think.