Celebrate Sunshine!

Hello Friends!

The sun is shining and the breeze is gentle. It is a beautiful day in Faribault...yeah! The red, orange and green skies have disappeared for now. My neighbor Patt and I went for a walk this morning, the kids are riding their bikes and the dogs are chewing their bones in the front yard, now this is summer!

I have had a chance to get busy in our family's art room for the past three days. I have a couple of orders to fill for birthday cards. Here is what I came up with.

The first card is a birthday card for a man. The stamps and impression plate are from Papertrey ink http://www.papertreyink.com/ and the layout idea from Maile Belles http://mailebelles.blogspot.com/.

Inside: Happy Birthday $1.50

My niece, Sydney helped with the staging of the next card. I am still

trying to figure out lighting, setting, etc. so the cards look nice on my blog.

Today since the sun was out, I thought I would take the pictures with natural light

by putting the cards on the little table by my front door. The lighting was great, but

I had a hard time getting the angle just right... that is when

Sydney saw that I was getting frustrated so she gets off her bike, grabs the

card and plunks it in the pot of flowers that were right next to my white background board.

What a fantastic idea! What would I do without her?

Here is the results of her staging idea- brilliant!

Happy Birthday $1.50

Happy Birthday $2.00

I just love this summer basket set...it is very versatile.

The napkin hangs over the edge.

Kick Up Your Heels & Have FUN!

Inside: Happy Birthday

$3.00

I made this card for a special friend who will

 forward it onto one of her close friends.

 I wanted to make it really fancy.

I purchased this stamp set Archiever's.

I am going to get back to "work".

But first I must send the kids off to camp then put a little music on,

grab a hot cup of coffee and stamp the day away...total bliss!

I will post more cards later on today...stay tuned!

Celebrate Friends!

Hello!

I am so excited...I am going to a friend's cabin this weekend to stamp out 90 cards and get caught up on my scrapping. I am about 6 months behind, but I am confident that I can get caught up if we don't sleep a wink the entire weekend! I will be back on Sunday to share all of the cards that I put together.
Take care!
Nicole

Celebrate Legos!

August wanted to be published too, so I thought I would post a couple of pictures of Tim and August building a Lego table for our basement. Grandpa Harlan has this funny obsession with Lego Land at the Mall of America...thanks, Dad! Tim spent 40+ hours sorting over 15,000 Legos into plastic boxes and 8 hours building the table. August just loves playing with his organized Legos. When we cannot find him he is usually focused on a Lego project in the basement.

Celebrate 5th Grade- Valley Fair Style!

Morgan and Ady on the Scrambler with their hands in the air- YIPPY! The dads were the chaperone's for the day...they all had a blast!
















Shannon, Ady, Morgan and Kiersten looking so "tough"! Ady had such a great year at her new elementary school. Her teacher was amazing and her class had such a nice group of girls, the transition was seamless.


On to the middle school next year!

Celebrate Sunshine!

Thank you very much $1.50

Here is a cheery little thank you note to brighten someone's day!

Celebrate Graduations

Congratulations- You did it! $2.50

This is our first day of summer vacation- Yeah! Ady started summer swimming, Pops Band at the middle school and August starts softball tonight. The joys of summer vacation, it is so much fun to see them do activities that they just love! Anyway, my mom asked me to make a graduation card for a lady that was graduating with a nursing degree, this is what I came up with... I printed and cut out the Pure Innocence "Girl Writing a Letter" digistamp (from below), then I stamped and cut out a nurse's hat to top her off. I typed up a "congratulations" doctor's prescription note punched across the top with a Stampin'Up! notebook punch (retired). My mom was pleased.

Celebrate Summer

                                          You are a chairished friend $2.25





                                          You are my sunshine $1.50





                                                    Sweet Baby $2.25
                                               



                                                    Rock Star $2.25                




                                         One of a kind friend $1.50

                                                   Happy Birthday $2.50

Good morning! Ady, my daughter, and I tried to take bright, expressive pictures of some cards that I just finished making for a friend. Boy, oh, boy is that difficult trying to balance backgrounds, eliminate shadows and focus on the details...this is almost impossible when we had to gather flashlights, table lights, white and brown paper, compare the quality of two different cameras... to pull this feat off. We had a blast trying our best- lots of laughs. We will continue to experiment with the equipment that we have around the house, until then I hope you get a pretty good idea of how these cards look up close! Have a great Saturday...we are onto starting the dreaded Saturday morning chores- yippee!

Celebrate Teachers!

                                              Thank you $2.50

A teacher asked me to make her some end of the year thank you cards for her students so I new I just had to use this Pure Innocence "Girl Writing a Letter" Digistamp to make these cards- isn't this girl is soooo cute! This was the first time that I tried using digistamps and discovered that they are so versatile to use because you can make them any size you want and print out any number that you would like all at once. But I have to find an ink for my printer that is permanent because the ink ran when I used my Stampin' Up! markers to color the little girl in. Live and learn I guess. Enjoy!

Welcome!

This is the very first post on my new blog. I am very excited to share my stamping creations with the blogging community. I have been stamping for about 15 years and previewing other avid stampers' blogs for about 3 years. I have learned a lot from many accomplished stampers while visiting their blogs almost daily and hope to share some tips and ideas of my own. I hope you enjoy my stamping creations! Thanks for stopping by!