January Paper Smooches DT Blog Hop

**This is my second post of the day. For my Maya Road post, please click HERE. 

Hi everyone! 

It's Pep Rally week and we are here today to share a sampling of the NEW Paper Smooches February release with you! FOUR new stamps and EIGHT new dies will be available to purchase on January 31st at 8:00pm PT. Once our release goes live, you will find our new products HERE.

To add extra fun to our blog hop...we are offering up a prize! The prize - a $25 gift code to choose what you like at the PS online store. Here are the details:

• FOUR winners will be chosen at random from any of the design team blogs and the PS Blog to win the $25 prize. 
• Just leave a comment on any of the design team blogs listed above or the PS blog for your chance to win (you do not need to comment on all blogs to qualify, but it increases your chances). 
• Deadline: You have until midnight PT on Sunday, February 1st to leave a comment. 
• Please check the Paper Smooches blog on Monday, February 2nd to see if you are one of the FOUR lucky winners. 

Here's the order of the hop:

Ashley Marcu
Emily Leiphart
JJ Bolton
Jocelyn Olson <--You are here
Kalyn Kepner
Kay Miller
Laura Bassen
Laurie Schmidlin
Michele Boyer
Pamela Ho
Teri Anderson

To increase your chance of winning:

• Tell us that you Facebooked about our blog hop (leave another comment) 
• Tell us that you Tweeted about the hop (leave another comment) 
• Tell us that you posted on your blog about our blog hop (leave another comment) 

I made a card set using Religious Words dies. Here's one:

I used the "faith" die from the Religious Words dies and glittered it with white glitter. I layered it over the huge butterfly from the new Graceful Beauties stamps and a left-over Roses die-cut from THIS card. I was going to double-stamp the butterfly, but I kind of liked the more rustic look. The papers are hand-cut...my paper cutter isn't that bad. ;) 

Here's the set of cards:

Each card has a different color scheme. They weren't really meant to match...I just used a bunch of left-over die-cuts and scraps to determine the colors. :) I figured they would work as sympathy or encouragement cards.

See the "God" die-cut? That's from the new Religious Words, too. I used Reflections stamps and Reflections Leaves dies on two of the cards, and the "loves you" from the new Have Faith set.

Here are close-ups of each:

Thanks for stopping by! Next up is my sweet and very talented friend Kalyn!

Supplies

Dies: (Faith, God from Religious Words dies; flowers from Roses dies; leaves from Reflections) Paper Smooches
Stamps: (butterfly from Graceful Beauties; sentiment from Have Faith; leaves from Reflections) Paper Smooches

Cardstock: (Rustic White) PTI; (White Solarcrest) Neenah; (vellum) Hobby Lobby

Digital: (script papers, navy/light blue papers from Paislee Press) The Lilypad

Patterned papers: (stripes) My Mind's Eye
Ink: (Versafine Onyx Black) Tsukineko; (Grass, Lemonade) Fresh Ink; (Red Hot Hybrid) My Favorite Things; (Grass Chalk) Hero Arts
Glitter: Martha Stewart
Clip: (yellow star) Freckled Fawn

So I Have News... :)

Hi everyone! I hope you're having a great week!

I've been *super* excited to share some news....

I'm joining the Maya Road team! Eek!! I'm so honored to join this team. :)

Here's a sneak peek of some of my upcoming projects:

There's a welcome blog post over on the Maya Road blog, and I would *love* it if you would swing by and leave a comment. :) Thank you!

Have a great day!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1... And a Winner!

Hi everyone! Happy weekend!

I make a lot of cards that I don't blog (or share on this blog). Case in point, I made this card back in August, had it photographed and ready to go, but I never shared it here. Do any of you do that, too?

I thought I would share this birthday card I made using a Scraptastic Club kit:

My son had a birthday party to go to, so I made the card for his friend's 5th birthday.

I die-cut the numbers on my Cameo and then hand-cut several of the Scraptastic August kit's Boys of Summer papers to layer in the negative space. The main kit is no longer available, but most of the papers I used were from the Crate Paper Boys Rule collection. 

I added a few embellishments in the rainbow order. All of the embellishments are from the Boys of Summer kit and Add-on except the Neat & Tangled sequin. Isn't that flair awesome?

Here's another close-up:

For the Online Card Class Clean & Simple 4 giveaway, the winner is:

Schnauzer Craft Creations

I'll e-mail you, or you can reach me at the Contact link above. Congrats!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!


Supplies
Cardstock: (White Linen) Ellen's Essentials
Papers: (Boys of Summer Main Kit and Add-on) Scraptastic Kit Club
Stickers: (Boys Rule) Crate Paper
Flair: (Boys of Summer Flair) Scraptastic Kit Club
Sequin: (Lime Satin) Neat & Tangled
Silhouette Cameo

Online Card Class Giveaway

Hi everyone! I have a post and a giveaway today:

Ever try a technique that ended up feeling just too complicated to use on a card (or worse multiple cards)? We’ve all been there! Happily, Online Card Classes is ready to help us take on that challenge with a little technique know-how! 

Online Card Class instructors Kristina Werner, Jennifer McGuire, and Julie Ebersole are the instructors for Clean & Simple Card Making 4: Techniques Made Simple.  In this all-video class, they’ll be sharing ideas for embossing, die cutting, and more… all with a Clean & Simple twist that will make the techniques more approachable and useable than ever. 

I’m one of the guest artists in this class....I'm still kind of geeking out over it. :) The sneak on the bottom-right is my card. (Squeal!)

Want to take Clean & Simple 4 for free? I get to give away one spot in this fantastic class. Just leave a comment on this post by 1:00pm ET on Friday to be eligible! Class starts on Monday, January 26, 2015. I hope to see you there!

If you want to enroll in the class or see more about it, you can sign-up HERE. These classes are always awesome!

Have a great day!

Flowers and Flowers (and Winners!)

Hi everyone! I'm sorry for dropping off the planet for a few weeks. I've been in the middle of writing a grant for a state that has been pretty all-consuming.

I thought I would share some Paper Smooches projects, and the Season's Givings winners are below. :)

First up, a rose card set:

This card required *a lot* of die-cutting. ;) But once I made 17 passes through the die-cutter, I had enough pieces to make more than one card set and the process moved quickly. This technique was a great way to use up scraps of patterned paper.

I used the gorgeous Paper Smooches Roses Dies and in-laid patterned paper die-cuts--mostly American Crafts papers. For the sentiments, I stamped four different sentiments from the Uplifters set.

Here's a close-up:

I packaged the set of four cards for my mother-in-law. For the tag, I used the Paper Smooches Gift Tags 2 die, the Tiny Hearts Die [Aren't those hearts cute? They're only $1.99!], and one of the leaves from the Roses Dies. The sentiment is from Group Hugs.

Next up, I have a second floral card:

The roses are from the Paper Smooches Lovely Thoughts stamp set. I did some two-step stamping and added a bit of shading using Copics (although if I redid the card, I would have used colored pencils).

See the cool background? It's embossed using the Retro Arrow die. Here's a close-up:

Want to hear the winners of the Season's Givings blog hop?

[Drumroll....] The winners are:

Prize 1: Rachel

Prize 2: Shona Chambers

Yeah Rachel and Shona! Please drop me an e-mail at my contact information (the tab on the header). Thanks to everyone for your very sweet comments. You all are so nice!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a great day! :)