Bella Bella Bella Rose Cont...

Woo Hoo! I have more stuff to post today...My post yesterday got a little long so I saved some stuff for today. A few more Bellas and another Bella Rose card... I've mentioned before that I joined a yahoo group for Stamping Bella called Bellahollics Anonymous...it's a cool group that keeps stamping interesting with challenges, contests, and swaps etc. The coolest thing they do though is the Bella Sistah Swap. You basically get paired up with another Bella addict and you chat with each other and send each other Bellas, cards, goodies etc. I'm participating in my first one, and I got paired up with a great gal named Ellen. So here is a fabulous card she sent me including some awesome stamped images of Bellas that I don't have. I LOVE the colors she used! Pink and Green are my favorite color combo! And I love the glitter too! A Bella can never have too much glitter! And this is a card I made a while ago for Ellen. I had to wait to post it until she received it though...Did I mention I love pink and green? Finally a cute lil card using my fave DSP...I used my 1/2 circle punch to make some DIY polka dot paper. I also used the Say it with Scalops stamp set from SU! I found the cute lil easel and decided to try photographing a card on it...trying to decide if I like using it...I wish I could find something similar to what Dawn McVey (my other stamping idol) uses to prop up her cards for photos.

Bella Bella Bella Rose

So this weekend I had a whole Saturday with nothing to do but stamp! It was glorious! AND THEN yesterday I had a snow day...I don't really get to have snow days because I'm a nanny for two doctors that HAVE to go to work, but I started driving in to work and I just had a BAD feeling that I was gonna crash so I turned around and came home...and once again I stamped ALL day...So here are my creations First I made a few Valentiney (I decided that is a word) Bellas for the Bellaholics Anonymous Yahoo Group homepage contest. If I win this month it means a free new Bella stamp for me, so keep your fingers crossed! This is a box that one of my Origins gift sets came in...It's almost exactly the same color as Kiwi Kiss from SU! So I just had to jazz it up with my favorite Bella Rose designer series paper. I wanted to give it sort of a weathered shabby chic look...I'm pretty pleased with it. While I had my Bella Rose paper out I went ahead and fancied up this cute little recipe box which will go just perfectly in my pink kitchen! I got the box from Sephora...it was a Philosophy gift set which contained some yummy yummy body washes...obviously the box was the best part though! The original colors on the box are almost spot on matching to SU Pink Pirouette and Riding Hood Red...so I just jazzed it up and personalized it with my JustRite monogram stamper. Now if I could just get around to making all of the recipe cards to put in it. Last but not least I made this precious little stationary set holder using the All Boxed Up template from Papertrey Ink. Lauren Meader (one of my stamping idols) designs these templates that you download, print, cut, and assemble...and they are just so awesome! For the design on the front I cased a design I saw on the Stampin Up! Demo website. I changed the design a bit but I just love love loved the color combo and the cute lil paper flower.

One more Bella

I made this card for my Bella Sistah, Ellen because she just had a birthday last week. She got the card in the mail so I can post it on my blog now :) Happy Birthday Ellen!

Look what I made :)

I did a major organizational overhaul of my "craft area" this weekend and got down to business on making some new stuff. I say "craft area" because I'm not one of the fortunate few who have a whole Craft room. Frank and I have a two bedroom apartment but I gave him the 2nd bedroom to be his sanctuary in exchange for letting me have control of the decor of the rest of the apartment (i.e. pink kitchen, pink and green guest bathroom, and what he refers to as "easter egg" colored bedroom) So I commandeered a wall/corner in our bedroom to be my craft area. :) And now for my creations... My cousin (along with like 546572 other people) got engaged over the holidays...so I made her a card :) I actually made her two cards because in exchange for supporting my habit my mom occasionally commissions me to make cards for her to give. So I made one from me and one for my mom to give her. For the one from me I used Blingabella from Stamping Bella. For both of the cards I also used the "bling" stamp from the new level three hostess set Goody Goody Gumdrops from the brand new Stampin Up! catalog...did I mention there's a NEW Stampin Up! catalog!!! Oh boy...gooooood stuff...my wishlist is ridiculous! It's hard to tell in the picture but the card base is metallic silver CS from SU! It's also hard to tell that I added some sparkles to the ring on the bella and the SU ring. I colored Ms. Bella with my Bic Mark-it markers as well as my Stampin Write markers For this card I used Baja Breeze CS and metallic silver CS from SU! I also used my Brocade Motifs stamp set and heat embossed it with silver embossing powder. The picture doesn't do it justice. ...Speaking of the new catalog, Mom also commissioned me to make her one of the example projects from the new catalog. I always feel kind of bad blatantly copying another card...but that's what she wanted...I at least changed up the colors a little bit. I used the old classic stamp set Loads of Love. It's a great little set and is soooo versatile!

Blog Candy Alert

There is some wonderful blog candy floating around the interwebz this week so of course I am partaking! Here is some neat stuff from Carri And some awesome Valentines stuff from Dannette More Valentine Goodies from Michelleo And a HUGE amount of great stuff from Sally And just so that this post isn't void of images and because Bronx was embarrassed of her last picture on here, here is one of her front side :) Isn't she pretty?

Some Gifts that I actually got photos of...

I actually got a chance to take some photos of some (really late) X-mas gifts that I made for some friends. The first one was inspired by the gift that my fabulous upline Marilyn gave me... And here's my version... I made it for my friends Cari and Rob who just bought a new house a few months ago so I thought it would be nice to give them a little handmade home decor. I used the Stampin Up! Curly label punch to cut out Muirfield Designer Series Paper and I used the Baroque Motifs and Live Life Like You Mean It stamp sets

This is an all occasion card set that I made for my friends Kim and Kris...they just got married a few months ago and since she is a doctor in her 2nd year of residency and he is a work-a-holic fire fighter they have very little spare time on their hands, so I thought a card kit would be a nice gift for an uber busy couple. I used a variety pack of designer paper and cardstock that I got at Archivers on sale and then I used a variety of Stampin Up! stamps as well as my Just Rite Monogram Stamper. If you have a question about a specific stamp just email me because I used too many to list them all. :) To create the packaging to house all of the cards, I used the "All boxed up" template from the Timeless Templates collection over at one of my very favorite stamp companies Papertrey Ink...which fun fact--happens to be based in good old Cincinnati, Ohio!

Finally an Update!

I've been a blog slacker lately...the holidays sort of consumed me a little bit. I made tons of gifts and cards for Christmas...but in true Jaime fashion they were all completed in the very last minute before giving them to the recipients...so unfortunately I didn't get pictures of most of the gifts/cards I made...bummer. Oh well. But I will share the super cute Christmas card my boyfriend, Frank made for me. He's always teasing me about all of my card making antics (especially since my supplies are generally scattered all over our living room because I don't have a "craft room") So anyway, he said he was going to make me a card for Christmas...I pretty much thought he was joking and I asked him if he was going to use my supplies to make my card...and he said, "No, I'm gonna use MY supplies" I didn't really expect anything to come of it but on Christmas morning I was surprised with this... I guess I should have prefaced the picture with the fact that he has a fine art degree and is a very talented painter/sculpter. His hobby lately has been building and painting little miniature models for a "nerd game" that he plays. So he used his model plastic and paints to make me a card. Isn't that sweet? I think it came out so cute...I almost wish it wasn't Christmas themed so I could display it all year round. He also gave me this...Diamonds are a girls best friend after all :) I feel bad that I missed out on posting all of the various Christmas card designs that I made but to make up for it, I got a jump start on making some Valentine cards last weekend so I will go ahead and post those. I was trying to make something that would be masculine enough to give to Frank...not an easy feat when dealing with Valentine subject matter...I thought that perhaps the truck stamp from the Stampin Up! Loads of Love set would do the trick...but it's still pretty girly...I may use these cards for my girlfriends and take another stab at a card for Frank. Any ideas for a masculine Valentine card? And just for good measure here is a photo of my special puppy, Bronx...She is in heat right now which is why she is wearing a diaper...and she is laying like that because she is very "special"