Whooo’s Your Valentine?

Julie gave me her permission to share her Valentine's with us!

This is not the best picture–it was taken with my iphone by a very bleary-eyed me at 11:30pm last night!  But I made all of Jenna’s Valentines yesterday—woohoo!  LOL!

Inspiration for these came from the ones you made –thank you!  Cardstock is textured Poppy Parade, textured Concord Crush, and Shimmer White.  Owl and sentiment are stamped in Chocolate Chip, owl’s heart is colored in with the Poppy marker, sponged Poppy on the edges of the hearts.  Also sponged Poppy on most of the fingernails of my left hand J  Would have liked to have added some bling or ribbon, but I purposely tried to keep things simple because I had ten-million things I had to do this past weekend.  Jenna was very happy with them, so I guess that’s all that matters.  Thanks again for the inspiration!

~ Julie J

My Girls’ Valentines are Done!

I'm so glad we got to make our Valentine's again this year.  I think last year we did store bought.  Ick!  LOL  But it was another day to stay inside (and the girls in some random clothes they found in their closets!  LOL) while Daddy went to the Bruins game.

We kept the cards simple this year; not like a couple years ago when we used the sweetheart treat cups which although were super cute, did take a while to create for  two classes worth!

Lauren did all the stamping of the hearts, wrote all of hers out, put the glimmer hearts on with dimensionals, and taped her pops on!  In 12 years, I'm signing her up to be a demo! 

Elizabeth wrote hers out (she's not much of a stamper) and taped her pops on the back. 

I used the heart from "Filled with Love" and of course had to add some glitter with the Real Red Glimmer paper!  (I do love that my girls are totally girly with me!)  Lauren also had an idea to make boxes for her teacher's and put chocolate in those boxes.  I talked her into the 2,4,6,8 boxes (tutorial can be found here) and she stamped those up, created her tags 100% on her own, and even picked out the ribbon she wanted for them! 

I chose the above pop to take a picture of because I'm pretty sure Lauren has a Kindergarten crush on Kyle.    He's the only one who she got a little fancy when writing his name and announced "this one is for Kyle!"  LOL

We just taped the pops onto the back with some Scotch tape.  Nothin' fancy but it looks cute and the girls are happy and they're done a week early!  Woohoo!

How are you going to celebrate Valentine's Day?

Oh!  And I wanted to let you know I'm working on a Facebook business page!  I learned this week that talking about stamping at all on my personal Facebook page is against both Facebook rules and Stampin' Up! rules.  So, a business page needed to be created.  Go check it out and "like" it to keep up on the latest stamping in my Suite.

CLICK THE BOX BELOW!!!

Katherine Allen Stamps A Lot

The Finished Product…

So it appears maybe no one cared about what I was up to on Wednesday or you had no idea what I was creating!  So, here is the finished product.

Can you see it?  LOL  No.  I know you can't.  So here are some closeups.

It's amazing how different the pictures come across when I take them in my stamp room (below) versus somewhere where the walls aren't painted Apricot Appeal!  LOL  (Obviously the ones above are MUCH more true to life colors than the ones below.)

So I wanted to show you a little bit about how I created this.  I didn't make 18 totally different letters for the banners, that's for sure!  But I did make at least 6 totally different ones.  Then I repeated the patter six times overs.  Notice I've set them up in rows so you can see the subtle variances.  The H, A, and N are all stamped with a flourish stamp from the Sale A Bration set "Bliss."  Then I punched a heart from the Real Red Glimmer paper and popped it up with a dimensional. The next set I stamped off a Real Red heart from the "Always" stamp set.  Then I embellished them slightly differently.  The first, I stamped "Amour" from the "Artistic Etchings" stamp set and added rhinestone jewels.  For the "L" I used a marker and inked up "ove" from a stamp in the "Full of Life" stamp set and stamped it next to the "L".  I also stamped, cut out, made shimmery with Champagne Mist shimmer paint, and popped up an angel from the stunning "Clearly for You" stamp set.  And for the "E" I painted a paper flower with Champagne Mist shimmer paint and attached a half back pearl to the center of the flower.

The next grouping is almost identical.  I stamped off in Chocolate Chip ink the script from the "Charming" stamp set.  I then stamped the adorable chubby "love birds" from the "Clearly for You" stamp set in Chocolate Chip ink on a scrap piece of Naturals Ivory card stock.  I colored them in with the Champagne Mist shimmer paint and added a small Real Red Glimmer heart.  I distressed the edges and sponged some Chocolate Chip ink to aid in the vintage feel.

The next group has a Real Red heart from "I Heart Hearts" stamp set and some Chantilly Crochet ribbon and jewel rhinestones in different variations.

Finally, the second to last group used the Flourish stamp again from the "Bliss" stamp set, but I stamped it on its side and added buttons.  The middle button is my favorite.  I placed the half back pearls inside the button and then on a small circle that was in the design of the "T."  This time the "amour" stamp on the "A" came from the "Clearly for You" stamp set.

The last grouping uses the medallion and key stamps from the "Artistic Etchings" stamp set.  The smaller crown came from (can you guess?) the "Clearly for You" stamp set.  The larger crown is from "Artistic Etchings" again.  Add some bling and some shimmer paint and it's all good!

Hope you like it!  I'm hoping to enjoy it for a week at least. 

Vintage Stamping for me…

So another snow day yesterday and what's a girl to do?  Well, in between changing diapers, feeding, playing Chutes & Ladders (lost both times!), reading books, playing with shape sorters (I'm getting really fast at my matching my shapes! ), getting snacks and drinks multiple times, etc., etc., with 4 kiddos home, STAMP of course!  And then thankfully I got some guilt-free stamp time after the kids were in bed as well. 

I'm still not done but I wanted to give you a sneak peek of what I was working on it yesterday.    I won't have time to finish it today, but oh well, I'm well on my way!

Any guesses as to what it will end up being and where I might put it?

I'll give you all the details when I post the finished product!

Sneak Peek for My Scrapbook Club

My Scrapbook Club meets this Monday night.  We talked last time about doing a winter page so I decided to use the pages I did for my young girls as inspiration.  Of course I am able to spice it up a bit for my adult stampers not only because they're adults, but because they obviously have a love for stamping (or they wouldn't be in my club, right?!) and there are 8 of them (versus 16 young girls!).

So… here are the upgrades. After the club meets I'll show you the completed pages.