Fabulous News & COUPON!!!

I'm so excited to announce that I have been accepted to the CropStop Creative Design Team!  Woo-hoo!  I could hardly believe it when I got Vicki's email congratulating me a couple of weeks ago.  I am soooo excited!  Below is the formal announcement on their blog introducing several of us new design team members.

Meet the New CropStop Creative Team Members!

We had an extremely overwhelming response to our CropStop Creative Team call.  Thank you so much to everyone that applied for our team. Please watch for future calls and be sure to submit again.

It was a long road to choosing and finalizing our choices and getting the details in order and...

We are happy to announce the addition of 4 members to our CropStop Creative Crew!
A huge welcome  to....

Carina Hella

Lisa Watson

Nancy Jensen

Nazeema  Bastian

They will be joining us for the next 6 months.  Ladies, we look forward to working with you and sharing your creative inspiration and goodness on our CropStop Challenge Blog.

You can read more about them on our Creative Team Member page. Just click on the "Creative Team" tab in the left sidebar of the blog!

We are sad to say good-bye to fellow Creative Team Members, Agnieszka Marchel and Kathleen Hernandez. It has been a pleasure working with you and sharing your creative abilities on our CropStop Challenge Blog the past 6 months. Thank You!

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I also have a coupon for 10% off your WHOLE ORDER at the CropStop store!  Normally you would have a $30 minimum to use a coupon but with my coupon there is no minimum!  Now that's a great deal, especially as new products are arriving every day from CHA!   Use code: NJCT-02 at checkout ... now let's go shopping! 

NOTE: I am still with the My Time Made Easy Design Team so I'll have a card for them posted before my first card for CropStop. Until then, here's a little teaser of my first card for CropStop coming up on Thursday:

I LOVE love

I LOVE love, don't you? I love my husband, my children, my parents, my siblings and their families, my in-laws, my church family, my friends... and the list goes on and on. I made this card for someone special... someone who I admire and love. But since I haven't given this card to them yet, I'm not going to say who it's for until the time is right. I guess you'll have to come back to find out who the lucky person was, won't you? hehe!

When I saw the sketch at CardPatterns I just knew I had to use it.

Here's my take on it:

I was so happy to be able to use the red mini roses that I've had for awhile.  That's the first thing I thought of using when I saw the sketch.  I used paper from the Le Tres Chic stack from DCWV which I got from my local Michael's store.

I used some deep red ribbon for the bow, tied a narrow strip of toole to the pearl heart button and glued them onto the rest of the card.  I love finding pretty buttons to put onto my cards.   

I wanted to add a tiny butterfly to the card so I punched one out of light pink paper and put a little glitter glue on it to make is sparkle.  After the glue dried I bent the wings up and out with my fingertips and adhered it to the card.

I added some pearls to the centers of the mini roses to add that last extra little touch.

Thank you so much for stopping by.  I appreciate each and every visit and comment.  In fact, I have some exciting news that I can't share with you quite yet... so there's yet another reason to keep coming back!  hehe!

What's in it:
The "love" stamp, tag punch and linen thread are from Stampin' Up!
Dies used: Spellbinders circles and scalloped circles
Embellishments: Red mini roses from Taylored Expressions, adhesive pearls from Michael's, toole and lace are from my stash, 

Other challenges:

Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes!

Just us Girls: Red, Pink & white 

The Pink Elephant: photo inspiration
Papertake Weekly: Happy Hightlights
Sugar Creek Hallow: Go girly

The Paper Players: CAS & tag
Digi Doodle Shop: Anything Goes
PaperCrafting Journey: Floral
There She Goes: Love is in the Air
Creative Inspirations: anything goes

Winter Wonderland

I love scenes of snow covering the ground, trees, buildings and everything in sight. I can't look out my window to see a winter wonderland as I live in Southern AZ, but I can make my own on my cards... so that's what I'm doing again this week.  

I took some white vellum and ran it through my Big Shot with the snowflake embossing folder.  I trimmed it down to the size I wanted and took a picture of it for you on top of my desk so you can see the embossing.   

I attached the embossed vellum with silver brads onto pink cardstock and placed the image of a winter hat on top of it. 

The hat is from MTME's Winter Knits and the paper is from MTME's Feminine Flakes and Fuzzies.  I love these two sets that I used them two weeks in a row!  Below is a side/angle view of the card.  

For the snowflakes I used shiny pink and shiny white cardstock punched with Creative Memories' snowflake punch and attached them with silver brads.

I cut a piece of white cardstock with Magnolia's Leaf and Swirl die and then spread Stickles diamond on top of it. 

I think it added just the right touch.  It gives movement to the card, giving a sense of wind swooshing the snowflakes around a winter wonderland!

Thank you for stopping by today.  I truly appreciate each and every visit and comment.  Don't forget to hop on over the the MTME Pretty Pattern Sketch blog and see what the other designers have prepared for you today.

Happy Winter

Yes, I said Happy Winter!  I can say that because I live in Southern AZ and we are having wonderful weather right now!  hehe!  I feel sorry for all of you who are dealing with heavy snowfall, terrible roads and below 0 temps.  Maybe this card will cheer you up a bit?

I used MTME's Winter Knits digi stamps for this card.  I colored the hat with copics and cut it out.  The copics I used for the hat are: rv000, rv00, r81, bg10, bg11, bg34.

The paper I used is MTME's Feminine Flakes and Fuzzies.  I LOVE this set of digi paper!  Living in Southern AZ, I don't see a lot of snowflakes so I love using them on my cards.  I also like "girly" colors so this set is right up my alley.

I added some light pink lace behind the purple ribbon as part of the sketch.  It adds a nice feminine touch.  Below is a picture of the card with the the light pink lace below.  The lace doesn't pop out at you on the card so if you didn't see it before, you can see it now.  :-) 

Thank you for stopping by!  I truly appreciate each and every visit and comment.  Head on over to the MTME blog to see what the other designers have for you today.  It would be great if you play along with our sketch challenge this week too!

Other Challenges:

Sundays With Crissy: Beat the mid-winter blues

For A Real Sweetheart

Good morning!  Today's card has been through some transformations as you will see.  I had such a hard time making this card come together.  The only thing that I ended up with that is the same as my original idea is the main image.  The paper, pink scalloped circle, white doily and swirls, etc were all added as the day went on.  It seemed as though everything that could go wrong DID.  Computer glitches, printer stopping mid-printing, etc.  But I was able to get the card done in time to go in today's MTME Pretty Patterns challenge post.  *whew*

Then I decided to add some  more fancy stuff - some pearls around the heart and some flowers... and even embossing the little pastry with clear embossing powder!

In the view below you can see how shiny the white doily and swirls are.  I also added some shiny to the pastry with my Gelly Roll (Sakura) "clear star" glitter pen.

In the view below you can see how pretty the pearls are.

And finally: I like to show the layers and 3-Dness (I know, not a word... but it describes what I want to show, right?  lol) of the card.

Thank you for stopping by!  I appreciate each visit and comment.  I hope you stop by the MTME Pretty Patterns challenge blog and see what the other design team members made for you today and it would be great if you played along!  

What's in it:

MTME digi stamps - Sweet Sentimentals  & Sweet Treats.

MTME digi paper -   Candy Kisses  (I changed the background color from brown to black with my digital program - Photoshop Elements)

Other challenges:

Joan's Garden: 

• Make a card and/or tag using some kind of hearts
• Use any kind of embellishments 
• Use, pink or red with white
• Do some kind of embossing

CMC Copic Challenge Group: go retro 

Sympathy Rose revisited

We are having a review of sketches 27, 28, 29. 30, 32 and 33.  (we didn't have a sketch #31 because we were doing a review that week)  You can see the sketches on the MTME Blog here.  I chose to use sketch #30 - in fact, I'm re-posting a previous card and here's why:  I'm suffering from tendinitis in my right hand. (suffering is the perfect word because I want to craft!  lol)  I had to take a leave for this week because of the pain... and I really should let my hand rest... so instead of typing up a whole new post I'll copy and paste parts of the previous post.  Thanks for understanding.

In October of 2011 made a sympathy card for the parents of a young boy who passed away from several congenital diseases. 

I used MTME's new digi stamp set Well Rounded and the digi paper Wildflowers.  

The white paper is a shimmery white stripped paper.  I took a couple of pictures to show the pretty stripes.  I don't remember what it is called but I've had it on hand forever.  I also used light pink lace and white flower trim from my stash.  

I love the rose in the digi stamp set I mentioned above and I wanted to color it with copics so I took the time to reverse the effects of the rose stamp which is a black silhouette and outlined in white.  I used the eraser tool and erased the black areas and then used the paint bucket to color the white outline to black.  That way I could print up the black outline and color it pink with shading and highlights.  

I first tried using the color bucket to color the different parts of the rose in 3 shades of pink and I really like how it turned out.... but that is for another project and another sketch!  (which I should use soon, huh?)  

I hope you enjoyed the card even though the occasion is a sad one  Thank you for stopping by and I appreciate each and every comment.