My Time Color Challenge

Happy Saturday! Time for another Super fun My Time to Create Color Challenge from Lauren. Here's a look at this week's colors:

These colors scared the crap out of me - soooo NOT my typical colors (I don't normally do too many pastels!!), but I'm actually really pleased with my card. Man, that Pam sure can pick 'em!! LOL. (I'm really sorry for the bad photo. I didn't finish this card until almost 11:00 tonight and had to take it in really poor lighting. This is the best I could get even with lots of editing).

I was so distracted by the terrifying thought of having to use these colors that my MoJo ran off and hid and was nowhere to be found, so I decided to dig into my "To be CASE'd" files and this card is a CASE of a card by Lisa Johnson, but it's so late and I can't seem to find her post with the original. Sorry! The layout's basically the same as is the stamp set, but I used a different sentiment and umbrella top and chose to paper-piece my umbrella rather than color it and added a ribbon tab and button rather than a little flower. But the rest of it's all Lisa.

Well, I'm headed to bed!! (It's still Friday night here). It's been a crazy busy week preparing for the Verve Stamps release tonight as well as the Clear and Simple Stamps release tomorrow (well today for most of you). Tomorrow (Saturday) we're headed to the beach in the morning for my friend Sarah's birthday bash, then I have some more DT work to catch up on in the afternoon. Should be a fun but busy weekend!!

Be sure to stop by the rest of the My Time to Create DT blogs to see what the other girls have done with these colors:

• Dana
• Kendra
• Kristin
• Lauren
• Lisa
• MacKenzie
• Maria
• Odette
• Pam
• Tamara
• Tracey

Mahalo for stopping by!!
-Jen

Materials Used:
Stamps: Scattered Showers (PTI)
Paper: Plum Pudding, Sweet Blush, Lemon Tart CS, Aqua Mist Bitty Dot Basics (PTI); Whisper White (SU)
Ink: Versafine Black Onyx (Tsukineko)
Accessories: Sweet Blush button, ribbon (PTI); Scallop border punch, corner rounder punch (SU)

Today's the Day!! - Verve Release Party

I totally meant to post this earlier, but we had a fun-filled morning swimming at the pool in Kihei with my good friend Ellyn and her son Charlie. (check out the adorable pic of Dean in his new swim goggles below - I was cracking up laughing!). Anyway, the Verve Release Party kicks off at 8:00 pm Eastern tonight. There are a TON of giveaways being announced and the Verve Divas will be sharing all of our fab creations with the new stamp sets before they're available to purchase immediately following the festivities!! Stop by and join us for some fun times!!

Here's another Sneak Peek at one of my favorite projects with the new stamps:

I made a birthday gift card holder & cake slice gift box (basic instructions HERE) with the new Party Time set and some printed digi paper from the Forever Young kit by Libby Weifenbach. The cake slice box is a template from Kelleigh Ratzlaff that is part of her August Grab Bag (along with several other fantastic templates!!).

And here's a look at Dean sportin' his cool new swim goggles:
See you at the Release Party in a few hours!!
-Jen

School Days

Hey there! Just wanted to pop in and share another Clear and Simple Stamps sneak peek with you all today. Don't forget the CSS release is coming up on Saturday and believe me, you don't want to miss these new sets!!

This card I made for my son's AWESOME babysitter, Sarah (who returned to school a few weeks ago) uses the soon-to-be-released School Days set. I stamped the locker image, colored it with my Copic Markers and then popped it up on dimensionals. The papers are printed digi papers from the Spelling Buzz kit by Libby Weifenbach (Sweet Shoppe). I added a punched star and some screw brads for embellishments. I think Sarah will like it.

Here's a pic of Sarah and Dean on her last weekday babysitting gig of the summer. Dean LOVES Sarah:
Materials Used:
Stamps: School Days (Clear and Simple Stamps)
Paper: printed digi paper from Spelling Buzz by Libby Weifenbach
Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko)
Accessories: Word Window Punch, Star Punch

Mahalo for stopping by! Stop back tomorrow for some new Verve goodies!!
-Jen

WINNERS announced for Battle of the Creative Teams

Well, it's over. And guess what!?!? The Libby Lou Crew WON Battle of the Creative Teams!!! I am so freakin' excited!! Thank you so much to all of my Blog Readers who helped us out by voting for us each week this past month!! As a special thank you to all of you, Libby is offering a very special 30% off coupon to her store! Use the code LLC2009 to get 30% off Libby's products. (Excludes 2Scoops & Triple Dip collabs). Head on over to Libby's Blog for all the details and then go shopping!! (but hurry! It expires tomorrow!)

THANK YOU!!!

P.S. - Sorry for all the multiple posts today, but I just couldn't wait to share this!!

- Jen

Beep.

Well, good news!! Tropical Storm Felicia has pretty much been dying a slow and painful death as she moves across Hawaiian waters, so all that preparation was just as I expected - for nothing!! Oh well. Better safe than sorry, right? We have been getting a lot of rain in Kahului today, but we needed it.

Anyway, it's Wednesday again already and that means I have another cute little project to share using product from ABC Toys & Crafts. This week I decided to make a SUPER simple card (shocking, I know) using my Slice digital cutter. Check it out:

Cute, yeah? I used the new Big Kids Design Card to cut out the 3 robots from textured Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze and So Saffron CS, mounting them on a Kraft base with a little Chocolate Chip mat for definition. The sentiment, a simple "beep" (which in my mind is robot-speak for "hello") was also cut out using the Big Kids Design Card from Chocolate Chip CS. I love this clean and simple layout and it was so quick and easy to make, yet so effective and PERFECT for little boys (who are notoriously hard to craft for). I can see myself using the Slice and this particular card layout over and over again (with different shapes and colors of course) to create a whole series of cards. Be watching the ole blog for more like this soon!!

ABC Toys & Crafts has a HUGE selection of Slice Design Cards and Accessories. They also have a few good sales going on right now - with items like Inkadinkado stamps and Primas marked down. Head on over and check them out!!

Thanks for stopping by!
- Jen

Anni-VERVE-sary Week kick-off

Ok, I'm totally swiping the following from the Verve Blog, but Julee just has such a way with words, ya know!?!? LOL. Here are the details on all the goings-on...and I just have to mention as I've been busy crafting away with the new stamps this past weekend - you so do NOT want to miss this release!! I know I say it every single time, but REALLY!!! Total and complete AWESOMENESS!!!

And check out all of these amazing opportunities to win Verve goodies this week...seriously - Julee continuously amazes me with her generosity!!

Anni-VERVE-sary Sketch Challenges
Julee has designed five brand new sketches for this release. Play along by this Friday, August 14 at 6PM Eastern for your chance to win Verve's ENTIRE release! Check out all the sketches and the deets on this thread in our SCS forum.

Diva Giveaways
Throughout the week, our Divas will be posting giveaway threads in our SCS forum. Participate along with them (it might be a challenge, a game, a question or some other activity) and you might win $25 in Verve Bucks, good for anything in the Verve Store. A few Divas are scheduled to post each day Monday - Thursday, so there's 13 chances to win!

Sneak Previews
Sneak previews officially start on the Verve blog TODAY (Tuesday). Each day this week, the Divas will be bringing you some Verve-alicious peeks at the sets releasing this weekend! Plus there'll be more chances to win some stamps!

Anni-VERVE-sary Release Party
Last, but not least, our release party will be this Friday night (August 14) at 8PM Eastern. We'll be revealing the 7 new sets and 2 plain jane singles, as well as chatting and announcing all of our release week winners. Be there or be square! Oh, WHERE you ask? Over on the Release Party thread in our forum!

Take the Challenge - Get Sketchy

August is here and Clear and Simple Stamps is doing things a little different this month - since the first Tuesday of the month (Take the Challenge Tuesday) fell on the first day of the month, we decided to move TCC to the 2nd Tuesday of the month - Today!! This month for Take the challenge Tuesday we are going to Get Sketchy. Maria created this fun sketch for all of us to play with this month:

Join us over in the Clear and Simple Stamps Group on Papercraft Planet to play along in the Let's Get Sketchy Challenge!! Create your own card or project using Maria's sketch and upload it to the Papercraft Planet gallery (if you need help, HERE is a tutorial for uploading photos to the PCP gallery) using the tag TTC08.

Here's a look at my creation with the sketch using the soon-to-be-released ABC...123 set, one of my faves from the upcoming New Releases!

Stamps: ABC...123 (Clear & Simple)
Paper: Very Vanilla, Dusty Durango CS (SU); White Pure Luxury CS (GinaK); Teacher's Pet DP (Imaginisce)
Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko); Copic Markers
Accessories: Corkboard; Riding Hood Red ribbon (SU)

Be sure to stop by the other Clear & Simple DT blogs to check out what the other girls created with Maria's fabulous sketch!!

• Beth Matson
• Erin Bigler
• Kim Howard
• Lori Tecler
• Maria Levine
• Neva McMullen
• Robyn Weatherspoon
• Sue Berker

Thanks for stopping by!!
-Jen

Battle of the Creative Teams - Round #4

Well, it's FINALLY here!! The 4th and final round of Battle of the Creative Teams! That means this is the last time (and the last chance) I'll be begging for your votes in this fun competition! So, one more time - please vote for the Libby Lou Crew HERE before Midnight (EDT) Tuesday!! Thank you!

I've had so much fun during this competition the last 4 weeks, but I have to admit - I'm so glad it's just about over! It has been A LOT more work than I anticipated and the competition has been stiff!! You can check out my entries for the previous rounds below:
Round 1 - Family Time Organizer
Round 2 - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Round 3 - The Mathematical Cuteness of Dean

This week's Challenge, Inspiration Found, was to Scraplift 2 of our teammates. Each of us was only making one project, but had to take part of one temmate's layout and combine it with a part of another teammate's layout. Once again, this was really tough on me as a hybrid artist - I had to find 2 digi layouts that I could easily (or at least attempt to) carry over onto some sort of hybrid project. The Libby Lou Crew worked together and each of us was lifted twice. I set about the task of browsing through the galleries of Linz and Laurie and decided to lift Linz's Just Us layout and Laurie's Bee-a-utiful layout.

Here's what I came up with:

It's a little "Beach Treasures" Keepsake box for Dean to put all of his little beach finds in - he is always carrying home little treasures in the pockets of his board shorts every time we go to the beach. Of course, I wanted it to match his room so I used the fabulous Jen & Dean kit by Libby (you might remember that Libby used Dean's new bedding as inspiration for this digi kit, so it was the perfect choice for this project!!).

Here are a few more shots of the finished box:

You can check out the rest of my team's beautiful layouts (Laurie even used some super cute photos of Dean on her layout) using the Jen & Dean kit for Round #4 HERE.

And then don't forget to go vote for the Libby Lou Crew HERE!!!

On another note, we had a super fun family outing this morning on a nice little waterfall hike over on the North Shore. If you're interested, you can read about our adventures HERE on our family blog. Have a fabulous week!!

- Jen

My Time to Create Inspiration Challenge

Happy Saturday! Hopefully everyone's having a fun weekend!!

We're anxiously watching the progress of Hurricane Felicia, which currently is headed straight for Hawaii!! Most likely it will fizzle out once it passes over cooler waters sometime tomorrow and will only be a Tropical Depression or Tropical Storm when it reaches us sometime on Monday, but you just never know with these things. And unlike those of you living in hurricane-prone areas of the mainland who at least have the option of evacuating if things do look like they will get bad, there is nowhere to evacuate TO when you live on a tiny island!! So even though chances are all we'll get is some good surf and heavy rain next week, we do have to take this very seriously and take all precautions. So we have spent the last 2 days going through our "Hurricane Survival Kit" and throwing out the old out-of-date food and restocking it with fresh batteries, water, etc. We know where there are 3 pet-friendly shelters within 5-10 miles of us, we have a list of things we'll need to pack up on Sunday "just in case" if it Felicia does end up staying strong, and overall we feel prepared for the worst but are only expecting a little bit of rain excitement!! (It IS a little frustrating to have to do all this work knowing most likely it will all be for nothing, but at the same time REALLY hoping it IS all for nothing!!).

Anyway, sorry for the off-topic rambling!! Since it's Saturday, it's time for another My Time to Create Challenge and we have another super fun Inspiration Challenge for you to play along with this week. Here's a look at the Inspiration Photo:

And - exciting news!!! - Lauren is going to be showcasing the Top 5 challenge entries each week on her blog in a new feature called "My Time to Shine". So be sure to play along for your chance to shine!!

I just loved all the colors and the bright, summery feel of the inspiration photo. Here's the super simple card I came up with (loosely based on Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday Sketch #29):

Materials Used:
Stamps: Everyday Button Bits, Polka Dot Basics II (PTI)
Paper: Spring Moss, Hibiscus Burst, Sweet Blush CS (PTI); Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White CS (SU)
Ink: Ripe Avocado, Fresh Snow (PTI)
Accessories: Scallop Border Punch, corner rounder (SU); Hibiscus Burst, Sweet Blush buttons (PTI)

Be sure to check out what all of the My Time to Create DT girls have done with this awesome little piece of Inspiration:

Alicia

Dana G

Kendra

Kristen

Lauren

MacKenzie

Maria

Odette

Tamara Harder

Tracey Cuccia

And then go whip up your own project and link us up to your creation using Mr. Linky on Lauren's post for a chance to be highlighted next week in the My Time to Shine feature!!

Sneak Peeks - Clear and Simple

Hi there! I thought I'd share another quick Sneak Peek of one of the newest sets from Clear & Simple Stamps, releasing August 15. I just LOVE these school-themed sets!!

This fun card uses the new School Days set. I colored the locker scene with my Prismacolor pencils and OMS, taking the colors from this adorable Teacher's Pet DP by Imaginisce. There is so much DP on this card, that I kept the overall design layout and embellishments really simple so as not to distract too much from the main image. A little mini library clip was the perfect finishing touch!!

Don't forget to check out the little Teacher's gift I made for the fabulous Lauren, Dean's preschool teacher, using the FREE Apple Basket Template. Wednesday was the first day of the fall semester at Children's Garden preschool and Lauren LOVED her gift!! All of the other teachers were super jealous! ;-)

And remember, use the coupon code DTBlog809 to get $1 off your Stamp of the Month Purchase, A+ Darling, through the end of August!! The rest of the new stamps will be available August 15!

Materials Used:
Stamps: School Days (Clear & Simple)
Paper: Going Grey, Pumpkin Pie CS (SU); Pure Luxury white CS (GinaK); Teacher's Pet DP (Imaginisce)
Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black; Prismacolor pencils & fishing pole.
Accessories: Riding Hood Red ribbon, Word Window Punch, Mini Library Clip (SU); Circle Nestabilities (Spellbinders)

Ooga Booga!

ABC Toys and Crafts is celebrating the latest release from My Cute Stamps with daily giveaways all week long!! The Design Team will be sharing projects all week using the newest sets - Just head on over to the ABC Design Blog each day this week and comment on the day's post for a chance to win that day's featured set. Winners will be announced on Saturday Aug 7, so you have all week to comment on each post. Can't wait for the end of the week to get your hands on the fabulous new sets? Head on over to the My Cute Stamps section of ABC Toys and Crafts and order the new sets today before they're sold out!!

And in a separate giveaway, Julie, the owner of ABC Toys and Crafts, is giving away a $25 shopping spree to the store this week!! Details HERE.

So today is my day to share a project with one of the My Cute Stamps new release sets and here's my little Halloween card:

I used the new Ooga Booga set (sooo cute!!) paired with some printed digi papers from the I Want my Mummy kit by Christy Lyle (Sweet Shoppe Designs). I added some white pom-pom trim, attaching with staples for accent and paper pieced the ghost image.

Head on over to My Post on the ABC Design Blog and leave a comment before Friday night for a chance to win this set!!

Materials Used:
Stamps: Ooga Booga (My Cute Stamps)
Paper: Going Gray, Basic Gray (SU); printed digi paper from I Want My Mummy by Christy Lyle (Sweet Shoppe Designs)
Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko)
Accessories: Stapler; Pom Pom Trim; Circle Nestabilities (Spellbinders); Word Window Punch (SU)

I Brake for Stamps Challenge

I'm super excited today to tell you about a fantastic challenge hosted at Papercraft Planet and sponsored by I Brake for Stamps. It's a sketch challenge, so to play along simply create a card or other project using this sketch:

Post your project in the Paper Craft Planet photo gallery, and use the tag "PCPIBFS" -- all caps, please. (Here is a tutorial on adding pictures to the gallery, if you need it.) I Brake For Stamps has generously offered a $30 gift certificate to one of our lucky challenge players. But wait, there's more!! (channeling Billy Mayes :) -- if you place an order at I Brake for Stamps between now and Saturday, use the code "PCPlanet" and you'll save 15%!!!!! Here is my card:

The PCP Super Novas and I all used the Humorous Seniors for our cards. I (fittingly I think) chose to use Joe Surfer, coloring him with my Copic Markers and pairing him with some printed digi papers from the Jen & Dean kit by Libby Weifenbach (Sweet Shoppe Designs). My coloring isn't so great (it never is) and I think that instead of looking like shading as I'd intended in the crotch area of poor Joe, it looks more like he might be suffering from some incontinence! {sigh}. Oh well. I, of course, am not old (in fact, my 5th Annual 29th Birthday Celebration was just a few weeks ago....) so I can't give this card to anyone as the sentiment says something about "we" (LOL), but I plan to hand it over to my Mom tomorrow morning and I'm sure she'll get a HUGE kick out of giving it to one of her surfing buddies at Makena (who really IS old and probably looks a lot like Joe, but with a better tan and MUCH more leathery skin!!)

Check out what the other Super Novas came up with:

• Adela Rossol
  
• Melanie Muenchinger
• Lynn Mercurio
  
• Kim Burmeister
  
• Wendy Price
  
• Susanna Boyd
  
• Tammy Hershberger
  
• Erika Martin
  
• Lori Tecler
  
• Sankari Wegman

Check out our I Brake for Stamps Challenge gallery so far!

Battle of the Creative Teams - Round #3

Yep, it's that time again - time for me to beg and plead for your votes in the 3rd round of Battle of the Creative Teams! Vote for the Libby Lou Crew HERE before midnight (EDT) Tuesday.

ETA: if you voted last week and you get a message that says "your vote has already been counted" after you vote, you may need to clear your cookies and try again in order for your vote to count. You should get a message that says "Thank You for Voting".

Thank you so much to everyone who voted for us last week!! My Girls Just Wanna Have Fun project was selected as the MVP Project (out of somewhere close to 250 projects total!!). That was a HUGE honor, especially for a Hybrid Artist in a contest hugely skewed to digi (I'm one of only 2 hybrid artists participating).

The challenges are getting steadily more difficult, especially when completed as a Hybrid project!! (they were obviously geared strictly towards digi scrappers!!). This week, the challenge was "Scrap By Numbers" and here were our instructions: This week your team must come up with a formula to scrap by. You must use the following numbers 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. You can only use the amount of items in your formula on your layout, no more and no less.

YIKES! right? So here's the formula the Libby Lou Crew agreed on:
10 - staples
9 - papers
8 - stitches
7 - buttons
6 - ribbons
5 - flowers
4 - photos
3 - frames
2 - alphas
1 - font

For my project, I decided to make a wrapped up and pocketed little mini album (I used the FREE Recipe Wrap-Up template by Lauren Meader as inspiration, but altered it to make it work for my needs). I used a not-yet-released digi kit called Pie Are Squared by Libby Weifenbach (avail Saturday Aug 8 at Sweet Shoppe Designs) for the majority of the project. The remaining supply list is at the end of this post. Here are about a gazillion photos of the project (click on each photo to see it larger for detail):

The Mathematical Cuteness of Dean...

You can check out the rest of the Libby Lou Crew's AMAZING layouts and how they used the formula HERE.

But most importantly, PLEASE go vote for the Libby Lou Crew HERE!!! THANK YOU!

Digi Supplies: (everything by Libby Weifenbach, available at Sweet Shoppe Designs)
Digi papers, staples, round alpha from Pie Are Squared available 8/8 at Sweet Shoppe Designs (special EARLY sneak peek on Libby’s Blog)
Digi buttons from Berkley Mckay
Frames from Jen & Dean
All stitching from Border Basics: Bundle
White alpha from Extra Large Painted Chippy Alpha
Font is DJB Print from DJB Journaling Basics by Darcy Baldwin and Angie Kovacs

Physical Supplies:
Chocolate Cardstock for album base
Olive Ribbon for tying album closed
5 pieces of Chocolate ribbon for tabs
5 real buttons
5 flowers punched out of printed digi paper
Adhesive, scoring tool

My Cute Stamps Giveaway

ABC Toys and Crafts is celebrating the latest release from My Cute Stamps with daily giveaways all week long!! The Design Team will be sharing projects all week using the newest sets Just head on over to the ABC Design Blog each day this week and comment on the day's post for a chance to win that day's featured set. Winners will be announced on Saturday Aug 7, so you have all week to comment on each post. Can't wait for the end of the week to get your hands on the fabulous new sets? Head on over to the My Cute Stamps section of ABC Toys and Crafts and order the new sets today before they're sold out!!

And in a separate giveaway, Julie, the owner of ABC Toys and Crafts, is giving away a $25 shopping spree to the store this week!! Details HERE.

Anni-VERVE-sary Blog Hop

Welcome to the first ever official Anni-VERVE-sary Blog Hop. Verve turns two today and we’re celebrating with a hop, hop, hop! The party kicked off over on the Verve blog, so if you’ve just happened along, be sure to hop on over there to start from the beginning! And to make this party a real shindig, there’s a mystery jackpot hidden at one of the stops along the hop. One lucky commenter on that blog will win Verve’s entire August release! But of course, it wouldn’t be a mystery if you knew which blog, would it? So if you’re feeling the love, give a little shout out to the bloggers in the hop and you just might have a reason to jump for joy!

And today, some of the Verve Divas on the Hop (myself included) have an extra special treat for you...we're surprising you with some Super Sneaky Peeks at some of the newest Verve stamps - due out later this month!!

For my creations, I'm giving you an early peek at the new Delightful & Delicious set with this card using Jen del Muro's latest Sketch for You To Try as well as a Starbuck's Gift Card holder. (I've included brief instructions for making the gift card holder at the end of this post).

That fun patterned paper is printed from a new digi kit, Animal Crackers, by Libby Weifenbach (New release TODAY at Sweet Shoppe Designs) and I've paired it up with some Chocolate Chip and So Saffron CS. I also used my new Blossom Spellbinders die for matting the main image panel. The images were stamped in Momento Rich Cocoa and colored with Copics. The yellow coffee mug is cut out and popped up on dimensionals.

Thanks for stopping by! Now it’s time to hop on over to my fellow diva Jackie’s blog, for a little more Verve-y goodness.


Instructions for Gift Card Holder:
- Cut cardstock to 4 1/4 x 7 inches
- Score at 1 1/2 and 4 1/2 inches (along the 7-inch side)
- Fold 1 1/2 inch section in and use brads to adhere to middle section - forming the gift card "pocket".
- Fold 4 1/2 inch section over the top and use either ribbon, velcro, or something else creative to hold it closed!