SCS Card Swap - Adorable & Cute

My first card swap to host on Splitcoast Stampers has ended. I've sorted out all the cards I received and mailed them to the ladies that participated in the swap. A total of 19 ladies signed up and 16 actually completed the swap. Unfortunately I did not receive cards from 3 of the ladies that signed up. I believe, for some reason or another, their cards have gotten "lost" in the postal system. I understand from other ladies who do a lot of hosting on SCS that this does sometimes happen. I feel really bad for these ladies.


The ladies could sign up for more than 1 spot. They had to make a total of 4 cards, 1 card was for me, the hostess, and the other 3 were to be swapped with the others who signed up. The cards had to be different for each spot that they signed up for. Quite a few signed up for 2 spots and one signed up for 3 spots. All of the cards are fantastic.


The first two cards are from Candice. She leads our Shoebox Card Swap group here in Sacramento. She used "Bella" images.

Pat's (Patriciae) card.

The inside of Pat's card.

Heather's (darloudasha) card. This is Mimosa, a Bildmalarna stamp. These stamps come from Sweden. I ordered a couple of these stamps today. :)

Debbie's (B&D) card. I think it is called a step card and could be considered a fancy fold card.

The next 2 are Renee's (Handmadebyme) cards. I could see this as a card for a baby shower. So cute.

The next 2 are by Genie (sissymama2). The images are by Sugar Nellie which are from Scotland. I love these images and have gotten quite a few.

This is Diane's (Glamour) card. She signed up for 1 spot and she made all 4 cards different. I had a hard time trying to decide which one I wanted because they all were fantastic. Her use of Copic markers was so good on this image. This is probably my most favorite Sugar Nellie image.

The next 2 are Joani's (joeknee) cards. The images are from The Angel Company. She is the friend of one of the ladies that belongs to our Shoebox Card Swap group and lives in Tennessee.

She used Diamond Glaze on the sunglasses which is so cute. Diamond Glaze gives an image a raised glossy look. It can also be used to adhere jewels or other embellishments to cards.

Zavi's (mahoganygirl) card. Another Bella image. She decorated the inside of her card and included an envelope with the head of this image stamped on the envelope.

Jamie (Dandylionslayer) made 3 sets of cards. Here's her first one.

She also sent me some goodies. This is a snowglobe card. So clever!

Michelle's card. She's a sweet friend. The image she used on her card is by Gillian Roberts, another European stamp company.

Alex's (stampinalex) 2 cards. She actually made card fronts. She is a Stampin' Up demonstrator so she used all SU products. She has participated in our Shoebox Card Swaps and did an all day Stamp 'n Scrap Fest in Oroville the end of May. Candice and I attended and had a great time. I love the colors...they are all so bright and cheerful.

The next 2 are by Evelyn (scrap2bhappync). This first one is another Bella.

This may be The Angel Company image.

Julie (love-2-stamp) did the next 2. She is also a SU demonstrator and a part of our Shoebox Card Swap group. She is hosting our August 14th card swap.

Nancy's (jeanstamping2) 2 cards. These are The Angel Company images. She is a demonstrator for TAC.

McCine's (procrstnationiskey) 2 cards. She's been calling me Tutu. My SCS screen name is tutu1960. Tutu of course means grandmother in Hawaiian. She is from Guam and spent some time growing up in Hawaii. Its been fun talking "island slang" with her.

This is the cutest mermaid I've ever seen. The waves at the bottom of the card were probably done with a punch.

This is the inside of this card. Notice the fish paper clip.

To make it 20 ladies, I took 2 spots. Here's my first card...the image is by Rachelle Ann Miller.

And a Sugar Nellie image. I used a small paper doily behind the image layer. I cut it in half and sponged it with some blue ink. I found the crochet flower on Etsy...bought 10 of them for $3 and finished it off with a blue brad.

This is a very long post and I commend you if you stayed until the very end. I've thoroughly enjoyed hosting this SCS swap and "meeting" some awesome stampers via cyberspace. All of these cards are just awesome. Well, I hope they enjoy the cards they get in return. I'm hosting another swap on SCS which is due in November. It is card kits so it should be fun. A few of the ladies from this swap have joined me on the new swap.

Birthday Cards I Received

Wednesday I celebrated my 68th birthday. Here are the cards I received in the mail. Several friends sent Facebook greetings and a couple of e-cards.


This sweet card was from Patricia from SCS. She participated in my card swap that I hosted on SCS and just completed the mailing. I love these Magnolia images. The color scheme that she used is aqua and cream. She also sent this card kit with the same color scheme. She included 4 pieces of designer paper, a strip of white stamped with a border punch, two kinds of ribbon (one of them is stretchy with the middle of the ribbon being fuzzy), a Magnolia image and a Sugar Nellie image, some buttons and a charm and different sizes of embossed butterflies.

This card was sent to me by the Williams family...Michelle, Andrew and Liberty. Michelle made the card. "Hau'oli La Hanau" means "Happy Birthday" in Hawaiian.

This sweet card was from someone who belongs to one of the Birthday Racks that I belong to.

This is another birthday rack card from someone on the AMuse birthday rack list. Lovely card.

One of my nieces, Amy and her husband Joe sent this card. It is super neat. The candle flames are beads and the decorations on the cake are all beads.

My step-daughter, Jenni and family sent this card. She loves cats. So sweet.

Jenni does all kinds of crafts including crocheting and knitting. I've been wanting some crochet flowers to use on my cards. She made these for me. There is a pink and red rose, some that have frilly petals, some singles and some doubles. I'm excited to be able to use them on my cards.

Gerry's Birthday Card

Here is the birthday card that I made for Gerry last Saturday night. His birthday was on Sunday, the 25th.


I found this stamp at Stampers Corner, a stamp store in Elk Grove a few months ago and have been saving it to use for Gerry's birthday card. He is an avid cyclist so I try to find bicycle images for him.


The card base is kraft (tan), then there's a brown layer, a piece of Basic Grey designer cardstock that has browns, greens and tan stripes. The bicycle was stamped with brown ink on a piece of white cardstock. I paper pierced the left and right corners of the white layer. And that's it, very basic...its the kind of card he likes. I was going to stamp the bike in blue to go along with his new bike which is blue. I didn't like it so decided to go all brown. This is the inside of the card...a layer of white cardstock with a strip of the patterned card stock.

He posted a picture of his card on his Facebook so I guess he liked it. :) I will do a post on my Betty's Ramblings blog to tell you about our birthdays.

AMuseapalooza 2010

In July of every year, AMuse Art Stamps releases their line of Christmas stamps. The Paper Garden Boutique hosts classes. Julie Ebersole of AMuse has come to Sacramento for the past 4 years to hold these classes at The Paper Garden. I've taken her classes for the past 3 years. We have a slight connection in that our mothers were born on the island of Kauai. Julie is part Filipino.


I took 2 of her classes last Saturday. She actually taught 4 classes on Friday and 3 on Saturday. One of the Saturday classes was using Copic markers. I took a class with Linda, the owner of AMuse stamps in April and didn't want to do another class. Actually, I had to think hard and long about taking classes this year. They are rather expensive, although there is a slight savings if more than 1 class is taken. I really wanted to see Julie so I decided to do it. The first class she taught on Saturday was using the different floral images that AMuse has.


This first card was cut with a circle cutter. We used a green ink pad to ink the stems and then inked the flower with Versamark. Then using a white embossing powder and a heat gun, embossed the flowers. There is a butterfly stamped on the inside. The ribbon is holding the two circles together. This card was fun to make. Three different inks were used, a green for the stems, a blue for the middle of the flower and then the edges were lightly inked with a darker blue. Julie didn't want to bring her Xyron machine with her so she found some wide sticky tape. We put that over the flowers and then dipped it in glitter. It is really pretty in real life. :)

On this card, we punched out 5 flowers using a scallop circle punch. Then we scrunched up each one and then took an emery board and roughed up the first blossom. The daisy center was punched out with a different punch. After they were all smoothed out, we stacked them and using a pin, make a hole in the middle of all 6 layers. I actually broke off the head of the pin we were using to make the hole in the center. After we got the hole made, we used a brad to hold it all together and with a glue dot, adhered to the card base. We had already stamped a leaf frond on the card base. The punched border on the green layer was done with a Fiskars border punched.

This next card is so awesome. Julie's sample was absolutely beautiful. First we stamped the leaves on a piece of white cardstock. Then we took some very sheer ribbon that is 5 inches wide and covered the white layer, adhering it to the back. Then we inserted a piece of white vellum behind the ribbon and stamped the rose on the ribbon. I did not ink up the stamp enough so I didn't get a clear image. The pearl sticker were then adhered onto the ribbon as was the sentiment. The pearls have a pink shimmer to them. The Paper Garden is suppose to be carrying this wide ribbon. I would love to make another one of these cards.

The next set of cards were made with some of the new Christmas stamps. The gingerbread boy and girl was stamped with Versamark ink and then embossed with white embossing powder. They were cut out and then popped up with foam tape. I don't like to "fussy cut" so don't look too closely at my handiwork. :) The sentiment was also popped up with foam tape. The strip of donuts was made using a border punch.

The snow people are new. I actually cut the curve on the white cardstock freehand. I was amazed at myself. We used a glue pen and put a glue line on the edge and used flower flock to look like snow on the edge. Copics were used to color the snow people.

The holly branch and sentiment is part of the new Christmas stamps. We stamped the holly on the branch and then stamped some of the holly on a separate piece of cardstock and punched them out. Those few are popped up with foam tape.

I realized that I didn't finish this card. There is suppose to be glitter on the snowflake, around the roof line of the house and along the ridges. I'll do it later.

I really like this card. We stamped the trees on white cardstock with Versamark and then embossed them with clear embossing powder. Then we took a piece of post it note, tore off a tiny bit of the top of the post it where the adhesive is and put the post it on the card. Then using a blue ink and a gray ink, sponged in the winter sky. When the post it was removed, there was a snow line. So elegant looking. I bought this stamp which comes with a leaf stamp on the side of it. I didn't get the sentiment, will have to get it later. The sentiment was stamped using the gray ink. I could easily do this for Christmas cards this year.

I wasn't going to post this card and then decided to do it anyway. It is made with a piece of clear acrylic. We stamped a large blossom on it with white Stazon ink. The layers are crooked, one of the reasons I wasn't going to post it.

Close up of the flowers.

There was a reception at The Paper Garden after the last class. It is by private invitation and given to those who have spent a certain amount of money during the year. I was surprised to get one this year. They have food to enjoy, this year there was chow mein, gyoza, won tons, fresh fruit, veggie tray, mochi and pieces of cake. This was all homemade by Stephanie's mother and aunts. Stephanie (the owner) is Japanese. Some really good deals are offered. I didn't partake of much of it, I was so tired and it was very warm in the store so I just wanted to get home. They also do make 'n takes so I did get the templates for those. All of this week there have been make 'n takes, however haven't been down to do any of them.