Stacked Stones Studio!

I have loved the Julie Nutting mixed media dolls since I laid eyes on the first one! I'm sure it is the little girl in me that LOVE playing dress up with her paper dolls...but I could serious use one of her dolls on a project a week and not get tired of them...so you gotta know that I was a bit giddy to find a way to use Zoe on one of my pages in my journaling Bible! I have been working on the content for a College and Career Women's Retreat that I will be teaching in a few weeks. I am excited that we will be doing an interesting combination of in-depth Bible study times and then Illuminated Journaling times inter-mixed. My own journaling comes out of my study times - so will LOVE seeing how God meets with these precious ladies on the pages of their Bibles. But I digress...As I was saying, I have been working on the messages I will be sharing during the study time - and found myself focusing on what it means to have Biblical humility. As a younger woman - I think this is on...

I am honored to get to be a June Release Guest Designer for Olga from Little Blue Button Stamps.  Isn't this the cutest coffee themed set of stamps? You know me and my love of coffee...getting to work with these was just a melding of two of my favorite things...stamping and sipping coffee! The set is called Coffee Love...and in addition to the cute and sassy girl holding a hot cup of coffee, we get coffee and tea  elements that work well together to create all kinds of cards and tags. Two of my favorite sentiments, "Life Begins with Coffee" and "My Blood Type is Coffee"  - and truer words were never spoken...I am such a nicer person in the morning....AFTER I've had my first cup of coffee...ahem...ok .... second! I know you will love Olga's designs too! If you are interested in her rubber stamps you can find them here: on CC Designs website . Her digi stamps are available for download here: on the Little Blue Button Stamps website . ...

I seriously love creating these collage stamped backgrounds! Wish I had discovered it sooner! I am so glad that the Papertrey Ink Make It Monday Challenge got me thinking about this technique.  You can check out the beautiful card that Dawn made here. I am preparing for a class I am going to teach - French Country Inspired Projects . I have had fun researching...finding lots of things that will be my inspiration for creating these projects. I have started a Board on Pinterest called French Country. If you would like to check it out - there is a link over in the side bar that will take you to my Pinterest Account. So, as I am preparing for this class the first thing that I did was to look into color combinations and iconic images that would help give my projects the FEEL of French Country. I found that Golden Yellow, True Red and Deep Blues are often used - so I pulled out some of my supplies that might work within these color ranges.         ...

Recently I discovered a new trend (ok - it's not exactly NEW...but it is new to me!) of white on white or tone on tone inspired cards! So I had to try my hand at it...and - I had the best time playing in my studio!  I love how the greenery pops off the embossed background...I am definitely going to be creating MORE of these cards. I have done a quick tutorial in case you want to try your hand at it! Supplies: White card stock: Papertrey Ink Frame: Spellbinders Label Die Greenery and Flowers: Memory Box Lavish Branch and Delightful Florals Birds: Impression Obsession, Chickadees Color: Copic Markers, Y21, W5, W3, W1

Well I hope you have had some time for creativity this week...I did - and the thing I am MOST excited about is that I have been able to get back to creating videos for some of my projects!  I have missed getting to share the "process" with you and am super glad to be back on track. I have a fun project to share with you today...using a Papertrey Ink stamp set - A Year In Flowers: Marigolds . It is perfect for this type of card because it is "line art" which works great for doing a little or a lot of coloring....with markers, colored pencils or watercolor. You can see I opted for doing just a bare minimum of coloring. I needed to make several gifts for some friends and wanted them to be handmade...but I had a real short window of time to create them in...so I just had to come up with an idea that had a lot of visual punch but could be created fairly quickly.  These line art stamps were just the ticket. One of the things that I love about working with Papertrey...