eye think you're neat {lawn fawn fall/winter release sneak week}

Are you ready?  Oh boy, you're in for a treat. Lawn Fawn is showing you their entire fall/winter release this week, and it is ah-mazing.

AMAZING.

It will all be available for purchase at the end of August, so get excited, lawn fawn lovers.

I made a card with the new Monster Mash set:

I stamped the sentiment to cover the black paper (it's from lawn fawn's christmas papers last year, that's why I could tear into it and have the underside show as white.)



I stamped the adoring monsters (I find it hilarious, the way the eyes are fixed on each other) and fussy cut them out. Just in case the greeting was too hard to read in the background, I stamped it again on a strip of striped paper and attached a tiny, dangling heart from the strip.

EYE hope you like it!

Check out full set reveals and more design team stuff on the lawn fawn blog today, and all week long.

♥.

make a wish {mama elephant designer series}

Hey there! I'm on the Mama Elephant blog today, showing off a birthday card I made with the Soiree stamp set and new coordinating dies.

I am supposed to be showing off the dies, but I had too much fun stamping those banners!  The stamp set is a new one for me.  I stamped four rows of the banner image, and colored them in different pink and blue shades, adding little dot and stripe accents with a white gel pen.

I then stamped "make a wish" repeatedly to look like a cake (!) and die-cut the cake stand and little banner topper.  Having the banner topper die-cut saved me from having to mask anything and I love how it looks popped up on foam adhesives.

I colored the cake topper banner to match the bigger banners, did you notice? I'm easily impressed, and hoping you are too...

A coat of glossy accents on the topper and the cake stand gives the card a special something extra.

I hope you like it! I can see making this card in a ton of different colors and keeping them on hand for last minute birthday needs :)

♥.

way to go! {avery elle guest designing}

Hi there!

It's another week of Avery Elle guest designing, every Wednesday in July.

In case you missed the first few weeks, click and click again!

Today, it's time to bring out the big balloons (in case you're a Katy Perry fan, hee hee.)

I paired the new balloon dies with the party animal stamp and matching die, and added a tag from thanks a bunch.



From this angle, you can see the glossy balloon animal in all her glory, and the shading that I added to the patterned paper beneath the large die-cut balloon negative.

I hope you like it!  I'm having so much fun with Avery Elle this month!

♥.

happy 70th birthday

Hey there, and happy monday!

My mom recently asked me to create a special milestone birthday card for her cousin, and asked me to make it BIG. Like, take a sheet of cardstock and fold it in half big.

Most of our stamps are made for smaller-scale cards, and I didn't want the card to look too fiddly (or take me an enormous amount of time to fill.)

Enter: the silhouette.  It's my go-to now when people (ok, just my parents) ask me to make bigger cards. I like teeny-tiny cards, they think bigger equals more impressive. ha.

I used a silhouette file for a one-layer cake (click!) and turned it into 2 layers to better fill the card.  Everything was cut out of one sheet of white 12x12 cardstock and then colored with copics.  It's a more speedy process, and the result is a softer looking cake. There are color variations that you can't achieve if you cut colored cardstock.

I also added a blue stripe to the top and bottom of the focal panel, by way of a copic marker's chisel tip. I like how it frames the cake.

I hope you like it!

♥.

a stuffed animal birthday...

You're invited...

to a stuffed animal birthday party!



This set-up makes me giggle. Is there anything sweeter, for a small child's birthday party? Party hats for everyone!

I mean, lookit those eyes. ha. I created this party for lawn fawn, using a mix of their stamps to created a fun scene.

I masked the animals to look like they were huddled in together, and gave them party hats, just like their real-life counterparts.

I used my favorite alphabet stamps to create my custom food labels.

The food is so simple, and there are so many other possibilities when you think of the stuffed animals: monkey munch, penguin pops, kitty cupcakes. I dunno, but they all sound like fun!



The cake pops look like pom poms, I think, to match the rest of the party.

Careful, I think the penguin is sliding a flipper around here... sneaky, sneaky.



My favorite thing is the huggably soft big pom pom garland.  I wanted to keep the garland as soft as the stuffies themselves, and I'm still obsessed with pom poms:



Kelly asked me how I made the bigger ones when she saw the pictures! I used *this* pom maker, in case you'd be interested in making some of your own!



I hope you liked this month's lawn fawn party!  My kids thought it was hilarious, and as always, danced around me waiting for the photos to be done so they could dig in!

♥.

birthday dude {avery elle guest designer}

Hi there!

I'm thrilled to be guesting with Avery Elle all month!

Last week, I blogged Goldie and her balloon birthday, and today I'm showing off a card made with their new surf's up stamp set.



You can't get more "summer fun" than this!  I stamped the wave image on either side of the vw camper, and colored it in different shades of blue. After the coloring, I added some highlights with a white gel pen.

I popped up the camper by fussy-cutting it out, everything save the wheels. It's so much easier to make a cut look good when there are no curved edges!

My favorite part? The glossy camper windows. They look like glass!  I added a layer of glossy accents to the windows after everything was colored and adhered and set the entire card aside to dry overnight before handling it again.



I hope you like it! Check out the Avery Elle blog for all kinds of amazing inspiration, and their announcement that they are expanding their line to include patterned paper. How exciting!

♥.

jaws party.

Before Ryan's shark party, (if you missed it, click!) there was Evangelina's Jaws-themed party.

I can't claim all of the fun ideas you'll find in this party - Tanya saw *this* party and we adapted what we saw for Eva's spread.

Tanya snapped a few quick photos in the most awful apartment lighting, but I hope you'll enjoy a look anyways:

That giant motorized shark was the star of the party, even if it was hard to keep him still enough for a photo. When he wasn't bobbing over the food table, he was swimming across the room, over the girls' delighted heads.



The backdrop was a roll of wrapping paper that Tanya found at Michaels, and hung sideways so it didn't look quite as "surf & sky."  We still had to endure a few "hey, did you guys hang that sideways?" comments. ha. The ruffled banners were modeled after the original Jaws party, and made out of 2 colors of crepe paper. I love the look!  The tutorial can be found here. What I love is that I can roll them up and store them for a future party. Which I did. I used them again for Ryan's shark party.

We served up sea water,



life preservers, (the girls found it amazing that lunch was served with long strings of licorice)



and other fun foods like cheesy triangle "shark teeth," grape tomato "shark eggs," and carrots-in-shot-glass "anemones."



My favorite things were these "shark attack" cake pops. They were adorable!

All of the food labels were made to look like beach cabanas. I used a silhouette file that was meant as a circus box (this one.)

This party was so much fun! Evangelina's dad was a hoot, dressing up in a full-sized shark costume, but he was also amazing with the girls, helping them create their own shark tooth necklaces.

Yep, that is one giant shark tooth. And yep, I look nuts. And yep, so does Jason. haha.

I've known Tanya and Jason since high school, where he was voted most artistic of our senior class. Even so, I was amazed to learn that he made the party hats himself:

So cool, right?

I hope you enjoyed this look into Eva's Jaws party!

♥.