local may card swap

Masculine cards

Good cards, good company and good food!

we had a lot of fun at our "pot luck" May card swap meeting as you can see from both the pictures above.  theme for this month was masculine ..... look at all the great ideas that we all came up with for this theme.  I always look forward to our meeting and I'm sure next month will be another fun time.

Nature

Had fun at my local stamp group ... we had a nice get together at Panera and swapped out our nature cards.  our cards are a mix of different stamps and ideas that always impress and show off all our talents.

Sometimes we get a little extra from one of our members and this month Kelly surprised us with a cute bunny bag full of candy.

hope you enjoyed this little look at our group

Fun with friends

Last weekend I went to my first crop, yes I said crop!  and for anyone who knows me they know I don't crop at all...I tried it but it just wasn't my thing in fact I started calling it the dark side.  teeheehee.  anyway my friends said come and you can make cards so that is what I did...I prepped for four cards that I would need for a local monthly swap group.  This crop was hosted at the Southbridge Hotel in Southbridge, MA.  this is a big hotel as you can see from the long hallway (that is just one hallway to our room) we walked to our room.....in fact...there were several halls we had to walk down to get to our room.  Our room was at one end of the hotel and our crop room was waaaaaaaaaaaaay at the other end.  I have to admit I had a lot of fun but I think that is because of my friends...we always have a lot of laughs when we get together.  I'll show a sampling of the cards I created while at this crop in another blog post.  Oh yes, there were several crop rooms this is just our room.

Bendi fold valentines

I finally got around to making the bendi fold card.  there are instructions on splitcoaststampers to follow to make this card which I did for the most part except I'm not good with measurements so ........ after I had all the card pieces cut and tape together I cut my slits by eye instead of measuring in 4" or so like the instructions mentioned.  every time I tried it that way they just didn't turn out for me so I did it my way but all in all I like the card structure and would most likely do it again.  In fact I used this card for my Valentine card swap last week at my friend's Valentine luncheon get together and they were very well liked by all.

lunch with friends

Yesterday was our annual Valentine luncheon at Leslie's house who
is the hostess with the most-est as the saying goes.  Her table-scapes is always spot on and creative! If you look over to the left at the photo you can see the table in all it's glory along with one of our beauties...that's Muriel. We

had beef and barley soup that was absolutely delicious!  in the
middle of the table was a delectable array of cheeses, breads, fruit and veggies to munch on along with the soup.  Over on the kitchen island were all kinds of deserts for after we finished that delicious soup.  There were mini brownies, cookies --- my favorite the

oatmeal raisin cookies!!!!!!  yummy!  even homemade marshmallows covered in coconut or heath bar candies but the main
desert was a fabulous lemon mousse.....Oh my! was that good!  everyone in our little group knows I'm not a chocolate person so the lemon desert was perfect in my opinion!!!  I have such good friends!   And of course, we are stampers so we had a card swap along with some handmade favors filled with candies and more.  The card swaps with all our extra goodies were in these beautiful red bags so we could bring everything home in style.  Over to the left is Roberta showing off a little card that our friend Petti made that was attached to a bag of candies....unfortunately she couldn't attend our get together because of family sickness.  she was missed.  Now over to the right is Brenda showing her full sheet she created using Dina Wakely techniques.....she cut up one of her sheets to make her card swap so we all could have a piece of her art.  All in all a terrific get together with friends to enjoy each other's company and lots of good food.

fun making cards

Yesterday went to friends' house to visit, stamp and eat!  First off to
stamp.....I ended up with at least a dozen cards ready to give as thank you gift sets.  Next the table is set and set BEAUTIFULLY by our hostess......we had some delicious Italian wedding soup made by our hostess.  Plus we had delectable deserts made by a couple of us to enjoy.  Outside
the window there were flower boxes decorated for the season.  Here is a sampling of the cards I put together, oh yeah, did I mention we used one of SU Paper Pumpkin kits for our cards.

tea time

Most people have coffee breaks but me it's all about the tea and that is what I will be doing after my drive home from my get together with friends today. it's a little hard to tell from this photo but it's embossed with silver and has a circle of shimmer silver paper.  did some water coloring with the color purple.

card details:
stamps - Mark's Finest Papers and Stamps Relax a Bit
colorbox silver pigment ink - silver embossing powder
shimmery silver paper from craft store
circle dies - Spellbinder's Nestabilities

Altered mini composition books

 These are mini composition books that I stamped, and add images with those fun "weebles wobble" but don't fall down springs.  I know they have another name but for the life of me I can't remember. They are little favors for friends that I will be seeing or am seeing as you read this post.  we get together a couple times a year to stamp, eat and visit with friends.  It's a lot of fun.
details:
stamps - Starving Artiststamps  
stencils by various companies

 check out this post with an ATC that wobbles.

More on Valentines

At our luncheon we even had raspberry in our glass...now that is
elegant.  If you know me I'm not a big chocolate person...in fact if it's chocolate I can leave it but....if it's lemon I'm in!  look at that tray of lemon treats....YUM!  they were very good to eat!
Next up are a few more of our swaps I didn't show in last week's post here .  Muriel made a fun honey-pop card.  Brenda created a card with her own free hand cloud and umbrella.  Petti did a wonderful pop-up card using a SU die and also a popper from the envelope maker.  Susan is a terrific sewer so she made puffed hearts.

Hope you enjoy this look at our swaps this year at our luncheon get together with my friends.

Valentine luncheon

Earlier this week myself and some friends had a wonderful Valentine
luncheon at our friend Leslie's house.  She sets a beautiful table with all the trimmings..the food is delicious.  We had beef bourgugnon for the main dish with a delectable salad before the beef dish.  Then after that what I like to call finger deserts so you can have one of each and not feel guilty.

See all our bags lined up as we filled them with all our swaps.

After all of that, we had a valentine card swap and boy, even if I say so myself we are a talented bunch of gals.  We even had some fun with our group picture.  You never know what type or style of card/project you will receive with our swaps.  It seems each year we out do ourselves and this year is no exception.  I will show a few pictures here and remember you can click on any of the pictures to see a bigger view. Maybe next week I'm show some more pictures.  Hope you enjoyed this viewing into our Valentine luncheon.

Try a shoebox swap

Earlier this month I got together with a few friends for our stamp club and we decided to do shoebox swaps from now on.  A shoebox swap is where you create a card and have everything inside a shoebox so everyone can recreate it.  Since this was our first one only three of us did the shoebox for the rest to create.  The fun thing is the three of us did Halloween without even consulting each

other, just worked out that way because our meeting was the beginning of October.  I used the SU owl punch, some stamping and a lot of layering, remember you can click on each pic to enlarge and see who made that card.  The peek-a-boo card was designed by Petti and she used mostly SU products including the peek-a-boo die cut.  Do like that witch and mummy.  Leslie created a square card with lots of paper collage items.  You will noticed that my friends gave out envelopes with their cards but I didn't....that's me for you.  next time I'll try to remember envelopes so no one has to go home with naked envelopes.

Pumpkins!

 

It's Sunday and I hope I'm at my friend's in N.H. for our annual stamp bash....I say hope because there is going to be a hurricane on Monday so with that pending it is making my husband nervous about driving home. He had decided weeks ago to drive with me because he was bored with staying home and said he would go check out a driving trail he found online. Anyway let's just say yes, we are in N.H. and with that check out the pictures of my paper pumpkins. At our stamp get together we like to do MITI's so this is mine. The pumpkin on the left is a finished one the others are a work in progress. I think they would make good centerpieces for any table and depending on the size of the paper strips the pumpkins will turn out tall or stubby. Another factor is how tight you pull and knot the ribbon to hold it together. Hope the gals like my MITI.

Double Dutch fold

I'm a big one for doing all sorts of folds or cards that move...that's my passion besides adding layers to cards. This fold is called double dutch fold which I was first showed by a friend at our get together last April.  The instructions can be found at Splitcoaststampers website.  It's fun and easy technique.  All stamps on this card are from Celebrate Big from Mark's Finest Papers and Stamps! a Heinrich Company . 

If I'm not mistaken when we were kids and jumped rope wasn't it called double dutch when two jump ropes were involved??????

entering this in the following challenge:

1.  Mark's Finest Papers blog - different folds

2.  Rogue Redhead Designs blog - use circle, square and rectangle

3.  Moxie Fab World - gallon/quart/pint lesson

Stay awhile for tea

 This is the card I brought to stamp bash (stamp bash is an annual stamping get together) for everyone to create themselves.  We did a bunch of MITI's.  When I scan them I'll put them up here for all to see.  All images are by Stampin' Up.  I fell in love with this stamp set when I saw it and had to have it even though I have a draw full of tea images.

Check out another one of these cards here .

Happy Valentines Day!

Today is Valentines Day!  today will be spent quietly at home with my best friend, my husband but I wanted to tell you about yesterday.

Let me set the scene: it's February 13, 2012 an ordinary day except for these ladies who drove to the house on the hill in upstate New York for a quiet luncheon.  The table was set with fine china, grandma's silverware by our hostess, Petti.  The day started with everyone greeting each other and filling the red swap bags with cards and goodies and oh what treats were in those bags.  Next it's sitting around the living room with a little show and tell from our hostess petti and another called brenda.  As the day goes on we have a delicious lunch of chicken crepes with chocolate mouse and yummy cookies that our hostess stamped and gave a cookie stamping demo.  As the day goes on with all the exciting tales and cameras snapping away we have to say goodbye to a lovely time gone by.