A Blog Called Wanda

An old fashioned hello!

2012-02-21T19:51:50-08:00

Let's talk! Today I'm sharing a card I made this weekend using a fun stamp set from Hero Arts! I only had a few more days to get an entry into the February contest! I love entering their blog contests. There's a lot of competition and it's fun to join in the mix. You don't have to have a blog to enter - they do their contests on Flickr - which is free - so I really encourage you to enter! CLICK HERE for the details on the challenge for this month. This month's theme is Friendship or Hello cards.

I love this vintage stamp set - cool old phones and a neat font...Just begs for some retro colors and buttons and such. I like combining a bunch of 'stuff' on my shabby chic cards. Here I used a scrap of the patterned paper (Picadilly by Basic Grey) and a pearl pin to make a flag. One trick for putting light colored buttons onto dark cardstock is to put the button on a tiny piece of white paper. That way the color can come through.

Here are my supplies...The pretty red toile looking paper is the back side of the stripes...perfection! I found just the right shade of aqua blue Bazzil paper to match. These colors make me think of the 50's!

Let's talk! The stamp set is called "Just Saying Hi." I love the sayings in it.

So there you have it for today! Thank you, as always, for coming by to see me! I hope you have a great day! See you soon.

A good deed story and a card...

2012-02-19T12:36:40-08:00

Hi friends! How are you? I'm hunkered down in my craft studio for the next two days...I gotta get some stuff done! That's okay with me though. Kitty is in here with me and I have some tunes going on my iPad and it's all good. The hubs is relaxing in the family room. A perfect day. I made today's card as a thank you card for a good deed that someone did for me last week. It's a nice story.

I'm sitting at my desk at work last Thursday afternoon and feeling sort of sleepy due to Excel spreadsheet overload...so I got on my iPhone and wrote a facebook post saying "I wish Starbucks delivered." That's it, forgot about it, and kept going. Well...down the hall in another department a sweet co-worker read my post on her phone and wrote me back that she would go and get us Starbucks and deliver it!!! There's a Starbucks about 3 blocks away from our office...and she needed some fresh air... SO how great is that? Technology + facebook + sweet co-worker = Starbucks delivery! What did we ever do before iPhones? Don't answer that...don't speak of it...LOL.

So here's the card I made her to say "thanks a latte" to her for going and bringing me a much needed Venti Soy Caramel Macchiato! Her favorite color is pink...

This trellis (called Tessatina) die is a brand new die from Memory Box for Spring...I am in love! It looks very nice and crisp against this pink. This quatrefoil pattern is without a doubt my favorite new stamping 'thing' and it's popping up everywhere. Hero Arts has a new stamp (Studio Calico) with this pattern coming out soon. I saw it at CHA. YUM.

Here are my supplies...The stamp set is from Amuse Studio and I cannot remember (sorry) where I got this pretty washi tape. I put a touch of Stickles on the little steam clouds. Two Copics is all. R81 was a perfect match for this Bazzill paper.

This is what I put on the inside of the card....

This past week I got five new email subscribers! That puts me at 225 peeps who are kind enough to let me pop them an email when I post something new! This is very very touching to me and I'm really glad you're here sharing with me. Thank you! Have a great day everybody. :-)

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Sunflower Happy Birthday! TESC #152!

2012-02-17T00:01:00-08:00

WOOO HOOO! It's Friday! Hope it was a great week for all of you and that fun times are ahead for the weekend! I have Monday off for President's Day so it's a three day weekend for me. I have plans for brunch with a gal pal tomorrow and then I need to stamp like a crazy woman to get my projects all done! Thanks for coming by today. It's my day to post for Taylored Expressions so I used the awesome sketch from TESC #152! You still have time to enter your card for the sketch challenge....and you could win a prize! CLICK HERE for details!

I made sort of a shabby-country-chic sort of creation! I used new papers from My Mind's Eye and a Fall stamp set and a pretty shade of golden yellow. I'll put my supply list at the bottom of the post.

Here is the sketch image. I flipped it up on it's side since I wanted to use the oval the long way to fit my image better. COOOOOL sketch...it's a keeper!

Here is a photo of my supplies...I used the "Thankful" set - which is traditionally for Fall! You can get more use out of your sets if you try to see them in a different light. The apples could be for a teacher card too and I love the sentiments with that set. I used the Happy Birthday words from the "Embrace Beauty" set because I like that font.

Here is my card before the focal image. I sanded the brown paper and the gold paper to make it softer and more shabby-licious! hee hee.

Here is my Copic Palette...

Supplies - all from Taylored Expressions:

Thankful Stamp Set

Embrace Beauty Stamp Set

Medium scallop die

Copic Markers

MME - Be Amazing 6x6 paper pad

I hope you have a most fabulous day friends!

Happy Valentine's Day 2012! XOXOXO!

2012-02-14T00:02:00-08:00

Whew....I have a lot to share today! I had a super fun, busy weekend full of friends and laughter and food and crafting and pictures and oooh boy. I needed to go back to work to rest up! Hahaha. Happy Heart Day to you and your family. It's Valentine's Day! I'm sorry it's here because I feel like I was just getting in my crafty groove with hearts and stuff. I put all the Valentine crafty things away last night...until next year. I have one last card to share with you for the holiday.

As you probably know...I love banners! I'm crazy about 'em actually. Love them on cakes, and cards and hanging up for a party and all that. I even have a Pinterest Board called Banner Madness (click here). I wanted to make a pretty red and cream banner card so I got out some supplies and went to town with it! This card is definitely "more is more!"

Each little banner is different, but they are all unified by using the same papers, hearts, and butterflies. I adore crisp, bright red with cream.

Before I started, I went around the craft room and got out all kinds of yummy things I thought would go together. The pennants were cut from a Papertrey Ink die set and the hearts are also a Papertrey Ink die set. The butterflies were punched from Martha Stewart punches. The beautiful lace ribbon is from my sweet pen pal Holly in The Netherlands! I had to pretty much tear the whole room apart to find those teeny tiny clothespins!!!

This is the process of laying everything out first to see what looked best...before gluing it all together. I decided to layer two colors on each pennant.

Here they are all strung on a pretty piece of lace. I inked the edges of everything with linen distress ink just to make it look more vintage.

I busted out the sewing machine and made a free form edge around the cream paper. The message was stamped in brown ink.

Now, somewhere along in the process, Mr. Buddy decided to hop onto my stamping table and have a look...and he liked this one the best! Bad kitty!

Friday night my friend CJ met me at Paper Garden to take a class from the fabulous Ms. Julie Ebersole! CJ is an amazing baker/cake decorator. She brought me the most adorable (and delicious) little box of truffles she made! Aren't the pretty? They tasted so goooooooood!

In class, we made five fun fold cards. I think this idea was my favorite. The card lays flat for mailing but then pops up into a little diorama. SO cute! I will be making some more of these - I have some ideas in my head already. Thanks for a great class Julie!

Saturday I spent the day with some of my stamping gal pals....all day....eating yummy food and stamping and laughing and being silly and carefree! Sunday the hubs and I decided to do our Valentine's Day celebrating. It's too hard to go out on a Tuesday night with the crowds and such...so we just did it a little early. First we went for a nice long drive in the car just to relax and snap some pics. Then we went for a tasty dinner at PF Chang's! Had great service and a wonderful time. Made it home in time to watch the Grammys. It was a perfect weekend!

Some of you might know that I LOVE my iPhone. No, I mean like I REALLY love my iPhone! hahaha. I have about 20 photography apps and like to try different things with my phone photos. One of my favorite apps is Instagram. I like the different filters and effects and I like the fact that you can "follow" people's feeds and and share your pix. You can CLICK HERE to see my Instagram stuff. I thought I would share some of my favorite photos from Sunday's drive.

One last picture...our daffodils have started blooming in our front yard! They are so fresh and bright and perfect right when they bloom. Makes me happy!!! Okay, that's enough of my yammering on for one day.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

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A cheery cherry valentine...and a CHA video!

2012-02-03T20:50:57-08:00

Hello! I'm so excited to actually be home and posting from my computer and hanging out in my craft room tonight! Whew...what a week! It was so great...all of it. I'm still trying to process and remember everything. I had more fun than a girl should be allowed to have at the CHA convention! Thanks for all the nice comments on my posts from my iPhone. It was great to share with you! Now, it's back to reality for me and lots of stamping assignments to get done! Valentine's Day is less than two weeks away! ACK! I need to get busy in that department.

I have a valentine card to share with you, but first, I have a video to share! You know how the DH is really into making videos? Well...I gave him my CHA photos and he made one for me! I hope you will watch it!

What did you think of the video!? TOOOO much fun! I love that he knows how to do that stuff. You might say he's the audio/video department here at A Blog Called Wanda! Okay...now on to my Valentine for the day... One trend I absolutely notice lately is CAS cards. Everyone's going there! I have a new board on my Pinterest just for CAS beauties. Being inspired, I decided to keep it clean and simple today...and use one of my favorite tools.

I am in love with my Epiphany shape studio tools!! This one is a small heart. At CHA they premiered two new shapes - a flower and a tiny banner! Yipppppeeeee! Those on on my list for sure. Here is my stash of supplies for this project.

This stamp is an old favorite from Hero Arts. I inked up just the stems, and not the cherries. The scale was perfect for those hearts!

I colored the leaves in with my Copics (YG23, YG25 and YG17). The large heart shape is cut from a new die from Memory Box called Cupid Heart. The sentiment is a new one this season from Savvy Stamps. I stamped it on a strip of vellum.

Thank you so much for coming by today! The Taylored Expressions release for February was pushed back a couple of week since Taylor was at CHA. So, be on the lookout for new yummies from Taylor at the end of next week. You will love a new style she's trying out this month. Have a fantastic weekend!

CHA Goodie Boxes!

2012-02-01T08:00:00-08:00

Hi peeps! Today I'm posting a super fun project that I've been saving to show you! I'm typing this before leaving for the convention...and when you read this, I will most likely be in my car somewhere on I-5 on the way home from LA. Since I was going to meet the Taylored Expressions Baker's Dozen crew I wanted to make them something special. I made cute goodie boxes to leave at their hotels as a little check-in surprise! I was cooking up this idea for weeks and it was hard to keep a secret.

I used tons of my favorite Taylored Expressions Cuppie stamp sets and lots of sparkly glitter. I hope you enjoy looking at this project. There are lots of pictures in this post!

Here they are all ready to get loaded into the car:

Here's a close up of my coloring before I put any glittery parts on....

I used images and saying from all of these stamp sets. I kept the palette simple - pink, aqua and black. This let me play with a lot of images but still have a clean look.

Look at all those little candies....so cute!

Here they are all spark-a-lay!

I made little matching notecards to go inside the boxes. To make my mini cards (about 3.5 inch square) I used my Cuttlebug and a large scallop square Nestie. I love making little scallop cards like this. Somehow they seem more fun!?

Here is my little stack of cards ready to go!

This is what I put inside for the gals....

Okay, these little cupcakes are the cutest thing ever! I found them at Bed, Bath and Beyond! They are meant to be little single cupcake holders....but I filled them with candy. Then the gals can use them later.

I printed the names out on my computer onto thick cardstock....

This is the back and side view....

Thanks for coming by today to check out my project! I hope you do something creative every day! Have a wonderful day....see you soon!

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