September Guest Designers

Hey, hey, it's September!! How did that happen? Well the arrival of a new month means the arrival of two new guest designers! This month we're pleased to have Andrea Vernagus and Melissa Craig. Below is more information about both of our guest designers but first we have to say good-bye to our lovely August designers, Monika Davis and Cheryl Gorka. Both of you provided us with amazing artwork this month, thank you so much!

And here's a bit more about our September designers:

My name is Andrea Vernagus and I am wife to my wonderful husband, Kevin, of almost 12 years and mother to two pretty cute kids, Elijah and Adilane. I am a stamper, scrapbooker, crafter in general, housekeeper, chef of the house, chauffeur for my children, Praise Band singer for my church, Sunday School Song Leader, photographer of my family, and landscaper. I have been stamping since around 1997 when I took a class at a local craft store with a friend and started making my own Christmas cards, but I didn't get fully addicted until I became a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator in 2002. Since then, I have enjoyed making mostly cards, but also some scrapbook pages and various other projects and teaching classes. This year I decided to leave Stampin' Up! and have enjoyed the freedom to explore different product lines and awesome stamp companies. I was a Sugar Baby for the Sweet Stop Sketch Challenge Blog for six months, have been a "Makeup Artist" for the Paper Makeup Stamps Design Team since July, actually managed to get a card published in the March/April 2010 edition of Paper Crafts (and I have one in the Jan/Feb 2011 edition coming up!). Oh and I am technically a Mechanical Engineer by trade (graduated from University of Michigan), although I traded in my HP calculator for diapers when my daughter was born, but it is hard to shake some of those engineering tendencies! Come and check out my kind of engineering on my blog.

My name is Melissa Craig, I am a child of God, first and foremost. Without Him I never would've been able to endure the trials that came my way the beginning of this year. I am a mother of three amazing children that keep me very busy. I have been a papercrafter for over 12 years now and I've loved every minute of it. I have enjoyed crafts for as long as I can remember. When I'm not busy playing with paper, markers and images, you can find me either watching cooking shows or cooking or reading. You can see more of Melissa's work on her blog.

Please join me in welcoming Andrea and Melissa to the team this month!

Christmas Wishlist

Although last week was my final week on the August Guest Diva DT, when Korin asked if I would like to participate in the sneak peeks for Christmas, I just had to say "Yes". I was able to play with the set "A Cocoa Kind of Christmas". If you love Cocoa, you are just going to love this sweet set.

I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek of Christmas! Don't forget about the blog hop tomorrow, September 1, where you will get to check out some new Christmas sets and have a chance to win some goodies.

Cheryl

The Greatest Gift

Hi there and thanks for stopping by!
This is Ceal and I am sharing a sneak peek form the upcoming release on September 1st. The name of this set is The Greatest Gift. This is the perfect name for this set because Jesus is truly the greatest gift anyone could ever receive!
We have a blog hop on the first to showcase all of the new stamps and it starts here, you will not want to miss it.

Customer Spotlight Sunday

Happy Sunday everyone! I pray that today will be a blessed day for you! Welcome to another Customer Spotlight! Today I had a hard time picking a card to share because today's customer has created so many amazing cards with our images! Say hello to Deb Vandersteeg from Little Works of Art. Works of art indeed, her cards are lovely!

The card I finally settled on was this vintage beauty created using one of our month flowers, this rose is from the June set. You can also purchase this image as a digi or as an acrylic stamp and we have flowers from every month of the year...well almost, there are still a few months left until 2011!

I adore this card and how Deb cut out the flower and popped it up on the oval. And how about her coloring skills? Stunning! I also really like the pearl and lace embellishments, just perfect for the old world look of this card.

Deb - Thanks so much for letting us share your card this week!

Season of Love

Happy Saturday!

Today I have a sneak peek of the soon-to-be released (Sept 1) Season of Love clear stamp set. Christmas is going to come so fast and I don't have any holiday cards yet... so here comes the first one. I just love the precious image, don't you?

I wanted to add dimension to my card so I used 2 of the same images. I cut out the white parts of the top image, then embossed it with Psychadelic Embossing Powder. The bottom image was sponged with yellow, orange, and red inks.

I added rhinestones in the middle of the stars. The background was embossed with a Sizzix embossing folder... I also used a Martha Stewart border punch and my trusty Spellbinders circle die. The greeting was punched out with a tag punch...

***Please note that I used the digital version of the set so I was able to resize the images.***

Thank you for visiting!

Monika

O Christmas Tree

Is it really possible that September is just around the corner, which means *gasp* that Christmas will be here in a few short months? I'm not ready! :-) I am ready, however, to craft a sweet Christmas card with this adorable stamp set, which was recently released. The name of the set is O Christmas Tree and it couldn't be any cuter! This makes me think of life in the country on a bright and crisp winter morning. You can pick up this set for only $9.00!! Now that is sweet!

I'm continuing to go to my SU! winter mini catalog for inspiration and last week I was inspired by a card that used a tag to showcase the name image. Since this stamp fit my size tag perfectly, I had to go for it! I first used a Tim Holtz technique to add color to the tag. You can find a tutorial for this technique here (in my tutorial I used one color of ink, for today's tag I used two colors). I aged the edges of my tag because...well I can't help myself! Once my tag was dry I stamped and colored my image, using Stickles on the ornaments and a white gel pen for the bunny's belly and for a few snowflakes on the ground. The card layout is fairly simple, just using a piece of designer paper in the background, a thin piece of dry embossed cardstock, and a hint of pink ribbon (I'm loving pink on Christmas cards!). The finishing piece was an antique button, from Mr. Tim. :-)

I hope you enjoy today's card and get ready....Christmas is almost here!! And don't forget about our blog hop on September 1, which we'll be showcasing lots of Christmas goodies and prizes!!

Pumpkins & Blessings

Is it fall yet?? I know the nights are starting to get cooler and the leaves are falling off the tree next door, so that's a good sign!! My card today sure puts me in a fall mood! I watercolored one of the pumpkins from the Sweet Pumpkin clear set and paired it with a saying from the new clear set Blessings and Thanks that will be released on September 1st. I just love the sayings in this set! It is definitely going to be a "go to" set for me. Don't forget that there will be sneak peeks here and there all week on both this blog and the DT blogs and that there will be a special blog hop with challenges on August 31st. You won't want to miss it!!!!

Blessings!

Tricia