Wanted to post sooner...

... but it's been an incredibly busy week. I do technical writing for my father-in-law's business as well and I was trying to make a deadline with that, contracted a weird flu over the weekend, planned a workshop for this past Wednesday and did a lot of prepping for the full team meeting my upline, Joanne, is hosting tomorrow. So, I will have lots of great ideas to share with you in the next while - coming out of the meeting (such a great place to see creative ideas other demonstrators are cooking up) and just get my own creative juices flowing! I'll take pictures and share! I'll also share some of the things we did at the workshop this past week. But for today, let me show you my swap card for tomorrow: We only need to do cardfronts, but this card wouldn't have worked as a swap if I didn't do full-sized. This card features that gorgeous Au Chocolat 2-sided paper found in the Spring mini. The front of the card folds back about 1 1/2 inches from the right side and I stamped it with the flower outline from the Polka Dots & Paisley set in Chocolate Chip ink. I ran a length of Chocolate grosgrain near the edge and used a chocolate chip marker to make an edge of dotted faux stitching - just palying on the dots on the paper. The far right of the image is actually the right side of the inside of the card. I just wheeled the new Petals jumbo wheel up there using chocolate chip ink. The greeting is the Smile stamp from the Be Happy set stamped in Chocolate Chip ink on vanilla paper, punched out and layered on a punched Chocolate Chip circle. I did this card at a class recently and the ladies liked it so much that I thought the demonstrators I'm swapping with tomorrow will like it too - it's simple but elegant, I think. Well, since it's been so long since I posted, perhaps I'll share one more stamping idea. This one uses the Polka Dots & Paisley stamp set on a scrapbook layout. This is a total CASE (copy and share everything)of a layout my good friend and fellow demonstrator in my downline, Janet created. I loved what she did so much, that I made up the same layout. I still need to drop photos into it so I'll have to go hunting through my stash. I usually scrapbook the other way around, choosing the photos first and building around it, but this layout was one I knew I wanted in my book. So the Certainly Celery is background stamped with the flower and outline stamps in Certainly Celery. The Happy tag is made with the tag punches and features the frayed ribbon in rose and celery grosgrain, as well as some repeat stamping with the paisley stamp. The squares in the lower corner are paisley stamped and sponged on the edges. The borders on both pages are made with the Petals and Paisley 2 sided papers, along with a strip of So Saffron stamped in More Mustard with the polka dot stamp. The circle details come from the Little Pieces stamp set. The right page is background stamped in celery with the paisley stamp. The flowered paper is assymetrically cut. Here's a tip on doing that: Put your paper in the trimmer at about twice the length you would like for one page and trim. Now put the trimmer piece back in your trimmer, placing the upper right corner on the cutting line, and the lower left corner on the cutting line. Then trim. You'll have 2 assymmetric pieces, one for each page. The Round Tab punch was used to create the faux clipboard in the upper left corner, along with the spiral punch. I borrowed the spiral punch to do this, but now that I've seen how eas it is to use, I may get one for myself... the parentheses are made with the round tab punch too. Sponging, dtp, punched flowers and buttons finish the details. Thanks Janet for sharing your creativity with me - I can't wait to put my photos on here and add these to my scrapbook!