It’s my grandnephew Evan’s birthday soon and even though I haven’t bought him a gift yet I knew that I would probably need a gift bag. I had some plain white gift bags in my stash so I grabbed my stamps and some paper and started creating.

Here is the finished bag.

I used the Mini Pennants collection to make the cute banner at the top. I just stamped right onto patterned paper. I also used the Royal Flush alpha set to personalize the bag with Evans name.

I also used the Small Greetings collection to give the bag that added special touch! This set can be used for so many things!

I love that I didn’t run out and buy a gift bag. This one is definitely so much more special!

by Agata Pfister

by Els Brigé

by Isolde Pyncket

by Jaine Drake

by Janet Zeppa

by Jolene Johnston

by Marsha Valk

See you on Monday for the exciting announcement of our latest round of Design Team members. Have a great weekend!

This calendar is also supposed to help me remember people dear to my heart to whom I’d love to wish birthday wishes. So I’ve printed their names and dates on copy paper, cut it in stripes and adhered over some stamped images along with one small picture of one of the birthday persons. Here, obviously, it’s my daughter! Along with snow flakes from Let it Snow! set.

Next up is my son. The other day, my kids were playing with my inks and stamped with pads directly on paper. Then my son doodled something over the squares and it looked gorgeous! So I took his idea, stamped colors from his tee and stamped also some robots from Programmed Robots set! Frankly, after I did this page I didn’t want to move forward unless making all other pages with the same technique! Finally, I overcame this tentation but not entirely. To be continued…

For the April page I was inspired by the proverb “April showers bring May flowers”. And clear embossed a cloud from Wishing you Sunshine set and then colored rain drops with markers in rainbow colors. Stamping Cherry Blossoms from the new set was a breeze and a pleasure!

My birthday is in May and I even have a not very old picture of myself with my daughter! It was a nice occasion to print it! And since it’s quite rare, I used the camera from Snapshot set to underline this fact!

Another page without any picture! And with only one birthday date!!! I’ve added a simple but nice stamping technique: first, I’ve stamped some flowers from Abundant Blossoms in white, let them dry and second I’ve overstamped with butterflies from Colorful Companions set. The flowers are gently peeking from under butterflies, here’s a detail shot:

Next up is the July page with my nephew’s picture. I used the stamp from Road Trip set – this sweet boy and his family will be going away soon after plus it’s the usual vacation month. So this “bon voyage” stamp was very “à propos”!

In August, in Switzerland we’re celebrating our country’s foundation day, there are always tons of fireworks! Hence the stars (Back to the Basics set) in all the colors of the rainbow! And my favorite technique of the moment – multi color heat embossing!

September is the back-to-school month by definition so I’ve stamped the whole alphabet from Summer Alpha set after first aligning each and every letter on my cutting mat. I liked the effect so much that I’ve stamped the alphabet on copy paper for my kids to play with. Some more ideas are coming…

We’re skipping one month and going straight to November. In Polish, my mother-tongue, it means literally “falling leaves”. So here they are (from Floating Leaves set), white embossed and stamped over with ink pads directly to paper! I told you I liked it!

A little close up for you to appreciate the look! After stamping with pads, I’ve smeared ink with my fingers which made those leaves pop a bit more.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this “trash-to-treasure” post and understand now why I’m sort of proud of saving us some money on buying another DIY calendar. But I might spend some more for next year! Yes, stamping is dangerous so beware!

Happy stamping,

I hope the weather at your place is much better than the weather here in Belgium. It has been raining cats and dogs the whole day. I don’t mind if it rains when I’m at home to create but I had to work, grrr. Oh well, now I’m at home and I’m ready to start playing with some scrapping goodies. When I’m creating, I don’t like to be disturbed because I hate it when I need to finish something the next day. I made a door hanger to let my hubby know that I’m creating, hahaha.

I used the Friday Night Stencil

, Funky Flowers and Striped Stems

Have fun creating

I love the new myStampBOX stamp set Lovely Houses! These little houses are perfect for cards and scrapbook pages, but I thought it would be fun to try one on some fabric first.

I stamped the image on a couple of scrap pieces of fabric. Parts of the images were then cut out and sewn on top of each other with a sewing machine and by hand with some embroidery floss. I finished it off with an eyelet and a piece of string.

Did you get your hands on one of the new stamp designs yet? We would love to see what you create with them! Link up in the comments below!

Have a wonderful day!

One of the best times of the year is the time leading up to Christmas, when we get to light candles, bake cookies and keep many secrets. As a kid I always have had an advent calendar, made by my grandmother. It was mostly filled with sweets.

Our boys still enjoy their calendars and don’t seem to outgrow them. For this advent I made a family calendar which will be hanging in the kitchen. For every day between today and December 24th, we will be adding one mini ornament to the Christmas tree, until it is fully decorated.

For the tree I chose different colour card stock, cut it into organic shapes and assembled the tree. I stamped it with zipper and zigzag stamps from “Repeat after Me” in brown, then smeared brown and green inks and white acrylic paint all over the tree. I punched 24 holes and added 24 gold brads which will be holding the ornaments.

The background was cut from a piece of gardening burlap and stamped with white snowflakes (“Let it Snow”) and acrylic paint. I added green and white acrylic paints and the word “advent” at the bottom.

For the ornaments I chose a selection of our Christmas stamps from several stamp sets and used brown ink on shrink plastic. The images were cut out, hole punched and shrunk. A small wire was added and they were ready to be hung!

The whole project took about 3 hours from start to finish.

Come and see the fully decorated tree on December 24th on our blog!

Until then enjoy our 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS projects coming up in the next days! We will have some very decorative and festive ideas in stock for you!

Happy Stamping,

Love,

She cut out the paper to the right size to cover up the cup (with a light curve) then stamped the grass on the paper by slightly “curving” the grass stamp. She stamped the grass twice with Memento Inks, each time using a different shade of green. Weiwei added the stalks, flowers, and dragonflies. To add interest, she used stickles to create bling. The paper was glued onto the cup and the cup was ready to hold office supplies!

I challenge you to make your own cover to re-use an old packaging!

Thanks for having me over to play at myStamp BOX! I had a great time working with the “Funky Flowers” set! Weiwei

Happy Stamping!

Stamps used:  Repeat After Me, Rustic Outlines

This project was so quick and easy!  I removed the clipboard hardware and traced the shape onto my patterned papers.  I then cut them out and attached them, using watered down glue.

I stamped around the edge using Distress Ink and one of my favourites stamps from the Repeat After Me set – the straight stitch.  I stamped the letters onto pattered paper and fussy cut.  Cardstock stickers were matted to help them pop.  I finished off by wrapping twine around it several times and tied a bow!

And then I had to attach this adorable photo that my father-in-law took of my husband when he was just eight or nine months old.  So cute!

Thanks for looking!

Sometimes you just need to create for the sake of creating. I have an art journal that I use for this purpose, but I haven’t cracked it open for quite some time now. I was really beginning to feel a need to play with inks, paints and Glimmer Mists, so I decided that it would be fun to try a few mixed media techniques on canvas.

Here’s a step by step-tutorial of how I created my canvas:

Start with an 8 x 8″ canvas. Mine had paint on it already, but as you can see, I covered it completely by painting the sides with pinkish Ecoline and by adhering random pieces of old dictionary pages to the front of the canvas with gel medium:

Once the gel medium is (almost) dry, grab a few vibrant colours of Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (I used Pink Bubblegum, Cosmos, Pumpkin Pie and Mustard Seed) and spray the whole surface with it:

Set the canvas aside to dry. You can speed up the drying process with a heat gun, but I let the puddles of Mist dry overnight before I got on to the next step.

Use the myStamp BOX Border Lines set to create the word ‘LOVE’ on a piece of cardboard. Use the corner shape for the ‘L’, the heart for the ‘O’, manipulate the corner shape to form the ‘V’ and then take the same shape to create the ‘E’, by covering parts of with masking tape. Make all of the letters approximately the same hight as the heart:

Use a black pen to tidy up the parts where the letters were elongated:

Cut out the letters and colour them with Ranger Distress Ink Broken China. Emboss them with clear embossing powder:

Stamp another heart. Cover the open heart with Ranger Distress, like the other letters and spray the closed one with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist Dragonfly and Chalkboard Peacock. Coat it with Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam Chandelier. Adhere the two hearts together with foam squares:

Time to tackle the canvas again:

Stamp on the canvas. I used the following sets: myStamp BOX Graphic Borders, Colorful Companions, Itty Bittys and Abundant Blossoms.

Spruce up some chipboard buttons (these are from Graphic 45) with Glimmer Mist and Glimmer Glam and adhere them to the canvas with gel medium:

Grab a piece of heavy cardstock and stamp it with the word ‘YOU’ using the myStamp BOX Blueberry Alphabet. Colour the cardstock letters with Ranger Distress Ink Crushed Olive:

Adhere all the letters to the canvas with foam squares. Take the tiny flowers from the myStamp BOX Funky Flowers set and stamp a few of them here and there. Splatter a little bit of Glimmer Mist and as a final touch ink the corners of the canvas with teal ink:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you feel inspired to create a canvas of your own, please link it up in the comments below. We would love to see it!

It’s me again, Isolde! This is my second post for this wonderful blog. It’s Project Day so I wanted to show you a layout I made last weekend. My bf and I love to take the car on a Sunday evening and drive to the coast for a long walk. We live about 40 min. away from the sea. It’s so relaxing to walk there and here the sound of the sea. We don’t love big crowds of people so we always go in the evening.

I used several stamp sets for this layout. For the title I used Summer Alpha. The phrase ’special day’ and the little hearts are from Itty Bittys and the pennants are from Mini Pennants

Love

<

Here’s the outgoing wall-hanging mailbox that she found. As we say in the altering world, it had “good bones” and a great structure for this project.

I recovered the back of the box and the front pocket using papers that match the other new items in her office. A simple stamped “MAIL” using my very favorite myStampBOX alphabet, Royal Flush, was the bold and simple choice for the front. A final strip of ribbon on the top edge of the front pocket helps break up the patterns that coordinate without being too matchy-matchy.

I was able to stamp directly on the striped ribbon using StazOn ink and the swirled leaf from He Loves Me. I love the extra little detail it adds in an unexpected place. I hope you get a chance to upscale something for your home or office decor using stamping!

myStampBOX stamps: Royal Flush, He Loves Me; StazOn ink; Autumn Leaves papers; Mod Podge; Nestabilities die; Sizzix Big Kick; Bazzill cardstock; Basic Grey Precision Files; unknown ribbon.

For the bigger frame I chose to work on some kraft cardstock. The grey robots were stamped with chalk ink, the blue ones with acrylic paint to make them pop. I first drew some guidelines on my paper to be able to allign them, which I erased after I was done.

The smaller frame features all four robots in lime green.

A clean and simple, but fast and easy way to decorate a room.

Today I’m going to show you a quick way to reuse a fun packaging product in your everyday life.

My 6 year old son, Spencer, just lost his very first baby tooth and I promised him I would make him a fun way to present the Tooth Fairy his tooth so I grabbed one of the Maya Road packages like the one’s shown below and set off in making something fun for him to present his tooth to the Tooth Fairy.

I decided to use the plastic slip off front on the front of a card.

Dear Tooth Fairy

Stamps used: Wishing You Sunshine, Graphic Borders, Mini Pennants and Deck the Halls

As you can see below, I designed the plastic piece to slide off the front of the card so you can not only put your tooth in the box but reuse for the next tooth!

To finish off the card, I decorated the inside too!  I figured he could leave a sticky note for the Tooth Fairy so the inside can be used again and again.

So I challenge you today to come up with a fun project where you reuse or re-purpose a piece of packaging from your crafty stash.  It may be a simple as reusing a piece of plastic backing, a piece of the package backing or even some of the cardboard that your supplies get delivered in.

Good luck!  I can’t wait to see what you creating using some recycled packaging!

Wishing You Sunshine Stamp (myStamp BOX)

Graphic Borders Stamp (myStamp BOX)

Deck the Halls Stamp (myStamp BOX)

Mini Pennants Stamps (myStamp BOX)

I used a combination of orange and watermelon ink to stamp flowers from the Bits and Pieces stamp set around my daughter’s soup thermos.

Next I used the Colourful Companions stamp set, combined with cool words from the Whatever set to decorate the lid of her sandwich container.  I stamped only the top half of one of the butterflies, and used lilac and ocean ink to stamp the “hip hip hooray” logo.

I then used the Border Lines stamp set and white ink to stamp on the lid of a little snack container. 

Lastly, a school lunch is not complete without juice, complete with a stamped banner that gives “hugz” to your little one at school.  I used Bits and Pieces & the Whatever stamp sets.

Hope everyone has another GREAT year at school. 

Keep up the great work & keep stamping.

So, I’m a HUGE fan of mini books and with the stash of mSB stamps, seriously just amazingggg coolness, I decided to create up this mini, “Our Love Soars”.  I wanted to go outside the normal colors of pink for loveeeee and went with a play on different colors with red & blue.

Beware:  Photo heavy….since I’ll show you how I worked the different mSB stamps inside along with all the fun fun details & pages throughout this mini.  I usually work lots of stamps in my minis’.  I LOADED this mini up with a big dose of mSB eye candy!!!

A tidbit about this book….My boyfriend, Gianluca, & I have been together for a little over a year.  He’s Sicilian and lives still in Italy (Turin, Italy).  “Our Love Soars” across the distance of 2 continents, across that big ocean of the Atlantic, 2 different languages, many flights, many long hours on those flights, many miles (or kilometers)…yet it’s all worth it, he’s so worth it. “Our Love Soars” in bringing us together in many parallels.

One of my favoriteeeee mSB sets, Bold Blocks, used here in the phrase,“Who is that?”

Using the mSB, Color Me Sentiments, here in “hello hello”.

A couple of different mSB sets used on this page, Symbols (heart),

{yeahhh, I think I was singing the Black Eyed Peas when I made this )}

Yes, many many miles for love!

But the phrase “crazy stuff” from mSB Bold Blocks was just perfect because he’s like a child with a new toy when getting a new comic book! )

This is quite a common play on words between Gianluca & myself…it’s the norm ))

Soooo…hope you enjoyed my mini & inspiration!!

Now, I (Marsha) also had a song to inspire me. You know: the kind of song that you hear on the radio and then stays with you all day or (in this case) all week? When I was thinking of our theme ‘Baby, Be Mine’, I had the Bob Marley song ‘Is this Love’ stuck in my head. I had to take it as a sign and started to create my project around it!

I created my funky fabric flowers using the myStamp BOX Funky Flowers set to stamp on denim with StazOn inks. I then cut the stamped flowers and leaves out and machine stitched them onto hand-cut pieces of felt. I used cardstock and another piece of felt to create the grass. The flower stems are stamped directly onto the photo mat.

I took the glass from the shadow box frame (Ribba from IKEA) and stamped part of the lyrics on the outside of the glass with myStamp BOX Mini Alpha using StazOn inks. I used the same inks to stamp the swirl from the Funky Flowers set onto the inside of the glass.

The photo I placed in the frame is one of my favorites that I took during a (table top) photography class. It features two figurines that have been in my possession since childhood!

So… we hope you enjoyed our projects & inspiration!
Grab up some mSB stamps & create it up!!

Supply List for Wendy’s mini:

mSB Stamps –
Bold Blocks
Color Me Sentiments
Symbols
Friday Night Stencil
Programmed Robots
Repeat After Me
Seal It
Road Trip
Sigh Gush Gasp

Other -
Cardstock – Recollections (Ocean Blue), Paper – My Mind’s Eye (Stella Rose), October Afternoon (Rocket Age), Fancy Pants Designs (It’s the Little Things), Cosmo Cricket (Odds&Ends), American Crafts (Amy Tangerine), 4×6 Chipboard Covers – Creative Imaginations (Bare Elements), Glue & Seal (Ranger) – Matte, Inks – Ranger (Broken China, Fired Brick), Binder Rings –  7 Gypsies, Color Wash Mist – Ranger (Adirondack – Red Pepper), Smooch Spritz – Clearsnap (Vanilla Shimmer, Ginger Ale), Color Mist – Studio Calico (Mister Huey – Calico White, Bonny Blue), Glimmer Mist – Tattered Angels (Olive Vine, Pattina), Glitter Heart Metal Stickers – Making Memories, Wood Heart – Studio Calico, Brads – Making Memories, Tapes – Tim Holtz, K&Co (Smash), American Crafts (Amy Tangerine), Rub-ons – 7 Gypsies, October Afternoon, Kaisercraft, Puffy Fabric Hearts – Making Memories, Heart Trinket Pins – Maya Road, Letter Stickers – Recollections, October Afternoon (Rocket Age), American Crafts (Thickers), Foam Glitter Star Stickers – Darice, Word Stickers – The Girls Paperie (Authentique), Label Stickers – Jenni Bowlin, Pearls & Bling – Basic Grey, Kaisercraft, Dimensional Stickers – American Crafts (Amy Tangerine).

Ally and I have created some back-to-school themed projects to share with you today!

I have a dirty little secret to share – and I’m sure many of you can relate … I HATE packing lunches!  Most of the time, my kids bring home half of what I sent with them!  So I had an idea…

We sat down and made a list of their favourite foods (Mom-approved, of course!) from four basic food groups:  Grains, Protein, Dairy and Fruits/Vegetables.  Once we had about 8-10 items in each category (or more or less, if your children are more/less fussy than mine), I sat down and created this:

It’s a menu planner!  So, how does it work, you ask?

Well, when you were younger, did you ever have one of those books where each page was cut into three or four sections and you could mix and match the girl’s clothes and shoes?  Same idea!  The album, made from 6×6 pieces of chipboard, was decorated using patterned paper, cardstock and of course, myStamp BOX stamps, Funky Circles and Lots of Dots Alphas.  I then printed all of the foods from our list onto cardstock and trimmed them to 1.5″ x 6″.  A small strip of patterned paper, a stamp of colour and a quick punch with my Crop-o-dile, and voila!

Each child plans their lunch by mixing and matching the cards, ensuring a well-balanced lunch that they will eat, because they are in control of the situation!  I will also add some milk or water, and a small treat or extra snack to round out the lunch!

To add a little sunshine to their day, I created a little envelope from kraft paper and attached it to the inside cover:

Inside, I tucked teeny note cards that I created, using the Seal It and Itty Bittys stamp sets.

I will slip one into each of their lunches every day, to remind them how much I love them!

And here’s Ally…

Hello!  In order to get ready for a new grade, I thought I’d better complete a layout about my son’s first and last day of Kindergarten from last year so that’s what I did.  The journaling boxes from the “Your Story” stamp set worked perfectly to journal the details of each of my photos.

Stamp Sets Used:  Letterboxes, Mini Alpha, Fleurishing Punctuation, Your Story, Neighborhoods, & Mini Pennants

Thanks for visiting – and Happy Back-To-School!

and

As summer slowly winds down, I love to look back on all the fun things we’ve done during the summer.  One of my most favourite summer activities for me and my family includes camping!  So I thought I share a layout featuring photos from my son’s “birthday” camping trip from July of this year.

The Rules of Camping

Stamp sets used: Tall Outlines, Itty Bittys, Review Time, Rough Copy Alphabet, Repeat After Me

Some of the fun ways I used my stamps includes my title work.  I first stamped my “RULES” title using the “Tall Outlines” alphabets set, making sure to overlap my alphabets (I love this look! Makes it easier to cut out too!) and then I took the “wood grain” stamp from the “Itty Bittys” set and stamped all over my title.  I used the “Rough Copy Alphabets” set for the remainder of my title!  I added some fun shading using some Copics to my title.

I hope you too have having a great last week of August as September is just around the corner!

Happy stamping!

We have a variety of themes and projects for you, hope you are truly inspired

by Rebecca Keppel

by Allison Cope

by Agata Pfister

by Jaine Drake

by Janet Zeppa (we will feature the whole album later this month)

by Jolene Johnston

Then I included two of them in this layout:

Obviously I went very simple because I wanted to decorate with die cuts, but the sky is the limit with this idea–stamp in a rainbow of colors and even add small images to your journaling blocks. The best part about this idea for me is that I am encouraged to use my own handwriting on my layouts AND I have a space to corral my handwriting so it doesn’t look messy or haphazard. If you’ve been using Bold Blocks to make journaling tags I would love to see!

Rebecca

When I removed the original flowers it tore the paper underneath, so part of my job was not only adding new decorations but covering up the imperfections made in the process. I started by covering the corners of the letter with coordinating paper and inking around the entire letter.

I chose the smallest flower in the Abundant Blossoms set of myStampBOX stamps and multicolor-inked with shades of pink and red. By stamping a trail of flowers across the entire letter, I was able to create a bit of movement in an otherwise-blocky letter. Each flower was enhanced with a pearl or rhinestone center.

The original design for this letter had a cluster of flowers in the upper right corner, and since most of the damage happened when removing it I had to be sure to cover it fully. I started with a paper flower enhanced with a little Stickles. I stamped a larger flower with Abundant Blossoms also inked with pink and red. I took a small flower (the same as the “trail” created across the letter) and punched it out with a tiny punch to create the flower center. A pearl and more Stickles completed this special flower. I layered it with another paper flower and my favorite leaf from the Floating Leaves set of stamps. Together they have enough texture, sparkle, and interest to make little “M” (and her mama) proud!

Supplies: Abundant Blossoms and Floating Leaves stamps by myStampBOX; Ranger Distress Ink; Cleasnap Vivid! Ink; Clearsnap Colorbox Fluid Chalk Ink; Bazzill flower; Prima flower; Ranger Stickles; Basic Grey pearls; Studio G rhinestones; DCWV paper; American Crafts cardstock.