I have moved my blog!

I have been working on getting a new blog set up in Typepad. You can visit me here.
My new address is http://myhappyplace.typepad.com. I have been real nervous to switch sites because I have had to learn a new software but I think I'm ready to take the leap! I hope you'll join me there!

Bear Hugs

I just love this bear from Under the Stars. He looks like he's going to attack you with a great big bear hug!

Recipe:
Stamps: Hugs and wishes, under the stars
Ink: Jetblack stazon, chocolate chip
Paper: Riding Hood Red, Kraft, Washington Apple designer paper

I've got another card made with this set I was playing with last night. I got to photograph it and edit it and I will post it tomorrow. It's a beautiful fall day here in Minnesota. Have a great day wherever you are!

Snow Flurries

This was my card for the recipe challenge design team this week. The challenge was to use felt, stickles or glitter, and an office supply. The snowflake from felt flurries is the felt, I used glitter on the snowman and the office supply is the paperclip on the edge of the main image.

Recipe: Stamps:Punch Pals
Ink: Jet Black Stazon, Real Red, Baja Breeze, Old Olive
Paper: Ski Slope Designer paper, Whisper White, Baja Breeze, Old Olive, Basic Black, Riding Hood Red
Other: Word Window punch, Felt Flurries, Riding Hood Red taffeta ribbon, stampin' dimensionals, designer circle brads, dazzling diamonds glitter

I have had fun creating in my craft room this week. Sam, my 8 year old came in to see what I was working on. This is the conversation:

Sam: Whatcha doin?
Me: Making cards
Sam: Is that a Christmas card?
Me: Yes
Sam: Christmas? It's not even Halloween! That's just wrong!

I wasn't about to get into the whys with him. Speaking of Halloween, it's only 2 weeks away! It lands on a Friday this year. How fun! No school or work the next day.

Thanks for stopping by!

I owlways love you

I've been wanting to play with this stamp set for awhile now. It's called Owl Together Now. You can view the whole set by going to my online ordering site here and clicking on the shop now button on the upper right corner of my demo website. I don't actually own this set...yet. I borrowed from my friend, Kristina, and stamped a bunch of images. I finally got to do something with it last night. I colored in the owls with my ink pads and blender pens. The flowers are from the 3 for you punch and the middles are 1/4" circle punch with crystal effects layered on them.

Recipe:
Stamps: Owl Together Now
Paper: Old Olive, Whisper White, Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chip monochromatic designer paper
Ink: Jet black stazon, creamy caramel, close to cocoa, more mustard, summer sun, old olive, garden green, chocolate chip
Other: 3 for you flower punch, 1/4" circle punch, crystal effects, scallop edge punch, paper piercer

I'm off to pick up my 10 year old from a sleep over. I'll be back tomorrow with more creative projects.

Halloween Bunko Food

This was where all my creative time and energy were going earlier this week. I hosted Bunko Tuesday night and I love to go all out with fun Halloween food. I bought a couple of little booklets with Halloween food ideas. I made cookie cup cauldrons, quicksand dip with breadstick hands, monster mouths, and magic wands. I had so much making all of this fun food! I also made Halloweenies with miniature wieners with crescent roll strips wrapped around it.

I have stamping projects to share tomorrow. I'm just waiting for some natural light to take the pictures.

Merry Mr. Twigster.

I was playing around with a few ideas for a holiday swap I am in so I pulled out Mr. Twigster again. Warning: Once you purchase this little guy he's hard to stay away from. There is just somsething about this stamp set that I keep coming back to. This isn't the swap card I chose but I still like it. I used the Punches Three hostess level 1 stamp set for the greeting. I punched it out with the square scallop punch and then cut around actual greeting part. The snowball is from one of my favorite greeting sets called Short and Sweet. If you have been around my blog for awhile you have seen it in action many times. It comes with greetings in cursive and then little images that go with the greetings.

Recipe: Stamps: Mr. Twigster, Punches Three Level 1 hostess stamp set
Ink: Jet black Stazon, Real Red, Pumpkin Pie, Baja Blue\
Paper: Ski Slope Designer Paper, Whisper White, Basic Black, Baja Blue, Real Red
Other: 1/2" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, square scallop punch, real red brads, stampin' dimensionals, real red striped grosgrain ribbon, 2-way glue pen, dazzling diamonds glitter

The kids are off of school this whole week. We don't have any big plans. We have conferences for all 3 kids this week and I'm hosting Bunko. Other than that we're just hanging out. What do you have cookin' for this week?

Cup Card Tutorial

I have seen these "cup" cards for years but have never sat down and made one. I received a cup card in a swap at convention from Arlene Stokes. She included instructions too so I finally decided to make one myself. We made this in my card club last Monday and they loved it! I thought this would make a great tutorial for all of you to try!

The first thing I did was cut apart a plastic cup and cut a portion of it for my template. Next I smooshed down the template over cardstock vellum and traced my cup. It must be cardstock vellum and not just regular vellum because regular vellum will be too flimsy.

After I traced my pattern onto cardstock vellum I scored the sides about 1/4 inch on each long side. Then I sponged some riding hood red ink on the bottom of the cup. You may notice a different set of hands in the photos. I ran out of hands to take pictures and show the steps so my 8 year old, Sam, stepped in to help. Notice his pokemon tatoos in one of the photos.

Back to the tutorial... I placed a post-it note about 3/4" down from the top of the cup. This is to give me a nice cut off line for the ink(the beverage in the cup). I then sponged tangerine tango ink above the riding hood red ink. The ink takes a little bit to dry on the cardstock ink versus regular cardstock so be careful of smearing.

Then I put a strip of tacky strip at the very top rim of the cup. I sprinkled chunky essentials white glitter at the top. Now we're ready to attach our cup to the card.

Fold over the edges of the scored lines of the cup. Place 3 glue dots along each edge. Place the left edge of the cup down making sure to place it so there is the natural angle of the cup. Next. Adhere the second edge allowing the 3 dimensional part of the cup to pop out on the card.

That's it! Now just finish your card as desired. Pretty easy really. I used the tart and tangy set with my card. It seemed the perfect go together. I also used the Celebrate Everything greeting set. Let me know if you have any questions about this tutorial. Have a great day!

More Sizzix Projects

Here are a couple more projects Kristina and I made with our Sizzix this week. The santa and the reindeer were showed by Shelli at convention. We finally got around to making them. I colored the reindeer nose with crystal effects. Both Santa and the reindeer are made with the Stampin' Up! exclusive Sizzix pennant die. The santa's hat trim was made with a strip of whisper white cardstock and the scallop edge punch. We sponged around the white edges with sahara sand ink.

Thanks for stopping by! What are your weekend plans? We are going out to dinner with my husband's side of the family to celebrate our niece's 25th birthday at Buca. This is going to be my first time ever eating at Buca. I have always heard it's good. Then the whole family is going to take part in a Minnesota Heart study at the Univ of Minnesota on Saturday. Fun times! We get paid to do it so more stamps for me!

More fun projects!

I've been having fun cooking up monsters in my laboratory! I made these fun boxes with Kristina the other day with my Big Shot. These are a CASE from the fabulous Cambria. You can see a tutorial on her blog here. These were made with the Stampin' Up! exclusive Sizzix top note die and Stampin' Up! punches. These were so much fun to make! I feel like a kid playing with toys when I'm creating fun projects like this.

Have a great day and I'll be back tomorrow with some more fun projects!

Halloween Monster Faces

Aren't these Halloween monster cards the cutest? I CASE'd the idea for these from Gretchen Barron and from rochellee on Splitcoaststampers. I tweaked some of them again and made them my own.

I'm offering these as a mom and me class next Wednesday, Oct.15 from 1:00 to 3:00. We're off the whole week here in Minnesota so I thought this would be a fun class to do with your kids. The cost is just $10 and you can get it to go if you can't make the class. Contact me at krhopperstad@juno.com if you're interested.

Crazy Cupcakes

Good morning! This was the second card for my stamp club on Monday night. Stampin' Up! is having a sale on some of their cupcake stamp sets this month so it gave me another excuse(like I needed one!) to use my Crazy for Cupcakes stamp set. For this card I stamped on watercolor paper with jetblack stazon ink. I like to use stazon so there wont be any bleeding when coloring. I then colored the image in with Stampin' Write markers. When coloring with our markers on the watercolor paper you don't get streaking. I think I may have mentioned that before.

The greeting on the circle piece is the 1/2 circle "happy birthday to you" greeting. I found the idea to stamp it twice to make a circle from Nancy's fabulous card here! What a great tip! After coloring the image in I used my 2-way glue pen on the frosting of the cupcake and sprinkled dazzling diamonds glitter over the top. I paper pierced the So Saffron panel and the scallop circle.

This card is based on this sketch from Beate's weekend sketch challenge. Another fabulous sketch to try!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Lots of promotions

This is coming a few days late but there are lots of Stampin' Up! promotions to tell you about. First up is World Card Making Day special: World Card Making Day is a holiday for card makers around the world to celebrate the creativity of handmade cards and the personal connection that they create between friends and family (see the World Card Making Day page).

Celebrated the first Saturday in October, World Card Making Day endeavors to bring together card makers around the world at a time that is traditionally the busiest time of year for card- and gift-making.

Stampin' Up! Celebrates World Card Making Day

Stampin' Up! is excited to celebrate this holiday with you and your customers the week of October 4-11. During this week, we are offering 20 percent off Simply Sent card kits and Simply Sent Card Elements. Hurry - this special ends soon!

Next up is Stampin' Up!'s birthday promotion. October is the official month that Stampin' Up! began. 20 years ago this wonderful company opened their doors. To celebrate Stampin' Up!s birthday there is a special on some of the birthday stamp sets. Purchase $20 in regular catalog merchandise and then you pick out any or all of these stamp sets for 20 percent off! This offer only lasts through October 31.

Time is also running out on the $99 starter kits. You have until October 11 to sign up as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and get a mini starter kit for only $99! Sign up is easy - just go to my website here to sign up!

To order any of these specials you can go to my online ordering site here or contact me at krhopperstad@juno.com.

Stamp club card

This is one of the cards from stamp club last night. It is called faux(ok fake!)dry embossing. It's a pretty simple technique. There is a great tutorial for it on Lisa Somerville's blog here.

I used the Halloween Frights stamp set from the new Holiday mini. There are so many wonderful stamps, ribbons, papers, and other embellishments in this mini. This is my favorite one of all time!

Back to the card. I did the faux embossing on the Halloween images and then punched them out with my 1" circle punch and popped them up on stampin' dimensionals.

Recipe:
Stamps: Halloween Frights
Ink: Craft White, Tangerine Tango, Kiwi Kiss, More Mustard, Basic Black
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Kiwi Kiss, More Mustard, Tangerine Tango
Other: 1" circle punch, stampin' dimensionals, stamp-a-ma-jig, tangerine tango ribbon, scallop edge punch

I love my stamp club nights. This group is such a fun group of ladies. We can have fun and stamp and laugh and have a great time!

After any great party is the clean up. I left my mess from stamp club out in my basement last night. I need to go clean up because Kristina is coming over to stamp today. We're going to do some fun stuff with the Big Shot. Stay tuned.

Whooo loves you?

Whew! I had a busy weekend. I taught my Get Punchy punch class Friday night, had soccer tournaments for both boys on Saturday, went to play cards with our card group Saturday night, and prepped for stamp club on Sunday. I got my cards done for stamp club and even had a little extra time to play with some stamps I haven't touched yet. This card is made with the Love Owlways stamp set that's in the new Holiday mini. You can order from this now too! I colored in the owl with markers. There is chunky red glitter over the heart and I googly eyes too. This was based on a sketch by Lauren Meader.

After stamp club tonight I will show you the projects we are doing tonight. I don't want to spoil the surprise for my stamp clubbers in case they are taking a peek in here today.

I had a little time last night to play with my Halloween stamps. I used Tamara's sketch 57 for the layout. I used the Halloween Frights stamp set from the Holiday mini and Tasty Sweet from the big catalog. It was pretty easy straight stamping. For the greeting I inked it up with the Tango Tangerine ink pad and then went over every other letter with my Basic Black Stampin' Write marker.

Did you know the Holiday mini is now available? You can order from it now! Click here to see the mini or click on the link on the right side of my blog under Stampin' Up! links.

We had our family photo taken for our Church directory yesterday. Why is it so hard to get everyone to dress nice, comb their hair and smile? I think they came out pretty good in the end though.

I have my punch art class Friday night. There's still room if you live locally and want to come. Just shoot me an e-mail at krhopperstad@juno.com

Saturday it's all about soccer. Both of my boys have soccer tournaments. Go Burnsville Blaze! Then my dh and I will be playing cards with our every other month card club. What are your weekend plans?

Clearly Spooky!

This is my card for the recipe challenge on Tamara's sketch blog this week. I hosted the challenge this time and it was using something clear, ribbon, and something to give dimension.

I used a clear transparency over my stamped image and attached it with brads. I also used a clear button over the ghostly greetings designer paper. I used crystal effects over the image and attached the button. The funny thing is I broke my own rule and didn't use ribbon! Oops! How did I not use ribbon? It's not like I don't love it and own drawers full.

Hop on over to Tamara's blog to see what the other design team members came up with. Give it a try yourself and post your link to your project under the comments on Tamara's blog. We'd love to see what you come up with!

Christmas Ivy

I got a chance to do Beate's weekend sketch challenge again. I think that's two weeks in a row! I used three different strips of designer paper from the the Ski Slope designer paper pack that is in the holiday mini catalog. You can order from this tomorrow! Whoohoo! I sewed around the panels of dp with my real sewing machine. I don't do this very often but I love the results! The stamp is from the Holiday Trinkets stamp set in the big catalog. I love it because it's just simple stamping and the images are cute. The berries are covered with crystal effects to give them a sheen. The image is punched out with the 1 3/4" circle punch and backed with the bottom of the basket from the Sizzix Stampin' Up! exclusive baskets and blooms die cut. It fits the 1 3/4" circle perfectly!

Recipe:
Stamps: Holiday Trinkets
Ink: Old Olive, Real Red
Paper: Ski Slope designer paper, Baja Breeze, Whisper White, Old Olive
Other: Crystal Effects, Sizzix baskets and blooms die, stampin' dimensionals, sewing machine

I went to see my mom yesterday. Sunday was her 77th birthday. I don't visit her often enough. She only lives 1 1/2 hours away from me. She has 10 children, 27 grandchildren, and 3 great grandchildren. It means so much to her when her family visits her. I vow to do it more often.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!

More punch art

I saw variations of this owl floating around Splitcoaststampers. Here's my version. I sent this in as a swap card for my up-up-upline's meeting and it was on a board for a card contest there. It won first prize! Yippee! I hope this inspires you. It's made with many of Stampin' Up!'s wonderful punches.

Recipe:
Stamps: Heard from the Heart
Ink: Chocolate chip
Paper: Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze, Chocolate Chip, Creamy Caramel, Whisper White, Basic Clack, Kiwi Kiss, More Mustard, Tango Tangerine, Chocolate chip monochromatic paper pack
Other: Top note sizzix die(I love this thing!), riding hood red ribbon, boho blossom punch, silver brads, 1/4" circle punch, 1/2" circle punch, 3/4" circle punch, round tab punch, circle scallop punch, boho blossom punch

Get Punchy!

In honor of World Card Making day I am holding a Get Punchy! punch art class. These are the 5 cards we will be making. I scoured blogland and Splitcoaststampers for ideas and then tweaked them to come up with this set of 5 cards. I'm thrilled with how they turned out! Thanks for all of the inspiration. I can't remember where all of the different ideas came from but if it was you - thank you!

The class will be held on Friday, October 3. There are two sessions: 1:00-3:00 or 7:00 - 9:00 pm. Normally I would price a class like this higher but in honor of World Card making day it's for the bargain price of just $10! If you are in Twin Cities area of Minnesota and are interested in attending one of the sessions you can contact me at krhopperstad@juno.com for all of the details.

Thanks for stopping by!

Owl notebooks from Target!

I found these cute owl notebooks in the Target dollar spot. The one on the right is the original. The one on the left is my altered version. I just added some googly eyes and ribbon on the spirals. I used to not be a big fan of owls but with cute stuff like this out there they are really growing on me!

I've been especially busy lately so not a lot of time for chitchat. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Halloween stamp camp

These are the 5 projects we will be making at my Halloween stamp camp on October 12. There is a Boo Banner, Halloween mini album, test tube with test tube holder, Halloween patties with treat topper, and a Halloween card. The test tube holder is from Lisa Somerville and the idea for the halloween treats with topper came from Angie Kennedy Juda. If you are local to the Twin Cities of Minnesota and are interested in attending you can contact me at krhopperstad@juno.com for more information.

A crowd of snowmen

This card was based on Beate's WSC58. The stamp set is called Holiday Lineup. I love the group of snowmen all squished together. The paper is called Ski Slope and will be in the holiday mini and the felt snowflake is from the new holiday mini coming out Oct.1. My color combo came directly from the paper pack. That's one of the things I LOVE about Stampin' Up! It just makes it easy to coordinate everything!

Recipe:
Stamps: Holiday Lineup
Ink: Jetblack stazon, riding hood red, baja breeze, old olive, chocolate chip
Paper: Baja Breeze, Riding Hood red, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Ski Slope designer paper
Other: Little Felt Flurries, circle designer brads

It's another gorgeous day here in Minnesota. We are having a late summer I guess. Have a great Sunday!

Halloween Decor Elements

Are you a Halloween nut like me? Then you are going to want to get yourself some of the Spooky Spider Decor Elements from Stampin' Up! He comes in 3 sizes for a variety of uses. Put him on your wall, on a candy jar, on a shadow box frame, etc. This is only available through Oct.31, 2008. Contact me or your local demonstrator to order yours. You can even go on my website here and use the online ordering system. Just click on the "shop now" button in the right hand corner.

You can view the full sized flyer here.

Stampin' Up! and Country Living

Stampin' Up! and Country Living magazine are teaming up this fall to offer you a fantastic deal! Stampin' Up! is going to have a huge holiday spread in the December 2008 issue of Country Living. You wont want to miss it!

Subscribe to a year of Country Living for only $12 and get a FREE mini stamp kit! For just $1 an issue, you'll receive great craft projects, articles on collecting, makeover features, recipes and entertaining ideas-all delivered to your home each month. PLUS, Country Living will include the exclusive Stampin' Up! mini stamp kit. Use it to design note cards, menus and anything else that inspires you! Click here to subscribe.