PP650 Sending Warmth

 Hello there! My name is Shawn Marie O'Connell and I'm an Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Welcome!

How are we at Monday again already!?! Boy, the weekends sure do fly by. My card today was inspired by The Paper Players. I love a good sketch to kick-start the creative juices!

The only stamping I did on this card was the sentiment, which I embossed with white embossing powder. The One Horse Open Sleigh DSP, an online exclusive, is ahhhh-mazing!!! The photos don't do it justice, truly! They are stunning! I ordered two more packs so I can use them in a class in September. Get your hands on some of this paper before it's all gone!

Loving this clean and simple layout and card! 

Thanks so much for visiting today. Have a great week!

~Shawn

FMS595 Peace and Joy

Hello there! My name is Shawn Marie O'Connell and I'm an Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator in Southeastern PA. Welcome!

I spent some time in my stamp room this afternoon working on the Freshly Made Challenges Challenge #595. 

I flipped the sketch to accommodate the curved Peace and Joy sentiment. I'm loving this Online Exclusive stamp set, So Very Merry, from Stampin' Up! 

I embossed the angel image on vellum with gold embossing powder, which was inspired by Erica Cerwin. She talked about doing this in her most recent Facebook Friday. I colored the backside of the image with Stampin' Blends. I used some retired circle dies to cut it out and mounted it onto some white card stock. I used those retired circle dies to make a frame from Azure Afternoon card stock. This allowed me to glue down the image without the card background showing through the vellum. I embossed the panel on the left with the Exposed Brick 3D embossing folder. Some gold Simply Elegant Trim tied in a double bow and some adhesive-backed sequins added the finishing touch!

I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend! My daughter, Jackie, and I visited my niece and her family yesterday. She has two adorable little ones, Cade and Avery. I'm so mad that we didn't take a single picture. UGH!! At least we made some fun memories and got to meet sweet miss Avery, who is now six months old. Time sure does fly!!

Wishing you all a fabulous week! Thanks for visiting!

~Shawn

FMS592 Sending Love & Christmas Cheer

 Hey there! Happy Saturday!!

I have Stamp Class at my house tonight. It's always a fun night making cards, and enjoying some wine and chocolate!! Tonight we are getting a head start on our Christmas cards. From February through June we make regular cards: birthday, sympathy, thank you, anniversary, congrats, thinking of you, etc. From July through November we make mostly Christmas cards and gift card holders.

The card below is one of the cards we'll be making tonight! The sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches. I've CASEd this card from Amy O'Neill.

Since this is a Christmas card, I chose to leave the leaves off. If you zoom in you can see that I didn't start blending the Azure Afternoon ink on scrap paper before moving onto the card. When you don't do this, you get heavy splotches of ink. My Azure Afternoon ink pad is especially juicy, which makes the splotches even more noticeable. I'm leaving it this way as a word of caution to the ladies tonight. A "learn from my mistakes" moment. haha! I used Masking Paper and a circle punch to mask the area for the sun while blending the Azure Afternoon sky. Then I used that same circle punch to create a mask for the Daffodil Delight sun.

I am slowly building up my Stampin' Blends collection, but didn't have what I needed for this card. The branch and bird were colored with Ohuhu alcohol ink markers purchased in a set of 120 from Amazon. Now that I'm looking at the photograph, I think I change the color of the bird. There's not enough contrast from the color of the sky.

Wishing you all a fabulous Fourth of July weekend! I'm so excited to have a four-day weekend!! Planning on getting lots of stamping done.

Thanks for visiting! Happy Birthday to this flawed, but still AMAZING, country of ours!! God Bless America!!

~Shawn