Have a great rest of your weekend!

Hey there Friends! Happy October! I was so excited to make my first Halloween card of the season since I got to play with some fun new goodies from the Stampin'Up! Holiday Catalog.  It all started with the Cookie Cutter Builder punch and the Cookie Cutter Halloween stamp set that I used for the cute little mummy. The Spooky Fun Photopolymer Bundle gave me the spooky scene I was looking for with the pumpkins, tree and the witch!

Hi all! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I've been on a tag kick lately, and for today's share, I made tags from the Oh What Fun Tag Project Kit. These tags are so much cuter in person too! They coordinate with the Oh What Fun polymer stamp set. Here's a look at a few more close up!

Hi there, blog friends. I have finally gotten some time to stamp and play a bit more with my new Occasions and Sale-a-bration goodies!  Though, I have a confession to make. I was going through a bit of creativity block trying to come up with a card design. Do you ever get that feeling of having so many ideas in your mind that you don't know where to begin?  Top that off with being a little rusty from not crafting as frequently as I'd like to and that's exactly how I felt. I had a lot of stops and starts before I was finally able to design a card that I was excited about!

This is not a typical color palette for me, but one of my influences for this navy and reddish-pink {Night of Navy and Rose Red, to be exact} combo was because I've had France on the brain. I wanted to pay respects to the French in my own little way for the recent tragedies they experienced. So, this is where the inspiration came for the card, and I'm really pleased with how it came out.

The Butterflies Thinlits dies are so pretty, that I had lots of fun die cutting a bunch out of different colored cardstock to see how they looked!  (This diversion definitely helped in getting my creative juices flowing!) Despite their very intricate appearance of the die, these thinlits are really easy to work with.  The main tip here about die cutting with this amount of image detail is to use a layer of wax paper between the cardstock and the die and the die will easily peel right off! Now, let's take a look at the background, shall we? I love the look of those dots. I basically double stamped the dots to get the lighter shading of Rose Red.

Here's a closer look:


I love that one of the symbolic meanings of the butterfly is that it represents "new life." It makes me happy to create cards keeping that in mind :)  I'll defnitely get a lot of use for these thinlits!

Here's a list of the supplies I used for your reference.  Note that the items shown as $0.00 are Sale-a-bration items, which means that you can earn the item for free with a $50 purchase. Not bad, huh?  You can take a peek and shop at my online store if you'd like. You can also click on any of the items below to get to the store, too  :)

Hi there blog friends! Happy New Year to you!  Hope you all had a great holiday with your friends and family. It was a busy time here at the home front, but it was nice we got to spend some quality time with my brother's family who was visiting from Alabama and we also got to do a road trip to San Luis Obispo to visit my hub's sister and family.  So, as you can imagine, the days pretty much just whirled by and here we are!

Hello there friends!  Have you seen the Wondrous Wreath and framelit and coordinating photopolymer stamp set?  Well today, I've got a video share that'll show you the cool features of this framelit and stamps and give you ideas of how you can incorporate it in your holiday season of crafting! I actually used it for my Thanksgiving napkin holders, so it's definitely versatile enough to use for a lot of occasions.

Without further adieu, here's the video!


And, since today is Tuesday, that means Stampin'Up!'s got new weekly deals for you! These deals are good thru next Monday, Dec 15th while supplies last.

Hi all! Can you believe it's already September?!  Things have been pretty hectic on the home and work front for me, but in a good way.  Alas, my blog suffered as a result.  Lots of stuff going on at the Diehl household.  For the last month or so, it's been a combination of home improvement projects and general work business.  But, August was also a momentous month for our little man.  He started Pre-School!  Time has been going by quickly here, so while it may have seemed quite here on my blog, it has been quite a busy time in the background.

Now, let me share a few things:

First of all, one of the home improvements that has been a work in progress has been my craft studio. Here's a glimpse of my new storage holders from Stamp-n-Storage - I love the stamp pad holder and my new punch holder, too! They fit the Stampin' Up! stamp pads and punches perfectly.


Here's a look at the full wall:


The room just got a fresh coat of paint, too! It went from an egg shell color to this new Lemon Sorbet color, which I just love!



Here's a closer look at my framelits and embossing folder holders, too.  LOVE these!

I'm so pleased with how my stamp room is coming along.  But I'm going to have to leave you hanging for the rest.  It's still a work in progress, so stay tuned!  I'll share the rest when it's ready for showtime! :)

In the meantime, here's my little guy on his first day of school:



This is a picture of a happy moment.  He was not the biggest fan leading up to this, but as you can see behind him, he found a new fun toy....numbers and pegs that he put together, in order, from 1-10!  This is his cute little proud face.  I love him!

And lastly, here's a pic from our weekend at the beach...such a beautiful way to spend Labor Day!
The weather was gorgeous and the day was fabulous!

Happy Monday, blog friends!  Hope you guys had a great 4th of July weekend!  I had a very nice and relaxing one...though it sure did go by quick!  I've got a birthday card share today - it's the birthday card I created for my God son's Bad Piggie themed birthday party.  I knew I wanted to create a punched out piggie as soon as I found out the theme.  This was so much fun to make!  Lots of circles, as you can see.  I used the Circle Framelits along with an assortment of circle punches.  The eyes and nostrils actually came from the SU! Owl Punch.  I also used the owl "feet" for the balloon stems. That Owl punch definitely worked overtime on this card!

Here's a couple more pictures for you...
For the background, I used the Large Circles embossing folder, which is one of the NEW embossing folders in the SU Catty.  I just love these big circles!
Hope you liked this little card!  Here's the recipe for you:

{Bad Piggie BIRTHDAY FUN}!
Stamp Set: Endless Birthday Wishes
Cardstock: Lost Lagoon, Gumball Green, Tangelo Twist, Whisper White, Basic Black, Retired DSP scraps
Accessories: Large Circle Embossing folder, Circle Framelits, 3/4" circle punch, 1" circle punch, Owl Punch, Itty Bitty Shapes (retired) circle punch, Petite Pennants Builder punch,
Inks: Rich Razzleberry, Lost Lagoon

Thanks for visiting today. I wish you all a great week! By for now!

Hi all! Happy Friday! I wanted to share this cool video on one of my FAVORITE stamp sets in the new catalog - Flower Patch!  It's a photopolymer stamp set and what's great about it is it uses "two step stamping" where you layer on the stamps.  Plus, there's a coordinating framelits set where you can create layered dimensions as well. LOVE LOVE LOVE this set!  Hope you enjoy the video.

Enjoy your Friday!  Have a great weekend!

Hello blog friends! I've got a quick share today of a Birthday card I made for our friend, Liam. He had a Monster's Inc. themed party this past weekend, so I thought I'd try my hand at making a "Mike" card.  Here's another look at the card:

{Monster's Inc Birthday}
Stamps: Sans and Stripes Alphabet photopolymer set
Inks: Pacific Point
Cardstock: Pool Party, Whisper White, Gumball Green, Basic Black, Pacific Point
Accessories: Arrows Embossing Folder, Circle Card Thinlits die, retired DSP, Circle framelits, 3/4"Circle and Owl Builder (for smaller circle) punches

Thanks for stopping in.  Have a great day!