Flowers For You!

This sweet Flower Pot Pocket card is fresh, fun, and easy to make!  I used up some leftover paper I had from a Close to My Heart paper pack.  I didn't have the punches with me to make the flowers in the tutorial, so I improvised with the Cricut cartridge - Walk in My Garden.  "Pick" the flowers out of the pot to reveal the sentiment inside with space for a personalized message too.

Check out the tutorial for this card here at Splitcoaststampers.com.   At the bottom of the instructions page is a video tutorial by Beate--she makes the best video tutorials!

Nanci and I went to CHA Summer 2010 in Rosemont, IL last Friday.  We stopped at the Splitcoaststampers booth and we met Beate! We were both thrilled to meet her--I was star-struck!   We'll post our CHA blog soon!

Our Last Retreat Spring 2010 Season

We hosted our last retreat of the Spring 2010 Season for the lovely Ludwig Ladies and friends--all novices to paper crafting!  Our weekend opened with

 a dinner featuring Creamy Pasta with Spring Vegetables and Chicken, Tomato Bread, Ceasar salad, and fresh strawberries.  The meal ended with a light dessert of lemon chiffon ice cream with a lime twist.  Save some room for our decadent late night desserts and snacks!

After dinner we jumped right into our beginner's mini-album class. We covered the basics of cutting paper and choosing adhesives. We mastered the technique of clear embossing with Versamark to create a tone on tone or watermark effect with butterfly stamps across our book cover.  Then we bound our mini-albums with the Zutter.   A short intermission occurred, so we could recharge our collective batteries with warm, oozing, chocolate lava cake a la mode!

Once our albums were bound, we designed layouts for our blank pages.  The fun continued as photos were cropped and pages were embellished with gems, ribbons, punches, and buttons.  We crafted until the birds began to chrip in the trees!

The weekend concluded with a leisurely breakfast of Creme Brulee French Toast Casserole and Baked Sausage Breakfast Casserole, yogurt parfait, and fresh fruit.  Our guests left relaxed taking their completed mini-albums home to share with friends and relatives.  We hope your craft group will spend a weekend with us this fall!

Butterfly Mini-Album Retreat Class

 This Zutter mini-album was the project for our most

recent retreat weekend at Lake View Lodge.  The Stampin' Up! DSP Cottage Wall was used with Razzleberry, Old Olive, and Orchid Oppulance cardstock and ink accents.  We used the butterfly stamp from the Sprinkles stamp with VersaMark and clear embossing powder to create the tone on tone random butterfly pattern on the top half of the Razzleberry cardstock.  The scallop border and butterfly punches and Flight of the Butterfly stampset continue our butterfly theme.  White gel pen, rhinestone and ribbon accents complete our cover design.  Additional butterfly embellishments were cut on the Cricut Expression using the Walk in My Garden cartridge.  The Round Tab punch was used to add index tags and journaling to some of the pages.

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