Today it's time again for our cool new calendar projects from Taylored Expressions and I have had such a good time making my pages each month this year! The Baker's Dozen Design Team has been sharing calendar goodies and ideas with you throughout the year, and we are winding down to the last two months.

Refer over to Taylor's blog to get all the info to play along with us each month. There will be a linky at the bottom of Taylor's post and it will remain open all year, so you have the option to go back and catch up if you start playing late. For everyone who plays in 10 or more of these monthly calendar challenges in 2012, there will be a random draw for a TE prize pack valued at over $150!!! Click here to go to the TE Calendar Department and see all the goodies.

I chose to make the "Frame Your Imagination" calendar and use Cuppie as my theme! The stand for the calendar comes in raw wood and then you can paint it whatever color you choose. I painted mine kind of an antique white and then speckled some brown onto it to give it some character.

CLICK here for the calendar stand…CLICK here for the page protectors and CLICK here for the page inserts. I like this a lot because the finished pages are 6×6 and that gives a lot of room to stamp!

Well, I might be biased, but I think November is the BEST month! Oh, might be because my birthday is this month! LOL. Seriously, how cute is Cuppie out in the pumpkin patch?? I used the adorable fence die and some pretty leaves to make an Autumn scene…. 

I cut the fence out of kraft paper! Colored in my cute pumpkins and Cuppie. I cut out a few extra pumpkins to place around my calendar page.

Here are my Copic choices for this project…

Here are my supplies….

Here is our list of calendar players for today! Take a look! Thank you for coming by my blog today! And, hello to all my new subscribers! Have a fabulous day. XOXO

• Charmaine Ikach
• Sankari Wegman
• Shannon White
• Stephanie Kraft
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Wanda Guess

Wow! It's Halloween week already…and my birthday is coming up this week too! Woohoooo! Now, if I didn't have this stupid sinus-cold-congestion thing happening….life would be perfect! Ugh. Spent the weekend in the house downing Airborne and Dayquil like nobody's business. But, I did drag myself into the craft room to whip up one last Halloween project to share. It's a clean and simple card with a SUPER cute bat from Paper Smooches! I used the tree branch image from an OLD Kim Hughes set I got years ago and that set is called Landing Pad.

I combined two sentiments to make it say 'batty for you.' One of the great things about clear stamps is that you can do that with the sentiments and get them lined up perfectly.

The branch and bat were colored with my Copics. Isn't he silly??

I hope you have the best week ever! Happy Halloweeeeeeeeen! Take care everyone!  

It's time for the Baker's Dozen Studio Challenge for September!! This is our monthly opportunity for us to share what makes our stamping studios hum.  Each month we will have a fun, crafty question so we can share our favorite stamps and dies, some tips and tricks, stamping advice and more. This has been such a fun thing to do!

The challenge that Taylor gave us for October is:

Good things come in small packages!  The holiday season is upon us and between Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, and Christmas there are a ton of opportunities to create and give little treats, gifts, and party favors.  Please show us something you'll be giving this year!

For my project, I decided to make some card gifts for my girlfriends for Thanksgiving! Kind of a card and little treat/gift all in one. This Autumn I have been obsessed with the new Pumpkin Flavor Via Coffee packs from Starbucks. Have you tried this? OMG – so delicious and perfect for a cool morning. I built my treat project around giving some packets of coffee to my friends. You could put a Starbucks card in there too…and I may do just that! 

These library pockets are PERFECT for gift giving – gift cards, money, gift certificates, coffee, etc. 

I used the pretty mini leaves and cut them out of patterned papers to match my card. Can you see the gorgeous houndstooth pattern on the golden paper? 

Work in progress….

Here's a good tip for you! I wanted to use the Banner Day Die for my sentiment, but the sentiment is straight. Hmmmm…what to do? Well, I used the pattern for the die (comes with it) and mounted my sentiment onto it in a curve! It worked! LOL. 

Here area all my building blocks for this fun treat project….

Here's a close up of the Houndstooth Impression Plate pattern. LOVE. 

Here is the object of my obsession…

And last but not least, the inside of my Thanksgiving treat card…

You can find all the supplies in the Taylored Expressions Store! Here are photos of all the dies and stamp sets I used. Yup, I love Autumn!  

Here are all the links for the rest of the crew! I'm so excited to see all the posts for today! I hope you will hop around and have some fun with us. I just know you will find some great treat ideas for the upcoming holidays! Have a great day everybody! 

• Charmaine Ikach
• Jen Shults
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Melody Rupple
• Regina Mangum
• Sankari Wegman
• Shannon White
• Shelly Mercado
• Stephanie Kraft
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Wanda Guess
• Carolyn King – Guest Designer!

Hi Friends! Hanging out tonight in the crafty cave, getting some Halloween cards addressed and ready to mail and eating a snack. Buddy is by my side…. It's been a busy week (what week isn't anymore?) and I'm relaxing a little bit. You know that I am always looking for quick and cute treats to bring to work or share with friends… Well, tonight I'm sharing a fun treat project made with one of my go-to dies. This is one of the projects we made at my classes at Paper Garden in August. I thought you guys might like to see it too.

The die is called "Fry Box" and is from Lifestyle Crafts – it's so cute – you've probably seen it here on my blog before. This time I was going for a vintage vibe, with the gingham and an old fashioned image. AND…there's candy involved! Score! LOL. I'll be bringing these to the office on Halloween.

Totally fun, right?

Here's a side view so you can see the die shape…Two of the dies cut on one piece of cardstock perfectly. Two pieces of tape, and that's that!

The little pennants were made by punching out triangles and gluing them onto pearl pins. You can buy these pearl pins in the wedding section at the craft store, or at the sewing store. I make these all the time.  

Here's my big bucket of boxes all ready to be filled!

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you like this project. Do you make Halloween goodies? Let me know your favorite treat to make! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Hi there friends! I'm here tonight in the craft room with a post about some cards I made in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast Cancer has touched all of our lives. One of my sweet stamping friends has been fighting breast cancer for the past year and another friend at work has a sister fighting the fight also. I wanted to make some cards to send to these special gals. It's my day to post for Taylored Expressions and I found some great supplies to work with for the occasion. if any of you out there are dealing with breast cancer in your life, please accept my admiration for your courage and strength and determination. Keep on fighting. XO

I took the tall and skinny alpha set of dies and cut out the word hope…then I die cut a bunch of Curly Dies in a slightly darker shade of pink….

I thought that these Curly Die pieces looked like a bunch of pink ribbons all hooked together! What do you think? Can you visualize that?

Here is the inside of the cards….

My supplies….

I cut out two of the Stacklets Dies in white and layered them on foam tape. I made a pretty pink ribbon and put it underneath the white layers.

Here are pictures of all the dies and stamps:

Thank you for stopping by today!
 
Wanda

Hi crafty friends! How is your week going?! I hope it's been great so far! I'm enjoying Fall crafting and the nice chill in the air that's starting to come at night… Been spending a lot of time doing Fall projects since October seems to go by in a whirl wind of activities! The hubs and I had a lovely day trip to Lake Tahoe last Saturday and we saw some Fall color up in the mountains and stopped for some apple cider on the way home. I have some pictures to share – and I'll try to get those posted soon.

Today is one of my days to post for Taylored Expressions! I made a bright, graphic Halloween card to share with you, using some of my favorite TE products. I love the way these colors are so powerful together, especially against that crisp black.

I incorporate lime green into my Halloween projects a lot. Can't seem to stay away! Here, I clear embossed my main image with lime ink. I stamped another of the images in orange and cut out just the circle part and mounted it on foam tape.  

AHHHHH- Chevrons! So graphic! LOVE this die…. I cut out a bunch of Chevron strips using the TE Chevron Dies and then played with them until I got a look I liked. At first I had white space in between them all…

I used three different Halloween stamp sets from TE for this project. The main Trick or Treat image is from Totally Tags Halloween, the bats are from the Moka Tabitha set, and the sentiment I put on the inside is from the awesome Toil and Trouble set from last year! LOVE them all!

Here are my cool chevrons all ready to go…

Here is my assistant walking through….while I'm trying to take a picture….

I just started gluing them all down and then I trimmed the paper afterwards so the edges would be nice and clean.

Here's a photo of the stamp sets and dies…

And here's the inside of my card….

Enjoy the rest of your week! Thank you so much for popping by today!

Hi friends! There is a lot going on this weekend! Happy World Card Making Day! Are you stamping today? Getting together with friends? I hope you have a great day ahead. The hubs and I are headed out to take a nice long drive and hang out together…headed up to Lake Tahoe. This past Wednesday was our wedding anniversary and it's so hectic to try to do something special during the work week. When we were dating we always used to go for long drives and talk and talk, so DH decided that's what we should do, and I can't wait! We'll take some pictures (see if we can find some Fall foliage) and have a nice dinner….Yay! The weather FINALLY turned today and it was the most glorious day.

Do you ever buy new stamping stuff and you can't wait to use it…and it sits on your desk…and you're so excited when you get to make something with it? Well, that's what happened with the things I used for today's project! I bought the new PTI pumpkin dies last month and wanted to make something cute for Fall…so here it is! A pumpkin card!

How can you go wrong with orange gingham? The sentiment stamp is from PTI also. The pretty leaves are the mini leaves dies from Taylored Expressions…It all works together so nicely!

I think these would make such nice Thanksgiving invitations or place cards for an Autumn table. I wish I had time to make a bunch more! Maybe I'll find some time here in the next few weeks….

Here's how the die comes out of your cutting machine…all in perfect sections.

The solid die folds into a card base (A2) and then you cut one more to mount your sections onto…

I used some distress ink on the edges of my sections to give more dimension. The center section was mounted onto some foam tape. At the last minute I changed my mind and made the stem brown instead of green.

Blessed…that's how I feel today!

In honor of World Card Making Day (and month), Taylored Expressions is having some very fun challenges! CLICK HERE for more details and join in on the festivities! Have a great day everyone!

Hey everyone! I'm kind of sad to see this release week come to a close! It's been a Holiday-palooza of fun things for Christmas… But I guess I'd better get back on track with my Fall crafting! LOL. I have one last card to share today. It's super clean and simple and silly and fun. Hope you like it!  Everything is available now in the TE Store…so get shopping! LOL!

I used the new mini set called Reindeer Food! It's from the Embracing Grace Collection drawn by Emily Burger. So cute! Jami concepted this one and it's a set of nine adorable reindeer images and sentiments. It's great for cards and little treats. I picked out the cute little reindeer face – because I love his hat!

I also used the papers from the Carta Bella Merry and Bright Project Pantry Kit – the light blue and green was perfect. I used this card as my opportunity to cut out the PRETTY new Snowflake Border Die too!

The little pearl for his nose is a white pearl colored red with a Copic Marker. I used my Copics for the rest of the image too. Easy-peasy card. You could make a bunch of these in no time. Sometimes less is more?!

Here's your last link list for the week! Hasn't this been so fun?!

Charmaine Ikach

Jami Sibley – DT Coordinator

Jen Shults

Jodi Collins

Karen Giron

Melody Rupple

Nancy McKinney – Illustrator

Regina Mangum

Sankari Wegman

Shannon White

Shelly Mercado

Stephanie Kraft

Taylor VanBruggen

Wanda Guess