Greeting Farm Birthday Card

Another stamp design company that I have absolutely fallen in love with is The Greeting Farm. This stamped image is called "Cupcake Anya." I love how super cute their "Anya" and "Ian" series is. They are also very fun to color. You can get away with using a bright scheme and they always look so adorable. Since I am a beginner at learning how to color and shade skin and hair, having wider spaces to work with help me get my lines down these stamps are great for that as well.
Whenever I get a new stamp, I rush home and can hardly contain myself to open the box then I immediately (or as soon as possible) go into my sanctuary that is my craft room and stamp my image and color it. I have days when all I want to do is color, so I stamp multiple images and then I color my heart out while watching my favorite TV show or movie. I had this stamp colored for days before I found time to mount it on a card. I love combining different styles, so I thought using my Cuttlebug (R) would add a nice touch. I was going for pink so next I added pink paper and a bow. This is how it turned out.

One of things I have a challenge with is decorating the inside of my card. I work so hard on designing the outside, but by the time I get to the inside of the card am at a loss of what to do. One thing I always try to do is put scripture in the sentiments of my cards. I do this because scripture is so much a part of my life and I want it to impact the lives of those I come in contact with. Since I didn't put scripture on the outside of the card, I knew I could add it to the inside sentiment. I am not crazy about most of my card insides, but I tried embossing a cupcake under the sentiment to add a little flair. It took several tries to emboss the cupcake because my paper kept tearing, I finally got one cupcake that looked halfway decent, here is what I came up with. 

I hope my posts bring inspiration your crafty life. I sure enjoy making things and I love sharing with whoever will pay attention.

I hope you have a lovely day, Thanks for reading.
Nikki Mudge

Stamping Bella Baby Shower Card

I started out my card making craze when I was 8. A really nice couple moved in next door and they loved having me over, I would spend almost every Saturday at their house doing whatever they were doing. Shortly after I started hanging out there, Rene got into selling Rubber Stamps. It was not uncommon for her to host a craft night every Friday with her sister and niece, me and my mom, and several other girls. We would stamp and just have a blast, it was there that I found out how much I LOVED making cards. Sadly, both my family and theirs ended up moving, but somehow I inherited a TON of Rene's stamps. Those stamps were one of the greatest gifts I've ever received, and I still use many of them to this day.
Flash forward to now, and I still love to stamp. I have gotten into my Cricut (R) Expression 2 a lot, but I still love the cards that I stamp and color. I am now working on developing my own style and flair and I love combining my stamped images and die cuts. This card was no exception to those rules.

I started with one of my favorite line of stamps from Stamping Bella (R) and then colored her with my favorite coloring tools, Prismacolor Pencils. I am by no means an expert at coloring, but I am learning. About a year ago I realized that I really needed to step up my game in coloring. After watching tutorial after tutorial I found a style that I liked and worked well for me so I just dived in and have been learning along the way.
After coloring the image, I found some paper that went well with my color theme, some of them were scraps some of them were new sheets and I layered up my pieces until I found a layout I liked. My finished project turned out like this:

It didn't turn out too bad if I do say so myself. If you want to purchase Stamping Bella Images you can check out all her designs here.

Once again, Thanks for Reading!

Nikki Mudge

Bee Not Wise Note Pad

I am always looking for different projects to try. I can spend a TON of time on Pinterest looking for inspiration. One of the boards I was following lead me to a tutorial for making these super cute note pad covers.

I rushed down to the store to pick up some note pads immediately and then whipped out my Create a Critter cartridge for my Cricut Expression 2. I decided that I wanted something cute, and like most of my project, scripture themed. I decided to try to the bee image since I had never used it "bee-fore." After I made my cuts, I had two of these adorable bee books completed.

You can find the template and tutorial I used from here:
Thanks for Reading!
Nikki