Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mothers and Grandmothers out there!  Today is your special day to do whatever you want! :)

My mom has grown to expect handmade gifts from me.  Store bought gifts are not real gifts- she only seems to like the ones I make.  I decided to book a last minute flight to spend Mother's Day with mom this year so I knew I had to make something special for her.  Here's what I came up with...

I realized that out of all the frames I've made for craft fairs, I don't believe I ever gave one to mom!  Since this one was made with her in mind, I decided to personalize it a bit and added in foam stickers to spell "grandma @ akemi". 

This photo was taken the last time mom visited us in Hilo.  We had her sleep in Akemi's room since that's our only other bed in the house. Normally Akemi sleeps with us when we have visitors, but this time she slept with my mom. It was rather cute that I could hear them talking and giggling together just like two girls at a sleepover.  I didn't have the heart to interrupt their "girl time" by making Akemi go to sleep, so I allowed her to stay up and bond with mom.  I know years from now they will both look back on those "sleepovers" with fond memories.  So now whenever we go to visit mom on Oahu, she tells Akemi to sleep with her!  I think its funny that when I was Akemi's age, I was getting kicked out of mom's room, but now that she's a grandma, she's inviting my daughter back in!!!

Decided to use the Miyono stamp to decorate the frame since she's named after my mom.

Here's a close up of Miyono.  Don't know if you noticed, but I cut off her bow in her hair and replaced it with a flower since my mom is always wearing flowers in her hair.  Accented the frame with some sakura die cuts from my Wikicaps die and added pink pearls by Kaisercraft for some bling.

I hope mom likes this frame!  Happy Mother's Day everyone!  If you didn't already call your mom- go ahead and do it now!!

Graduate Yoshi

It's graduation time again... has the school year really come to an end?  So fast, I can't keep up sometimes.  So I found out recently that my cousin Yoshi is graduating from college!!  Yay!  He worked really hard, so this is a big deal for him.   So what could be better than a Yoshi graduate spinner card for Yoshi himself?

Got the graduation hat from Island Scrapbooking.  Originally it was white, but I used my distress ink and blender tool to color it black. Now why didn't I think of using my distress inks like that before?  Duh!  Had to trim down the cap a bit since it was a bit large for his head.  Then I colored Yoshi's kimono up to look like a graduation gown.  I colored the gap between his legs so that it looked more like a gown than pants.

The star stamps used are from a PTI set I just got.  I am so happy with this set!  The other stamps have cool sentiments as the star trails, but they were more about friendship, so I decided to use the regular one.  Decided to emboss it using my glitter embossing powders.  I like how it came out- couldn't use black since Yoshi was in black and didn't want to use white, so the kraft was a nice compromise.

See how Yoshi spins?  I guess it would be better illustrated on a video, but I'm not that high tech yet.

And here's the inside.  I used a larger star for the inside and the same star trail but facing the other way.  I embossed the star and the Congrats sentiment using more silver glitter embossing powder. 

Congrats Yosh!  We're so proud of you!

Store Samples and Candy Winners!

Phew!  Did you have fun with this release?  Hope you enjoyed all the samples by the DT and myself.  I have one last sample to share with you today... Normally I try to include a sample for each store that carries our stamps.  Well, look how much our business has grown!  And this isn't all of them- just the Hawaii stores- the mainland cards were already shipped by the time I got a photo taken.  Now you know why I'm so busy right?

Went with a gatefold card this time and went to town with all my new washi paper!  Like I've said... I've been collecting boy type washi in anticipation for this release, so I thought.. I'd better use it now!  Some were from Hanko, some from the Paper Source, some from Heiko, and some from Island Scrapbooking- sorry I don't know the name of the new company they brought in, but when I find out, I'll update.

And on to the winners...

Katsura winner:  Thanh Vo

Yoshi winner:  Jes

Kenichi winner:  Jazzmom

Congratulations to all!  And thank you to everyone else who entered!  Winners, please email me at sisterstampsllc@gmail.com.

Happy Easter!

 Happy Easter!  Gee, it feels like I already celebrated Easter since our Easter images were released about a month ago.  Makes it more fun to be able to celebrate Easter twice!

Made these Easter goodies for some of my friends. You may have remembered my Masa post with the green milk carton?   I love pastels and bright colors, so the Doodlebug mini printed cardstock was perfect for this project.  Cut each sheet using the milk carton Sizzix pro die, which made putting this box together oh so easy.  

Then I colored up some Akemi's to go on each box.  Didn't want them to be the same, so I colored up each one a different color.  Before putting Akemi onto the box, I added some grass using my MS grass punch (my fave!) and this Magnolia fence die that I've been dying to use!  Unlike other fences, it has hearts cut out of it!

Found these flower clothespins at Michaels for $1 for a pack of 3.  Love it!

So hope you and your family have a Happy Easter!  Gotta go hunt down some eggs now- have fun!

It's Release Day!

We made it!  It's our 7th Release and I'm so excited to hear back from all of you on how you like our stamps!  Can't wait to see all the samples in blogland too.

First of all, I have to give a BIG mahalo to Kris, our Guest Designer for this release!  Thanks Kris!  And to my girl Debi for always helping me out!  You rock!

Ok on to my last project.  Decided to go all out and make a Waterfall Mini album!  Found many tutorials online and on YouTube, so you can just do a google search for them or on YouTube for the instructions.  For some reason I love this WAAAAAY more than the original Waterfall card.

Here's the cover- honors goes to Katsura.  Do you like my red snapper?  I got it at a local store in downtown Hilo.  They import things from Japan- need to remember to check them out more regularly.  Unfortunately its too soon to get any of the small boy's day koi that comes with candy filled sticks that you can find around boy's day. I know we had a couple from past boy's days but can't seem to find them in my messy house. Thought about buying a regular one that you hang above your house, but those are waaaaay too big to fit in this photo!  So red snapper fish will have to do.

Picked this washi paper as the constant in the album.  Love the masculinity of it (is that a word?)  Next up is Yoshi- posed him in a somersault position so he looks like he's really tumbling!

Page 2 features an old favorite- Nobu! Yes, he snuck into this mini just to say hi!

The next page features Kenichi and his doggie...

And this last page features Keitaro!  He wanted to join in the fun too!

 

There's actually one more page behind Keitaro, but I didn't have any more small boy stamps that would fit!   Anyway, I'm thinking I can add on the photos on the back side of the pages and add journaling to the pages with the boys.  What do you think?

Ok so if you've been reading all of my posts, I didn't really answer the question of how I cheated in cutting out the images right?  You are probably thinking- are you ever going to answer that question?  Well, on the Katsura tag, I didn't cut out the string part of the fish.  It would've been too thin, and since I had placed him on a colored background, it looked funny with the white showing through... So I played around with my copic markers until I found the right color that was the same as the background and colored that space up to match.  I did the same for the area in between Kenichi and the doggie.  There!  Now you know my secret!

So hope you had fun with this release!  Can't wait to see what you all come up with!  Enjoy!  Be back soon with the Release 7 candy winners.

Distressed Katsura

 I know I don't mention my personal blog all that much, but I've been recently inspired by my craft idol- Tim Holtz.  I know he and his awesome products have been around for awhile, but I guess I never really understood how to use them until I signed up for his Creative Chemistry 101 class. I'm hoping that the 101 means that eventually there will be another version later. (crossing my fingers!).  All I can say is that if you haven't signed up for it yet, you can still do so since its an online class and if you sign up, you will have lifetime access to the videos!  Sign up here- you won't regret it!

So while doing my "homework" for the class, I ended up playing around since I had a lot of the supplies out.  I had a really fun day playing around with different color combos and stumbled upon this one that I fell in love with.  While at CHA, I took a Hero Arts class (click here to see the cards I made) and Sharri Carroll (who taught the class) shared how one of her favorite color combos was brown and blue.  I guess I had that in the back of my mind when I made this card, and now I absolutely love it! Especially for male cards!

So after inking up this tag, I followed the advice of my wise husband who told me after I expressed that I wanted to play with Distress and not Sister Stamps (gasp!).. why not mix the two together! Duh!  He's so smart yah?  So I added some detail to the tag for some interest by digging through some old stamps that I had in my stash.  The branch stamp is an old Stampendous wood stamp and the dragonfly and kanji poem are both by Hero Arts.  The branch stamp was inked up using Forrest Green distress ink and the other two were stamped using my Versamark pad and topped with bronze mica powder for shine.  That might be the reason its so hard to see in this photo.

So I got in close and tried to get the light to hit the tag just right to show you the kanji poem and dragonfly images covered in mica.

After I colored up Katsura, I cut him out and adhered him to the tag.  Can you see where I cheated in my cutting?

Hope you enjoyed this distressed tag as much as I had fun making it!   Don't forget to check out Debi's and Kris' projects too!  See you tomorrow for Release day!!!

Other supplies used (not listed above):
Katsura- Sister Stamps
Copics
Gold Smooch
Tim Holtz tag die
Manila folders

Super Fun Yoshi!

 So are you liking the new images so far?  Hope so!  Well, to give you more inspiration on using our images, I've solicited the help of a very special Guest Designer for this release.  Frankly, I needed a lot of help since I'm so junk at boy stuff, so I had to pick someone who also had a boy... You can find out who I'm talking about by checking out her blog here...

Don't forget to check out my CBFF (Crafty BFF) Debi's blog here for even more inspiration! (Thanks Debi!)  She has a boy too, so I'm sure she has some great boy projects for you.

So my project for today is using Yoshi again.  He's just full of surprises... check it out:

Is that a present I see?

Wait!  Yoshi is popping out of the present!  What a rascal!

Here's a close up of Yoshi. I actually had a lot of fun making this slider card.  I haven't made one in awhile, so I had to look up the directions again.  I forgot how much thought you have to put into it to figure out what he will be popping up from behind.

So my last story to share about Yoshi is that one time while at my house, my sister made us tuna sandwiches for lunch.  After serving us the sandwiches, my sister checked on us and my cousin Yoshi was done.  She couldn't believe it since Yoshimi and I had only taken a few bites of ours.  He claimed he ate the whole thing, but my sister must've suspected something.  She checked the trash but couldn't find it, so assumed he did eat it.  Later on when my mom came home, I don't know what she was doing but she and my sister found the tuna sandwich!  He ended up inserting the sandwich into a hole in our recliner in an effort to not have to eat it.  What a rascal yah?   That story still makes me laugh till today!

Ok, so now that you've had a good laugh for today, go check out our Guest DT and Debi's blogs for more fun.  Psst... Debi might have some candy too!  All joking aside, for the record, my cousin is not like that anymore, but I sure have fun remembering the good 'ol days!

Supplies:
Yoshi- Sister Stamps
CS- Bazzil
DP- Bo Bunny
Ribbon
Small tag punch & sentiment- SU
sentiment- Hero Arts
Pop dots
Copics