Thursday, January 31, 2013

Woolen Wishes

 
 
 
A fun card to share with you today.  I'm entering it into the Pinspired Challenge, as well as the Moxie Fab World window challenge and Simon Says Stamp's Anything Goes challenge....I love it when it all works out that way!

When I started out, I was just going to make a card for the Pinspired Challenge.  Here's the challenge photo: 



As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to pull out my Becky Oehlers' Warm Woolen Mittens stamp set.  I had the idea to use the mittens to create a heart, but when I was putting it together, the lightbulb came on and I thought, "Why don't I cut a little window and put the heart on the inside of the card?"  This might be the smallest window ever on a window card!



The little mitten strings are hand drawn, and I popped the mitten wrists up with foam tape.  I had a heck of a time photographing the card....I eventually just used washi tape to tape it shut so I could get the photo with the heart showing through. 

This what the inside looks like.



And that's all there is to it.  Hope your day is off to a great start!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - White Daisy, Slate, and Ruby
Stamps:  Gina K. Designs - Warm Woolen Mittens; Neat and Tangled - Kindness Matters
Ink:  CTMH - Black and Ruby
Other:  CTMH - Dimensional Foam Tape and Craft Knife; American Crafts Black Precision Pen 08 size; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Kuretake Glue Pen

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

How to eat an ice cream pop

 

Carina eats everything with her hands....even when there is an obvious, built in solution!  It was amazing, and hilarious to watch her seemingly go out of her way to avoid using the popsicle stick....wait until you see the pictures of her and her birthday cake (which was Carvel).

Anyway, back to the layout, I'm using another Elle's Sketch today.  Since most of the photos are black and white I wanted this to be colorful and a little funky, so I turned to the Glitz Cashmere Dame collection.  LOVE this collection.

In terms of embellishments, I used some Elle's tags, washi tape, and added some stamped accents.  The sentiment stamps are from Mama Elephant's Good Times set, and I'm also sneaking one of CTMH's new sets which will be available on Friday.  This is the set that comes in the Chantilly Collection's Workshop on the Go.



Had a great time putting this one together.  Hope you guys are having a good week...we had a bit of a break yesterday as schools were closed, but it was back to reality today.

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  Glitz - Cashmere Dame 6x6 paper pad; CTMH - White Daisy cardstock
Stamps:  CTMH - Chantilly Workshop on the Go stamp set; Mama Elephant - Good Times
Ink:  CTMH - Black, Sky, and Sunkiss Yellow; Distress Inks - Festive Berries
Other:  Freckled Fawn - Checkered Black Diamond washi tape; American Crafts - Black Nutmeg Thickers; Cosmo Cricket - Tiny Type stickers;Tombow - Mono Adhesive



Monday, January 28, 2013

Simon Says "Paper Piece"

 
 
 
I was excited to see that this week's challenge at Simon Says Stamp is paper piecing.  If you've followed me for a while, you know that this is one of my favorite technqiues.
 
I created this card by cutting an oval and then using the negative cut as a mask.  I added Honey ink with a sponge until I got the coverage I wanted.  I traced the bottom portion of the oval with a pencil to use as a guide for stamping the flowers.
 
The flowers are from Jane's Doodle's Doodle Flowers set which is one of my favorite JD stamps.
 
I stamped the flowers and stems starting with the center one, and then moved out on either side to get the right placement. 
 
The flowers and leaves on the pieced pieces are from Amy Tangerine's Sketchbook collection.  I also added a little bit of extra color to the tips of the flowers with an orange watercolor pencil. 
 
 
The pieced pieces are adhered with a Kuretake glue pen.  When dealing with really delicate/small pieces, I think it's easiest to add the glue to the piece that you are glueing onto, in this case the base piece.  That way if you don't place the piece just right, you haven't managed to smear glue all over your card. 
 
Finally, I stamped the sentiment, which is from A Muse Studio's Fight Like a Girl set.
 
Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  American Crafts - Amy Tangerine Sketchbook 6x6 pad; Bazzill Card Shoppe - Banana Split cardstock; CTMH - White Daisy cardstock
Stamps:  Jane's Doodles - Doodle Flowers; A Muse Studio - Fight Like a Girl
Ink:  CTMH - Black and Honey
Other:  CTMH - Orange watercolor pencil, Sponge Tool; CM - Custom Cutting System Ovals; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Kuretake - Glue Pen


 
 
 
 

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Finger Painting - Basic Grey Sketch

 
 
Thought I would try out this week's Basic Grey sketch since it's a two pager, and I have a lot of photos to scrap.

These are from September, Carina was trying out one of her birthday party gifts.  Carina is not particularly neat or precise when it comes to crafting, so it was funny to see her trying these paints out.  She was being so careful....eventually she warmed up to them, and made a big old mess, which of course I didn't manage to photograph.

I stayed pretty true to the sketch here, although I eliminated some of the 'fussy' elements.  I didn't have a ton of time to spend on this layout, and when that's the case I like to kind of strip the sketch down to the bare bones. 

I'm using Basic Grey's Max and Whisker's collection, using mostly the 'b' sides of the paper.  They have this great painted look which I thought was perfect for the event being scrapped, and I really loved that bright bold orange.  The sticker embellishments are from BG's Konnichiwa collection.

I didn't want the layout to be too plain, but like I said, I was pressed for time, so I added just a few details that are easy to do and don't take long:

1) Used a sponge tool to add some Cocoa ink to the corners/right and left sides of the layout.  Then I used a brush and water to spread the ink out a little.  It softened the white base to make it a little less stark, plus it kind of mimics the brush strokes in the patterned paper.

2) I added a bit of stitching, nothing complicated, just a little bit, which ended up being a lot more subtle than I planned because when I started stitching I realized I had gray rather than white thread in the machine, and I was too lazy to fix it. 

3) I used one of my handcarved stamps for the journaling spot in the right hand corner.



That's all for today.  Hope your weekend is going well!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  Basic Grey - Max and Whiskers collection; CTMH - White Daisy cardstock
Stamps:  Handcarved frame stamp
Ink:  CTMH - Cocoa
Other:  Basic Grey - Max and Whiskers collection alphas, Konnichiwa sticker sheet; CTMH - Texture tools, dimensional foam tape; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Sewing Machine

Friday, January 25, 2013

A Contender...with Flair



Last Friday was a GREAT day for me.  After many, many attempts, I finally had a card picked up by Papercrafts Magazine....it'll be published in this year's July/August edition.

Of course I submitted more than one card, so there were several 'unloved cards'.  Annette Witherspoon is hosting a blog hop for creations that didn't get picked up called 'The Contenders', and I'm linking this one up there.

This was for one of the sketches.  For the four quadrants, I just pressed my ink pads directly on the paper.  It's an inexact science, but I think it goes with the look of the card.  I only have a yellow, pink, and orange neon pad, so the fourth quadrant was colored with both the yellow and pink pads.

The sentiment is from Unity's One of a Kind set, so I'm going to link up over at Unity for this week's Friends with Flair too. 

Hope you have a great end to your week!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - White Daisy cardstock; Bazzill - Licorice Twist Card Shoppe cardstock
Stamps:  Unity - One of a Kind
Ink:  Hero Arts - Neon Orange, Yellow and Pink; Memento - Tuxedo Black
Other:  Tombow Mono Adhesive

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Guest Designing for We R Memory Keepers

 
 
 

I'm pretty excited about today's post.

I was invited to guest design for WRMK. and received the beautiful Winter Frost collection.

A number of the papers are divided into quadrants with small scale versions of the 12x12 patterns, and they were calling to be made into a mini.



I've been wanting to try making a star album for a while, but they looked so complicated I was a little bit intimidated.  Folks, there is really nothing hard about it.  I found some very easy to follow instructions here at Creativity Prompt.



The instructions are very clear, so I won't repeat, but in a nutshell, you cut papers in three different widths, the widest is the inside layer and the narrowest the outside of the star.  You create sections at a time and assemble. 



The one thing that this album does need is lots and lots of paper.  You need 12 sheets of paper/cardstock to complete the project.  Since I tend to hoard my patterned paper, I used cardstock for both the inner and middle layers.



You'll notice that there are no photos in my mini....that's because I'm really hoping to be able to fill it with photos of the girls playing in the snow.  We had no snow last year, and Ellie is really hoping for some this year.

Thanks so much to WRMK for having me as a guest!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  WRMK - Winter Frost Collection; CTMH - White Daisy, Grey Wool and Grey Flannel cardstock;
Other:  Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Recollections - Sheer White Ribbon, Adhesive.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Stop! Papa Time!

 
 
 

Couldn't resist the post title, although I did not go so far in the layout. 

I've missed the last few Elle's Studio sketches and wanted to jump back into it this week.

This photo is from our vacation this summer in Lake Lanier, Georgia.  It's never easy to get a photo of Andrew - especially when he's in vacation mode, but I was able to capture some quiet time that he and the girls had down at the lake one day. 

I'm really happy with how this turned out too since I was able to incorporate a lot of stamping (one of my goals for the year is to do more stamping on my layouts), and I got to try a new technique.

I'm using Mama Elephant's On Target set, a gift from my sweet friend Cheiron.

I used the target image to create a grid (I did measure it out in advance since i'm just not that good).  Then I stamped one of the arrows along the grid lines in second generation. 



The corner pieces are my first attempt at the current chalkboard stamping fad.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, although I think my embossing powder is a bit old because it's supposed to be white, but looks more off white.  In either case, it was a fun new technique to try.



I added some other stamped accents from the On Target stamp set in Garnet ink, and a some Elle's tags and Freckled Fawn wood veneer arrows, but overall tried to keep this pretty simple.



Thanks so much for coming by, hope you are having a great day!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  Studio Calico - Yearbook collection; CTMH - White Daisy, Vineyard Berry, and Black cardstock
Stamps:  Mama Elephant - On Target
Ink:  CTMH - Slate, Garnet, and White Daisy; Versamark
Other:  Elle's Studio - The Sweet Life - Lil’ Snippets: Labels; CTMH - White Daisy embossing powder, Liquid Glass, Dimensional Foam Tape; Freckled Fawn - Wood Veneer Arrows; Tombow - Mono Adhesive

Monday, January 21, 2013

Happy Mail for Grayson Card Drive

 
Hey everyone, I've got a very special card and post to share with you today.

Just before Thanksgiving, Danielle from Neat and Tangled, heard news that a girl she went to high school with and her family had embarked on an incredibly difficult journey. They had discovered that their sweet little 2 year old boy, Grayson, had a tumor on his brain stem. Since then they have been on a roller coaster ride, and this is only part of the journey. Grayson will begin chemotherapy this month as the next stage of treatment. Through all of this, the family has stayed strong, hopeful, faithful and positive. And Grayson is a strong and spunky fighter :) Grayson's mom, Jackie, has a blog she keeps updated regularly, so you can get to know more about Grayson HERE.

Danielle wants to just light up Grayson's life with some serious happy mail! She talked to Jackie, and she informed her that Grayson and his brother love to get mail...and so, we have the Happy Mail for Grayson Card Drive.
 

Grayson is so lucky to have a big brother, Aydan, who is 4 so make sure to send some awesome cards to him too! These boys love all things boy :) Rescue Bots, Geotracks, Angry Birds, Thomas the Train. Send these little men funny, happy, cards! We all know how much love goes into a handmade card, and even better how personalized they can be!"
 
Here is the important info:

The drive will run from January 21 - February 28
(If they arrive late because they are International that's okay too!)

Send them here:
Grayson Savery and/or Aydan Savery
c/o Danielle Walls
P.O. Box 5808
Wilmington, DE 19808
 
For my card I used one of the borders/backgrounds from the Little Tangles set.  There are three 'tangles' and I masked off two of them with tape.  I stamped it once on the card, and once on my patterned paper.  Then I fussy cut around it to create a border at the top of the card. 



Using a black marker, I drew 'strings' to hang the stars from Sweet Home and colored those in with Spectrum Noir markers.
 
The sentiment combines the Kindness Matters and ME Good Times sets....couldn't resist adding the 'rockstar'.  Pretty CAS card, but I think Grayson and Ayden will like it. 
 
I hope that you are able to participate, it's a great cause for some sweet little guys!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  Bella Blvd - Birthday Boy Collection; CTMH - White Daisy
Stamps:  Neat and Tangled - Little Tangles, Sweet Home, Kindness Matters; Mama Elephant - Good Times
Ink:  Memento - Tuxedo Black
Other:  Spectrum Noir Markers; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Kuretake Gue Pen; EK Success - Black Zig Marker

Sunday, January 20, 2013

scrap rendez-vous

Hey everyone, I'm so excited about today's post.  I'm Guest Designing over at scrap rendez-vous today. 

The way it works is that I create a card sketch and card, and then the lovely ladies over at Scrap RDV will each create a card based on my sketch.  This was a lot of fun, the first sketch I've really created and I had a great time.

Here's my sketch:



When I first drew it, I thought I was envisioning a quilt style card, but that was so not in the works....I ended up with this fun, and festive number using AC glitter tape (love thast stuff) and a sentiment from a Greeting Farm set.



Then I thought I would revisit the sketch and try for the quilted look again.  I pulled out one of my very favorite CTMH collections, Stella, and voila. 



What do you think?  Which is your favorite?

Please head over to Scrap RDV and check out the post there.  Over the next week or so Alexandra. Pascale, and Virginie will share their takes on the sketch and you can link up a version too.

I'll be visiting everyone who tries the sketch out, I'm excited to see what you guys come up with!

Thanks so much to Alexandra, Pascale, and Virginie for inviting me to be a guest at Scrap RDV!

Supplies Used

Card 1:  CTMH - White Daisy bulk card base and black cardstock; American Crafts - Glitter Tape; The Greeting Farm - Sparkling Season Stamp Set; Memento - Tuxedo Black ink; Tombow - Mono Adhesive

Card 2:  CTMH - Colonial White bulk card base and cardstock, Chocolate cardstock, Stella papers, Say It In Style stamp set, Colonial White Embossing powder; Versamark; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Sewing Machine

Friday, January 18, 2013

Punky Sprouts/Amy Tangerine mashup featuring Lawn Fawn


Hey everyone!

It's my turn to share over at the Punky Sprouts blog today, and I'm sharing my first Punky Mini.  FYI, there are a TON of photos in this post.

This month Punky Sprouts teamed up with Lawn Fawn.  We were allowed to choose any Lawn Fawn stamp and I picked Critters Ever After because my mini is of a little getaway Andrew and I took in the fall of 2011 (I know, I am so behind) to Orlando/Disney.  You'll also see some other Lawn Fawn sets as I already owned Sunny Skies and Here's the Scoop.

I mentioned Amy Tangerine, right?  Well, I have a couple older Amy Tangerine daybooks which I think are so cute.  I had pulled them out a couple times, but then just felt kind of intimidated by them, and didn't quite know how to proceed with the project.

Solution, pair it with Punky Sprout's Soul Sprout album.  I undid the stitching along the spine of the daybook and the used my paper trimmer to cut along the spine of all the pages so I had a bunch of individual pages.  Then I mixed the pages in with my Punky Sprouts album, and voila!

This mini also uses iphone photos exclusively....we opted not to bring the big camera with us.  In terms of printing, I created photo collages at Shutterfly, each 8 1/2" x 11", and then cut them up when they got here.

Here's the cover featuring the castle from Critters Ever After and some Any Tangerine washi.  It's hard to see the stamping through the kind of translucent cover, so there's a second photo that shows the castle off better.





For the canvas piece I used the large Lil Lacy Blossom as a mask and spritzed it with Mister Huey's Plumb Thumb mist.





















I repurposed the Lil Lacy Blossom that I used as a mask on this page.


The hearts on this page are from the LF Here's the Scoop set, and I used one of the Lil Cork Petals for the title.



The Soul Sprout album has a 'B' shaped cardboard piece.  I immediately thought of mouse ears, so I used Versamark and black embossing powder to create the illusion.











I used a TON of products in this mini, so I'm not going to try and name everything, but please ask if you have particular questions.

BTW - you are all sworn to secrecy because Ellie has NO idea that we went to Disney without her and she would be so not OK with it.....

Supplies Used

Punky Sprouts (Punky Store-http://getpunkysprouts.com/store/?page/63371/shop-punky) - Soul Sprout Album, Lil Lacy Blossoms, Lil Parchment Blossoms, Lil Cork Petals, Funky Punky Fiber Pack.

Lawn Fawn - Critters Ever After, Sunny Skies, and Here's the Scoop.

Other:  CTMH - White Daisy Ink, Honey, and Desert Sand Inks; Spectrum Noir markers; Jenni Bowlin Alpha stickers; My Little Shoebox Alpha Stickers; Memento - Tuxedo Black ink; Taylored Expressions - Skinny Alpha Dies;

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Little Tangles Challenge #5 - Buttons!

 
Hey Everyone!

It's time for another Little Tangles challenge!  It's an extra special challenge week because in addition to the chance to win a Neat and Tangles stamp set, we are being sponsored by MossyMade, so the winner will also receive a set of buttons from the MossyMade shop.



The DT was lucky enough to receive some of Chari's beautiful buttons to incorporate into our projects for this week.

Here's what I created:



I thought the buttons would make cute balloons, and I used some Charcoal Twinery twine for the strings.

To create the border, I stamped the top layer of the scalloped border from the Little Tangles set seven times, fussy cut, and layered them.  The bear, fromt he Little Bear stamp set, was colored with Spectrum Noir markers and popped out with foam tape.



You guys have been creating such fun cards for these challenges and I've really enjoyed looking at them.  Hope that you are able to play along again!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  MME - The Sweetest Thing Lavender 6x6 pad; CTMH - White Daisy cardstock
Stamps:  Neat and Tangled - Little Tangles, Little Bear
Ink:  Memento - Tuxedo Black
Other:  MossyMade buttons; Spectrum Noir Markers - TN7, TN8, CT4, BT4, PP5; The Twinery - Charcoal twine; CTMH - Dimensional Foam Tape; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Helmar - QuickDry 450

Monday, January 14, 2013

Bambo Baby

 

 
 
 
Sorry it's been so quiet around here.  Been a bit swamped, we had some relatives in town over the weekend, a bunch of family/friend activities, and I've been working on DT projects and cards for the PC call.  BUT, I've been itching to do some layouts, so here's my take at the current Pretty Little Studio sketch.  I'm also going to link it up at ScrapFIT since I've got stars in my layout.

This is kind of a companion layout to the one I did for last week's sketch.  I just love the look Carina has....that 'why am I here and what is going on' look.

The pretty houndstooth paper is from Pretty Little Studio's Sand Castle collection.  I used the full size sheet, for the grid, and you guessed it...Slate cardstock.  Pretty Little Studio collections always have some sheets that have the prints on a smaller scale, in quadrants on a full size sheet, so I used the mini pink houndstooth quadrant to cover a Jenni Bowlin star.



One of my goals for this year is to do a better job of incorporating stamping on my layouts.  The stamp set I used is an older CTMH one that came with the Elemental workshop on the go.  The little 'circles' at the top were stamped using that set.  Those are actually half circles.  I stamped them and then used a circle punch to cut them out.  The little plaid stars are also from that stamp set.



Lots of machine stitching on this one too.

Hope that you had a great start to the week!

Supplies Used
Paper/Cardstock:  Pretty Little Studio - Sand Castle collection; CTMH - White Daisy, Slate, and Whisper cardstock.
Stamps:  CTMH - Elemental Workshop on the GO stamp set
Ink:  CTMH - Slate and Tulip ink
Other:  Pretty Little Studio - White Train Tickets Tags; Jenni Bowlin Studio - Chipboard Star; Pu;nky Sprouts - Lil Lacy Blossoms; Elle's Studio - Lil Snippets Tiny Labels; American Crafts - Amy Tangerine White Journal Foam Letter Stickers and Black 01 Precision Pen; CTMH - Bonding Memories Adhesive, Finishing Files; Xyron - 5" Creative Station; Uniball - White Signo Gel Pen; Tombow - Mono Adhesive