This & That

Many thanks to everyone who visited and left sweet comments during the Blog Hop. The major highlight for me, however, was seeing my friend Jessica's card highlighted on Nichole's blog as one of the Blog Hop winners. We met close to a year ago - she lives just down the road - and have become crafting enablers of one another very quickly! Congrats to Jessica - please visit her blog, The Paper Parade, here. As for me, I am slowly making my way through the blogs in the participant list.

For today I have a card and a new addition to my craft room to share. So sadly, I had to make another sympathy card this week and I was totally out of ideas for this. I was at a loss. My March issue of CARDS came in the mail, and the card on page 141 by Melissa Phillips caught my eye as something very calm and comforting. So I CASE'd it... {Sorry.} Here's what I came up with:

The bottom two layers of fabrics are from a flower kit by K & Co. The felt layers are from PTI. The pearls are from the SU! Pretties Kit, which I spilled in its entirety all over the place! What a mess! I am going to be finding pearls for months and months to come. The patterned paper strip at the bottom is from My Little Yellow Bicycle's Savor Collection; have you ever felt their paper? It almost feels like nylon. I love it!

The paper that the flower is mounted on is vintage cream, but I inked it up with chamomile ink all over to tint it a little bit, and then I stamped the Diamond Background in white; then it was heat embossed. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but I really like it!

Here you can see some of the texture in the My Little Yellow Bicycle paper, as well as the embossing and the fishnetty/tulle fabrics in the flower.

Here is the newest addition to my crafty space- the awesome shelf by Making Memories, which I picked up on sale at Michael's last week while I was on vacation. I have wanted this for the. longest. time. and I am happy I finally bought it. I chickened out of hanging it on the wall, mostly because I cringe at the tought of putting lots of nails in the walls...even though they've been painted for years. LOL! So I moved my bookcase to the side of my desk and put the shelf on top. The two pink metal flower boxes store cards I have both made and received, and the bottom one stores felt and some loose ribbon. I used these as card boxes at my bridal shower & wedding; I love them. The bottom file holds scraps and the encyclopedia is very old and is used for its paper, very tissue thin and great for flowers.

The teddy bear in this shot was a gift from my grandmother. When we first got Teddy, our dog, she bought this for him at the post office. She thought it was a dog toy, but since it isn't, I have kept it in my room as a reminder of her. I have always stored my PTI buttons in these plastic containers; each bag of buttons fills one to the top, but the containers don't fit vertically on the lower two shelves. Do I think I will ever use all of them? No way!! But they look pretty!!

Hope you're having a relaxing weekend!

Papertrey February Blog Hop Challenge

Well, it's one of my favorite challenges of the month, and this one in particular is probably my favorite Papertrey Blog Hop theme ever: SCALLOPS, pure and simple. Let's get right to it:

My mom was invited to a little boy's first birthday party and the colors on the invitation were bold and bright. She asked me to make a birthday card for him, and I thought I would try to something other than baby blue and pastels for a 1 year old.

I have plans to decorate the inside a little, but I was up pretty late working on this. I took apart so many different things, especially the tag and the buttons, so many times until I got it to look how I wanted. I am so happy that my Papertrey release package came so I could try out the new Button Builder and the tag sale die.

The patterned papers are something I picked up at my local stamp shop while I was on vacation last week. I kinda went overboard with the amount of paper that I bought! Ha ha!

I love that red sparkle paper and can't wait to try out the brown version. Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a great weekend!

Supplies {by PTI unless otherwise noted}: Stamps: Baby Buttons Bits  (sentiment) ; Paper: kraft, pure poppy, vintage cream, red sparkle paper, Patterned papers by October Afternoon (Schoolhouse Collection); Ink: Smokey Shadow; Other: Ocean Tides satin ribbon, Button Builder dies, coaster, red heart button, DMC floss, Fillable Frames 1.75", eyelet border punch (EK Success), Large Scallop border die, Swiss dots embossing folder (Cuttlebug), Tag Sale 4 die, shimmer chalk, Janome Sew Mini, white thread

MIM #3: Glitter Strips with Scor Tape

I'm back with my second post of the day for the Make It Monday challenge, which was to make a card with a glitter strip on it. You can read all about it here on Nichole's blog.

For this card, I used a base of Enchanted Evening cardstock, mixed with Blueberry Sky strips on the card front as well as the Brunch patterned paper from Cosmo Cricket. The sentiment is from the Asian Fusion stamp set. The flower image on the right is from Baby Button Bits. I stamped it in Vintage Cream ink and heat embossed it. Then I rubbed enchanted evening ink over the heat embossed areas...followed by some glue pen action on the petals to add more glitter to the right side of the card.

Hope you like it! Have a great week!

Papertrey Paper Dolls Challenge(s)

Today I have a sympathy card to share. I made this with the last two PPD challenges in mind, because each of them asked us to use a flower set. I don't have any of the Year of Flowers series sets, so I opted for Delightful Dahlia. Amy challenged us to emboss and use springy colors (a challenge in and of itself because I needed to make a sympathy card) and Laurie challenged us to use designer paper and at least 3 colors; the polka dot paper that I am  using here is from Anna Griffin. The links to the challenges can be found here and here.

There are also two "firsts" about this card - it is the very first time that I tried masking so I could layer the flowers and it's the first card that I sewed with my Janome Sew Mini, a Valentine's Day gift from my husband. I was also inspired to dry emboss the square around the sentiment strip based on this post/video by Kristina Werner.

I embossed the sentiment using clear embossing powder, but used white embossing powder on the flowers after stamping those in white ink. The colors here are soft stone, enchanted evening, and a soft grayish blue polka dot paper, as well as white.

Today is my last day of stay-cation so I hope to have a Make It Monday card to post a little later on too. :)

Make It Monday

This week's Make It Monday Challenge was to make a card that has a sentiment stamped on some vellum. I needed to make a birthday card for tonight and this is what I came up with:

Pretty much all supplies are from PTI, except for the toothpick center. I cut off the top of a fancy fancy pin and glued this to the top of the toothpick; the ribbed red paper is from my LSS. I used Star Prints and Dot Spot along with Aqua Mist and Blueberry Sky papers. The vellum is cream tinted. The inks are Snow White and Versa Mark. I also used the cloud dies with vintage cream felt. :)

Have a happy Monday!



Happy Valentine's Day!

Just a quick card tonight - this is what I made my husband for Valentine's Day. I used the Aviary set from SU! but the birds are a stamp by Savvy Stamps. I used True Black ink from PTI and Real Red ink from SU!. The awesome gingham ribbon was a gift from my pal Jessica, and the glitter is red Stickles. The last thing is the sentiment and hearts, which are from PTI's Simple Valentine set.

I am hoping to make a good dent in my Project Life album this weekend, so I should be back with some pictures of that soon. Have a wonderful night!

Moxie Fab World Challenge: The Appearance of Cameos

Today's post is in honor of the Moxie Fab World Challenge: The Appearance of Cameos, so if you'd like to play along, please visit their awesome blog here.

I really love cameos. They remind me of my honeymoon in Italy, where we stopped in a shop that specializes in making them. They are so beautiful and I wish that I had bought one while we were there.

I went to my LSS to look for a cameo stamp for this challenge but couldn't find one. My next best best was to see what I could download from the internet, and I came across the most adorable cameo of a boy on iStockPhoto.com (from member: rheo) - I downloaded it and came up with this card. Digital art, for sure! (Hope that's okay, Cath!)

The sentiment was also printed on my computer. The card that I envisioned reminded me of the Butterfly in the Wind poem, so I used the first line of the poem as the card sentiment and picked a matchy font~

  

The felt and cardstock are from PTI and the butterfly die is from SU!. Thanks for stopping by!

Triple Play!

Not only is this my second post of the day, but this post is a Triple Play for the following 3 things:

1. Papertrey Ink's Anniversary - Day 2

2. Curtain Call Color Challenge ACT 68

3. Papertrey Paper Dolls Challenge #30

How does my card fit each of these challenges? Lemme explain...

The center of the tag was printed at home from the free digital download available in Nichole's post today, and I used the colors posted on Stacey's blog for the Curtain Call challenge:

And lastly, the lovely Laurie challenged us to use felt on a project for the Dolls challenge. I can't believe I did it all! My very first Triple Play! The crafty world is very busy these days, so be sure to visit each of these blogs to join in on the fun. :)

Here's my card:

Here are some of the details...I added glitter to the rainbow after using a water-filled brush pen to color the rainbow with Raspberry Fizz ink. Notice how I tried to make the center pink stripe a little lighter in color. Then I used another brush pen to color the dots on the clouds with New Leaf ink. The backgrounds are embossed using the picnic plaid and linen impression plates, and the scalloped circle is cut from felt to add more dimension to  my project. I really love how this looks because the colors are so pretty together.

Chili is on. And now I am ready for the game. Have fun!

Supplies {by PTI unless otherwise noted}: Stamps: Background Basics Retro; Paper: Pink (SU!), Raspberry Fizz, New Leaf, SS White; Ink: New Leaf, Raspberry Fizz; Other: New Leaf twine and satin ribbon, Raspberry Fizz felt, LL die, tag die, corner rounder, water brush pen, glitter, impression plates 



Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger

Okie dokie, here's a sweet Valentine for the Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger, which was this photo:

I was inspired by the pinkiness of it all, as well as by the vintage cream colored hearts and the tinge of red in the background...and here's what I came up with:



I found the doilies at my supermarket, and the center heart is a clear heart button from SU! that I colored with a red sharpie. The paper, twine, and buttons, as well as the In Bloom flower die are from Papertrey Ink. I inked the edges with chamomile ink from PTI. I ordered the crochet trim online and the organza ribbon is from SU!.

Hope you have a great Superbowl party tonight!

Papertrey Ink Anniversary - Day 1

I've been gone, but definitely not off traveling somewhere tropical or doing anything fun. In a nutshell, work was overwhelming this past month and getting probably close to 7 feet (or maybe it's 8, I've stopped counting) of snow since Christmas-time hasn't helped one bit.

I wanted to say hi to the new Papertrey Paper Dolls: Sara, Renee, Christy and Kristin - I added their blogs to the left so please be sure to click on over!

Today's post is in honor of the first day of fun for the PTI Anniversary. You can read all about it here on Nichole's blog. She has asked us to post our very favorite project from last year, and this card is probably it for me.

I remember making this card for one of the Papertrey Paper Dolls challenges and for a PTI Blog Hop. I finished the card and as I was taking pictures of it, I realized that it didn't seem done, so I took it all apart so I could put the patterned Bitty Box paper behind the umbrella instead of a plain piece of paper. I realized that this made such a huge difference and since then I have always tried to fill as much space as I can with something stamped or patterned - leave nothing blank. I also really like the colors together. Scattered Showers is one of my all time favorite stamp sets. I was also pretty proud of how well the photo came out .
Hope you all have a nice weekend!

Supplies {by PTI unless otherwise noted}: Stamps:Scattered Shower, Polka Dot Basics, Damask Designs ; Paper: Vintage Cream, Ripe Avocado, Hawaiian Shores, Bitty Box Basics ; Ink: Hawaiian Shores, Dark Chocolate ; Other: Cream twill ribbon, EK Success Jolees jewels, PTI scalloped border, Fiskars border punch, corner rounder