Embellish Magazine Challenge

This week there is a great challenge at Embellish Magazine.com For this challenge you need to find inspiration in the photo collage below, using the colours in the swatches and with the addition of birds in your card.

Well I grabbed my newly retired set 'From the Earth' because it has a fabulous bird silhouette and set to work. This card was CASE'd from the fabulous Margaret Moody over at PPA. I changed up the colours and embellishments a bit, but stuck with the same basic layout that she used.

The Fun Stuff:
1. Paper - Kiwi Kiss (retired), Melon Mambo, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White
2. Stamps – From the Earth (retired), Teeny Tiny Wishes
3. Punches – Curly Label, 1 ¼” square, and 1 3/8” square
4. Accessories – Button Bouquet (ret.), Melon Mambo Polka Dot Grosgrain (ret.), Chocolate Chip Satin Ribbon (ret.), Small Rhinestone Brads (ret.), Silver Elastic Thread (ret.), Stampin Dimensionals and Square Lattice Textured Impressions Folder for the Big Shot.

Monkey Birthday

This card was inspired by a card I saw in May's Paper Crafts Magazine. I wish I had a photo to post up on it, but it was made by Diana Albright. I really wanted to use my Island Oasis paper from the current Summer Mini and I pulled the rest of the colours out of that paper. The Monkey was paper pieced using punches and I cut the party hat freehand. I used the sketch from Karen Giron to make my card.

The Fun Stuff:

1. Ink - So Saffron, Tempting Turquoise, Old Olive, Rose Red, Pumpkin Pie, and Chocolate Chip

2. Paper - Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Old Olive, Island Oasis DSP

3. Accessories - So Saffron and Tempting Turquoise Grosgrain Ribbon, Chocolate Chip satin ribbon, Ovals Bigz Die for the Big Shot. Not Quite Navy Brads and various circle punches.

Stampin' Royalty Challenge #30

This week it's a Keep It Simple Sweetie challenge over at Stampin' Royalty. What does this mean? Well to me it means a clean and simple layout without very many embellishments and as few layers as possible. For this card I managed to do a one layer digital project. Below is the image I created using My Digital Studio. How did I get the ink colours for the current In Colors??? Well I colour matched the patterned paper.

For Stampin' Royalty I printed it out on my home computer and mounted it on a card base and then took a photo of it. I liked this card so much that I changed my blog header to match it! Don't forget to hop over to Stampin' Royalty to check out what the talented Goddesses have created.

Happy Birthday LeAnne

When I found out today was LeAnne's birthday over at Color Q (and Color Throwdown amongst others) I just had to take part in the secret blog hop that Arielle was organizing. But of course I didn't get to it until after midnight as I've been furiously working in my craft room. I just got new shelving and I've been organizing all the crafting crap (um, I mean supplies) that I have. I'll get photos up in the next few days. So anyway, I don't even have time to print this out and take a picture as I'm exhausted. But I whipped up this little card for LeAnne so HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEANNE. I hope you have a great day!!! I found this sketch over at Clean&Simple. (scroll down to see it) They do amazing sketches and I really wanted to join in on their 100 sketch celebration! Congrats!!!!***** I just managed to print out and post the hybrid card at the top *****

Practical Scrappers - 7 Items Challenge

This week at Practical Scrappers, the challenge was to use at least 7 different items from your stash. So, in order to pile on 7 different items, I decided that a 12x12 scrapbook page was in order. I'm not so sure about the pink as an accent for a picture of my son but I thought I'd keep it in to add contrast. The title is "Sometimes I Wonder What He Is Thinking" because he looks so thoughtful in this photo, but the title was too long. I just could not figure out where to fit in the rest of the words without it looking unbalanced.

I managed to get more than 7 items on my page. Most of them are from Making Memories, but some are from Paper Daisy, Thickers, and DCWV. So here are the items I pulled from my stash.
1. - The Title Stickers
2. - The felt stickers in both Pink and Red (bottom left corner)
3. - The shiny handmade white paper (the background)
4. - The patterend paper that is on the right side - I die cut them with Bigz dies and Nestabilities
5. - The scallop circled birds die cut
6. - The gold bird die cut
7. - The drawing of the 2 boys with the umbrella (top right)
8. - The faux mini library card on the bottom right
9. - The blue-green ribbon with the crystal on the right
10. - The little paperclip on the top right corner

Graduation Cards 3 and 4

Just a quick post today. Here are the last 2 cards I made with that fabulous Grad paper from Lyndsay's Stamp Stuff Click here for a tutorial on how to make the grad hat. Click here for other cards made with this technique.

MDS and My Children

These cards were a lot of fun to make. It ws my hubby's birthday on Thursday. I didn't have a lot of time with my kids to make him birthday cards. So I sat them each on my lap in front of the computer and we designed these two cards below together. Basically I pulled up options for background, image, stamp, and embellishments. Then I let them tell me what colour they wanted and then I suggested where to place these things in order to get a balanced layout. Brad likes the colour green and both kids chose a lot of green for their cards. My son actually got me to pull up the palette and he pointed out exactly which cards he wanted. Teagan couldn't resist a little bit of pink on her card.

Connor's card

Teagan's card

After these images were made I changed them into jpeg's and then printed them out and mounted them on card fronts. Then the kids 'wrote' on the inside.

Stenciling Again

Last week we had a stenciling challenge over at Stampin' Royalty. This card was my first attempt, but it just looked a bit too plain for a design team card. So I wound up making another card for my Design Team sample. For this card, the pink hearts were made using the same stencil from this card. Then I made a single stencil and made the hearts on the purple background.

The Fun Stuff
1. Stamps – Well Scripted
2. Ink – Concord Crush, Melon Mambo, Basic Grey
3. Paper – Elegant Eggplant, Pretty In Pink, Whisper White, Basic Grey, Crumb Cake
4. Accessories – Lots of Tags Sizzlit for the Big Shot, Small Heart Punch, sponges

Taylored Hybrid Chick

As you might know, I have been making digital projects for the past year, since My Digital Studio has been available. I have been using primarily Stampin Up! products for my work, but occasionally I download freebie images from other sites. You "might find" some freebies if you google Emily Giovanni, Shabby Princess, Christina Renee, or Pen Scrappers to name a few. Oh and BTW this card is for my hubby's birthday - which is today - thus the sentiment and the colour palette.

I found this fabulous site called Hybrid Chick. The designers are primarily digital scrapbookers. They have just started a challenge blog hop. This week the challenge is to use the current sketch at Taylored Expressions (which you can find below). So I used MDS and imported the .jpg and .png images and then printed them out as two images which you can see directly below. Then I cut out what I needed, popped them up on dimensionals, sponged the edges and then added some buttons and brads from Stampin' Up!

Stampin' Royalty Challenge #29

Wow did I have a lot of fun making this card. It's for the theme challenge over at Stampin' Royalty. This week the challenge is 'Splish Splash'. The Stampin' Goddesses have really outdone themselves this week with their samples. Please hop over to Jody's blog to see what she's done this week. You should link to all the other Goddess' blogs (kind of like a blog hop).

I saw this week's challenge and was thrilled because I have been thinking of doing this type of card with the scallop border punch. In the end, though, I decided to use the Scallop Square die for the Big Shot because it allowed me to place the white layer on the top and emphasize the negative image (wave shape) of the scallop edge. I layered the blues from darkest to lightest and offset the scallops to give more interest. I used a mask to sponge the sky and make clouds. Click here for a mini tutorial on how to do this.

The sentiment was made in Word and then cut out with the Modern Label Punch. Then I mounted it on turquoise cardstock and carefully cut it out with craft scissors. The whales come from the Fox & Friends stamp set. They were cut out and mounted on Stampin' Dimensionals for more interest. The entire card was mounted on Melon Mambo cardstock.

The Fun Stuff:
1. Ink – Bashful Blue, Melon Mambo, Elegant Eggplant, Cherry Cobbler (tiny hearts)
2. Paper – Cardstock – Whisper White, Bashful Blue, Tempting Turquoise, Marina Mist, Pacific Point, Melon Mambo
3. Stamps – Fox & Friends
4. Accessories – Scallop Square die for Big Shot, Modern Label punch, Stampin’ Dimensionals

Practical Scrappers - Stash Challenge

These cards were made for this week's challenge over at Practical Scrappers which is to use something in your stash that you've had for over a year. Well I've been looking at these Groovy Guava Carouself Notes for well over a year. And this DSP is from the same year. Thank goodness that Wild Wasabi is coming back. I started by carefully cutting out some flower and butterfly images from the DSP. I sponged the edges and popped them all up on dimensionals to add dimension. I used the beautiful wings embosslit and some chocolate chip satin ribbon to finish out the card. Oh yeah, of course the circles were made using my Circle Scissor plus.
Here's the first card.

Here's a side view to see the layers. The vellum butterfly was cut using the Big Beautiful Butterflies Bigz die for the Big Shot.

Here's the second card. The larger butterfly is cut from DSP from a retired Simply Scrappin kit.

and another look at all the layers.

Here's the third card, and my favourite of the 3. I love alllll the butterflies and flowers on this one. Plus I sponged around the circle with chocolate chip ink to add interest.

And a peek from the side...

And finally a look at the inside. As there is no Groovy Guava marker, I stamped the flower on the ink pad, then I added the Chocolate Chip with a marker, to the flower centres directly, and then used baby wipes to rub the ink off the leaves, and added the Wild Wasabi with my new markers.

Baseball Thank You's

And here's yet another card for my customer's baseball coach. Again the image is from my Clip Art as I don't have any baseball stamps. The colours I used are Kraft (crumb cake!!), Chocolate Chip, Soft Suede and Whisper White. The brads are More Mustard and the ribbon that matches them so nicely is from my stash. I ran the Soft Suede piece of cardstock through the Big Shot with the Square Lattice Textured Impressions folder.

Mojo 147

I was inspired to try a hybrid card for this week's Mojo Monday sketch. I tried out some of my new papers and colours for My Digital Studio. I printed everything out and then cut out parts and layered them together.

The Fun Stuff
1. Paper – Concord Crush, Pear Pizzaz, Wild Wasabi, Whisper White
2. Stamps – Bon Voyage
3. Accessories – Stampin’ Dimensionals

Colour Q 41

Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE colour challenges??? I have really been trying to catch up with my favourite challenges over this summer break. I love what the girls over at Colour Q come up with each week. I was thrilled to be able to participate this week and this card is what I whipped up. I didn't have any patterned paper that fit this combo, so I took out my retired Night & Day black and white paper and then added the pink with my Pink Passion Stampin' Write Marker.

The Fun Stuff:
1. Paper – Pink Passion, Pretty in Pink, Whisper White, Night & Day DSP (retired)
2. Ink – Pink Passion, Pretty in Pink, Pink Pirouette, Basic Grey, Basic Black
3. Stamps – Circle Circus, Teeny Tiny Wishes
4. Accessories –Modern Label and Word Window Punches, Pretty In Pink Taffeta Ribbon (retired), non-Stampin’ Up! pink eyelets

A Musical Birthday

I was going through my scrapbooking and card making magazine pile the other day and stumbled on this patterned paper. I decided that instead of throwing it away like I usually do, that I would try to incorporate it into a card. The paper is not really my taste, but the music notes were something I just couldn 't throw away. I am, after all, a music specialist. The sentiment is from Well Scripted. It's stamped in Soft Suede Ink. Then I punched it out with the wide oval punch and then mounted it on a die cut from the Lots of Tags Sizzlits. Next I dug through my stash of cardstock and came up with the closest matches I could. The top card's sentiment is mounted on Rose Red and the bottom's mounted on Sage Shadow (I miss that colour). I used a paperclip and some white ribbon to finish it all off.

Graduation Card 2

Here's another card made from that fabulous Graduation Paper from Linday's Stamp Stuff. This paper has more feminine colours in it, so I mounted it on Bermuda Bay and Rich Razzleberry cardstock. The cute little Graduation Cap was made with punches. Click here for a tutorial on how to make the Grad cap.

Heart Stenciling Tutorial

This tutorial is for the band of stenciled hearts at the top of this card. I got the idea from the current Stampin' Up Idea Book & Catalogue. On page 202 there is this blue card with red hearts and the hearts have been cut out in 2 rows. See the photo below. This got me thinking...

Here's what I did. First I punched a heart on a piece of cardstock. Next I used my pencil to mark out where to punch the next heart. If you look carefully on the left side of this photo you will see a little dot made with a pencil.

Next I put my punch up to the paper and looked for the little mark I had made. You can see it in the photo below. Look on the right side of the heart (in the punch itself). There's a little line made with a pencil.

Punch as many hearts as you would like. Now for the tricky part. First you need to cut your cardstock down to a 1" strip. Then you turn it upside down to punch the other side. What I did was draw little pencil lines where the centre between the already punched hearts was.

Next I lined these up with the bottom V of the heart as in the photo below.

And Voila, a perfect double row of heart punches. There is no measuring in this technique except for the 1" strip. I hate measuring in case you didn't know.

Next I erased all the little pencil lines and taped extra cardstock to the outside edges of the hearts. You can see the tape and the Kiwi Kiss carstock I used in the photo below.

Next tape your piece very carefully to your cardstock (pink in this photo) so that it doesn't wiggle around. Next sponge over all openings in your stencil. Try to make all the hearts look like they have an equal amount of colour.

Once you remove the stencil you can trim your pink cardstock to whatever size you'd like.

Stampin Royalty Challenge #28

Well it's Wednesday and that means another challenge over at Stampin' Royalty. This week the challenge is stenciling. Check out Stampin' Royalty to see the Goddess' samples. Hop on over to Jody's blog to start the weekly blog hop.

For this card I tried to follow the vintage trend which is so popular these days. I made a stencil using the small heart punch. I was inspired by a card on page 202 of the current Stampin' Up Idea Book and Catalogue. Click here for a tutorial on how I did this. Once I had stenciled the hearts on pink cardstock I roughed up the edges and curled the ends to give it a worn look. Once I had this strip I needed to provide an equally vintage background. First I pulled out some Crumb Cake (kraft) cardstock and embossed it. Next I ripped the edges using the Tearing Edge ruler. I decided to mount it on Pink Pirouette cardstock like the hearts. I stamped an image from the Tiny Tags stamp set in Pretty In Pink to add more contrast. I wapped this with ribbon and twine. Next I stamped the sentiments with the Tiny Tags set and punched them out. I put a small hole in the top of each tag and threaded them with twine. I gathered all the twine and clipped them to the heart strip using a library clip. Finally, I decided to add the flowers from Vintage Vogue. I cut them out and roughed up the edges for a more vintage look. I wanted to use a Filigree Brad for the centre, but I was out of them, so I pulled out my retired corduroy buttons and used a Chocolate Chip one for the flower's centre. Finally the entire thing was mounted on Rich Razz cardstock.

The Fun Stuff:
1. Ink – Pretty In Pink, Pink Pirouette, Rich Razzleberry
2. Paper – Cardstock – Whisper White, Pretty In Pink, Pink Pirouette, Rich Razzleberry
3. Stamps – Vintage Vogue, Tiny Tags
4. Accessories –Stampin’ Dimensionals, Clips Assortment, Linen Thread, Rich Razzleberry Grosgrain, Tiny Tags punch, Corduroy Buttons

Practical Scrappers - Embossing Challenge

This card was made using a digital image from Digi Doodle. I printed it out using My Digital Studio and then coloured it in with Stampin Write Markers. I pulled the colours from the DSP that I used (Island Oasis from the Summer Mini). Next I cut it out and mounted it on a piece of Crumb Cake (Kraft) cardstock. I had previously embossed the cardstock using the Square Lattice Textured Impressions Folder for the Big Shot. And then tore the edge on one side. To emphasize the torn edge I placed a strip of Old Olive cardstock behind it. I punched the cardstock with the Scallop Trim border punch. The whole thing was mounted on the DSP and then mounted again on Rose Red Carstock.

The Ingredients:

1. Ink – Rose Red, Tempting Turquoise, So Saffron, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Soft Suede
2. Cardstock – Crumb Cake, Rose Red, Old Olive
3. Accessories – Scallop Trim Border Punch, The Tearing Edge, Square Lattice Textured Impressions Folder for the Big Shot.

411 Curtain Call

This card was whipped up for challenges over at Stacey's Stampin Stage, and Stampin' 411. I was inspired by this card here by Mary Fish. I really wanted to use my new Level 3 hostess set Playful Pieces. Its' so versatile. You can construct so many different images with the stamps in this set. The cake base was put together with some pieces from the set. The cake was stamped from a single rectangle and then cut up into pieces to make the layers of the cake. This patterned paper is from a retired hostess set. I really was drawn to the colours that Stacey chose this week and I thought they'd make a fun girly birthday card. Then I realized that there were some similarities between the sketch and Mary Fish's card, so I used both of them to create the card.

Here's a photo of the inside of the card. The inside stamp is from Birthday Bliss. I coloured it in with Aquapainters.

The Fun Stuff
1. Paper – Very Vanilla, Regal Rose, Certainly Celery, Pumpkin Pie, Rich Razzleberry, Regal Rose Patterned DSP.
2. Ink – Regal Rose, Rich Razzleberry, Pumpkin Pie
3. Stamps – Playful Pieces, Birthday Bliss
4. Accessories – Modern Label Punch, Stampin’ Dimensionals