Christmas Non-Card Creations and Final ICAD Week 9 Results!

Hello friends and TGIF!! Hope you have some happy plans laid out for the weekend! I will be doing various things including helping my son move!

If you remember my post from last Friday, I shared some hand-made cards that I had entered into my local County Fair. There are a few other items that I’ve entered besides cards for certain categories and I thought you’d enjoy seeing a few other things that I’ve created just for the fair:

Vicki-Christmas Center Piece-Snowman Hat

My first project was entered into the “Christmas Centerpiece” category, and I was excited to see that I had won first place with this! Can you tell what I’ve used to create the “snowman hat” design?

Let’s take a closer look…

Vicki-Christmas Centerpiece-Snowman hat1

I asked hubby to save me one of his empty coffee cans and I’ve spray painted it in black. I’ve also bought a $1.00 charger plate from Hobby Lobby in black and then attached them together to form the snowman hat. Then I took some white paint and splattered the entire thing for a fun “snow fall effect”. I then began to decorate it by attaching some ribbon, pine tree sprigs and pinecones.

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I bought a really pretty snowflake ornament with lots of sparkle to use as a center piece for the front of the snowman hat. The ribbon bow was attached below that and then the pinecone and sprigs were placed and attached in the center of the bow. (Even the plaid ribbon has some pretty sparkle in it!)

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For the pinecones and the “snow” over the top of the hat, I have used some embossing paste mixed with some texture stones to give it a thick snow appearance. While it was still wet, I’ve added some glitter to all of it. Love the way this turned out! It will be a great center piece at Christmas time! 🙂

And since I was in a Christmas mood, I also made another item for the Fair:

Vicki-Christmasbasket

This poinsettia basket was entered into the “handmade basket” category, and I was happy to see that I had won first place for this entry as well! For the fair entry, you can have a basket made of anything as long as it was handmade…so of course I made a paper one! 🙂

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I remember a while back this awesome basket with a tutorial that someone had made from Heartfelt Creations, and I knew I wanted to give it a try. It is such a sturdy basket too as I’ve used some pretty heavy-duty paper to compile it together.

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The papers that I’ve used are actually some pretty old ones from a past Stampin’ Up! collection. They’re double-sided and you can see the pretty poinsettia pattern on the other side from inside the basket walls. The poinsettia die was a purchase I had made from a sale item in a booth at that Stamp Convention I went to earlier this Summer. I love the embossing details it made with the poinsettia flower. I also took some white ink to pop them out a bit so they’re more noticeable. There is one on each side of the basket and a smaller one at the top of the handle.

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I’ve used some gold foil paper for the center of the flowers and then added some gold enamel dots on random spots for the centers. I took some thin and narrow gold ribbon to the edges of the handle and then tied a triple bow with it and placed the poinsettia in the center. I just filled the basket with pinecones that I had on hand, but I could see so many things that this basket would work for! Maybe I need to make one for another Holiday too?!

Well although I made these for the fair, they will be nice to use for my own home and of course the photos do not do justice to what they look like in person! I had so much fun with these projects too! (I may still have another project or two to share with you from the fair entries…so keep watching!)

Lastly, I’m also very excited that I have fully completed my ICAD challenge for 2018!! Yay!! I cannot believe that I kept up with it the entire time and did a card for every single day the last 61 days in June and July!! I know that I’ve posted every week what I’ve done, and this is my final set for week 9:

Vicki-ICAD2018-week9

These were so much fun! Some days were really hard and others I zoomed right through it! I learned many things not only from other ICADians, but also about myself with art and how it affects me physically, mentally and emotionally. I am very surprised in more ways than one. Just when you think you don’t have it in you…you can surprise your own self! Have you ever done something like this? I urge you to try as it is such a learning experience.

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There is just NO WAY I would have enough room to get every single one of these cards in a photo shot! I had a huge ring binder that I kept them all on and they actually just barely fit on it! LOL! Such a fun thing to see all of these together at once and it will be great to go back and look at later too! Glad I wrote on the back of what each one was.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my post today and have been inspired in some way! There are SO many crafty things I enjoy doing…. there are just never enough hours in the day sometimes! LOL!! We crafters can understand that! 🙂

Thanks so much for dropping in, I really appreciate your kind thoughts and read each and every one! See you soon!

Ho! Ho! Ho! Anything Goes at Cute Card Thursday!

Hello friends! Hope that you are having a good week.

Today is Thursday which means that it’s time for another Cute Card Thursday challenge! Yay! This week we have our monthly “Anything Goes” challenge, so please be sure to enter whatever you’re making this week! We’d love to see what you come up with!

We are also sponsored by the lovely Whimsy Stamps this week and they have provided an image for each of our design team to use. I have been wanting to get going on making some Christmas…so here’s my card:

Vicki-CCT541-ATG-Whimsy

I just adore these sweet and fun penguins that Crissy Armstrong comes up with at Whimsy Stamps. I’m using the Penguin Light Me Up digital stamp on my card here.

I have colored it with Copic markers and gel pens. I thought it would be fun to stamp some snowflakes in the background, so I’ve used the Whimsy Stamps Penguins Winter Adventure stamp set for the background as well as the sentiment from the same set for my tag. My tag was cut out using a tag die from my stash and then I added some gold thread to the top and attached it to the card with foam tape.

I’ve mounted this image panel onto a gold foil cardstock piece and then attached it to a couple of layers of festive plaid papers which was mounted onto a white top folding square card base. I sponged some gold ink around the edges and added stitching detail with my gold gel pen. Lastly, I’ve added some gold ribbon tied in a bow at the top corner and also some dimensional snowflake accents.

Here’s a closer view of all the shimmer and glitz on this card:

I had so much fun coloring this image and glad that I’m down another card for the Holiday Season too! 🙂

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you’ve enjoyed my share! See you soon!

Challenges:

Whimsy Stamps Challenge – Anything Goes (using Whimsy Stamps image)
Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge – Anything CHRISTMAS Goes
Adicted to Stamps & More! – Holiday
Creative Inspirations – Holidays
That’s Crafty – Animal Magic

Christmas Cards from County Fair and ICAD Week 8!

Hello friends! TGIF is what I am thinking today! Whew!

I have lots of fun things to share with you all today…so please take your time to read, relax, sip on your beverage and enjoy! 🙂

First, I’d like to share a couple of Christmas cards that I had made earlier this month and I didn’t take a photo of them until (with the exception of one of them) because I was in a hurry to meet a deadline of course and had to wait until I received them back! (I will explain that as we go…)

Vicki-SU! Christmas Card-County Fair 2nd place

I am glad that I have started making up a few Christmas cards now because I literally ran completely OUT of any Christmas cards, I had last year and didn’t really have quite enough to send out all that I had wanted. Well, I’m going to be working DOUBLE hard on my Christmas from here on out because I have 2 craft shows that I’m going to be at, and I know I will really need some including several in a boxed-up form!

I have TONS of Stampin’ Up! products and I was happy to pull some things out and use it on my card here. I knew I wanted to go mostly white with this one because I wanted it to look elegant. I used some chunky silver glass glitter around the edges of my oval. Both the pine needles and outer pinecone where heat embossed with some clear glitter embossing powder. The embossing folder and ribbon are all from SU! too. I just used a wonky stitched rectangle die from My Favorite Things to cut out main panel.

This card won 2nd place at my local County Fair! (You can see more about that below)

Vicki-SU! Christmas Card - County Fair 3rd place

Here is another Christmas card that I made using some more of my Stampin’ Up! products that I keep on hoarding in my stash and don’t use! LOL! The only thing I did different was the background pine trees are actually a Tim Holtz stencil from last year and then the die cut pine trees along with everything else including the paper and ink are all from Stampin’ Up! I added some Stickles clear glitter over the die cut pines and though it’s hard to see in the photo, I sprayed the DSP with some shimmer spray.

This card ended up winning 3rd place at the County Fair!

Vicki-County Fair Christmas Card entries

Here are the entries that I entered in one category at my local County Fair this month. I won 1st, 2nd and 3rd all in the same category which was “Hand Stamped Greeting – Holiday”. They don’t award any more than this in any category. So, I was happy to see that I placed all three! Above, you can see that I have entered the bauble Christmas card I previously posted, and it ended up winning 1st place! You can see the close-up details of the card in THIS POST if you are interested or missed it.

I just needed to start making up Christmas cards and I thought this was a great way to not only get some done but make the most out of it by entering them for the fair!

And of course, since it’s Friday, it’s also time for my weekly ICAD results!! I only have ONE more week left of this 61-day challenge…. can you believe it?!! So here are the ICAD 2018 week 8 results:

Vicki-ICAD2018-Week8

As always, things are a bit random and weird, but each day the prompts inspire me to keep on going to my room and have a play with media!

For one of the cards, I have used a Chibilights Electronic and yes, it is showing as there is a reason for it! LOL! But I wanted to share that it DOES really work on my card:

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I just had to share that as it is the very first one, I’ve ever done that I got to actually work!! LOL! I was pretty excited! I will be back next week with my very final share from this!

Now you all know WHY I had random and spotted postings…I’ve been a busy stamper with getting projects done and ready for the County Fair (I’ve entered 16 projects and I will share more later on), and I’ve been getting samples ready for my challenge as well as my fellow Splitcoaststampers DDDT challenges getting ready to start soon.

I am tired now and I think I’ll relax with hubby this weekend! Tonight, we are going to go to a hot-air balloon moon glow in our area. The weather is beautiful for it! Hope you all have a wonderful and fun weekend too! Thanks so much for dropping in!

Challenges for Christmas card(s) at the top:

Use Your Stuff – Anything Goes with a Sentiment
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Christmas in July
Fab ‘n’ Funky – Christmas in July
Back to Basics & Beyond – Use an Embossing Folder (top card)
Watercooler Wednesday (WWC180) – Holidays

Cute Card Thursday is Getting “Too Cute”!

Hello friends!

It’s Thursday and time for a new challenge at Cute Card Thursday! If you are not challenged by the title of the challenge blog, then let’s get even cuter by making the challenge this week “TOO CUTE“!! LOL! We’re looking forward to seeing your cute creations in the gallery!

Our sponsor this week is Kinda Cute and they have kindly donated an image that I have used on my card for you today:

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When I saw this image, I thought this was perfect for the challenge theme! I have used the Fairy and Snail digital stamp from our sponsor. I printed it out and colored it in with Copic markers. I have used a white gel pen for certain areas, and I have added some Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen over the fairy wings. I have also used some Nuvo White Blizzard Glitter Drops for some sparkle underneath the snail where it’s wet from his ‘slithering path’.

I have also taken the Lawn Fawn stamp set Stinkin’ Cute (of course) and stamped the sentiment above the image in the top right corner. I also decided to take the solid heart from the set and stamp a few purple hearts between the characters. I also took some linen thread to make a tiny bow because I thought the fairy would look CUTE with one on her curly hair! LOL!

I cut the image panel out with the My Favorite Things Stitched Mini Scallop Rectangle STAX die and then sponged some Tumbled Glass distress ink around the edges of it. I mounted it onto a piece of black cardstock and then I wanted to add some ribbon to it so I took my slot punch and punched out a hole on each end of the image panel to slip some silk purple ribbon around it. I tied a bow and added it over top to the right side. I then found some purple dotted papers and cut out a panel with the Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Rectangle Stackable die to cut it out with. The purple ribbon was secured onto the back of this piece and then mounted onto a white top folding card base. Before sticking down the image panel, I put some fun foam on the back for a bit of dimension.

Thanks so much for dropping by! See you soon!

Challenges:

Stamps & Fun = Creativity – Anything Goes
Make My Monday – colored image.
Addicted to Stamps & More – Make Your Mark
Crafty Creations – Anything Goes
Crafting by Designs – Anything Goes

Rainbows and Butterflies

Hello friends!

That was quite a post yesterday and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your kind words…it was even hard to read those, but please know I appreciated your kind hearts immensely!

I have a very fun and cheerful card for you today! Although I had missed the Cute Card Thursday challenge this last time, it is still going on and you have a few more days to enter if you wish to play along with us using your Bugs and/or Butterfly creations! I just love playing with butterflies and the first thing that came to my mind was that past Simon Says Stamp card kit called “Beautiful Butterflies”. There was some awesome rainbow patterned paper in the kit as well as a butterfly stencil and so I decided to mix them together!

Vicki-CCT539-rainbow butterflies

I used the rainbow papers (from Lawn Fawn) for the base background of my card. I took the butterfly stencil from the kit and sponged in some Distress Oxide inks for the different butterflies in rainbow ink color! I’ve used: Picked Raspberry, Orange Marmalade, Squeezed Lemon, Twisted Citron, Mermaid Lagoon, Wilted Violet and sponged them in with a sponge dauber. Mounted it onto a strip of black cardstock and placed over the rainbow background. I heat embossed a sentiment from the stamp set included in the kit with white embossing powder and then used some foam tape to mount it over the card. I finished off the card with some black enamel dots.

Simple and fun card to make! Thanks so much for stopping in today!! See you soon!

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps & More! – Anything Goes
Butterfly Challenge – Butterfly wheel on letter ‘O’: butterfly, orange, over the edge (sentiment banner)
Casual Friday (CFC204) – Rainbows & Butterflies
Crafting From the Heart – Anything Goes
Artistic Inspirations – Anything Goes

Turn! Turn! Turn! – A Remembrance of My Sweet Mocca (Bean)

I can’t tell you how very hard it is for me to type up this post, but I knew it was going to come and it is just something I must do to help with my grieving process.

If you have followed along with me on my other blog, then you may have seen a few posts or photos or mentions of my beloved miniature red-haired dachshund named Mocca. (Pronounced like the word spelled mocha) You may have also seen along the side of this blog a photo of her and dedication of her life. I would like to say thank you for those of you that have asked about her and sent thoughts of sympathy my way. It is appreciated so so much! I thought of her as a very special family member and was with her until the very end. She was a fantastic companion and ALWAYS there for me and by my side day in and day out. Every single one of my family members just LOVED her so much. It has been hard on me, but I know for a fact that she has impacted the lives of everyone around her…she was loved that much. This post is for all of us.

Vicki-Mocca Canvas

It was very hard to go through her photos to pick out just the right ones that I wanted to do these various things with, but I’m very glad I did. I will begin with this photo that I took while she was looking up at me in the very spot I am typing up this post. I grabbed my phone and took it. I took the photo to my local Walgreens and had them make an 8×10 canvas printing and it is hanging on the wall right above my computer, so I can always see her. It’s a very awesome canvas printing and the photo wraps around the edges.

Newborn Mocca: (I received this photo after she was born)

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Part of the reason for my last absence from blogging was the caretaking of her. She had developed some problems as most older dogs do, but she had arthritis, pancreatitis and lastly, she was diagnosed with a rare disease called Mega-esophagus or “floppy esophagus”. What that means is that her throat didn’t allow her to swallow, and she would choke or “regurgitate” anything that was caught in there. I had to specially make her food in meatball form and make enough to feed her small meals 4 times a day. They needed to be spread out so that there was less of a chance of anything being caught. Dogs that develop this disease can regurgitate and then accidentally ingest some of it causing them to die from aspiration pneumonia. Not only this, when she did eat, she had to be in an upright position so that the food went down her throat by force of gravity. And to make sure her meatballs got down to her stomach, I had to keep her sitting upright for at least 15-20 minutes after each feeding or any time I gave her something. After Christmas time, she had gotten worse and was slowly deteriorating to the point she couldn’t take water without choking. I was in a special group on Facebook that had the support of others going through the same thing with their pets and some helpful advice was given many times with her. I started giving her “Knox blocks” to help with hydration. She was older and with her other problems, she was still dehydrated, and I think she gave up because she refused to eat at the end. Of course, I wanted to keep going and hubby knew this…so he made me take her in where the vet had to spell out to me how sick she was. She was 12 and half years old on Groundhog’s Day of February this year when we had to let her go. I’m pretty sure I yelled NO! at the office. You may remember photos from her 12th birthday in her special chair:

Mocca turns twelve

I was hoping to be able to celebrate her 13th birthday with her which would’ve been today. Unfortunately, we did not make it, so I thought this would be a good day to remember her. Rest in peace my little beenie weenie…. I will see you some day at the rainbow bridge.

Vicki-Mocca Shadow Box Memorial

Something else that was very important for me to get done was her Shadow Box Memorial. Hubby and I picked out one of our favorite photos of her. She really enjoyed being out in the sunshine and grass. She was very healthy in that photo. The footprints came from the vet and I had heard that sometimes they fall apart, so I wanted her footprints to stand out a bit, so I took some glitter paint to go over them and then covered the entire piece of clay with some sealer. I put it back into the plastic case I was given and then glued them onto the shadow box background.

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On the other side of the paw print case that the vet gave me was this Rainbow Bridge Poem. So I matted it with black card stock and attached it to the box. (I apologize for the glare on the glass…hard to capture it.) I still cannot read the entire thing without tears.

Vicki-Mocca shadow box2

For the lettering of her name, I took some wood veneer letters and painted them along with the pink heart in the center of the ‘O’ and glued them on the back of the shadow box.

The other items are sentimental from her like the collar. I cut the end of her collar because it was so curled up and part of it was all cracked from use. The heart is a piece of fabric from her favorite “bone blanket” she got for Christmas one year. I cut out a heart shape and then stitched around the edge with some black thread. The tiny jar above her footprints is her red Doxie hair. I had some from her comb in her little “beauty box” as we called it.

This month was also our local County Fair, and I decided that I was going to enter a simple scrapbook layout that I would be able to put in her scrapbook that I’m working on. I ended up getting third place prize with it:

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The photos were taken on Mother’s Day of last year. She was snuggling with me on our front porch and fell asleep, so my hubby took photos of the process. This is a 2-page 12×12 layout.

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I remember now that this was about the time, I started growing my hair out…so it’s really gotten long since then! LOL! I had some “cloud” pattern paper which I thought was perfect for this. I added a sentiment sticker backed with black card stock along with stamping the birds and die cutting the swirl underneath the sentiment.

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I had taken the other piece of “cloud” pattern paper to place on the opposite page, but I die cut the paw prints (From My Favorite Things) so that the black would show through. The journaling says:

Mother’s Day 2017

It was a beautiful day to be outside and Mocca was enjoying the weather with me as we relaxed on the porch. She finally fell asleep in my arms. really miss snuggling with you sweetie.

The paw prints underneath the journaling were stamped in white ink from the MFT Critter Condolences stamp set.

She had even shared time with me by scratching up a spot on the carpet in weird places on the floor in my craft room 🙂 What a precious crafty friend!

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Thank you for sharing this remembrance with me. If any of you have ever lost a special friend like this, I know you understand. I wish you all LOVE & PEACE

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Sharing this post with:

2 Crafty Critters Crazies – challenge 16 Anything Goes with a critter.

Crafting Retreat Hang-over Plus ICAD Week 7

Hello friends! Oh no…It’s been a week since my last posting! I have a “crafting hang-over” if there is such a thing! LOL! There were so many things to get done after my 3 day crafting stint and I just couldn’t get it all in! I ran out of steam!

For my 3 day crafting event, it was a local friend who puts together 3 days full of classes, prizes and food! I am still a true blue stamper to the end, but since it was mostly painting, I brought my painting supplies with me and not my stamping supplies. Here’s a mixed media sample I helped teach for a class:

Vicki-Halloween-AlteredBottle

I had a Jack Daniels bottle to alter and went with that for my sample. The advantage that I had compared to everyone else is that I had four flat sides which made it a tad bit easier to attached items to it. These girls were creative and made it work and had fun! The window that I put on even glows in the dark with some special glow-in-the-dark embossing powder! I then covered it with some glossy effects for a “window” look. They are all so cool looking and I loved seeing all the different results!

Vicki-Halloween-Alteredbottle1

A closer look at the bottle and turned to the other side, you can see all of the texture that I attached to the bottle with the flowers, embossing paste, gears, bats, etc. I was going for a steam punk look for the bottle portion (which is why I went over the texture with just a gold metallic texture paste.) and I thought it would be cool to make the green goo coming out at the top, so that was fun to paint with a metallic green. There were lots of little tips and tricks everyone learned along the way. It was funny because everyone didn’t understand why they were painting over everything they worked so hard putting onto the bottle. LOL! After the texture paste, there was the excitement!

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This is just another side view of the bottle with the added texture I’ve put on it. I was able to collect some unique items for everyone’s bottle through my husband’s work in a manufacturing setting that had little metal pieces…no idea what they are, but it was something fun and unique to add texture to the bottle. And of course I had gears, buttons, stencils with embossing paste, flowers, etc. The windows and bats were all cut out with some dies that I had. That window die is actually from Lawn Fawn! The tiny bone sticking out on the window is of course Tim Holtz.

Painting Divas 2018

Here are some of the girls having fun with their bottles in class. They are very intently working on getting their bottles just right! 🙂 Of course it’s hard to get everyone together at one time in a photo, but there were a couple more people there including myself not shown.

Painting Divas-2018-Doris-mixedmedia bottles

Here’s a look at the bottles from class! I think everyone enjoyed this concept and I even had an additional bottle that I made they really enjoyed the other sample that I made too. So I made a different theme on this one:

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For those that are not Halloween fans, I showed them a completely different look with the bottle. This is my “Mermaid bottle” that I’ve made with Patina Effect Texture Pastes and copper metallic paints. I used some sea shells that I have along with some rope, beads, texture paste, cheese cloth and lots of other little tid bits I had on hand. I got a cork and used it for the top of the bottle and added a gem on top. I really like how texturized the paste made the bottle look.

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Turning the bottle around, you can see more detail on the bottle along with the charm and tiny jar I have hanging down around the cork at the top. I painted a silver mermaid charm with some Mermaid Sparkle metallic paint of course and then touched up the edges of it some copper texture paste. For the bottle, I had a package of tiny bottles and I filled one with some blue sequins and made this tiny tiny label over vellum and attached it to the bottle. It says “Mermaid Tears”.

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On the back side of the bottle, you can see that I’ve made a little “path” for the beads and sea shells to flow all the way around it. I have taken a mermaid die cut and cut it out several times to create a dimensional look by adding several layers of cardstock together. I had her sitting on top of one of the stone pieces I’ve attached to the bottle along with some gems above her for a “bubble” affect. This mermaid die along with some of the stones, gems, pebbles, mermaid charm and the gem on top of the cork all came from a past card kit.

Vicki-Mermaidbottle2

And here is just another angle of the bottle before we come back to the front of it. It just gives you a better idea of what all the dimension is on the bottle and how I’ve highlighted it with copper metallic paint. I even had a little toy compass to attach to the front. I had a piece of decorative paper from an older paper collection that I cut of piece of to attach to the front of the bottle and then wrapped the rope around it. I gave it a bit of a white wash over it with paint so it fit with the theme of the bottle….old looking.

And finally, yes, when I got home I realized that I was behind on chores around the house as well as my ICAD challenge! So I sat down yesterday to try and catch up with those so that I don’t get too far behind! I’m happy to say that I’m all caught up and there is not many left to go either! Another 2 weeks and it will be complete!

So here are the results of Week 7 ICAD:

Vicki-ICAD2018-Week7

With the theme and prompts given this last week, I didn’t expect mine to be as colorful as they are, but some of them turned out very colorful! I also enjoyed playing with some things I rarely get out to play with!

So now you know what I’ve been busy with this past week and maybe you’ll excuse me not being around so much! 🙂 Hope you’ve enjoyed my mixed media projects. I’d love to know what you think! Have you ever tried mixed media? Do you like the concept of it? Just curious how many of you out there enjoy it! Thanks for stopping in!

Challenges I’d like to enter my bottle(s) for:

A Inky Mess – Just For Fun (mixed media)
Creative Artiste – Anything Mixed Media Goes
Altered Eclectics – Anything Mixed Media Goes (no cards)

Shaking Up a Floating Boat and ICAD Week 6!

Welcome to Friday friends! It’s not common that I’ve posted 3 days in a row! Wow!

Speaking of rowing, I have a fun shaker card to share with you today:

Vicki-LF-color shaker

I thought it would be fun to pull out my Lawn Fawn Float My Boat stamp set and create a “porthole” scene shaker style card. I cut circles with the LF Stitched rectangle dies and then used the LF Ocean Waves die to cut the circle in half which creates separation for the ocean scene. I took the top half of the panel to create the sky by blending in distress inks and then used other distress inks for the bottom portion. I stamped the birds from the stamp set over the sky and then I inserted the sailboat inside the wave. As you can see, the sailboat is paper pieced with the LF Beachside Paper pad. I’ve used this paper pad to also layer throughout my card design.

I found some cool looking shaker sequins with stars to put inside my shaker “porthole”. I also used the stitched circle die to cut out a piece of acetate for the window and then I used a stitched circle frame die to cut out a white frame around my acetate shaker window. I then stamped the banner from the LF Bannertastic stamp set and cut it out with the coordinating die. I then stamped the sentiment from the Float My Boat stamp set and then popped it up with foam tape over the “porthole” shaker window until it was high enough to lay over top of it.

I mounted these onto the starry navy paper from the paper pad as well as the same red that I used on the sailboat, which was then layered onto a white A2 sized top folding card base. I used heavy weight due to all of the layers and shaker details.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be sailing on the water about now? OK…sorry…went off on a short day dream there! LOL!

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Can you believe that I’ve went through SIX WEEKS of this ICAD so far?! I have struggled at times going in to figure out what to do for the prompt on a tiny index card, but I have to say that I have built quite a collection and in a few more weeks I will have completed the entire challenge!

And here are the results from Week 6:

Vicki-ICAD2018-Week6

This week was slightly out of my comfort zone, but I went ahead and pushed through it and I’m glad I did…learned some pretty cool things! 🙂

Thanks for dropping in! Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Challenges I’d like to enter my sailboat shaker card for:

Lawn Fawnatics – color challenge
Crazy 4 Challenges (C4C442) – Windows
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Fun in the Sun
Creative Knockouts – Summer Fun

Ribbons & Bows, Oh My!

Hello friends! It’s Thursday time again and that means it’s time for a new challenge over at Cute Card Thursday! This week the theme is all about Ribbon and/or Bows!

I happen to just love ribbons and think that almost everything I create “needs” to include one somewhere. So sometimes I try to refrain from always doing it. It’s so nice to see when a challenge comes up requesting it though! 🙂 How about you? Are there any “ribbon lovers” like myself out there?

We are sponsored by All Dressed Up Digital Stamps this week and here’s my card using one of their images:

Vicki-CCT538-ADU

I have used this really fun image called Play Day for my card here. Check out those cool shades! Ha! I’ve colored it with Copic markers. Thought she would be cute with a denim looking jacket, bow and boots! I’ve also used some denim ribbon on my design too!

Looking through some papers in my stash, I found some pretty floral sparkly pattern and I’ve also added some stitch marks to the border of it, but I went “wonky” with it…so I decided to do a second line with more “wonky” stitch marks to even it out.

I feel like I haven’t used flowers on my cards in forever, so it was fun going through my stash to find goodies to go with this image. The sentiment was stamped from my stash and I hand cut a banner with it to add to my card.

Hope you like my card for today! Be sure to check out the challenge blog for more inspiration from the design team and to link up your luscious ribbon creations too! 🙂 Thanks for stopping in and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges for this card:

All Dressed Up – June Anything Goes with ADU image
Tuesday Morning Sketches (TMS461) –
Crafty Calendar – July ‘Totally Girly’
Crafting From the Heart – Anything Goes
QKR Stampede #303 – Anything Goes

Turtley Impossible

Hello friends! I really wanted to post earlier this week, but life sometimes gets in the way of all of the crafty fun that you want to do as I’m sure you know! 🙂

If you remember earlier this Summer my post about the fun stamp convention I went to in Collinsville, I shared a photo of the TONS of things I got while I was there. I still haven’t been able to play with all of it…yet, but there are a couple of companies that I fell in love with, so I decided to place an order for some things that I wished I had gotten while I was there! LOL!

This “new to me” company called Pink & Main was a booth that I went to and bought some items from. I had seen a video last year of something that I fell in love with and was determined to purchase that while I was there. I started following along with them and fell in love with these sweet turtles that I’ve used on my card today:

Vicki-Impossible Card-PM

Before I get to the details of this card, I wanted to explain what type of card this is. There are many challenge blogs I like to follow because I enjoy challenging myself while paper crafting as many of us like to do. So I came across this challenge that was asking us to make an “Impossible Card“. (I have linked a tutorial that I found on Splitcoaststampers if you want to learn how to make one for yourself. Just click on the card name.) I had not seen nor heard of one of these before, so naturally I had to play along! What I like about this card (NOT impossible at all…so easy!), is that the center panel naturally pops up like that AND you can fold it down to lay flat in a regular A2 sized envelope! (You can create different sizes and such, but I kept mine simple.)

To decorate this card, I’ve taken the very cute Pink & Main Turtely Amazing stamp set with the coordinating dies to color with my Copic markers and cut them out. I’ve also used the Pink & Main Sunset paper pad as well as the Waves Border Dies to decorate the background scene. The white strips that I’ve used for stability on the card was stamped with the sentiment from the same set and then layered with the blue polka-dotted paper around it. I added the cut elements and layered them on top of the strip. For the main popped up panel, I’ve taken the cut out turtle and layered him among the cut wave border at the bottom. I then took some of the Pink & Main Silver Glossy Dots to embellish the upper corner. I also took some ribbon and added a bow just below the turtle. For the light blue polka-dotted papers, I sponged some blue distress ink along the edges for a bit more color.

And since you can completely turn this card around, I wanted to decorate the other side as well:

Vicki-Impossible Card2-PM

For this side, I took a different turtle from the same stamp set, colored and cut him out along with the other elements to arrange on my card scene. I took some brown card stock and cut a strip with a stitched border die and inked up one edge for a sandy beach for the turtle to sit on. I also tucked the shell behind the border and added the star fish on the strip with foam tape. I also added some more silver glossy dots to the strip.

There would still be room to write a personal message on the bottom portion of the card if someone wanted to. You could also easily write something on the back somewhere on the lighter blue spots.

Super easy and fun to make which is something that I needed right now, so I’m glad I decided to give this a try!

Here are the challenges I’d like to enter this card for: