Hello friends! I hope that you’ve had a great start to your December month! I promise I haven’t been hiding, but it’s a busy time of the year and I’ve been doing all of the Holiday things, so my time has been limited. I’m glad to have just now finished up some Christmas cards!😉
Speaking of Christmas cards, I have something fun to share with you today!
Last month I had won a top 5 in a challenge and was asked to be a guest designer for this Try it on Tuesday challenge! I really enjoy playing along in the challenges to keep motivated, so I was thrilled! For THIS challenge, the theme is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” which inspired me to pull out this fun Santa stamp for a chuckle:
So, this is Santa’s excuse for being late! Like me, he’s NOT hiding…just delayed!😆
The stamps and die cuts came from an older My Favorite Things card kit I had called “Stuffed Santa“. I had fun putting this one together and was the beginning of the cards made to send out this year. (It was my plan to be early, but you know how THAT goes!)
For the background: I ink blended in a couple of blue oxide colors with the center panel fading to the lightest color. I sprayed the panel with some shimmer spray for that cold frosty shimmer sky. I then splattered some white opaque Copic mixed with water for the snowfall.
The Santa, hands, sentiment bubble, and lights around the chimney were all stamped and colored with Copic markers. I die cut them out along with the chimney, snow and rooftop pieces. I die cut the pieces with white and used my Copic markers to color in the chimney, roof, window and lights around the roof line. For the sentiment panel on the house at the bottom, I cut it to size and used my Copic markers to color the same as the roof peek. I added the sentiment to it, and made this the “base” for the house.
To finish it off, I added some chunky glitter to the die cut snow on the chimney and roof. I also used a glitter pen to add some sparkle to the inside window panels and the Christmas lights. I also used some foam squares to pop up the sentiment bubble and Santa’s mittens.
Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and that you’ll play along with this fun challenge over at Try it on Tuesday as well! Thanks so much for dropping by!
Hello friends! I hope you’ve had a great start to your November so far! It’s been a few minutes since I’ve posted, but I have to say that I’ve been pretty busy in the background! Hoping to share what I’ve been up to soon!
Today begins a new challenge over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge! This month, we’re looking to see some WINTER ANIMALS! I hope you can join in the fun with us! A reminder that this will be the final challenge for the year as we’ll be on Holiday break until January. Here’s my take on the theme:
My first thought of a winter animal is a penguin of course! I’m a huge fan of them and have so many in my collection…including other than stamp related! These guys are really enjoying winter on this scene! I’m using theMy Favorite Things Playful Penguins stamp set and I started with a stencil from MFT that has “pond” shapes and lightly stenciled the soft blue for a place for my “ice platform” to be.
After creating the “ice pond”, I used some tape to mask off the bottom portion so that I could ink blend a sky at the top. I used some White Opaque Copic and splattered it over the sky area. I then used another MFT stencil to create some snow drifts in the background.
The two penguins, igloo, ice pad and sign were stamped, colored with Copic markers and die cut out to be placed over the scene. I added the flattened penguin to the ice pad and then had the igloo in the background while the sign and penguin are waiting at the side of the pond. I used a pen and wrote “FREE RIDES” on the sign.
I finished it off with a glitter pen over the “ice pad” and igloo and then used some Stardust Stickles over the snow on the sign. I thought it needed some more snow falling down, so I took some sequins and added it to the scene.
If I were on that scene, I would probably be more like the flattened penguin on the “ice pad”!😆 How about you? Do you like the snow?
Thanks so much for joining me here! I hope you like my penguin card and will sharing your favorite winter animal in the challenge too! Have a great day!
Hello friends! Hope you had a great weekend and maybe did some crafting? Did you participate in the World Card Making Day events? There were so many things going on, so I basically opened up the You Tube video marathons and watched while I did a bit of crafting.
I was inspired by the Craft Roulette WCMD event with several crafters showcasing their version of the parameters they were to use for that event. It was several hours long!
Here’s the card that I made with the Craft Roulette World Card Making Day parameters of – PROJECT: A2 card, COLORS: rainbow, ELEMENT: nature, and RANDOM: black dots
I also combined my card using one of the sponsor’s products which I’m entering for this week’s sketch challenge from My Favorite Things.
I’ve had these stamps in my collection for quite a while and it was nice to pull them out for this card. I actually needed a card for an elderly woman who recently fell and broke her hip, so she’ll be recovering with therapy for a while.
For my card, I used the MFT Watercolor flowers and stamped them in red-, orange- and yellow-colored layers and cut them out (This was my nature element parameter). The middle was cut with the MFT Stitched Hexagon diesthat I ink blended with green and blue inks (These colors make up the rainbow parameter). I splattered the shape with white and black. *Before I splattered, I stamped the sentiment from the MFT Essential Sentiments set with black pigment ink and heat embossed it with clear EP. (The sentiment was cut in portion to fit my design.)
For the A2 sized card base (makes up project parameter), I used a MFT Triangle background stamp (retired) in the same kraft color that I inked the centers of the flowers with. I also used this color to ink around the edges of the card. I than layered two more cut out shapes for the ink blended sentiment panel for dimension and attached to the stamped card base. I used foam tape to pop up the flowers and lastly added some black gemstones (for the black dots parameter).
Thanks so much for stopping by today! Hope you’ve enjoyed my inspiration! See you soon!
Hello friends! We have now started the Fall season over my way and although the weather has been quite unpredictable, I am looking forward to the temperatures dropping and pretty Fall colors outdoors. I have just now started seeing some slight changes in some of the foliage.
COMMENT UPDATE: I thank you so much for taking the time and trying to leave a comment with me…I appreciate it! I have been in contact with a support team and they’ve been very helpful. Here’s what I’ve been told – “In response to your inquiry, WordPress.com indeed made some changes recently to enhance security and user experience. We released the new comments User Interface on 20% random sites which we believe is better than the older version in every way. e.g. Earlier the Facebook login was treated as a quick way to fill the guest form, but now when you log in with Facebook, your subscription preferences are recorded and rendered correctly; i.e. you’re actually logged in and remembered, and you can configure your preferences. However, we understand that this might not be convenient for all users.”
So basically this just means that the way the comment box looks is different. You should still be able to leave a comment. Just pull up the comment box and start typing whatever you want to say, once you do that, buttons will appear on how you’d like to enter your information/login. Once you do, the “reply” button will highlight and you can leave your comment. Hopefully you will be “remembered” the next time you visit. Hopefully, this all makes sense. (If you have any more questions or problems, you can always contact me)
So now let’s get back to some Fall crafting! I’ve made a birthday card for a guy that likes to go camping and eat smores by the fire….
I think this turned out so fun! I have used an older STAMPtember collaboration set from My Favorite Things and not sure if it’s last year or before that…but fell in love with the camp critters in the set! (This year’s STAMPtember collaborations will be fun to play with too! Stay tuned for some makes coming up with those!)
I have ink blended a panel in blues for a night sky and splattered some white over it for a starry look. I stamped and colored all the images and cut them out with the coordinating dies. I die cut a very dark green panel with a grass border die and attached it over the blue night panel that was layered onto a white A2 side folding card base. I tucked in and attached all the pieces over the grass and behind it for the scene and then even added some shadow with a marker under some of the images. I white heat embossed the sentiment from the set and then the celebrate banner was attached at the top. Lastly, I’ve added some Stardust Stickles over the flames from the fire.
How about you? Do you like to camp? Eat smores? Enjoy Fall weather? I like all of the above of course! Thanks so much for stopping in today! Hope you’ve been inspired or gotten smile!
Challenges:
Make My Monday – Create Your Own Background (starry sky)
Hello friends and happy weekend! As we finish off another really hot day…probably for most of the U.S. right now, I do hope you’re staying cool and enjoying the rest of the month of July. We’ve been in a heat advisory in our area for the last few days, but hopefully it will cool down soon. In the meantime, I will be crafting inside!
It’s time for the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she will have some wonderful inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” July prompt of “STRIPS/STRIPES”:
I don’t know why this makes me giggle, but it does! I thought the best way to create the “STRIPS/STRIPES” prompt would be to pull out some more of those never-ending stash of pattern papers! So I pulled some out for the strips at the bottom that I cut out with a hillside border die and one of the pieces happened to have stripes on it which worked out for both! I thought it would look great for the field that the cow WAS on.😆
For the background: I started with my usual piece of 6″x 9″ pre-punched at the top from Canson Watercolor paper and made a galaxy background with watercolors. I had fun making a mess with it! I let it air dry underneath some heavy books to keep it flat as it dried. Once dry, I splattered some Copic opaque white with a fan brush over it.
This is where I added the strips of cut papers at the bottom. Before I cut the green layer at the bottom, I ran it through my printer to create the quote on my computer. I sponged the edges of it with green ink. I also sponged some black ink around the edges of the galaxy background too. The striped paper was painted with a light green ink and then splattered with a darker green color as I was trying to mute it a bit. The “fence” behind it was cut out with white cardstock and placed behind the striped strip piece.
For the flying saucer and alien, I used an UFO die set from Whimsy Stamps and cut it out with several different specialty papers like holographic, silver glitter, green metallic, black glitter, vellum and acetate (for the front window of the saucer). I popped it up with foam tape over a die cut piece of vellum that I’ve colored with a yellow marker and sprayed with shimmer spray…hard to pick up in a photo, but you can barely see it. I attached it over the background by using my Xyron sticker machine, so you can still see through it.
I glued the “confused cow” from the MFT The Whole Herd stamp set within the “beam” vellum. The hillside borders that I cut the bottom strips with came from MFT as well.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my AJ page today and been inspired in some way! Thanks so much for dropping in and don’t forget to look up!!😆
Happy April friends! We have finished March already and onto Easter very quickly approaching! I hope you’re enjoying all things Spring coming up your way! We’ve had several storms and we’re in the tornado season as well, so I hope everyone is staying safe out there whatever the weather. I do have some things that I had previously finished and wanted to share:
First, I wanted to share about the Virtual Stamp Joy Event by Taylored Expressions that I participated in a few weeks ago. I always have so much fun and enjoy the motivation that it seems to generate! I’m sharing them in the gallery below, so if you’re on my website post, then just click on each photo to enlarge it.
The first four photos were from a class using the same floral stamp set and the others are from the next day of make-n-take projects. Please let me know if you have any questions about any of them!
The last set of four cards were a “mass production” using a background stamp in different colored cardstock panels and clear heat embossing over them. The class sample had “hello” sentiment on each one, but I changed up the sentiments and have placed them in a card box to give them out with envelopes as a gift for someone.
Hope you’ve enjoyed the inspiration as much as I enjoyed putting them all together!
From the end of last year up until this last month, I didn’t have much time with the Holidays and everything going on, but as you may have seen in previous posts, I participate in a “square sampler swap” and when everyone sends out their squares, we then complete a home décor piece with all of the squares, so I thought I’d share mine finally completed:
CLICK PHOTOS BELOW TO ENLARGE
This was for the Christmas Sampler SWAP and you can see that I’ve used a black shadow box frame for my sampler and placed some red with red metallic dotted paper behind it. The square on the right is the one that I made. (I’ve used My Favorite Things products for my square.)
This was for the Winter Sampler SWAP and I went with a white shadow box for this one. I’ve placed some soft blue snowflake papers for behind my sampler as I thought it was soft enough to not look too busy. The square on the right is the one that I made. (I’ve used Inky Stamper products for my square.)
And recently we finished up our Spring Animals Sampler SWAP that I used another white shadow box for the sampler. I’ve added a piece of pink colored “Watercolor Wishes” paper from Lawn Fawn behind it. It looks a little off in the photo, but it looks better IRL. The square on the right is the one that I made. (I used Taylored Expressions products for my square.)
Not sure if we’re doing any more or not, but I had so much fun making the squares to swap with friends!
Lastly, I have a fun little thing to give to whoever is interested in these Taylored Expressions dies + foil-it panels package. (It’s not sold in stores anywhere as it was a free gift with purchase) I have an extra and so I thought I’d give it away to someone! Just leave me a comment below if you’re interested and I’ll pick someone from the comments.
Leave a comment below if you’re interested!
That’s all I have for today! Thanks so much for stopping in! I’ll be seeing you soon!
Hello friends! Welcome to March! Although it’s still cold and even some snow coming in our forecast, I know that warmer weather is coming soon along with those pretty flowers! I have a full weekend of crafting coming, so I’m prepared to get through this cold snap!
So, I have unfortunately had to make and send a couple of pet sympathy cards as I didn’t have any on hand. I decided that I needed to pull out a card kit from My Favorite Things called “Rainbow Bridge“, I think. It’s no longer available, but I know they have a few things in pet sympathy. I wanted to make sure that I still had some of these on hand when needed because I feel like these can be hard to make.
This card was made and sent out in January for someone who lost their precious fur friend. I thought the silhouette looked a similar shape to the photos I saw. I’ve used the stencil and dies that came with the kit along with some of the papers included in the kit with the paw prints. I’ve also used the same papers as a liner for the inside of the envelope that you can see in the photo.
I’ve ink blended some rainbow colors and then used the die set in the kit to make the rainbow bridge and added some hearts around the silhouette pup which was popped up over the rainbow bridge.
I also needed to make a kitty one and then just decided that I was going to use this card kit to make several of these different pet sympathy cards so that I had some on hand when needed. I thought that was a clever card kit and knew it would be very useful to create lots of pet sympathy cards with.
These are all in the gallery below, so if you’re on my website, just click on each photo to enlarge the size so you can see the details:
Sometimes it’s just good to sit down and craft to have some cards on hand that you know you’ll probably need at some point, but don’t want to hurry to try and put something together because you need it.
Hope you’ve gotten some inspiration in my post today or found some inspiration with it. Thanks so much for stopping in today!
Hello friends! Hope that you’ve had a wonderful Valentine’s Day and a great start to this new week in February!
I’m really excited to share that I’ve just been invited as a new design team member over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog! I really like the fact that it has fun monthly themes to get you thinking and also that I can use up my never-ending piles of my own craft stash! This fits perfectly well with me and something I can handle!😉 So I hope you’ll stop by and follow along to play with us each month! You can find a new one on the 15th of each month.
Today starts a new monthly challenge theme which is #161 “Men Only“…so anything masculine will do! With having sons in my family, I’m always in need of masculine style cards for sure! Here’s my card for this month’s challenge:
Oh yes…tools! This always seems to be a favorite in my craft supply when creating a masculine card for sure! I made this one for my husband who’s a very handy guy, and he likes the color blue. I always like to add lots of textures, distressing and layers when making a masculine card. This also helps for using more of those craft supplies!
I’ve had these stamps and dies from My Favorite Things for quite a while now and only used them a couple of times. I die cut the background panel in the pegboard cover die and stitched rectangle dies, plus, layered with a couple of different blue panels that were stapled together. A die cut circle in woodgrain and blue papers were attached and cut off at the edge before attaching to the top folding white A2 card base.
I’ve added the die cut tool elements over top of the circle using some silver mirror and blue colored cardstocks to cut them out. I added some sponged ink over some places and topped it with a ripped strip of silver embossed screw heads, a strip of dark blue and the stamped sentiment stapled together and placed it over top with a piece of “messy” thread. Lastly, I added the dark blue die cut hearts and covered them with a glitter brush pen.
I hope that you will stop by the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog to check out the challenge and inspiration from the creative design team! I look forward to seeing what everyone creates!
Thanks so much for stopping in and I’ll see you soon!
Hello friends! We’re headed into the home stretch now for Christmas and the end of the year! Are you ready yet? Well I thought that I would try and get some Christmas cards made up and have some fun with it rather than trying to rush things too much.
Tee hee! This one makes me giggle! While I was making up some squares for my sampler swap group, I thought I’d use this same MFT Stuffed Santa kit (that I had gotten last year) and made a card along with making the squares too! The squares I made turned out cute too and I’ll share those later on. I added some glitter to the snow on the image and on his gold belt buckle too. The background was white heat embossed with the MFT Christmas Greetings Background and then ink blended with blue inks. Finished off with snowflake sequins and Stickles glitter in the centers of each.
And here’s another set of cards that I made from a previously purchased kit by Riley & Co using the cute Riley as the Grinch stamp. The stamp was included along with the kit and so I just thought it would be nice and easy by just coloring him up, adding my own sentiment and putting it together. So now I want to watch the movie! 😄
And lastly are some cards that I put together during an OOAK event with the classes that I selected to get the kits for and just enjoyed the process of putting them together. **If you are on my website, you can click on the photos below to see them up close and larger**
Craft Fancy class – part 1 (spinner)Craft Fancy Class – part 2 (shaker card)Riley & Co – candy lane image (z-fold)Riley & Co – Merry deer (z-fold)Riley & Co – funny bonesInky Stamper – gift card holder inside & mini card
So although I’ve shared several projects here today, I have more craft-making going on so I’m going to shorten up my post and hope that you enjoy the inspiration! I appreciate you stopping by today! See you soon!
Hello friends! We’re here! We made it to Christmas Eve!😀 My cards have been sent out, my cookies are done and delivered as well as my other little gifts. This is quite a long post, so grab your hot cocoa or whatever your favorite beverage is and a Christmas cookie or treat and let’s see what I’ve been doing this past week:
So, starting with my Christmas cards, I usually make around 40ish cards each year give-or-take and I only like to make a handful of them at a time for not only boredom of the same design, but for product depletion as well.
So back in July, I purchased this really adorable card kit from Taylored Expressions (included was the Frosty Background Cling and Clear Combo set + more.) that came with coordinated colored envelopes as well as the seals. So, I made a set of four different colored designs in two of each one. The snowmen were popped up with foam squares over the backgrounds and I added some fun Snowflake bits that were included with the kit as well.
Next up is another set of cards I made using some more gorgeous products from Taylored Expressions. I’ve used the Seasonal Sprig stamp and die combo along with the stencil to color them in with. Some of these I ink blended the backgrounds, so I just used cardstock with a watermark effect and a white heat embossed sentiment. I used the die to cut an extra frame behind the stamped one for added stability. I made 4 of each design shown here for a total of 16.
I then made another set of four using the same products, but for these I gold heat embossed the image and sentiment and then used some watercolor for coloring it in with. I also got some of these coordinating envelope seals to use on about 10 of the 16 cards. (No longer available in store.) I’ve also partially ink blended the background behind the frame on these as well.
Here are some cards that I’ve actually made a total of 8 similar designs using the large wording background dies from My Favorite Things. I’ve used the “Sending Christmas Joy” and “I Really Miss You” dies for all eight of these, but only after I stamped the backgrounds. I used the MFT Knitted Sweater BG stamp and the Alley Cat BG stamp for a couple of backgrounds before I die cut them. Then I used the die cut letters to place into the other backgrounds on the cards to get that look. So it was like creating 2 cards with one cut and filling it all in. (For the Alley Cat background stamp, I ink blended the background and stamped it as a watermark effect over it and then took the “left over” ink from that to stamp it again to create an additional BG.) I then cut out each of the panels with the MFT Wonky Stitched Rectangle die and placed over a white A2 sized side folding card base. The penguin image is from the MFT Holiday Penguins set and the bird on the other one is from the MFT “Tweet Holidays” (Not found in store.)
And then of course you don’t want to waste any backgrounds you’ve made, so you make more cards! I’ve used a couple more images to personalize the design for people too. I combined the sets Newton’s Nook Whispering Pines and the Lawn Fawn Winter Skies. I think I took a set from them to create a sentiment to fit my cards as well. (not sure from which set.)
For the other card, I took this cute image from the Whimsy Stamps Gnome for Christmas stamp set, colored him up with my copics and cut him out with the coordinating die to pop him up over my card.
And then for these set of 4 cards, I’ve just die cut a snowflake from some glitter paper and glued in the center of the “O” on each design and popped up a sentiment over that with foam tape stamped and die cut from the Taylored Expressions Mini Strips – Holiday and Mini Strips die.
And as you remember in a previous post those “recycled Crystal Light containers” that I make, I made another set of three of them here. This time, I’ve used this snowman stamp. I just used my scissors to fussy cut those cute snowmen out as they were pretty simple to do and then I popped them up over an ink blended tag using the stencil over them. I used coordinating cardstock and silver heat embossed the sentiment strip at the bottom and of course added my “snowman soup” poem on the back of the containers. I’ve also added a layer of silver mirror cardstock behind the tags.
And I made a couple of these darling ornaments from a fairly “new to me” company that I was actually introduced to with product during my time as a {Cupcake Inspirations} sweetie DT when they sponsored a challenge a while back. P.S. There are a few more days left to enter their current challenge of “SNOWFLAKES” if you want to pop on over to join us too!!
But I was so taken with this darling image and kit from Inky Stampers from this Snow Much Fun Kit. You get the snowflake ornament (with string), the stamp set and die, papers, wobbler, along with glitter to complete it too! Well, I wanted to make more than one, so I grabbed another set of Snowflake Ornaments from the store and just added my own papers and glitter from my stash to make it.
Whew! I’m ready for that “Looong winter’s nap” now!!🥱 I hope you’ve enjoyed my post today and it has brought you some inspiration and/or a smile somehow! I have received some beautiful Christmas cards and I so appreciate them and have them all displayed by being pinned around my garland in our pass-through in the living room/dining area. I think after a bit of rest, I need to finish up my projects for the “Bugaboo Christmas Chaos” that I halted in the middle for to finish up Christmas projects….so I’ll be back soon with that.
In the meantime, I wish a MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!🎅
