Grateful & Encouraged

Hello friends! It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow for us in the United States and I’d like to send a heartfelt Thanksgiving greeting to you all! I would also like to say a huge thank you to everyone for your kindness and friendship. I’m very grateful for you and encouraged by your support!

I’ve been working on several things and haven’t spent the time to photograph and share everything yet, but I will be sharing soon. In the meantime, I’d like to share a few projects that I’ve made in lieu of the Thanksgiving holiday:

I don’t normally send Thanksgiving cards, but it’s a great way to say thank you to someone that hosted a dinner or brought something to share or just spend time with you! That is the ONLY turkey stamp I own! The stamp set is called “Sassy Thanksgiving” by CZ Designs at Simon Says Stamp. I thought the sentiments in it were too cute and funny. You certainly could make this any type of thank you as well.

This is also a fancy/fun fold card called a “Swing Easel Card”. I found a tutorial using a vertical style on You Tube here – SWING EASEL TUTORIAL (I also used the same detail of embossing an additional panel with leaves and went over the texture with some gold paste.)

I made another panel for the center area and ink blended some blue that faded out and then splattered some gold paint over it. I then layered it over a piece of gold that fits in the center panel of the easel. I gold heat embossed the large sentiment and cut it out with the die. It was popped up over the leaves. I also cut an additional strip with the gold for the “catcher” of the front panel of the easel card. I added the turkey and leaves along with the stamped sentiment on the inside bottom.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year and I enjoy using the colors and images in the cards I make, so here’s more that I’ve made:

I’ve made a couple of encouragement cards to send out to some people and I’ve used a favorite card kit from my stash by Taylored Expressions. The images come from the stamp set Wheatfield Dreams. I’ve used an oval die and oval mask to do some ink blending and just cut out the colored image to pop them over top. Both sentiments were copper heat embossed.

I kept the backgrounds simple with the one on the left stamped with a background stamp from TE and the other was cut out with a wonky stitch die and layered over a green card base.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my creations, and I am so grateful you’ve chosen to stop by!❤️

Challenges:

Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
Crafting Happiness – Thanksgiving/Harvest #148
Four Seasons – Fall Season
The Crafty Addicts – Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore – Anything Goes

It’s Halloween!

Hello friends! Tomorrow is Halloween and so I thought I’d share some cards that I’ve made that were sent out to people.

The dog and cat ghosts are too cute from Newton’s Nook! I love their “howling”! Not much to color and I’ve used the dies to cut them out and pop over the background with the paper pad from NN as well. I heat embossed the sentiment over a die cut banner and then added a frame around the edges with some holographic paper.

I made this for someone who loves Halloween almost as much as I do and also has both a dog and cat. The cat’s name is Spooky! LOL

And here’s another card I’ve made using some Taylored Expressions products. I first ink blended the background in a couple of blue tones with dark blue around the edges and then splattered some silver watercolor for the stars. I used a layered moon stencil to the moon effect and then die cut the witch in glitter black cardstock. The sentiment was white heat embossed and cut out with a banner die. I’ve also used another frame of the holographic cardstock.

And last but not least, I’ve made this card and not necessarily for Halloween, but this was made for my husband’s anniversary card. We’ve been married 24 years and we both feel the same about Halloween/spooky things! LOL I found these fun digital images from Etsy to print out and then I fussy cut part of one to add to another. I stamped the background with a background stamp I had covered with roses and blended some inks around the heart. I also added some black gems around it and covered the rose “Jack” is holding with a glitter pen.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my post today! Thanks for dropping in and I hope you all have a wonderfully fun and spooky Halloween!👻

Challenges:

Little Red Wagon – Trick or Treat
Papercraft – Happy Halloween
Creative Crafting Uncles – Halloween
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes using paper
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes
Krafty Chicks – All Occasions (bottom card anniversary)
Sweet Stampin’ – All Hallow’s Eve

October AJ Page-Thriller Mix

Hello friends! Halloween is very near! 💀 I have been working on a few Halloween cards and will be posting those as soon as I know they’ve been received. But today’s project is about Halloween in mixed media art journal form! I do enjoy crafting Halloween!

Very excited to be doing 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 always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” October prompt of “MIX” (mix colors together from any media):

For this month’s prompt, MIX, I have to say that I love to mix up colors to see what they look like. I have SO many bottles of watercolor and of course watercolor is fun to mix up…so I went with that for my background.

For the background: Hard to tell, but I’ve used eight different colors of watercolor that was applied to a pre-punched 6″ x 9″ Canson 140# cold press paper. I also used a circle stencil to apply some white ink over it for a bokeh effect. I also stamped some random words and gears. (Stamperia and Tim Holtz) I also took some of the green watercolor used in the background for a few splatters.

Showing my age here but does anyone remember the Micheal Jackson “Thriller”?! It’s perfect for Halloween! I thought I needed to add a title to my page to represent the Halloween theme and this song came to my mind! 😆

I found some cool lettering that I used my Cricut machine to cut them out with in both gold metallic (also cut gears with) and some dark grey cardstock. I glued them together with a slight off-set so the gold shows through. I also used some Nuvo Glow in the Dark liquid drops around the edges of the letters. I wanted to make it really “goopy” so I heated it up with my heat gun so that it bubbled.

The bottom of the page has the really cool Steampunk skull image that came from an Etsy store. I used another image of it to fussy cut the hat and then popped it up over the image on the paper. If you look at the center bottom of his hat, I added a gear with a clear drop in the center of it.

I’ve also added a talk sticker and rub-on from Tim Holtz. I added a couple more metal gears from my stash to go with the gold cut out ones. Lastly, I’ve taken some silver metallic wax and went around the edges of the page and slightly over top of the skull’s hat.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page today! I sure had fun putting it together! Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – In Gear
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media #98
Try it On Tuesday – Halloween
Two Old Bats Halloween – Anything Goes Halloween
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Spooky!

Things That go ‘BUMP’ in the Night for Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends! I hope you’re having a great weekend! Did you have “good luck” on Friday the 13th? It’s getting closer to Halloween! I don’t send out very many Halloween things, but it’s something that I share with friends and my adult kids because it holds some special memories of just having fun.

Today begins our October challenge at Sparkles Monthly with a theme that was my turn to pick: Things That go ‘BUMP’ in the Night (Does not HAVE to be Halloween!) So, if you’re not a Halloween person, this theme is open-ended. Try nocturnal animals, Santa on the roof, etc. Just have some fun crafting!

Of course, I love Halloween and had fun making my card:

I thought these mice were just too cute! They were out bumping around in the night trying to be scary but scared each other instead! LOL

The mice came from the STAMPtember collaboration with Whimsy Stamps and the set is called Spooky & Mice. I colored them with Copic markers and die cut them out with the coordinating dies. They were popped up with foam tape over the background.

For my background: I used a cloud stencil on a white piece of cardstock and blended some clouds with purple ink and then blended around the edges with black and grey ink. I then took the SSS Spook Up Some Fun stamp set and stamped black stars over the background and I also white heat embossed the oval sentiment panel that was in that stamp set over black cardstock and set it aside. I’ve also splattered the background with black, white and silver acrylic paints.

While that panel was drying, I heat embossed the Whimsy Stamps Spider Web Frame with a white sparkle EP and then cut the middle of it out with scissors so the cloud background would show. I stamped the spider hanging down onto the background while sizing it up with the frame and then drew a black string with a marker for it. Glued on the frame, attached my oval sentiment panel, and attached it to a top folding A2 sized grey card base. (Then added the mice with foam squares.)

Lastly, I’ve added some silver gems on each side of the sentiment oval and attached a few clear sequins over the night sky background.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you’ll be able to join along in the fun with us this month! I’ll be seeing you soon!

Challenges:

Two Old Bats Halloween – Anything Goes Halloween
Crafty Animals – Anything Goes with an animal
Critter Crazy – Anything Goes with a featured critter
Creative Inspirations – Autumn or Halloween
Craft Rocket – Autumn and/or Halloween
As You Like It – Favorite Halloween or Fairies & why? (I love to make Halloween theme because it’s so fun with cute, scary or fun characters and I love the colors too!)
Most Magical Time of the Year – Anything Halloween or Christmas
Creative Moments – “It’s Alive!”

September AJ Page-Thankful Imprint

Hello friends! Can you believe we’re already through September?! Today is a scheduled post from me as I’m away in an area with spotty to no connection right now, but wanted to be sure that I had my Art Journal Page posted for this month.

It’s also hard to believe that this is the 9th page done for this year! I’m so glad I’ve done 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 always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” September prompt of “IMPRINT” (using gel plate, print machine, leaves or something to create an impression):

Really had a fun time with this as I hadn’t gotten a chance to play around with my gel plate very much and I received about 15 different prints in one sitting! It started out like I didn’t have a clue, but the more I kept experimenting, the more fun and unique prints came out. Do you have a gel plate and/or do you use it often? (If you’re new to Gel Printing, here’s a link to a You Tube video showing you basics on how to get started – The Basics of Gel Printing)

For my print here, I decided to try something from nature and found a couple of maple leaves in my yard that were laying on the ground starting to turn. I think there are about 3 layers of prints on this one…hard to remember when you just keep going! I cut it out to fit the size of my AJ page.

FOR THE BACKGROUND – I started with my usual 6″ x 9″ Canson 140# cold pressed watercolor paper with pre-punched holes at the top and covered it with DecoArt media fluid acrylic Primary Cyan applied with a baby wipe. Really love the blue background it gave here. Then this is when I applied the gel print piece to my background. I then used some orange, black and white colored acrylic paints to create some splatters over the background and gel print piece.

I die cut some maple looking leaves from the Taylored Expressions Garden Variety-Fall die set and ink blended them. I also splattered some orange paint over them as well. I had some gold glitter sheets that I cut down in a couple of thin strips to add to the top and bottom of my gel print piece. I then attached the die cut maple leaves.

I cut out the word “Thankful” from Impression Obsession three times in Pumpkin cardstock and layered them together for my page. I also grabbed this sentiment from the Tim Holtz small talk stickers and layered it over the same Pumpkin cardstock and attached it next to the “Thankful” word on the page.

I thought about adding something more, but I then thought it would distract from the printing which already has a “busy” look to it and so I called this one done.

I’m very THANKFUL that you’ve taken the time to stop by and your kind support! It’s always more fun to craft with like-minded friends! I’m also THANKFUL to my crafty friend Carol for sharing this monthly AJ fun with me as well! (I will stop by to see your page as soon as I can my friend!)

Have a great day and see you in October! 😊

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Let the Fall Begin!

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.”
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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)
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Love to Craft – Anything Goes
Allsorts – 4-legged Friends or Anything Goes
Passion for Markers – For a Man or a Boy (colored with Copic markers)

Inky Stamper NEW Stamps Inspiration!

Hello friends! I’m really excited to be sharing some more inspiration today as a guest designer this month using some brand-new Inky Stamper stamp sets that were just released! Stop by the store and check them out…they’re so cute!

First, I have a couple of shaped interactive cards for those warm drinks as the temperatures start to cool down. I made one for Autumn and shared it in the Inky Stamper FB Group and was asked how it I made it, so I thought I’d share that one along with another Christmas style version that I made too:

Aren’t these so cute with that little raccoon from the Inky Stamper Warm Beverages stamp set?! The one on the right is the one I made with Fall colors covering the front of the cup with the Doodlebug Gingham/Linen paper pad. I also used the Doodlebug Bon Bon Twine around the cup sleeve.

The cup on the left is more Christmas themed and I’ve used pretty much the same products, but just changed up the colors a little bit. This cup is slightly different because it’s about 1/4″ shorter so that it would properly fit inside an A2 envelope. The Autumn card was a bit snug, so I tweaked the size a bit more on the Christmas to make it fit nicely.

When you pull the lid off the top of the coffee cup, there is an insert with a greeting and/or a place where you can add a gift certificate. These were so fun to create and easy to do! Mass production could be possible for sure!

All that is needed are some measurements and a few tips along the way to get you started. I thought it would be easier to understand with a video, so check that out below or watch on You Tube HERE.

I also had a birthday card that I needed to make for someone, so I thought I’d pull out the new Inky Stamper Hippo stamp set and have some fun with it!

Aren’t these party animals so cute?! I thought this one would be fun to turn into a polaroid style, so I pulled out a square die to create my own polaroid frame with it! I also cut another one in black cardstock so that I had a bit of dimension with it. I stamped the sentiment from the set at the bottom of the frame.

The background behind the Hippo was created by white heat embossing the music note image from the stamp set over some Inky Stamper Watercolor Panels and then using some watercolors for an emboss resist background. I colored up the Hippo, bird and party hat and cut them out to arrange over the background. I added a couple of pieces of the Doodlebug Grey Swiss Dot Washi Tape over top of the Doodlebug Gingham/Linen Paper that was cut out with a wonky stitched die and attached to a white top folding A2 card base. I found a couple of sequins from the Picket Fence Rubber Duckies mix and then filling the centers of them with yellow Stickles.

So many different things going on in this post, but I hope that you’ve enjoyed it and have been inspired to create something too! Thank you so much for stopping in today!

Challenges:

Love to Scrap – Anything Goes
Love to Craft – Anything Goes
Krafty Chicks – Stamp Act
My Time to Craft – Critters
Colour Crazy Craft – Anything Goes + coloring
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
The Corrosive – Anything Goes

November GDT for Inky Stamper – It’s OWLright!🦉

Hello friends and happy November! Really excited to share that I’ve been asked to a be guest designer this month for one of my favorite companies which is Inky Stamper! Yay!🎉 If you follow along with me, then you’ve probably already seen some of my creations using their products. Please be sure to click the badge below to be taken to the store! (The characters are so cute!) I will be adding this badge to the sidebar of my blog here so you can find it if you want to come back to it later.

For my first project this month, I actually pulled out an older stamp set which I think is perfect for this time of year especially when you want to give “thanks” to those special people in your life.

Isn’t this guy with his quirky face adorable?! I’ve used this fun Inky Stamper Owl stamp set with dies for this card. The punny sentiments that are always with these stamp sets make perfect options!

Have you seen the “Torn Window Card” technique around social media? I think you could probably find it just about anywhere and not sure where exactly it originated from, but I wanted to try it and give it my own spin by creating a torn hole with a slightly pulled around opening. Which I thought was a perfect “tree hole” for my quirky owl to pop out of! What’s fun is that you don’t need any special tools or die to do this…just rip it!

For my papers, I’ve used the Doodlebug Buffalo Check & Woodgrain 6×6 paper pad from Inky Stamper with the brown color for the outside “tree trunk” portion that I ripped the hole in the center for and then another piece of the woodgrain in black for behind the hole which makes it look like the inside of the “tree trunk”. Plus, I think it makes the owl stand out more. To rip the hole, I just cut through it with scissors and gauged what size to rip based on the owl image. I used some brown ink to sponge around the edges including around the “hole”. I then distressed the edges of the paper as well as lifted/curled the torn edges of the “hole” area. When I did that, it exposed the buffalo check pattern on the other side of the paper, so then I took my VersaMark ink pad to rub around the edges and gold heat embossed all the distressed edging. I also gold heat embossed the sentiment from the stamp set over some of the black woodgrain for the banner at the bottom.

Here’s a closer look at the owl all colored up with Copic markers. I added a few white gel pen marks to his beak and feet. I also colored up several of the leaves with this set and die cut all the pieces to attach to the card. I glued the leaves around the owl and then for the owl, I glued the bottom of him over the leaves and then popped up his head with foam tape. I also used foam tape for the leaf to the left of the owl.

For a little extra sparkle, I painted on (using a brush) some Liquid Pixie Dust for the leaves and the owl’s eye whites. To finish it off, I added some Picket Fence Sands of Time-Gems. (These are a couple of my personal favorite extras!)

I hope you’ve enjoyed my ripped hole owl card today and have been inspired to doing some ripping of your own!

Thanks so much for stopping in and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

Creatalicious – Anything Goes + optional Fall
Double D – Thankful/Blessings/Grateful
Crafty Animals – Anything Goes + animal
Four Seasons – Anything Goes Fall
QKR Stampede – Anything Goes #455
Kreativ-Tanten – Autumn Greetings

Batty Anniversary

Hello friends! I wanted to share the anniversary card I made for hubby this year. Now that I’m posting this (without him knowing), I think I made a bat style card last year too! It just happens to fit with this time of the year and we got married close to Halloween…so it works, right?!😉 I’m just thankful that we BOTH like Halloween!

So, I fell in love with these cute cuddly bats (Yep, I said that!) from Lawn Fawn called Fangtastic Friends. I stamped, colored and die cut out the images that I wanted before I started to work on the background.

For the background, I pulled out a cloud stenciled and mixed purple, black and blue oxide inks to blend in a night sky. I spritzed it with water for the water droplets. I then die cut the full moon from the LF Full Moon die set and then used some Distress Mica Stain Harvest Moon and sprayed over it, so it has a bit of a shimmer to it. I placed it where I wanted to go over my sky background and then cut them both out with a double-stitched rectangle die and attached the panel to a side folding A2 black card base. (The sentiment strip was added before attaching)

The sentiment was heat embossed over a black strip of cardstock using some white glitter embossing powder.

I attached this strip at the bottom of the sky panel and cut off each end. I added the rest of the elements and images to my scene and stamped the “eek!” by the bat on the right and a couple of hearts on the moon above the hanging couple. I added some shimmer to the hearts with a purple glitter gel pen.

I thought I would share the inside of the card with the stamped hanging spider, the sentiment and the hearts I stamped around it with some more of the purple glitter gel pen coloring. I also used some purple and black distress oxide inks to blend around the edges of my white inside panel which was also cut out with the double-stitched rectangle die.

I certainly do love hanging out with my husband, but hopefully not in the manner on the card!😅

We’re enjoying time together right now as this has been scheduled to post, so I hope you enjoy and thanks for dropping in! I’ll see you soon!

Apple Picking Fun

Autumn is always a favorite time of the year with the changing of the Season: cooler temps, pretty colors and being able to go out enjoy all of nature with its bounty and beauty. There’s also nothing better than freshly picked apples from the orchid too! It’s something that I love to do with my husband every year at our local orchid.

So, when Lawn Fawn came out with this adorable set along with a free craft-a-long class, I knew I wanted to participate!

This is the first card we created using the LF Apple-solutely Awesome stamp set and dies. For the class, we actually stamped, colored and cut out all of the images that we would be using for both of these cards. I think the fun thing about this set is arranging the images to figure out where you want to place them for your scene. Since it was a class and I didn’t have to think too much, I decided to just follow along with what I had and just enjoy the process.

I didn’t have the stencil set that they used for the class, so I had this Pink & Main Leafy Stencil that I thought would work out fine and I just blended different colors with some Oxide inks. The white panel was cut with the LF Small Stitched Rectangle dies, popped up over the stenciled leaf panel and the sentiment was stamped at the bottom before attaching the images.

I’ve already sent this card to someone that gifted us some homemade applesauce…YUM! (Already gone!)

And here’s the second card we created for the class using the same stamp set and stitched rectangle dies. I had fun with that “cider jug” and adding a bit of sparkle to the contents inside with my glitter brush pen.

For the sentiment, I die cut it out with some LF Woodgrain Cardstock and ink blended some brown Oxide ink at the bottom of the die cut. I used some foam strips to pop it up over the panel. The white panel was done the same as the above card. I used the same stencil as the above card as well but only kept the yellow tones for this one as it seemed too busy with all that was going on with the card.

So, although this was a class that I mainly followed along with except for a few minor changes, I had fun making these while getting into the Fall spirit! I hope you’ve enjoyed them as well! Thanks for stopping in!

Challenges: