Butterflies at Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends! Hope that your week has been a good one for you! Thank you to everyone for stopping by and taking your time to spend with me as I appreciate your kindness.

Today starts the August challenge over at Sparkles Monthly and for this month, our hostess is asking to see a butterfly or butterflies on your projects. I love butterflies and look forward viewing the gallery on this one. Be sure to stop by the blog to see what the rest of the team has created for you. Here’s my project for this challenge:

I like how this one came together! I’ve used several butterfly items from Taylored Expressions. I started with the background by taking the Fluttering Friends Layering Stencil and stencil the colors Sour Gummy, Spearmint & Peaches ‘N’ Cream over a white card base. Once the stenciling was finished, I used the Fluttering Friends 3D embossing folder over it which also impresses the bodies and antenna on them. I layered this over a top folding A2 Spearmint card base. (I also cut out a frame with the same colored cardstock using the Frame in Frame 3 Cutting Plate).

For the butterfly focal, I white heat embossed a butterfly from the Beautiful Butterfly Wings stamp set and cut it out along with the layered wings and body from the Beautiful Butterflies die set. I layered it onto a piece of vellum cut out with the Petite Scallop Circle Stacklets die. I also white heat embossed the sentiment from the Mini Strips-Fluttering By stamp set over Sour Gummy cardstock cut from the Mini Strips die. I used foam strips to pop it up and I also added some rhinestones on the butterfly wings.

I hope you like my inspiration for the challenge and that you’ll take some time this month to create something with butterflies too.

Thank you for stopping in and have a great day!

Challenges:

Cut It Up – #310 ‘Thinking of You’ + use of die cut
The Divas That Cut…Paper! – Wet/Dry Embossing (I did both)
Crafty Gals Corner – #258 Anything Goes optional: Embossing Folder
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Can You Handle the Pressure? – Anything Goes using Embossing Folder optional: wheels
Stencil Fun – Anything Goes using Stencil optional: Summertime
Triple B – Butterflies/Birds/Blooms (I used butterflies)

One for the Boys at Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends! I hope you’ve had a nice weekend. I spent mine doing house chores which is fine as there has been a heat advisory here for a couple of days, so I thought I’d stay indoors!

I’m here today to share my project(s) for the new challenge over at Sparkles Monthly with the theme of “One for the Boys“. I’m always needing masculine cards, so this worked for me!

Cheers! I’ve pulled out the Taylored Expressions Hoppy Days stamp set for this card. I like the pun sentiments that go with it. I stamped the “bubble pops” image above the beer in yellow ink and added some sparkle with Stickles. I also used some liquid applique and heated it up for the “foam” on the beer stein. The die set cuts out the beer stein as well as that oval platform underneath. I cut off the excess on the side of the card after I popped it up with foam squares.

I stamped the pun sentiment in navy ink on the top left of the card.

I trimmed two thin strips of copper mirror cardstock then attached on each side of the pattern design before popping up the beer stein.

For the pattern details on the card, I used the Taylored Expressions Create-in-Quads Mod stencil set which actually makes 4 different card panels at once. (this particular one is retired, but click here for other sets.) These are all of the four cards I completed:

I had the beer theme in mind when creating a card in the first place, but then I thought it would be fun to pull out one of these create-in-quads stencils to make a pattern and have four cards completed at the same time.

I was thinking of masculine colors to use and I came up with the Taylored Expressions colors: Blue Corn, Mushroom, Pineapple and Salt Water Taffy. I used a full sheet of white cardstock and after the stenciling was finished, they were cut into 4 sections for card fronts. All the card fronts were attached to Blue Corn A2 side folding card bases.

To continue with the masculine look of the cards, I’ve added some touches of Copper metallic with mirror cardstock and other details. Each card was done a bit different and you can see the others in the gallery below with details.

If you’re on my website, click on each photo below to enlarge:

I used copper watercolor to make splatters and die cut sentiment with copper and blue corn.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my set of masculine cards today! Please be sure to stop by the Sparkles Monthly challenge blog to see the inspiration from the team and I hope you’ll play along!

Thanks so much for stopping in! I appreciate you taking the time to join me here!

CHALLENGES:

Daring Cardmakers – “Cheers!”(Beer card)
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
A Perfect Time to Craft – Anything Goes

Masculine Makes

Hello friends! I hope you had a great weekend! It’s been record heat and continuing to be all this week over my way and it’s way too hot to be outdoors for any length of time! So I thought it would be nice to bring the outdoors to my craft room instead.

I wanted to share the card I made for my husband for Father’s Day:

My husband is an outdoor type and where he prefers to be most of the time. We really have fun going hiking and visiting parks whenever we can and this seemed like a great start for making a card for him.

I’ve used several Taylored Expressions items for this card including: Great Outdoors Layering Stencil & Clear Combo, Through the Woods, Wood Slice Background Stamp, and Hello Lovely sentiment set to make this card along with an entire set pictured below.

For the background: I stamped the Wood Slice stamp over kraft cardstock (along with the envelopes to match) and then I splattered some black and cream color paints over them. I took the panel cut the Ridged Circle Stacklets into the background. I wrapped some twine around it and attached them to an A2 side folding black card base.

The stencil creates four different scenes all at once by layering the stencils with colors you choose and then you cut each one out. I layered mine over black cardstock and attached to the kraft card front panels. I stamped the trees and sentiments and also added those to each card with some of them being popped up with foam tape.

Here’s what the rest of the cards look like using the same products. I changed up the scenes for each one but using the same colors for each stencil layer. I changed the sentiment so that I have a masculine card for several different occasions too. There are lots of males in my family to send cards to and I always seem to run out of them.

Thanks so much for stopping in today! I appreciate your kind words and taking the time out of your day! See you soon!

Challenges:

Cardz 4 Guyz – Father’ Day
Addicted to Stamps & More – Die Cuts & Stencils #470
Crafty Catz– Make it Masculine #674
Cupcake Inspirations – For the Guys #596
Allsorts – Masculine or Anything Goes #785
Papercraft – For the Boys #106

Try It On Tuesday GDT-Book Pages

Hello friends! Happy June! Hope you’ve been enjoying your month so far! It’s going to start warming up at the end of this week which means I’ll probably start spending more time indoors with the air conditioning and hopefully have some time crafting! Yay!

I’m super excited to share my post with you today as I’ve been asked to be a guest designer for this challenge at Try It On Tuesday! Always happy to be apart of the challenges and support them as much as I can as they help to inspire creativity!

I’m loving the challenge theme for this one which is “BOOK PAGES”! There are several different ways to go with it, but here’s my take with the challenge:

I am an avid reader and I do love turning the pages of a good book, but sometimes you can come across an old book that is in bad shape or even a book that has no meaning to you and that you might normally throw away. I don’t do that, but I keep it instead for purposes of using in my crafts! I do the same with magazines, etc. Sometimes I use the illustrations for art journaling, etc. I’ve even kept some for the purpose of gift wrapping. How about you? Do you keep things like this for anything? If you do, then this challenge would be a great for using it up! I’ve even seen some decorative papers that have a “book page look” which would be suitable, I think, for the challenge as well!

For my card: I’ve used a cover plate die (unknown) and cut the pieces from a book page and then cut it again in black cardstock so that I could use the frames. I took some brown ink to sponge around the edges and in the center randomly, so that it wasn’t so stark white. I then splattered it with both black and white paints, wrapped some twine with a bow around and placed it on a side folding A2 black card base.

The flower image: I took another book page and stamped/heat embossed the Bursting Blooms stamp from Taylored Expressions(retired/not in store) and cut it out with the coordinating die. I had some fun watercoloring the image with some Daniel Smith watercolor samples and than I sponged around the edges with some more of the brown ink before attaching to the card with thin foam squares. (I also cut an additional piece of white cardstock for added thickness as some book pages can be thin.)

To Finish: I’ve taken the Taylored Expressions Sundry Sentiments and white heat embossed the sentiment over black cardstock and cut it out with the coordinating die. I attached it to the card along with some black rhinestones.

I love how this one turned out and I hope you do too! Please be sure to pop on over to the challenge blog and check out all of the inspiration from the team! I look forward to seeing your creation in the gallery as well!

Thank you for stopping in today and I’ll be sharing more with you soon!

Challenges:

Allsorts – #784 Flowers Galore or Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – #279 Anything Goes
Alphabet – ‘E’ is for embossing wet or dry (heat embossed flower and sentiment)
Krafty Chicks – #719 Stamps
Time Out – #265 Inspired by a Quote from Henri Matisse: “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

Mother’s Day Flowers

Hello friends! Sending a happy Mother’s Day to all of the celebrating moms this weekend! It’s a beautiful day out today and tomorrow will be too, so I’m going out to plant some flowers that I’ve been wanting to do! I hope that you’re having a nice weekend in whatever you’re doing.

I just wanted to share a card that I had made just for Mother’s Day:

Vicki-TE-MothersDay

I love how this turned out with all of those blooms bursting out from the antique pail! I’m in the middle of going back over some classes that I’m doing, and this was one of them that I’ve switched up to fit this occasion. The original card had carrots as a base and I didn’t have the flower dies they used, so I made my own version with what I had.

The antique pail, flowers, leaves, bow and foiled sentiment dies all came from Taylored Expressions. The scallop rectangle frame came from My Favorite Things and some of the design papers I’ve used came from Scrapbook.com.

The background papers and large flower came from the same pattern papers as a couple of other flowers and dark green leaves. I used some light pink ink to sponge some of the other flowers and center of bow. The center of the scallop frame has some light green blending, so that it wasn’t so stark white behind the flowers. I also sponged around the antique pail.

I arranged the flowers inside the pail and turned it over to attach with glue over the center of the scallop panel. I popped up the front flower and added some colored gem dots to the center of the flowers and bow. I attached some mirror cardstock to the back of the scallop frame panel to match the foiled sentiment. The sentiment was attached over the pail at the bottom.

It took a little bit of time to cut and arrange all of it, but it was fun to fiddle with.

Thanks for taking some time to stop by and I hope you’ve enjoyed this pail of flowers for Mother’s Day! Have a fabulous weekend whatever you do! 🌼🏵️

Challenges:

Creative Inspirations – Feminine
The Paper Funday – Anything Goes optional: Flower Shoppe
Craft Rocket – Flowers
Cardz 4 Galz – Celebration (Mother’s Day or other)
My time to Craft – Mother’s Day or Friendship
A Place to Start – Anything Goes optional: For a Lady
Aud Sentiments – Foiling and/or Flowers + sentiment
Unicorn – For the Girls
Get Creative – Ladies Only

Mix It Up with Inlaid Die Cutting!

Hello friends and happy May! I hope you are having a wonderful week and have been enjoying your Spring season with lots of sunshine and flowers! There’s always lots of things to do when the weather turns warmer, but that’s a good thing!

Today starts a new challenge over at the Mix It Up Challenge Blog! There is always lots of wonderful inspiration from the team, so please go check it out and play along! The challenges are always ANYTHING GOES with an optional theme. This month’s optional theme is Inlaid Die Cut (flat or raised)! For these challenges, you have plenty of time to enter as they run for 6 weeks! I look forward to seeing what you come up with! Here’s the project I made:

I think this card turned out very well using the inlay die cutting technique! I found the perfect dies, but of course you can use almost ANY dies you want to try this including your regular shaped die cuts! I always find those frame style dies to be very easy to work with for this.

I received this cool freebie die from Taylored Expressions called “Simple Stems” and thought it would be perfect for this technique. I also inlaid a sentiment die from my stash over top of the flower and inlaid that too. I used the Taylored Expressions Frame in Frame 3 die set to create the middle pattern and glitter frame around the flower. These were also inlaid into the white card front panel.

It’s a little tricky at first to figure out in what order to die cut all of your pieces so that it looks right. Mine is very flat which I find helpful for mailing out and with the cost of postage stamps going up again this Summer, I need to rethink the type of cards I make any more. Here’s a photo so you can see that everything lays flat to the card front:

For the inlaid die cutting, I also find sticky sheets very helpful. I took a piece of double-sided sticky sheet and placed it on the back of the white card front panel AFTER I had cut out the frame from it. This makes the inside of the panel sticky so that I could lay all of my pieces on top and also keep it flush with the white card front panel. Once I laid all of the die cut pieces, I took the backing off the sticky sheet and attached it the A2 top folding white card base with everything in place. You also don’t have to worry about liquid glue oozing out.

It’s a simple CAS card, but it was so fun to do! Hope you’ve enjoyed my card and take some time to check out the challenge this month! Thanks so much for dropping in! See you soon!

Challenges:

Daring Cardmakers – “Something Old, Something New” (old glitter paper and new die cut + I used blue paper)
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Feminine
Moving Along With the Times – #166 Flowers

April AJ Page-One Cup at a Time

Hello friends! I hope you’ve been enjoying your month so far! We’ve had a few really nice days this month, but it’s still a tad bit chilly and hopefully it will warm up more next month! It’s hard to believe we are already headed into May for this year!

That means 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 always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” April prompt of “HALF” -(e.g. 2 halves to create whole item/half of something):

Yes, coffee please! I’m a coffee lover and so is my husband! I don’t think we’d be able to start a day without it! I know there are lots of people who don’t like coffee and that’s OK…as long as there will be some somewhere for me, I’m good! 😉☕

It was my husband that inspired this page for me when I asked him what his favorite shape was, and he answered with a circle. Looking down at my coffee cup was the circle I saw and decided to take more inspiration from a coffee cup we purchased at one of our favorite local coffee cafes you can see in the top corner of the photo. To achieve the look, I took a cardstock color matching the cup and splattered white paint over it. The “HALF” is obviously the coffee cup that was cut out with circle dies. I cut another piece of the handle which makes it look like the view you would see from the top of the cup. The other “HALF” of the cup was placed in the corner area at the bottom and this coffee is more of my husband who likes plain black coffee. But this is certainly how we start our day together which is great since he’s retired now. The other “HALF” cup has the latte art, and I did that one with light sponging around the edge and then took my colored pencils to free hand the design. Not sure if that’s exactly what it looks like, but I gave it a try.

For the background: I’ve used a strip of wood plank pattern paper from my stash, and I’ve also heat embossed a coffee bean background stamp with, of course, coffee embossing powder that I’ve had for a very long time, and it was a great time to use it! I’ve also heat embossed the “coffee” sentiment and quotes with it. Below the embossed coffee is a sentiment that says: “Take life one cup at a time” and the other two at the bottom say: “First we drink coffee, then we do the things”😂
The coffee cup-stained background, I’ll share more about below.

I also took a big brush marker to go around the edges of the cups and the sentiment strips. I wanted the heat embossing to stand out a bit more over the brown cardstock, so I took a white Tim Holtz crayon and rubbed over top of it to brighten it up.

Have you ever made backgrounds with coffee? I had such a fun time playing with it and decided to make several different backgrounds that I could use for later!

I don’t drink instant coffee, but I have some in my cupboard because I like to make a chocolate cake that has instant coffee in it…so good! I took some of this instant coffee and made the coffee cup-stained background for my page to create more circles that went with my circle coffee cups.

I also decided that since I had a cup of it, that I would go ahead and make more backgrounds with it and just play around with different things. I splattered, I smooshed, I’ve added salt along with a few other things and let dry and make patterns with. Once dry, I cleaned them off and here are the results of my play. I wish I had done another cup circle background though.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page and been inspired in some way! Thanks so much for dropping in! Have a great weekend! Mine will be busy!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Geometric Forms
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Try it On Tuesday – Inspired by a Song (Can’t think of coffee with the “Coffee Song” by Frank Sinatra!)
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes using paper

Mail Carrier Birthday and Class Results

Hello friends! I hope that this Spring weather hasn’t gotten too crazy for you. I know that this is a season of storms and tornadoes where I live in the Midwest, and I saw Iowa get some tornadoes come through. It’s windy here, but luckily not that bad. So, I thought this would be a good time to catch up sharing some things I’ve been working on!

My first project is a birthday card that I made for my son last month. He’s a mail carrier and so I thought this would be fitting for him. The mail carrier came from a MFT Birdie Brown stamp set (retired) that was actually a female with ponytails and a dress. So, I’ve altered it and masked off the ponytails and drew in some shorts. The mailbox die (retired) and other postal related stamps/dies all came from MFT as well.

For the background: I’ve used a MFT cloud stencil and cut it out with a stitched rectangle die. After coloring the image with Copics, I cut it out with another rectangle die and placed it over the red postage stamp rectangle. I cut out the mailbox pieces and put it together over the cloud panel and added a few postal images at the top right corner along with the envelope in the background. I finished it out with the birthday sentiment on the mailbox (retired) and a few white gel pen details on the image.

Although he’s a mail carrier, I didn’t have to mail this card to him, and I got to see him smile when he opened it…which is better than mailing it!😊

Last month, I also participated in the Taylored Expressions Virtual Stamp Joy. I also just realized when registering for this event that I have participated in every single one of these since she started it during the pandemic in 2020! I think the pandemic has really changed the world in several different ways, but I’m glad that this was one of them as I have enjoyed doing these. There’s just something about getting a class event mailed to you and attending in your PJs while having snacks and crafting that I find appealing, I guess! 😉

Of course, doing virtual, I have lots of time to finish up projects, but I think I had them all completed within a week after the event…I just had to photograph everything and now I’m finally getting them on this post to share: (IF YOU ARE ON MY WEBSITE, CLICK EACH PHOTO TO ENLARGE IT-CLASS INFO AT BOTTOM OF PHOTO)

This was the “Strip Class” where we used the TE Strip dies in various ways…I made a few extras!

I had a busy month for sure! I’m also in the middle of another session of classes that I’ve been working on and having to go back in my spare time to get through each one. During the exact same time as Stamp Joy was going on, there was another freebie class weekend that was going on, so now I’m going back and watching the replays to do little bits at a time…I have a little way to get through it still, but when I finish, I will share those results too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my catch-up post today and have been inspired to have some fun even if you can’t be outside! I’m sure when it gets a bit warmer, I will want to enjoy it, but for now, I’m going to play in my craft room!

Thanks so much for stopping in and have a great day!

Challenges: (top card only)

Pearly Sparkles – For a Man/Boy #94
Dragonfly Dreams – Use a Die
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2415 Anything Goes
Creatalicious – #276 Anything Goes with Optional: Use Something New (new postage dies/stamps from MFT)
Ally’s Angels – #81 Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Stencil It (stenciled cloud background)

April Showers Bring May Flowers at Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends! I’m so very happy to see April come as well as the warmer weather it has brought our way! I’ve actually been taking sometime outside to see some blooms with daffodils, tulips and other buds popping out everywhere! We are expected to get some rain tomorrow, but that is exactly what April is all about…and then the May flowers to follow!

This is exactly what it’s all about for this month’s challenge over at Sparkles Monthly too! We hope you can share your “April Showers-May Flowers” projects with us this month! Here’s what I’ve chosen to make:

I always love a good Spring rain with a little bit of sunshine peeking through that causes rainbows! I never get a good photo of one, so I just enjoy it while it lasts!

I’ve used a fairly new product from Taylored Expressions with my card today called “Create-in-quads ROYGBV” which creates 4 different card panels at one layered stencil session. (I now have 3 other panels to make cards with too.) I used the “Create-in-quads ROYGBV vase die” to cut it out and then another one in black cardstock for a slightly off shadow effect behind it.

For the background card panel, I had a DCWV rain drops stencil (that I’ve had for a long time) and blended some blue ink over it. I’ve also cut a piece of blue/teal colored glitter paper for a thin border behind it to attach over an A2 white top folding card base. I then took another piece of blue cardstock strip to make a “landing/grounding” for the vase to sit on. Before popping up the ROYGBV vase, I took a marker to create a blue shadow underneath where the vase would be positioned. I was going for a “rain puddle” look. Popped it up with foam tape and added a white enamel dot in the center of one of the flowers. I also took a glitter pen to cover over the raindrops and “rain puddle” under the ROYGBV vase.

The sentiment came from the Taylored Expressions Mini Strips-Rainbow stamp that I’ve white heat embossed over black cardstock and cut it out with the Mini Strips-Asymmetrical die and chose the ones that I wanted to use for this card to attach over top of the vase. (I also have extra sentiments to use on other projects.)

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today! I also hope that you will take some time to stop in and join in the challenge with us this month! I have several projects finished that I’d like to share, but I find it so hard to come and sit at a computer when the sunshine and happy weather is calling my name! Maybe when it rains tomorrow, I will post more things!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Challenges:

Just Us Girls – Word Week: RAIN
A Place to Start – One or More Flowers
Crafts Galore Encore – #122 Anything Goes
Try it On Tuesday – Rainbow Colors
Addicted to Stamps & More – #465 Die Cut and/or Stencil
Crafting Happiness – #170 Rainy Weather

Hearts and Flowers for Sparkles Monthly Challenge

Hello friends! I hope you’re having a great week so far and enjoyed a nice Valentine’s Day yesterday with some yummy sweets! We enjoyed some treats of our own! 😉

Today I have a new challenge to share with you for the Sparkles Monthly Challenge blog and this month the lovely Dawn would like to see some “Hearts & Flowers” on your creations! Although Valentine’s Day is over, I think hearts are great for adding any time of the year, so check out the inspiration from the design team and here’s what I’ve made:

I’ve made a mini slim card using the Taylored Expressions Hearts in Bloom Layering Stencils which are so great for mass producing several cards at once. For this card and the other cards below, I decided I wanted to use the TE Hearts in Bloom Foil Panels which works with these stencils. I foiled them with gold foil. I think the foiling adds such a pretty shine and glitter. I also used the TE Love & Hugs Foil Panels for the sentiment and die cut it out with the coordinating die set.

So after foiling everything, I used the stencils to create the pretty bouquet of flowers with the hearts in it and then added a frame around the edge with a TE Diagonal Stitch Mini Slim die that doesn’t cut anything, but adds those slash marks. I used some foam tape to pop up the foiled sentiment and just attached everything to a coordinating mini slim card base.

I couldn’t just make this one to show you, so here is the whole set of cards I’ve made together:

Those stencils create all of these patterns at one time. I just lined the foil panels up at one time and then used each stencil for the colors. If you didn’t want to use the foil panels, you could also just use the stencils on one sheet of cardstock and then cut them apart to make the card fronts.

I found these sets to become very addicting! And just like that, two of them have been sent out!

I’ve been really busy with creating behind the scenes and I will be sharing more soon! I will be around to see what’s been going on with you all shortly! I really appreciate your kindness and support…it really means so much!❤️ Thanks for stopping in!

Challenges: