Hello crafty friends! Happy Friday to you! Hope that you’re having a great Summer and a great start to your July month. We’ve been busy doing lots of things and I got to visit my new grandson again which of course was wonderful!
I’m swinging in today to share a new challenge over at the Alphabet Challenge Blog! Our next letter is ‘G‘ and the hostess has chosen “G” is for GIRLFRIEND *Remember that this is a bi-weekly challenge, so you have two weeks to enter* I hope you will find some time to play along! Here’s what I’ve created:
Isn’t this the cutest image! I found this adorable image called “Emmy and Wryn-BFF” from the Tiddlyinks store on Etsy. I have always loved this artist’s images and I hope to be coloring up more of them soon!
I colored the image with Copics and then black heat embossed the sentiment at the bottom and cut out the entire panel with a stitched scallop square die. (P.S. Have you heard that “My Favorite Things” has closed?) Both the sentiment and die came from MFT.
I had a package of these pretty papers from another crafty friend laying around, so I pulled them out to use for this card. I loved the flowers, so I cut a few of them out and popped them up in the corners with foam squares. I added another strip of the papers in the center of the design behind the image panel that was also popped up with foam tape.
I finished with details on the images using a black gel pen for their eyes and a white gel pen for highlights. I added some colored gems over top.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and that you’ll stop on over to the challenge blog to see what the rest of the team has come up with. Thanks so much for dropping in!
Hello friends! Last month was a very busy month for me and I know that I had mentioned a couple of times that I had some things that I was working on “behind the scenes”, so I thought I’d share what I’ve been doing.
At the end of last year, my son surprised us with the news of a new grandchild coming! A few months ago, I was asked to help with some decorations for their baby shower and of course I wanted to help! Here’s a photo of the soon-to-be parents in front of a back drop that my husband cut out and I hand painted. My husband and I also put together the balloons around it:
You may also notice, on the couple, they’re wearing a corsage that I made for each of them to wear. My son wasn’t too thrilled about wearing it, but he humored his mom. LOL
On the left white panel, There are hexagon shelves that my husband put together and there are wooden letters of the baby’s name. I decorated each of the letters with Winnie the Pooh papers and characters. I wish I had taken a better photo of them, but I tried to zoom in a photo with the gallery below.
You can see how tall each of the panels are. My son is over 6 foot tall. I don’t paint much, so painting something this large was a big undertaking, but I enjoyed the labor of love doing all of these things for them.
Below you can see all of things that I’ve made for the baby shower and there is a brief description with each photo explaining what it is. If you are on my website, please click on each photo to enlarge it and scroll just beneath it to read the description:
The full backdrop when finished with 3 large wooden panels cut out by my husband and hand painted by me. I added a hexagon stencil pattern with paint on the yellow arch panel. Eeyore and the bee were cut out from computer print and attached to a foam cut out by hand.Left back drop panel with hexagon shelves. Each hexagon has the wooden letters of baby’s name that I decorated with Winnie the Pooh characters and papers. This photo is really blown up because I didn’t capture a good photo of the letters.We made a large “hundred acre wood” sign that my husband cut out and placed in a clay pot. I used paper covered chipboard for the “welcome” and stenciled with black paint on the rest. The Winnie the Pooh character with all of the balloons was cut out from a computer print and flipped with each side on a cut out black foam piece. We staked it in the ground and attached the balloons around it. We made 5 different characters to line the drive.This is one of three different prints that we had done on poster size that was hand cut out and placed on a foam board. To make the characters stand up, my husband made a wooden stand with slots wide enough to fit the cut outs with the foam board. Since the front of the wood showed when the characters were upright, I covered the wood with moss by gluing it to the wood that showed. This character is on a table about 16″ x 20″ large. (I didn’t get good photos of these either!)I made 15 center pieces by painting the yellow honey drip over a clay pot. I also added some glitter paint over it and added the “hunny” letters. I printed and cut out the bees and attached them with wire to stick inside the pots with the fake flowers. I added some moss at the bottom to cover up the foam used inside to stick the flowers in. I covered the bee’s wings with glitter too.For each of the center pieces, we added a charger plate underneath each one so the couple could add candies for each of the tables.These are the corsages that I made for the mommy and daddy to be. I used the Cricut to cut the tie pattern from cardstock and then added some glitter papers, ribbon and cut out a cute Winnie the Pooh to go above the lettering. I had some wooden bee embellishments and added a pin on the back to attach the clothing with.I made 50 of these pacifier necklaces for the party. I cut out the image with a circle punch, added the glitter scallop punch layer behind it. I used some green yarn to tie around the blue acrylic pacifier decoration and attached the image over it with hot glue. I also attached a ribbon bow as well as a blue gem in the center. The rule of the game was if anyone was crossing their legs, arms, hands, etc. they collected a necklace from someone else. Whoever collected the most necklaces won the game. (It was funny to watch everyone playing the game! I lost mine really fast!)I made 50 of these hexagon tags and personalized sticker on top with the name and date for a party gift. Inside the jar was real honey combs from a local area.
They put in so much work having this baby shower with lots of food, yummy desserts and drinks. I know with all of the set up and cleaning up they were wore out! We were also wore out when it was finished up. LOL Now it’s just the waiting to meet the newest member of the family by the end of this month. We are certainly looking forward to it!
Hope you’ve enjoyed my post today…and now you can see why I’ve had “BEEs” on my mind lately! LOL Thanks so much for stopping by!
Hello friends! Welcome to June! The “lazy days” of Summer are here! I’m hoping I can be lazy this Summer, but not sure about that! LOL
I’m very happy to share my project with you today as a guest design spot I won from challenge #594 at Penny’s Paper-Crafty Challenge Blog! This is a fortnight (bi-weekly) challenge starting today and the theme is always Anything Goes Using Paper! Hope you will stop by the blog to see the team’s inspiration and play along! Here’s the project I made for the challenge:
They gave me this super cute image called “Frogtini” by Pattie’s Creations to use, so I colored him up with Copics and added some stenciled waves at the bottom along with some blending of yellows and blues above him to create this relaxing scene. I cut him out with a stitched circle die and layered him onto a silver mirror scalloped die cut circle.
I used a fun card sketch I found along with pulling some papers and a sentiment out from an older card kit I had in my stash to complete the card. For the A2 sized top folding card base, I used a corner chomper to round the edges and then I used some more of the yellow ink over the background where the circle image was going to be for a bit of softness and color.
I embossed a strip of the silver mirror cardstock with a 3D embossing folder and rounded the edges of that strip along with the green paper strip to create my layout. I popped up the circle image with foam tape over top.
Lastly, I white heat embossed the “unfrogettable” sentiment and cut it out with a coordinating die and placed it at the bottom of the circle with foam strips behind it. I used the other part of the sentiment and stamped it directly above the frog’s head.
For some more finishing touches, I attached some green sequins, used a glitter brush pen for the frog’s sunglasses and covered the martini glass with Stardust Stickles along with some green Stickles for the centers of the green sequins.
Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today! I had fun coloring him up! Thanks so much for stopping in and I wish you a very hoppy and relaxing day!🐸
Hello friends! I’m back today with one last inspiration for Art Journal Journey to remind you that there are still a few days left to enter your art journal project for this month! So please be sure to hop on over to the Art Journal Journey Challenge Blog to see the details about how to enter. I have really enjoyed all of the inspiration from the gallery! So fun to see what everyone comes up with using my “MUSIC” theme this month! I thank everyone for having me along as a host and sharing your kindness in welcoming me back this year.
I went with some animals this time:
I’m pretty sure that there has to be some sort of music going on at farm too, right?! LOL I found these cute “singing” critters online and thought that a farm scene would be a perfect platform stage for them! This is also the first time that I’ve ever added an interactive element to an art journal page, so that was fun!
For the background: Starting with an 8.5″x 5.5″ watercolor paper, I printed the critters over it in the position that I wanted…this is so that the musical notes showed on the page.
I then used my Kuratake Gansi watercolors and brush to paint a scene starting with blues for the sky, letting that dry and then adding some green hills for the bottom of the scene. I went over the areas a couple of times to get the look I wanted and let it dry. I also die cut a green grassy border at the bottom of the page with green cardstock being careful to place it so that it covered the “legs/feet” of all the critters.
More layers over the background: I used older Tim Holtz stamps to add some texture by stamping brown ink, then I used an old TH stencil and some yellow paint for the “sun rays” around the hill with a sponge to apply it. I also used a sponge with white ink to stencil over another stencil in areas and lastly, I stamped some musical notes in silver ink in a few places.
Here’s a closer look at some of the details including the critters.
Since I covered up the critters with the grassy border, I printed out the critters again on a separate piece of cardstock, colored them with Copic markers and fussy cut them out with my scissors. I attached them over top of the printed out ones on the page so that they align with the music notes above them. I used more markers to add some darker shadow grounding underneath each critter before permanently attaching to the page.
For the interactive element: I used a die cut to cut out the pieces for the windmill in the brown, white and silver cardstock pieces. I then used a circle die to cut a hole in the center of the windmill on the page and then added an element that makes the wheel portion spin in a circle when you spin it with your finger.
I went around the edges with some blue ink for the sky, attached some clouds and then printed out the quote on my computer and cut out each word attached to the page. I used some blue ink to lightly add to the bottom of each one.
Lastly, I went around the edges of the page along with the edges of each word with a black micron pen and then I used a silver paint pen to go around the edges of the page again.
It’s a pretty flat page, but it made me happy! What song do you think they’re singing?
I hope you’ve enjoyed my page today as well as my art journal inspiration throughout the month! Thank you so much for your kindness and support! See you soon!
Hello friends! I have a mix of projects that I’ve recently been working on and wanted to share my latest since I’ve gotten all caught up with the projects that I hadn’t posted.
I had a few birthdays come up and of course I forgot to take photos of a few of them before I sent them out the door and now they’re long gone! (DOH!) But I did remember to take photos of these:
I fell in love with the stack of party pups from Newton’s Nookand I always wanted to try out one of those cool card layout dies! The person that I’m sending this to loves his dog and I know the dog also has some “friends” she visits with, so why not a “PAW-ty” of them together!
I’ve used the NN Birthday Barks stamps & diesand colored it out with Copic markers. I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment in the top right square and added a stamped paw print from the stamp set. All the images were popped up with foam squares.
For the background, I took the NN A2 Card Layout 2 die and cut the frame with all of the stitched pieces using the NN Birthday Woofs Paper Pad. These dies make for some quick and easy cards without much thinking involved which is great when you’re in a hurry!
Next card was made as a thank you for a pizza night using one of those Ooni Pizza outdoor grills. I’ve never had one and so of course being the pizza lovers that hubby and I are, we gladly excepted! Very good pizza it was! I wanted to thank them for having us and made this card:
I’ve used this really cute pizza set from My Favorite Things and I was happy to pull some papers I had for years and years to help pull it together.
I’ve used the MFT A2 Stitched Rectangle dies to cut the checkered pattern paper as well as the light blue panel. I’ve used the MFT Stitched Mini Scallop Rectangle dies to cut the white piece behind the blue panel. (The red and white checkered paper is so old…got it at a stamp event so many years ago and hoarded it of course!)
Decorating the pizza was so much fun and I used the same ingredients we received on our Ooni pizza which was a handmade crust, tomatoes, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, cheese and sprinkled with basil leaves. All of the cut pieces to make the pizza came from the MFT Pizza Maker dies and the sentiment came from the MFT Pizza My Heart sentiment set (I don’t see it on the website, so I’m not sure if it’s available any longer?) I stamped it with black pigment ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. I’ve also used the same size stitched rectangle die as the blue panel to cut off a portion of the pizza to make it fit into design.
Lastly, this is a card made hot off the press tonight using the current Craft Roulette parameters! So if you missed it, go catch tonight’s latest episode #228 and play along! This is the card that I’ve made with tonight’s parameters:
I decided I wanted to also use the image from Beccy’s Place August Freebie challenge and add myself another challenge on top of the 4 parameters! I loved the image as it looked so refreshing! I played around with the image on my computer and added an extra one next to it, but flipped it around and placed it behind the other one. I also typed up my own sentiment underneath to go with the “Monday” parameter with Craft Roulette.
Project: I used a Geometric Square stencil for the background with yellow ink and to fit Beccy’s extra twist challenge which was to use something old from your stash, I did dust off those square sequins and brads that I’ve had for years and years to add on the front of the cups. (Now the image reminds me of those Recesses Peanut Butter shakes! YUM!)
Colors: Bee Garden colors are obviously the black and yellow and I had to add in some orange for the guest Irene who is a #teamorange color person.
Element: Monday was typed up within the sentiment.
Random: Use A Marker(s) which the image was colored in with Copic markers.
Ok…so that’s it for me this weekend! I needed to get this posted this evening because I would be missing out on a challenge that I wanted to be sure to play in before time runs out and that will be in like a couple of hours!
Thanks for dropping by today friends! I hope you have an amazing weekend!!
Hello friends! I hope that you’re enjoying your week so far! Summer is now in full swing over my way and it certainly is feeling that way too!
Where I live, June is also a time of year when the blooming cherry trees from May now turn into the cherries ready to be picked! If you’ve never tried a cherry jam, I highly recommend it! With the freebie image over at Beccy’s Place, it seemed like a great idea to make a card with it:
Without the sugar, cherries can be extremely tart and so it’s never something I would pick from a tree and eat especially with a pit in it! I do love a good cherry pie though!
Coloring cherries is also fun! I opted to use the non-colored version of the image and I printed it out twice because I cut out the front cherry and front leaf on the image to pop up with foam tape for dimension. I used Copics to color it in along with the background circle it’s on. I also added a white highlight with a gel pen.
I thought it would be fun to make a punny sentiment to print out “A Cherry” on my computer and then cut it out to weave into my white heat embossed “hello” cut from red cardstock.
I die cut the scallop circle which also cuts out the center that the cherry image is on. I layered it onto the Doodlebug gingham paper and attached it to the white scallop rectangle that is all attached to a red A2 top folding card base. I finished it with a couple of red rhinestones.
FOR THE CATCHING UP: The last several months/year, it seemed like my blog posts were really random and sometimes I would go a few weeks before posting the next time. I seem to struggle on and off with having no motivation to get crafting or even go into my craft room at all. I know this happens from time to time, but it seemed to be up and down and all over the place which is why I took on joining a few challenge design teams. It helped to get me a routine of at least getting motivated to get into my room on a regular basis anyway. I didn’t want anything that was too strenuous, or I felt that I would give up completely. This is also the reason why I do art journaling…it helped with “no pressure” on what I could create and use whatever I wanted. After looking at things I’ve created, I still have things that I’ve made but never posted about! So I thought I’d try to catch up with some of the things I’ve done and finally post it. There will have to be some more posts to catch up with it too!
So here is the start of some of my catching up towards the end of last year…
Do you remember the 12×12 Sampler SWAPS that I was doing with my blog buddy group? (Patti, Shirley and Donna) We would swap out the squares and then finish it ourselves by adding the background papers and placing into 12×12 shadow box frames. We had completed one for each season, but for this last one we decided to make one about our “favorite craft”. Here’s all of the squares that is still hanging up on my wall right above my computer and next to a clock and other craft items I made. I enjoy looking at it and seeing all of the squares from fellow crafting friends. This was fun to participate in and it really helped me with struggling motivation as well, so I’m glad I did it! Plus, it is cool to have it for inspiration in my room!
I actually had this done AND photographed last June! I forgot to get it posted on my blog.🙄
This is the square that I decided to do for this swap. I do love lots of glitter, so of course there is glitter on the floor spilled over along with glitter on the “walls”. If you don’t recognize these cute mice, they’re from Lawn Fawn Just Add Glitter stamp set. For each square, I wrote each person’s name on the paper from the table. Of course my name is on this one.
I was also asked to commission a card for someone’s very special birthday in November last year and forgot to post it as well:
I thought this one turned out so cute! I was told this card was to be for a special lady’s birthday who turned 100 and that she really liked plants.
Of course my first thought turned to plants and green colors. Then I thought, I don’t think I have any “plant” style stamps! The only thing that I thought of at the time was this darling My Favorite Things Sittin’ Prettystamp set from my stash. I also thought it would be fun to have a banner going across a wreath with the special number over it. I found the My Favorite Things “Fall Wreath” stamp set (not in store) and the banner came from an older (retired) Lawn Fawn set.
I also had a fern embossing folder that I embossed over green cardstock and then rubbed some gold wax over it to bring it out. I gold heat embossed the banner and popped it up over the wreath. I was just going to place the colored plants around it, but decided it would be cute to add the girl sitting on the wreath. She’s there to wish the special lady happy 100 with all of those plants around her! I added a border of grass at the bottom to help ground everything, added some gold foil for a layer and attached it to a green A2 card base.
Here’s what I did for the inside of the card: I stamped the wreath off the edge on each side of the panel with green ink and then sponged around the edges with the lighter green ink. I gold heat embossed the sentiment.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my new “Cherry Hello” card today as well as the projects that I am catching up with posting about! There will be more coming!
THANK YOU FOR STOPPING IN! I’M GRATEFUL FOR YOUR TIME AND THOUGHTS!
Challenges: (For Cherry Hello card ONLY)
Beccy’s Place – June Freebie image (THANK YOU!) optional: Food
Hello friends! I hope that you’re having a wonderful week so far! We have officially started Spring over my way and now I’m just waiting for the weather to warm up to match it. I’m looking forward to being outside with the flowers!
Speaking of flowers, I saw this really cute image over at Beccy’s Place and wanted to play along, so I printed it out and colored it, but didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with it until I saw Beccy’s tutorial – Tricorn Fold Card: (click name for her tutorial)
Isn’t this so fun!? I thought it was such a unique design that stands up, but also folds flat for a 4×6 card size. I usually make an A2 (5.5″x4.25″) card size, but I can also easily create my own envelope for any size too. It was a bit tricky at first and I messed it up because I put the scores going in the opposite direction, so I had to start over. I wasn’t confident enough to figure out the mat layers of all the angles, so I just added some pattern papers to the largest two panels and then placed blank white on the back of the card for a message.
I also found a stitched hexagon layering die in my stash that worked out for the design which is what I used to cut out my colored mouse and layer behind him. I found a sentiment that worked well for the space I had on my card and then finished it with a couple of teal rhinestones I had laying on my table. It was fun to create, and it will also be great to send out too!
Here’s a closer view of the colored image that I’ve done using Copic markers. I did add a few white dots to his cheeks with a white gel pen as well as the center of his eyes.
I have my card lying flat so you can see that it will fit inside an envelope for mailing. It does spring back up, but I think that’s what will be great for a recipient to pull out of the envelope to see that the card stands up by itself.
Thanks for dropping in today and I hope you’ve enjoyed my card!
Challenges:
Beccy’s Place – March Monthly Challenge optional Bingo (Not sure if the flowers in the image qualify, but if it does then I used the center across row)
Hello friends! I can’t believe that February is gone and we’re moving onto March! That month went by quickly, but now I can look forward to Spring coming, which is a good thing!
I had won a guest spot over at the Once Upon a Time Challenge blog in January, so I’m sharing my project for the March month’s book title: “The Cat in the Hat“! I remember this book so well as I read it so many times as a child! You can be inspired to create with this book/book cover to make your project for this challenge:
I chose to use the cover photo for my inspiration and I remembered something that I had which went perfectly with this theme in mind too:
I kept my card simple because the book cover photo was simple as well. This is a digital image by Bugaboo Stamps(no longer in business) that I’ve had in my computer for a long time. I still pull one out from time to time as they’re so great to color with! The file name on my computer was “Cat in Hat“. Really love that quote from Dr. Seuss!
I printed the image out twice. Once to cut out the entire image panel and then another to color just the cat’s head, cut out and pop up over the image for dimension. I felt compelled to color the background behind the cat in blue to match the cover photo. It was easy to color because the cat was done in black and white with a pop of red color in certain areas. I also added some glossy accents over his nose.
The image panel was layered over a piece of red scallop and then attached to a top folding white A2 card base. I thought it would be a great card to send for encouragement to someone.
I hope you can play along in the challenge as I’d love to see your take with this book! Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing some time with me! I’ll be back shortly with another challenge post, so stay tuned!
Hello friends! Hope that your week has been off to a good start. We are closing up February, but there are still a couple of days left if you’d like to enter the Art Journal Journey Challengethat I’m hosting this month with the theme of “LIGHT“. It has certainly been a journey as I’ve never created that many pages within a month’s time! I did have fun on this journey as it also helped to push me to try a few different things that I can take me with as I continue to art journal. Thank you to everyone over there for having me as host for this month and to those that have played along, as I have really enjoyed all of the fabulous inspiration!
For my last page, I challenged myself to try something I don’t feel comfortable with:
Sometimes as hard as it can be, you just have to let it go. I let go the fear of hand lettering and drawing for this page.
For the Background: I’ve got a piece of canvas paper 5.5″x8.5″ that was pre-punched on the right side with my Zutter machine. (I like this canvas paper because it takes paint really well and the texture does not interfere with making the writing wonky.) I took my favorite colors turquoise and lavender paints that were extremely watered down to cover the page with. I was going for very light colors with a flow that blended together. Once dried, I took some light blue ink and stenciled in certain places.
For that cute little girl that I found on my computer from Tiddlywinks, I printed her out rather large to fit on my page and colored her with Copic markers. I printed an additional image over a piece of vellum and cut out the dandelion seeds and hearts and attached that portion to the girl image I colored. I did this so that you could still see the background. Once I’ve attached her to the page, I cut a piece of cotton ball and glued it to the dandelion weed and the one in her hair. (Cotton is pretty light!)
Lastly, I took a deep breath and used a pen to write the title above her head as well as all of the dandelion seeds floating around with the words. I used a white paint pen to make an underline around the words as if they’re flying through the air. I filled in the lettering with a blue gel pen.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my page today and found some inspiration with it. I also hope you’ve enjoyed my journey this month with art journaling too! Thanks for stopping in!
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!👻
