K is for Keep It Simple (CAS)

Hello friends and happy Friday! The weather has decided to cool down quite a bit over the last couple of days and it’s been very nice to have the windows open for a change! I think we’re supposed to have another spell of warm weather, but I’ll take the cool down for now!

Today is a new challenge over at the Alphabet Challenge Blog! Our next letter is “K”, and the hostess has chosen “K is for KEEP IT SIMPLE” (CAS style) *Please remember that this is a bi-weekly challenge, so you have two weeks to enter.* I hope you’ll join in the fun with us. Here’s the project I’ve made for this challenge:

That cat is not a fan of winter! LOL I do love me some snark for the Holidays, so I thought this stamp set called “Holiday Grumplings” (retired stamp set) from Taylored Expressions would be great for a simple Holiday card.

I also think that CAS style cards are great for pulling out those left over scraps from your papers for little strips to create a simple layout, so that’s what I did here. I stamped, colored with Copics the kitty and popped him/her up with foam tape over the snowflake strip.

Lastly, I just added a light brush with pink ink to the left of the kitty and then gold heat embossed the sentiment over it. Placed the white panel over a pink A2 sized top folding card base and done.

I’m happy to report that I’ve spent some time going through my stash of cards and realized that I have several already finished and ready for sending out Christmas cards! So I’m basically DONE for Christmas cards! Yay! The first time ever that I’m ready ahead of time! NOW…hopefully I’ll send them out on time too! LOL

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and helped to inspire you to “KEEP YOUR CRAFTING SIMPLE” and join us for the challenge! Look forward to seeing what you make! Thanks so much for stopping in today!

Challenges:

Critter Crazy – #102 Anything Goes with Featured Critter
Crafty Animals – #98 Anything Goes including Animal
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2535 Anything Goes
Merry Little Christmas – #64 Anything Christmas Goes
Creative Inspirations – #202 Christmas in September

A Snarky Friend

Hello friends! It’s getting closer towards the end of the month and so it has motivated me to get going on some challenges that are about to end soon. So I’ve grabbed my supplies and had a fun play…

Tee hee!😁 This one makes me chuckle and I think it would be so fun to send to a special friend for Valentine’s Day or even at any time of the year! Most all of the products I’ve used for this come from Taylored Expressions. Along with many people, I do enjoy those “snarky” products they sell!

To start, I’ve based my card on a sketch for a challenge that’s about to end and worked with the Taylored Expressions Easy Strips 1/4″ and Easy Strips 1/8″ dies for the bottom right side of the card using the colors Blue Raspberry & Dijon cardstock. The colors are part of the TE Maker Challenge for January as well which is about to end too which is why this was my choice for this card. I cut the panel in half diagonal based on the sketch and used a white cardstock for the top right area and blended some TE Blue Raspberry ink with the TE Superstar Rotating Stencil. Layered these onto some Dijon cardstock which was layered onto the white top folding A2 card base.

For the image panel, I stamped the “TE Grouchy Grumplings” (Sorry, it’s been retired it looks like! LOVE that snaggle tooth! 😆) and the TE Shenanigans sentiment on the same panel layered over a piece of Blue Raspberry cardstock that was popped up with foam tape. The image was colored with Copic markers. I also stamped the TE Simple Strips-Snarky with black ink over a piece of Dijon cardstock that I cut out with the TE Simple Strips-Asymmetrical die and attached at the top right corner of the card.

To finish off the card, I die cut the stars from the TE Gathered Stars die from Dijon cardstock, glued over the card and then covered with a glitter brush pen. I also added some TE Tiny Diamonds over the stars to match the Blue Raspberry color of the cardstock. For the image panel, I used a black pen to doodle around the edges and then covered the heart with glossy accents.

Hope you’ve gotten some chuckles or inspiration from my card today! Thanks for dropping by! I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

*Cheerful Sketches – Jan sketch
Taylored Expressions FB Fans Group – TE Maker Challenge Jan
Happy Little Stampers – Jan Stencil Challenge ATG + stencil
CRAFT – Anything Goes
Colour Crazy Craft – Anything Goes + coloring (Copics used)
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes

Name That Bird!

Hey there friends! Ever have one of those days where you were up late or you got up in the middle of the night and then realized you weren’t sure if you got any sleep at all? Sometimes I have days and then forget to do something and then I’m thinking about it all night only to realize that I’ve spent my time thinking about it and not sleeping when I could’ve just got up and done it!😂

This post is sort of a representation of that issue! Not only did I forget or run out of time to get my post ready, but it’s also THE last day of the month to get these projects finished for the challenges they were intended for! Story of my life!

Vicki-TEpigeon

Oh my gosh this is too funny!!🤣 A few months back I had spent some time at the Taylored Expressions store and had a laugh at some of the sentiments that I didn’t realize were in the store and decided that they would make some great cards to send out and they go well with those Grumplings stamps too! I also wanted to participate in the #TEMAKER challenge before it ends, so I enjoyed putting this one together!

Believe it or not, I had a sample of dental floss in my purse and decided to pull some out and use it for this card! LOL! It meets the challenge which is to use something from your purse or junk drawer! I just tied it around the card front! I used some dies from my stash for the tree branch and the hexagon shape. The papers comes from Taylored Expressions along with the Grouchy Grumplings II stamp set (owl) that I cut out with the coordinating die and popped him up with foam tape over the branch. The hilarious sentiment comes from the Pitch Black stamp set and I know I’ll be using some of those others on more cards soon! Tee hee! I also found some fun yellow sequins laying on my desk and added them to finish it off!

Here’s a closer view of the “bird” and how I’ve colored him up with my copic markers. I’ve used the TE papers to cut out the pieces in the branch as well as the background and hexagon shapes. If you look at the “bird’s” eyes, you can see where I’ve added some glossy accents. He does look a bit tired!!

Vicki-TEpigeon-flat

The reason for the strip at the bottom actually came from a mistake in calculating measurements for my card panel, so I just added a strip that I cut out from the hexagon die and used it as part of the design. Sometimes there are ways to fix mistakes, so never think you’ve ruined something!

I hope you’ve gotten a chuckle from my card today as it has made me laugh!!😆 Thanks so much for dropping in today as I really appreciate your support and thoughts here!

P.S. I have been busy “behind the scenes” doing various different things and haven’t shared them as of yet in my posts, but here’s a little look at what I’ve been doing lately:

Vicki-DDSLadyinWaiting-colored1 Vicki-DDS-New Little Ones Vicki-DDSPrimrose-colored2 Vicki-DDS-Sunflower Dreams Vicki-DDS-WintertimePenguins

I also haven’t shared my latest masculine cards, so I’ll be sharing those soon as well as other things I’m working on too! Just getting things sorted out and taking the time to do it is all!

Have a great day and I’ll be seeing you soon!

Challenges (for bird card):

Taylored Expressions – #TEMAKERCHALLENGE – hexagon, yellow & purse
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes
Colour Crazy Craft – Any Handcolored Image
Creative Fingers– #189 Anything Goes
Crafting Happiness– #55 Anything Goes
Use Your Stuff – Free Week
Creatalicious – #190 Anything Goes

Anything BUT a Card for Cute Card Thursday – Calendars Finished!

Hello friends! We are already here on the last Thursday of August! I can’t believe we are already getting close to the end of the year soon! Time seems to just go by so fast for me anymore!

Today stars a brand new challenge over at Cute Card Thursday and for this week we’d like to see your “Anything BUT a Card” creations! We look forward to seeing what you all come up with!

So I bet you thought that I had forgotten about my finishing up those calendars? Well as soon as I saw that this was the last week of the month, I went to try and find the next month and of course it wasn’t there! LOL! Then I realized that I needed to finish out these “Grumpy” calendars for the remainder of the year! To see the past months I had already created, you can find all the posts by CLICKING HERE. I had so much fun with these! So here’s the last of them:

I think these are fairly quick and easy to do, plus they’re so much fun putting together by creating the scenes for them and they give me giggles every time I look at it! (There are days that we can relate to these guys, right?!)

Again, for all of these, I have used the Taylored Expressions 3×4 Calendar panels with the printed design at the top. (of course mine are the 2019, but if you click on the link, it will take you to the 2020 calendars!) I have slightly cut the edges off so that I could make a layered panel behind them and still keep the 3×4 size.

All images came from the Taylored Expressions Calendar Grumplings stamp set and coordinating dies. I’ve used the sentiment from the set and made a banner with it that I’ve tucked underneath the elements from the Build-a-Scene Calendar dies. I’ve colored all the critters with Copic markers.

The eyeballs on this dude are too funny! I’ve white heat embossed the sentiment on this one over black to mimick a chalk board. I added lines around the edges with a white gel pen. I’ve popped up the grumpling with foam tape. I’ve added some glossy accents over the apple in his hand. This is my birthday month too!! Woo hoo!

BWHAA! HAA!! This one is probably my fave not just because of the sentiment and the cute grumpling, but I love Halloween anyway. I stamped the sentiment over some yellow cardstock and then punched it out with a circle punch so it looked in the shape of a moon and then die cut a couple of clouds to go around it. I had a punch that punched out lots of stars and so I glued those on the background. His broom handle was colored with a purple glitter gel pen and the frame was cut from some purple Glitterstock.

Oh yes, all of those leaves pile up about this time and there’s always tons of yard work to clean up along with all of those dead flowers before winter gets here…this is usually how I feel about it too! The leaves at the bottom are from a sequins mix that I had. I do love the different colors of leaves in the Fall!

Last, but not least is this funny “Bah Humbug” grumpling! Things tend to get hurried this time of year for sure and by the time the end of the month rolls around, that’s about my take on it! LOL! I’ve used some white Nuvo Drops for the snow in the background. The ground was die cut from Glitterstock. The sentiment was punched out with a really old speech bubble punch I have.

I hope you’ve enjoyed catching all of the months of this year’s calendar with me as much as I had fun putting them together. Now, the trick is to pull out the 2020 calendars and start working on that earlier than just as the time gets here! LOL! Thanks for hanging in there with me for it! Hopefully you’ve been inspired in some way or at least had a few smiles with the process!

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges: