January AJ Page-BRR!

Hello friends! Hope you’re enjoying your day so far and staying warm! We’ve just recently survived a very cold below freezing temps in my area, so going outdoors is not that pleasant even bundled up! So with that, I stay inside and find crafting to be my happy space!

I’m very excited to be joining with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper) for another year of SMASHING OUR STASH!🎉 I love the inspiration that we bring each other as well as accountability for getting those piles of stash used up! Thank you for joining me again and please be sure to check out the wonderful inspiration on her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with this month’s prompt of “COLD” (anything related to this word):

Of course when I think of cold, I think of my favorite animal…the penguin!! I pulled out some Lawn Fawn stamps to use on my page today. Lots of blues and silver and sparkle help with the feeling of cold too! I have so many sparkly items, so it was great to use some up!

For the background: I started with a piece of Canson Watercolor 140# coldpress 5.5″x8.5″ pre-punched holes at the top and covered it with blue colored acrylic paints using a baby wipe. I also went around the edges with a darker blue and then used a number stencil with white paint which you can barely see as I’ve covered most of it up. I then splattered with white paint using a fan brush for the snow.

I also found a cool icicle border and cut it out with my Cricut machine in silver glitter cardstock for the top of the page. I then used my Zutter machine to punch the holes again and used a corner chomper to round the top edges.

For the bottom: I used all Lawn Fawn border dies for the mountains and snow hills. The blue ice water the penguin is standing on is just a straight piece of blue cardstock covered with a glitter brush pen. I also used Stickles glitter to cover the snow cone that the penguin snowman is holding.

The lettering was done with a Lawn Fawn alphabet die that I ink blended in blues and covered with crystal effects. I foiled over the “January” word with blue foil and cut it out with a die and placed a couple of silver rhinestones next to it. This was popped up with foam underneath the “BRR” letters.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my AJ page today and have been inspired in some way! Thanks so much for stopping in!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – It’s On the Calendar (January is COLD!)
Kreativ-Tanten – Snow
Once Upon a Time – Mr. Popper’s Penguin book cover
Penny’s Paper-crafty– Anything Goes with Paper
The Sisterhood of Crafters – Winter Blues

New Beginnings at Sparkles Monthly Challenge!

Hello friends! With January comes a new year and every year people are thinking about everything “NEW” like resolutions, out with old, in with new sort of things. It seems with cold and snow winter outside; I’ve been doing a majority of my time organizing and figuring out what to toss or keep! I’m thinking I need a new “for sale page” here on my blog! I will need to figure that out and update later!

Today brings a new challenge for the start of the year at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog! For the start of the year and this month’s challenge, we have the theme: NEW BEGINNINGS! I received a Lawn Fawn gift last year and this is my first time using it for my card today:

Of course, a baby is a wonderful “new beginning”, and I was inspired to use this darling Lawn Fawn stamp set called Elephant Parade plus the Add-On. I stamped, colored and die cut all of the images to arrange a scene over the arch opening of my card front made with the Lawn Fawn Secret Garden Window die set.

I wanted to keep the colors gender neutral, so I went with mint and yellow type colors. I blended around the inside edge and white heat embossed the sentiment at the bottom. I found a very old scrap of decorative paper and ran a stitched cloud background plate die over it. (I think it’s been retired) This was the background for my window opening. I added foam tape to the back of the mint card front and attached it to the decorative paper. Some of the images were glued directly onto the background and some were popped up with foam tape. I’ve added this panel onto a top folding A2 white card base.

I finished out the design with some clear sparkling sequins filled with Stardust Stickles and a few white and black dots with gel pens.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and have been inspired to come join us this month to enter your creation! I look forward to seeing what you make! Thanks so much for stopping by as I appreciate you taking the time! Have a great day!

CHALLENGES:

Simon Says Stamp – Cute Critters
Critter Crazy – Anything Goes featuring a Critter
Time Out – NEW
CRAFT – NEW
My Time to Craft – New in Your Stash (stamps/dies – first used for this card from gift given October 2023)

Bugging Out With Sketches

Hello friends! I hope you’re having a good week so far and staying safe wherever you are in the world. Sending hugs to all experiencing a troubled time. I hope that my post can bring a smile to you today.

I needed to create some get well type of cards and so I thought I’d try to incorporate some challenges while working on them which helps me to concentrate more in what I’m doing and maybe think outside the box a bit.

My first card is made with the Beccy’s Place Challenge freebie this month and she also challenged us with a sketch which I’ve decided to use for my card. (see sketch below) I was really happy to use up some more pattern papers with it and I also decided to add a tiny dragonfly at the top to enter another challenge and to adhere to my “bug” theme today!

I printed the image in black and white and colored with Copics. The dragonfly and the center pink strip were stamps that I cut out and added to the design. The rest is pattern paper from my stash except the scalloped kraft border in the center that I cut out with a die. I stamped the sentiment and cut it out to go with my twine around it. *You will notice in ALL of these cards that I’ve used some sparkly gems. I wasn’t aware until posting them! I must be on a kick of wanting to use them!*

Challenges for 1st card:

Beccy’s Place – August challenge + sketch
Paper Dragonfly Creative – Anything Flies (Goes) or Party
Kreativ-Tanten – Anything Goes
The Crafty Addicts – Anything Goes
Crafty Calendar – Anything Goes
Dragonfly Dreams – Dragonflies

And for this next card, I’ve played with a large bug:

Around my area this time of year, you can hear the sound of these cicada bugs with their distinct noise throughout the trees. My husband likes the sound when a bird catches one! EEW! This bug is a cute one from Inky Stamper called Cicada and I’ve colored it up with pencils this time. Hard to see, but I’ve also added some shimmer with a glitter pen on his wings.

I’ve used the Picket Fence Tree Bark stencil over kraft on the background and then splattered it with brown and white paint. The leaves under the bug and the accent came from the Lisa Horton Variegated Leaf EF+die that I cut over light green cardstock. I used some metallic green wax to go over the details in them. I also used some gel pens to make some doodles around the strip, the circle and under the sentiment along with following a sketch. (details below) You will also notice more sparkly gems! I’m also entering this in the Inky Stamper FB challenge this month which is using an IS bug image.

Challenges for card #2

Sketch Saturday – #732 sketch + twist: add a doodle
Creative Knockouts – #501 Anything Goes
We Love Stamping – Masculine
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
A Place to Start – Anything Goes optional: leaves/trees
The Corrosive – Anything Goes

For my last card I decided to keep this one simple’ish’:

So, I know these aren’t real bugs because I’m not squealing, but these guys are too cute! They’re popping up out of the dirt for a special greeting! I mixed in both a new and older stamp set from Lawn Fawn on this one. I’ve used another sketch for this one and decided to keep it very simple. The hardest part of this was the coloring which honestly wasn’t all that difficult either because they’re small images. I’ve also added some shimmer with a glitter pen on the wings and of course, there’s those sparkly gems again!

Challenges for card #3

Sunday Stamps – SSC316 in the corner sketch
The Paper Players – CAS using any Bug
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Clean and Simple
Krafty Chicks – CAS (Clean and Simple)

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I appreciate your time and thoughts! I’ll be seeing you again on Saturday with another AJ page!

Feeling Tropical at Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends! I hope that whatever state you’re finding yourself right now, that you’re able to find a bright spot in your day somewhere. In watching the news, there are so many variable patterns in the weather and my heart goes to those in Hawaii dealing with the wildfire disaster. My card today is not only for the DT challenge, but also a tribute to our tropical friends in Hawaii.

There’s a new challenge today over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge with the theme of: TROPICAL and/or BEACH

Since I live in the Midwest area, I don’t get a chance to see too many scenes like this, but maybe someday hubby and I will get a chance soon! The inspiration for my card came from my computer background photo and I loved the look of the water with the setting sun. Everything I’ve used on my card today came from Lawn Fawn.

The entire background was done with stenciling using the LF Beach Sunset Stencils and inks. I added that mice couple from a freebie stamp set that came with one of my orders. I colored them pretty dark with cool grey tones so that they blended into the beach and looked like a silhouette. The sentiment at the bottom was white heat embossed from the LF Butterfly Kisses set. I’ve used a glitter brush pen over the sun and purple reflective water. I think I got a little carried away with the white gel pen, but I was trying to make it look like the dark areas were highlighted with some of that setting sun over it and there’s just no removing any lines! (If you’ve done this, then you know what I’m saying!)

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my Tropical themed card today or found some inspiration with it. Thanks so much for dropping in and please check out the challenge details with inspiration from the DT and play along!

Challenges I’d like to enter this card for:

Four Seasons – Anything Goes Summer
Crafts Galore Encore – Anything Goes
The Paper Funday – Anything Goes optional: Great Outdoors
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes using paper
Get Creative – Summer Nights
My Time to Craft – Stenciling
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes

Party Pandas

Hello friends! I had another birthday card to make and this person likes panda bears, so I thought I’d go through my stash and see what I had for that. Here’s what I came up with:

So, I found this cute little guy that I believe was a “freebie” a few years back for your birthday month from Lawn Fawn called “Party Panda” and the extra was that “Happy birthday” sentiment as well. There was also a set of coordinating dies with it that cut out the panda as well as the tiny cupcake.

So, to make it a good party, you need more than one panda, so I stamped him out three times and stamped out some “party elements” as well from the Lawn Fawn Party Animals stamp set, colored and cut everything out with the coordinating dies. These little guys turned out so cute with their party hats on and holding their birthday items to celebrate with another panda friend, of course!

I thought it would be fun to create a green colored frame with the Watercolor Wishes paper cut out with the Outside In Stitched Rectangle and the Reversed Stitched Scallop Rectangle dies to create a frame. I had some additional metallic gold polka dotted papers for the background behind it that were also a freebie with one of my orders. Before attaching it to the back of the green frame, I also added a piece of Noble Fir cardstock cut from the Grassy Border die. Attaching this border to the frame only gave me some room to tuck the pandas behind the grass.

I stamped the sentiment in black, cut it out with my scissors to make a banner and sponged some green ink around it before attaching to the card. Lastly, I added some gold sequins and placed it over an A2 sized top-folding white card base. I decided to create my own envelope with more of that green Watercolor Wishes paper to mail it in.

Well, the green and grass have me thinking of Spring coming and I think I might party like a panda myself when it finally arrives!! 😆🎈 I’m sure ready to be outdoors!

Hope that you’ve enjoyed my card today and have been inspired! I’ll be back Saturday for this month’s Art Journal Page and hope to see you then! Thanks for dropping in!

Challenges:

Creative Knockouts – Add a Sentiment
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2311 Anything Goes
Lawn Fawnatics – Inspired by Book/Movie/Song (My book inspiration came from Xander’s Panda Party by Linda Sue Park)
The Corrosive – Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes

Going CAS at Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends and happy Wednesday! Today starts a new challenge over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog and this time we would like to see your CAS (or “clean and simple”) creations! I hope you will hop on over to see the inspiration from the team and consider joining in the fun with us!

Here’s the DT creation that I’ve made for it:

Sometimes I feel that CAS can actually be even more difficult than regular cards and I struggle with thinking I’ve added too much, or it doesn’t look right. I think it’s more of me over-thinking something, though!

It was my son’s birthday yesterday and I thought this would be a great opportunity to make a card for him. He’s a postal carrier, so I thought this cute owl from the Lawn Fawn Special Delivery would work great for this. I started with the LF Stitched Cloud Backdrop and the LF Stitched Rectangle Frames dies to create the main focal panel. I lightly blended some blue ink in a circle before adding the Copic colored postal owl popped up with foam.

Over some red cardstock, I white heat embossed the sentiment. (I don’t remember which LF stamp set it came from) I die cut it with a banner die and popped it up over the cloud panel. I also had an extra die cut heart lying on my table, so I thought it would be great to add with the owl.

Thanks so much for stopping in today! Hope you’ve enjoyed my CAS card and have been inspired to join us this month with your take on the challenge too!

Challenges:

Country View – Birthday card for a man
Love to Scrap – Anything Goes
613 Avenue Create – Anything Goes optional: CAS
Lawn Fawnatics – All things birthday
Sunday Stamps – SSC304 sketch

Lots of Love and Commissioned Wolves

Happy weekend friends! It’s almost time for Valentine’s Day which means we share our appreciation to those that we love! I like to make cards that are great for any time of year and hearts are versatile enough to do this without being specifically Valentines. Here are a few cards that I’ve made with this in mind:

I actually participated in last week’s Craft Roulette #149 and the perimeters were: 1. tissue/vellum 2. collage 3. far away 4. three pops of red. So…while watching, I had decided that I was going for the Tim Holtz Postale Tissue Wrap that was already collaged with images. I decided because of the collage images, that I was going to find an airplane image to use with it and my thoughts turned to an older Simon Says Stamp card kit I had with the “Home Sweet Home” stamp set. I white heat embossed the airplane, the long building strip and the sentiment over black cardstock. It seemed to lend itself to a slimline card design, so that’s what I went with and used collage medium to attach the tissue to the background. Once it dried, I glued the die cut buildings strip and went around it with a Big Brush marker that I smudged to create the shadow effect.

I made a banner with the sentiment and attached a white string to the back and tied a bow with it to the airplane and popped up the plane with foam tape. The collage background panel was layered over a black piece that was attached to a standard slimline top folding card base.

Here’s a closer view of the details so that you can see them a bit better. My “three pops of red” came from 3 hearts that I cut out with red cardstock. The die was from the coordinating set with the stamps. I attached them around the airplane and covered them with a glitter brush pen.

If you’re interested in seeing what the Craft Roulette is all about, you can check them out live every Friday night around 6:00 pm CST. I will be doing this tonight as well! It’s just something fun to get your crafting thinking and I love that I can pull out my stash and use it up!

And of course I couldn’t help but follow along with the Lawn Fawn Create With Us “Wood You Be Mine?” class! There’s a little inside joke about Woodchucks chuckin’ wood with my son and I couldn’t resist sending him one of these cards. (CLICK ON THE PHOTOS ABOVE TO SEE THEM LARGER IF YOU’RE ON MY WEBSITE)

I just pretty much followed along with the same design as they shared in class with the exception of the background stencil. I didn’t have the same one they used, so I pulled out one from Taylored Expressions that is no longer available. but if you’d like to follow along with the class, you can check it out here.

And lastly, I wanted to share a commissioned card that I made for someone that requested a card to give to their partner. Not really too specific other than they liked wolves and the “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong lyrics somewhere displayed on the design. So here’s what I came up with:

I did not own any stamps with wolves on them, so I turned to my Cricut machine to cut out a silhouette wolf and then I flipped it to cut another one so that they faced each other. I wanted to give the appearance of the wolf couple howling together. LOL I also had some digital map paper that I could print out to use for the hearts as well as making an envelope with it too.

The background was ink blended with the center being lighter toned in blue and then I splattered some white over top for a night sky or an “outer space” looking sky…however you’d like to interpret it, I suppose. I cut a large heart with the map paper and arranged the two wolves over it so that, although it’s the same image flipped, I can make them look like different wolves and then cut off the bottom portions. I popped up the large heart with foam. I also used the same papers to cut smaller hearts above them and added some glitter and covered them with crystal effects to make them shinny. I printed out the lyrics on my computer and cut it out in a banner shape to attach below the wolves.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my “love” creations today and have been inspired in some way! Thanks for stopping by!

Challenges:

Sweet Stampin’– LOVE (Beavers)
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Love is in the Air (slimline)
Everybody Art – #529 Heart/Love
Cardz 4 Guyz – Valentine for a Guy (wolves)
Try it On Tuesday – All You Need is Love
Fab ‘N’ Funky – Valentines or Hearts
Little Red Wagon – Somebody to Love
The Sisterhood of Crafters – Hearts
Crafty Gals Corner – Add a Heart

Warm Wishes & Christmas too!

Hello friends! Gosh, it’s been a few minutes since my last posting, but I’ve not been with a computer for a while and I haven’t been able to post or see what’s been going on in blog world. I’m still without sound, but hopefully I’ll be fixed with that soon as well. After you get used to a computer, it’s time consuming trying to set everything back up on a new one and make sure you have all of your stored photos/files too! I’m getting there though!

Everything was a bit busy at the end of last year and I was not able to get around to participating in some classes that I’ve been wanting to do. Unfortunately with no sound, I couldn’t hear the videos, but I managed to easily figure things out anyway along with an instruction print out. So I was happy to get these Christmas/Winter cards finished:

I absolutely fell in love with the Lawn Fawn Ugly and Bright stamp set and I wanted to play with it and participate in their “Create with Us” class using it. I colored the stamped pieces similar to the class, but I didn’t have the same snowflake stencil for the background, so I pulled out my Taylored Expressions Let It Snow stencil (retired) to use for it.

The critters as well as the letters were popped up with foam tape and I’ve added some loose glitter to the speech bubbles, and hats. I used some LF chunky glitter to the bottom section of the letters. The letters were die cut from the LF Henry’s ABCs and colored with Copic markers.

And this one was also from the class using the same products as above, except the large sentiment came from the LF Giant Merry Christmas die and this time it was ink blended and sprayed with a shimmer spray. This was also popped up with foam tape along with the speech bubble and Santa hat. I was happy about the colors on this one and thought it was fun to put together and color.

For this last card, it was not a part of the class above, but I still wanted to play a bit more with the set and I had an extra deer critter cut out and colored and ready to be clothed! For this one I decided to keep it as just a wintry theme so it could be used for Christmas OR non-Holiday-ish. I pulled out the Lawn Fawn Snow Flurries Backdrop die to cut out a frame over top of a piece of the LF Knit Picky Winter Paper Pack that was ink blended along the edges and attached to an A2 top folding card base.

Thought that the deer looked a bit plain with no “grounding”, so I die cut a piece from some silver cardstock for him to stand on. (retired MFT die set) Added some glitter to his hat and sweater and popped him up with foam tape. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add some sequins, dots or other snowflakes to it, so I left for now.

Really sorry if you’re over with anything Christmas, but I am just happy to have finished the class and hopefully it won’t take me as long to get to the next one…which has already been out, and I haven’t gotten to yet! 🤨

Thanks so much for stopping in today and hope that you’ve been inspired in some way! I will be doing my monthly AJ page Saturday, so I hope you’ll come back to see this month’s inspiration.

Challenges:

NBUS – #46 New LF! Yay!
Merry Little Christmas – Anything Goes Christmas
Christmas Kickstart – Masks and Stencils
Once Upon a Time – Snowy Day (third card)
613 Avenue Create – Anything Goes optional winter theme
The Corrosive – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes

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: