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

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:

Four Seasons – Anything Goes Fall
Crafty Friends – Use More Than One Die
Happy Little Stampers Stencils – Anything Goes + stencil
Stamping Sensations – All Things Autumn
We Love Stamping – Autumn Colors
Addicted to Stamps & More – Die Cuts & Stencils

Lawn Fawn Fever!

Hello friends! I have LOTS to catch up on with all of the blogging of projects that I’ve been working on over the last few months, so I will probably share several projects within one post until I can get caught up!

I know that Christmas in July is going on everywhere right now, so I thought I’d share that along with a few other projects I had going on during my “Lawn Fawn Fever” episode! I have loved their cute little critters for so long and hope you enjoy what I’ve made:

It’s been a while since I even played along with a Lawn Fawnatics challenge, so I decided to join this one which is asking to see your Lawn Fawn “Fun with Food” challenge projects. What could be more fun than sharing Christmas cookies?! I’m not sure I’d share any with mice…but these guys are too cute and add some more fun to the scene. They’re a bit older and I know I’ve had the set for several years as it was one of the STAMPtember sets called “Merry Christmouse“.

I used some older Lawn Fawn papers from my stash to create the table and backdrop setting and then cut it out with the Lawn Fawn Outside In Rectangle dies. I used the following sets which include the one mentioned above for my scene: How You Bean?, How You Bean? Christmas Cookie Add On, and Thanks a latte. I Copic colored them and even added a few stamped images over the cookies including some Chunky Glitter.

For the mouse hanging over the hot cocoa cup, I cut around his arms to fit over the cup. I popped up the candy cane as well at the mouse next to the jar for depth on the scene. I added some touches of glitter and then on the mouse Santa hat, I took some liquid applique and heated it up until it was puffy. The sentiment was white heat embossed over the dark chocolate cardstock and then I just used my scissors to cut it out and attach at the top. Really fun scene to create!

I also took part on Friday with the “Hive Five Kit” class they did using the adorable new Hive Five card kit they came out with recently.

For the first card, I made my sentiment too high, so I had to “arrange it” how it worked for me, and I wanted it to be a birthday card instead. The other project was just the hexagon tag. I changed mine into a shaker and then added to a card. I also added the speech bubble on this one.

The products included with the card kit were really fun and I’m glad I got it!

The majority of this card came from a fun little kit that my sweet blog friend Shirley gifted me included with a SWAP that I was in with her. (Details of that are below.) Really love that she included the backdrop for the sky which worked out perfectly! I actually already purchased this awesome Lawn Fawn Platform Pop-Up die along with the Platform Pop-Up Add-on and the Upon a Star stamp set and dies, but she was so very kind to have all of these pieces already stamped and cut out for me! I just colored in the critters and the stars, added a few more here and there along with some glitter, white heat embossed the sentiment over the navy cardstock and put it together.

I hadn’t even broken out my Platform die at the time, so this was my first time putting one together! It looks a little more intimidating than what it really is, so I had lots of fun with it! Thanks so much for sharing the fun with me my friend! I can’t wait to attempt another one soon! (Thanks for helping me with my addiction! 😁)

And as I had mentioned above, I was asked if I’d be interested in joining this “Summer Sampler SWAP” with my wonderful blog friends Patti, Shirley and Donna along with a few other ladies to take part with! When it was described to me, I quickly realized that I had seen these 12″ x 12″ sized papercraft stamped samplers all over Pinterest. Of course, I had thought to myself that would be fun to create and never did.

Each square is 3-1/4″ and we each were to use the same color for the back layer so it was all similar for the finished project to coordinate well. So 9 of us created 9 squares, kept one for ourselves and then mailed out the others to each person in the swap. Really fun to see everyone’s idea here with the theme of “SUMMER” too! I love them all and thought how fun that each one is so different from the others!

This is my finished 12″ x 12″ shadow box framed piece with everyone’s squares that I’ve attached to a wood panel background paper. I have it hanging on the wall. I think this would be so fun for each season or even gifts! Hope we can do another one!😉

And here’s the square that I did for the swap. I zoomed in to take the photo and it’s behind the glass, so it’s not a real great look at it, but as you see, I’ve used Lawn Fawn again! LOL

I had some fun 4th of July papers and thought it would be neat to make somewhat of a shaker element with confetti stars. I’ve used the Lawn Fawn Dandy Day Flip Flop set along with a mouse from the Bubbles of Joy set for the front of my square. I was trying to give the impression that the mouse had a sparkler, and the sparks were flying while the other mouse was enjoying the show. I used glitter and die cut a star from silver glitter cardstock for the center of the dandelion. I added a red bow at the top. I thought with using a shadow box frame that the dimension wouldn’t be an issue and it wasn’t.

There’s always something fun to keep me hopping, so I know you’ll see more soon including the wedding & painting class projects! I promise I’ll get there! Thanks for dropping by!!

Challenges:

Lawn Fawnatics – Fun with Food (first card)
Crafty Gals Corner – Christmas in July (first card)
Krafty Chicks – Christmas (first card)
CRAFT – Christmas (first card)
Jingle Belles – BLING on the Holidays! (first card)
Double Trouble – Christmas in July Thing 1, Thing 2 & Thing 3 (I’ve used old stamp sets, papers and added some fun bling on my cookies -plus added to the partner challenge in first card!)
Alphabet – ‘H’ is for Holidays (first card)
My Time to Craft – Christmas in July (first card)
Papercraft – Christmas in July