November AJ Page-Peace Love and Hope

Hello friends!  Hope that you’re having a wonderful weekend and I can’t believe we’re looking at the end of November already as well as almost the end of the year too!  Since I’ve been doing most of my post this month with guesting for Inky Stamper, it’s time to change it up a bit.

At the end of the month, I do an Art Journal page and collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), so please check out her blog for her AJ page too!🥰  We’re trying to get creative by using up our never-ending stash piles!  So here’s my Art Journal inspiration with the “SMASH OUR STASH” November prompt of “washi tape/stickers/border stickers, etc” :

So with the Smash our stash theme, I went through and pulled out so many stickers in my collection…and then realized that I’ve had some of these things for such a long time!  I couldn’t use them all, but I made something work with a fun Christmas theme in mind.

For the background:  I started out with my pre-punched holes at the top of my 140# cold press paper sized 6″x9″ and covered the bottom portion of the page with some Tim Holtz Christmas themed washi tape.  I thought it was a bit too bright and went over it with some white paint and a brayer.  I also took a collage paper of Christmas music sheet paper and stamped a couple of different images over it to further the collaged background.  I also covered this area with a thin layer of mixed media silver paint.

I die cut a pine tree and sponged some inks around the edges and turned that as well as the die cut sparkle snowflakes into stickers using my Xron machine.  I stamped the two deer in black ink and heat embossed over it a clear EP.  I then took a Tim Holtz stencil and used some sparkle texture paste over it for snow. (Before I attached the larger snowflake stickers.)  I also splattered the page with some white paint too…lots of snowfall going on!

For the wording:  I had some black thickers (as they call them, which are thick foam letter stickers) for the “PEACE” and then the other words are stickers from my stash.  The heart is from the thicker sheet too.  I took some silver rubbing paste with my finger and went along the edges of the page as well as the thicker letters to add some interest.  Lastly: I made a “snow ground” for the deer by applying some glue and covering it with some glitter crystals.  I also added some black gem stickers to the center of each snowflake sticker.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page today and have been inspired in some way.  Thanks for much for stopping in and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

  1.  Art Journal Journey – Collage Fodder and/or Food and Drink (collage fodder here)
  2. Mixed Media Lovers – Letters/text/quote 
  3. Creative Artiste – Anything Mixed Media
  4. Creative Moments – Winter
  5. Arty Divas – Anything Goes
  6. Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – NOT a card

Working in Washi Encouragement

Hello friends!  Happy Labor Day!  Can you believe we’re in September already?  The time goes so quickly!  I’ve been helping my husband around the house so we can finish up some projects before the weather starts getting cooler on us!  He does keep me busy since being retired! LOL!

As I had mentioned, although I wasn’t posting on my blog, I was still crafting.  I’ve also been trying to organize my craft room with my husband helping me to move things around as my space had really gotten to be over-whelming.  Carrying several card kits (many never used) and boxing them up to store, I realized how many things I actually have and never used!  It’s fun to buy stuff, but I think it’s even better to use something I have…as I’m becoming my own store!  So for this reason, my purpose has really shifted to TRY using what I already have if possible!  I know many of us are in the same boat, so perhaps I can help inspire too!

Here’s a set of cards that I’ve been working on from a virtual class that took place sometime in July.  It was supposed to be a set of 4 cards created with this gorgeous paper, stamp set and washi tape collection from Teresa Collins (Called “Create a Beautiful Life”).  The purple and butterflies really spoke to me and I got the kit…which I honestly didn’t need, but this is how it’s been!  I was supposed to get some already cut butterflies with the kit, which I didn’t…but it was fine, as of course, I had some dies that worked just fine for these cards and I decided to go off a bit on my own anyway.

Remember the post I had recently done about the washi tape challenge?  This is what made me think about this card kit class and that I needed to finish it up!  There’s a couple ideas in there using some of the pretty washi tape from the TC collection.  I think taking all of these virtual classes has taken a tole and burned me out a bit as well because although I’m making the cards (and have a huge stash of them), I usually still have extra product/material to use up too!  It sort of compounds the problem and doesn’t really help much.  I think it’s just time to consider a heavy freeze on it all!  Or at least until some of my stash gets used up anyway!🙄

Here’s a closer look at each one of the cards in the set.  If you’re on my website, just click on each photo below to enlarge it or if you are set up with e-mail, it will probably show in original form.  (There’s a caption under each card with the details too.)

I stamped some of the sentiments that were included with the stamp set from the collection, but there were also strips at the bottom of some of the pattern papers, so I took some of them and used them for some of the other cards.

I really like how they’ve turned out and this will be a nice set of encouragement cards to send along for my donation box this month to “The Butterfly Project” for domestic violence.

Really hope they were inspiring for you as well and that you’re reminded to use your own stash of papers, washi tape and other forgotten materials too!

Would love to play in these challenges for fun:

  1. Crafty Sentiments – Anything Goes 
  2. Crafty Creations – Anything Goes
  3. 2 Crafty Critter Crazies – Anything Goes + animals (butterflies count!) 
  4. The Crafter’s Cafe – Anything Goes
  5. Love to Scrap – Anything Goes
  6. Penny’s Paper Crafty – Anything Goes
  7. Cute Card Thursday – Anything Goes (birthday optional)
  8. Just Us Girls – 6 of anything (Didn’t realize it, but used 6 strips of pattern paper on the last card in the gallery!)  Thanks Vicki D!😉

What’s Up With Washi and Camping Fun!

Hello friends!  Hope you’re having a great week so far!  Today, I have some cards I made for my GDT month at Inky Stamper using washi tape!  I have loads of washi tape because I have a “squirrel moment” when I see it and think how pretty…and it’s not that expensive and easy to craft with and whatever excuse I can come up with!😁  Then it sits around unused!  

This is why I’m glad that the “Washi Tape Challenge” came up for this month in the InkyStamper Inkspiration FB Group!  You just need to use at least 1 Inky Stamper product and your washi tape…any you have!  I decided to go for 2 cards:

For both I cards, I took a scrap piece about 4.25″ x 5.5″ of black cardstock and covered it diagonally with 3 different types of washi tape.  One was from the Inky Stamper Doodlebug Lily White Swiss Dot washi tape, another from some metallic shinny silver washi tape and another from some clear sparkly washi tape in my stash.  The white turned up almost grayish over the black and the clear sparkle turned up differently as compared to it on the crab card in the background over white cardstock.  I thought it was cool the different looks I got with it.

I then decided to use some dies to cut it out with and then cut the remainder in different sized strips for my cards as well so I wouldn’t have to waste the rest of it…

Vicki-InkyStamperGDT-Washi Challenge-cat

For this card, I took a “hello” die from my stash and cut it out of the washi tape piece I created on the black cardstock piece.  I then cut out the “negative” sentiment with a rounded corners rectangle die and layered another piece of black cardstock behind it that was cut out slightly larger and popped up over an A2 card base that I’ve also layered with more of the washi tape strips I cut out from the left over.  I added this cute kitty from the Inky Stamper Cat stamp set along with the sentiment at the bottom.  I thought it would be fun to add a couple of paw prints at the bottom in white ink from the Inky Stamper Dog stamp set.  Lastly, I thought it needed some Doodlebug Twine too!

Vicki-InkyStamperGDT-WashiChallenge-crab

And for this card, you see that I’ve taken the die cut “hello” sentiment from above and added it to the crab’s claws to hold up in the air…so fun!  I still had a couple more left over strips from above and added that to the top and bottom of the scene I’ve created on this card. 

So for the scene, I’ve used the cute Inky Stamper Crab stamp set along with the sentiment at the bottom.  The sparkly looking “sea” in the background comes from a couple of different glitter washi tapes I had in my stash.  I then used a border die cut to cut it out to go across the card front.  Die cut some waves for the sand and tucked in all of the stamped and colored elements over a stenciled cloud background.  I added this card front scene to an A2 sized black card base.

How about you?!  Do you hoard your washi tapes?  I sure had fun playing around with it making these cards and I think it’ll be fun to sit and play some more with it as I have so much of it!  I think it was fun to die cut too!  If you’d like to washi tape around too, please join the challenge with us in the InkyStamper Inkspiration FB Group!


Just wanted to share some projects with you I’ve made this past weekend from a Craft Camp that I went to with Inky Stamper.  We made lots of fun projects: (click on photos to enlarge!)

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  Really hope you’ve enjoyed my washi tape cards and you can come join in the challenge with us this month!  Have an amazing crafty day!

Challenges:

  1. Aud Sentiments – Anything Goes + sentiment
  2. Allsorts – Add some sparkle 
  3. Sweet Stampin’ – Feature an animal
  4. Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
  5. Crafty Sentiments – Anything goes