Pattern Inspiration

Well people, I did it. Quite successfully, too, I think!

What's that, you ask? What did I do?

I used a pattern that I saw on Pinterest and translated it into a papercraft and made it into a card!

Want to see it?

Here's the pattern. I think it's a fabric. If it's not, it should be.

And here's the card:

I loved the color combo and the modern botanical look. O may add a vellum sentiment strip when it gets to be time to use it, but for now, I just think it's pretty. :-)

The leaf image is from PTI'd Friends 'til the End set.

Cheers!

Birthday, by the numbers

The girls at A Passion For Papertrey are at it again; giving me a challenge to put my creativity to work! The current challenge is to make a card featuring numbers.

Well, this came at a great time, as my BFF's daughter is having her 2nd! birthday at the end of the month. If it weren't for this challenge, I probably would have waited until the last minute before whipping together a card for her party. But now that I have this little number, I can coordinate wrapping (once i have a gift!) and make it into a lovely package together.

I busted out several stamp sets for this card, mixing and matching. I stamped the background using the big words from the Celebrations stamp set. Then I used the "HAPPY" from that set, paired with the "happy birthday" from the Birthday Basics collection to complete the sentiment on the main image. My By The Numbers #2 die cut shows loud and proud through the negative image, and a few ScorTape glitter strips break up the mono-chromatic color scheme.

What little girls doesn't love glitter?

I mean, really?

And by "little" girls, I really mean 29 year olds.

OK, I mean me. :-)

APFP Inky Love Challenge; Take 2

OK, folks. I'm back with another card for the A Passion For Papertrey Inky Love challenge. I wasn't too happy with my first card here, as it was a complete CASE as well as a card style that I have made before. While it did fit the challenge of using a stamp set that had been neglected, I feel like a bit of a cheat of making the same card with only a slightly different stamp.

So for today's card, I used not one, but TWO stamp sets that have been feeling a bit jealous of my more used sets. Today's card features Movers and Shakers Sentiments and Dot Spot, both of which I *had* to have, then struggled to use.

I wanted to use my new cloud die, so thought I'd put a little vellum window in the card face partially revealing a happy rainbow inside the card.

You can barely make out the rainbow peeking through the vellum cut out on the front of the card. I though this was perfect to go along with the sentiment, and will hopefully brighten somebody's day.

And here is the dotty rainbow inside the card. I used my SU Stamp and Write markers to color the stamp, but because it took so long to color each dot, the ink kind of blobbed up a bit before I could stamp it. I was disappointed at first with the spotty coverage rather than nice, full circles, but the more I look at this, the more I like it this way. It looks like it was rained on. :-)

Cheers!

an autumnal state of mind

It's probably because this morning I voted, and the view from my craft room is full of nothing short of fall splendor, but I am totally in an autumnal state of mind! The things that catch my eye when we're out and about are fall-inspired centerpieces, cinnamon sticks, the color of leaves turning, dew on the grass. Fall is definitely around us and it's making its mark on my crafting (and my hair, too. Bye-bye blonde! Hello auburn. ;-).

This is the view from my craft room window. The pond across the street has several aldertrees that have all been losing their leaves, making for spooky sounds and whimsical views.

So in the spirit of all things fall, here are a few of the cards that I made this morning. 

I like the inverse embossed image on this one. I stamped the leaf and acorn in VersaMark and embossed with clear powder. Then using my Early Espresso ink and a sponge dauber, I sponged around the embossed image to leave the negative space as the focal point. I used my Simply Jame cardstock as the image backing so that the pretty script font would show through. A sentiment strip and some bling finish it up!

I think this might be my favorite. I wanted to showcase the illusion of falling leaves and acorns in this cascade of falling color. The Autumn Acorns images are die cut and stamped and aligned on Dark Chocolate cardstock stamped with Background Basics: Woodgrain for a woodsy feel. Some gold embroidery floss adds a little shine and pizzazz, and voila!

I have to say that I really like the grid on this card, It reminds me of stained glass. The colors make me feel warm and cozy and reminiscent of the spicy-orange smells of the season. I used a strip of card stock between my panels to ensure a perfect alignment. Gold embossing powder for the sentiment gives this card front a bit of a gilded look.

Thanks for stopping by!

APFP Inky Love Challenge

Howdy, folks! Today I spent the day organizing and destashing my craft room. It's far from perfect, but it's a good start. Hubba hubba hubby and I decided that over the Christmas break this year, we would (finally) renovate my craft room. Dinosaur border wallpaper, you will soon be a thing of the past! I don't know about you, but dinosaurs don't really get me in the creative mood...

So I've picked out my new desk and shelving units, thinking about paint colors, and spending way too much time wandering through Storables and The Container Store figuring out all the bins and crates that I'll need in my new space. It's so exciting! Now only 7 more weeks until we can get this project started!

So once I had fulfilled my organization quota for the day, I got inky and made the little card below. The card I made is similar in style to a card that I've made previously (so I kind of feel like I'm cheating a little bit), but this time I reached for my Beautiful Blooms stamp set that was in my first PTI purchase that I haven't used in years. The APFP challenge was to ink up some neglected stamp sets, so I went through all my sets until I Beautiful Blooms caught my eye and I though to myself, "It's been a long time since I've used that set!"

So here is my card, a simple monochromatic gratitude card that could be used for any occasion. I used my craft knife to partially cut out a few of the outer leaves, then popped them out with some dimensional stickies, making the contrasting card stock matting the card front peek out just a little bit.

I should also mention that this is a CASE of another card, I believe by Debbie Hughes, but at the moment, I can't for the life of me find the link to this card on her blog. I'll keep looking and post it here when I find it.

**EDITED TO INCLUDE: I Found it! The card that I CASE'd! It's by LimeDoodle, and I just ADORE it! To see the original card, click here.**

Papertrey October Blog Hop Challenge

It's a bird...

It's a plane...

It's a...card?

I know. Even I'm in shock.

After all these months of radio silence, I finally got my mojo back and spent a little time in my craft room! Maybe it's because it's fall and it's dreary outside and my energy levels are starting to prepare for hibernation, but there was something about getting crafty today that was just callin' to me. I needed some serious crafty time.

So here's Nichole's non-traditional holiday color scheme that I chose to work with.

And here's the sparkly little snowman number I created with those colors:

Hopefully more bloggin' to come soon!

Card Magic!

Well hello, everybody! It's been a LONG time! Sorry for the radio silence. Not really sure what's going on around here, but I just haven't been feeling the mojo lately. It's summertime, and I think the sunshine calls to me a little more than my craft room.

Nonetheless, I made a card last week, and I wanted to share it with you! The ever-talented and creative Amy Wanford has made a couple of cards using this technique, and I figured it was about time I try my hand at it, too. She explains her technique in this post here. OK, so I guess it's not so much a tutorial, but I'm pretty savvy when it comes to figuring these kinds of things out, so I just reverse engineered the design (sounds smart, eh?) and figured it out all by my onesies.

So here's the card as it begins. Not too exciting, but see those little arrows on the ribbon tails? Yep, go ahead and start pulling...

WHAT THE WHAT? Keep pulling...

Holy magical colored cupcake, Batman!

And voila! There you have it. A fun little card and gift tag all in one!

Well folks, that's it for today. The sunshine is calling, and I have some serious weeds to tackle. Have a great weekend!

Make It Monday #694 - Using Color Inspiration

Hello, dear readers (are there any of you out there?). Happy Friday.

Sorry for my absence lately, in case you've noticed. I have hired out my oh-so-coveted Fridays off to help another adviser in my office, so a majority of my crafty time (and sanity) has vanished, along with the much needed extra few hours of sleep. But this week, I still found time to get a little inky.

I decided to try my hand at using Nichole's techniques for using color inspiration for a project. You can see her video here. One thing that she point out to add balance to a card is to try to incorporate your colors 3 times on the card. Well, having chosen a color inspiration photo with 5 colors made that difficult for me, especially since I tend to lean toward the CAS style. So as you'll see in my card, some of my colors appear only twice. But I still consider this a victory, as I think I put a lot of stuff on this card, but I still like how it turned out!

Here's the color inspiration piece that I chose for my card today:

 Ans here's my card. I hope you like it!

Have a great weekend!

Embellish Magazine Challenge - Chevrons

Hi There! Just a quick post today before I'm off for breakfast. I know, right? Cards before breakfast? You betcha!

This card is for Embellish Magazine's Chevrons challenge. This was a tough challenge for me. I have no chevron stamps, I attempted making a chevron by cutting and piecing strips of paper together, but that was a disaster. I was at a loss. So I fumbled through my thousands of pages of patterned paper until I came across this beauty. Not only is it chevrons, but it's the right colors, too! So I whipped out this cheerful little card, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Here's the trigger image. The challenge was to incorporate chevrons into your design, while also sticking to an aqua, pink, purple and grey color scheme.

 And this is what I had to contend with this morning. Barley, the dear sweetheart, would not leave me alone while trying to work on my card & photograph it. Maybe I should feed them breakfast first?

And this is Hops, sitting on his foam like a good cat, out of the way of the crafting and as regal looking as ever. Such a handsome boy!

 Breakfast time! Eggs and avocado, anyone?

Dude Card

So here it is again. The time of my life where I'm faced with the challenge of creating a Dude card. I'm not sure if other folks struggle with this, but I'll tell you what; it's not easy for me! The majority of my stamps are flowers, or pretty little doilies or frames with scripted sentiments. Not exactly dude material.

But I remember that killer patterned paper from the PTI holiday release, and thought that the colors of those diagonal stripes would be a fitting base.

So I whipped that out, punched the corners with my corner punch (I have no idea who makes it or when/where I got it, but I bought it for our wedding invitations 3 years ago) to give a little masculine architectural interest, and took it from there. Now the Dude that this is for is turning 41, so all those cute little boy images wouldn't work, either. But I made a little tag-looking-thingy, busted out a few banner strips to make it looks like a present, and voila. Dude birthday card.

Thoughts?

Runway Inspired Challenge #9

Happy Tuesday, all! Today I'm attempting to become a card fashionista, as I'm participating in this edition of the Runway Inspired Challenge.

Without further ado, the runway photo:

 And here's my card. I took the design of the dress as a bit of a sketch challenge, with the green, then the floral, then the cream all on the bias, but then used the Kraft to show the floor of the catwalk. What do you think?

OK, dinner time. See you next time!

Embellish Magazine Challenge - Jeweled

Hi folks! As part of my challenge to myself for 2012, I decided to try to participate in more card challenges. So I stumbled upon this challenge today over at Embellish Magazine.

The challenge was to create a card or project using not only the color scheme in the inspiration photo, but also to incorporate some kind of jewels or bling into your project. Here's the inspiration photo:

Such pretty colors! Those are colors that make me drool all the time, whether together or individually. In fact, I'm wearing a shirt in that lovely aqua color this morning, so it was meant to be. :-)  (I used PTI Hawaiian Shores, White, and Soft Stone paired with SU Wisteria Wonder and Pool Party).

I decided to bust out my Upsy Daisy set from Stampin Up and make a tiled flower scene. I had done a card similar to this once before, but it had been a while, so I thought it was about time to try my hand at it again. I stamped the flower image 3 times using VersaMark, once each on a different colored card stock background, then embossed the image with white embossing power. Then I cut each image in thirds, and selected one tile from each color to reassemble into the original image. As I had 3 sets of images to work with, I rearranged them 3 different ways for 3 different looks.

This first card is very bright and cheerful and makes me think that it would make a nice wedding card. I just love the colors together. I added a few pearls at the base of the large flowers and used my diamonds impression plate (PTI) for a white-on-white matting to complete the look.

The next card I wanted to be bright and cheerful, so I used a silver matting for the flower tiles, and set that on more Hawaiian Shores to really make the brightness stand out. Matted that on Soft Stone on a white card base, added some bling and a vellum sentiment strip, and voila! I also added some Stickles lavender pearls to the base of each blossom, but I'm not loving that, so pretend that's not there, OK? In fact, I don't love the vellum strip, either. Maybe I'll remove that and stamp right on the Soft Stone card stock.

And lastly, I wanted a card that would be a bit more somber, something that could be used as a sympathy card. I set my flower tiles on Smoky Shadow (although in the photo it appears black) and matted that on Wisteria Wonder which has a lovely greyness to it. The card base is soft stone so that it wasn't too bright, and a few simple rhinestone brads add the finishing touch.

So there you have it. Three cards, all with the same colors and images, but arranged in ways that make the overall effect of the cards very different. This was a really fun project to try and I'm happy with the results. Each card has a very different mood and evokes different emotions from me, which is exactly what I was hoping to accomplish. I'm going to pat myself on the back for this one. Maybe Hubba Hubba Hubby can pat me on the back here, too. :-)

Happy weekend!

Cards, cards, cards!

Hi there! This is just a massive post for a bunch of cards that I've been making lately. Admittedly I'm better at making cards than I about about blogging. Sorry, folks, that's just what you get. Besides, who wants to read my mumbo-jumbo anyway?

Well, this first card is for the A Passion For Papertrey's "House and Home" challenge. The challenge wansn;t specifically to make a new house card, but to use something that is home-related. So naturally I went right to my new Lighten Up set from my last PTI order. I thought it'd be neat to see a bunch of lamps turned off, then BAM! One big, bright light at the end of the row. Here's my interpretation.

Here's a little number I made using the partial die-cut technique that I learned here today:

And here's a card that desperately makes me yearn for summertime and watermelon.

And another one using the same layout as above. Stick with what works, right?

 And lastly, a CASE of Maile Belles' card found here.

Yep, I Made That - Magnetic Make-Up Board

Hi there, and welcome to my first edition of "Yep, I Made that." I'll use this title to post about the non-card things that I make, most of which will be inspired or directly copied from things I found on Pinterest.

Today's Yep, I Made That item is a magnetic make-up board. My BFF shared this idea with me as a way to get my make-up off the counter and make it more visible. This is great, because I have been in a rut using the same 3 or 4 items for the past few years because I'm too lazy to dig to the bottom of my make-up bag, pull out a grimy, powdery mess, rub the label to see what color it is, throw it back in, start rummaging again, rub my face, only to find that all the loose, powdery mess from inside my make-up bag got all over my fingers and is now smeared all over my face, wash my face, and start all over again. Phew! This way, all of my make-up is clean, visible, and most of all, accessible.

Here's what I made:

OK, so this is the final product, but not mounted on my wall, yet. I wanted to see how all of my products fit on the sheets before I nailed them to a wall.

So how did I make it? Well, I went to Home Depot and bought 3 pieces of flashing in the roofing department. It's a thin sheet of metal, of what kind I have no idea (I did have to make sure that the flashing was magnetic, though), and about 60 magnets. The flashing cost $0.88 each, and the magnets were $2.99 for 8 (although you might be able to find magnets for less at a dollar store or something). Total cost of my project so far is about $27.

I took it home, and using my handy-dandy glue gun and some left over fabric (OK, well mine was actually dark red vinyl), I hot glued the fabric to the flashing. I just folded the fabric over the edges, glued it down, and voila! Cost for this step: $0!

I then hot glued a magnet to either the top or bottom of each of my make-up products, depending on what I wanted to see. Because most of my product is the same brand with an opaque black lid, I decided to glue them on bottom-out so that I could see the product and color name from the front of my board. Some items took 2 magnets to stick on (actually, the only thing that took 2 magnets was the tubular Clinique body shimmer, far right).

I decided to organize my items by product type. On the far right I have everything for complexion and face, including my mini-buki brush. Concealer, foundation primer, foundation, blush, bronzer.

In the middle I have eyeliners, liner-setting liquid, and a few shadow pallets.

On the far left is eye shadow. All eye shadow. Yep; I have a lot. Funny, considering I haven't really worn any in about 3 years...

Here's a close-up of my FACE board:

Here's a close-up of my LINER & SHADOW board:

And here's a close-up of my EYE SHADOW board.:

I got my hubba-hubba Hubby involved, and he measured and leveled and mailed the darned things to the wall above my towel bar!

So the total cost for my project was just the flashing and the magnets for a whopping $27. Now all I need is better lighting in my vanity to clearly see what I'll end up putting on my face!

Cheers!

Cards, coffee, and boots

Happy Friday, all! I'm super excited for my fun weekend ahead and all of the crazy memories that I'll make. What am I doing, you ask? Why, I;m taking two classes at the Academy of Burlesque! Miss Indigo Blue (who you might have seen in the documentary available on Netflix 'A Wink And A Smile') opened up her studio in Seattle several years ago, and I am so anxious to go to two of her classes with my gal Stephanie this Sunday! Tomorrow we're making our own tassel pasties, which will undoubtedly be a hoot!

But enough of that for now. I'll let you know how it goes next week.

First is my pop of color card for the A Passion For Papertrey  challenge. This fortnight's challenge was to make a card using only black, white, and a pop of color. So here's my happy hearts coffee card.

My color was SU! True red, and I think the hearts really make that coffee cup just POP right outta the screen and into your heart. :-)

Here ar3e a few other coffee cards that I made with this new PTI set that I'm absolutely in love with. This is a gift card holder. The front flap tucks in behind the matting on the front to hold it closed.

Open the flap and it looks like this:

And inside there are 2 pockets - 1 to hold the gift card, and the other on which to write your note!

I couldn't resist the woodgrain impression and the felt coozy on this cart.

 And here are the new boots that came in today's mail from Zappos.com. I ordered them yesterday and asked for the free 3-5 day shipping. NEXT DAY! Love it. This pair has some sassy lacing up the back. The shoe is leather but the boot shaft is suede. Oh so luscious!

 Side view:

And here's the other pair that I ordered. All leather, a little less-dressy, but still fabulous. How is a girl to decide? Oh the choices...

Well that's it for me today. Have a great weekend!

A Passion for Papertrey: Needle & Thread

Happy Thursday, all! I'm (not supposed to be) at home tonight. My vstay-cation from work starts tonight, as I was supposed be at the airport tonight picking up my sister-in-law, but the Tallahassee airport had other plans for her. So instead I'm home getting crafty, and will go to the airport tomorrow to retrieve my dear Allison.

So in the meantime, I'v whipped up a stampless/inkless card for the needle & thread challenge at A Passion For Papertrey. All day today I have wanted to make a card with raspberry fizz, orange zest, Hawaiian Shores, black and soft stone. Why, you ask? Because the dress I'm wearing today is all of those colors in an amazing paisley print, and all I could think about all day was:

1. Getting Allison from the airport and starting our vacation with her
2. How comfortable this dress is
3. How inspired I am by the colors in my new dress.

So here is my card using these colors and the needle & thread challenge. I went literal here and actually ran my card through my sewing machine. Since I got my machine over a year ago, the only thing I have stitched outside of hemming a few items is cards. But I'm still so glad that I have it!

My first thought for needle & thread was argyle, as it's always stitched in these eye-popping, criss-crossing patterns. Not having any argyle stamps, I die-cut the small triangle from the Two Triangles die set from Papertrey (that coordinates with Tranquility Trilogy) and set them up to form diamonds. A little cross-stitching on top of my interwoven stitch lines and voila; argyle!

Next time I would do without the trace stitches right alongside my diamonds. I think they get lost in the mix. But I do just love how the zig-zag stitching turned out over my raspberry fizz lines!

And just for fun, and because I know I'm curious about people, so therefore assume that people are curious about me, too, here is a picture that Hubba Hubba Hubby took of me tonight. Keep in mind this was taken after our amazing dinner out at a local Indian restaurant (OMG, I LOVE tandoori chicken!).

Cheers!