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!