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!

Baby Shadow Box

Hi Folks!

Remember that card I made with the stripes the other day? You know, the very next blog post down? Well, that's for Baby Eldon's shower next weekend. Sadly, I cant' attend, but today I whipped up this beauty (if I may say so) of a shower gift. A little decoration for his room or dressing table.

I was at a loss for what to get him - go with a traditional gift of something from the registry (boring), or try to find something unique that you think they'll like (risky)? So, at a loss, I asked my BFF for advice. The dear told me "the best gift you have is your creativity." She then directed me to Pinterest to find something to copy. I love my BFF! She sent me to a page full of baby shadow boxes, and I knew I had to make one of these for Eldon! So I sat down at my table, looked through my stash, and this is what I came up with.

When they bring Baby Eldon home, they can take off the white paper and place his baby photo in the frame. I even put scor-tape on there for ease and convenience. All they have to do is peel & stick!

It stands up nicely on its own, or it can be hung on the wall. LOVE the colors here in the (filtered through rain and grey clouds) "sunlight."

I'm pretty proud of how this turned out. I just wish I could be there when parents-to-be open it.

So there you have it. My first-ever hand made home decor piece. What do you think?

Cheers!

APFPTI - Stripes Edition

Hello everyone. I hope you're having a great day. It was a relatively sunny day here in Seattle. It's a nice change from our February doldrums. I can only take so much of the wintry-grey, so the sunshine was so refreshing!

As such, I  made a bright and cheerful baby card for the A Passion For Papertrey gals' STRIPES challenge! And, not only does it fit this challenge, but the recipient, soon-to-be parents, just painted baby Eldon's room with blue and white vertical stripes. I'm so clever. I know.

I hope you enjoy!

I have a few girlfriend's having little girls soon, so I did a few mock-ups of some potential birth announcements. These are great, because you can either print the information right on the front here, or you can put a photo on the front and print all the important deets on the back.

Ignore the fact that I tore my paper here. Imagine a pristine, pink sheet instead. :-)

PTI 5th Anniversary - Day 6

Hello!

I'm working a partial day today, in the afternoon (instead of my Fridays off), so I had the opportunity to get inky this morning. Such a lovely start to my day!

Today's challenge at PTI is a sketch challenge. Nichole posted 5 sketches for us to choose from. Sketch challenges are sometimes easy, and at other tines very difficult for me. Take my first card below. This is a sketch that just seemed to come together for me. But the second one - what about all that empty space? I don't feel right about my card; there's just something about it that is off to me. Oh well, at least I gave it a whirl

Tell me what you think!

The sketch:

 The card:

The sketch:

 The card:

Cheers!

Papertrey Ink Anniversary Celebratios - My Favorite Things

Howdy, y'all! Not sure what's up with the drawl, but I'm in a good mood, so it seemed appropriate.

Or maybe I just need dinner.

Likely.

At any rate, it's a beautiful day here in Seattle. For the last four days, yes, count them, FOUR, the sun has come out and our skies have turned from drab to, well, SKY blue! Yesterday it was so nice I went for a bike ride. 20 miles on the trail is the best therapy a girl can get. *Deep breath*

And for my recent absence; let's just cal it VA-CA-TION! Hubba Hubba Hubby and I, along with my awesome parents (yes, I'm old enough that I can think my parents are cool) spent several days at Whistler, B.C. It's about a 4 hour drive from here. We skied the slopes, drank the beer, and hot tubbed 'till we were pink in the face. It was lovely.

So, on to cards. PTI is celebrating their 5th anniversary this month, and in celebration, today's challenge was to use a design by one of the members of the DT to create a card of our own. So I printed the Freebie and chose the awesomely retro cassette tape from Erin Lincoln for my focal point. I thought this would make a good dude card.

Duuuuuuuude, I was right.

Maybe I spent too long listening to snowboarders recently.

Dude.

I love Erin's funky style, and I thought this card would be a good channeling of her fresh take on things.

And this is just a fun little number I put together last week. 

Cheers!

Snow, and a card update

Hiya folks. Well, we're settling in for a long night here at Tremper Hills. With 7" of snow already on the ground, tonight's forecast is looking pretty scary:

Experts are predicting that this winter storm will be the biggest and baddest in the Pacific Northwest in decades; since the 1980s. I have been living here since the late 1980s, and I remember some pretty bad ones. So if this one tops that, I'm worried. especially now that I'm a homeowner with 5 huge evergreen trees in my back yard. If the winds blow and the snow falls like they predict, I might end up with an 85' cedar tree in my kitchen. Let's hope not.

Anyhow, Hubba Hubba Hubby bought a snow shovel and ice melt and worked on the driveway today, so at least that's cleared. My office decided to close tomorrow and we're all working from home, so I'm fortunate that I don't even have to think about leaving the house.

But I will get stir crazy, so you might see some disgruntled blog posts tomorrow. Or maybe I'll strap on my cross-country skis and take a stroll through the neighborhood. That sounds nice, actually!

So, because of the snow, I'm feeling inspired to make Christmas cards. And yes, I did want to have them done way in advance of next Christmas, and there's no time like the present.

So here's today's card. I was flipping through my expandable folder of dies when I saw my picket fence die (PTI), and thought to myself, "I wonder if the string of lights from Holiday Lights would fit on the fence?" Well, guess what? They did! But I didn't think the bulbs would show up on the kraft fence, so I went all out with lots of bling instead.

Whaddya think? With all that bling on there, I don't think I'll be making many more like this. I'll have to save this card for someone really special next Christmas.

OK, well the Hubs and I decided to take the Jeep out and grab some stick-to-your-ribs dinner tonight as we prepare to hibernate through the storm. Wish us luck!

Make It Monday #49; Ghost Masking

Ooooh, ghost masking. Sounds creepy. But it's really not. Betsy Veldman of Papertrey Ink showed us this technique for this week's Make It Monday. In essence, mask off an area, then stamp images around it. Once you're happy with that, then reverse mask and re-stamp the inside, lining up your images with the previous, only stamp off excess ink this time so that the inside image is lighter and more ghostly. Betsy's example is great, but I think mine would have turned out a little better with a more bold image. The delicacy of the images I chose lost a lot of their detail in the overlapping and ghosting if the image.

Take a peeksie:

You can see that the images inside my frame look lighter. This is a one layer card, so there aren't any tricks here. I just stamped off the excess ink to get a lighter inking of the images inside the frame. 

And here are a few more cards I made during the snow day yesterday.