Fall Fun Cas-ual Fridays

I'm entering my Happy Thanksgiving card in the CAS-ual Fridays Fall Fun challenge this week.

 The sentiment is from Hero Arts Celebrate Everyday, and the colours used are from the Hero Arts Colour Challenge for September. The tree and leaf is Paper Smooches - Summer Groves. I changed the summer tree into a fall tree with patterned paper from Bo Bunny (Garden Girl). I cut out the different sections of the tree in various colours/patterns and added dimensional foam to the back (differing heights of foam from middle to bottom.)

 

Not sure if I like the extra leaf at the bottom - maybe a bit too big - but I thought it looked too plain without it.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

Happy Birthday...

My youngest is turning 14 on Tuesday! It's hard to believe that she already in grade 10. Where does the time go? I'm not sure what we're getting her for her birthday, but I did manage to make a card for her.
When I sat down to make one, I wasn't sure what it was going to look like. Then I received an email (on my ipod) from iSpy Sketches, and thought the sketch might be a good way to get started. I made a shaker card with the adorable (and favourite of mine) PB 'mimi the mermaid' stamp.

 

 

I took the picture at an angle due to the reflection in the plastic cardstock window. I used some small beads, but a few of them are still a little big (and got stuck at the end of her hair.)

 

I am entering my card in the iSpy Sketches Challenge 33, and Totally Paper Crafts Challenge#134 Use Your Favourite Stamp.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

New Stamps



When my daughter came back from visiting her boyfriend (in May), she brought me home an adorable stamp set by Sandylion. Other than playing around with the stamps, I had never made a card with them. So, for my brother's birthday, I chose the robot from the stamp set. He works in electronics and robotics, so I thought this was a cute choice for him. :) I stamped and coloured the robot and cut him out. I popped him up with some dimensional foam and stood him on the 'h' for 'happy'. The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn. I didn't like the 'happy' coloured solid, so I decided to colour it halfway up.  My daughter liked the robot, but thought my card was too plain. :)

 

I am entering this in Papertake Weekly's Anything Goes challenge, and Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Put a Stamp On It Challenge (Don't forget to check out their STAMPtember event and blog hop going on this month!).

 

 

 

 

I am also entering this in Moxie Fab World's Card Design Handbook Week: The Movement Challenge. The movement is supposed to start at the main image, and then your eye is drawn to his foot on the 'h', and then across the word 'happy', and finally to the word 'birthday'. I think I really need a copy of the Card Design Handbook!

 

 

My second card is one I've already posted on my flickr account, but hadn't yet put on my blog. I just love this Hero Arts Newspaper Tulips stamp! I coloured it with my memento markers and stamped it so some of the stem bottom are off the paper. The sentiment is from PaperSmooches. 

 

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!

Another Christmas Card

It has been a busy August. There hasn't been a whole lot of time to make cards, and even less time to post them. I did manage to put three of my cards up on my Flickr account so I could enter the monthly Hero Arts contest - but I haven't had time to post them here. I will be happy once September is here...

I used one of the same stamps that I used in my last Christmas card post. It is Penny Black and so adorable!

I was kind of struggling for inspiration, so I decided to just stamp an image and colour it. On the Penny Black blog the other day, they featured one of their talented designers, Elizabeth Allan, and when asked what she does in a 'stamping slump', one of her answers was to stamp and colour an image 'without trying to create anything specific'. So I tried that, and it worked! After I was done colouring, I just looked at it for a bit. I trimmed it up, matted it on red and found a small card/gift card holder (that I made for something else, but decided not to use it). I added the polka dot washi tape and my card came together. Make sure to check out her fantastic blog, here. Her amazing work is so inspiring!

I coloured with my Copics. I stamped the holly from her hat and added it to the inside for a little colour.  I just love the black with white polka dots washi tape. The only problem I had was with it constantly ripping as I pulled off a long enough length for the card. Even though I pulled it slowly, I had a lot of trouble. I've never really used it before, so I'm not sure if this is normal for washi tape or if I just got a defective roll. :)

I am entering my card in the following three challenges:
4 Crafty Chicks - Circle and more cirlces ( I do have lots of little white circles.)
Simon Says Stamp and Show - No rules, anything goes!
City Crafter Challenge Blog - Wisha Washi 2

Have a great day!

Christmas in July!

I have finally started to work on some Christmas cards. Last year I left it too late, in my opinion, and felt very rushed. So this year I have decided that I would come up with several designs and gradually make them over the summer and fall.
I am using my Penny Black stamps for these 2 cards - both image and sentiment. I just love the adorable Mimi images.
The images were stamped and coloured with Copics and then cut out. I stamped the image on the card base and adhered the coloured image.

Card #1:

Card #2:

I am entering my cards in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Anything Goes

PaperPlay Challenges - Christmas in July

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

CAS-ual Friday #62

CAS-ual Friday's current challenge (that ends Thurs at noon) is:

I'm really liking my new Hero Arts stamp set, Blossom Art. I paper pieced the flower and leaves and popped them up with a little dimensional foam. I stamped the Thank You in Frost White ink (ColorBox). I thought of embossing it, but when I tried, I didn't like the results. I wish I had a finer white embossing powder - mine made the sentiment look splotchy when I tested it.

I am also entering my card in Simon Says Stamp Challenge - Anything Goes.

Have a good day!

Day 7 Flowers

The last card I have is from Day 7 - Flowers. I didn't have the stamp set they used in the class, so I used my HA Blossom Art set and paper pieced and layered the flower.

I added a little blue background using HA Envelope pattern. I made a mask with copy paper and a spellbinder's reverse wonky rectangle. I stamped the image inside the cut-out area of the copy paper. The image came out a little lighter than I planned, but if you look close, you can see it.

I used dimensional adhesive to pop up the petals and the leaves. I added a little glitter to the flower with a glitter pen and blue stickles on the flower center. The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn. I wasn't quite satisfied with it until I rounded the bottom right corner.  The paper is MME's 6x6 Away We Go for the flower, and Echo Park Dots and Strips for the leaves.

Hopefully I will have some time later to make a couple more cards. So far, I have loved watching the videos and trying some of the new ideas from the class.

Day 2 - Happy Birthday card

I needed to make a card for my niece's birthday, and I really loved the card that Amber made on Day 2. I don't have any collage stamps, but I did have some pretty butterfly stamps from HA. I liked the black card base (I liked everything about the card) so I tried to reproduce it for my niece.

The clear cardstock is tricky to photograph - anything with flash made it shine in a bad way. :)

I photographed the card in the basement, so the lighting is poor, leaving me with grainy pictures. But there wasn't enough time to take better pictures before the party. I had made a card for my brother-in-law as well, but forgot to take a picture of that one.

Day 1 (and 3)- Stretch Your Stamps... Baby Tags

My niece is going to have her third baby soon - real soon, she's overdue by 9 days already! I decided to make some announcement cards (tags) for her. All she would need to do is fill in the information and take a picture of the baby (Owen) to put inside the cards. Then she can hand them out to family, etc.

I used my Spellbinder's Scalloped circle die to create the outside. After making most of the shaped cards the hard way, I figured out a much easier way to finish the last few. First, cut 2 pieces of cardstock to 4.5"x4.5". Score the back piece (can't remember how far down I scored, but just under 3/4 inch...I think) and put a strip of 1/2" scor tape above the score line. Adhere the top piece of cardstock and flip it over. On the backside (where you can see the score line) line up the scalloped circle die and tape it down (I use washi tape to hold it in place). Run it through the Cuttlebug and you have a perfectly lined up shaped card. It also presses the paper together so the tape adheres nicely. If only I had figured this out earlier! It took me so much time to line up the scallops.

Day 1 - Background stamps. The middle one is the one I used a background stamp on(from Penny Black). I used HA's soft pool on the stamp, stamped it first on scrap paper and then on the white tag front. The digital stamp is from Hero Arts.

The envelopes are inspired from Day 3 (alphabet stamps) of Stretch Your Stamps. I used Lawn Fawn stamps for the letters and the black dash lines. The heart is from Paper Smooches.

I haven't given them to her yet, but I'll probably get my oldest to give them to her tomorrow when she goes over to visit. Hopefully she'll have the baby tomorrow. :)

Hero Arts July Contest

It has been a while since I've posted - just over a month. Things got busy just before Father's Day. I moved my crafting stuff down to the basement so my supplies would be out of the way when we had the family over for Father's Day. I needed to re-arrange the kids' playroom before I could set up my work area, so I only had time to finish off the cards for school. The teacher I gave the 'thank you' card set to really liked them. :)

When the online card class started on July 9th, I had my work area mostly set up, but I had to focus on making some family birthday cards. Now that all of that is over, I can start posting a few of the cards/sets I made over the last week.

The first post is for the Hero Arts July Contest - Paper Flowers. Shari Carroll has a video (here) that shows how she made some cute flowers. I used Martha Stewart glitter embossing powder to give them some sparkle.

I am also entering this in Papertake Weekly Challenge - All things girlie.

Supplies:

Sizzix Hero Arts - Bold Pop Designs

Hero Arts - Trees, Birds and Messages (sentiment)

Hero Arts - Blossom Art (leaves)

Echo Park - 6x6 Dots and Stripes

MME 6x6 Lime Twist - Happy Go Lucky

Thanks for stopping by!

Remaining cards for the Card Set

After a lot of searching through my stamps, and testing at least 12 different ones, I chose Hero Arts 'Three Flowers' CG128. I used the largest of the three flowers and paper-pieced them, just like the butterflies. Since the flower is bigger than the butterfly, I had to change the Spellbinders die I used. For 2 of the butterfly cards, I used the Reverse Wonky Rectangles, but for the larger flower, I used Labels 17 (my first die). It allowed for more room around the flower.

I also didn't have enough room to mat the flower, like the butterfly cards, so I had to find some other way. I must have spent an hour (or more) trying different ways to incorporate a mat before I decided to take a break. During my break I watched a video from the Hero Arts blog by Julie Ebersole.  I found inspiration in that video and went back to my work table to try it out. I made a larger strip of patterned paper than her card, but I really wanted some of that pretty paper to be visible. I did a sample first before trying it for real - I tend to make too many mistakes otherwise. :)
So, here are the remaining cards for the gift set I'm making. (All I need to do is make a box for them all.)

The paper is MME Miss Caroline Howdy Doody 6x6.

Have a great weekend!

Card Set - Thank you

It seems I've been making a lot of Thank You cards lately. I know I should be making my dad's Father's Day card, but I'm not sure what to make him (he doesn't have any hobbies).  So I have been focusing on end-of-the-school-year gifts.

This is just half of the card set that I am making. I haven't decided what the other 4 cards should be yet. I would like them to use a different stamp, but I'm not sure which one. I've been experimenting with several different options and have not found one that I'm satisfied with. I originally had planned to make the Thank You cards with Hero Arts 'Newspaper Tulips', but none of the stores near me, or even the one I order from online have it. Simon Says Stamp carries it, but I wouldn't be able to get it before school ends. :(  So I used Hero Arts 'Artists Butterfly' stamp instead. I love this stamp and it looks great paper-pieced!

The fabulous paper is from My Mind's Eye, and the sentiment is Hero Arts Impression Obsession (sorry, just realized I posted the wrong company name)- which I picked that up at a more local store, Scribes' Nook. They told me they could order the Newspaper Tulips, but it would take a little time to come in.

I am entering several challenges, but not with all the cards. I just wanted to use one post for this to make it easier to set the whole (partial) set.

I am entering the last card  in Cas-ual Friday's #56 Sweet Spot. If you look closely, you will see the pretty pink polka dot paper around the edge. This is such pretty paper, I felt bad covering most of it up.

The inspiration for these cards came from CASE Study's challenge #94, with Joy Taylor as the muse. Here is Joy's beautiful card:

So I am entering my  first two cards for this challenge (as one entry though).

I am also entering my card (the first one) in DYSU challenge # 75 - paper piecing.

The last challenge I am entering the first card in is:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Anything Goes

If anyone has a suggestion for a stamp that would work well for the remaining cards (matching with the Artists Butterfly though), please let me know!

Have a great day!

Thank you...

My youngest has just finished taking a course in Japanese (high school). She wrote the final exam last week. As a 'thank you' for the wonderful teacher, she wanted to give her a gift card. Of course I wanted to put it in a handmade card for her. So I had my daughter write the thank you in Japanese, print it out, and then I die cut it. Originally, she wanted to use the longer, more formal thank you, but we were running short on time and she wasn't sure of the spacing. I added the gems to help with some of the extra white space from the short sentiment. The images are Hero Arts.

At first, I struggled with what kind of card to make. Then, while looking through Lawn Fawn's Intro to "Make Lemonade", I found my inspiration - Latisha's amazing card!

I was originally planning to enter my card in a few challenges, but I decided that since the design wasn't my own, that I shouldn't enter it. But I still wanted to share it.

Have a great day!

Let's Celebrate...

I'm taking this wonderful online class called, Fold It, Pop It, Flip It, Zip It!, with Julie Ebersole. I just love all the great interactive card ideas and the videos are so easy to follow. I have tried a couple of them so far, but my favourite is the Shadow Box lesson. 

I used this sketch from Card Patterns as my guide, and turned the sketch sideways (which worked perfectly for this type of card. )

I layered the images from Lawn Fawn to add dimension. I didn't like the sides so plain and white, so I stamped 'bundle of joy' on them in Hero Arts Soft Pool. The cloud background is also from Hero Arts.

Every image is on a different layer. I doubled-up my dimensional foam dots under the stork to elevate him in front of the background tree, but leave him behind the foreground tree. The banner has only one layer of dimensional foam dots behind it.

I am also entering my card in this week's Simon Says Stamp and Show - Anything Goes!

Have a great day and weekend!

Shaker card attempt...

At the beginning of May, the Lawn Fawn Blog posted a video by the very talented Yainea. She showed how to make a beautiful shaker card. It was a great video; I just wish I had taken some notes before I attempted my card. I guess I waited a little too long before making it and forgot a few important details.
First the card, then some of the issues:

I wanted to use white foam, but the only white foam I had was thin. I thought, 'no problem, I'm using glitter so it won't matter.' Well, that was my first mistake. -sigh- I should have used the thicker foam. The clear plastic I had was from a report cover. It would have been fine, except for the static - all the glitter stuck to it (even after I wiped it with an anti-static cloth). I also did my glueing in the wrong order. I adhered (with the wrong glue even!) the clear plastic to the foam ring and then glued it to the card. I should have re-watched the video.
I had a lot of issues with: glue, glitter falling everywhere, etc... I won't go into all that, though.

In the end, I changed to small beads. Again, this would have worked fine if I used the thicker foam like the video told me to. I then glued it to the wrong side of the card base. I was ready to cry at this point. So my daughter suggested to cut the card and adhere it to a new one - since I had used scor-tape and couldn't get it off the base. Now my card is front-heavy.

I would have started all over again, but I don't have enough of this gingham paper from MME. I choose this paper for my sister (the card is for her birthday). I'm not sure if I'm going to give it to her or just make a new, plain card. I still have a little time to decide.

I am entering my card in the following challenges:

CardPatterns sketch 164 -

Moxie Fab World : Card Creations Week : The Gingham Challenge

I am also entering the Hero Arts monthly challenge - but through Flickr.

Have a great Friday!

Thank You

My youngest recently participated in some music competitions and we wanted to give a special gift to the wonderful piano accompanist.

 I love this bunny stamp from Penny Black. And I also love using this sheer ribbon - it let's the pp show through and has a nice shimmer.



I am entering my card in the following challenges:

4 Crafty Chicks: Favourite Embellishment (sheer ribbon)

Papertake Weekly: Anything Goes

Have a great weekend!

Mother's Day card

On Tuesday, my mom called me at 7:20 am and was very stressed. My sister was supposed to pick her and my dad up at 7:00 am and drive them to the hospital for her surgery (minor). So I talked to her until my sister showed up (after 7:30). I was a little nervous now about her surgery, because she was feeling so stressed, that I decided to focus on her and make a Mother's Day card. By the time she called to tell me she was home and doing well, I had finished the card.

For the background, I embossed (clear) the HA's stamp Lotus pattern and used distress inks to watercolour it. I stamped the same inks on some neenah cardstock , misted them with a bit of glimmer mist and with black ink, stamped the HA's butterfly. I cut them out with the matching die. I used the butterfly dies to cut the windows in the card. The sentiment/label is all Hero Arts. The twine is from Doodle Twine.

I know Mother's Day isn't until May 13th, but it felt good making the card for her, and it helped me keep from worrying too much.

I was inspired by three challenges:

Moxie Fab World's Tuesday Trigger

 (watercolour butterflies - and this is a 2-week challenge, so lots of time to enter!)

The PlayDate Cafe's challenge colours



and A Blog Named Hero Challenge #2(windows)

I am also entering this card into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Anything Goes

Paper Sundaes - Anything Goes

I'm so glad it is Friday! Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

For my parents... and a thank you

I know I'm late with this (missed a couple challenges, too), but it has been busier than usual around here. ( I forgot to take a picture of the card and tag before we left for my parents, so I had to take them with my ipod - not the greatest, but...)

On Easter Monday, we went to visit my parents to celebrate Easter and my dad's birthday. They were expecting a hand-made card for Easter so I had to make the time to get it done. I pulled out my only real Easter stamps - from Penny Black - and started stamping.

I stamped part of the image twice (I wanted the hedgie to be pulling two easter eggs) and then again so I could paper-piece the eggs. I coloured the rest with Copics. The first time I assembled my card, I adhered the picture to the wrong side of the card base. I had already stamped the sentiment inside, but somehow stuck the picture on the backside of the card!! Luckily I had used foam adhesive and it came off with minimal damage to the picture. I just had to get a new card base and re-stamp the sentiment. I was more careful the second time. :)

I didn't have enough time to make a full card for my dad, so I opted for a tag. His presents were a Tim Horton's gift card (we put it in a small TH's coffee cup with a winning roll-up-the rim free coffee) and a McDonald's gift card (in a small chicken mc nugget container ).  Had to try something different, since I usual make the card holders. I wish I took a picture of the presents outside of the gift bags.

The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn.

**Thank you to all those who visited my blog during the Lawnscaping blog hop, and for all those wonderful comments on my card! I truly appreciate it.**



Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!