crafting this and that

A little while ago, I was so lucky and won some blog candy from Amy Young at A 1000 Sheets of Paper .  I love all the paper and embellishments that she sent over.  So I made this card, totally inspired by the one she made and included with the blog candy.  Her card in person is so pretty. I used a Tim Holtz embossing folder for the brick look on the red cardstock.  I used his distressing tool to rough up the edges too.  The Christmas tree is felt and cut from a PTI die.  I stuck on the little pearls that Amy had included in the candy. The stocking has some polar white flower soft added to it as well.  I'm always afraid to color in large areas so I paper pieced Stocking Boy's pjs. I love this little boy cause he reminds me of my boys especially the older one who is always looking forward to Christmas and the presents of course. When I was done, I asked my hubby what he thought of this card and he said the red cardstock looked like carpet.  ...

We took a road trip to the Grand Canyon earlier this month...and this is the resultant scrapbook page. I know, it looks like I just arranged photos on a page, but I forgot to add text on the large photo for the title. And then I didn't know where to place an embellishment that wouldn't obscure the photos, so I just left it plain. The layout is based on a sketch from Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life class that I had signed up for at Big Picture Classes a while back. The idea was that she would go over design principles, you make your own layouts based on her sketches, and then you should end up with a reference album of sorts. I could never keep up with getting the photos printed and doing the weekly assignments. But now, we have a new used photo printer so I was playing around with it. I still think it's difficult to edit and print your own photos. If anyone has any tips, please share! The skin tones still look a little red to me in print. I tinkered a little with free ...

Christmas!  I love, love, love, love Christmas!  Maybe even more than my kids do.  So much fun with crafting and shopping and buying gifts.  It's a really fun and exciting time for the kids and I love to watch them get excited.  My daughter still believes in Santa.  At what age do we tell her the truth?  Sigh.  I don't want to burst her bubble.  She thinks if she stops believing in him, she won't get any more presents.  Little does she know that it's Mommy and Daddy buying all the gifts. Anyway, here is a little Christmas project I made.  I just had to make something when all my PTI goodies came the other day.  This is actually the second Christmas craft I made so far.  I'll share the first one on another day.  So this uses all PTI products except for the green baker's twine (which I got at Pineapple Cove).  This is a simple matchbook project.  The cover just slips into the bottom tab to close. Opened ma...

Can you believe it?! I actually colored another one! This is an Amelia I bought a while ago, again from that sale at Die Cuts R Us where I stocked up on TGF stamps. I didn't even ink her up until yesterday...I'm such a collector...and I can't resist a good sale. I'm going to try and upload it to the Club Anya WTW Prismacolor gallery later. Anyhow, I actually tried to pick my papers beforehand this time so I could pick corresponding colored pencils. It was an old Basic Grey collection pack, called Oh Baby Girl which I used previously on a baby board book, plus now I had some matching Bazzill cardstock from Embellish It. Except I didn't quite decide on the specific papers until after I colored and then ended up using the most basic patterns in the pack. And now I've forgotten what color pencils I used for the outfit, I think the accessories were Violet. The hair was Dark Umber and Dark Brown. I used Club Anya Jen's suggestion for the skin color, Light Peach ...

Hi!  I made a little easel card to participate in ACLP's challenge .  I had just bought these Doodlebug papers.  So cute and cheery. I used a Sizzlits rainbow die.  Clouds are PTI felt as is the cardstock. Remember these little guys?  My daughter had made cards with these stamps.  I had to used them too.  They are from taj, a local store here in Hawaii.  They have the cutest stamps, stencils, clothes, etc.  I used to buy taj stamps when I was younger too but hadn't for a while until I had kids and revisited the store.  Every time I'm in that store, I want to buy something cause everything is so darn cute!  And these stamps are small enough to fit on the rainbow. The sentiment, frame, pink ribbon and label die cuts are all from PTI.  I bought the baker's twine from DCRU.  It's a fun little embellishment to use.  I should buy more colors but red seems pretty versatile.  Well, thank you for reading and ha...

I was so excited to see a Prismacolor pencil tutorial on the Club Anya blog done by Jen here . I decided to get colored pencils way back when, even though they're not as popular as Copics, because the cheap side of me won out when I was able to use a 40% off coupon at Michaels for a set of pencils. Since then, I never mastered colored pencils, so I didn't think it would be wise for me to invest in Copics. Anyhow, for my first coloring attempt, I used the same Ebony image from Jen's tutorial (I believe I got my stamp from a Die Cuts R Us sale a while ago). I pretty much copied everything she said in the tutorial, using all the same colored pencils for the hair and clothes. It's baby steps for me, I figure I'd better start with following the tutorial before trying to branch out on my own. The tricky part for me is figuring out where the highlights in the hair belong so I wanted to use the same image to be able to follow her example, except it didn't turn out as ...

One of the first people I ever "met" through blogging was Sunghee .  She creates wonderful templates and is so imaginative.  She can take one template and make a dozen different things.  So I was really happy when she opened her store "Little Potato House."  I decided to try a couple of her templates for boxes for Halloween goodies. This one is made from her Animal Box Car template.  I decided not to put the wheels on as I plan to fill it with goodies and ship this off to someone.  I hope it doesn't get too banged up in the packing box.  I love the detailed lid of this--the scallops and the corners.  It comes with a plain lid too.  It's easy to assemble in minutes but doesn't the lid look so fancy? This box is her Book Shop Card Box .  I made the larger one and it actually is pretty big.  I was able to fit a small pouch, a couple of bookmarks and a little board book with still more room to spare. I love the lid of this one ...

I don't know what this kind of a card is called.  I saw it originally HERE last year.  It was made to hold giftcards and I really liked the idea of how the GC would slide out.  It is similar to the one Cheryl made and blogged about HERE .  That tutorial was from Dandelion Designs.  Anyway, I couldn't find any directions on how to make it so I just stared at the pictures on the blog until I got the general idea.  So I altered the dimensions of the card to hold the tattoos above instead of a GC. I made it for my older son last Halloween so that when you open the flap the tattoo would slide out.  The tattoo was held together by a band that said "Happy Halloween."  Bought a whole bunch of these at Walmart. I thought I'd make a couple more this year.  I blurred out the names of the kids so they can be surprised if their Mommy happens to be reading this post.  Paper is from Bo Bunny. I started with a 4.25 x 11 inch piece of cardstock an...

I promise this is my last bookmark!  I had colored this cute stamp, Oleander from Sweet November Stamps, to use on a Halloween card but she fit so nicely on the bookmark.  I love how she looks so innocent and sweet but maybe has something up her sleeve.  I made the little orange tassel to attach on the bookmark. And green eyes ... for some reason I wanted her to have green eyes. Thanks for reading!  Have a great week!

Another a little bookmark.  This one I made for my older son.  He loves this stamp from Dandelion Designs!  I think it is super cute too. Some times when I stare too long at this stamp, I think their eyes could be their nostrils and you could stick some googly eyes on top.  Well, maybe it's just me. It was my daughter's birthday the other day and I was going crazy trying to find the birthday card I had made for her some weeks ago.  I guess I hid it too well and I forgot where I hid it!  Usually I put all my finished cards into a little filing box but I couldn't find hers.  I searched for a good couple hours every where on my crafting desk and my cabinets and through all my papers.  Still couldn't find it.  And so I told my husband that I thought someone took it!  In retrospect, it sounds a little ridiculous.  So I decided to give her a different card I had made.  I knew that once I wrote in that card that I would find her o...

At least that is how many it felt like I was making.  I must've cranked that PTI bookmark die through my Big Shot at least 100 times. Bookmarks for my son's kindergarten class.  At first I was not thinking and I was using my circle nestabilities to cut out the circle one at a time.  Hello!  I do have a circle punch too.  So I used that and it's so much faster for something like this.  The bookmark is made from PTI cardstock on the bottom and then their Halloween paper on top.  I stamped some images using PTI's Tiny Treats Halloween set.  (I love these stamps.  And I can't wait for Tiny Treats Christmas).  The neat thing about the acrylic stamps is that I could bend some of the longer sentiments to be rounded so that it would fit on the circles.  Saw that on PTI so had to give it a try.  My son colored them and he glued everything together.  He helped with the ribbon and I tied on the beads. My daughter's set of bookmar...

Hi!  I made this little book for Halloween.  I had actually thought of this one before the counting one.  This one is smaller in size, just 3.5 x 3.5 inches.  It's a lift-the-flap book. I stamped and cut out the little guys from TGF's Spooktacular set.  I cut 7 pages out, each 3.5 x 7 inches.  Five pages for the stamps and two blank pages, one for the first page and the other for the last page.  It's nice to have some blank pages to write a note or something if you're planning to give it to someone. I scored all the pages in the middle and glued them together.  I spread the glue around all the way to the edges.  It gets a little messy.  I used the glue pictured above mostly because I had seen it on Sunghee's blog .  She makes great little mini books, albums and templates too.  I think this glue works okay.  Is there a better glue for this type of project?   I used PTI's Mat Stack 4 die.  Trimmed off a bit ...