crafting this and that

Hello.  I was thinking Eva would post something soon, but she must be having a busy summer... Here's a birthday card that I made for the latest Farm Fresh Friday challenge, using ribbon .  And based on the Saturday Sketch on Splitcoaststampers . It's a little strange that all the cards I've made recently end up at Eva's house! You might be wondering where the ribbon is, but I read "twine" somewhere in the challenge description and went with that instead since I wanted to tie some tags on.  Anyhow, this was my first time coloring up Logan, usually I try to pick characters that sort of look like or remind me of the recipient, but don't really know many boys with curly hair.  Tried to color the hair strands straighter, but oh well.  Used Papertrey Ink cardstock in kraft, aqua mist, ocean tides, dark chocolate, and vintage cream, plus their patterned paper, happy birthday stamp and tiny tags die.  The background woodgrain stamp is from Hero Arts stam...

Hello, just popping in with 2 quick Mother's Day cards before I send them off to the grandmas.  Can't believe it's May already and I actually made something.  I wasn't really planning on making anything, but sometimes it's fun to just sit around and make cards.  Maybe I was procrastinating, didn't want to get around to doing the not so fun chores and what not. Anyhow, I used the sketch from CPS #262 , unfortunately it took me so long to make the card that I didn't have time to do a post, so the deadline for that week's challenge has come and gone... But here's my card anyhow. I can't keep track of all the names of my stamps anymore and I'm too lazy to go look them up, but this is a Milton stamp colored with pencils.  I tried to do that partial die cutting thing with the image sticking out of the circle.  Made my own text and polka background paper using background stamps from Papertrey Ink.  I like the idea of those background stamps ...

Hello.  I'm actually making a seasonal card, before the season is over, or technically even before it begins since it still feels like summer weather around here. Anyhow, I was wanting to make a fall birthday card, and found this Hero Arts leaves stamp set that I won last winter from a blog giveaway.  So I searched online to get some ideas of what people have done with this set, and I found  this card by Nichol Magouirk .  I thought she did some neat things with the background stamping, so here is my version, the simplified version.  This was quite a bit of stamping for me though. First off, this is a larger card than usual, I just folded the letter size cardstock (Summer Sunrise from PTI) in half.  I used Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge distress ink for the leaves, and Scattered Straw for the text.  The text is rather faint, which turned out to be a good thing since I stamped one half upside down!  It's one of those really slanty old style han...

Hello...I'm back with some cards.  Finally got a chance for some "me" time this past weekend.  And I actually made some random card this time without really thinking of an occasion.  I mostly wanted to use my new stamp, thanks Eva! I thought the sketch this week at CPS kind of went with a zen, minimalist, Japanese style :-) Anyhow, pretty basic, just Papertrey Ink cardstock and stamps.  The stamp is Kiyomi from Sister Stamps , so cute!  I forgot where Eva got it from, but sounds like they only sell it locally in Hawaii.  Kiyomi is colored with pencils, (still debating about going the marker route, especially now that I see Promarkers all over the place and Copics at Hobby Lobby and Aaron Brothers).  But at least pencils seem pretty forgiving, just blend away or layer another color over.  I ended up cutting the antennae off the butterfly.  Anyhow, I also wanted to use my Spellbinder Lattice rectangles, finally got that from Hobby Lobby afte...

Hi!  I would've started writing this post earlier but I'm a little addicted to watching The Voice so I had to watch that first and I even washed all the dinner dishes in 30 minutes so I could just sit on the couch.  But I'm slightly disappointed.  Nothing really stood out tonight.  Last week I really loved Pink's Perfect.  I mean Javier was good tonight but we kind of already knew that.  Anyway, on to my project. A couple of days ago or so I got my Lion Brand e-newsletter and they had this cute grad owl amigurumi (pattern number 80282AD) so I had to check out the site.  But then I found an even cuter owl (pattern number L0256AD) so decided to go with that one instead.  Plus it was smaller so I thought it would be faster for me to make.  Then I thought I'd make a matching card for TGF's Farm Fresh Friday Challenge to make a Congrats card . Here's a pic of the owl.  Isn't she the cutest?!  She's just 3 inches tall without the grad...

This is probably the last Christmas card I will make since Christmas is nearly upon us. I finally used a Hero Arts card for the base. I should have used one sooner because it's nice and white on the inside to write a message. This year I have been reading along with Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas and in the video, he was demonstrating a neat way to ink the embossed image with ink directly on the embossing folder . Except I didn't visualize it correctly and actually inked the back of the Cuttlebug snowflake folder, oops! Luckily the ink wasn't too dark and I could just turn it over to use the other side for my card. I also tried the distress ink as embossing ink with clear embossing powder for the sentiment which I also saw on a Tim Holtz video somewhere. The candy cane is a Sizzlit, don't look too closely, the leaves and berries were hard to cut out nicely for layering. I colored the candy cane stripes with a "cherry" marker, I didn't realize it was ...

So I made a few more quick Christmas cards. I don't usually buy too many Christmas themed things because I don't typically make things to give away at this time of year. Even all those well intentioned Christmas layouts are still in the "photos have been downloaded but not printed" stage. Maybe one of these years I will try a December Daily album ... that I should probably start preparing in January. But for now, this is about all I can do. Last year I bought some clearance Sizzix dies (which I almost forgot about until I was cleaning my craft area) and now I have some Hero Arts Christmas stamps. The huge snowflakes are supposed to be ornaments, but since they were so huge, there wasn't much more to add to decorate a card. The green paper is from a Christmas paper pad from We R Memory Keepers that I got during their Black Friday sale. I inked the edges of that and the snowflake with some distress ink, it might have been Frayed Burlap. Then I added a "h...

I actually made another holiday card! Kind of the same idea as the other one, pretty much using the same things. I used the same snowflake stamp set from Hero Arts. However, this time I used white embossing powder on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock. Again, it was a little messy, hopefully the little specks of white, aren't too obvious in the photo. Again, same Sizzlit die cut set for the sentiment. This is the one I initially tried to emboss in black but it came out way too spotty with black embossing powder all over the place so I just stamped it in black ink. The sentiment also came in the Hero Arts prize package. I just noticed Jennifer McGuire's blog entry about a powder tool that she said she uses prior to embossing. Maybe I'll just try more baby powder next time. The snowflake is a chipboard piece from Maya Road that I pressed into the versamark ink then sprinkled with white embossing powder. I think the embossed layer wasn't thick enough, but I covered the whole th...

Finally, I started on some Christmas cards! Which is unusual in itself because I pretty much send only Christmas photo cards...just have to make one, then print out multiple copies. Again, reminds me that we haven't even taken our family photo for this year yet. But I thought I should make something because I actually won the Hero Arts prize from Kristina Werner's blog! I couldn't believe that, that was totally shocking. I randomly enter things like that here and there, but I don't really expect to win anything. So here's a card using the snowflake set, "Enjoy the Season." It is just PTI cardstock in Aqua Mist and Hibiscus Burst. (I should have used the Hero Arts cards that I also received, but I thought if I messed up, at least I have relatively more sheets of cardstock than wasting the real cards). I was mostly playing around with embossing powders, which got a little messy. I don't know how people keep their powder from sticking to the cardstock. ...