No Buttons or Bows - Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Guest Designer

Several weeks ago I received an email from Betty Wright asking if I would like to be this week's guest host at Flourishes Timeless Tuesday.  Would I....humm, let me see...only in my wildest dreams - LOL!!!  Of course, my fingers were shaking on the keyboard when I typed my acceptance!

And now it is time for Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge (FTTC90)!  It is the last Tuesday of the month when they have a guest challenge host.  This month's guest is YOURS TRULY!!!  I am challenging you to Anything Goes But Buttons and Bows.  There are so many wonderful embellishments to use for accents on our paper crafts, but all too often we fall back on our old favorites.  This week, let's stretch ourselves and see how creative we can be embellishing our cards.  We want to see what you can do without using buttons or bows.  Keep in mind that ribbon is still allowed along with lace and twine.  It's the bows and the buttons that are not.  We'd love to see what you create!

Flourishes has so many gorgeous stamps, but I am very partial to their fruit stamps.  I chose to work with the largest bunch of cherries from the Cherries and Peaches set.  In keeping with my autumn mindset, I kept the colors dark, rich earth tones.  And of course, I made it in my signature style - distressed vintage!  My main panel, layered over several pieces of K&Co. DP, is Flourishes Classic White cardstock, which I love for coloring with Copics.  The image was stamped in Memento ink and colored with  Copic markers. Then it was masked and a script stamp was overstamped in Old Paper DI.   I randomly embossed a mixture of UTEE/Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls to give it just a hit of gold tone.  All of my main embellishments were cut with dies from Flourishes Classic Ivory cardstock, sponged with Antique Linen DI and then double embossed with clear UTEE.  I was going for sort of a country enamel look, which I think I achieved.  The flower was handmade and dyed with several colors of inks to try to match the cherries.  The jewely end caps were squashed into a Versamark pad and then gold embossed.   

Inside Panel With Space To Write

The inside panel has also been finished off leaving a blank panel to write a special message.  I stamped the cherries again in Antique Linen and the script very lightly with Old Paper. 

I hope you will stop by the Flourishes blog as well as the other designers personal blogs.  I'm so excited to be working with this elite group of designers this week! 

Dee

Silke

Maki

Betty

Barbara

Cindy

Thanks for stopping by to share my little bit of excitement this morning.  Have a great day!

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

Sentimental Sundays - Distressing with a sentiment on the front

Charisma Cards - Vintage

Alphabet Challenge - Z is for Zig Zags

Frosted Designs - Let's See Your Die Cuts

Black-Eyed Susans

It's Wednesday again and you know what that means, don't you? That's right, it's time for another challenge at Isabella's Sketchbook. Did you see the graphic on the sidebar? Isabella's Sketchbook is having a one-day sale TODAY!! Images are just $2 so get over there and get shopping. You need to use an Isabella's image to enter the challenge.

It's a 3-D/paper tole challenge. This week we want to see your cut out and popped up images. I used this new image from Isabella's Sketchbook called Sunny Flowers. I think it was probably designed to be a daisy, but I was in a yellow and brown mood and mine became Black-Eyed Susans, a favorite wildflower of mine, and was colored with Copics.

I did use a couple of other stamps on this project because I wanted to do some embossing and I just don't have any luck embossing with digis on anything except vellum. So the flourishes around the perimenter of the card are a Verve stamp and the flower on the main panel is an ancient, long retired SU stamp called Summer Sunflowers. Both were stamped with Versamark and clear embossed. I also used the SU Linen BG stamp on the main panel, stamped in Baja Blue. I sponged the Baja Blue panel with Creamy Caramel, Chocolate Chip and then a bit of Vintage Photo, using the lightest colored ink first and building it up. The DP is from Cosmo Cricket, the More Mustard squares were embossed with the Cuttlebug Fancy Corners EF and the Chocolate Chip panel was embossed with the Diamonds in the Rough EF from Cuttlebug. A little hemp twine and buttons and this card was good to go. No stitching again, but the good news is my sewing machine is fixed and I picked it up yesterday afternoon. So I'll be back to stitching on my cards with my Friday post.

Please drop by the Isabella's Sketchbook Challenge blog and check out the rest of the DTs' samples. Wonderful work this week from the very talented team. And if you want to stop by their blog and leave some love, here are all the links you will need.

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥

Thanks for dropping by today and for your lovely comments!

Blessings & hugs,

It's a Beach Thing!

Hello and happy weekend to you! Any beach plans in your weekend agenda? That's the challenge theme this week at Our Creative Corner. Isn't this an idyllic scene? Even though I live in Miami, I am not a beachgoer. My kids are and I am glad that they do take advantage of our wonderful beaches in the area. I'm more of a pool person myself and do intend to log some pool hours this weekend if the weather cooperates.

Here's my take on the beach challenge. I really love the bright tropical colors in the DP I found to use (Lost at Sea by Designer Digitals). The stamp used is from the By the Sea set by JustRite Stampers and was colored with Copics. The sentiment was computer generated. All edges were sponged with Creamy Caramel and the stitching was done by hand again (since my sewing machine is in the repair shop!). The CS is Tempting Turquoise and Barely Banana from SU and the shells were cut with a Cuttlebug Die. Spellbinders Ovals and the Labels Four dies were also used.

I hope you will stop by Our Creative Corner and also the blogs of the rest of the team. Lots of yummy eye candy to see this week!

♥Wendy Jensen♥Dana Grothaus♥Diane Gilbert♥Jennifer Meyer

♥Julie LeBlanc♥Sarah Gough♥Lori Rider♥

Thanks so much for dropping by today. I wish you a wonderful weekend!

Challenges Entered:

Bizzy Bec's Creatalicious - Show Some 3-D

Paper Romance - Stitch it Up

Twisted Thursdays - Water, Waves, Wetness

If the Shoe Fits - Take a Vacay

Just Add Ink - Just Add...Embossing

Allsorts - Summer Days

Lexi's Creations - Stitching

Lots to Do - Stitches

Secret Crafter - Summer Holidays

Wee Memories - Summer Fun

It's a Boy Thing!

Yay, it's Friday! And that means another challenge from Prairie Fairy! That's right, hop on over to Fairy Fun Friday and check out the challenge and the DT inspiration. The challenge is "For the Boys". That's right, we always need more guy cards! I made mine pretty generic. It could be used for a birthday or some other occasion. I think it would be great just for inspiration for a young man. I was thinking of sending it to my son who had his 27th birthday last week. I was on vacation and never got a card made for him. This could be a belated birthday card. I think he would like it and I was thinking of him while I was creating this card.

Before I left for vacation, I was trying to alter a bathing suit I had purchased that didn't fit just right and I BROKE MY SEWING MACHINE. Can you imagine? The first time I have tried to sew on cloth in probably two years and the cloth was too thick. I heard a bad "thunk" and then the needle wouldn't go all the way down. I worked on it awhile last night to no avail so I ended up stitching this card by hand using some old, old crochet thread from my grandmother's sewing box. I actually like the way it turned out - very rustic looking but it is NOT something I want to do all the time. I dropped the machine off today at a local repair shop and am hoping to get it back in a week or so.

After using cork for the OCC challenge last week, I fell in love with it and here it is again! I think you may see it frequently until I get sick of it! It's really great for embellishing male-oriented cards. It adds some pizzaz without being girly. The image is called Pokin Puddles by the Prairie and the sentiment is from Raindrop Echo Designs. The image was colored with Copics and cut out with a Spellbinders label die. The cardstock and twill tape are from SU, the DP from Cosmo Cricket and the stars DP was someting from a local craft shop that I purchased about 10 years ago. The buttons are from Jo-Ann's and the brad from SU.

Here are the blog links for the Fairy Fun Friday design team. I hope you will pay them a visit this week and let them know how fabulous their work is! And be sure to stop by the blog and play along with us this week!

♥Margreet - Margreet's Scrapcards

♥Suzi - Sugar n Spice

♥Viv - Crafting Haven

♥ Hege-Annie - Hege-Annie's Paper {He}Art++

♥Ann - Raindrop Echo Designs

♥Carla - Carla's Corner

♥Corry - Fancy Free 4Ever

♥Lori - Just Ducky

♥Kelly - Kelly's Kreative Korner

♥Tonya - Stamp Happens

♥Trisha - T-Bear's Touch

♥Sue - Arty's♥

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you have a relaxing, sun filled weekend!

Challenges Entered:

Incy Wincy Designs - Distress It

My Time to Craft - Butterfly Bliss

Tuesday Throwdown - Stitching

Flutter By Wednesday - Use 3 layers and a fairy, angel or butterfy

Dare You to Digi Stamp - Stitching

Res-Q-Challenge - Don't be anemic, eat a hamburger (use red)

Stamp Something - Something Digital (both the image and sentiment are digital)

C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - Babies/Children

Posies 'n Punches

Hello and happy Wednesday! I'm so glad to be back among my blogging buddies! I was away for another long weekend in Key West. This was family weekend with all my DH's sisters and their DHs. Too many people and too fast-paced to be relaxing, but it was still great to spend time with the family. But now I am back -no more long weekends until the fall football season rolls around. I'm just starting to get back into the card-making groove and have a lot to catch up on.

I managed to get this card finished for this week's Isabella's Sketchbook challenge before I left so it was already "in the can". Our challenge this week is another easy one - use punches. I have been fascinated lately by Becca Feeken's amazing use of punches amd wanted to try more of her right angle punching. So I made this two-layer element according to her video tutorial and a Martha Stewart corner punch. I thought it was too plain so I wrapped it with vintage crinkled seam binding and added buttons. The image, Flower Song, is relatively new in Isabella's boutique. I decided to give it a vintage flavor with the retired Parisian Summer SU papers and Creamy Caramel sponging. It was colored with Copics and the sentiment was made up on my computer, which was then cut with a Spellbinders tag die. Let me know if you need any more information on anything here.

Now that you've had a peek at my DT card, I hope you will stop by the rest of the teams' blogs and pick up a little inspiration.

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥

Thanks so much for stopping by today and for any comments you care to leave.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:
Mark's Finest Papers - Use Punches
Paper Sundaes - Lots of Layers
Papertake Weekly - In the Garden
Stampin' Bees - Polka Dots

Truly Scrumptious - How Does Your Garden Grow?

Your Next Stamp - Flower Power

For Fun - Use Your Fav Coloring Medium - no die cuts as main image

Cork-a-Doodle-Do

Good morning, friends! Isn't this a wonderful wake-up call? I sincerely love this rooster from Isabella's Sketchbook. But first let's talk about the really cool challenge this week over at Our Creative Corner. Our fab hostess (and blog owner), Jennifer Meyer, has a wonderful challenge for us - use cork on your card. What a blast I had using this new media! The cork I purchased was from Michael's and came in sheets for around $7 a pack. It is very thin and works perfectly with your die cut machines. I started with this wonderful Rise and Shine image from Isabella's Sketchbook and the found a perfect match in a sentiment from Raindrop Echo Designs. (Don't you just love it when everything just seems to fall into place?)

There's not a lot more I can tell you about this card, but here goes. The digital image was colored with Copics on Flourishes card stock. The hearts were cut with a Cuttlebug die and the cork wings were traced on the cork from a Tim Holtz Grundgeboard set (I had already used the wings so I traced from the negative impression) and cut out. I honestly don't remember where the winged heart brad and the feather charm were from. The DP is again from a fav digital DP seller Designer Digitals. I'm sure there are lots of other details so if I have missed anything that you are dying to know, please leave a comment and I will update this post with the answer.

This type of funky collage card art is one of my favorites so I had a great time playing around with it. Now I hope you will stop by Our Creative Corner and see that the other designers have made to inspire you to use cork. And maybe you could stop by their individual blogs too. Here's their links to make it easy!

♥Wendy Jensen♥Dana Grothaus♥Diane Gilbert♥Jennifer Meyer

♥Julie LeBlanc♥Sarah Gough♥Lori Rider♥

Thanks again for stopping by. Hope to see you over at Our Creative Corner!

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

Charisma Cardz - Watch the Birdie

Dare You to Digi - The Great Outdoors

Digi Doodle Shop's Best - Texture

Fresh Brewed Designs - Summertime

My Crafting Partner in Crime - Summertime

Craft Your Passion - Stitching

Artful Inkables - Stitching

Celebrating Life!

Hello and welcome to my Wednesday post for Isabella's Sketchbook. This week's challenge is "Anything Goes" combined with an Isabella's Sketchbook image. We thought it would be a great week to relax, kick back and enjoy the summer. So check your inventory of Isabella's Sketchbook images, pick one out and have a go. You could win two of Isabella's delightful images. The one I used is called Cup Stack and I don't believe it's available yet. I digitally paper pieced it, including the background of the image panel using the Sweet Violets digital paper pack from Designer Digitals. I used this week's Mojo Monday sketch and also lined the colors up with this week's Just For Fun Color Challenge which is to use purple, green and blue.

The die cuts were cut with a Cuttlebug die, the embossing folder used was from Stampin' Up! I used two different Spellbinders dies, the sentiment was a lovely freebie from Ann Vento at Raindrop Echo Designs/Sentimental Sundays Challenge. You can buy her digital sentiments from Whimsey Stamps. The mini library clip is from SU and the button is from Jo-Ann's.

Let me know if you have any questions or need more information.

Now it's time to stop by Isabella's Sketchbook Challenge Blog and the blogs of my teamies. I do so hope you will be able to play along with us this week!

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Blessings & hugs,

Fun With Die Cuts

Good moring friends! I'm so happy you stopped by this morning to check out my sample for the Creative Card Crew challenge. This week, Jen is our hostess and she has challenged us to use die cuts on our creations. We all love our dies and die cutting machines, don't we? So this should be a fun challenge for everyone and I'm looking forward to seeing what you all can do.

Our sponsor this week is Simon Says Stamp and they have offered a generous prize - a $20 gift certificate. So that should be a great incentive for you to join in our To Die For challenge!

My sample was made using one of the JustRite stamps I won earlier this spring. I'm not sure why I ended up with so much red in this card, but I really like it. I started with the K&Co. DP and since the one paper had some red in it, I decided on red for my die cut and everything got out of hand from there. I was working on it on the 4th of July so maybe I had red on the brain or maybe because it rained here in Miami all of the holiday weekend I felt the need to brighten things up. Red is my favorite color so when my mojo headed in that direction, I just let it run wild.

All the layers in the center medallion were cut with various Spellbinder dies. I'm not going to name them all here, but if you can't identify one, let me know and I'll do an update at the bottom of this post. The flowers are from Prima, the buttons from Foo-fa-la and the clip is from the SU Hodge Podge Hardware. I bought the gorgeous red crinkle ribbon on Etsy. That's about it - nothing tough or involved on this one. Just a lot of cool die cuts!

Please be sure to stop by the Creative Card Crew blog to check out the wonderful samples from the rest of the team. And sometime over the next two weeks, I'll be looking for your To Die For card linked to the challenge!

As always, thanks for stopping by and for all the lovely comments.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

Little Red Wagon - Use Nestabilities

Gotcha Cornered!

Good morning! Hoping your weekend is getting off to a great start. So happy that you stopped by to see my DT sample for Our Creative Corner. I am hostess over there for the month of June and will be setting the challenges. This week, I am challenging you to give some special love to the corners of your card. Instead of neglecting them, fill them with stamps, die cuts, metal, bling, flowers or whatever makes you happy. I'm looking forward to seeing all the creative ways you all can fill up those corners.

I just might have gone a little overboard on filling up my corners, but I definitely made my point! I started with a base of Very Vanilla and Riding Hood Red, overlaid by a layer of Cosmo Cricket DP (too bad I always cover up the beauiful DP). Four of the beautful filagree cross from the Spellbinders Cross Collection (limited edition) die set were cut out of Riding Hood Red. Next up is a layer of Creamy Caramel cut with the largest of the Scallop Squares Nestabilities. A chocolate chip square was cut using the Spellbinders Fair Isles pendant. The little circle flower is a die from the Classic Frame Frameabilities set also by Spellbinders. The pearls are from Kaiser Kraft. The image is from our sponsor this week, The Prairie Fairy, and was colored with Copics. Roberta will give five digital images to the random winner of this week's challenge.

I hope to see your creation entered into our challenge this week at Our Creative Corner. Be sure to stop by the other design team members blogs to see their beautiful work too!

♥Wendy Jensen♥Dana Grothaus♥Diane Gilbert♥Jennifer Meyer

♥Julie LeBlanc♥Sarah Gough♥Lori Rider♥

Thanks again for stopping by and for the wonderful comments you all leave. I'm sorry that I haven't had time to return the favor, but am hoping things slow down a bit for me in July after I return from vacation.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

Crafty Catz - Embossing

Cardvarks - Wet or Dry Embossing

Isabella's Color Challenge

Good morning and welcome to Wednesday with Isabella's Sketchbook challenge. You know, one of the very first things that attracted me to Isabella's website was her website header and graphics. I loved the colors and the whimsical feel of it. I couldn't wait to dive inside and see what kind of images she was offering. I love this week's challenge too, which is to create a card or project using the colors from her website header. You can use one or all of them. I went for all - the whole enchilada! I think the image I selected to use on this card is sort of whimsical too - and sooooo fitting for me and I bet many other crafters too. I would rather create than clean and spend way too much time in my stamping room to the detriment of the rest of the house.

If you haven't seen Isabella's images yet, you definitely need to browse through her store. There you will find contemporary, vintage, whimsical and many other types of digital images. And be sure to stop over the the blog to see what the rest of the design team have come up with. I'm sure you will be inspired. You will need to use one of Isabella's images to enter the challenge. There will be a randomly-drawn prize of two digtal images for the winner of this week's challenge.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope I see you over at Isabella's and good luck wining those twodigital images from Isabella's store.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges entered:

ABC Challenge - U is for unused stash (mine is the paper from SU's Flowers for You DP)

Fab 'n' Funky Challenge - Metal Mania

Little Red Wagon - Brads

Dare You to Digi - Anything Goes

OCC 3-D Challenge

From The Funkie Junkie

Well, I knew it had to happen sometime - the dreaded 3-D project! This week, Jocelyn Turner, our host over at Our Creative Corner has challenged us to make a 3-D project. Really, truly, I have been putting off doing anything like this. I've seen many 3-D creations that I have admired, even thought I'd like to do one some day, but was terrified to take a stab at one. I especially loved the box that Kirsten created and generously shared a tutorial. But was still afraid to try it.



Then my friend Dianne took the plunge and made one of Kirsten's boxes, but she took it a step further and topped it off with an easel card. I fell in love with Dianne's beautiful creation and decided that I would go for it on this challenge. My 20 year old daughter was home from college during Christmas break and was lamenting that she didn't have one of my cards to show off to her college friends so I decided to make the box/easel card for her. She helped me select the papers and image. She had to leave to go back to school before I finished this so she didn't get to see it. I'll be shipping it to her next week. I hope she will like the way it turned out. I was pleased with the project.


It was actually much easier to make than I feared. The box went together very quickly and easily. And so did the easel card. I had the most trouble with photographing and editing the photos to post on my blog. Would you believe I took over 50 shots with all different lighting and settings, but just could not get these photos to do the piece justice.

Here's the recipe:
Paper: DP is Crazy Beautiful by Designer Digitals, SU's Certainly Celery, Neenah Solar White for coloring with Copics
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark, Copics
Stamps: Whiff of Joy, Verve Celebration of Thanks & Thankful Hearts
Accessories: Cuttlebug, Spellbinders Labels 4, Ceramic "Love" is by Meadow Grove, Prima flowers, Making Memories brad, silver heart by Jewelry Essentials Findings, Stickles, Cuttlebug Hearts & Stamps die, Tim Holtz Antique Linen crackle paint, 3/8" wooden button plug for drawer pulls which I painted with the distress crackle paint.

I hope you will take the time to pop over to the Our Creative Corner blog and see the gorgeous 3-D creations the rest of the design team has come up with. What a fun challenge this has been!

A Blue Christmas - OCC Winter Challenge

From The Funkie Junkie

We're getting down to the wire on Christmas now. This will likely be the last Christmas card that I will make for this year. Have I sent any? No! Have I bought any Christmas gifts? No! Fortunately, I don't have many to buy for and I plan to do a quick blitz at the mall tomorrow. I will be giving cookies or Fair Trade gift baskets of coffee, chocolate and other fairly traded goodies to co-workers so I have those covered. And I am giving several of my cards with the insides nicely finished off and beautifully presented in gift boxes to several of my family and friends who will appreciate them.



This week at Our Creative Corner, our hostess Jenny Gropp has challenged us to create a card with a snowflake or winter scene. This is the card I came up with for the design team. I struggled for quite awhile with it. I tried to start it out as a tag, but after moving things around for way too long, I decided there was too much here for a tag and it grew up to be a 5.5x5.5" card. This wonderful image is from Heidi at Shabby chic papirskatter (be sure to check out her blog for fabulous free vintage images!) and printed out on my printer. The blues matched up perfectly with SU's Bordering Blue. The base is Creamy Caramel with a layer of white sponged with Tim Holtz Antique Linen distress ink. All the dry embossing is with Cuttlebug embossing folders and the snowflake and letters are Cuttlebug dies.

The Merry Christmas tag is a digital brush by by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals. It's adhered with a little Crystal Effects to a Tim Holtz Fragment. I adhered three tiny silver half pearls to the top and bottom to make it a little more festive.

I know its a busy time of the year for everyone, but I hope you will take time to stop by Our Creative Corner and see what the rest of the team has been up to. I'm sure you have a snowflake/winter card you have made this week that you can enter into the challenge. We'd love to have you play along with us this week.

Wishing you and your family a blessed Christmas!

The Holidays Are Here!

That's right...and we hope you will help us celebrate over at Our Creative Corner by making a holiday card - Christmas or Hanukah - and entering it into our challenge! The design team has some fabulous holiday cards to get you started. Stop on over and check them out and get your holiday mojo revved up! Here's my DT card for this week...another one that I didn't get the inside done yet.

It will happen, of course, but maybe not in time to use this one for this holiday season! This has been a super busy week and unexpected issues kept cropping up to monopolize my crafting time (don't you just HATE that?). And I wish I could look forward to taking some time off, but while the rest of the parish staff works half days and the parish school is out entirely, I will be working even harder to keep the food pantry running throughout the holiday season - probably with a reduced volunteer staff because people will be away or wanting to take time off even their volunteer gigs. So if you don't hear from me and I don't visit your blogs, please don't take it personally. I am hoping to cut my hours back to the 20 hour work week that I am being paid for after the first of the year - I want my life back and I need my sanity back! And my New Year's resolution will be to do it!

Okay, so now that I am done venting, I'll tell you a bit about this card. First of all, I'll tell you that I love it. I think I am becoming a brown person. I didn't really have a plan for it. It just evolved. I knew I wanted to use the Cardinal Christmas set. I was a little lazy and didn't want to pull out my Copics and spend time coloring so I decided that brown tones would work just fine. From there, the cracked glass technique seemed to be the right move. Have you seen the Mojo Monday sketch this week with the three circle elements? I've seen a bunch of cards made using tha sketch and I loved it so I set out to use it. It got me started, but I couldn't work it out with the circle size I used for the cardinal so I went to one circle element with Spellbinders dies behind it. First I stamped a piece of Close to Cocoa with the Weathered stamped inked up with Chocolate Chip ink. Then I used the Spellbinders Fleur De Lis pendant die to cut one out of the Close to Cocoa and one out of Chocolate chip cardstock. I offset them, glued them together and layered the main element over them. The main element is stamped onto Very Vanilla with Chocolate Chip, sponged with Tim Holtz Old Paper Distress Ink and with Chocolate Chip around the very edge and then embossed 3 times with SU's Glassy Glaze EP. I stuck it into the freezer for 20 minutes and then cracked it immediately upon removing it. The ribbon is from Jo-Ann's holiday selection, the buttons from Foofala Bag-o-Buttons and the silver half pearls from Michael's.

My daughter is home for a few days so we are planning to decorate the tree tomorrow and bake Christmas cookies...mmuumm...I can almost smell them now. Looking forward to some quality family time this weekend. Hope you find some too!

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

Retro Santa

From The Funkie Junkie

This week's challenge at Creative Card Corner is to make a Christmas card. How fortunate, right? We get to make a card for a challenge that we can put to immediate use. Here is what I came up with for my design team card this week. The stamp set is the many-years-retired SU Up on the Rooftop which I borrowed from a friend. Last year, I tried to buy it on eBay and was outbid every time. I think I set $30 as my maximum bid and ever time it went for around $70 so I think it is a set many stampers would love to have in their possession!



I started with a shell of Very Vanilla, sponged with Creamy Caramel to distress it. Next layer up is Always Avecado followed by another layer of Very Vanilla stamped with an old SU text background stamp (sorry, don't remember the name of it). Next up is the delicioiusly retro Melissa Frances designer paper called Rudolph. The main image was stamped with Superior India Ink on #140 lb. watercolor paper and watercolored with my SU reinkers for a nice vintage look.


The flowers were made using the Cuttelbug flowers die. I stamped the text stamp in black on the Melissa Frances paper and cut them using the die. The stars are also a Cuttlebug die coincidently called Stars. Brads are SU and the ribbons are Basic Grey. The buttons are from Jo-Ann's.


Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

Snowflakes & Sparkles

From The Funkie Junkie

Whoo hoo! My friend Wendy, aka Looby Lou, of Digital Delights is sponsoring the challenge at the Creative Card Crew this week. She generously gave each of the DT their choice of one of her latest releases to work with. I picked Jingles the Snowman. Isn't he adorable? And not much to color, either - hehehe!! The challenge theme this week is favorite things. Isn't that the most fun challenge ever? You just make a card using your very favorite things and you are qualified for the challenge. If you are one of my blog readers, you have probably already guessed that one of my favorite things is TAGS!! So here I am, back again with another tag this week. Plus I added some bling. So here is a pretty simple card this week. The base is Soft Sky topped with a layer of Whisper White run through the Snowflakes Cuttlebug EF. Used my Top Note die to cut a piece of BG Figgy Pudding designer paper and a Spellbinders tag die to cut the tag. Creamy Caramel was used to ink distress the edges. I masked Jingles and sponged Soft Sky around him then colored him a bit with Copics. The tiny snowflakes were punched with a Martha snowflake border punch and the other snowflakes are Cuttlebug dies. A little Dazzling Diamonds glitter and some Prima crystals and the card was good to go. Oh, the flowers? They were handmade by punching four small hearts and four larger hearts with my old CM Heart Maker. The hearts were ink distressed and either stamped or embossed, crumpled up and formed together to shape a flower. The crystal brads are from the Pretties Kit.

And now I'm checking out for the week. Wishing all you Americans a happy, healthy and safe Thanksgiving with your loved ones.

A Country Snowflake

From The Funkie Junkie

This week, I went a little country with my Creative Card Crew design team submission. This week our challenge is to make a card with a snowflake on it. As soon as I read the challenge, this kraft brown snowflake with chunky glitter came to mind and I walked around thinking about it for several days before I had a chance to start on it. I knew it would be layered onto another layer of Kraft matted with Chocolate Chip. I thought about red gingham ribbon, but when I perused my ribbon stash I realized that I had never even unwrapped this beautiful SU ribbon that I bought last holiday season. I thought this was the perfect time to get it out and use it. I also had never used the MS snowflake border punch that I used along the bottom. And that glitter I applied under the border punch? Well, it was white in the bottle! I guess I applied it too thick because it is now green in all lights. Lucky for me that green is a Chistmas color - LOL! All the edges were sponged with Close to Cocoa. The large snowflake and the smaller ones are Cuttlebug dies and the embossing folder is also from CB. The tag is a Spellbinders die and the tiny safety pin is by Tim Holtz.

I am slammed with work this week. My part time job managing the food pantry at our church morphed into full time +++ last week with the great need in Miami (not that I'm getting any extra pay - LOL! The overtime is my ministry.) So I skimped again on this card and did not do my usual finishing off of the inside panels. And I can't promise I'll catch up and post the other pics next week because I don't think the demand for emergency food is going to be reduced any time soon. So I'll just do the best I can to balance my art and my ministry. Prayers for new jobs are greatly needed in our country right now.

I found a challenge that I could enter this into:

Winter Wonderland - they have an open theme this week - everybody can play!

Thanks for stopping by and blessings on your week!

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

OCC Challenge - Halloween Fright

From The Funkie Junkie

The time has rolled around again for another of our weekly challeges at Our Creative Corner. Our hostess, Lori Rider, is challenging us to make a card inspired by a favorite horror movie or book. I think it must be a generation thing, but I'm not a big fan of horror movies. Now my kids, that's another story. The scarier the better as far as they're concerned! So I really had to stretch on this one. I decided on The Birds, that classic Hitchcock film, not so much because it was my favorite, but because it was one that I had actually seen - LOL! So I searched around for vintage artwork that might depict birds. I found this cool image which is more like Poe's The Raven.

Here is my design team submission for this challenge. The base of the card is Basic Black. Up one layer is Creamy Caramel embossed with the CB Textile folder and brayered with black ink. The next layer up is digital designer paper from DigitalDesignz which I printed on my home printer. The main image of the crow is from a Halloween ephemera collage sheet that I purchased off Etsy. I don't remember the link for the seller, but there is a lot of vintage artwork for sale on Etsy.

The flower petals were punched out with two sizes of hearts using my old Creative Memories heart maker. For the black petals, I ran a sheet of Basic Black through the Textile embossing folder, then brayered it with Versamark and sprinkled on Tim Holtz Tea Dye distress embossing powder - more rusted look! The brad was stamped with a skeleton head from a Clear Art Stamps (by Inkadinkado) stamp that said Happy Halloween - the kind you pick up for $1 when you are waiting in line at Jo-Ann's. I punched out the skeleton head with the small SU punch and used SU's Build a Brad to create it. The inside R.I.P. stamp is also from Clear Art Stamps and the All Hallow's Eve stamp on the bottom panel is from Pink Paislee.

I hope you will take some time and stop over to Our Creative Corner to see the great samples the other team members have submitted. And while you're at it, check out their blogs to see the other creations by these lovely, talented ladies.

Other challenges entered:
Creative Inspirations - Halloween

My Time to Craft - Halloween colors

Stamping for the Weekend - A haunting good time

Crafty Creations Challenge #38 - All Hallow's Eve

ABC Challenge - F is for Flying

Just Us Girls - Add a hand-made three dimensional flower to your card

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

Wishing you all a Happy Halloween!

Friends Forever

From The Funkie Junkie

This charming vintage images tugs at my heartstrings. There is something so purely innocent these three little ones playing at having a tea party that makes me want to sit and play along with them, drinking in their simple joy.

This week, the challenge at the Creative Card Crew is to make a card for a child or baby. I seem to be fresh out of those type of stamps so I went to my collection of vintage images. This one if from Shabby Chic Papirskatter. Here is my design team submission for this week's challenge. I hope you will stop by and check out the rest of the DT submissions and maybe play along. Be sure to chck out their blogs and see their other fantastic creations.

For this card, the paper is Melissa Frances. The front frame was cut with the Mega Rectangle Nestabilities and stamped with an Artistic Outpost filagree stamp (yes, its the same one that I used for my last card. I just discovered this stamp in my stash. I had never used it and now I LOVE it - LOL!!). I inked it up with Versamark and Pretty in Pink and clear embossed it to add texture. I stamped it in the opposite corners of two sizes of the frame, which I then layered with craft foam between. The lable was also cut with a Spellbinders tag die and the bottom punched with a MS border punch.



On the inside, I used two heart dies to cut the element and then glued it down together. I like the way the one heart cut inside the other one looks. The sentiment is by Rubbernecker and the floruishes are by InqueBoutique. The lower panel was dry embossed with my Cuttlebug and the With Love set of embossing borders.







So that's my design team entry for this week. Hope to see an entry from you over at the Creative Card Crew blog.



Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

OCC Inspiration Challenge - Longings of the Heart

From The Funkie Junkie

I can't believe that I have already been on the OCC design team for an entire month. This month our hostess is Lori Rider and she has some great challenes in store for us. The first on is an inspiration challenge. I don't think I have ever done an inspiration challenge before. I know Splitcoast Stampers regularly has one a week, but I have never joined in for that challenge. Lori has challenged us to be inspired by one or both journals by Moique Duval which you can see on this post.

The journals are lovely and I really liked the quote "and then she jumped into the mountains and unexplored regions of her heart". I remembered that I had a Rubbernecker sentiment stamp wih something similar. I have actually been wanting to make a card with a quote or sentiment as the main focal point. So this was the perfect opportunity. Since I am in an autumn groove (or rut) right now, I chose the journal with the fall color scheme for my inspriration. I started with some designer paper from last year's SU Pumpkin Pie DSP which I layered on Really Rust and then Chocolate Chip for a base. Also from last year's SU line, I had some brown felt ribbon which I had never used so I pulled that out also, determined to use it on this piece. Rather than just running a flat ribbon across the front, I created three sets of pleats, tacking them with linen thread which I then tied in a knot. I searched through a Foof-a-La Bag-o-Buttons and came up with a handful of peachy buttons that I used to embellish the felt ribbon. The Rubbernecker sentiment was stamped in Versamark and Chocolate Chip Classic ink and then heat embossed with Clear EP. The sentiment pane was cut with the Spellbinders Mega Rectangles die. Leaves from the Best Blossom set were stamped with Versamark onto Chocolate Chip cardstock, clear embossed and trimmed out. The border along the bottom was punched with a Martha Stewart border punch.

The interior of the card was similarly decorated. The flower is Prima and the Chocolate Chip strip is dry embossed with the new CB Organic Flourish Embossing Border. I severely restrained myself (LOL) and did not scissor distress the edges, however, I did sponge the edges with Really Rust ink. It's not a color I normally use for sponging and I found that I really like it.

I am also hunting for other challenges to enter this card into. Here's what I have found so far

Crafty Calendar Challenge - a once a month challenge blog started by a 13 year old crafter. This month's challenge is to make an autumn card, with an extra option to include plants or vegetation.

Pile it On - 3 dimensional card

One Stop Craft Challenge - Autumn Inspiration

ABC Challenge Blog - E is for Embossing

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.