April Showers Bring May Flowers

Here we are on the brink of the Easter weekend.  It's finally spring all over.  The sun is shinning (I hope) and the April showers are about to give way to May flowers.  And that's our challenge this fortnight over at Fairy Fun Fridays.  I could have gone the April showers route, but for my card I chose flowers and used this delightful lily image from The Prairie Fairy.  I was going to try to make it white so it was an Easter lily, but felt the card needed the color.  So I just have a pretty spring lily.  I was inspired to use the Mojo Monday sketch as a starting point.  Everything else is pretty simple - no special techniques here, just a pretty shabby chic style card using paper lace and sweet posy appliques from my new Etsy shop.  And you can get some undyed seam binding there to.  Great stuff and so fun to custom dye to match your project.  I dyed this seam binding with my So Saffron reinker. I have a tutorial here on dying the crinkly seam binding.  All the card stock (Bordering Blue and Whisper White) and designer papers are from SU.  Sorry, but I don't remember the name of the designer paper pack, but it's from a couple of years ago and it's retired now.

That's the scoop on this one.  Hope you will play along with a April Showers or May Flowers themed project this fortnight at Fairy Fun Fridays.  Thanks again for stopping by and heartfelt thanks for your lovely comments.  It so inspires me to hear that you like my work.








Challenges Entered:
Mojo Monday - Sketch
C. R. A. F. T. Challenge - Flowers
Pixie Dust Studio - Spring Forward
Paper Romance - Tag It
ABC Challenge - Y is for Yellow
Fussy and Fancy - Springtime

Polly Put the Kettle On

I'm back today to kick off another fortnightly challenge over at Fairy Fun Fridays.  Our challenge to you this time is to make a card inspired by a nursery rhyme.  I had fun reviewing nursery rhymes to find one to inspire my card for the challenge.  I finally settled on Polly Put the Kettle On and if you want to read the whole rhyme and learn its origin, here is a site to do so.   I used the Mojo Monday sketch to get me started.  Don't ask me why I used purple again.  I'm not a big fan of the color, but it does bring to mind spring and Easter and that's the mindset I'm still in. 

The lovely tea pot is a digital image from The Prairie Fairy called, appropriately enough, Tea Time and was colored with Copics.  Built on a base of SU's Lovely Lilac, I used a page of a vintage songbook I picked up recently.  The dotted paper is from Pink Petticoat Little Big Dots digital papers.  A scrap of lace with tiny yellow dots, a doily that I vintaged up, some fabric flowers and the yellow seam binding ribbon I dyed the other day for my tutorial (next post down) are the embellishments that seemed to work.  I made a tiny sentiment tag for a Papertrey Ink sentiment from the Out on a Limb set (no longer available with the sentiment) and used my brand new Viva Decor Pearl Pen.  

That's it!  Nothing too complex here, but if you have questions, ask away.  I'm always happy to share.  And now, stop on over to Fairy Fun Friday and see what nursery rhymes inspired the rest of the team.  

As always, my deep gratitude for reading my blog and for the lovely comments!

Challenges Entered:
Mojo Monday - Sketch and monthly contest
My Partner in Crafting Crime - Lots of Layers
The Shabby Tea Room - Spring Colors/Photo Inspiration
CCEE Stampers - Use a Doily Die Cut or Lace
Pixie Dust Studio - Lace it Up

Delightful Daffodils

We're having a party over at Fairy Fun Fridays!  It's our Fairy Queen Roberta's birthday and it's the one year birthday of Fairy Fun Fridays.  We hope you will make a birthday or party themed card and join in the fun with us.  

I seem to be hooked on daffodils lately.  This is the second time I have used this delightful Daffodils image from The Prairie Fairy in the last two weeks.  A few other challenges caught my eye too as I was looking for inspiration so I shaped this card around them and about a dozen more that are calling for spring or flower themes.  I used the sketch from Mojo Monday.  CRE84FN has a yellow/orange/kraft theme and The Kraft Journal is doing spring fling.  

I used some yellow raffia that I edged with Rusty Hinge distress ink to make it resemble daffodils.  I got inspired and decided to make the main image a daffodil and then took it further and created my own handmade one for the corner.  I blinged it up a bit by adding some Star Dust Stickles dots.  Using a piece of crinoline, I inked it lightly with Rusty Hinge and then stamped a Tim Holtz flourish in Rusty Hinge.  Then I ran it through an SU butterfly die.   The designer papers are from My Mind's Eye and Crate Paper plus I used Kraft and Barely Banana CS.    

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  Hope you will pop over to Fairy Fun Fridays to see what the rest of the team has for your inspiration.  

Additional Challenges Entered:
Crafty Cardmakers - Fabric (butterflies are crinoline)
The Pink Elephant - Spring Time
Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - Stitching
Papertake Weekly - Lemon Ziggy
Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes
Pals Paper Arts - Easter/Spring

A Cherry Blossom Birthday

Good morning!  I hope you are all well and surviving any recent snowstorms.  We're looking forward to a sunny weekend here in south Florida with temps in the mid 70's F and nights in the mid-50's - perfect winter weather!

This fortnight at Fairy Fun Friday, our challenge to you is to make a birthday card.  I used the Cherry Blossoms digital image from the Prairie Fairy to enhance my vintage card. It was colored with Copics.   I used the current sketch from the Shabby Tea Room to determine my layout.  The image, I believe, is from the Graphics Fairy.  The Happy Birthday label and the sentiment banner were both printed on my home printer.  They were sponged with Stormy Sky distress ink and dabbed with alcohol ink gold mixative (which I seem to be finding a lot of uses for lately).  The DP is digital and is from Raspberry Road.  The ribbon is (retired) from SU!, trim from Jo-Ann, used the Cuttlebug Script embossing folder and sponged almost everything with Antique Linen distress ink.

I think that's all the details, but feel free to leave me a question if you need further information or clarification.  As always, I appreciate your comments from the bottom of my heart.

Challenges Entered:

Flourishes - The Beauty of Vintage

The Shabby Tea Room - Sketch

The Stamp Man Challenge - Distressing

A Krafty Christmas Fairy

Oh my goodness, tomorrow is Christmas!!!  In the back of my  mind, I knew it was coming, but oh, my goodness, it will be here and gone before I know it!  Twice this week I tried to go to the supermarket in the middle of the afternoon, only to give up after cruising the parking lot a few times trying to find parking.  So I got up at 7:00 this morning to hit the supermarket - and it was already packed.  I already know of one thing I forgot - but I don't think I'm going back!  We'll have to do without.  And I remembered that I haven't made any holiday food and since I promised to go shopping with my daughter today, I guess that will have to wait until late this afternoon.  Whew, it's a good thing that I gave priority to making a couple of cards, right?

Since I missed the Fairy Fun Friday post last week, I squeezed in a mid-week card for the "Use Kraft" challenge.  And I'm so glad I did.  It felt great to mess around at my craft table again and I remembered how much I love using kraft CS.  Here I used The Prairie Fairy's Tree Fairy for this, plus the sentiment from her Holly Fairy set.  I really love this vintage holiday fairy set that Roberta came out with this season and have so enjoyed working with these digital images.  I also used Grunge Flourish Hearts from Stempelglede with lots of Vintage Photo distress ink.  And I used a technique that Tim Holtz used on one of his Christmas tags by dabbing one of the white acrylic Paint Dabbers onto the edges of the tag to look like snow.  The snowflakes are from SU's Winter Post set.  I embossed a piece of K&Co. chipboard and then painted over it with the white paint dabber.  When dry, I sanded the high points and used some VP DI on it.  

I think that's about it for the dets on this card.  There's still another week to play in the Kraft challenge at Fairy Fun Friday.  I hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve.  Keep calm, don't stress - that's my mantra for today.  I'll be back tomorrow with my card for Our Creative Corner.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

If the Shoe Fits - Get Crafty

Stamp Something - Something with a tag or a pocket

City Crafter Challenge Blog - Vintage Christmas

Southern Girls Challenge - Vintage