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!

Willow's Thanks

From The Funkie Junkie

This fortnight's challenge over at Creative Card Crew is to make a distressed card. Oh well, not really a challenge for me - LOL! It's actually my very favorite style of card crafting and later this week, I hope to put together a little tutorial on how I do my distressing.

I really enjoyed putting this card together. I chose the Willow Kneeling image from Whiff of Joy and decided to make another thank you card that would be suitable for a Christmas thank you. The floral and dotted DP is from MME Wild Asparagus collection and the gingham is a digital paper I printed. I am so proud of myself! I didn't have any gingham paper that was a match for the burgundy color so I put the MME paper on my scanner, scanned it and opened it in my PSE7. Then I opened a digital gingham paper and changed its color to match the scanned MME paper. You can't believe how thrilled I was when this experiement actually WORKED - LOL!! It has opened a whole new world of digital papers for me.


The card is built on a 5.5" square of Whisper White. But I thought it was too white so I stamped it with an SU Garden Silhouettes stamp inked with Bordering Blue and Bravo Burgundy which matched the MME paper almost perfectly. I also sponged the edges with Bordering Blue. Next up was a layer of Bordering Blue. The edges are scissor distressed and sponged with Close to Cocoa ink. The Thank You sentiment is from SU's All Holidays set.

Inside, the focal element is two stamps from the new Verve set Thankful Accents, which my sweet daughter (with a whispered suggestion from me) bought me for Christmas - stamped in Bravo Burgundy.


The open panel in the lower inside was stamped with the Garden Silhouettes stamp, again inked in Bordering Blue and Bravo Burgundy. Flowers by Prima, branches from an MS punch and buttons from Foof-a-la. Several Spellbinders dies were also used.


Also entered into:


Quixotic Challenges - Lace
Stamp Something - use a new craft goodie, either brand new or something you have had but never used
Creative Inspirations - Thank You
Bizzy Becs - Creatalicious - Something old (almost everything), something new (Verve stamps inside), something torn (distressed edges), something blue (Bordering Blue CS)
Roses on Paper - Color with your favorite medium - hands down Copics are my fav!
Pile it On - Anything digital - my digital gingham paper that I changed the color on
Crazy4Challenges - Polka dot fun - one of the designer papers I used has polka dots - you can see it better on the bottom interior panel
ABC Challenge - Layering
Corrosive - Use 2 of your favorite things - okay, I used many fav things - distressing, layers, Copics, lace, etc.!

Warm Winter Wishes

From The Funkie Junkie

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas!! I did for sure! Since most of us have been eating and drinking our way through the holidays, Jenny Gropp, our hostess this week at Our Creative Corner, has challenged us to make a card with a food/drink theme. I flipped through my stamp image binder looking for food and found that I don't have many stamps of food images. I did find this adorable Whiff of Joy stamp that had never seen ink and thought it was a perfect time to use it. I actually had been wanting to use it before the winter season is over. I also had this (digital) round brush from a set called On the Edge, In the Round by Katie Pertiet from Designer Digitals that I had been wanting to use. I am not much on digis, but I really like her designs. The file came in black and I really didn't want black. I spent some time a week or so trying to change a digital stamp from black to another color in Photoshop Elements 7 and finally gave up. But this week, I was fortunate enough to be reading Faith's blog Delightful Inspiration and caught her post with tips on how to change the color of digital stamps. Thanks to Faith I was able to match up the digital image very closely to Sage Shadow. I also lucked out and found a free Verve digi. I changed the color to match up with the brush and printed it inside a smaller (resized) version of the brush. Later I decided to just cut the sentiment with a circle Nestie, but a little of the brush design remained around the outer edge - that is not a part of the Verve digi. The designer paper is retired SU and the snowflakes are Cuttlebug dies. A l ittle zigzag stitching and some tiny chocolate Kaiser pearls and this crad was ready to post.

After the gifts are unwrapped and the goodies gobbled down, I hope you'll take some time to stop by Our Creative Corner and the blogs of the other team members to see what delicious concoctions they have whipped up for your delectation.

Sweet Strawberry Girl

After my last card missed the challenges by a mile, I set out to create a card that would hit several. I believe this one will hit:

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - use hardware (red diamond brads between the flowers)

Three Clovers Designs -Tootie Fruitie

Cute Card Thursday - fruit

Cuttlebug Spot - use your favorite CB embossing folder and spot 3 of their blinkies on other blogs

Dutch Dare - use lace

Daring Cardmakers - Bejeweled bliss

This is the first time these stamps (Whiff of Joy and Flourishes) have seen ink. I have quite a few Whiff of Joy and Sarah Kay stamps that I still have not used (so many stamps, so little time - sigh). The new Flourishes Strawberries set is fabulous and I have been planning on using it so these fruit challenges were very timely. But oh, what to use for DSP? I wanted a crisp white for the dotted swiss but any rich red DPS I owned had a cream color rather than white in the pattern. So off I went again in search of the perfect DSP via a digital download. I found just what I was craving at Raspberry Road Designs. Their Flour Sack paper pack really appeals to me and it had a couple of papers with strawberry patterns. And so this card was born.

The coloring was done with Copic markers and I had a shock when my colorless blender pen ran out of ink. I have only had these pens since May. Luckily I had purchased a refill canister and a bottle of the colorless blender fluid. It was a pretty quick and easy task to refill it with the assistance of this four-part tutorial. I was fortunate that I had the refill on hand and I think next time I order supplies, I should start ordering a couple of refill colors each time I order - especially the colors I am using the most like skin tones, hair colors, basket colors, etc. I would hate to have a marker run dry in the middle of a project!!

~Card Recipe~

Stamps: Flourishes Strawberries, Whiff of Joy Willow With Basket

Paper: SU Real Red and Whisper White, Neenah Solar White for coloring with Copics, Raspberry Road Flour Sack DSP

Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black, Copics

Accessories: Martha Stewart border punch, Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots embossing folder, Nestabilities Labels Four, Stickles, lace from Jo--Ann's, sewing machine, Prima Say it With Crystals

Shabby Chic Criss-Cross Card

For my second challenge card in a three-card series to use techniques that are new to us, I chose doing a criss-cross card. I have long admired them, but hadn't wanted to take the time to learn the technique. So when my card artists' group issued a challenge to use a technique unfamiliar to us, this is one of the three I chose. (This is my first technique challenge using the colorwash faux bleach technique.)

I wanted to to something girly with some sort of lace or trim on the criss-cross section. I chose Melissa Francis DP and matched up the colors in my Copic coloring and the nosegay of Prima roses.

Card Recipe:

Stamps: Whiff of Joy, Inkadinkado, Stampin Up, Papertrey Ink

Ink: Memento Tuxcedo Black, Versamark, Copic markers

Paper: Melissa Francis DP, SU Bashful Blue, Neenah Solar White

Accessories: SU Round Tab Punch, Cuttlebug and Vintage Die (on envelope), trim from Jo-Ann's, K&co. jewel, Prima roses, Stickles, craft foam, scrunched ribbon on front is Chatterbox artsy.licious and on envelope is BasicBasic from Michael's