Many Thanks

I received this image as part of the Canadian Express Image swap on SCS but loved the set so much, I chose it as one of my Sale-abration sets. This card was super easy but quite dramatic looking IRL. The image is coloured in Prismas with baby oil. So Saffron paper and ribbon were used. The patterned paper is from Creative Memories. It was a freebie set that while I really like it, doesn't match my scrapbooking style. The sentiment is from SU's All Year Cheer.

Challenges for this card:
Creative Card Crew: April Showers Bring May Flowers
Daring Cardmakers: Diecut Crazy
Lili of the Valley - Here Comes Summer

Cupcake Kind of Day

Ever have a card that just said "Create Me!" That was last night. I was trying to clean up and pack for a crop today and all the supplies just serendipitously were all together on the table at the same time. I didn't have to cut a thing. I even remembered some challenges this week that featured cupcakes. Well that was it.

The cupcake image is a single Inkadinkadoo. The sentiment came from "Going Places" by MFT. It actually said "Celebrate the Journey" but I masked off the rest of the sentiment. I love all the bling on it! I even used the colours I rarely ever touch. The icing is even covered with clear stickles for some extra glitz. I used Bashful Blue and Creamy Caramel for the cardstock and coloured with my SU markers.

Challenges this meets:
Daring Cardmakers: Diecut Crazy - The scalloped circle matting the image.
Fussy and Fancy: Birthday with a Sweet Treat
Paperworks Co: Use Cupcakes - Happy Birthday, Peggy!
Pile it On: Make it Sweet
Stamp with Us: Birthday
The Pink Elephant: Colour Aqua

Miss You A Latte

I must admit, the jury is still out on this card. DH likes it but it feels a bit too retro to me. I've never enjoyed the 50s-60s look. What do you think?

The card is for a coffee card swap I'm in. The sentiments says "Miss You A Latte..." and on the inside it says "Let's meet for coffee." I created these on my computer.

The images are part of my stash from the SCS Canadian Express Image Swap. The great part is that some of the images were not clear and layering helped hide some of the flaws.

The ribbon is from Michaels, the DP is from my Coscto pack, the pearls are dark brown. The tag is popped up on some recycled rubber.

Calling Home

I just got my latest order from MFT. Gotta love the Bubble Bin. When I saw this stamp, I knew I had to make my Mother's Day card with it. Our phone calls back and forth are a big joke in the family. The baby can give her the classy card.

I saw the Paper Sundae's challenge this week of 3 patterned paper, 2 cardstock and a flower and thought NO WAY! I don't do DP well, never mind co-coordinating three different ones. I ended up scrounging through my scraps to find DP with small prints to fit my image. Thank goodness for my Grab Bag Swaps! I think I deserve bonus points for this one. I managed to get all the paper requirements in the photo alone! My cardstock is Close to Coca and Certainly Celery.

The floor is a digi I found on Michelle's Just Painting Around Blogspot. It took my quite a while to get everything resized and printed on cardstock but it finally worked.

I chose an easel card after completing the image. It took me so long that I wanted a card that would stay upright and show off my hard work!

Challenges this card meets:
Paper Sundaes - Recipe (3 DPs, 2 colour cardstock, 1 flower)
Charisma Cardz - Girly with Flowers
Daring Cardmakers - Easel Card
Lexi's Creations - Recipe (3 DPs, 2 embellishments, 1 image)
Papertake Weekly - Do Something Different ( 2nd easel card ever made, 2nd paper piecing, 1st MFT image ever used)

Rocketting Birthday Wishes

It's funny. I hadn't really set out to make a card today. Baby was fussy so I was colouring while rocking - I'm getting good at the one-handed. I just love this Changito. It was part of a Changito image swap. Changito is coloured with Prismas while the rest of the image is coloured in markers. The cockpit is covered in Crystal Effects to give it the glass domed effect. I then wanted to take off the sheer white since outer space is usually darker and found some glimmer mist that I'd forgotten I had bought. SCORE! This is very shiny IRL. I don't think you can really tell in the picture.

The image and the sentiment had come on one quarter sheet of paper and needed some creative Nestie work but I like how it turned out. Unfortunately, as I was distressing the sentiment, I dropped my spot so I decided to just run with it.

I think this makes a fabulous birthday card for a child - bright and cheerful and can be used for almost any age.

Challenges this card meets:
A Spoonful of Sugar - Happy Birthday
Creative Card Crew - Happy Birthday
Meljen's Designs - For the Little Ones
Paper Sundaes - No People
Stamp with Fun - Animals

Flowery Hellos

DS insisted on helping me with my photography today and it shows. I'll try to get a better photo soon. I tried a new technique today. Emphasis here on TRIED. I had seen beautiful results from the Gesso Resist where magazine's are recycled into backgrounds for silouhette images. Mine just looked scary. I think the problem was I was using an old copy of "The Economist" which has very small, block text. Old books seem to work better. Anyways, I wanted to try and rescue something from my attempt and a challenge last week to make your own flowers has been twigging at the back of my mind for a while now. Out came my trusty heart punch from Creative Memories and this is the result. Some of the hearts are curled up to give a more realistic, 3 dimensional effect. The blue background is from a paint chip we decorated with. The sentiment came from SU's Autumn Leaves set.

My one question though is how does one store and send cards like these? I normally use flat or sturdy embellishments so I can stack them. Everything fits in an envelope to be mailed. I've seen lots of very pretty but quite 3D flowers being used at the moment. Are they immediately given away? How are they presented? This card will be crushed if I even just leave it on my table!

Don't Forget

This card was made for my Grab Bag Swap but I thought it has great use as a "gentle reminder". Placing a sparkly card like this in a prominent place could be a good visual without a nag factor. The other idea I thought of was to give it to a child to build anticipation for an outing or vacation. (Trip to the zoo maybe?)

The set is Jungle Fever from MFT. I usually use the WTG on safari but I thought this made a more neutral card. I can't say masculine since I used glittery background paper. (I don't know why glitter is not masculine, guys like shiny stuff too. Why else would they chrome their cars?)

The sketch is from this week's Inspirational Card Sketches and measures 4.25*4.25. I am actually really liking this note card size. I normally do larger square cards but this is cute.

This card fits several other challenges this week:
Paper Sundaes: Focus on animals - No people
Stamp with Fun - Animals
Paper Jewels - Sewing & Buttons

Great News

Dear Friends are expecting for the second time. How exciting! I know I probably should have used more gender neutral green or yellow but I love Bashful Blue. Besides I had a scrap the right size. (sigh)

Love the simplicity of this card. The punch came from Kristina in the Canadian Image Swap on SCS. I am going to have to get this one eventually. The blue was run through the Big Shot with my Swiss Dots folder. I always grab this one for babies since it reminds me of minky blankets - so soft.
The ribbon is from Michaels and the sentiment from SU's All Year Cheer is embossed in white.

Challenges for this card:
Cupcake Challenge - Childhood Memories (DS was never without her trusted minky blanket!)
Cute Card Thursday - Touchy Feely
Papertake Weekly - Cutie Pie (What baby is not!)
Meljen's Challenge - 3D Elements (Stamp image is on pop-up dots, knot of ribbon, embossing)

Pretty in Pink

Wow, these look so much more elegant IRL. I'm still playing with the basic premise of simple thank you cards that could be made in several colours and go into a kit but these still don't do it for me. I just got the Elegant Thank You in my Sale-abration order. Maybe my next set will be more inspiring. I hope you'll bare with me while I try a few more CAS cards.

The cards are in fact quite nice. The pink cardstock has a slight grain to it and the white sponging on the embossing is more subtle IRL, giving the card a soft textured effect. I will keep that effect in my next attempt but will see if I can perhaps take some better photos.

Challenges my cards fit:
Cute Card Thursday - Touchy Feely
Pile it On - Say it with Words

Birthday Burnout

No, it's not a card this week. It isn't even the better of the two cakes I had decorated. I had done the elaborate decorating for the family cake but no one thought to take a picture. Oh well.

This is a chocolate butter cake baked in a preformed pan. I know baking from scratch is often wasted on 3 year olds but DS's best friend is allergic to nuts and I wanted everyone at the daycare to be able to have cake. All candies used are peanut free.

This week was a complete write-off for cardmaking. Two nights were dedicated to baking cakes. Two seperate nights for decorating. This was only half of a night. The other took longer. The family party was a fifth night and of course there was the night spent cleaning up after the baking and getting ready for relatives.

DS made me laugh. This cake was for his daycare party. He knew that he was having a party with his friends and a train cake. However, we had it the day after his birthday. At bedtime on the BIG Day I asked him if he enjoyed his birthday.

"No, Mama. No party. No balloons. No train cake."

The family dinner with presents from both sets of grandparents. The day out with his family. The new bike. None of it mattered. The birthday wasn't real until his official party. Ugggg.

Train Tickets

DS is celebrating his 3rd birthday on Thursday. Where does the time go? He LOVES trains and there is a wonderful miniature railway only 5 minutes from his daycare. We prefer to do a daycare party rather than a house party because I believe he should have all HIS friends there. So I will bring a train cake and we have an outing planned.

Unfortunately, the railway is closed during the week. That's where the party favours come in. In each party favour, is two tokens for the children to ride the train for free. Either they can go twice by themselves or once with a parent. I'm hoping the children will meet us on Saturday so we can go together, but that's up to them. I thought this would be so much nicer than a bunch of junk that most of us parents tend to throw away anyways.

The image is a digi stamp from Inktegrity Designs. Joni was fabulous about getting it to me quickly. I was able to resize the image quickly to fit my tiny favours. The image is coloured with my SU markers. The paper is U BUG ME! DOT by Bo Bunny and the ribbon was a freebie from MFT.

The template for the Treat Bag Cover came from Splitcoast Stampers (Resource Section). I really have to thank Holly with the Try a New Technique for this week. It was party favours and that made me look at the calendar and realize I need to get my act together!

Now I just have to bake and decorate the cake!

Challenges my favours meet:
SCS - TLC #267 - Party Favours
Creative Card Crew - Vintage/Aged (This reminds me of the old wooden toys my dad used to have.
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes
Crafty Creations - Anything Goes
Meljen's Designs - Anything Goes
Twisted Thursdays - Have Fun and Anything Goes
For Fun Challenges - Anything Goes
AI Factory - Anything Goes
Just Add Ink - Anything Goes
Crafty Ann's - Something for Someone Special to you

Dandelion Garden

I was looking at the Paper Sundae photo challenge this week and it reminded me of my garden. Brown grass, the occasional tulip or hyacinth for colour but mostly dandelions. Any chance I get, I'm pulling dandelions from the new neighbours and my yard since we are in a duplex. For that reason, when I found the paperclip on my desk, I grabbed it. The paperclip has been floating around the junk drawer for years, too nice to be used for my files but just creating clutter. I'm so glad it will now get put to good use.

The sentiment came from SU's Right at Home set. It's one of those sets that's great to have when the occasion arises but doesn't usually get much love.

Challenges this cards meet:
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes
Lili of the Valley - Blue and Silver

Happy Easter

I love the Dustin Pike images but often don't have time to colour them. I just got new SU markers though and wanted to put them through their paces. I would love to get some Copics but this is such a big improvement over the Crayola, I was using that I'm thrilled. Normally I use Prismas but I love the vibrancy of markers.

The DP is from a large package from Coscto that DH gave to me for Christmas. Squares and image are distressed at the edges with close to cocoa to make them stand out since I used pastels in the paper and images and wanted them to stand out a bit. It's also hard to see but the sky and the grass on the image are also sponged in bashful blue and certainly celery.

I really debated putting on flower embellishments but decided that by leaving them off, I could keep the card CAS and more child appropriate. I can now give it to DS from a certain bunny on Sunday.

Challenges this card meets:
Inspirational Card Sketches - Challenge 60
Dustin Pike - Easter
Charisma Cardz Challenges - Animal Magic
Colour Create Challenge - Your choice of pastels with an Easter or Spring theme
Everybody Art - Spring
Fussy and Fancy - Easter
Lexi's Creations - Easter
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes
The Pink Elephant - Pastels

Caffeine Inspired

Can you guess which company inspired my creation this week?

I'm always needing gift-card holders. Thank you for the daycare person, the secretary, a gift for family. This one is wonderfully simple. I folded an envelope in half. I then cut the top flap from the center line out so that the top opens on one side only. The flap was licked down and the holder was ready to be decorated inside and out.

The image came to me from the Canadian Express Image Swap that I occasionally participate in on SCS. It was coloured with markers and the whipping cream is white fun flock.

Challenges this gift-card holder meets:
Colour Create Challenge - Your choice of pastels
Saturday Spotlight - Inspirational Coffee

Wildflowers

I'm so excited. Kristina came over to play yesterday and I received my latest SU order. So much to play with - I didn't know where to start! Managed to re-ink my spots; thanks Kristina! I also managed one card in between caring for baby. Baby has his first cold and is learning how to breathe, cough and eat while being blocked up. It hurts to watch.

One of my new toys are the SU markers so I broke these out first. I loved how quick and easy it was to colour my stamps. I used to do this with my spots but this is so much quicker and more accurate.

I sponged some creamy caramel over top but didn't sponge off, forgetting I'd reinked it so the colour is a little darker than I was expecting. The image is Of This Earth and is also a new toy. The sentiment is from Take Three. I get so much more use out of this set now that I've split the sentiment and the images.

The card was inspired by this week's Paper Sundae challenge which is a pretty photo inspiration. I loved the colours in it which I kept. I also kept the floral theme.

Challenges this card meets:
Papertake Weekly - Anything goes
Saturday Challenge - Pink, Green and Flowers