Pirate Monkey

I'm embarrassed to admit how long I've had these pirate supplies on hand. I was so excited when pirates became popular. I got a whole bunch of stamps and supplies and did not make even one card. I am just so glad for this week's challenge at For Fun Challenges to kick start me.

This week to celebrate summer we are to use sand in our cards. I ran out to my garage and stole a bit of my finest grit sandpaper that I use when preparing our bookshelves and window seats for painting. The image of this cute little monkey pirate is from our sponsor, The Paper Shelter. The gold coins are pieces of confetti that I couldn't help myself from grabbing at Michaels ages ago.

The colours seem a bit funny in the photograph. I'm not sure if the shadow effect is being caused by the colour contrast in my two different DP or whether it is the soft evening light.

I do hope you'll join us and have as much fun as I did with this card! This week's winner will recieve a $15 gift certificate to The Paper Shelter.

Teacher Notes

I had started making a class set of the apple cards to go on my end of year gifts to my students when I realized I had the Changito Loco stamp and that they would probably like those ones better. I was right, they did! The cards are 3 x 3 and the stamped images were stamped on scrap and then cut with my Creative Memories circle cutter. I then used my smallest circle nestie to get the scalloped circles.

I'm on a Christmas Tree roll. Today I was inspired by a card I saw in the Winter 2011 Stamp It! magazine called Hppy Holidays card on p. 57. The creator had used Papertrey Ink's text stamp and masked a Christmas tree. It looked very clean and sharp. I wanted to CASE it. I tried using my French Script background stamp but it is so large and loose that the image wasn't really obvious. I decided then to sponge in my masked area with my green in order to keep the shape clean. It looked a bit stark to me so I added the sentiment at the top.

Let me know if you are getting bored of Christmas.

Challenges this Card Meets:

Chapel Road - Merry Christmas

He's Checking It Twice...

I had fun with this week's challenge at For Fun Challenges. We are to use two different ribbons, which is something I never do. I decided to go for broke and try a ruffling technique that I had seen on Splitcoaststampers.

The image was generously provided by this week's sponsor Di's Digis. I love this image. You won't be able to see here but I did colour the snowmen with my C1 copic since snow tends to reflect light and isn't really white. The snowman's note is coloured with E11 for the same reason. The snow on the ground is covered with Frosted Lace stickles and I used white Flower Soft to give the texture to the hats. They feel great.

The winner this week will get to choose 5 digis from our sponsor, Di's Digis. I really hope that you'll join us this week!

O Christmas Tree

I had made an earlier post using ribbon to create an heirloom Christmas ornament. I had shown it to a crafting friend and she mentioned that she has a hard time using that much ribbon in a card and she would have made it with scrap paper. Talk about brilliant! I don't have much green ribbon but I'm being buried alive under my scraps, especially those little ones that somehow seem to multiply when I'm not looking.

This one uses my Christmas tree Nesties and scraps of Old Olive, Mellow Moss, Garden Green, Certainly Celery, and some from Brazzil - Crisp apple and a textured, sparkly green that I don't have the name but love how it seems to make the card pop. The base is more Cherry Cobbler. Can you tell that it's my new favourite colour?

Wouldn't this be great Christmas card for a single guy or the boss?

Happy Halloween

I love it when "mistakes" work out so well. I was trying to make a Halloween base to go with the card I had made for yesterday's post. This one just wasn't balancing. The image was too large. That's what I get for working backwards. I had started with punching the goo. I just love that punch and will use any excuse to pull it out. That's probably why I make so many Halloween cards. So despite the fact I don't normally care for the DP used and was just using up a scrap, I was really happy when I found the sentiment sticker in my stash and it fit the empty black space perfectly. Yeah me!

Harry Potter's Shelf

This is my second attempt at this card. I love this image and had it all coloured and cut out but when I attempted to add a base, it just didn't balance properly. You'll see the base made into a card in my next post.

The image is from this week's sponsor at For Fun Challenges. You really should play. Bugaboo is generously giving the winner 7 digis of their choice. Bugaboo has so many wonderfully funny images. I love some of their sentiments.

Our challenge is to make a card with only one fold. Not a hardship for me. Most of my cards are the standard 4.25 x 5.5 inches. This one is a 5.5 inch square; I'm living dangerously. I really do hope you'll join us!

Watermelon Invitations

Welcome to my second batch of wedding invitation samples for my brother. The colours are watermelon and white. I don't know what share of watermelon yet so I've just used Melon Mambo. I personally would love to see these in green. Mellow Moss maybe? Since these are only to give her an idea of how the same layout can have different looks, I wasn't worried about matching the colours exactly. All the cards are 5 X 7 with different wording for the bride to choose from. The stamps were generously lent to me by a friend. I have hundreds of stamps but no flourishes!

Please let me know which one you like best.

Invitation Samples

I was asked to make up some wedding invitiations for my brother's wedding. Unfortunately, all I've been told is that the colours are watermelon and white. Now is that pink, red or orange in shade... I haven't gotten a sample yet. Nor have I been given an idea of how formal she wants or a theme. I decided just to make up samples from my stash.

The white has their information computer printed out. I've just digitally removed it for this posting. There are not really any smears to be seen. I wanted her to see some samples using cards that fit into a business sized envelope since they would not require extra postage and it would be easy for them to include a full sized map. I also wanted her to see how we could use punches to create an effect. I don't expect her to use either the butterfly or the hearts, I just wanted to show how punches could look.

To be honest, these invites are not impressing me. I find the contrast between the bright pink and white to be stark. In the second one, I find the ribbon too heavy but I didn't have a pink one to match and I'm going with what's in my stash until she gives me some direction of what she likes and doesn't like.

At least I'll have lots of fun going back to the drawing board!

Baby Elephant

Little Claire is sponsoring us this week at For Fun Challenges and I was so excited because I just love this image. DH collects elephants so they have a special place in my heart. This image was coloured in copics and then cut out by hand.

The challenge this week is to use a crochet flower. I don't crochet so luckily I had one given to me by a friend in a swap. There are some fantastic youtube videos though if you want to try it yourself. I'm really tempted to get some supplies and try it myself!

I just love simple Christmas Cards. I find them so relaxing to make. This one was completely CASED from Susan Raihala's (aka: LateBlossom) buttefly card, which was in turn also a CASE. I've added the link so you can see. I changed the punches to snowflakes (Creative Memories) and used my Heartfelt Creations Snow Flurry background stamp on the Brocade Blue and then mounted it on Night of Navy. I added half pearls just for fun.

Enjoy your day!

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day to all my Canuck friends! This post was scheduled since we will be busy all day. Canada is BIG here in our house. Pancake breakfast, parade, neighbourhood party, barbecue and fireworks that can be seen from our balcony.

Anyways, today's card is very CAS. I wanted to recreate Canada's Olympic mittens. I figure everyone around the world recognizes them by now. I used both my winter mittens and maple leaf nesties. I actually cut out the the shape from the centre of the mittens and inlaid the white maple leaf so they would lie flat.

The sentiment on the inside was a Michael's dollar stamp that I picked up on a whim.

Hope you like and enjoy the day!