It Shouldn't be so Difficult...

This card is pretty much a replica of one that I saw on Pinterest but I cannot find the original to give appropriate credit.  The original is gorgeous and I'd love to give the original creator credit if anyone knows who it is.  Changes I made included: - 1) using layers since the original only had two layers, 2) changing the sentiment and die cut for the medallion and 3) not including ribbon or gems.

This card for all that it was a re-creation, was surprisingly hard to make.  I haven't made any cards since last June and haven't made cards regularly since before Covid.  I can't believe how much I had forgotten - which inks were the best for blending, best way to cut and score paper to avoid waste, how much pressure to use when stamping to get a clean image.  This was painful!

The card is for a co-worker.  I'm on the Sunshine Committee for work so I'm back to making cards, at least until June.

 

Sending Positive Thoughts

 

This looks so much better in real life - softer, brighter colours.  I wanted a cheerful, spring card for a co-worker that needed something to brighten their day.  I am on the Sunshine Committee so I'm back to making cards since before Covid.  I probably wouldn't even have posted except I like to have a record of what I've done in the past. 

The sketch is from Mojo Monday Sketch 535.  I didn't bother making the other cards to make the 2 sheet wonder.  I needed two cards for work and this was the second one.  The stamps are SU's Wonderful as You.

Challenges:

Neglected Stuff Challenge:  I haven't touched any of these supplies since 2020 and haven't made a card since last June.

Perfectly Panda

I had fun with the Sketch Saturday Challenge this week and since it helped me to use 3 different patterned papers, my New Years' goal for the year, I decided to give it a second shot.  (If you didn't see my first card, you can see it here).  I used the same stamps and the same layout.  I love how changing the papers gave it a completely different feel.  This green and pink layout was my favourite one - it just seemed a bit cleaner.

The card is going to one of my students as a Valentine's Day thank you.  They really do enjoy getting happy mail and I really do believe that if I want them to learn about the importance of being gracious, it needs to be modelled.

Challenges:
Sketch Saturday
2 Crafty Critter Crazies
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - February
Brown Sugar - Anything Goes
Cut it Up - Love is in the Air

Valentines' Thanks

I needed some thank you cards for my students who were so generous at Valentine's Day.  They get so excited when they get mail at home.

I am trying to use some of my stamps that haven't seen love recently.  I don't think I've ever used this panda.  I liked how this one reinforced the Valentine's theme and helped me to use some of the papers that have been in my stash since before my children were born.  Let's just say they aren't little anymore! I find using patterned patter challenging and it is my New Years' goal to bust some of that patterned paper stash.

Challenges:
Sketch Saturday
2 Crafty Critter Crazies
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - February
Brown Sugar - Anything Goes
Cut it Up - Love is in the Air
Use Your Stuff - Circles

Cheers to a New Year!

Happy 2020 to you!  Every year I make a promise to myself to use up some stash.  I think it's working... my paper stash is about 6 inches smaller than it was three years ago.  As part of keeping my resolution, I made New Year's Thank You cards to send to my students.  They were so kind to me.  These cards were a wonderful blend of new and old.

I used my last 4 pieces of Vintage Violet, that I'd had for 15 years.  (I bought it to make Christmas cards the first year I started stamping.).  The last of the scraps were used to cut out the cheers.  I then used the last of some sparkly blue that I had.  Even all the paper from the 4 spring cards came straight from my scrap pile.  Only the inserts were new paper.

The Cheers to the New Year is from the SU holiday catalogue and I had to have it since I never manage to get Christmas cards out.  By the time I've written report cards in November, I can't string a coherent sentence together.  I tend to write my cards right after Christmas and send them in the first little bit of the new year, or as Valentine cards.  I figure as long as everyone gets a card over the course of the year, it's all good.  I have a good stash of Halloween cards; I may use them this year.

Challenges Entered - 
 Challenge Up Your Life:  Anything Goes
Crazy for Challenges:  Use Something New
Inkspirational Challenge:  Photo Inspiration (New Years' Theme)
Polkadoodles:  Anything Goes
Cute Card Thursday: Anything Goes
Lavina's World:  Anything Goes

Too Cute to Spook

I was playing with what's on my table before Halloween.  Honestly how does a onesie, a scrap of green stars and a spider web become a card?  But I know someone for whom this was their first Halloween and their daddy is a Halloween baby himself so I could get away with it.  I just love that I was able to find a tiny skull stamp to fit on the onesie.

Stamps:  onesie from Stampin' Up, skull from MFT, sentiment from WaltzingMouse
Dies: spiderweb from MFT, rectangle from Spellbinders

Forest Friends

I needed a super quick card for my cousin's son.  He's turning four and he wanted a "Forest Friends" theme for his party.  Why do I never plan my cards in advance?  I make them but so rarely remember to sign and give them if I am organized in advance.  I wasn't sure what I had in my stash that would work but after much frantic searching, I found this image I had never used from Mark's Finest Papers.  I struggled with the colouring because the image is in no way atomically correct and so I struggled with how to translate the shading from the images I looked up.  I used MFT's sketch 448.  It thankfully hides the smudges at the top of the card as well as gives it some visual interest.  Bonus was that it allowed me to continue to work on my scrap pile.  All the sentiments came from Stampin' Up!  And yes, I had to run back for it but he did get his card.

Mahalo

I had bought Tropical Chic from Stampin' Up! to make baby shower cards for my sister since she chose a Maui theme for the nursery.  However my good intentions never materialized and I did something much simpler.  This was the first time I broke out the set despite my nephew now being seven months old. This card is based on MFT's Sketch 439. Once I had stamped all the leaves I had a gap in the middle though so I pulled out the banner die from Concord & 9th.  I just happened to have the Mahalo stamp from Waltzing Mouse, which means "thank you" in Hawaiian.  I love the green, blue and white combo.  All the white paper was from my scrap stash.

Roaring Valentine

Can you tell I'm behind in my blogging.  I'm now posting the Valentine I made in 2018 for my youngest.  There's always so much going on at that time of year and I took photos but never got it posted.  I made 3x3 inch matchbox packets.  The dinosaur and images are from a Stampin' Up's retired No Bones about it set.  

This is what it looked like when you start to open it up.  I used a glue dot to keep it closed.  The valentine medallion was an old Studio G stamp.  I  wanted the "Roar..." sentiment to fit the flap so I computer generated it.

If you look carefully, the chocolate is a T-rex medallion that I ordered from the local chocolate shop.  I love that place.  I find that you can find pretty much any theme I want.  I use them a lot when I want to decorate birthday cakes to minimize how much piping I need to do.  Everyone is impressed with my Martha Stewart skills and I don't have to do much.

On the back of the matchbox is the label with my son's name and his friend's name.  These were lots of fun to make.

Fairytale Agenda

I was given this agenda in February but I didn't particularly like the cover.  The word feminist means so many different things to people and it made me uncomfortable as something that I would be using and others would be judging so I wanted to make a change.

I found this sentiment in my stash.  It's an old one from Paper Makeup.  I love it but it doesn't always work for a card.  However, it is such a wonderful sentiment to look at each day as I go about my day-to-day.  I embossed it in gold embossing powder to match the writing at the bottom of the book.  I did cover it in a self-sticking laminate sheet but it peeled off almost immediately.  However, six months later, the book is still looking great and the medallions haven't started to peel at all.  I love score tape!

Stamps:  Sentiment - Paper Makeup, Stampin' Up - Daydream Medallions

Paper: Wild Wasabi, Pink Pirouette

Ink: Pink Pirouette, Versamark

Bubblegum Ice-Cream

Day 4 of recreating cards from the new Stampin' Up catalogue.  In case you haven't been following along, I'm not a demo and not affiliated in any way.  I simply couldn't afford to go shopping and decided to play along with what I have.

I liked a lot of the cards on page 42 so expect me to play with some of them later.  This one is based on the ice cream version on the middle of the page.  I thought it was adorable and remembered I had this ice-cream cone that I'd never used from an old Sale-A-Bration set, Honeycomb Happiness.  This was awesome because I had also forgotten I had a balloon stamp and you will be seeing it in a few days.

Now my ice-cream cone image is slightly bigger so I ended up changing the layout a bit to fit a standard A4 card rather than the square card shone.  I changed out the DP to some dollarstore stuff I had in my drawer.  Surprise, I had no twine so added more rhinestones.  It was great to use up some of the pink ones I've had floating around for what must be close to 10 years.  The sentiment also came from the same set.

All in all, I like my version better!

Blue Thank Yous

I'm on Day 3 of recreating cards from the Stampin' Up catalogue.  Okay, I'll be honest, this was not my most successful recreation but I appreciate when people show their meh work as well as their best.  We can't be rock stars all the time!

This card is from the bottom of page five and is not my usual style at all.  It's way more fussy than I am comfortable with and I think it shows.  I didn't have any lovely Coastal Cabana so I substituted Tempting Turquoise, which I think is just too bright for this card.  I couldn't find my swish stamp from Sheltering Tree.  I know it's in there somewhere but lost polymer stamps are impossible to find! I substituted with raindrops figuring I would at least go with a nature theme.  The tag is from some cheap dollar store DP.  The stamped image is a very old one from Stamping Bella that I directly coloured.  I think my Tempting Turquoise marker's ink is going slightly off.  Has that happened to anyone?  The markers are very old.  The sentiment is an old Sale-abration set.  Once again, I had to go on an archeology hunt to find some ribbon for this card.

All in all, it was fun to try something different and I used two stamps that I hadn't touched in at least five years.  So despite the way it looks, maybe it was a marginal success.

Orange You Glad It's Your Birthday

Here is Day 2 of my challenge to recreate items from the new Stampin' Up catalogue using items I have in my craft room.  This card is based on the lovely blue tag at the bottom left corner of the cover  of the catalogue.  I don't usually use tags so I changed mine to card.  I had to completely change the colour scheme because I am not a ribbon person.  This orange ribbon was the only thin ribbon I could find at the time.  I know I have some pink and white somewhere but I couldn't find it for the life of me.  It doesn't really matter since my brother's favourite colour is orange so he'll be happy to receive this later in the year,  I swapped out the punch and sentiment from the Darling Label Punch Box and used retired Stampin' Up's Love Labels with the coordinating punch in Tangerine Twist.  It was mounted on coordinating cardstock.  I didn't have any orange pearls so I coloured some rhinestones with a Copic.  Don't ask me why but the men in my family feel that rhinestones are masculine but pearls are not.  They like sparkles on their card.  The paper is a cheap dollar store DP mounted on Gina K.'s luxury white.  I quite like how this turned out.  Jury is still out whether I need more ribbon. However, if you want a quick project to make lots of tags, it's great and could be used as a quick gift if made into a set.  I still really like the labels but I can hold out for now.

Peace and Joy

My Stampin' Up catalogue came yesterday and I had a great time looking over it.  Last year I'd seen someone that made themselves a challenge to try to remake items from the catalogue using what they had in their stash and I thought it might be fun to try this myself.  I really wish I could find the thread on Splitcoast from last year because it was great.  I admit that I'm not one to do a straight remake.  I'm not so good at following rules so I took it more as inspiration piece.

My first choice was the card on the top of page 97.  I started with some Pink Paisley DP from their Merry and Bright pack.  Instead of Christmas Pines, I used the retired Peaceful Wishes set and stamped it in Old Olive and Meadow Moss (left over from the last time it was in the catalogue!)  The pinecones were stamped in Distress Oxide, which I don't like as much because I think I lost some of the details.  The ribbon came off a Lindt Chocolate bunny.  The sentiment is from Hero Arts Christmas Insides and I used Spellbinders Labels 4 instead of the Everyday Labels punch.  I then changed the background to Real Red to give me that magic 3 number.  I didn't even notice the lace on the card until I was posting here so I left that off.  All in all, I'm really happy with my recreation.

Baby, Don't Cry

Needed a baby card for work.  I always add the little pamphlet stitching on the top for these cards so I can add extra pages inside for signing.  This is a CASE but I can't remember from where, it's been so long.

Stamps:  So Many Scallops (retired) by Stamping Up
Embellishments:  So Saffron ribbon
Techniques:  Dry Embossing
Papers:  So Saffron, Brocade Blue Whisper White, Unknown DP

I Can Explain...

I saw this little wood piece on sale at Michael's and it fell into my basket.  Just a quick and easy card when trying to avoid writing report cards.

Paper:  Real Red, DP is Merry & Bright by Pink Paisley
Ribbon:  White Grosgrain
Stamps:  Stampin' Up's French Script (retired)
Embellishments:  Wood Plaque from Michaels

Thanks Kindly

I'm still showing off samples from the last year.  I was always asked to make the plant picks to put in the flowers to give out to the school volunteers at the yearly Volunteer Tea.  I always try to make these out of scraps since it is a donation to the school.  I think this is my fifth year and every year I try to make it different.

Stamps:  Stampin' Up's One Big Meaning
Ink: Black Versafine
Paper: Unknown scraps, all from Stampin' Up

Straight Down the Middle

I was asked to make a retirement card for a co-worker who's really into golf.  This was a complete CASE because I didn't have much time to come up with anything and I don't have any golf images.

Stamps:  Lovely as a tree

Techniques: sponging, torn paper, dry embossing

Inks:  Stamping Up's Old Olive, Always Artichoke, Wild Wasabi, unknown blue inks

Paper:  Stamping Up's Always Artichoke, Wild Wasabi, Basic Black, Real Red, Close to Cocoa and Whisper White

Accessories:  Number stickers from Creative Memories and Swiss Dots embossing folder used on the golf ball.

And the Leaves Came Tumbling Down

Dad needed some thank you cards so I needed something quick to mass produce that didn't look girlie.  This seemed to fit the bill.

Stamps:  Gorgeous Grunge, Autumn Leaves (retired) and Thank You Kindly.  All sets are from Stamping up.
Paper:  Gina K's Luxury White, Crushed Curry
Ink:  Crushed Curry, Sahara Sand and Versafine's Tuxedo Black.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone.  I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful day.

I'm hoping for snow but I that's just because I've only had a few White Christmas's in my lifetime.  They are exciting when they happen.

This was my first attempt at using my sewing machine on a card.  Not bad.  My sewing skills have really improved in the last year.  Of course, most don't sew on cards anymore now that all the pierced stuff has become more popular.  I'm always late to the game.