Summer... it's Hot.

Haaaaappy Thursday!  How's your summer going?  Mine's flying right by and I'm trying to hang on :-)  I did get to spend a couple hours in the pool on Tuesday.  It was SO hot, it felt like bath water. But then it rained for a bit and cooled everything off and it turned out to be a gorgeous night, which we spent at the Muny. This is pretty much my only "free" week this month.  For the next two weeks I'll be out of town for two different summer camps.  One is a girls camp here in Missouri, the other is a mission trip with 8th graders in New Orleans.  I'll have about half a day break in between the two, but I think it'll be fun.  Then maybe I'll sleep for a week when I get back ;-)

I have a card to share with you today! This week at 365 Cards, we've been making collage cards.  I've said before that I tend to stay away from putting lots of "stuff" on my cards.  But then it's always fun to step outside the box and stretch a little bit.  For today's challenge, your collage card should include sponging, scallops and stitching.

There's plenty of sponging around the torn edges of the paper.  I didn't feel like lugging out my ridiculously heavy sewing machine, so I had to do the stitching by hand.  It turned out pretty good, I think.  For the scallops I used crepe paper ribbon.  There are so many possibilities with a challenge like this, so I hope you'll stop by and play along too!!

B is for...

Apparently, I'm on some kind of baby card kick. Lol.  I don't know why.  I guess they're just kinda cute and fun to make.

This is my DT card for today's 365 Cards challenge, "Button Blitz."  Use at least TWENTY buttons on your card and be sure to stack at least SIX of them.

I have to admit that when I saw "20 buttons" I was a little intimidated.  As a rule I try to stay away from bulky cards, simply because they don't fit in envelopes.  But once I started looking through my stash and playing around with the placement of the buttons, it actually wasn't too bad.  This one would probably fit into a slightly oversized envelope quite nicely :-)

As always, thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to stop by the 365 Cards blog-- we'd love to have you play along!

Ladybug, Ladybug

Hi there, blogger friends!  Happy Saturday to you all.  I'm singing at a conference here at church today, and I'm trying to do something useful with my time until the next session.  I haven't had a chance to blog anything these past couple of weeks, so I thought I'd do that :-)

Let's flashback to Thursday.  It was Day 31 at 365 Cards.  The challenge was to use a piece of poetry on your project.  It was a little hard to start with the image and find a poem to match, rather than starting with the poem then finding an image to compliment.  So with a quick search for poems about ladybugs, and then sifting through a bazillion preschool songs, I found this poem that I thought would be perfect for a card:

"I'm sending luck and wishes

All wrapped up in a hug

Good things should come your way

With this tiny ladybug."

~Author Unknown 

The image I used is from our sponsor this week, Digi Doodle Shop.  They have some super cute things, so make sure to check out their site!  Also, it's not too late to play along with this challenge (or any of the challenges this week)-- You've got until Monday night to post the links to your cards :-)

Peace

Happy Thursday, everyone!  I'll be celebrating with a snow day.  It started falling last night, and this morning I woke up to this:

My sister, attempting to clean off the cars... I'm not sure why.  I don't plan on going ANYWHERE today.

The patio furniture in the backyard is a pretty good indicator of how much snow actually fell...

I will be spending the rest of my day nice and warm inside the house. Lol.

But anyway, back to business...

The card I have to share with you today is for "Inspiration Week" at 365 Cards.  The word I picked for today is "Peace." This word means a lot to me right now.  It seems these last couple of months have been a little crazy.  Lots of family stuff, ridiculous stuff at work, but I feel like I've been able to maintain at least some peace in the middle of it all.  It'd like to think I'm not a person who's not easily stressed out, but I guess we all have our moments. :-) I came across this quote sort of by accident, while I was googling something else.  But I think it's absolutely perfect for today's word.

This card is made from a hodgepodge of scraps: some lace, wallpaper, a wedding invitation and the last scrap of some shimmery cardstock I've been trying to use up.  I think it's fun to make cards that way... except that it's very unlikely that it will ever be duplicated!  I guess we'll have to go for variations on a theme ;-)

Now it's your turn!  Head on over to the 365 Cards blog to check out the other words of inspiration from this week and maybe pick a few (or all of them!) to play along with.

Since I began this post, I've been informed by my sisters that I will NOT be allowed to stay inside today.  I guess I should go find something warm to wear.... ughhhh... ;-)

BOiNG!

Good morning, Blogger peeps :-)
I'm super excited about the cards that I get to share with you today because I think they turned out so flippin' cute!  The challenge for Day 249 at 365 Cards is to create a coil pop-up card.  For those of you who have seen this before, it's waaaay easier than it looks.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, take a look...

This is actually the second card I made, but you can see the coils easier, so I'll show you that one first:

To make the coil, all you do is start with a circle and cut it into a spiral from the outside, almost all the way to the center.  For me, the trickiest part was figuring out how big of a circle to start with and then how wide to cut the coil.  On both cards I used a 2-inch circle for the main coil.  The smaller coil on the butterfly card was made from a 1.5-inch circle.  I found that somewhere between 1/8th and 1/4th of an inch works for the width.  Too much bigger and it's not as "springy".  Too much smaller and it doesn't hold anything.

For the next card I used acetate for the coil.  I think it looks kind of cool with the leaves.  Also, I really hate when I use acetate and I can see the glue, so I usually try to cover it up.  In this case, I cut mirrored versions of the die cuts and sandwiched the coil between them.

 

I'll also mention this: In order for the card to lay flat, the coil has to line up.  To make sure mine was lined up, I glued one end on the bottom of the card, then let the coil lay flat.  Then I put glue on the end that would be attached to the top and closed the card.  When I opened it, the top end was positioned right where it needed to be.  (Hope that makes sense... :-P)

Okay, well, I think that's enough blah-blah-blah from me!  I'm telling you-- this was SO much fun.  Go give it a try and then link it up RIGHT HERE!

Imma Bee, Imma Bee, Imma-Imma-Imma Bee...

Just kidding. I'm a wasp. *UGH* I know. It's a terrible joke. But I crack up every time I hear it. Lol.


And now I've got The Black Eyed Peas stuck in my head.  Good job, Hannah.


Anyways, the reason I'm singing this song is because that little bee stamp from yesterday's card is making an encore appearance in today's challenge for 365 Cards.  For this challenge, "repetition is key."  We have to "use a word and an image at least three times."  I don't know why this one was so hard!  It's not really a complicated challenge, but my brain was having a heck of a time turning the guidelines into ideas.  This is what I ended up with:

It's SUPER simple, but I think I like it. 

HA!! I did it! (Part One)

At the risk of driving all of you completely bonkers, I've been playing catch up with the challenges at 365 Cards and not posting them as I go... So I have SIX cards sitting here, waiting to be revealed.  Sheesh.  I think I'm gonna split this up into two posts to make it easier.  SO, here's the first few...

Day 96, Color Scheme

Green, Pink, Purple, Yellow and Orange

I had a really hard time getting started with this one.  It's not my favorite, but the cupcake turned out kind of cute.

Day 97, Supersize It

Card dimensions = 8.5" x 5.5"

The reason I chose this sentiment is because I can't think of why you would need a gigantic card like this unless there were gonna be a whole bunch of people writing in it. Lol. But this is coming from a girl to like to keep things short and sweet. I know a couple people who could probably fill this whole thing up in no time ;-)

Day 98, Super Sketchy Sunday

Click the link to see the sketch!

This one is a little bit out of my usual style, I think.  But I really like how it turned out.  The green and gold color scheme is kind of neat.  It looks more sparkly in person :-)

Thanks for taking a look! If you wanna go straight to part two, CLICK HERE.

HA!! I did it! (Part Two)

Part Two of the super-long catch-up post!  If you got here from a direct link, but you wanna see what else I've been working on this week, you could CLICK HERE if you want ;-)

Day 99, So Charm-ing
Create a charm out of paper.
I stamped the butterfly in this fabulously obnoxious orange ink, punched it out with a circle punch, then added diamond glaze for some dimension and shine.  I love the colors on this one!!

Day 100, All Lined Up
Everything from embellishments to the sentiment lined up in rows. At least three items in each row.
I've got a row of three trees, then the dots and sentiment make a second line.

Day 101, Inchie x 10
Use at least ten "inchies" on your card.
This one was hard to do at first, but then once the idea finally clicked, it came together pretty quickly.

Thanks again for stopping by!  Hope you have an excellent day :-)

Ho Hum.

Today is just kind of blah.  (Except for when I went shopping and got a couple of new shirts :-P)  I need to stop anticipating the absolute SUCK of the rest of this day.  It's gloomy and rainy outside, and while typically I would be spending this time at my craft table making all kinds of fun stuff, instead I'm stuck with the projects from you-know-where.  Have you ever agreed to do a project and then as soon as you got started, realized that you really want nothing to do with it?  That's where I'm at. *GROAN*  I'm lacking some serious motivation this week.

Sorry to be such a downer today, but it's my party and I'll cry if I want to. Lol.

And anyway, on the flip side, I did remember that I had this card to post:

This one is for the current challenge at Everything But the Kitchen Sink.  The challenge is to use nail polish on your project.  A friend of mine gave me a whole bunch of goodies last week and there were these super cute butterfly-shaped buttons.  But they were definitely the wrong colors for this card, so I painted one with some cool metallic blue nail polish.

Thanks for stopping by today and putting up with my "badditude" :-)  Come back tomorrow-- I'll be in a better mood, I promise! Lol.

My Mojo Can't Stay Awake As Long As the Rest of Me

Hey, hey my friends!  Hope you all are enjoying what's left of this weekend.  If you've got nice weather, I'm a little jealous.  We had tornado warnings yesterday and crazy storms.  Of course the story varies depending on which block you live on.  Gotta love St. Louis weather.

If you haven't checked it out yet, make sure you stop by the Scrap It With A Song challenge blog.  Each week there's a new song to inspire your layouts, cards and other projects.  Challenge #2 should be up tomorrow!

SO... my plan was to stay up late the last couple of nights and finish up my cards for this past week at 365 Cards.  No dice.  My body stayed up late cutting pieces of paper into piles of unusable scraps (I'm probably exaggerating just a little), but my "mojo" went right to sleep.  I did manage to finish a card I had started earlier in the day, so that's the one I'm sharing with you.

We're gonna skip over Day 53 for now (I KNOW, right?  It's killing me too!! Lol. Ugh.)  and go to Day 54-Fancy Folds. The challenge was to create a "joy fold" card.  I'd never made one before, but I love how it looks!  Will definitely be making more like this.

I absolutely LOVE this patterned paper.  And actually because it's two-sided, I was able to make this whole card from one sheet.  I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but all the black on that butterfly is covered with that velvety flocking stuff.  It's awesome.

Thank you all for stopping by!

More Cards, Less Blah-Blah-Blah

Okay, friends.  I've only got about 15 minutes to make this post, but if I don't do it now I'll ended up posting an entire week's worth of challenges on Saturday, and that would be ridiculous (not that it isn't already). I'm gonna have to skimp on the commentary for this one, but enjoy the pictures, okay?




Sunday, Day 42-Super Sketchy Sunday

The rest of this week's challenges are "White Space" challenges and they are whoopin' my butt!  The challenge is to keep your all of your embellishments and whatnot inside the designated space and everything else is left "blank".


Monday, Day 43
I'm sad to say we've been needing a few of these lately.  But I think it turned out pretty and hopefully it will be a blessing to someone going through a rough time. :-)

Tuesday, Day 44
This one is also for this week's Tuesday Trigger: Lovely as a Rose challenge @ Moxie Fab World.  I got my inspiration from the colors in the photos, but also from Samantha's project with the paper flowers.

Wednesday, Day 45
When I saw this challenge, it just reminded me of butterfly wings.  I did turn the sketch sideways for this one.  And I probably cheated just a leeeetle bit with the stamp and the black matting. Hehe. Nobody's perfect :-)

Thursday, Day 46
I love this paper! I found it on clearance too, which makes it 10% prettier. Haha.  I also used it on the Sunday sketch.

YAY! All done-- and a few minutes to spare! Lol.  Thanks for coming by to look at my cards :-)

How Many What?!

I gotta say, the challenge for Day 27 on the 365 Cards blog really threw me for a loop. (What the heck does that even mean anyway... the throwing, the loops...?) For this card there are supposed to be 8 elements. Each element should be overlapped with at least two other elements. I don't know why it was so hard for me to wrap my head around this one, but I finally worked it out.

Each of the flowers and the dragonfly were stamped, then fussy-cut and colored with pencils. I wasn't sure if the framed piece counted as an "element" or a background, so I used 7 flowers to be safe :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Because You're Really Cool and Awesome and I Like You!!

I wasn't paying attention last week when I made my 100th post,

so guess what!

We're celebrating now,

on this, my 103rd post. Lol.

A few nights ago I was sort of playing around and ended up drawing a totally cute little image that I've turned into a digital stamp to share with you!

Here's what I did with it:


If you would like to have this image, just CLICK HERE. Feel free to use it on your projects. All I ask is that you let people know where you got it from and link back to my blog or even this post! You know, share the love. I'd SUPER LOVE it if you'd leave a link to your projects so I could see what you've created with it :-)

Thanks to all of you who follow my blog and those of you who leave me such sweet comments. You make me want to keep posting! Also, to those who either just occasionally stop by to peek or even the people who just accidentally click on my page-- I still just get a kick out of seeing that I have another page view. Haha.

Hey, Hey It's a Monkeeeeeey

It's such a bright, sunny day! I should probably get out there and enjoy a little bit of it. :-)

Two cards today! The first is for Day 4's "White Space" challenge at 365 Cards. Aaaaand, I'm taking some liberties there with the whole "white" thing, but I think that's allowed :-) I seriously love the critters on the ZooBalloo cartridge. SO much fun.

The next one is for the sketch challenge on the Mojo Monday blog. My favorite part on this one is the butterfly. I wasn't sure how my coloring was gonna turn out-- it's a combination of colored pencils and markers.

Spring! I can almost taste it... er... feel it... whatever. Hope you all have a lovely afternoon. Adios!

I Have A Purple Foot

Greetings fair people of Card Land! It's been far too long since I've done one of the challenges at 365 Cards. I really missed it! They're about to wrap up the year and I wanted to be a part of this last week. These next two cards are for Day 358 and Day 359, respectively.

It took me a while to figure out how I was going to complete the sketch challenge. It wasn't that complicated, but the flow of inspiration was moving like sap through a tree in the wintertime. The paper clips were a bit out-of-the-box for me... And that's a good thing. lol. The papers are from the "Mi Casa" stack again. (If you didn't see my super cute baby cards from yesterday, you should check them out here.)

Next is the card from the scraplift challenge. This one was SOOOOO NOT easy!! But then, if they were easy, the be called "easy card ideas" not "challenges." Gloria's cards are always lovely, but I am just not good at that vintage look! I have to admit, I almost skipped this one... but I'm glad I didn't. This isn't my favorite card, but it's pretty and I like it. I tried to copy the layout of Gloria's original card.

OH! About the post title... I couldn't think of anything clever, so I went for plain ol' facts. My foot is all purple-y in places. I sat on my sister's collapsible piano bench and, well, it did just that. Collapse. On my foot. *sigh* Almost my entire body weight (which is more than... oh... let's say... enough to hurt. Reeeeeally bad) was pinning my ankle and foot between the seat and the frame. But it's okay now. It doesn't hurt, it just looks kinda gross. Which is why I won't be posting photos :-) Thanks for looking at my cards though! Hehe.

If I Had a Green Thumb... It's Red Now

I'm playing catch up today :-) I don't have a whole lot to ramble about today except to say that I'm so glad it's a two-day week!

This first card is for 365 Cards' Sunday sketch challenge:


And here is my card for today's challenge which was to "Try a Technique" and use thumbprint art!


Thanks so much for looking!

Keepin' it Simple

It's already 2:15am, but guess what! I managed to do a whole week's worth of challenges from 365 Cards! Woot.

For these three cards I kind of went back to my clean-and-simple look. This first card is for Day 138 where the challenge was to use a quote. From the mind of an 8 yr old... Haha. I love this stamp :-) I paper-pieced the cake together.


Next we have a card for Day 139's Paper Piecing challenge. This was fun... I hadn't really used this technique before.


And finally, for Day 140- Paint! I like using paint on cards. For this one I splattered the paper, then painted the flowers on top.

Going buggy

Check me out! Today I managed to combine 3 different card challenges in one project!! Haha. "Is that even legal?" my sister asks. I tell her "I don't know, but I did it anyway!" (FYI: This not necessarily my stance on everything. lol.)

Before today, I would've thought that a project using 3 combined challenges would turn out to be a hideous monster of a card, but surprisingly, it turned out to be a pretty simple design!

The first challenge (and probably the most obvious) is from 365 Cards: Make a ladybug-inspired card.

The second is from 2 Sketches 4 You which seemed to fit just perfectly with the other challenges!

Lastly, I joined the challenge from Use It! which was to use:

Scraps of any kind. Well, I've got scraps everywhere. The black and red paper and the thick black ribbon are little pieces that I had leftover from other projects.
Punches and/or die cuts. I love me some craft punches :-D The ladybug is all circle punches, and the flower is two layered flower punches.
Two or more different ribbons. In addition to the black grosgrain ribbon, I used the small black ribbon with the white stitches- one of my favorites :-)
One or more embellishments that you once loved and used a lot, but haven't used for a long time. For this one I used a silver brad. I used to use brads a lot. My sister likes to use them when she sits down to make something with me which is probably why I didn't realize how long it's really been since I used one.

And so, without further ado, here's my creation for today:

Just for fun, here's a card I made the other day for a friend's birthday. She loves shoes and purses, so I figure I can't go wrong with this...I'm especially proud of the purse, which I created from little circle punches and the bottom half of an apple punch :-)

Black & White Butterflies

Hmmm... what to say? It's been a long, but peaceful day. The rain has been coming down off and on-- thankfully it let up any time we needed to be outdoors ;-) We keep getting little teasers of spring, but it doesn't stick around very long (the high for today was 79 degrees and it's on it's way down to 25 degrees!).

Christina and I spent a little time outside taking down Christmas lights (probably a little overdue) and cleaning out the gutters... well, she cleaned out the gutters. Haha.

I did get a chance to make a new set of cards today! I'm usually more into paper piecing than stamping, but I wanted to try out some new butterfly stamps that mom picked up. Perfect for spring!!

I also wanted to try yet another card challenge. This time it's OCC's "Add a Doodle" challenge. My "doodle" is from a set of clear stamps by Rhonna Farrer-- it's one of my favorite sets. The butterfly stamp and the greeting are both from Inkadinkadoo. Hope you like it!

Butterfly, butterfly...

I decided to try another project for Caardvaarks' kraft paper challenge, so here's what I made today. This card is a modified version of a design I created for a small box which is for sale in my Etsy shop.

This is a 4.5" square card. The base is kraft. I love the variety of textures and patters with the ivory lace and tan rick-rack over the corrugated cardstock. Even the wings of the butterfly and the roll of paper in the middle are two slightly different textures and shades of white. You can just barely see the silver wire antennae in the picture.