Fun With Old Cardboard

Today I'm playing along with City Crafter Challenge Blog.  I've been following for a while, but this is my first time joining in :-)  The challenge is to use paint and recycled cardboard.

 

I have a stash of cardboard that I've saved from different packaging and boxes and whatnot, but today I had a cardboard mailing envelope sitting at the top of my wastebasket, so I decided to go with that! Haha.  I cut the star and anchor with my Cricut, then used white acrylic paint to create the distressed look.  My favorite part about this card is that rope-looking trim in the background.  I cut super thin strips from the cardboard, then carefully twisted them as tight as I could without breaking it.  Since one side of the envelope was coated white, it looked pretty cool.  I did that with several trips, then glued them side by side.  Kinda nifty, huh?  I also used a piece on the rope for the anchor.  I thought about putting a sentiment on there, but I just think it makes a great summery generic card for anytime.

Thanks for stopping by!!  Have a great day :-)

Where Do I Even Start?

Happy Monday! (I guess... lol.)  This week has been absolutely crazy!  It's been kind of up and down emotionally and physically.  I slept in BIG TIME today to catch up from this week, and I fully intend to hang out at my craft table this evening when I get home from work :-)  Hopefully I'll have some fun stuff to show you over the next couple of days.

In the meantime, here's the card I created for this week's challenge at Scrap It With a Song.  Our inspiration song this time is "True Colors" as recorded by Cyndi Lauper.  I love 80's music. It's just fun. Haha.  A little bizarre sometimes... but fun. :-)

The lyric I chose for my card is from the end of the second verse... "If this world makes you crazy and you've taken all you can bear, you call me up because you know I'll be there."  I thought this might be kinda cool for an encouragement or "thinking of you" type of card.  If you'd like to play along, make sure you hop on over to Scrap It With a Song.  I can't wait to see what all of you come up with!

OOOH!! I almost forgot!!!  We've got a great sponsor this week: Sew Many Cards.  The winner of this week's challenge gets 5 digi stamps!  So don't miss out on this one :-)

Digi Kitty!

Uh Oh.  I found a new "thing". Hahaha.

This is my first time playing with The Digi Kitty blog.  It sounds really cool and I hope I can stick with it... cuz let's be honest, who doesn't love free stuff?  Today I purchased the "Splish Splash" digital stamp for the challenge.  The awesome part is that if I continue to play along, I get the stamps for the next challenge free.

Here's the card I created with it:

There are a couple more in the set and they are super cute! I love frogs :-)  I found the quote by E.E. Cummings online.  It says "The world is... puddle-wonderful."  I thought it was cute.

Also, I'm working on a few baby cards.  For this one I used last week's sketch at 2S4Y. I LOVE how it turned out!!  This might be one of my personal favorites in a while.

I think my favorite part is the little flowers on the wire.  Sorry the colors are a little wonky... I SO wish I had Photoshop on this computer.  Picasa just isn't cutting it!!! Sheesh.  If anyone has any suggestions for some free photo-editing software, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for taking a look!

Weddings!!

I love weddings.  I like going to them, I like being a part of them.  I just think they're fun.  Except photographing them.  I don't like that so much.  It's stressful.  But anyways, I've got at least four more to go to before summer even officially gets here and I need to go shopping for something to wear.  I'll also probably need some cards, so that's what I did today.

The challenge for Day 50-Digging Deep is to use three things on your card:

1) An item that is more than a year old.  Technically, aside from the paper, it's all at least that old.  But for this, we're gonna say that the brads are my old item.  I think I bought them before I was even really making cards... and the only reason I got them was because they were in a bin of valentine's day clearance stuff at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

2) Something that you were given that you have never used.  Again, we're gonna say that this is the leather corner accents, but it could also apply to the stamp.  The corners came in a stack of stuff that my sister gave me a long time ago when she came to the realization that she was probably never really gonna scrapbook.  They've remained safely in their packaging until this morning :-)

3) Something you forgot you had.  I keep my stuff generally pretty organized and I've gotten better about going through it occasionally to get rid of things I'm not ever going to use, so I usually have a pretty good idea of what I still have in my stash.  The only thing that I tend to ignore and never get rid of are stamps.  This stamp is one that my aunt found for me at a garage sale last spring.  I really liked it, but it's been buried in the box with the rest of my stuff until I rediscovered it today.

Hey, look at me!  I'm posting a card on the actual day of the challenge! Haha.  Thanks for stopping by <3

Weird Weekend

This has been a really weird couple of days.  Not a bad weird, just---- different. Haha. My sis and I sang at a funeral on Friday.  What was supposed to be two or three songs turned into an hour and fifteen minutes of me literally making up accompaniments to songs I didn't know.  That was interesting.  Next time I agree to do that, I'll definitely be asking some more specific questions.  The super long funeral made me almost completely miss work, but it wasn't a huge deal.  And speaking of work, we got out early at the preschool which is really rare.  I got called into work at church again, but then got sent home early because half the kids didn't show up.  SO yeah. It was just weird.

Saturday was less weird.  My cousin's first communion was in the morning, then my sister and I spent the rest of the day at our church singing.  Afterward we checked out a new brewery with some friends.  That was a good time. Sang again this morning and then came home to chill AND of course, make cards :-)

I've got three for you tonight...

Finally finished the rest of the "White Space" challenges @ 365 Cards!  I think these two might've been the most challenging (or they just happened to come on the days I was most tired!).  Here is Day 47.  I don't know if I love this one.  But the little sis liked it (and she's probably my harshest critic) so I'll post it ;-)

And here's Day 48.  Took me a while to come up with this one.  I'm probably stretching the boundaries of this one just a tad with the shape of the decorated space, but it seems like there's been this mini-competition all week long to see who can stretch the rules and/or freak Pam out the most ;-) You guys are funny... and you make mine look like it's not a big deal. Hee hee.

For today's Super Sketchy Sunday challenge, I kind of had to force myself out of "white-space" mode!!  I know Pam mention something about olives, but I kept seeing half of a hard-boiled egg. Haha. But I thought that might be a dumb card, so I squinted my eyes and tilted my head and wondered what kind of animal you could make that has a big round body and a little round head...

SHEEP! Hahahaha... I hope you like it. (Haley, I thought of you when I made this! lol)  Thanks for looking and I hope you've all had a pleasant, restful weekend :-)

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 :-)

Life Happens :-)

Dang it.  I wasn't able to get these done before Sunday night, but I'm still going for completing the whole month again, so here they are-- my cards for the second half of last week's challenges at 365 Cards.

Thursday was the end of Easter break at the school where I work, Saturday I photographed a wedding (gaahhh! stress!!!), all on top of trying to spend as much time as possible with my brother before he flew back to San Diego.  Although somehow in the middle of that, I did manage to squeak in a late trip to Target on the way home from work for a sheet of rub-ons for Day 39-Totally Transferred. There were literally only two sheets of rub-ons in that whole store, so I picked this one because of the colors and the variety of sentiments.  I decided to keep the design really simple and just focus on the colors.

The challenge for Friday was, ironically, a little bit easier.  For Day 40-Friday Five, we had to use five colors, five patterned papers, five blossoms, five buttons and five stamps.  Find five stamps that worked together was the hardest part for me, so I ended up just stamping individual letters. On one of my recent trips to Archivers I picked up a package of these buttons which ended up working out great with the colors I picked for the paper.

The Day 41-DIY Glittered Blossoms challenge was yet another difficult challenge for me.  I don't generally use that kind of stuff.  I've said before that glitter isn't one of my favorite things, but it keeps showing up on my cards (AND in my hair, and the carpet, and my clothes.... and in my family's hair, clothes, etc. LOL).  This is another super simple design, but the textures are flippin' awesome!

That shimmery background paper is from a stash that I've had forever.  I don't even remember why I bought it, or what I thought I was gonna do with it. Haha.  I made the flower from an old gift bow that was smooshed beyond being able to use it again, so I cut rough circles from it and then melted the edges over a candle to make them curl.  I mixed some super-fine glitter into some Diamond glaze and then used a toothpick to put it on the edges of the flower. Silver leaves and a rhinestone in the center finished it off.  (I make this sound easy, but I probably burned and over-melted about 12 circles before I got these to turn out the way I wanted.)

Speaking of glitter, this would probably be an excellent time to share with you this story from the other day... My mom and I were making place cards for her women's group at church.  They were going to be very simple with just a single digi-image (this one) and a name.  For just a bit of extra "something" we decided to add some glitter to the butterfly.  Now, the glitter I have comes in one of those stacked containers, like this:

We were using the silver one-- at the very top.  Now, it seems a little risky to leave them all stacked like that while in use, but we were being careful and we finished all of the cards without any problem.  It wasn't until we started cleaning up that this happened:

OOOHHHHH, man. LOL.  Thankfully, it's a pretty small container.  However, the entire contents of that container was all over my craft table.  Also, I'm not going to point any fingers, but I'll let you figure out "who done it" by the direction of the spillage. Haha.  It's okay mom.  I still love you.

I saw, somewhere, a t-shirt that said "Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies."  'Tis true.  We got it all cleaned up for the most part, but we went to visit some family that night and my mom still had it on her face. And you can still rub your hand on my table and come up with sparkly fingers. Haha.

Thanks for stopping by, friends! Hopefully I'll be posting some more stuff tonight or tomorrow ;-)

Another Catch-up Wednesday!

Once again I've failed miserably at posting my cards for the 365 Cards challenges.  Lol.  I really am doing them almost every day, but either I'm doing them at ridiculous hours of the morning and I opt for bed instead of blogging, or I have somewhere to rush off to.  After this week, things should be slowing down a bit and maybe I can stay on top of things! :-)  In the meantime, here's what I've been working on:

Day 35-Super Sketchy Sunday
Here's my take on the sketch...

Day 36-I Quilt!
This one was tricky-- even if it was only figuring out how big those triangles needed to be! I thought I was done with Pythagoras. *sigh*  But I think it turned out cute.  I've had those buttons forever and it was nice to finally put them on a project.  The girl image is mine.

Day 37-Terrific Taggies
This was a fun challenge!  These ribbons are some more things that I've had laying around forever.  I found them in the dollar bins at Target a bazillion years ago.

Day 38-Acrostic Poem
I really had to think about this.  I liked reading the ones all of the other gals came up with-- there were some really good ideas!  Here's what I did...

As always, thanks for stopping by! I love reading your comments :-)

Happy Easter :-)

Hey there, friends!  Happy Easter to you :-)  I'm so tired, I could probably fall asleep right here on top of my laptop, but I'll try not to.  We got through two Easter services tonight at church and we'll do two more in the morning, so I'll have to be getting up yuck early, but I figured I could squeeze in a quick post.

First off is my card for Day 33-Whip Stitch It! @ 365 Cards.  I also used the colors for this week's Color Throwdown challenge and ETBK's challenge to use string.

Next is my entry for the Day 34- Color Scheme challenge and for this week's JUGS Sketch challenge.

Cute sketch!  Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Hope you all have a fantastic weekend :-)

Monster Post!

Hello Bloggerland!  Hope you all are enjoying this lovely Easter week :-)  I'm about to bombard you with all of the cards I've been making this week.  I've been playing along with 365 Cards everyday so far this week, but haven't had the time to sit down and actually post anything yet.  My brother is home on pre-deployment leave for two weeks, so between that and Easter preparations, it's been busy.  Anyways, all this to say, I sincerely hope you make it all the way to the end! Haha.

Day 28- Super Sketchy Sunday

This one took me SO long to do!! I don't know why.  But I like how it turned out.

Day 29- A Certain Sentiment

Use the sentiment, "Hang In There." I have to give credit to my little genius sister for the frame idea.  Thanks Gina Marie.

Day 30- In Pieces

Use an image on the outside of your card, then use it again on the inside but don't use it in the exact same way.  I created the bunny image for this project.  Gina Marie gets minus 2 "cool points" for calling it a "hippo bunny."

Day 31- All Mixed Up

Take and image and break it down into thirds - 1/3 no color, 1/3 patterned paper, and 1/3 hand-colored.  I realized when I read the challenge that I really don't have much of a selection when it comes to image stamps.  I have a lot of little sentiment stamps, but that's about it. So, I bought one. :-) This SUPER adorable image is from Meljen's Designs.   I stumbled across these stamps on Etsy, but she's got a new website where you can buy directly from her and get and instant download. Sweetness.  The mushroom cap and stem and the book are paper-pieced, the mouse is colored with pencils, and the rest is... well... white.  I wasn't gonna color the grass, but I started, so then I had to finish.  Oh well.  Haha.

Day 32- Recipe Card

Create a card that is suitable as a recipe card. I really loved how Vicky created the inside pocket on her card, so that's what I did too.  The chef image is a free clip art image I found online. Oh, and Gina Marie get's one of those "cool points" back for suggesting the cork "button."  We just sliced off the end of a wine bottle cork that happened to have a design on it.  Coolness.

It would be awesome if I could put my mom's spaghetti sauce recipe in here... But I can't, cuz it's a secret ;-)  How 'bout lasagna? Lasagna's good.  This card makes me wanna sing that song from Lady & The Tramp. Hehe.

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!

Busy, Busy, Busy

This has been such a crazy day. A loooong, crazy day. Working with kids makes you wanna pull your hair out is such a blessing and joy. :-) Thank the Lord for the weekend. I'm also SUPER excited because my brother will be flying in from San Diego tomorrow! I know we'll be busy spending time with him, but I'm hoping I can still get my challenge cards in... you know, priorities... 1) brother/family, 2) card-making, 3) eating... etc. ;-)

I've got two cards to share with you today. Numero uno is for 365 Cards' challenge for Day 25- Do It Yourself. The challenge was to create our own glittered brads or pearls. I used brads... er, brad. As in, one of them. Haha. I put a light coat of tacky glue on the brad, then rolled it in some super fine glitter. I really don't like it when you pick up a glittery item and the stuff rubs off on you, so once the glue dried, I added a coat of Diamond Glaze. This made it nice and smooth. Me likey.


I don't know if I'm totally sold on the "Mom" part. It's not tacked down very well in case I change my mind :-) And there's my shiny bling in the middle of that flower. It's made from a few pieces on the Cricut as well as a little rose-ish flower, like the ones I used on this project.

Numero dos is for Day 26-Card Recipe challenge. This one was a little harder for me. I really kept wanting to stick one more thing on there. But I refrained. So here's my (5"x5") card, with 2 squares (the patterned paper, framed with brown), 3 circles (all stacked up in the middle) and ribbon (I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out where that is).


OMG! I just realized what time it is... I have to be up early to take my sis to an audtion. Blegh. Okay, well, I'm off to bed I suppose. Thanks for looking! Enjoy your weekend :-)

I Never Know What to Title These Things...

Hello blogging world. It's after 2 a.m. (Just kidding Mom! I went to bed at an earlier time that is conducive to a good night's sleep :-) and I've just wrapped up a couple of projects. The first one I'm gonna show ya is for the Day 24, Terrific Ten challenge at 365 Cards. At first I thought this was only going to end in tears and gaudiness, but actually it was just fine.

Ta-da! Exactly ten.

This next card is one of the invitation/announcement I've put together for my cousin's first communion. It took me forever to decide what I wanted to do, but once I did, it was pretty simple to put together.

I created the grape and wheat image in Illustrator. The hardest part was cutting out all those cups. Sheesh.

Well, it's too late to start working on another card, but there's a DIY challenge for Day 25 at 365. We're supposed to create our own glittered brads or pearls. I figured I'd get a head start so I can work on the actually card tomorrow (err... later today, i guess). I did a few gold and a few silver since I haven't really thought about what I'm actually gonna use on my project. After I covered the brads with glitter (which makes a MESS, by the way) I also covered them with Diamond Glaze. I'm hoping that will smooth them out and keep the glitter from rubbing off later.


Thanks for stopping by! And don't forget to help yourself to my free digi stamp! The link is on the right hand side of the page.

Spring Birthday

I've been pretty good about replenishing my birthday card stash over the last week or two, and it continues today with a card for Day 23 at 365 Cards (use a stencil) and Laura's Sketch 48 at 2S4Y.


I did some sponge painting to stencil the flowers for the patterned paper.

This is gonna have to be another one of those I'm-about-to-walk-out-the-door posts, but thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

Irony or Paradox?

Today's challenge for Day 22 at 365 Cards is to create a card inspired by the movie Alice in Wonderland. I was amused to find that many of you share the same sentiments toward that movie that I do. I haven't seen the new version yet (not really sure if I want to-- it looks kinda creepy) and it's been YEARS since I've seen the Disney version. I always thought it was a little weird and more than a bit confusing. But I do like some of Tim Burton's movies, so maybe I'd appreciate this new one a little more.

Anywho... I ended up using the Queen of Hearts (from the Disney movie) as the inspiration for my card. I really like the bold pattern and colors of her costume, so that's what I went for:

Now, the real challenge here ended up being the sentiment. I mean, "OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!!" seemed a little inappropriate. And while I can think of a couple people I could send it to, I wouldn't. Haha. So I decided to go with "I love you" and just revel in the irony... or is it paradox? Either way, I love that it doesn't make sense... cuz neither does that movie! :-)

Yup. There Are Leg Warmers On My Card.

Hey friends! Hope you've had an excellent weekend! Mine was not too shabby. The highlight of my weekend was spending a couple of hours with my 11 yr old cousin, Grace, making egg-shaped candles in real eggshells. We had a lot of fun. I didn't take any pictures though. Boo.

I have a couple of cards for ya tonight (err.... today?). The first is for the Super Sketchy Sunday challenge on the 365 Cards blog. I think it turned out pretty cute... except maybe the "Easter Blessings" part. I don't have any Easter stamps so I hand-wrote it. Eh. Probably should've printed it on the computer, but this one was kind of a think-as-you-go project :-)

My second card is for this week's Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge. I really enjoy checking out all the challenges there, but this is the first time I've been able to actually play along.

The movie for this week is 13 Going On 30. It's a really cute movie, but I haven't seen it in a long time. For my take on it, I decided to go for an 80's theme. Yup. There are leg warmers on my card. I love them. Hahaha. I most definitely don't wear them, but I think they're kinda fun... on other people... from the 80's. :-P

For the background colors, I tried to copy the colors from Jennifer Garner's dress in this scene:

Thanks for looking! And if you haven't yet, check out my 100th-post giveaway HERE.

La Di Da

I'm sitting here on the floor of my sister's bedroom while she and our younger sister try to weird me out by singing/saying random things. It's not working-- there's nothing they can do to get any weirder. They're currently in the middle of a splendid rendition of "Three Times A Lady." Lol :-)

I have two cards for y'all today. The first is a catch-up card from Thursday's "Plentiful Patterns" challenge at 365 Cards. I went paper shopping, but I didn't have time to go out to Archivers, so I had to settle for the selection at Michael's. Don't get me wrong, I love Michael's, but they don't have much in the way of patterned paper. I found the toille and houndstooth patterns, but I ended up having to make my own plaid.


My next card is for today's challenge- Day 20, Let's Make Some Noise. What do you call this anyway? A shaker card? Well, at any rate, I created the "shaker" by stacking several of the frames cut with my Cricut and a piece of acetate from some packaging. On the inside are some small punched hearts.


Thanks for looking!

The Touch, The Feeeeel of Cotton...

... The fabric of our lives!

When I saw the challenge for today at 365 Cards, I immediately started humming that song from the cotton commercials. Haha.

The challenge is "Imagine This: Cotton." Not a lot of specifics-- just think of cotton and ready, set, go! The first thing that came to mind wasn't necessarily just the white fluffy stuff (or pink and blue, wrapped around a paper cone). I wanted to go for that raw, natural look with the browns and soft whites.


BOY! I really had to fight with this picture to get the color right... it's still not quite there. I hope it's showing up on your screen like it's supposed to! I wish I could show you-- the colors are much softer looking in person! Oh well :-)

Also, I wanted to show you what I did with the stamp I won the other day from Stretch 'n Bubbles.



Okay. I'm gonna be late for work if I don't leave, so thanks for stopping by!!