7th Day of Whimsy

Well, the paint is still drying on my tin for the 6th Day of Whimsy, so I'm charging ahead with the 7th Day of Whimsy - A Frosted Snow Angel.  I didn't have any of these particular beautiful Paper Whimsy images, but I found something similar at the Graphics Fairy.  I added some vintage white velvet leaves as her wings, some vintage lace, a House of Three crystal bangle, and a Stampin' Up felt snowflake as her halo.  Such a fun project!

I have the whole family here at home again tomorrow, so may have to wait a bit before I disappear into my craft room again.  Hope everyone has a wonderful Monday!

Days of Whimsy 2 - 5

I spent the entire day crafting yesterday... it was heaven!  I wanted to catch up with Nancy Maxwell James' 12 Days of Whimsy, featuring the beautiful collage images of Paper Whimsy.  You can get all of the instructions on Nancy's blog, Sugar Lump Studios.  The banner above is the 2nd Day of Whimsy.  I've used Lost and Found Christmas papers for them all, and I am totally addicted to this vintage color scheme! (Just went and bought two more 6x6 tablets of the stuff.  Yes!).  All of these images are from Paper Whimsy.  Here they are individually:

"Merry" is cut from a vintage Little Women book, as is "Christmas" below.  I cut the banners using a Papertrey Ink die.

For the "Wishes", I stamped a Christmas sentiment on a border of the text from the book, so that it would have the same patina.  I finished these off with some Stickles (my favorite color - Platinum), some poinsettia flowers, bling, and vintage mother of pearl buttons.

Next up, Day 3 and an adorable natural batting mitten.  I loved this project, since it gave me a very good excuse to cut into a stash of delicate vintage lace.

The image (from Godrun Loennecken) was printed on sticky-back canvas and stitched in place.  I added a little plastic "thingy" LOL - the little white filigree flower is from some sort of broken necklace I found at a flea market.  Very fun to be able to use that, too!

Next, Day 4 (bet you didn't see that coming, LOL!) and a snowy tag.  This is once again a Paper Whimsy image, vintage lace, glittery snowflakes, mother of pearl... oh how I love these projects!

Finally, Day 5 - glittery snowflakes that I opted to create ornaments with, but you can also attach them to cards, as in the project shown on Nancy's blog.

These came together in a snap.  For the snowflake, I used an image printed on canvas, and some crepe paper that I had edged in platinum Stickles and gathered.  For the star, it's just an image printed on cardstock.  Soooo easy, so quick, such a great way to adorn a package. (P.S. I had found these ornaments on clearance last year at Michaels - 50 cents for a pack of 6 - they might be there again this year, I haven't checked.)

That's my catch-up post!  Today's project involves a decorated tin ornament.... don't know if I have a tin, so I'll have to get scrounging or get creative.  Will hopefully have that tomorrow. :)

Playing Along with 12 Days of Whimsy

I finally carved out some time, very late last night, to craft.  I have been dying to play along with Nancy Maxwell James and the 12 Days of Whimsy.  These are my projects for the First Day of Whimsy, Button Faeries - I love them!  My first two ornaments feature images from Paper Whimsy (you can find them Here and Here.) 

Then I thought, wouldn't it be fun to use vintage (or vintage-looking) family photos?  So here are two more Button Faeries, these featuring a vintage photo of my Aunt Betty, and a not-so-vintage photo of my daughter as a baby.  I took a color picture of her and played around in my photo editing software until I got her looking sufficiently vintage.  She didn't even recognize that it was her at first, LOL!

Nancy has provided gorgeous photos and wonderful instructions on her blog, Sugar Lump Studios.  I am off to make another project - these are right up my street, so to speak! :)

Spooky Gluing

Wow, the word "gluing" really doesn't look like a word if you stare at it too long, LOL!!  I've been making Halloween pennants for a local swap, and so I have some fun extra stuff to put in my train case and glue into my little book during my copious waiting-during-kids'-sports-practices time.  Don't ya just love these little twins?  They are freebies from The Sum of All Crafts - she has some marvelous Halloween images, and these gals were from a post of several spooky-looking people.  I added some vintage German text that had been colored with sumthin'..... distress inks, maybe?  And of course some random wordage from an old book I always have with me for just this purpose.  The hats are from a Lisa's Altered Art collage sheet.

Also finally had some material to put on the page opposite my "Poe" page:

This little gal is from Paper Whimsy, and the images (stamped and scrap) are from Crafty Secrets/Heartwarming Vintage.

I'll finish up posting my pennants tomorrow, once I get them photographed.  I'm off to watch my daughter's volleyball game. :)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Where does the time go???  I'm coming along slowly with my Halloween pennants for my swap... here are two that feature a Paper Whimsy image (the girl, along with a hat from Lisa's Altered Images), and stamps from Red Lead (the small ravens with Poe quotes) Oxford Impressions (large raven and ouija board), and Tim Holtz (Halloween ticket).

Lately I've pretty much had time to scrap only on the go, and even then, I haven't done much.  I mentioned in my last post that I was feeling mojo-less and wasn't even happy with my gluebook pages.  So I will share... the good, the bad, and the ugly.....

First up, the good.... those little cuties are my dad and his twin brother, and the sentiment is from a piece of vellum patterned paper that I've had in my stash for centuries....

Next up.... a Poe page that I am basically happy with.... it's just that I cannot for the life of me seem to complete the page next to it.  There are some scraps in the foreground that I'm trying to use... I think I just might have to actually stamp or go gather something "real" from my stash that will work.....

Okay, as promised, the ugly.... this is waaaay too busy.  It seemed a good idea as I was putting it together.  I closed it up, ran off to some school event or other... came back and opened it up again and really had to say "What was I thinking?!"  But that's what's so great about a gluebook - you can try things, experiment, and if it doesn't work out, it's no big deal.  All you've done is use up some scraps that weren't making it into anything else anyway!!  Totally forgiving, and really, a learning tool.... a record of what does and does not work.  (I'm trying really hard not to rip this out, LOL!!!)

Still hoping to find more time to visit all of your lovely blogs.  Unfortunately, today I have to go out and spend way to much money on a dishwasher... ours totally gave up the ghost (I had been making do with certain features not working, but now it's finally dead and not worth fixing).  I've been spending all of my time online trying to figure out which models are best, etc.  But I'm tired of doing dishes, so I'm buying today no matter what, LOL!  Have a happy Wednesday. 

Mixed Media Collage Tags

More "class work" from my Paint, Paper, Paste E-Workshop.  This time we did tags - very fun, on a nice, doable small scale.  Yes, you just saw this little Paper Whimsy girl.... but I printed out the entire sheet, and she was on my desk, looking at me..... :).  Had fun collaging some metallic gold tissue paper that I had stamped text onto, some pretty spring-colored acrylics, a Tim swirl stamp, and some ribbon and lace.  The "Day Dream" is from Rogue Redhead Designs.  A little stitching on my sewing machine was thrown in for good measure.

Another tag, nature-themed this time, using a lot of the same stuff that was on my desk for the first one.  Added some patterned tape from 7 Gypsies and some Copic-colored flowers.  Just messin' around, havin' fun.

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend!  Ours started with hail and thunderstorms so strong I thought they were going to blow down the trees around us!  But now it's sunny and a little too tropical. :)  Keep it crafty!

More from the Paint, Paper, Paste E-Class

As I wrote in a previous post, I'm taking Teresa McFayden's Paint, Paper, Paste E-Workshop, which just keeps getting better.  I've combined a few lessons here on a little 5x7-inch canvas.  I collaged the background as I did for the previous neutral collage, but this time I used blue tissue paper that had been stamped with Tim Holtz stamps, along with more vibrant paint colors and some oil pastels.  As with last time, I used vintage text and music sheets, and some stencils.  The butterflies, clock, and house were done using a fun technique that Teresa came up with using pastels and images from The Graphics Fairy.  The image of the girl is from Paper Whimsy, and the little butterfly chipboard is from GCD Studios (both have some oil pastel added on).  Have I mentioned, I'm having a ton of fun with this class? ;)

Happy Thursday, friends.  I hope you have a wonderful weekend planned... a long one for us US folks.  Let's all hope for the best, most unsettled and *safe* weather patterns for our entire country (too much devastation as of late).  Talk to ya tomorrow. :)

Scrappy Gluebook Again

Once again this week, I have been sitting in my car more than I have been sitting in my craft room.  Good thing I have fun stuff to bring with me!  It's more scrappy stampy gluey pages.  This first one has my practice attempt at inkjet image transfer onto watercolor paper.  I had always read that you needed to have a laser image in order for images to transfer properly.  Lo and behold, I went to Donna Downey's website, and she shows us that as long as you use Golden's Gel Medium, inkjet prints work just fine.  Oh my, what fun!!!  (You can see her video tutorial on the subject *here*.)

A few lovely ladies in vintage browns.

Some of the last of my purple scraps.  The little girl is Paper Whimsy.  The stamped lilac is Unity, and the stamped tulips are Oxford Impressions.

I have some fun stuff coming up..... something new..... can't wait to show you! :)

Papertrey Ink Make It Monday

I couldn't resist taking part in a new-to-me challenge over at Papertrey Ink called "Make It Monday."  This week, the Make It Monday challenge is to hand draw a line frame as a border on your card.  I hope this counts, since I did in fact start out with a line frame - two, in fact, one around the entire periphery and one around the sentiment.  But then, it seemed to need a bit of whimsy.... so I doodled around the line frame.  And then I colored in some of the loops with Copics... and gave some others some polka dots.....  Seriously fun. ;)

A little tip I discovered for doing this type of doodling... actually, a couple of tips:  Doodling, by its very nature, is not perfect, so don't try to be perfect! It is much more appealing if it's got some character to it.  That being said.... so that you don't end up with a ginormous loop at your corner, or two teensy loops scrunched in at the end of your line... start out by making the little doodled loops at each corner first, on all sides (also at the ends of your lines, if the lines are broken up by your images).  Then start doodling loops along your line to fill in between the corners.  After you get about 2/3s to 3/4 of the way through, go to the other end of your line and make loops (in the opposite direction) until you meet up with the ones you have done.  Why?  Because then, if you have one loop that is notably larger or smaller than the rest, it looks like you *meant* to do it, since it is in the middle.  Follow? (Hmmm, I'm probably being as clear as mud..... should have taken pictures along the way... sorry!)

Anyway, the details..... the little girl image is from Paper Whimsy, cut out and distress inked.  The houses and wings are cut from Papertrey Ink's Love Lives Here Collection dies (one house from corrugated paper), and the house and sentiment stamps are from the Love Lives Here stamp set.  I started out by cutting out everything, stamping and distressing the diecuts, and arranging them on the card to get an idea of placement.  I then laid out my frame using the technique in Nicole's video.  I masked out the framed area, added Distress Inks in Antique Linen and Tattered Rose, then stamped a Text Style stamp in Tattered Rose as a background.  After doodling my frame, I added the little road using Copics, then glued down my elements.  A couple of little details... I added some vintage glass glitter behind the heart in the middle house, and popped up the house.  I also went in and "shaded" my doodles and the sentiment frame with a warm gray Copic marker (W2, I think) to give it all a bit of dimension.   


I know Papertrey is kinda known for it's clean and simple approach.... but as you can see, you can certainly take it all shabby chic and vintage.  Thanks for stopping by - I hope you can give this technique a try. :)

Tag Tuesday - Postcards

This week's challenge at Tag Tuesday is Postcards - use a postcard, have the word postcard on your tag, etc.  It's a 2-week challenge this time, so there is plenty of time to play along.  I have desperately needed some challenges to try to summon my still-missing mojo!  I sit down to create something, and it's like it's advanced calculus or Greek or something - what a struggle!

Anyway, the deets: the beautiful image is from Paper Whimsy.  I covered a manila tag with Tim's tissue tape as a base.  Swiped some red ink across the bottom and added the lace trims.  The "postcard" stamp is from Stampin' Up!, and the butterflies are from Red Lead (colored them with Copics and popped them up a bit).  Also added a little red postage stamp and some flowers.  Things were looking kinda "blah", so I framed the image of the girl in script patterned paper, then went to work with some colored pencils to sorta define certain areas.  Finally had to just say "done."  After walking away from it for awhile, it's growing on me.  I might add some Rock Candy Stickles to the butterflies.  Or not.  Hmmmmm......

Hope your week is going well - stay warm, snow-free, artsy and crafty. ;)