Paintchip Scraplings with Gingersnap Creations

Happy Friday everyone!  It's the beginning of a long weekend here in the US, and I am very much looking forward to some relaxing family time.  Today I'm sharing the scraplings I made for the current Gingersnap Creations art swap.  We were to use paintchips on our scraplings, but that was the only rule.  Now, as I visited other Gingersnappers' blogs, lots of folks kept remarking about how addicting these were.  I really didn't think anything of it, until I starting making them myself..... oh my! Yes! They are addicting, LOL!

For my scraplings, I used the rose spray from Stampin' Up's Elements of style on four of them.... the white ones are embossed, the brown are StazOn.  The birdie scraplings have stamps from Crafty Secrets, Cavallini, and Stampington.  Then I just started embellishing with rhinestones, pearls, glitter, microbeads, vintage text, punches, baker's twine.... yes, addicting! :)  You can click on the picture to make them bigger... I used the side of the paintchip that had the paint names for some of them, especially if they fit the theme, like "Rambling Rose" and "Rose Embroidery" and "Aviary" - so fun!  I may have to make more of these and add magnets to the bottoms, so that they can be bookmarks, with a little note inside, or maybe even a "library card" grid inside, so that you can lend out both the book and the bookmark, and have your friends "sign in", maybe even give the book a rating.  Lots of fun possibilities.

Hope everyone has a restful and relaxing weekend planned, and that Hurricane Earl doesn't ruin it for anyone! (Our skies are sunny, about 250 miles away from the storm on the Carolina coast).

Vintage Paris Canvas

So I hopped out of my box again yesterday and created another canvas.  Actually, it's an "un-canvas" - an "artist's panel" that claims to be "better than canvas."  Whatever.... its un-canvas properties actually made it very easy to adhere paper to, so I went with it, LOL!

This project was inspired by two challenges...... at The Shabby Tea Room this week, there is this gorgeous photo and the word "reflections" to inspire us.  Oh, how I loooooove the look of this mantel arrangement.  I want it in my house this very second.  Inspiration abounds.....

And, a fairly new challenge at a blog called More Paper Than Shoes.  Why, oh why, didn't I think of that blog name first??? It describes my life in four easy words.  Anyway, this challenge gives a little list of rules - actually, items and techniques that must be incorporated into the challenge. So for this month, the theme/items/techniques are:

Vintage Paris

Metal

Acrylic Paint

Fabric

Crackle

Any surface

The design team over at MPTS is amazing - all of them.  But before I show you my close-ups and tell you all the yada yada, I have to show you the DT project that made my jaw drop... here is the pic - and if you love it, run, don't walk, over to DT member Megan Bean's blog to see the rest of this amazing little album of hers on THIS post. Oh, but DO come back, will you????

Okay, so for my little project, I started with Bon Voyage Paris paper from Gartner Studios.  Next came paint around the edges of the canvas, which was Distress Crackle in Antique Linen, distressed with Walnut Stain.  I added a few pieces of vintage text from an old French school primer after that.  The beautiful little lady is a stamp from The Fairest Flower plate from Oxford Impressions, stamped in Ancient Page ink and distressed with Antique Linen.  Surrounding her is a Tattered Angels frame with silver Vintage Art Glass Glitter.  Oh my, I love that stuff!  I splurged, I hoarded for a long time, but now that I've used it I can see the difference - the sparkle IRL is amazing, and I can't wait for the patina to gently tarnish.  This is the "reflections" part for the Shabby Tea Room challenge, too.

For the metal, I used some of T!m's flowers, which I bent a little with jewelry pliers to give them a little more depth.

For the fabric, I stamped images from The Fairest Flower, Paris Exposition (Artistic Outpost), and Stampin' Up! onto some muslin, frayed the edges, and adhered it to the not-so-pretty sides of my un-canvas.

One last little photo to show you how well I'm coming along with my hoarding problem.. this is a vintage crochet covered button, which I have only one of... and I put it on this un-canvas.  (Eeeeeee, I'm breaking into a cold sweat just typing it... okay, deep breaths.... fine.)  See?  Pretty good, eh? LOL!

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you're all having a happy week.  Tomorrow I'll have a little card for the next Gingersnap Creations challenge... see ya then. :)

Stamping Around Inspiration Challenge

 

While blurfing today, I came across a great inspiration challenge at Stamping Around.  The photo inspiration was this catalog cover for Land's End, and the instant I saw it, I knew I'd have to play along. So I dug out a Stampin' Up! set that hasn't seen ink in centuries, and went to work with my Stamp-a-ma-jig.  I stamped my roses, cut them out, and distressed them with Antique Linen and Tea Dye Distress Inks.  I aged my white twill ribbon (www.twilltape.com) with Antique Linen as well, then attached it and some burlap using my sewing machine and a straight stitch all around the edges.  I thought the burlap echoed the texture of the basket - it's a fun accent to play with, but can get unruly unless you sew it down! 

I decided to shabby it up even more with some Tattered Rose Crackle paint along the edges; after it dried, I went back in and smudged some coral ink over it to give it more "oomph."

I also used some Rock Candy Distress Crackle paint and some Dazzling Diamonds to pretty up the flowers a bit.  The sentiment is from Anna Griffin.

Just a little enabling before I go..... Friday and Saturday (Feb. 26 and 27), Cornish Heritage Farms is awarding double CHF points with every rubber order, AND giving away a free spool of ribbon for online orders of $75 and over.  I'm just sayin'...   :)   I'm off to watch some Olympic hockey..... Have a great weekend!

Gingersnap Creations Three Colors You Love Challenge

 

Well, I fiddled with this one for waaaaay longer than I expected, LOL!!  The latest color challenge from Gingersnap Creations is to use Three Colors You Love.  Aaaah, I love all of them!  In fact, I think I can become easily overloaded by color - perhaps my brain becomes overstimulated - which  probably explains why most of my decor is creams and linens, with dark brown woods.  But I am decidedly partial to robin's egg blue, dusty purple, and blush pink.  I knew I wanted to make a collage-style card, using scraps of paper and some stamped images that I already had floating around in my "too-pretty-to-throw-away-but-not-gonna-use-it-right-now" box.  Perhaps that's what got me into trouble.  Anyway, here's my card for this challenge, using stamps from Cornish Heritage Farms, Martha Stewart, Inkadinkado, Stampin' Up!, Stampington.... pretty much anyone who sells stamps, LOL!  

This ultimately was quite fun... if you'd like to play with color today, you can head on over to Gingersnap Creations for some inspiration and a peek at the blog candy from The Artistic Stamper.  It could be yours, just for playing with colors you love :).

Witches Brew ATC

A witchy little ATC for the Wednesday Stamper challenge, which this week is Halloween.  I need to make a batch of Halloween ATCs for my swap next week, so this is one of the things I might work up.  The witch image is by Crafty Secrets, and the "moon" is from NASA.  The stamps are Stampin' Up! and Little Yellow Bicycle.  Vintage German text in the background.

It's A Bling Thing

First off, I wanted to let you know that I'll be on vacation for the next week.... we're shuffling off to Buffalo and to Pennsylvania Amish country to visit with family. I'm also hoping to sneak in a visit to a Buffalo stamp store, keep your fingers crossed!


I have a card for you that I posted over at Gingersnap Creations for one of their current challenges, which is to use bling. The theme for the month is Movie Stars, and the current color challenge is black, white, and silver, so this card actually fits them all, LOL! I used Best Occasions rhinestones (Wal-Mart), a vintage "diamond" button, and The Paper Company metallic gunmetal paper as my bling. I also used some Kaiser rubons, a Stampin' Up! sentiment, the Nestabilities Labels Four die, SU! Very Vanilla cardstock, PTI vellum, vintage ribbon to make the flower, and a free photo from web.

Go on over to Gingersnap Creations and check out their challenges - there's lots of time to play along, and.... blog candy, too!

Have a wonderful week!

Night Before Christmas with CHF

Oh, don't ya just love getting new stamps in the mail?!! I just got my order from Cornish Heritage Farms yesterday, so had to jump right in with a Christmas card. The image and sentiment are from a new set called Night Before Christmas. The design of the images in this set makes them PERFECT for making tags, but of course, you can also use them for cards.

I took the little circular snowy village image, along with the sentiment, and colored them with Copics (detail on the right). For the background, I tried distressing a piece of kraft paper with Rangers Distress Ink in peeled paint, but boy, was that paper thirsty!! It drank up that ink and made it all but disappear when it was dry! So I did another coat, then stamped randomly with a pine image from Stampin' Up!'s Peaceful Wishes set (retired) using Always Artichoke dye ink. Then I used Versamark to stamp the medallion from CHF's Ornamental Beauty, and to randomly stamp the little snowflake from Night Before Christmas. I then heat-embossed them all with white embossing powder, and assembled my card. The buttons are from my stash, and the little sparkly dots are "glitter domes" by Mark Richards (just picked them up from Archiver's).

Thanks for looking, and Happy Tuesday!

Travel Journal

Do you scrapbook? If so, are you the type who stays on top of scrapbooking your pictures, or do you feel like you are drowning in a backlog of photos? I am definitely the latter LOL!! I started out in papercrafting as a scrapbooker many years ago, when it was just becoming popular. Back then, the idea was to sort of chronicle your family history, day by day, month by month, year by year. We had great big books, and lots of stickers! Needless to say, with all the great mini-albums and photo processing programs and awesome materials available today, scrapbooking has come a long way. My mindset, however, needs a little push in the right direction. I need to preserve the memories that are happening right now, and I need to do it before I forget everything!

So, instead of angsting over my backlog of photos, I decided to make a little travel album (with no photos in it yet!!) to have at the ready. This way, when my family and I take our little trips, I can just print out one or two photos that are representative of our experience, and quickly journal (just a little paragraph) so that I don't lose the essence and the feel of the trip over the long years it might take me to get to my "big" scrapbook (if I ever do that....).

This is the journal cover (the journal itself is a grungeboard album from Tim Holtz - love these!). The background "map" is actually the Vintage City Scrapblock from Cornish Heritage Farms. I colored it with Copics, then distressed it with Ranger Distress inks to make it look time-worn. The main image is also from Cornish Heritage Farms - 1938 Suburban from their GM Series. I wanted it to look like a photographic negative clipped to the map, so I used a resist technique to get the effect. First, I stamped Vintage City again on ivory cardstock. Then, I stamped the Suburban in VersaMark ink in the center of the Vintage City image, and embossed with clear embossing powder. Then, I used Laundry Line's photo strip stamp to stamp on either side of the car image. I masked out the photo strip, and brayered right over the top of the Suburban with brown ink. I gently rubbed the brown ink off of the car image, removed the mask, and cut along the photo strip edges. I carefully lined up this "negative strip" image on the background Vintage City image in order to make it look like the map was showing through the negative.

The rest of the items are mostly found objects, some of which are sentimental to me - the luggage tag from our trip to Santorini, a German vocabulary card to remind me of our trips to Germany and Austria, a stamp from a letter from cousins in New Zealand (would LOVE to visit there!). The hardware is from Stampin' Up!'s Hodgepodge Hardware. A couple little stamps from Limited Edition and Inkadinkado complete the collage. I started covering the inside pages (sorry, they don't show in this photo) with ivory cardstock that has been stamped with another Cornish Heritage Farms Scrapblock called Vintage Ledger. That way, these pages will be a good background for either photos or journaling, or both! I plan to "embellish" the pages only with found objects from our trips - matchbook covers, ticket stubs, etc. to keep it simple, meaningful, fun, and above all, quick!

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend!

Citrus Mojo Monday 98

This little card uses the Mojo Monday 98 Sketch, and it's my take on the Gingersnap Creations GC17 Color Challenge, which is to use citrus colors. It also qualifies for my very first Pile It On challenge, which is to use at least 3 flowers and one other challenge of your choice (how fun is that?). The stamps are all from Stampin' Up!'s Bloomin' Beautiful set. I colored the image and some Hero Arts Artist's Flowers with Copics, and dabbed some Kiwi Kiss around the edges of the image panel with a sponge dauber. The patterned paper is from K and Company - there's actually a patterned paper on the bottom, then a patterned glittered vellum (same print) on top of that (hard to see in the photo!). The base cardstock is from SU! (Kiwi Kiss), and I used VersaMark watermark ink to stamp the "blossom" definition from the SU set repeatedly as a subtle background. I got the ribbon at A.C. Moore's. That's about it - not too complicated, this one :).

Thanks for stopping by!

Winter Wonderland Skaters

My card today incorporates three challenges: The Winter Wonderland Week #10 challenge, which has a sketch this week; the Splitcoast Stampers' Inspiration Challenge from Saturday, which is Heavenly Hostess; and the Gingersnap Creations GC16 Spicy Supply challenge, which is to use ribbon on a project. What fun these were to use together!

The Winter Wonderland theme this week was "Winter Wonderland" (how 'bout that?) and Beth Jaffe came up with this adorable sketch.


Over at SCS, Stef found the Heavenly Hostess site, with the cutest aprons! My inspiration apron for that one was this retro skater apron. I included a close-up of the fabric too - showing my favorite winter sport!

Finally, the Gingersnap Creations ladies have been inspiring me so much lately, I just HAD to play along with one of their challenges!! It's my first, so I chose an easy one, LOL! They have three challenges going on right now, and they always allow lots of time for each one. You'll want to check out their site this month, because they have some wonderful blog candy up for grabs (you don't have to play to enter, but after you visit, you'll probably be inspired to create!).

So, onto the details. My main skater image, along with the sentiment, is from Stampin' Up!'s Winter Post stamp set (Loooove it!). The trees and the iceskates for the background paper are both from Inkadinkado. For that background paper, I made a little mini patterned paper by randomly stamping the skate image, masking it, then gently tapping Baja Breeze ink over the white areas with a sponge dauber. I then colored in only the laces (red, to match my ribbon laces embellishment). Both the skates and the main image are colored with Copics. I used two rows of eyelets to resemble those of iceskates, and then laced 'em up! The patterned paper is all from My Mind's Eye Bohemia Bliss line, and the colored cardstock is SU!'s Riding Hood Red and Baja Breeze. (Those two lines go GREAT together - I know those are retired SU colors, but come on, we're all hoarding some, right? ;)) The white cardstock is PTI, and I cut out the image with Nestabilities Labels One. Did I forget anything? Hope not.

Thanks for looking and have a great Monday!

The Birds and the Bees ATCs

Our local ATC club is meeting this week, and our theme was "Idioms." I have lots of bird and bee stamps, hence my idea for my cards. I realized after I had finished that one of my stamps that I used is in itself another idiom, "You make my heart sing!" So it's a two-for-one, I guess, LOL!!

I used German scrap for the main bird image. The stamps sets I used were Sweet Bee from Cornish Heritage Farms' The Rummage Bin, Bird Notes (Medium) from Crafty Secrets, and Bloomin' Beautiful from Stampin' Up. I colored in the images using Copics and a white Souffle pen (for the pussy willows and the bees' wings). The background paper is from Basic Grey's Porcelain collection, and the card base is SU!'s Kiwi Kiss. This project was so much fun!! I highly recommend this theme for all of you who have a regular swap club... you can find sites with tons of idioms just by Googling 'idioms.'

Thanks for looking and have a great day!!

Cornish Heritage Farms Resist Challenge

A card I made for the Cornish Heritage Farms Summer Stamp Star Design Challenge, which for this week is to use a resist technique. I used clear emboss resist for the two background papers and the background of the main image.

For the bottom patterned paper, I randomly stamped SU's Soft Sky blue and Memories Mango pumpkin-colored inks on a white background, then clear embossed an image from CHF's Ornamental Beauty stamp set. I then went back over the paper with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink using a brayer. For the top patterned paper, I clear embossed another image from Ornamental Beauty, then smudged on the Mango ink. For the main panel, I first masked off the area where the image would go. Then I clear-embossed a text background, brayered Soft Sky ink over that, then stamped CHF's Tree Swallows Silhouette image in the area that was not embossed. (I had tried it with the entire panel embossed, but it was too busy - couldn't really appreciate the bird image.)

Other supplies include SU Baja Breeze, Very Vanilla, Whisper White, and Chocolate Chip cardstock, clear embossing powder, Prima Flowers, Martha Stewart and Anna Griffin ribbons, Making Memories alphabet stickers, and buttons and twine from my stash.

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

SCS Featured Stamper Challenge

Sunday's Featured Stamper challenge over at SCS was to emulate Sandra, a.k.a. "B-gin-r". I chose this card from her gallery. The topiary image is from The Little Paper Shop. For her card, Sandra embossed her image in white, then applied distress inks to add color, with the embossing acting as a resist. I wanted to use chalks to add color (not sure why I had that idea....) Anyway, after much trial and much error, I learned that the best way to approach this design was to rub a few different colors of green chalk on a white panel, THEN stamp the image in VersaMark and emboss with white embossing powder. My other unsuccessful attempts were to emboss with clear and white embossing powder first, thinking that the embossing would act as a resist for the chalk. Not so, at least not in my hands!! Anyway, the rest is pretty simple. The patterned paper is by Anna Griffin, and the cardstock is SU's Soft Sky, Kiwi Kiss, and Always Artichoke. The sentiment is from Hero Arts. Bling and ribbon are from my stash. Really, this would have been a 10-minute card if I'd done it right the first time, LOL!! Ah well, live and learn. Have a great Monday, everyone!

A Few Quick Cards

Well, today is hectic, but in a good way - swimming lessons and tests, my daughter getting braces, and my son's last baseball game of the regular season. So, I'm just posting a couple of cards - pretty simple, pretty straightforward.

This first card uses images from Oxford Impressions and Stampington, stamped on cardstock from Stampin' Up (Blue Bayou and Soft Sky). The next card (below) relies mainly on some pretty patterned paper, some glitter (I ran a punched flower through the Xyron sticker maker, then added SU's Dazzling Diamonds), a Prima blossom, buttons, twine, ribbon, and a rub-on..... just threw a bunch of embellies at it :).

That's all for now, hope you have a great day!

Winter Wonderland Challenge - Let It Snow!

Don't ya just love a new challenge?! I am new to the Winter Wonderland Christmas Blog Challenge, which is now in it's third week. I've been wanting to play along, but needed to get my Christmas supplies together and organized first. I've decided it would be fun make a Christmas banner, with a single flag representing the theme for each week. When I'm done, I can tie them all together and use the banner as a Christmas decoration. This week's theme is LET IT SNOW! - one of my favorite things :) The image is from a free clip art sampler sent out by Dover Publications. (If you'd like to get their free weekly clip art sampler via email, you can sign up HERE.) I added some white flocking mixed with glitter to the furry parts of the children's coats, hats, and muff (can't really see it in the photo). I then encircled the image with a sparkly pipecleaner. The base is Basic Grey paper, with pom pom trim glued around the edges. I cut the "Let It Snow" from a journaling block, and added some mica flakes as snow. The little felt snowflakes are from Stampin' Up, and the buttons are vintage mother-of-pearl from my stash. I added some tape measure twill ribbon, cuz where I grew up in Pennsylvania, everyone wants to know how many inches of snow each little town got... quite the competition! I tea-dyed some seam binding and glued it to the top, leaving enough on either side to be able to tie it to the next flag. This was such a fun project; I'm so looking forward to what the ladies have in store for us next week!

Sea and Sand

A little card for the Limited Supplies Challenge over at SCS today. The challenge: use only the colors of the sea and sand, and must use fibers, piercing, and brads. My seahorse image is from Anita's, stamped in SU's Blue Bayou on River Rock cardstock. I then distressed and pierced this main image panel. I used a bunch of different stamps to create patterned papers on SU's Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, and River Rock cardstocks, including Inkadinkado and Stampabilities. The sentiment is from Anna Griffin. The side panel with the fibers was crinkled and distressed, in honor of yesterday's Ways to Use It challenge. :) This project really made me long for the shore.... but it's a landlubber's life for me, for now :) Have a wonderful day!

Tag Tuesday - Definitions

I just found a wonderful challenge site that does tags... how fun! It's Kard Krazy's Tag Tuesday, and this week's theme is definitions. I was just playing around, so whipped this up pretty quickly. The girly is from the Graphics Fairy. Stickers from my stash, blossom definition from Stampin' Up. The flower outline stamp is from Magenta, and it is heat-embossed with clear glitter embossing powder. The background was made with pearlescent Brilliance inks. TFL :)

Mojo Monday, SCS Inspiration, and an Amazing Sight

We'll start off with the card, but if you'd like to skip to the amazing sight, then scroll down :). Here's a little card I made based on the Mojo Monday Week 90 sketch
and Saturday's Inspiration Challenge over at SCS. The Inspiration Challenge was based on a company called Design Dazzle, and the picture I chose is this one.









There's a lot happening in this card, so here we go with the deets: The stamped images are by Papertrey Ink (Bird Watching Additions), Cornish Heritage Farms (Vintage Ledger Scrapblock background behind the birds, Ornamental Beauty ornament thingy in the circle), Stampington (branch), Judith (leaves), and Fiskars (howdy from the Just Between Friends set). The circle label is by K and Company. The leaf ribbon is Papertrey Ink's, and the twine is from Martha Stewart. The patterned paper is from Crate Paper (Samantha), and the cardstock is all Stampin Up (Certainly Celery, Baja Breeze, and Ivory... is it Vanilla?) The inks are Stampin Up's Certainly Celery and Baja Breeze for the birds, and Chocolate Chip for the sentiment and feet. I used Ranger Distress Inks in Antique Linen for the ledger and branch and Vintage Photo for the distressing around the edges. The top green panel is punched with Fiskar's threading water punch. I added a little bling from my stash for the eyes. Whew, is that everything?

So on to the amazing sight. Have a look at this beauty (sorry for the blurry photos, it was dusk and I was far away).

He's an albino white-tailed deer! He was hanging out with a brown doe at the edge of a field after my son's baseball game. He appears to be either a spike buck or a 4-pointer, it was hard to tell. These two were completely un-bothered by the paparazzi that gathered to have a look and take pictures. Hopefully he will live a long and happy life! Here's one last photo of the two deer together.



Have a great day, and don't forget to be on the lookout for the little wonders of the world :)

TGIF - Dreams

My very late creation for the TGIF challenge this week, which is dreams. Thanks so much, ladies, for such a fun topic! In my lateness, I've had so much fun looking at the other submissions, and I'm still not done!

My main image of the lady in the shell is from Just for Fun stamps. I got it on ebay, along with the Poe quote, which unfortunately doesn't have a manufacturer's identification on it (perhaps someone's homemade creation?). The clock is from SU's Sense of Time, the scroll is from Stampington, and the birds are from Oxford Impressions and the $1 bin at Michael's. I used Anna Griffin and Fancy Pants patterned papers, along with some vintage French text. There's a Prima flower with a Flower Soft center, some Papertrey Ink leaf ribbon, and a Tim Holtz spinner. I colored the image with Prismacolor pencils and Distress inks. Thanks so much for looking and have a great day.

Mojo Monday Week 89

Is it possible to fall in love with a stamp set? Seriously, to actually CRAVE using a particular set of stamps? Because when I saw these stamps, my heart melted! I just had to adopt (um, buy) these cute little bugs! :) Anyway, this is my card for the Mojo Monday sketch this week. This adorable bug stamp set is by Basic Grey, released as part of their Wisteria Collection. I did the card in Stampin' Up's Riding Hood Red, Kiwi Kiss, and Tangarine Tango colors, which happens to be the color challenge over at SCS. I colored the little buggies with Copics to match the paper, then added a little Dazzling Diamonds and cut them out with my Nestabilities Labels One die. The patterns in the stripe and the bottom paper were made with the stamp set. The top patterned paper is from SU's Urban Garden collection. I added some leaf ribbon from Papertrey Ink, a blossom from a spray (Michael's), and some Hero Arts bling. The stitching in the circle is actually a Hero Arts faux-stitch stamp (50% off at Archiver's!). I had so much fun with this sketch, the color combo, and my new pets ... er, I mean, stamps! Thanks for visiting and have a great day!