8 Packages Tied Up in a Bow

Hi, everyone. Happy weekend!

The card below was inspired by this week's OWH Midweek Throwdown to make a masculine birthday card and CAS-ual Fridays' challenge to make a card featuring eight of something -- in this case, 8 birthday packages all tied up in a bow.

DCWV Natural matstack with foil
Paper Smooches twine
Paper Studio brads

Pretty pleased with the way this one turned out. Really love all the textures with the foil in the paper, the twine, and the brads. Hope it will brighten the day of one of a troop's loved one.

Parting Thoughts

Will try to make some time to write about this week's craft show. And, then there's a post-craft-show craft room that needs some cleaning up. :)

Thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!

Say It with Paint Swatches

Hi, everyone.

Seems like a long time since my last post, but guess it's just been about a week. Maybe it seems longer because OWH is celebrating its birthday month week with midweek events, like blog skips featuring partner companies, and I haven't been posting cards for the usual Midweek Throwdown.

Today's card is inspired by this week's Tuesday Tutorial to make a card using paint swatches, reworking a previous card using some monochromatic paint swatches. What a fabulous idea for getting a cool ombre effect! Thanks, Nancy, for sharing this idea. :)

Glidden swatches: Porcelain Peach, Venus Star, Apricot, Colorado Dawn, Golden Tan, Pumpkin Pie
blue: Distress Ink core, brown: AC
computer-generated sentiment (Mistral) on watercolor paper; hand-cut flames
OWH Sketch #182
Please click here for details on original card.

As always, thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!

Another 2 for 1 Day!

Hi, everyone!

Hope everyone's having a great weekend!

It's a cloudy day here with some must-see television viewing for golf fans. Translation: This is some prime cardmaking time!

Today's Cards

This year, I've tried to make an Any Hero card for every OWH Sunday sketch. But, when I saw today's sketch, I immediately thought of a masculine birthday card with 5 candles. (Maybe the card I made for hubby yesterday was still mulling around in my brain...)

So, what's a girl to do? That's easily answered -- make two cards! :)

Distress Ink core paper; Cuttlebug embossing folder
hand-drawn flames; computer-generated sentiment (Mistral)

Distress Ink core paper; Darice embossing folder
computer-generated sentiment (Mistral)
Fiskars and Paper Studio star punches; garage sale brad

Parting Thoughts

Hoping to work on a card for the CAS-ual Fridays challenge to make a card with numbers. Should be easy for someone who's spent a life in mathematics education, right?

Have a wonderful week. Thanks for visiting and happy scrappin'!

Happy Birthday to Hubby

Hi, everyone.

Hubby's celebrating a birthday in a few days. So, I took advantage of a little alone time to make a card for him. Since he's a no-frills kind of guy, I made a no-frills card. I didn't even put one brad on the card, which was really hard for me not to do!

Distress Ink core paper, lightly sanded
EK leaf and hole punches
(And, that's all folks! As no frills as possible.)

To make the flames, I punched out a tiny leaf from an EK punch, scanned the punched-out leaf, pasted and enlarged the image into a Word doc, printed the enlarged image, and used the enlarged image to trace the leaf and cut out some flames on the card.

The orange candles are actually two-layered, with the flame placed between the layers. In addition, I trimmed the tops of the candles with a pair of Fiskars paper edges to give the look of melted wax.

Lastly, I added the three tiny circles at the bottom to reinforce the yellow of the flames. I stuck to my guns to make this a no-brad/gem/embellishment card for my no-frills guy. :) 

Parting Thoughts 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!

CAS-ual Birthday Cards for Every Member of the Family

Hi, everyone!

The CAS-ual Fridays challenge for the next two weeks is birthday themed to celebrate Michele's birthday. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to play with some new toys: a cupcake punch and sponge daubers from Stampin' Up! and Nestabilities scallop dies from Spellbinders.

Two Cards in One?
For supplies, please see cards below.

The card at the right was my first attempt. All in all, it's good a little card. Hubby liked it with the exception of the candle on the cupcake. However, there was something about it that was bothering me. Then came my epiphany: This card was two cards in one. Both the circles and the cupcake were whimsical, but the circles felt more abstract and dreamy than the cupcake.

So, I made two cards, each inspired by the disparate images of the first card.

For Mom or Big Sis

watercolor paper washed in watered-down Warm White acrylic; Bazzill black
circles: Distress Ink peeled paint, dusty concord, and tumbled glass, sponged on using SU daubers
circle and hole punches from EK and Marvy
Mark Richards rhinestones

I apologize that this is such a rudimentary image. (There were lots of technical difficulties -- really struggled to get a photo that did justice to the colors.) Regardless, I LOVE this card -- love, love, love it. This is up there with one of my all-time favorites.

Bernadette Kirk taught the technique of punching out templates and using the templates to sponge on images at a recent Stampin' Up class. Think I'm going to be using this idea lots more. Thanks, Bernadette!

For Little Sis

watercolor paper washed in watered-down Warm Water acrylic; pattern: Distress Ink Scattered Straw on bubblewrap
Distress Ink core paper; Stampin' Up! cupcake punch and Tangerine Tango ribbon;
Recollections  stickers; Spellbinders Nestabilities scallops, EK hole punch

This just feels like a bright, cheery,  fun card perfect for the little girl in the family.

For Dad or Brother

After experimenting with sponging on Distress Inks, I decided to try it out with the SU honeycomb embossing folder and went with a masculine palette. For this card, I embossed an index card and cut out hexagons to create sponging templates.

Stampin' Up! (Sizzix) embossing folder, heat embossed with Distress Ink black soot
cardstock: Bazzill black; AC white, sponged in antique linen
hexagons sponged in Distress Ink (vintage photo, antique linen, tumbled glass, peeled paint, dusty concord)
computer-generated sentiment (Mistral)

Not a  bad first effort. Think this could take on lots of different looks with different palettes and fonts.

Parting Thought

Thanks for stopping. Have a great week and happy scrappin'!

Hearts and Sparks for Heroes

Hi everyone,

Let me start by sending thoughts and prayers to those on the East Coast dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

The images on television are unbelievable. I can't even begin to imagine what life is like for those of you dealing with such devastation and loss. My brother's family had lots and lots of rain, but only rain.

Hearts for an OWH Hero's Loved One

The card below was made for this week's OWH Midweek Throwdown and inspired by another one of Ashley's fabulous scrapbook sketches. Making cards for OWH is kind of like living in a time machine. While the rest of the world is starting to make plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas, OWHers are making Valentine's Day cards.  :)

Cardstock: Core-dinations Vintage Collection
Designer Paper and Chipboard: We R Memory Keepers
Techniques: Inking (Distress Ink Tattered Rose), embossing, punching, distressing, crimping
Tools: Sizzix folders, ek punch, heart template, crimper

The left side of the sketch was used to make the card.
An embossed heart was used for the large circle;
a chipboard piece for the 4 x 4 photo;
a We R Memory Keepers paper embellishment, layered on various papers, for the 6 x 4 photo;
and a smaller heart for the "round" sketch element, nudged slightly right.

 This was the first time I've paired different embossing folders and was pretty pleased with the results. The We R Memory Keepers paper and chipboard are from the Be My Valentine collection from a few years ago.

In addition to the Midweek Throwdown, I'm going to post this card for this month's ODBD challenge to make a card dusting off a tool or technique. It had actually been awhile since I'd used my Ranger sander. Not only was it perfect to use on the embossed cardstock, but it also worked really well for distressing the chipboard.

Sparks (aka Candles) for a Family Hero

The card below is for a family hero, my father-in-law. He will be celebrating his 89th birthday on Wednesday. The inspiration for this card came from Leisure Arts great card-making book -- page 109, to be exact.  :)

Paper: Kaiser Up, Up, and Away, DCWV Christmas & Winter Combo;
wicks: dental floss; sentiment: heat embossed with Stampendous clear powder

I ADORE the simplicity of this card -- and how it can be adapted so easily to masculine/feminine, child/teen/adult, whimsical/elegant. And, who would've thought of using dental floss? Designer Beth Matson, that's who!

The candles on the Leisure Arts sample card were round, compared to my flatter candles. So, I played around with rolling paper around a AAA battery -- and was really pleased with the result. And, I will probably use contrasting ink for the sentiment on future cards, as well as vary the sentiment depending on the recipient. :)

This seems like a good fit for this week's CAS-ual Fridays' challenge to make a masculine CAS card. Also thinking of making a variety of these to give to family and friends in 2012.

Parting Thoughts

Hoping to make some more progress on craft fair projects tomorrow. And, looking forward to tomorrow morning's sketch challenge.

Thanks for visiting. Special thanks to those leaving such kind words. Happy scrappin'!

3 for 1

Hi, everyone,

Another quick post. I have 3 cards inspired by this week's OWH sketch to share. (Boy, wouldn't it be nice if I could make 3 cards for every sketch!)

Card 1: An Encouraging Card for OWH

The first card is doing double duty since it also meets the encouragement theme in last Wednesday's Midweek Throwdown. I was pretty true to the sketch. (Shocking, I know!) My only change was putting the larger rectangle on the bottom.

Paper: We R Memory Keepers Down the Boardwalk; heat embossed sentiment in Distress Ink Black Soot; hand-drawn "stitching"; stash metallic "flowers"

Three points worth noting:

• I stamped the sentiments in reverse order as they appear on the card -- using ghost images to go from light to darker to darkest.
• In addition to heat embossing the last "smile", I heat embossed that rectangle's edges.
• The color of the metallic flowers are much closer to the vertical strip's color than they appear. (Honest, they are!)

Card 2: A Birthday Card for Dad

I made similar decisions (ghosted and embossed sentiments, the placement of the larger rectangle on the bottom) to create this sketch-inspired birthday card for my dad. One additional change was using the vertical strip to create a candle. Another change was triple matting the last sentiment for some extra pizazz. :)

Card Base and Patterned Paper: DCWV Natural collection; cardstock from stash pile; heat embossing with Distress Ink

Card 3: An Any Hero Card

Aside from rotating the sketch for my pre-written Any Hero note, this card is actually true to the sketch! The paper selection came easily, as did the sentiment. But, I really struggled with what to do with the top portion of the darker blue rectangle. That "space" seemed lots bigger and emptier when the sketch was rotated.

We R Memory Keepers Red, White & Blue; Stamper's Best sentiment in Distress Ink stash Vintage Photo; stash: cardstock and ribbon

Parting Thoughts

I keep thinking this is going to be the week when things slow down at work. (Busy is good, crazy's a whole other matter!) So, I'm really glad I was able to get these 3 cards made and posted in time for the two OWH challenges. :)

As always, thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!

Go World! Go Team USA!!!