Love Card Inspired by Watercolor for Card Makers

I'm still working through the backgrounds I made in the Onlinecardclasses.com class Watercolor for Card Makers.  For today's card, the background was done with this stencil technique they taught sing a variety of Distress Inks and the Mini Woodgrain stencil from the Crafter's Workshop.  It's such a cool technique.  I then water colored the raccoon from the Critters in the Forest set from Lawn Fawn before cutting it out with the matching dies.  I then stamped the cute little love bubble from the Into the Wood set using Black Soot Distress Ink then cut it out with the matching die.  I finished it off with some Liquid Pearls.

Happy Birthday Rayna

My youngest niece turns 11 today, so I made her a sweet card to celebrate.  I took my inspiration from one of my favorite blog, Karen Thomas' Luv to Stamp.  Karen took a bit of a break from blogging and I'm so happy to see that she's back.  I love her style so much.

For this card, I used some paper I picked up from Paper Zone just before they went out of business (oh how I miss that store).  I cannot for the life of me remember the manufacturer, but I love it's flecked tones.  The pick paper is a Pop Tone that Paper Zone used to sell too.  The burgandy-ish (is that even a word?) color is from DCWV.  The ribbon I picked up on sale at Michaels quite some time ago.  The washi tape I bought there much more recently.  I'm pretty sure the heart tape is from Recollections and the pink tape is either from Queen and Co or Recollections.  The butterflies were cut on the Cameo using the Echo Park design and the shape is one that I bought from Silhouette and altered on the Cameo.  I embossed the smallest butterfly with an embossing folder from the "Phrases" set by Darice.  I think it's so wonderful that you would never know that the embossing on there is the beginning of the word "Thank."  The sentiment is from a Hero Arts set I bought at Michaels. I finished it off with a few Liquid Pearls and called it good.

Sometimes it all comes together...

I decided to put aside my scrapbooking tonight to make a few cards.  I realized my stash was getting a little depleted.  So I turned to my Pinterest board for cardmaking for some inspiration.  First, I have to say that I was completely shocked when I realized how many people are following my little cardmaking layout inspiration board.  I guess there are a lot of cardmakers out there that get inspiration from the same things that inspire me.

The card I picked tonight comes from a blog called Glenda's Paper, Scissors, & Rocks (cute name, huh?).  I loved the simple elegance of the card.  I pulled the Beautiful Moments 6x6 pad from Carta Bella that I picked up at Craft Warehouse on sale a bit back.  It has some absolutely lovely patterns in it and I knew immediately they would be perfect for casing Glenda's card. 

And that brings me to the title of the post today.  It all just came together.  Sometimes it can take me a long time to make a single card because I can't decide on the paper or the sentiment or whatever, but today was one of those beautiful times when everything just all came together like it was meant to be.  I think I spent all of ten minutes making this card and more than half of those were finding the right ink (Stampin' Up Chocolate Chip, but if I did it again, I think it would switch to Close to Cocoa), baker's twine (Hemptique) and color of Liquid Pearls (Bisque) to finish it off.  Cutting the card, folding it, rounding the edges and two quick cuts of the Cameo to make some butterflies and I was done.  Honestly this post took longer to write than the card did to make.

The only thing I really regret is that I put my Inkadinkado stamp on my block a little carelessly so it came out a little crooked on the card.  But, oh well, that's what makes it unique. 

Inspired by Pinterest and Jill Parker

Lately I've found such good stuff on Pinterest and today is no exception.  I needed a quick card for a former co-worker who just adopted her second child from overseas.  I needed to make the card tonight because tomorrow is my one and only opportunity to get it to her before she's gone for a while.  Fortunately I found this sweet paint-chip inspired card on Pinterest.  If I had been smart I would have followed it back to Jill Parker's blog Sweet & Korny Stuff right away.  But no, I had to stumble through thinking out the cuts when, if I would have just looked at her blog, I would have seen that she had them all for me.  Oh well.

I just used some basic white card stock and four pieces of scrap paper from my stash.  I cut the butterflies out using the base of a design I purchased in the Silhouette store.  I added a little Distress Ink to the end of the base piece.  I stamped the sentiment in white Color Box ink using a stamp from the Fiskars All Year Greetings set and then finished it all off with some silver Liquid Pearls. 

Ta da!  Now I'm off to bed.  I'm tired!

Back in my room, but not quite back to normal

Today I had a whole day in my craft room, but I couldn't quite find my inspiration to craft.  Instead, I did the laundry from last week, made a loaf of artisan cheese bread that I'll bake later today and put together meatloaf for the hubby with cheesy biscuits.  I watched a little Sabrina (the one with Harrison Ford - my, my he's an attractive man) and caught up on Design All Stars and Craft Wars.  After a little time on Pinterest, I decided it was time to actually start playing with paper.  I managed to make one card today.  I loved this one I found and followed it through SplitCoastStampers all the way to her blog Paper Pursuits.  So I made my own version, building the sentiment in the Silhouette Design Studio using some beautiful ledger paper from the store.  I just love how I can fill any shape with anything I want.  I was able to fill the shape with the paper, layer a flourish over it, and add the text.  Such fun...  I loved how it combined with the patterned paper from the Stella and Rose collection from My Mind's Eye.  I added the cherry blossom cut from a design from the SDS and then finished it off with some baker's twine I picked up from Hemptique at Paper Source in Boston last week and some liquid pearls. 

Inspired by Crafting with Katie

I was totally inspired by Crafting with Katie to make this postage stamp card.  I challenged myself to do it entirely using the Silhouette Cameo.  I started by building the card base using a combination of squares and circles.  Once that was built, I needed two more inner squares.  Then I used another smaller square on a cut pattern of "scoring" on the white level to give a little more decoration without having to pull out the sewing machine (although it doesn't really show in the picture).  I then added my text, erased the score pattern in the way of the text, and built the kite.  Then I couldn't get my printer to print it.  It just doesn't seem to want to print on cardstock consistently right now.  This morning it printed just fine, but tonight it would not print at all.  So I had to settle for plain paper. :(  Then I cut out the kite and some vellum ties.  Once built, it still seemed like it needed something, so I added a cloud and some liquid pearls on the ties. 

A question?

I made this card for my former boss who is working on a very difficult project and I wanted to let her know we are all still thinking of her and supporting her in this new endeavor.  I used a single sheet of paper from the Stella and Rose 6 by 6 pad by My Mind's Eye.  When Paper Zone was going out of business, I bought a couple of packages of heavy weight vellum.  That vellum cuts beautifully in the Cameo making these butterflies truly gorgeous.  The sentiment is from that same Inkadinkado Garden Flowers set (just love the sentiments on that set) again stamped with Red Riding Hood ink from Stampin' Up.  I finished off the butterflies with a few liquid pearls. 

It's sad to say, because it means that I must be getting older, but I absolutely cannot remember where I found the inspiration for this card. I know I was looking through my sketch book, which has sketches from PageMaps and Mojo Monday, and browsed through both A Card-a-Day and The Best of Card Creations, both by Papercrafts. So I'm sure it must have come from one of those. But who knows which one?

But my real question of the day is:  am I the only one with kitty treats stocked in the craft room?  Zoey really only likes beef Temptations.  So I keep them on hand in my craft room for her. In addition, she now has a little bowl of her favorite dry food in there too (although all the furballs keep eating it too).  So I have a bag of food and I usually have a back-up package or two of Temptations, but Safeway ran this great sale recently so I was able to pick them up super cheap.  So now I have huge stockpile in the closet in my craft room, making me look like the crazy cat lady.  So am I the only one?