Inspired by Pinterest - Yes, It's Back!

Even though I was a little nervous after the virus, I did go back to Pinterest and, of course, found some wonderful inspiration from a blog I've never seen before and am totally in love with now.  The blog is called The Card Grotto and she has a delightful clean and simple style that I just adore.  I explored her blog looking for this card, pinned on Pinterest to the blog, rather than the post.  But I'm grateful that I had to spend a little time looking for it.  I made my own version using my Expressions and Frames set of stamps from Inkadinkado, some Imaginesce bling, the Swiss Dots Sizzix embossing folder and a butterflies cut on my Cameo using an Echo Park design. 

Loved this one...

I just loved this card that I found on Pinterest and followed through to the original source here.  It was so beautiful.  I completed missed the white on white background, but I like how my card turned out.  I modified a butterfly pattern I had purchased in the Silhouette Design Studio store.  Then cut it out in a rainbow of colors, added some lovely Darice and Imaginesce gems, stamped my sentiment from the Inkadinkado All Occasions set and then finished it off with some dots of black ink.  So pretty! 

Missing My Friend

So today's Learn Something New Every Day post made think about things that used to be part of my daily life but aren't anymore.  The absolutely first thing that came to mind is my friendship with Val.  We used to talk nearly every day.  Now we're lucky if we talk four or five times a year.  She's busy with school, work, family, church and her other friends. I understand that, but it doesn't mean that it hurts any less that I feel like I don't have a place in her life anymore.  So today's journal entry was about losing that close friendship we used to have and I made a page to go with it. 

I pulled out a collection pack that I bought at the sidewalk sale at Craft Warehouse this summer.  It's Crate Paper's Paper Heart Collection.  It's a pretty lovey-dovey set that I actually bought to scrapbook some of our wedding pictures with, but there's a couple of papers in there that I just love that are a bit more neural, like this background page, which I absolutely adore.

I love, love, love the sayings in the Echo Park collections.  They always just seem to be perfect.  The only problem was that the color of this saying was all wrong for my layout.  So I printed the print and cut design out from my Silhouette Studio, scanned it and opened it in Photoshop.  I then filled the text with colors that went with my layout and cut it out again.  The only problem was the white cardstock I had printed it on was too white.  So I used a little Old Paper Distress Ink to age it a little.  Now it was the absolute perfect embellishment. 

I added some Recollections pearls that were part of my stocking stuffers this year (thanks Mom!), some Prima and Imaginesce flowers and Darice bling.  The little tickets are from a border strip in the Crate Paper collection and the heart is from my new stamp set from Inkadinkado called Hearts.  I finished it off with some Thickers letters (my new obsession) and some rub on letters I found in my stash.  The top flower has an extra little eyelet tucked behind the gem because it's the pull tab for my hidden journalling. 

I had today off and used the day to try the smoker out by myself for the first time to smoke a couple of piece of pork that we had left over from buying meat at Costco.  Pretty dismal failure although Hubby saved the day when he got home.  But my attempt at dinner was much better.  I found a lovely crock pot recipe for Cashew Chicken on Pinterest posted by Six Sisters' Stuff.  I changed it up a little by doubling the sauce.  Then just a little before we were ready to eat, I dumped in a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies.  It was wonderful, although next time I think I'll triple the sauce.

Then we finally sliced the apple pie we made yesterday after canning apple pie filling from the apples we picked in the afternoon.  Yum!

The Card Inspiration Just Keeps Coming

I'm still working through all the inspiration I found last Friday on the blogs.  I found this adorable ribbon waterfall card on the Imaginesce blog.  I wanted to try it out for myself with a little paper from DCWV that I picked up in the great sale at Joann's last Friday.  Then I had a blast altering an embellishment I found in the Silhouette Design Studio store to match the colors in the DCWV paper.  I am still so amazed at all the things I can in that program and it seems like I learn something new every day. 

Another Recycled Sketch

For some reason I find myself going back to the same sketches from time to time.  I made this card in a tan and light greenish color and really liked it.  So I thought I would switch it up.  I also find myself reaching for the same 6x6 pad of Stella and Rose from My Mind's Eye.  I really do love that one.  Little did I know when I picked it up during last year's Craft Warehouse "sidewalk" sale that it would become one of my favorites.  It's funny too how papers that I'm just not completely in love with when I pull them out of the pad, I just completely adore when the project is completed.  So here's a fabulous remake of a card I love with a little printing from my Word processor (Vivaldi font) and a stamp from the Paperwork Greetings set from Inkadinkado along with Red Riding Hood ink from Stampin' Up.  The flower is one of my favorites I've downloaded from the Silhouette Design Studio with a little yellow gem from Imaginesce using my Irock and a some random crochet thread.

Inspired by a Winner

I was trolling my favorite blogs for inspiration and found it!  Paper Players was showing their winners and one of them just spoke to my creative heart.  They featured this amazing pinwheel card by Karen Day and I just knew I had to try it out myself.  Now, I could have downloaded clouds, the pinwheel and grass from the Silhouette Design Studio.  They had them, but I elected to make the pinwheel and the clouds myself.  It was fun to have to think through how to do it and I have to admit that I'm enjoying learning how to the use the program to create my own designs.  The only regret I have is that I did not make the pinwheel a little bit bigger on this card.  The blue, brown and green papers are card stock from DCWV.  The pinwheel itself was cut from a scrap from the Stella and Rose 6x6 pad from My Mind's Eye and finished off with a pearl from Imaginesce using my Irock.  The sentiment is one of my absolute favorites for birthdays.  Its from the Garden Flowers set from Inkadinkado.  The clouds were filled with Fun Flock from Stampendous!

Freshly Made Sketches #39

I just wasn't sure about this week's Freshly Made Sketches' sketch.  The samples were all very wonderful, but I just couldn't envision a finished product of my own.  But once I found this cute damask paper in the Stella and Rose 6x6 pad from My Mind's Eye, the whole card just started to fall into place.  I used the cute little sentiment from Fiskar's All Year Greetings stamped in Mocha Mama, a fabulous chalk ink from Quick Quotes.  I forget how wonderful their ink works for stamping sentiments.  The flower is my favorite one from the Silhouette Design Studio, but this time I made a little change to it.  While it's my favorite flower, it's really a pain in the rear to put together in a small size.  So I took a little time this time to copy, paste and weld the smaller petals together so I could put it together in much fewer steps.  It worked perfectly, but, of course, this time I was using a larger flower, so I'll have to give it a try on a smaller flower down the road to see just how much easier it really is.  I added a little Old Paper Distress Ink to give the flower and leaves a little more depth.  An Irock gem from Imaginesce finished it off.  I truly think it's one of my favorites.  It may be very simple, but that's the way I like it. 

Happy Father's Day

Today this post is going up as we drive to the restaurant to share a meal with both my father and father-in-law. It's wonderful that I still have them both in my life and that they live close enough that we can spend time together all the time (like on Friday night when we called my mom and dad on the spur of the moment to see if they could have dinner with us). I know that I'm very lucky in that regard.

So today I want to share with you the father's day cards I made. I was trolling the blogs on Friday night when I came across a video posted on My Creative Time about using punches on a card. Well, of course, I didn't have the right size of punch, sheer ribbon, a cute little charm or anything like that, but I did have my imagination. I cut the squares, the used my Sure Cuts a Lot program to cut a scalloped mat that I found on the DoodleLicious blog, then cut the charm out of the Fabulous Finds cartridge and stamped it with this stamp from the "It's All Good" set from Stampin' Up. The charm wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it gets the job done. I used regular ribbon instead of sheer. The best part about it is the whole thing is the paper. I had this little 6x6 Mini Deck from the Cosmo Cricket called Wanted that I won at a Cricut class at Craft Warehouse some time ago. The paper has these little cowboys on it. Since my father-in-law worked on a dairy, I thought it was perfect. The sentiment on the inside says "Happy Father's Day to a true cow-boy."

My dad's card was inspired by a post I found on the Paper Zone blog. It wasn't so much the twisted easel format, but the argyle design. I immediately thought back to this whole pack of paper I bought at CKC this year. I just LOVE argyle, especially this argyle paper from Fancy Pants called Recess in the All Fall line. I immediately thought of that paper for my card. So while I wasn't up to trying a twisted easel, I did get my inspiration from their project. I made a little square ribbon slide on Sure Cuts a Lot, used my Cri-Kit gel pens to write the sentiment (although it does look a little fuzzier than I would like. Then just matted the paper with some card stock from DCWV and made the card body with kraft paper from The Paper Company. At first the ribbon slide seemed a little too stark. It was a much brighter white than the argyle paper. So I used a waded up tissue with little Stampin' Up Old Olive ink to give it a little more color to match the bit of color in the argyle paper. You just can't really see that detail in this picture.

Then I still had to make a card for my mother-in-law's birthday tomorrow. I had just watched a video on a shutter card on You Tube and decided to give it a try. I turned out okay but I did learn that you need to use STIFF card stock for your base. I chose a textured card stock that wasn't very stiff after all that cutting and folding, so it makes the card a little difficult to close back up. I'm pretty sure this was a very old piece of DCWV because I found it loose in my paper cupboard when I was looking for patterned paper, but I don't know for certain. The [patterned paper was also a loose piece in with some others that I found when looking for a coordinating color for the original paper I had chosen, which I abandoned for this one. I liked the butterfly pattern on the other paper, but I couldn't find a coordinating paper that I liked. This one is a double sided paper and I thought both sides were perfect. I also learned that laying out the pieces with the card open doesn't work. I had them all arranged in a way I liked, glued them down and then closed the card and, eeeekkkkk, it looked terrible. I had all the same papers on the front of the card. So I did a double layer of patterned paper on a box on the front to give it a little mix. So if you try the card, don't glue down the paper until you've seen what it looks like closed too. So then I just stamped my front sentiment from the "Lots of Thoughts" stamp set from Stampin' Up and added my inside sentiment stamped from the Stampin' Up "Congrats" set.

I'm thinking that if I try this card again, I might try using pictures where all the yellow paper with the soft blue mats are (the ones you can't hardly see in this picture). These are all hidden when the card is closed but would be something that would be really nice to display for a while for the recipient.

So Happy Together

I had been looking at this Sketch Inspirations layout #220 for days before I even started it and even then it took me two days to finish it. I even missed the deadline for the contest because I couldn't quite figure out how to make it all come together. But, at least I finally got it finished. The white, blue and pink cardstock is from DCWV Pastel Stack. The pink vertical paper is from DCVW Stack 5 and was scored on my score pad. The blue paper was run through my Sizzix with the Swirls folder. The circles and hearts were cut using Sure Cuts A Lot with my Cricut and the flower is from Imaginisce. The Joy photo turn and brads are from Joann's Essentials. The font is Bradley Hand ITC. The thread for the circle is from Prism.

Tickled Pink?

I'm still working on some of the challenges from Craft Warehouse's blog party this weekend. Tonight I finished a sketch challenge (you can still play along until Midnight on Tuesday) in which we had to interpret a sketch in our own way. I loved the sketch but for this layout it was going to work better rotated for what I had in mind.

The original sketch has the title running vertically along the right side of the page. I used cardstock from DCWV's Brights stack for the base, layering strips of paper from DCWV's Nana's Kids stack and a small piece of cardstock from a DCWV Pastel stack for my journalling tag. The journalling tag was cut out with the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge, then layered with a fabric flower and small button. The title and two edge strips were cut from a page of white glitter paper from Creative Imaginations. I used two EK Success edge punches to make the half-flower and bracket glittered strips. The flamingo brads are from the Eyelet Outlet (love them) and the fabric flowers are from the Bazzill Collection from Imaginisce. I finished the title off with small Irock gems.