Another Baby Card Featuring Wild Child from Newton's Nook

I'm still working on using the images from the Wild Child set from Newton's Nook that I inked up and colored while on our quick trip to Seattle for Sandy Allnock's class at Impress.  For today's card, I was inspired by a past sketch up at Freshly Made Sketches. I was looking for something to use as the layout.  I didn't exactly follow the sketch, but it gave me an idea of what to do. 

I cut the colored Wild Child image out using my Lawn Fawn Stitched Journaling Card (I love that die!).  I cut a panel of paper from the Day Dreamer 6x6 pad from Dear Lizzy/American Crafts and cut a few banners from other paper from the pad.  Then it was just a matter of layering them together and using some pop dots for focal image.  I finished it off with some sequins from Doodlebug topped with some Stickles. 

Miyako and Kate Take Two

Since I wasn't happy with some of my choices on my first attempt with the Miyako and Kate stamp from Whimsy Stamps designed by the amazing Sandy Allnock, I immediately decided to start a second one so I could leave the shoes a lighter color.  I changed up a few things, such as the colors, but followed quite a bit of the same technique.  I even built the card the same way, but this time used a piece of paper from the Maggie Holmes for Crate Paper Flea Market 6x6 paper pad.  I like the overall look of the coloring of this one better, but I like the cat on the first one better (it looks more like my beautiful Smoke). 

Off to Denver - Card One

Well I know I've been away from the blog for a bit again.  It's been a rough time at work.  As I mentioned before, one the management team I'm on passed away.  He was a heck of a nice guy and I have to walk by his office is the one next to mine so I'm reminded of the loss every day.  Then I'm short staffed but also need to get my staff out for vacations before the end of year craziness begins so we are REALLY short staffed.  By the time I get home every night, I'm just completely wiped out mentally.  It was even worse this last week when there were a few days were there were only two of us managers for several weeks and the big boss (great guy that I have worked with for more than a decade) asked me to be the go-to manager for any issues.  Fortunately there were few issues, but it was a long, tiring week.  Now I'm off for a different type of long tiring week - it's time for one of the annual conferences I attend.  This time I'm in Denver, but I started at 2:30 a.m. today and I suspect it will be 11:30 p.m. or so before I finally call it a day.  Since I never sleep well on these trips and I find myself spending all day at the conference, a few hours socializing with my cohorts and a few hours trying to keep up with the work back home, it's likely to be a week of a bunch of 16 to 18 hour days of go-go-go all away from the hubster.

So, like I've been doing for many trips now, I have made a series of cards to leave behind to remind him how much I love him even when I'm away.

For today's card, I found inspiration on Stampin' Pretty in the form of a card done by Tracy Casil that you can find here.  It was super fund and easy to do.  Of course, I didn't have the stamp that she used, so I created my own word art in Word then printed it out.  I used my score board to emboss a border.  I found a heart shape in my Silhouette library of downloads.  I cut it out in various colors of scraps from the never ending scrap bin.  For texture, I used the Candy Cane Stripes embossing folder from Cuttlebug.  One I had the card put together, I thought the sentiment and hearts still needed something.  So I used the cute little heart from the Lawn Fawn Home Sweet Home set filled in with some Glossy Accents on the sentiment and some Stickles on the cut out hearts to add a little something something.

Bee-You-Ti-Ful

I love the honeycomb and bee theme I've been seeing around for a while now, but I've never used them myself until I found inspiration in SwanLady21's card on the Silhouette blog.  I purchased the honeycomb background and bee at 50% off with Silhouette's sale earlier this week (love those sales - I always have a wish list of things that I want to get some time and those sales are the perfect time to clear out that list).  I didn't have any bee stamps or sentiment stamps that fit, so I cut the "you" and hand stamps the rest with my Ginger alpha stamps from American Crafts.  I used some paper from the 6x6 Take a Hike pad from Simple Stories for the bee body and a page from the Beautiful Moments 6x6 pad from Carta Bella to back the honeycomb.  When I was done, I thought it still "needed something."  I pulled out my black Stickles to accentuate the "you" and added some Stardust Stickles to the dots and the bees wings.  I then still thought it wasn't quite enough so I added some dots of Glossy Accents to the honeycomb.  It's pretty subtle, but I like it. 

Rainbow Birthday Wishes

I absolutely loved this card I found via Pinterest from SplitCoast Stampers from Yours Truly.  She tells the story of having to rescue the rainbow from her card when she messed up stamping the sentiment (now who hasn't done that before?), but I think her "rescue" turned out amazing and I just had to try it for myself.  I used seven shades of Distress Ink and a lot of post-it notes for masking.  I love how it turned out with the Darice rainbow studs sprinkled on it.  The sentiment is from that Inkadinkado Garden Flowers stamp set.  It's funny how many stamps sets I have with sentiments, but I find there are several that I use all the time:  this one and the Fiskars All Occasions set are probably the most used sets I own.  I added a few more studs and little dot of Stardust Stickles to finish it off.  Quick, easy and adorable!

Hallie's Birthday Card

Yesterday, my eldest niece finally got her birthday card and I realized I had not posted it yet.  It was a fun card inspired by this post on Beak Talk.  I wanted to make sure it was in fun bright colors so decided to use the Sunny Side collection from Pebbles.  I just love the colors and patterns in that 6 by 6 pad.  For the background I used the Large Petal embossing folder from Darice.  The sentiment comes from the Fiskars set All Year Greetings.  I just love that set.  It's so versatile.  But the card still needed a little something, so I added some Diamond Stickles for a little bit of bling.  What girl doesn't love a little bit of bling?

A Lovely Christmas Card

I saw this cute little card on Julie Davidson's blog, Julie's Stamping Spot.  I just loved that it took a die I already have and turned it into something else completely.  Although I loved her color choices, I knew immediately that I wanted to use this lovely little poinsetta I found in the Silhouette store.  It turned out to be a very simple little card to put together because it's really just two passes of the Sizzix top note die and some cuts on the Cameo.  I added a brad and some Stickles for a little sparkle.  It's really a lovely card in person.

It's been a long time...

...Since I did a full layout. I guess I've been in card mode a lot lately. Plus I really haven't much creative mojo or energy lately. It seems like all I do is go to work and sleep. But this weekend, although it went way too fast, I had just had a great time and felt more like myself. We went to an afternoon hockey game yesterday with my parents and had a great time. Today we went to my niece's 11th birthday party. Then a little grocery shopping, some laundry, a little yard work, a new recipe for dinner (Cheesy Potato Soup - so easy and quite delicious) and I even found some time to play in my craft room tonight where I was inspired to do a layout of this great picture of my parents after a long exhausting day at SeaWorld in 2009. I used a PageMaps layout (aren't they fabulous?) for inspiration. I used a piece of Colorbok paper from a pad I found at TJ Maxx (love the great deal on paper there) and a lot of designs from the Silhouette design studio (the banners are new ones this week).

My first wedding layout

So, this month, as you know, hubby and I celebrated our 7th anniversary and I'm hesitant to admit this, but (deep breath) I've never scrapbooked our wedding pictures. Sure I managed to get all the pictures in an album, but I haven't scrapbooked a single page yet even though my mother has finished an entire album about my wedding. Although I do have to point out that she's retired and I still work a full time job, but on the other hand, my parents have such an active social life I need a calendar just to keep up with them. But I've decided to let it all go. No more shameful hiding of my secret. It's out there. You know what? So what? I don't care. There, I said it. I have decided to let inspiration dictate what and when and if I scrapbook it.

Funny enough, just as I came to this conclusion, I became inspired to do my first by a memory that came back to me over the weekend. Saturday night, hubby and I were at the hockey game. We ended up sitting in this quiet section. I was looking down on the seats at the end of the ice and this memory popped into my head of the game years ago. I was sitting in that section I was looking at when I bought my white jersey back in high school. It made me smile thinking about how back then buying the jersey didn't seem like all that big of a deal (although it quickly became my favorite to wear), but in fact, it would eventually become my wedding "dress". I knew that night I would have to scrapbook that for my wedding album and the next night when I saw the sketch from Sketch Inspiration, I knew it was the one for that idea.

This time I chose to showcase a number of things that I don't usually do or take things one more step than I usually would. Lately, I've been pushing myself to move out of my comfort zone. First, this is the first time that I've printed my journaling directly onto the background paper. Yes, I know that I've had a fabulous 12 by 12 printer for nearly a year now, but I've spent so much time working on 8 by 8 pages, that I never got around to using the printer for what I wanted it for in the first time. Also, I've hand-stitched on layouts before, but I haven't added beads to that stitching on a layout until now.

I've used stamps and Stickles, but rarely do I use Stickles over the top of stamps (here I was inspired to try it because my ink was just not quite the right color):

Although I've inked edges quite a bit and do a little distressing, I've never quite gone so far as to distress and ink an entire large flower before (actually I really like how it turned out).

So I encourage you to join me and let go of that mindset that says "I have to scrap something" as if scrapping should ever be considered a chore or something on a to-do list. It's incredibly freeing. Scrap what you want to scrap when you want to scrap it. Then drag out your supplies and give them a try in a way you haven't done before and stop by Sketch Inspiration (or become a member) for a little inspiration of your own.

Happy Birthday (and another birthday card)

And first a word from our sponsor (well not really) I just want to take the time to say:

Happy Birthday Aunt Margie!

Okay, now on to today's project, which is a birthday card, but not the one I made for Aunt Margie, which can be seen here. I bought this stamp set called Garden Flowers by Inkadinkado. I don't know why but it doesn't look like the one on their website. What's odd is the picture there is missing the one stamp that caused me to buy the set: this beautiful, elegant flower (I'm not even 100% sure what type of flower it's supposed to be). But when I saw it on the picture on Scrapbuck.com, I decided I needed to get that stamp set. So when I started digging through my stamp sets looking for something for a birthday card for a girl, this one jumped out at me. I happily peeled it off the backing and went to work. I didn't need any kind of sketch to get me started, this one just fell in place. Unfortunately, there's been a theme lately of bad photography because the picture just doesn't really do the card justice. I added just a touch of Stickles to the flower and it really shines (ha ha) in real life, but I just couldn't really show that in my picture (also the brads don't look quite so wonky in real life - I swear I used a Stampin' Up paper piercing template so they really are evenly spaced and look quite a bit straighter in real life). Maybe this picture gives you a hint of the sparkle to the card. It's really funny, before the Stickles I thought it was an okay card. But just a little tracery of Stickles on the flower and I absolutely fell in love with the finished product and knew it was "just right." Isn't it funny how sometimes we just know when it's done and others we just know it's not?

Just a little project tonight - I Feel the Love

By the time we got home from camping and finished unpacking, I didn't feel like doing much but I also needed to finish up my card for the I Feel the Love Project for August. I had an idea that I was working on but I couldn't quite bring it together, so I went a completely different direction. Madison had mentioned that Kate liked pink and rainbows, so I pulled out my Simply Charmed cartridge and glitter paper (what little girl doesn't love glitter?) along with some scraps and a piece of my new Cotton Candy Pop Tone paper I got in Paper Zone's great sale this past week. Add a couple of clear embossed butterflies using the Thinking of You set from Inkadinkado plus some Stickles and this is what I get:

The one tool every papercrafter needs...

It's starting to become quite a tradition to make a card on Friday night. I'm becoming addicted to watching Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday videos. The cards are always so cute and inspirational. Now usually I don't have the products she shows and today was no exception. I don't have the cute little ticket die or the stamps, so I made a ticket using Sure Cuts a Lot. Once I had the basic outline made, I copied it, shrunk, put the new image on it's own layer, and used the program to center the smaller one in the middle of the bigger one. I then drew the smaller outline using my Cri-kits pens and then cut the larger outline to get my "ticket." I chose the word from the "Warm Words" collection from Stampin' Up because I need a thank you card to send to a woman who provided us a lot of help in a recent project at work. I used the paper scraps from the birthday card for my mother-in-law last weekend, and some plain grosgrain ribbon I picked up at Dollar Tree. So, unlike how nice Christina's looked, mine still looked a little plain to me, which is odd because normally I really like a plain style. But this time, it needed something. So I added a mat with DCWV card stock, a little pierced line using my Stampin' Up paper piercer and added some Cotton Candy Stickles to the centers of the big flowers.

Now it looked better, but something just wasn't right, which brings me to the one tool every paper crafter needs: the Cricut Spatula. Now you may be thinking, really? I don't even have a Cricut. Or maybe, I have a Cricut but I rarely use the spatula. How can it be that important?

Well let me ask you this: Have you ever taped down a piece of paper on your project and realized it's not straight at all or you don't really like it there only to discover that the paper has adhered enough that you can't really move it? Okay so you all may be perfect, but it happens to me all the time. Like tonight on this card where I realized that what was wrong was the ribbon knot was too messy looking. Of course that meant I have to take up the paper. So I slipped the thin blade of the spatula under the paper and used the blade to separate the mat from the patterned paper. The tape sticks to the spatula and can easily be rubbed off the metal surface (you can still see a little on my spatula in the picture since I hadn't really cleaned it yet). It worked like a charm and I've done it probably hundreds of time now. Once they were apart, I tied the ribbon again to get a neater knot and then re-taped the paper with my ATG gun.

So that's it. Now I'm happy with it.

Stickles, stickles and more stickles

Cheryl at Cafe Expressions has a great Stickles blog candy. Head over there and check it out! Some lucky winner is going to have some real fun blinging it up!