Winter Wonderland

As I drove to my retreat this weekend, I was truly passing through a Winter Wonderland as all the trees were dark and wet with the branches covered in snow. So very pretty. Especially since it was only enough snow to make it pretty, and not enough to have to shovel or make it hard for me to drive to the retreat. 🙂

I used a bunch of my new Lawn Fawn stamps to create this Winter Wonderland for the new Lawnscaping Challenge. Party Animal, Baah Humbug and Scripty Sayings all showed up in this scene. I used the long swirls of Hello You from Scripty Sayings to make a snowy little hillside for the friends to meet up under a Distress Ink sky.

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MFT Sketch Card Challenge: 262

I love card sketches. It’s a lot of fun to see how everyone interprets the same basic design. My Favorite Things has great card sketch challenges and I need to make some time to do more of them.

I turned it sideways and used my older Grand Peaceful Flowers stamp set to make a flower garden sympathy card that I hope I won’t need anytime soon.

I’ve been playing with some new-to-me Palette inks this weekend. I’m really liking the colors so far. A few sketch-placed sequins, and I popped it up from a plain white card base.

10/366 #yearofmaking

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Something New…

Ahhh…new love.

I’m a long way from new love,  but it’s still pretty awesome. 🙂 (Hi Honey!) I used a new combination of Tim Holtz stamp sets: Bird Crazy and Mini Blueprints 2. Simon Says Stamp is having a Something New challenge.

How can you say no to that face?!?

You can’t. That’s how. 🙂 He’s so adorable. Now I want to try all the other Mini Blueprints stamps and see what else he can hold in his crazy little wings. Off to make another card!

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I’m a Happy Camper

I got some great new Amuse stamps at the stamp convention in Madison in November. I’ve used a couple, but I’ve been wanting to paper piece this adorable camper ever since I got it. That’s one of my favorite things about Amuse stamps is they often have simple, open designs that lend themselves well to paper piecing. New Year = New Projects!

See that amazing Panda Stamp?!?!?! My amazing friend Makalah–Jump Into Stamping got that for me for my birthday. YAY for AWESOME friends! SHE made ME a Happy Camper. Thanks Makalah!

She’s SO cute!

 

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Succulents with Waffle Flower

A couple of friends came over yesterday to hang out with me, watch Big Bang Theory and make stuff. And eat mini-quiches. Can’t forget the mini-quiches. We like entering challenges and we made cards for the current Waffle Flower Photo Inspiration Challenge.

I love the colors in this. I don’t really have a lot of the new succulent stamps so I had to make do, but I like how it turned out.

 

I used the Rock My World stamp set to make a little cactus! Isn’t it cute?!? 🙂 Then I stamped one of the little flowers from that set and added some Wink of Stella to make it all glitzy. The Hello die is from My Favorite Things called Happy Hellos and the smaller little plant is from Simon Says Stamp.

The cards I made yesterday were 6/365 and this blog post is 7/365 #yearofmaking. 🙂

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Hello Happy!

My mom got me into stamping (Gee thanks Mom! 😉 ). When I first started, she gave me a set of blank notecards and some Stampin’ Up ink spots. I’ve had those notecards for a really long time now. The last online class I took was about using your supplies, Supplies on Hand and that spurred me to finally break these out. I also pulled out a bunch of the die cuts and chipboard that I’ve had for awhile. This is one of the first cards I made at my weekend retreat. The simple Kraft-like background worked well with the Waffle Flower Photo Inspiration and white space challenges.

 

I used the Waffle Flower Rock My World stamp set for the Hello, Laugh rock, and leaves.

The Close to my Heart blog also had a Choose Your Own Adventure type story and I followed along with that to get to my challenge. That challenge was to use the colors Goldrush, Honey, and Colonial White so I incorporated those too.

I didn’t finish using all the notecards, but I made a big dent and I hope to finish them soon!

And of course, Anything Goes at the Paper Girls Challenge Blog and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge!

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Take a Bow

Whew! It’s been awhile, huh?

Yeah, I missed you too 🙂

I’ve been busy doing real world stuff, but I should really work harder getting back here, so this is a start. I’m at a crafty little retreat this weekend watching A LOT of Big Bang Theory and hopefully making a bunch of cards for challenges. I have 9 pages of challenges to work on, so I had better get going. I will try and space these out over the next week or so. And I hear that NaBloPoMo is coming…

Anyhoo… First up is the challenge over at Curtain Call.

The theme is Burlap Banner and I knew I had some Burlap ribbon that has been in my collection for WAAAAY too long. I also got to use a great little die that I got from my mom (Thanks Mom!).

The thank you die is from Savvy Dies and I wanted to tie in the pattern on the circle with the pattern in the banner above. I also got to play with some sequins and my new feather stickers from Pretty Little Studios (I blame Ashli for this).

Because there’s a lot of “Anything Goes” challenges at the end of the month, this will also be entered into:
Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
The Paper Girls Challenge

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Be Inspired Challenge #53

The last batch of cards that I’ve made have turned out a lot more CAS than usual. Almost all were on plain white card bases with a top-folding orientation. I don’t really know why, but it’s been interesting to mix it up a little. In that vein, I found yet another challenge blog that I haven’t played with before. This one is BE Inspired and uses TheAlleyWay stamps.

Now that’s one fly party! (tee hee) I used TheAlleyWay Sushi Bar set with the crane in it. The chipboard sentiment is from the Basic Grey RSVP collection and I blinged (yeah, that’s totally a word!) it out a little with the best rhinestones out there–Stampin’ Up. The inks are all Hero Arts. Now…is it Saturday(Game Day) yet? Let’s Party!

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I’ll Take it To Go!

I have a really great little Lawn Fawn stamp set called Good Fortune that I’ve had for what feels like forever and I’ve never really used it. It has a great fortune cookie with interchangeable fortunes and a little take out box. I mean, I’ve used the teeny tiny heart from it, but that’s hardly the point, right? I was at my monthly crop this last weekend (can’t you tell? I mean, I’m doing a blog post 😉 ), and I really tried to limit the stamp sets I brought and that one made the cut. So it was finally my chance to use it!

 

 

 

YUM!

So cute, right? I don’t know why I didn’t get around to using this set before. I heat embossed the container with my new favorite Liquid Platinum embossing powder from Ranger on Cut & Paste paper from Amy Tangerine. I used a friend’s Cuttlebug embossing folder from the Decorative Tile set to add a little texture to the otherwise fairly simple card. I was going to stamp out the chopsticks that are in the set, but then I noticed my toothpicks and decided to cut those into chopsticks instead. A much better (and cuter) decision. 🙂

 

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Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

Happy National Scrapbooking Day Everyone!

I don’t actually scrapbook, but most of the crafty people I know, do. And most of the crafty people that are at the crop I’m at right now, are. 🙂 I was going to try and follow along with one of the online crops, but it seems a little overwhelming at the moment since I’m at a real one too. Instead of an online crop challenge, my friend Emily challenged me to enter 10 challenges with one card. I didn’t make it to 10. It’s possible that if I kept looking, I could have found more, but I wanted to make more than one card today, you know? 😉 Here it is!

One down!

Little Tangles is having a Peach and Mint challenge and the Sorbet Stampin’ Up paper pack from this latest Sale-a-Bration seemed PERFECT to use. The sentiments are from the Everyday Circles set and the banner is from Party Dots. “Birthday” is stamped in Fresh Peach ink from Hero Arts. I am using that banner stamp A LOT lately. Which is really funny since I bought the set because I loved the circles! And OF COURSE the “Happy” is embossed with the Ranger Liquid Platinum!

Once I had the colors, I needed a sketch, so I grabbed one from PaperTake Weekly. It’s their Sketchie Free for All so I chose Sketch #43. I used washi instead of a second layer of patterned paper and I love the circle sentiment with it.

And what to put in the middle for an image? A Camera!!! The Paper Girls Challenge blog is having a Paparazzi challenge, and everyone takes pictures at birthday parties so it’s perfect!

I have SO much patterned paper so I had to use some which fits perfectly with the Simon Says Stamp Work it Wednesday challenge and the Craftyhazelnut’s patterned paper challenge.

So…that’s only 5. I didn’t make it to 10, but then this post would be LOOONG! I still think I did well and it was really interesting to try and combine several different challenges into one card that still was cohesive. Happy Crafting!

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