Using what I have for some bright spring cards

I'm still not purchasing from Papertrey Ink, but I get a lot of inspiration from some of the Papertrey design team members. Here are a couple of cards that I made using stamps from other companies along with inspiration from the design team.

First up is a card inspired by Maile Belles. Click on her name to see the lovely card that inspired me (scroll down - it's the last card in her post). I loved the colors and the way she cut out the edge of the card along the outline of the butterflies. I bought the Amuse butterfly set called Papillon awhile back and was eager to use it. I have hundreds of butterfly stamps, but I think these may be the most beautiful ones of all. Here's my take on it:
 

Details: stamps - Papillon (Amuse), Thankful Blossoms (Verve); ink - Fresh Ink Pool, Amuse Grass, Amuse Blueberry, Versafine Onyx Black

Next is a card inspired by Jess Witty. Click on her name to see the beautiful inspiration card (scroll down to the pink/orange/yellow heart card). I really liked the colors of Jess's card as well as the repeating elements. I used a stamp from an old Fancy Pants stamp set. It's one horizontal line of diamonds. I used it eight times; two times each in four different colors. I flipped the stamp over each time I used it so that the text wouldn't look identical each time.

Details: stamps - Bella Brush (Fancy Pants), It's Your Birthday (Stampin' Up); ink - Memento Cantaloupe, SU Cameo Coral, SU Regal Rose, Memento Rosebud, Versafine Onyx Black

My boycott of Papertrey Ink

I have been thinking for several days about what I should say about Papertrey Ink. It's such a long story that I can't even begin to do it justice, so rather than telling the same story again, I'll give you some links to what others have said recently:


Donna C
Euna
Bonnie
Susan
Carmen

I encourage you to read these. If you do, you'll see that the common thread is an opinion that Papertrey Ink has a well-earned reputation for poor customer service. I have personally experienced this on several occasions over the past five years as a customer. Why did I take it for so long? Great products, plain and simple. But I've decided that I will no longer support a business that chooses to treat its customers with such disregard and what appears to be actual disdain. They have had so many opportunities to turn things around, and an exceedingly patient customer base, but they've shown time and time again that they either can't or won't invest in the time/manpower/coaching/whatever it would take to make them a great company. I don't really care if the problem is stubbornness, lack of money, lack of business skills, or something else entirely. I will not continue to send money into that abyss.

I own a lot of Papertrey products and will continue to use them on my projects. However, I will not be providing links or naming the company in blog posts, because I do not believe that they deserve any free advertising. I have edited previous blog posts to remove links and attribution as well. I urge you to consider joining me and others in our resolve to stop (or not start) giving Papertrey Ink any of our hard-earned money. There are so many other great companies out there that go out of their way to earn our business!

Edited on 4/2/12 to add: Today, I received a very gracious apology from Rick, Papertrey's forum administrator, and have had my access to the forum restored. I will be watching to see what other changes are made in the days and months to come.

Mehndi a la Laurie

Here’s a card that I made last month when I went on the scrapbook retreat. We had a pretty sketchy wi-fi connection that weekend, so I was pretty much on my own for ideas. This one came to me easily, because it was inspired by a lovely card by Laurie Willison, and I’ve made several similar cards over the past few months in various colors and textures. Funny thing is, I remembered that I was inspired by Laurie, but didn’t have her original blog post pinned so that I could find it again, so a working wi-fi wouldn’t have made any difference that weekend. After speed-surfing Laurie’s blog (and finding tons more inspiration on the way!) I found the original card that inspired me. Check it out and see her lovely card. Even funnier is the fact that Laurie was inspired by someone she forgot to pin, too!



Details: stamps – Mendhi Medallion, Signature Greetings; paper – Kraft, Stampers Select White, Bermuda Bay (Stampin’ Up); ink – Versafine Onyx Black, Lucky Limeade (Stampin’ Up); accessories – Cuttlebug embossing folder (I think the name is Textile Texture or something like that?), Nestabilities circle die, Corner Chomper (We R Memory Keepers)

Inspiration Challenge

Today's card was created for an inspiration challenge.



Maile’s card, which you can see above, used chevron stripes in a rainbow pattern. I thought I would make chevrons using my all-time favorite Maile-designed stamp set, Modern Basics. My love for this set is well known. In my opinion, it is the best stamp set on the planet, and will probably remain in that position for a long time to come.

I had a blast experimenting with chevrons using the shapes in this set! In the end, I went with this simple pattern. I only used two stamps from the set, the large solid 3-leaf stamp, and the corresponding single leaf. I love how easy it is to line up the stamps in Modern Basics, even if you’re covering a fairly large area. I started at the edge of the paper and lined up the center of the leaves right along the edge (see the blue stamps at the top of the strip) and then just built from there.

Here’s the card with no embellishment.



And since I’m indecisive, I put a ton of little adhesive-backed pearls on the second card. I like it both ways.


Just another view so that you can see the pearls better.


Details: stamps – Modern Basics, Think Big Favorites #3; paper – Kraft, Stampers Select White; ink – Versafine Onyx Black, Stampin’ Up Pacific Point, Perfect Plum, Regal Rose, Real Red, Summer Sun, Old Olive; pearl embellishments (source unknown)

A girly birthday card

This card is for a brand new challenge, Virginia’s View. This challenge is going to be a monthly one courtesy of the fabulous Virginia Lu. This is the inspiration photo that we were to use:



I love the colors and the dangling hearts, so I chose this dangling heart stamp from my collection and stamped it in various shades of pink and orange.



Details: stamps – Bright Spirits (Verve), Think Big Favorites #7; paper – White, Hibiscus Burst; ink (all Stampin’ Up) – Melon Mambo, Pink Passion, Cameo Coral; tools – large scallop border die

CASE Study Challenge #74

I decided to play along with the CASE Study Challenge this week. The muse right now is Jen Rzasa, who is one of my “must read” bloggers. I loved Jen’s design (see below), so I stayed with the same layout. I had scraps of the distressed dots paper on my table, so they became the focal point. I think this card is a first – I don’t think I’ve ever used fourteen dimensionals on a card that could end up being sent to a man!

The distressed dots paper started off as squares cut to 1 1/8 inch on my paper cutter. The black paper was punched with a 1 1/4 inch square punch. I used my corner chomper’s 1/2 inch cut to round opposite corners of all of the squares.

Here's my card:



Details: stamps – Birthday Bash Sentiments; paper – Rustic Cream; ink – Versafine Onyx Black; tools – 1 1/4 inch square punch (Stampin’ Up), Corner Chomper (We R Memory Keepers)

Here is the inspiration card by Jen for this week:

Scrappy birthday cards

Here are some colorful birthday cards created using scrap strips of various patterned papers. These were fun to make. The only tiny challenge was choosing the ink colors to go with the papers. I made these on the scrapbooking retreat a couple of weekends ago, where I had taken limited inks with me. I found that my dew drop Memento pads yielded close matches for pretty much every paper shown here.





Details: stamps – Birthday Bash Sentiments, paper – White, Kraft, Bitty Box Basics, Bitty Dot Basics, Distressed Dots, ink – various Memento inks; tools – Corner Chomper (We R Memory Keepers)