Saturday, June 25, 2011

June Blog Hop

 This month's blog hop challenge was to use this photo for inspiration and create a project.


 
I tried and tried to get this uploaded in time for the blog hop, but missed it by one minute. Oh well. I still love the way it turned out!



Monday, June 20, 2011

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge - Color Block

This week's CAS-ual Fridays Challenge is to use color blocks in a project. I had an idea that ended up coming together very quickly. I'm super excited about this design and can't wait to make lots more cards like these. It turns out to be a perfect way to use up lots of those little scraps of cardstock that you can't bear to throw away but are not sure you'll ever use.

A patriotic thank you, perhaps for a soldier?


 A colorful birthday card.


 A sweet card for a friend.


My scraps were cut to 1 1/2 by 3 inches. I marked guidelines on the back to make it easier to get the punches exactly where I wanted them. I love the Tim Holtz Design Ruler for this! I put a black punch-out in the photo below to show where I punch once I have my pieces marked. No need to erase the marks because they're on the back.

Once my pieces were punched, I put dimensional foam in all four corners and adhered them to my card base. There is 1/4 inch between pieces and 1/4 inch at the top and sides. I found it easiest to place the two end pieces first and then center the middle one between them.


Details: stamps - Enjoy the Ride ("happy birthday"), Giga Guidelines ("just because"), Think Big Favorites #4 ("thank you"); paper - Stampers Select White, Kraft, Pure Poppy, Brilliant Blue (Stampin' Up!), Summer Sunrise, Orange Zest, New Leaf, Hawaiian Shores, Lemon Tart; ink - Onyx Black (Versafine)

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Party gift

We were invited to a 50th birthday surprise party for a dear friend this weekend. Her husband requested gag gifts. Here's ours:



This was great fun to put together. I used a random basket that I found in my garage, plus some blocks of floral foam (about $4 for a big package from Hobby Lobby; I only used about half of it), and three bags of Tootsie Pops. For the "50 sucks" sign, I used the By the Numbers dies for the numbers, and the Simple Letters Sizzix dies from Stampin' Up for the letters. I taped a few popsicle sticks on the back with Scor Tape and then stuck the sign into the floral foam. Easy peasy!

Eagle-eyed readers will spot one Blow Pop in the front row of the Tootsie Pop basket. Three bags of pops should have given us 51, but we were bitten by the "about 17 servings" bug, and three bags actually only contained 49. So we found one lonely Blow Pop in the house and used it as a stand in.