April Blog Hop - tissue paper

This month's challenge was to use tissue paper in a project. I chose to use the faux silk technique. I crumpled up my tissue paper and then smoothed it out to stamp on. After stamping, I glued it down to my white cardstock and proceeded to make my card.



Details: stamps - A Little Argyle, Masculine Motifs; ink - Hawaiian Shores, New Leaf, Dark Chocolate; paper - stampers select white, Hawaiian Shores, Dark Chocolate; accessories - tissue paper, Top Note die (Sizzix for Stampin' Up!), corner rounder punch (SU!), rustic jute button twine (colored with E40 Copic marker), Hawaiian Shores buttons, dimensionals

Hearts speak

This card is a bit outside my normal comfort zone, but I love the way it turned out. This is based on yet another sketch in Go To Sketches, this one on page 83. I was digging though a bunch of patterned paper and came across this great argyle paper, which was exactly what the sketch seemed to want. All of the paper is from the All Fall collection by Fancy Pants. I cut the flowers with the Beautiful Blooms II #1 dies, then stacked them up and put it all together with a rustic wood button tied with rustic jute button twine. The sentiment is from the Friendly Words jumbo wheel from Stampin' Up! Mine is cut up into separate sentiments and mounted on EZ Mount.



Details: stamps - Friendly Words jumbo Wheel (Stampin' Up!); paper - All Fall collection (Fancy Pants); ink - dark chocolate; accessories - dark chocolate satin ribbon, Beautiful Blooms II #1 dies, rustic wood buttons, rustic jute button twine

You make my heart sing

Oh, I had so much fun making this card! This is another sketch from Go To Sketches (page 28). I got to use some of my favorite patterned paper of all time, as well as the new anniversary set, Round & Round. And bling! Lots and lots of bling - 15 little rhinestones in all.



Details: stamps - Round & Round, Bird Watching; paper - white, Green Tea Leaves, spring moss; ink - pure poppy; accessories - 1 3/4" circle punch, circle Nestabilities (Spellbinders)

A very bright dotty card

Did you get your copy of Go To Sketches yet? No??? Run right out and get it now! There are some really fun things in there to shake you out of your crafting rut. This card was made using one of the sketches in there. I have a zillion sheets of fun patterned paper, so my only real dilemma here was deciding which paper to use. The circles were cut using a 1-inch circle punch. I love the silly little bird!



Details: stamps - Shapes By Design; paper - white, Lime Rickey (Basic Grey); ink - Memento Tuxedo Black; accessories - 1" circle punch

March Blog Hop - Button flowers

Thanks for visiting to see my blog hop creation for this month. Our challenge this month is to create something using buttons. No fancy tricks on this card. I was pleased to discover that this flower from the Beautiful Blooms set fits almost perfectly three across on a card front. I'm going to need to play around a bit more with this concept.



Details: stamps - Beautiful Blooms, Vintage Picnic Sentiments; paper - stampers select white; ink - Raspberry Fizz, Plum Pudding, Hawaiian Shores, Memento Tuxedo Black; accessories - buttons in Raspberry Fizz, Plum Pudding, Hawaiian Shores, glue dots

Springtime is for butterflies

How about some spring cards? I opened up my butterfly and rick rack dies today and made a couple of quick cards. I cut a bunch of butterflies from Basic Grey's Urban Prairie paper (love it to pieces!), glued down just their centers to my card base, then blinged them up with some rhinestones colored with my B04 Copic marker. The new rick rack die is amazing! Check out that cool border - it only takes about a second to make. And the color is Hawaiian Shores. Such a fabulous blue. The green paper at the bottom of the card is one of the sheets from the Urban Prairie pack.

A few of the butterflies have their patterns very carefully placed. If you want to cut from a specific spot in your patterned paper, just put a tiny bit of scotch tape across the edge of the die to hold it in place while you run it through your die cutter.

These cards were inspired by Lisa's great card here, which was in turn inspired by Heather Nichols.





Details: paper - Rustic White, Hawaiian Shores, Urban Prairie (Basic Grey); accessories - butterfly and rick rack dies, rhinestones (Kaisercraft), Copic marker

A musical clean and simple card set

I have a stamping idol. Her name is Susan Raihala. Susan is the queen of clean and simple stamping. You can visit her blog, Simplicity by Lateblossom, if you'd like to see for yourself. Get a beverage first - you're going to be there awhile. But do come on back here to see my latest project inspired by Susan.

I've had these great music stamps for awhile, planning to make something for my daughter's music teacher. Teachers go through many thank you cards, so I made a special musical set for Mrs. Elliott. These are 4x4 cards. I made 20 of them, two different designs, five colors, two of each color in each design. Quick and easy and so very cute.

I don't use my stamp-a-ma-jig very much now that all of my stamps are unmounted, but it was necessary for these cards. Not much leeway for crooked sentiments on such unadorned cards! It was worth the effort, though.




I packaged the cards and envelopes in a cellophane bag with a simple topper. I liked the treble clefs in a row on my scrap that I used to choose the ink colors, so I replicated it for the topper. Easy peasy. I should have gone ahead and used the stamp-a-ma-jig here, too. It bugs me a little bit that the treble clefs aren't perfectly in line, but I'm going to let that slide.



Details: stamps - treble clef and eighth note by Stampabilities, thank you sentiments from Stampin' Up!'s Thank You Kindly set, handmade sentiment from Spiral Bouquet set; paper - white, spring moss, spring rain; ink - spring rain, spring moss, raspberry fizz, aqua mist, orange zest, Memento tuxedo black; accessories - stamp-a-ma-jig, cellophane bag, 4x4 envelopes