Casual Fridays-Make Your Mark

This week's challenge at the Casual Fridays blog is to use our markers.  I love this challenge because I love my markers!  I'm not a Copic crafter - really don't have a lot of time (or patience!) for that.  The Bic Mark It Markers are just right for me! 

A lot of color choices, easy to use and combine, and they don't leave the marker "lines" like some do.  They are a perfect alternative to the Copic challenged population - like myself!

Here's a card I came up with last night:

Flower Box and Everyday Sayings stamps (Hero Arts)

After I stamped the Flower Box on Kraft paper, I colored it and cut it out.  I popped it up on another piece of Kraft.  The edges were inked to add a little contrast.  To add a little more dimension, I added some brown pearls and another flower that I stamped, colored, and cut out. 

I'm leaving my markers out.  I had a lot of ideas floating around in my head, and now I want to see if I can get more use out of them!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

PTI January Blog Hop

Today is the 25th, which means it is Blog Hope time at PTI.  You can enter at Nicole's blog here and see all the beautiful entries.

This month's theme is:

Here's my card:

I die cut the heart from Framed Out #11 from True Black cardstock, then ran it through with the Canvas Impression Plate.  After tying the ribbon around the top, it was ready to go.So, I concentrated on the inside:

I lined up the red heart so that it would be centered in the larger die cut from the front and stamped my sentiment. 

Here's a peek from the side!

A few more of these, and I'll be ready for Valentine's Day!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Interactive Birthday Card

I created this card for my brother-in-law's upcoming birthday. It's in a couple of weeks, so I'm happy to be ahead of the game.  The color scheme is an easy one to choose for him.  He's a Texas Tech Red Raider, so black and red are go-to colors for him.

This card fits the challenge this week at CAS-ual Fridays is to make a card that is anything but A2 size, and the Make It Monday Challenge at PTI to package cards with oversize embellishments. The card base is 4x5, and with the pull tab, it measures at 4x6. 

I made this an interactive card by adhering the top and bottom with scor-tape so that the middle of the card could be pulled out.  Here is the inside:

The back can easily hold a gift card to a favorite restaurant.  I already know where I need to go to get that for my brother-in-law.  He has a favorite and hardly gets to go there.

Because this card will not fit in the standard A2 envelope, I dressed up a 4x8 envelope with a label, a birthday sentiment and a cluster of stars!  That should make him happy when he gets it in the mail. 


To play along with either of these challenges, just click the links above!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Rainbows and Repeats - post 2

This is my second post and second card for this week's Make It Monday challenge.  This card uses this combination that Nichole gave us:

I have a dear friend who has recently made a huge, life-changing decision - she's retiring!  So, I wanted to give her a little encouragement as she steps out into uncharted waters.

Here's her card:

This card uses the Wonderful Words dies and Additions stamp set.  I placed Scor-tape on the back of my cardstock before running it through my Big Shot.  This gave enough adhesive on the back to secure the delicate die-cut down.

There are several other color combinations that Nichole came up with for this challenge.  Click on the link above to see them all!

Thanks for visiting!

Rainbows and Repeats

I have two cards today - both for this week's Make It Monday Challenge.  Nichole challenged us to use repeat stamping or repeat die-cuts in rainbow color combinations.

For my first card, I chose this combination:

Here's what I came up with:

This one is a birthday card for a dear friend.  I used PTI's zig zag die, Sunshine Impression Plate and a sentiment from Up, Up and Away to create this one.  The sun die is from My Favorite Things.  I ran the center portion through the Xyron before laying it down in glitter. 

Thanks for visiting!

Cards Blog Challenge

I made a couple of cards today for the color challenge at Create: blog.  It's sponsored by Paper Smooches, a company in the middle of HUGE sneak peeks and a big giveaway.  You can see the peeks every day this month on the Paper Smooches blog.  

The challenge was to use this color combination:

And it was quite a challenge, but here's what I came up with!

Little Bitty Bird, Tiny Tags (PTI)

I created the little scene on the white cardstock panel using some felt and foam adhesive to give it some dimension.  The white panel is adhered behind a layered Mat Stack 3 window, with the grass making a border at the bottom.  To bring out more grey, I added the border strip at the bottom and completed it with the thin ribbon and tiny tag.  To give a little more sparkle to the card, I added a border of glitter to the white card base. 

For the second card, I used the same color of grey and placed some chartreuse die-cut leaves on it.  To soften both of those colors, I adhered a layer of vellum over them.  After stamping the sentiment, I added the aqua flowers and chartreuse bow.  The aqua served as the perfect card base for this card.

So, that's what I've been up to today.  It was rainy and cold all day, so I was happy to stay inside and get some crafting done.

Thanks for stopping by!

Make It Monday #98 - Again!

Big and Bold Wishes, Teacher's Apple, Winterberry (PTI)

I made this card for this week's Make It Monday.  The idea was rattling around in my head all day, and I was finally able to sit down this afternoon and see if I could make it work.  Betsy Veldman did a great job on the tutorial.  You can see her video and card if you click on Nichole's blog here. 

I followed Betsy's tutorial a little more this time than I did with my last card.  It was kind of intimidating, but I wanted to give it a shot.  I also added some sparkle on the apple with a Sakura pen, some pearls on the leaf clusters, and some texture on the card base with the Woodgrain Impression Plate.

Thanks for looking!