Play Date Cafe #80

This week's challenge at the Play Date Cafe is beautiful!  Here's the link to play along, and here's the inspiration photo:

You don't see red paired with orange too often, so this was a bit of a challenge.  I've seen a lot of designers using white panels on white card bases lately, and haven't tried it yet.  I gave it a try with this challenge and here's how it ended up:

I used the Vineyard Impression plate from Papertrey Ink on the card base, and cut the panel for the flowers on a 4x4 square.  After I stamped the flowers, I added some holographic embossing powder to the images to give them a bit of shimmer.  The bow is made from Orange Zest satin ribbon and the little tag is from PTI's Tiny Tags set and die. 

I'm considering a couple of other cards with this color combo, but have to take a nap first before I attempt them! 

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Bee Happy!

I love the new line of stamps from Paper Smooches!  I want them all, but since I have a child to clothe and feed, I have resisted the urge to order them!  Kim also provides her blog readers with some digital stamps too!  Love that!

I wanted to use the chubby little bee digi-stamp for a card, but I wasn't sure exactly how it was going come together.  So, last night, before I went to bed, I colored the bees with Aquacolor pencils, and then outlined the eyes and colored in the wings and stingers with my Sakura Stardust pen.  After adding some Glossy Accents to the eyes to help them stand out, I let them sit overnight.

This morning, I wasn't really sure where to go from there.  Then I saw a fabulous sketch at Unscripted Sketches, and everything seemed to fit together for me.

Here's my card using Kim's digi-stamps and the sketch:

Here's a close-up of one of the little cuties.  Hopefully, you can see the accents and sparkle on him:

This was a super-fun card to make! 

Thanks so much for visiting My Happy Place!

More Wee Memories

Did I tell you that I loved paper-piecing?  LOVE IT!  I think I love it so much because by stamping on patterned paper, I really don't have to color in the images, which takes some time.  Time.  We all need more time, don't we?  Boy, there's a blog post waiting to happen - really an entire blog should be devoted to that topic, but then, who has the time for that?

I digress.

I love paper piecing and wanted to play along again with Jenny @ Wee Memories this week.  I had a little "sussie" to give to one of my friends at school, and wanted a cute tag to go along with it.  Here it is:

Do the bugs make you giddy?  Good! They should, because they are from Paper Smooches "Giddy Bugs" set.   Oh, they are cute, cute, cute, and perfect to paper-piece!

Here's a closeup where you can see the sparkle in the sentiment and on the lightning bug:

I'm blessed to have friends to which I can give gifts.  I hope she likes it.

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Paper Dolls #36

Jen Carter has recently brought us a wonderful challenge at the Paper Dolls Blog.  It's really no surprise to me because I have always admired Jen's creative color combos that she comes up with for her projects.  Here is the inspiration photo that she used for the challenge - and she also bought the fabulous quilt!

I love quilts.  I sleep with an old, old handmade quilt every night, so I loved this photo and want to go and find this quilt for myself.

Here's what I came up with:

I used the stamp set Sending You from Papertrey Ink and stamped the flowers in Hawaiian Shores and Pure Poppy.  The leaves were stamped in Simply Chartreuse.  After stamping the sentiment and matting the panel on Hawaiin Shores, and then mounting it on Harvest Gold, I filled in the centers with some yellow stickles, which had to be left to dry for quite some time.

It looks a little "folksy" to me, which is something I haven't really ever tried.

You should come and play along with this challenge by clicking here.  All of the Dolls' challenges are open for quite awhile and anyone can play along.  We are just trying to have fun and enable each other!  Join us!  The more the merrier!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Wee Memories & Play Date Cafe

As I promised yesterday, I have another card using the AWESOME color challenge from this week's Play Date Cafe.  You can click here for the challenge information.  Here's the inspiration photo:

I also wanted to play in the Wee Memories challenge for the week, which is paper piecing.

 
I LOVE paper piecing!  It may be my favorite stamping technique.  Here's what I came up with for these two challenges:

This card has so much of what I love!  Scattered Showers stamp set from Papertrey Ink, Fiskars grass border punch, paper piecing, polka dots, dies, and a little bling.

I die cut the clouds from the white cardstock and matted it with the grey patterned paper so it could peek out from behind.  I paper-pieced the umbrella using Bitty Dot Basics from PTI.  After I secured everything and stamped the sentiment, I felt like there was too much white space, so I added the silver beads to resemble rain drops.  I was really happy with how it turned out.

Here's the inside:

I hope you have some time to play along with these two challenges! Thanks for taking the time to visit My Happy Place!

Make It Monday #13 and Play Date Cafe

This week's Make It Monday, brought to you by Erin Lincoln, is FUN - with a capital F!  When Papertrey Ink began to sell Impression Plates, I turned my head and pretended I didn't see or hear anything - "La La La - I can't hear you!"

That didn't last long.  I have a few, but not as many as I want. 

This week's challenge is to use a die on top of the impression plate, creating a space for a sentiment or any other focal point.  Here's what I came up with:

I inked up the Woodgrain Impression Plate before using it.  It gives it a bit of a gray look, which is what I was going for.  The sentiment panel is the Fillable Frame #9, and I chose a sentiment from Star Prints.  I used the Turning a New Leaf die and stamp set for the leaves and embossed them with Holographic powder to give them some shine.  After cutting the flowers from felt, and threading the button with Martha Stewart twine, I secured everything on top of the leaves.  A couple of mats later, and I was finished!

Here's a close-up:

Now, another fun part of this challenge was the color combo.  I said earlier that I was going for a gray look to the woodgrain.  That's because the challenge this week at Play Date Cafe is AWESOME!  You can play along by clicking here.  I have another card for the challenge already.  Stay tuned! 

Here's the inspiration from Play Date Cafe:

Who knew Monday could be so fun!  Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Make It Monday- OTWC

This week's Make It Monday was H-A-R-D...hard. First, you really, really, really need a pen that works. Really.  That's pretty much it, so there is no "second."

After several attempts to make something, I finally managed this:

I love Melissa Bickford's Way to Go Kiddo! set and have not used it nearly enough.  So, I thought the caterpillar would make a good "base" for the card and a natural place for the line to come and go. The sentiment seemed like it would compliment the caterpillar by being in the opposite corner, but then the whole thing just looked bare - which is the idea around the frame - to tie everything together.  So, to avoid throwing the whole thing in the trash, I added some flowers and rhinestones.

Do you like the color combo?  It is the palette that Kim Wilson gave us at Off the Wall Craftiness.  You can play along by clicking here. Here's her inspiration.

I hope you find the time to play in one of these challenges this weekend!  Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Easter Cheer

I had a few Easter cards to hand out on Easter Monday, and wanted them to be bright and cheerful for some friends at school.  A couple were to thank my friends for some Easter gifts they gave to my son, and others were just to cheer them up during this week - state standardized testing!

Here's what I came up with:

I managed to make six of these in about an hour - easy to do when you are make smaller cards. First, I stamped the bunny on 2009 Polka Dot Basics paper in Kraft, Soft Stone, and Hibiscus Burst.  I cut out the bunnies (super-easy!) and highlighted them with either a red gel pen or a pink marker.  Then, I cut the 3x3 mats, inked the edges and added the grass to all of the mats.  After stamping and coloring in the tree leaves, I added the rhinestones, sentiment and secured the bunnies.  I left their ears loose so that they would look a little floppy.  I added another white mat and then used New Leaf as the card base. Here's another angle: 

 On the inside, I included the sentiment "Sending You a Happy Hello" from the Sending You set. 

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place today!  

Make It Monday - #11

This week's Make It Monday was brought to us by Heather, who showed us a great technique using our dies to emboss.  I waited until the last minute to make a card for the challenge.  Life was busy last week - or was it just me?  My family was in town for Easter, and I didn't think they came to visit me while I worked in my craft room.

So I waited until they left to make this:

Pink and green.  sigh...I love it together.  It may be my favorite color combo ever.  Any pink with any green - you just can't go wrong.

 I embossed the frame from the Sending You collection on a piece of white cardstock, and then masked it to stamp the Gingham background.  I used the die for the leaves and punched out the flower with my 1-3/4 inch punch.  I had a yellow button in the middle, but it just didn't look right, so I took it off and added the rhinestone.  It gave it just enough bling.  

Both of these sets were sent to me by my blog group - The Paper Dolls.  I haven't had a chance to play with the sets much, and I'm so glad I reached for them for this card today.  The Dolls have a challenge going on right now with a great inspiration photo.  You should check it out and play along.  I just now got an idea for it.  You'll be seeing Sending You again very shortly!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

A Layout For...

Papertrey Pages Monthly Challenge!

Beth (babiestwo) over on the PTI forum started challenging the members to create scrapbooking layouts using our PTI stamps, dies and anything else around.  She gave me the opportunity in March to challenge everyone, but we didn't get around to finishing our projects.  So, this month we are continuing our challenge by USING STITCHING ON OUR LAYOUTS!  The stitching can be by machine, hand or even faux-stitching.

I live in Texas where Spring wildflowers bloom like crazy.  It is not uncommon to see cars parked on the side of a major highway, kids climbing out and plopping themselves amongst the flowers so their parents can take pictures.   We do it every year. 

Here's my layout for this adventure from LAST year.  (I'm a year behind in my scrapbooking.) 

I cut some Echo Park Little Boy paper, Orange Zest and Simply Chartreuse cardstock into 3x3 squares, then secured them with a little adhesive to a 12x12 piece of cardstock.  After fighting with my machine for about an hour, I finally figured out that I hadn't threaded the needle correctly.  I don't know where my mind was.  (Actually I do, but that's another topic.) 

I sewed a zig-zag stitch to mimic a quilt.  Love the look!

I matted the pictures with white cardstock to help them stand out a little.  Otherwise, in front of the awesome patterned paper, they kind of blended in.

The tag was cut from the Tag Sale #3 die, and I stamped the title with Practicing Creativity's Carved Loved letters (small but super-easy to line up.)  I masked it when I finished and then stamped some flowers from Life in Orange Zest, Enchanted Evening and Color Box's Sky Blue.  Adding a knot with two ribbons was a final touch to the title tag. 

The subtitle was cut from the Double Ended Banner die and again stamped with the same letters in Enchanted Evening.  I had to use a little bundle of wildflowers cut from Larger Than Life and stamped from stamps in the set.  The green twine is from Martha Stewart, and is pretty sweet!

I hope you like the layout!  You can join us over on the PTI forum if you want to participate.  We just have fun together and "force" each other to get busy on our layouts!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

P.S. Here's a picture from THIS year's adventure.  Hopefully, I'll it in a layout before this time next year!

OTWC - Easter

This week at Off the Wall Craftiness, Kim gave us just this Easter photo inspiration with no specific colors.  Look at her beautiful collage:

How could you choose just one color scheme from this?  I couldn't, so I focused on the rabbits at the bottom and tied in several Easter-y colors.  (Yes, I made up another word.)

Here's my card:

The rabbits are from Hero Arts Happy Day Animals.  I tried to mimic the colors of the Peeps in the picture.  I added a green one so that I would have 5 rabbits  instead of 4.  The tree branches are from Little Bitty Bird and the sentiment is from Tag Its #1, both from Papertrey Ink.  I die-cut the clouds in Vintage Cream felt using both cloud dies from PTI. 

Yes, that's my grass border punch from Fiskars I love so much.  I've seen several in the stores now.  I guess they are seasonal.  You should pick one up if you don't have one yet.  I got mine at Joann's and I've seen them at Hobby Lobby too. 

I added a few more details by securing the pearls in the tree to represent buds and the crocheted flowers on the ground.  What a fun card this was to make!

You should play along with Kim's challenge.  You can see all the details by clicking here. 

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

Play Date Cafe 77

ETA:  Thanks to the girls at Play Date Cafe for choosing this card as a Fab 4 for the week.  See the announcement here.

I love, Love, LOVE the colors over at the Play Date Cafe this week!  Does it get any better than this?

 I know...beautiful, right!?

Here's what I came up with:

I used my Scor Buddy to create a frame on the Kraft panel for my new favorite find - CANVAS!!  I cut a rectangle to fit in the frame and used some tea dye duo on it.  After die-cutting the leaves and stamping them, I added them to the canvas.  The green twine is from Martha Stewart and goes perfectly with New Leaf.  I used Tiny Tags again (kind of addictive) and added some rhinestones to the bottom portion.  Threading some Rustic White twine through the New Leaf buttons and securing them was the last detail.  I mounted everything on a New Leaf mat and then to the Kraft base.

Here are a few close up shots:

 

I hope you can play along with the challenge!  It's a good one!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!