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!

Make It Monday #98

That Betsy Veldman gets me every time.  I loved her technique today in Make It Monday, and this is what I came up with:

Winterberry, Shape Up Snowman, Tremendous Treats: Christmas Stamps, Peace Be Still dies (PTI)

 After I created the faux chalkboard panel, I had to figure out what card base to use.  White was the only color that made sense, but it seemed a bit boring.  So, I added some scor-tape to the edges, and poured glitter over it to give the base a shimmering effect!

You can see Betsy's video for this week's Make It Monday and other entries if you click here.

I have also used this technique before when I created some chalkboard cards for my colleagues.  You can see the post by clicking here. 

Thanks for visiting today!

Make it Monday #97

I've been a bad blogger, and an even worse crafter, but this week, I turned that around.  I've made 26 cards in the last couple of days - mostly for thank you  notes for birthday and Christmas gifts.  My son even sat down and wrote his twelve notes with minimal attitude.  It's a wonder what the promise of candy will do for the attitude.

After seeing a box of cards in the clearance section yesterday using this same color combination and polka dots, I knew I could recreate a card that was similar. I'm lucky enough to be able to include this card in this week's Make It Monday challenge.  You can find details here:

I made these cards for my son to send to friends and relatives:

Polka Dot Basics, Tremendous Treats Christmas (PTI)

I wanted to keep it simple because I had so many to  make, so I began by stamping the cute reindeer in the corner.  After stamping the polka dot background, I added a strip of the glitter ribbon I found last year at Archivers.  I colored in the hooves, tail, star and nose and gave a little sparkle to the antlers and eyes with my Sakura pen.  Before I went to bed, I dotted each nose with some Glossy Accents to give a little dimension to Rudolph.  

Thanks for looking! 

MIM #83

This post is for the current Make It Monday challenge that Melissa Phillips put together.  You can see all the details and submit your card if you click here. Melissa challenged us to find a card in the card aisle and use it as inspiration for our project for this week.

I didn't technically go to the card aisle to find a card. I received this one a while ago.

It's beautiful, I think.  I love the Ocean Tides color, the embossing look and the little bit of bling in the center of the flowers.  I would have never put this color combination together either.  It's so pretty.  I love this card.

Here's my take on it:

I heat embossed some leaves from Turning a New Leaf on the Ocean Tides cardstock, die-cut a couple of strips from the Eyelet Lace border die, and added some bling in the centers.  After stamping the sentiment on a Spellbinders die and adding some twine, I was finished.  Easy peasy.  It's not quite as fancy as the store bought card, but I love this one too. 

Thank you for visiting My Happy Place!

Olympics

I'm going to see one of my friend's for lunch tomorrow.  My son and I usually meet her and some other friends every Friday during the school year for breakfast on Friday mornings at a favorite little restaurant in the area.  She's leaving town soon to accompany her husband to London as he competes in the 2012 Olympics.  We are very excited for him and can't wait to see him win!

I made him a card for my son to give him to wish him luck:

I cut the strips of paper, adhered them and stitched over the red ones.  My sewing isn't perfect, but we can pretend it's a well-loved flag.  The gold medal comes from this site, which has a lot of fun downloads and gift basket ideas. 

That's it for today!

I'm Finished

I finally finished my son's per-kindergarten scrapbook today.  It took a long time, and I had a lot of memories to relive while working on it, which has been fun.  This one took longer than normal because I was completing Project Life at the same time for his Kindergarten year, so this one kind of took a backseat to that.  When I told him I had finished his pre-K book, he said, "That's great, Mommy!  Now you can get started on 1st grade!"

Relentless.

This book is 42 pages long, and on 30 of them are some type of stamping.  That makes me feel like the money I've spent on all my stamps is justified.  Just what I needed.  May spend more now.

Many of the pages I have blogged about, and you can see them if you click on "layouts" in the labels.  Here are the last few pages that I haven't shared. 

I usually have a layout for each month and then throw in special occasion layouts too.   This one is from May 2010 - some of my favorite pictures of my silly boy.  (He had his bike helmet on in the backyard while drawing with chalk.  Safety first!)

 We are a two party system for birthdays, which I'm trying to avoid next year.  Here are the layouts from his parties. 

And finally, I always seem to do the cover layout for each album last.  I think I wait to find a really good picture for it, and this time I chose his school picture.

I framed his picture with sentiments from "Simply You" describing everything is is to me.  A lot of sentiments applied to him.

That's it.  All done.  He's just finished 1st grade, so I better get busy.

Pre-K Graduation

Super Stars, Teacher's Apple stamp sets, Angled Labels die (PTI)

This is a layout I've been working on in my head for awhile, and had most of it mapped, but having the time to complete it was the challenge.  I was going to die-cut some stars for this layout, but instead thought I would give the Make-It Monday challenge a chance, and just stamped right on the patterned paper.  

Yep.  Right. On. It.  

With shaking hands, because I have been looking for the same piece of patterned paper at my Archivers store, and they don't have it anymore.  So, this was a challenge for me. 

I'm almost finished with my son's pre-K scrapbook, so I can move on to his 1st grade book.  (I did Project Life for his Kindergarten year.)  Hopefully, you'll see a couple of more layouts soon!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place!

First Rangers Game

Wow!
Sorry for my long pause in blogging.  I was running low on time and effort last month, apparently.  Ending the school year, planning for summer, and working on finishing a stack of books got in my way of scrapbooking and cardmaking.

I'm committed to finishing some layouts.  I'm behind in my scrapbooking and have a few layouts in my son's pre-K album to complete and all of his 1st grade year to work on.  Looking forward to reliving those memories!

Here's what I did today:

All-Star Team, Have a Ball, Mat Stack 3 stamps, Mat Stack 3, Layerz, Seeing Stars, By the Numbers, Fillable Frames Block Alpha dies, Woodgrain IP (all PTI), Corrugated Letters (Jillibean)

This was my son's first time to go see our beloved Texas Rangers play. As you can see, he had a blast.

Thanks for dropping by My Happy Place today!  Don't give up on me; I'll be back!

Baby Boy!

I know.  You can hear crickets on my blog lately, right?  There are crickets chirping around my crafting area too!  It's been busy and it isn't even the last month of school yet - almost though!  And believe me, I'm counting down the days this year.  Last year, I was dreading it.  This year - I'm more prepared. 

We did get some good news from a friend, however.  And that's who this card is for.  One of my colleagues is expecting a baby in September.  He and his wife just found out last night that it is a boy.  Which is great - because the card I was making for the little girl didn't turn out how I wanted it to and ended up in the trash can.

Here's the one that didn't end up in the trash:

Bundle of Love, Scattered Showers (PTI), Patterned Paper (October Afternoon)

I cut out a circle from the patterned paper to create the hills for the stork.  After stamping him, I outlined him with a light gray Copic marker.  Popping up the baby blanket and adding the cloud gave me some depth and texture I think the card needed.  I need to use patterned paper so much more.  I really did buy it to use.  Need to do that!

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place today!

Lee Anne

I'm Published Again!

A few weeks ago I received an email from an editor at Papercrafts Inspiration magazine asking if I would be willing to have one of my cards that she saw on my blog published in her magazine.  It's the card you see HERE in this post.  

So, you know.  I thought about it for maybe 2 seconds before agreeing to send her an image to publish.  She sent me a copy of the spread today and here's the portion where my card appears in the May issue (soon to be sent out to all the subscribers in the UK:)

It doesn't really do the entire spread justice, so you will have to run out and buy this magazine as soon as possible.  I've heard it's popular in the UK and that Joann's does sell it.  You can also visit several of the other blogs that have published cards in this same spread when the editor includes the links to them on their website HERE.  You'll recognize several of the names - one of them is in my blog-group,, The Paper Dolls one of them organized a blog hop for a sick friend, and one of them is on the design team of a favorite company of mine.  It was an honor to be published next to these talented women. 

Thanks for visiting My Happy Place today - which is happier than usual!