Merry Monday 57

Happy Monday, all!  Back to the work week!   Lesley has a nice easy sketch for us today to get your Christmas card-making in gear:

This went together so quickly!!!  I started with a square Pool Party card:

I added a sweet little banner that was already pre-printed on some beautiful MME papers.  I just snipped it out, added some background papers from the same tablet and embossed the bottom portion of my card.   An MME brad and a glimmer snowflake provided some additional interest:

and to keep with the little circular theme I had going, I punched out my sentiment with a little circle punch!

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the velveteen ribbon extends a bit off the edge, but since the card is only 4 1/4” wide, it will still fit into a standard envelope.  This also qualifies (I hope—there’s a wee bit of green on the banner!) for the Dynamic Duos color challenge this week:

And this also qualifies for the Christmas Card Challenge #19--vintage!

I thought this was a marvelous sketch….I hope you will too!  Can’t wait to see what you do with it!  And as always, be sure to check out Always Playing with Paper to see the other wonderful samples from the DT!

I did manage to get the photos from my friend’s camera of the little Easter party she had for her daycare kids….and she invited Cassidy too.  Here they are, doing their craft.  Let me explain it first, then you can understand the progress!  Athena traced their hand on a piece of green construction paper and cut it out four times to make “grass”.  A paper plate served as a bunny face and she had ears, eyes and eggs all pre-cut out of construction paper.  They glued the grass to the front of the plate, ears to the back (sticking up) and then the eyes and eggs.  Aside from the fact that Cassidy wanted to glue her eggs on top of the bunny’s eyes, she did really well!  I wish I had a picture of her standing up with the completed bunny, but she wouldn’t hold still long enough!  Here ya go:

OH BOY!  Glue sticks!!!

Miss “Afeena” gets her started:

Picking out the eyes:

Gluing the ears to the back:

A few more steps and we’re done!  A pretty good job, I’d say!  The little boy with the bunny mask is our youth pastor’s son….he just turned four!  He’s eyeing that glue stick himself……

Thanks for indulging me!  And remember, today is the last day for FREE SHIPPING at SU!

Paper Players 140

Happy Sunday, peeps!  It FINALLY feels like spring around here!  Woohoo!  Today, the creative, talented Nance is our hostess at the Paper Players, and she has a fun challenge for us:

I love using recycled items for my projects, but I was really having trouble coming up with something original, so I fell back on a project I had done around Christmas time….but it’s a fun thing to do at any time of the year!  This was a little tricky to photograph, so bear with me (I’ve propped it up against an organdy tree as well as a vintage twig tree!!!):

This little vintage gift holder is made from (drum roll, please….) a toilet paper tube!  Yep!  I got this idea from Pinterest!  I simply took the empty cardboard roll, covered it with some collage-stamped First Edition DP, squished and sewed the bottom together and embellished it with some fun decorations!  Here’s a peek at the inside so you can see the tube:

My butterfly is from Nature Walk, with some background stamping from French Foliage; some stitching and a faceted button embellished with pearls:

and my yummy Certainly Celery-dyed scrunchy seam binding, embellished with an image from A Round Affair, which is available now as a preview from the upcoming SU catalog :

While making this, I was trying to use some colors that I hadn’t used for a while….I can’t even remember the last time I used Elegant Eggplant, and although Certainly Celery has always been a favorite spring color, I hadn’t used it for a while either!  THEN I found out that SU is retiring it!  So I am glad I got a chance to put it to use!  If you’d like to know all the products I used, just shoot me an email! 

What can you make with a recycled product?  I can’t wait to see what creative ideas you come up with!  Be sure to check out the goodies the DT has come up with as well!  See them all at the Paper Players blog!  Happy creating!

Last Thursday morning when Cassidy walked in, I realized we were dressed alike!  Of course, I didn’t have on a denim mini skirt or a flowered headband,  and she didn’t have silver dangly earrings!  But it was close enough!

Enjoy your day!

Mojo287

Happy Friday, peeps!  I haven’t played with the Mojo Monday sketch for a looong time, so I thought I should remedy that!  Here’s the sketch:

I needed a little boy baby card and I was just itching to use these fun papers from MME:

I flipped the sketch on the side to make it work a little better for my little car!  This baby’s extended family is VW-crazy!  It’s a large family and there are probably 10-12 VWs!!!  So I found this snappy little car in my MDS (On the Go), printed it in red, and snipped it out!  The banner is from Itty Bitty Banners; I mounted it on some Gumball Green cardstock and hand-cut a mat for it, anchoring it to the little car with some twine:

I added some fun papers on the inside as well, and included a sentiment from Friendly Phrases:

This just makes me smile with these fun, cheerful colors!  Thanks for visiting today!

If you close your eyes, it makes the person telling you to pick up your toys disappear, right?

Catered Crop & SSSC181

Happy Thursday, everyone!  Woohoo!  I was so excited when Linda at Catered Crop posted that this card was one of her top choices last week!  So this week, her challenge is to use twine!  I’ve been using some twine here and there, but I wanted to step it up a bit for her challenge, so I pulled out my colors and went to work:

This card is for my foot doctor!!!  I know, who sends their doctor a thank-you card, right?  But I had been procrastinating about a little lump on the bottom of my right foot that was beginning to get really painful; I could not walk barefooted without a lot of discomfort.  I imagined an operation, not being able to drive, etc; I was concerned, too, that I wouldn’t be able to chase Cassidy around!!!  He took me in on a Saturday morning, examined my foot, told me it wasn’t serious, and removed that little lump (which was a callus), right there in the office, and now I can walk on it with NO PAIN!!!  I am so thankful that it wasn’t more serious, and he had such a great bedside manner, I just wanted him to know how grateful I was!

The letters are from PTI and they are mounted on a piece of cardboard with various shades of twine wrapped around; the papers are some scraps I had laying around, and the layout is from the Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 181:

My original card used letters in Crumb Cake, but they didn’t really stand out, so I cut a second set from Chocolate Chip and mounted them offset, so it created a shadow effect:

Finally, I added “so, so much” at the bottom, which is a portion of a sentiment from Delightful Dozen.  I really had fun with this card—I hope you’ll stop over and visit the Catered Crop!  Linda has a terrific sense of humor and is a wonderfully creative stamper as well!

I had some place mats on the table from Easter, and Cassidy took it in her head that they would make a good blanket for Lambie:

A little mommy!  Thanks for visiting today!

FF15, STR160 & MIM

Happy Wednesday, peeps!  I swooned when I saw the challenge at the Shabby Tea Room this week:

Gorgeous!  I do love my blues!  I needed a couple of cards, so I used the Fab Friday sketch to make two similar cards:

SU’s April 25th Anniversary stamp set features butterflies, including the beautiful one from Strength & Hope.  I saved that set because I loved it and was so happy I did:

I used Midnight Muse as my base, randomly stamping the butterfly and  images from Creative Elements on the card front.  The Crumb Cake piece was stamped with Distressed Dots in craft white and the swirl in Crumb Cake.  I cut the butterfly out by hand and adhered it to the front.  The embossed and diecut scallops at the bottom are embellished with MM stitched ribbon.  Here’s the inside:

The second card is basically the same, I just used a different sentiment from Curly Cute and left off the second banner:

This is also for the Make it Monday challenge from The Kraft Journal, which is “Anything Goes”!  Thanks for visiting today!

ColourQ183

Happy Tuesday, peeps!  Whee…..back go the temps, down, down, down….I think we are going to skip spring altogether this year, just go from winter to summer!  But hopefully after seeing Arielle’s sweet color inspiration today, you’ll feel like spring!  What do you think:

It took me about two years to warm up to Blushing Bride, and now I am so sad that it has retired!  I still have some scraps of DP and cardstock, so I thought the sketch from Retrosketches would be a perfect fit:

So here we go:

And GUESS WHAT????!!!!  I actually used My Digital Studio for part of this card!  Yahoo!  At the reduced price of $19.95, I broke down and got it, and I have been having fun playing with it!  I love that you can resize your images and sentiments….and that’s what I did with this little “hello” speech bubble!  I have only begun to scratch the surface of all the benefits of it.  (My only sadness is that they don’t have Soft Sky or Cool Caribbean….maybe if I whine enough, they’ll add them!  Cranberry Crisp would be nice, too!)  This is a great sketch to use up DP scraps!!!   I cut mine down to 1” wide, then played around until I got the length I liked and added 1/8” for the mats.  The heart is from the owl punch; the owl is from the Itty Bitties, and the sentiment is from the MDS set called Celebrate Any Day.

I hope you’ll play along with these lovely springy colors…I know you’ll enjoy them as much as I did!  Share your project with us at the ColourQ blog where you’ll also see what the designers made too!  Can’t wait!

Several of you had information on the embossing folder on this card I shared with you from my friend Doris on Sunday—thank you so much!  It is made by Darice, and if you look in the comments screen, a couple people mentioned where to find it as well as the name of it.  Thanks for the info as well as the interest!  I’ll be getting mine soon!

A couple of pix from my ornery little bunny:

 

Enjoy your day!

Merry Monday 56

Happy Monday, peeps!  I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!  Lesley has a very intriguing sketch for us today at Merry Monday:

I resisted the urge to flip it, and stayed true to the original sketch, using some pretty MME papers, gold glimmer paper,  and some vintage-themed Christmas stamps:

I got my color inspiration from the Festive Friday challenge for this week, which is aqua, blush, and gold:

I stamped directly on the designer paper with Blush Blossom ink

and did some gold heat embossing for my sentiment:

I hope you’ll check out the other beautiful creations that our designers made—you can see them at Lesley’s blog, Always Playing with Paper.  Share your creation with us as well, and get a head start on your Christmas cards!

Cassidy pushing Mommy on the swing….and giving her a hug!

Enjoy your day!