Mojolicious Whimsy Submission

Hello friends!! I am a happy camper these days as my Mom is here visiting for a while - I have missed her so much (she lives across the country)!!

There's a design team call posted for Whimsy Stamps. They have adorable animal images - this moose is calling my name (I also think the skunk is super cute - which is ironic, considering my skunk post this week!)!! Anyway, we needed to submit a card using an animal image and since I don't own any animal images (other than owls and mice), I purchased this digital image from Victoria Case and printed it along with my sentiment. I used this week's Mojo Monday sketch (#75) and paired it with Basic Grey Perhaps paper. A lot of stitching, some Doodlebug Paper Frills, gemstones, and Flower Fusion and voila!! A super cute Easter card!

Here's the link to the call if you're interested - there's still time to apply! Have a happy Friday!!

CPS 104 and Papertrey!

When I saw that Papertrey was the sponsor for this week's CPS sketch, I decided to play along. I was inspired by this card by Alli Miles but didn't want to completely case it so I changed it up a little.

With the sketch, the branch worked better as a branch than a tree, and I used the thicker branch from Take a Bough. The paper is from Papertrey as well but the sentiment is from Stampin Up. Because the card had so much going on in the upper panel, I decided to forgo the bottom panel and just sanded the patterned paper so the sentiment would stand out more.

I got to use up some primas and buttons that have been in my stash for a while - so it's all good!! Thanks so much for stopping by!!

Oh sure - he looks cute!!!

But boy does he stink!!!! Apparently we have a skunk who has taken up residence under our concrete stairs by the front door. My house reeks!! I have candles going, vinegar and coffee grounds out in bowls, and my front door is wide open - I'm sure the neighbors must think I've lost it!!
That coupled with an infection have prevented me from stamping. I hope to get some done soon though!
Anyone have room for a family of four who needs to escape the skunk smell?? Funny story though - we woke up this morning and smelled burnt rubber. It was really bad down in the basement. In fact, it was the worst near the furnace, so I shut the furnace off and called a repairman (who luckily happens to be a friend). I thought maybe we needed a new fan belt. After checking over our entire furnace, he assured us it was a skunk. I had no idea that skunks could smell like burnt rubber - but after some quick internet searches - apparently they do! Who da thunk??!!
Anyway, hope you have a skunk free day!

Happy Adoption!

I know this might seem to be an odd card for an adoption, but a friend of mine just adopted a beautiful 5 year old little girl from China. I enjoyed reading about the adventures of my friend, her husband, and son as they travelled over to China to finalize the adoption of the newest member of their family. A group of us are going together to give them a gift certificate for some family pictures and this is the card to accompany the gift. Apparently Hannah is very fond of pink and purple sparkly things - so I tried to make the card with that in mind. I used Amy R.'s Friday sketch #50 for the layout.
Hope you're having a great weekend!!

Celebrate MFT Day with Tea for Two!

I wanted to make a card for Celebrate MFT day which is the 20th of every month - a good excuse to break out my MFT stamps.

I recently received Tea for Two - a set released earlier this month. I foolishly decided to use this week's color challenge on SCS - more mustard, rose red, and kiwi kiss. ARGH!!! The image itself came together no problem - I paper pieced the mug with some more mustard designer prints paper, but was I ever stuck on the rest of the card. I fiddled with it for what seems like forever and finally stumbled on this and gave up!

I ended up using black cardstock to try and unify the design, and used very sparing bits of rose red. I can't wait to play with this image again - in colors that I actually like together!! But isn't that what a challenge is all about? I certainly got stretched with this one!

Sketchy Urban Umbrella!

How's that for a title? I actually made this card for last week's MFT sketch challenge over on Splitcoast. When I inked the stamp, I omitted the rectangle frame that's usually around the image so that I could put it into a circle. The rest is simple, some paper piecing with more Basic Grey Urban Prairie paper and some crystal effects on the puddle to make it look wet and shiny. I actually flipped the sketch upside down so I could put my flowers where I needed them to be. Hope you're having a great week!

Mmmmmm...Valentine's and Cookies!

This is the Valentine's card I made for my son and daughter (they each got one but they were identical). The image is from Stampin Up's Big on Spring set and the paper is Pink Pirouette, Riding Hood Red and Scenic Route from last year. I coloured the letters with a prismacolor pencil and the heart with a copic. I didn't spend a ton of time on them, because I knew they would not be as appreciated as the gifts and candy!

This is the card I made for my husband, from my children. Again, I kept it pretty simple as this was from the kids and it was in addition to my card. I coloured Lily and Billy to look like my kids.
And these are the cookies we decorated on Valentine's Day. I flooded the icing for the first time ever, and they turned out so good! They were prettier before they were bombarded with sprinkles, but what fun are naked cookies anyway? We also made heart shaped pizza on Valentine's day for dinner. We had a blast!

Hope you've had a good weekend! We're off tomorrow as it is "Family Day" here in Canada. I believe it's Presidents Day in the States as well so if you're lucky enough to be off tomorrow - enjoy!!

CASEing Dawn!

I've been playing along with the Papertrey Anniversary challenges over on Nichole's blog, and today she challenged us to make a card using the colour scheme from one of Dawn McVey's damask cards. Dawn has her first set releasing this month - a beautiful damask! I chose to use the colours from this baby card (scroll to the bottom of the post), but I actually used the layout from this beauty because I fell in love with it! I don't have a lot of the PTI colours - pretty much just the pinks, so I had to improvise. I used Kiwi Kiss in place of Spring Moss and I stamped the leaves from Beautiful Blooms on the top. I used a piece of Basic Grey Mellow for the bottom, it was richer than my chocolate chip cardstock. I'm not sure where the ribbon came from but it was all I had that was close in colour to Spring Rain. The sentiment is from Little Lady and is stamped in Baja Blue.
As you can see, I'm still on a quest to fill in my stash with some masculine cards! Hope you're having a wonderful Valentine's Day! I was supposed to share my kid's valentine's today but I wanted to get in on the PTI challenge, so I'll share those tomorrow! Have a goodie (as Dawn likes to say!)!

Teacher Valentines

I wanted to do something small for my son's teachers for Valentine's Day. It had to be small and not fragile as it travels with my son on the school bus. I decided to make them a card (of course!) and a little box filled with 4 Ghirardelli chocolates. I used this tutorial by Beate for the box and covered it with Scenic Route paper.
The cards were made using the Lily and Billy Sweethearts stamps from Pink Cat Studio - I just adore Lily and Billy! My son is in French immersion, so the "Je T'aime" sentiment was perfect for his French teacher, and the "Hug Me" is for his English teacher. He wrote them each a short note inside. Hopefully they enjoy the card and chocolate!
Hope you have a wonderful Friday! I'll be back tomorrow to show you the Valentines I made for my kiddos!

Pacific Sketch Challenge

When I was at my Stampin Up stamp club last night, I mentioned to a friend that I hadn't yet used Pacific Point from this year's In Colors. My friend was aghast - apparently she's been going a ton of it and loves it! So here you go Sofi - this one's for you. Although I couldn't pull it off with Stampin Up stamps. There's a set in the new catalog that's super cute called Cheep Talk. Every time I look at it I want it - except I have a set from Hero Arts called Cherry Bird which is SO similar and it hadn't seen ink yet - until today!
I used today's sketch challenge over on Splitcoast and paired that Pacific Point with my fave - Kiwi Kiss. Anyway, I think it's a cute card, although I wish I would have spaced the birds further apart. I'll be back tomorrow to show you the Valentines I made for my son's teachers.

Papertrey For My Friend

I am so excited about this card!! This was one of those times where I had an idea in my head, and was actually able to execute the idea so that it turned out exactly how I had envisioned. Today's Papertrey challenge was to make a card for a friend. I wanted to make a card for my best friend, who is having a rough time at work. She's a quilter and pretty much the reason I bought the Quilter's Sampler and sentiment set from Papertrey. A couple years ago for Christmas, my friend made me a rag quilt (pictured in the background of the card pic). It's well loved and well used and one of my favorite things, as it is beautiful and reminds me of her. A rag quilt has soft, raggedy seams on the front of the quilt - rather than being hidden away inside the quilt.

I decided I wanted to try and create a rag quilt with my stamps. So after stamping the quilt block on some Scenic Route patterned paper and punching them out, I distressed each block before I adhered them together. I contemplated sponging the edges, but I wanted them to stand out so I left them white. I also die cut some flowers out of muslin and stamped them with the matching flowers from Beautiful Blooms (Nichole did this in her countdown for Beautiful Blooms). I used the CPS sketch for this card and I can't wait to send this to my bff!! Thanks for stopping by!

MFT Feb. Guest Designer Entry

This month's MFT Guest Designer contest came at a great time for me. My dd's birthday is coming up and I needed to make an invitation and some decor items for her "party". I say "party" because we're just inviting her best friend to Build-A-Bear workshop and then we'll have lunch and cupcakes afterwards. This month was a colour challenge - to use black, grey, pink, brown and white. Any combo of those would do. The invitation is a pocket card and I used my new Papertrey Raspberry Fizz cardstock and patterned paper that I won from Silke's blog candy contest (Thanks Silke!!). The whole ensemble is the invitation, napkin ring, cupcake pick, pop top container, and candy skewer. It was super fun to make, and now it's all done - no stressing at the last minute! Hope you had a wonderful weekend!!! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Papertrey Sketch Challenge

I am having so much fun playing along with the Papertrey Ink challenges. The prizes they are giving away are amazing - one can hope!! I think I may have overdone it with the circles on this one - but what can you do? I am still trying to make some masculine cards for my stash, and I think this one qualifies. Hope you're having a wonderful Saturday so far!! I'll be back tomorrow probably with another PTI challenge, and to show you my entry for the MFT Guest Designer contest!

Papertrey Colour Challenge

I know - 2 posts in one day!!! What is this world coming to? Really I screwed up on the deadline for the PTI bag contest and now I'm playing catch up. This is for the colour challenge and this one will be in on time. We were supposed to use pure poppy, summer sunrise, ripe avocado and ocean tides. I had a hard time with this one - I'm usually o.k. with 3 colours, but 4 freaks me out! I had to match up the colours as best I could as I don't own these PTI colours yet.

The layout is from Taylor's Weekend Sketch challenge - a fun one this week! Thanks for looking again!

It's In the Bag!

This is my entry for Papertrey Ink's It's In the Bag challenge. The instructions were to create, alter or decorate a bag of any kind. I decided to make a bag out of a clear card box - using this tutorial from Nichole's blog. I've had this project filed in my idea book for a while, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to try it. The paper and ribbon is all Papertrey in Berry Sorbet. I think I'll use this as a goodie bag for my daughter's upcoming birthday! Thanks for stopping by today!!

Another Ambassador Sample

This is the second sample I made for the Ambassador challenge I'm hosting over on the MFT forum at Splitcoast. Because my challenge was masking, I wanted to show a card with the reverse masking technique. I cut the biggest Nestability Label 1 shape and then positioned the second biggest one over top. I ran it through again with the sandwich for embossing only (no cutting) to get the embossed shape. I then left the nestie in place and sponged white craft ink into the remaining exposed area (essentially using the nestie as a stencil). I stamped this Annie Lapointe image in Versafine ink and coloured it using Prismacolour pencils and gamsol. I think this is actually the first time I've ever used the reverse masking technique, but I will definitely be doing it again soon!!
Happy Friday and I hope you have a great end to your week!

A Masked Challenge!

It's my privilege to host one of the Ambassador challenges for Feb. over in the MFT forum on Splitcoast. My challenge is to use masking to create a project.
For this card, I masked the ice cream sundae in order to layer them behind each other. After all - 6 sundaes are definitely better than 1! You can use post it notes to mask images but I recently bought some Eclipse masking tape and it is fabulous - I highly recommend it!
If you have time, I'd love for you to come play along in my challenge! MFT images are not required - so show us what you've got!
I'll be back tomorrow with my second challenge sample!

Chalked Daisies

So I'd been seeing all these gorgeous cards using this Upsy Daisy set by Stampin Up. A couple talented stampers have been using watercolours and prismacolour pencils to turn these solid daisies into beautiful works of art. I was inspired and tried my hand at it and failed miserably! Since I had my Versamark out anyway, I decided to pull out my chalks. I can't remember the last time I used chalks! It's been years! So I stamped the daisies in Versamark and applied the chalks using q-tips. I really love how this turned out - I will definitely be repeating this one! The paper is Kiwi Kiss, Tangerine Tango and Basic Grey Urban Prairie as well as Kraft and Chocolate Chip. The sentiment is again from Papertrey's Mixed Messages (it was still out on my desk!).
Tomorrow I'm hosting one of the Ambassador challenges over in the MFT forum on Splitcoast. I'll post my samples over the next couple of days and I hope you'll pop over and play along!

Sweet Pea Sympathy

I got a couple new goodies a couple weeks ago and I hadn't yet had a chance to play with them. I received this new Lockhart stamp - Sweet Peas as well as the Nestabilities Labels One dies. Unfortunately, I needed a sympathy card for a friend of my mom's, so I put them to work. I love sweet peas so it was love at first sight when I saw this stamp. It's pretty small so was a little hard to colour but I love the way it turned out. I coated the water in the vase with Crystal effects so it's glossy. The sentiment is from Papertrey's Mixed Messages set - one of my go to sentiment sets. The rest is pretty simple. Hope you're having a great weekend! We're off for some family fun!