Papertrey Ink June 2014 Blog Hop + NBUS + Seize the Birthday

Nichole Heady has provided sketches and color palettes, along with an inspiration photo, for the June Papertrey Ink Blog Hop. You can check out all the details and link up to the Blog Hop here.

I picked up the Stained Glass Die collection last year because I had an idea of using the frames just like this!

As often happens, what I planned to do and was actually created are two very different things, with the sentiment ending up in one of the frames :)

The candle from Birthday Style is selectively inked to create various heights, the balloons are inked, overlapped and inlaid into the yellow frame and the sentiment is created by combining Headline Alphabet dies with a Stylish Sentiments: Birthday stamp. Each framed piece has Wink of Stella applied for a little glitter.

I might have used the smaller frame before, but know I have never used the blue & pink frames so I am going to finally enter a card in Darnell's NBUS (never been used schtuff) challenge over at her blog djkardkreations! If, by some glitch in the interwebs, you are not familiar with Darnell and her delightful blog, you are in for a big treat.

I am also entering this card at Seize the Birthday, where Anything Goes for the current challenge. All the details for this challenge are here.

Because we have a few big things going on today, I am going to schedule this post to publish early and then link to the challenges when I have time this evening.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jacquie

Muse #71 + Seize the Birthday and FMS140 + The Card Concept Challenge #12

We have been officially on summer break for since Thursday at noon and I snuck away from our semi-annual closet clean out to make a couple of cards. This first one is completely inspired by Therese Calvird, the Muse for Challenge #71.

How cool is this card?! I love the bright colors and stacked diecuts and used them on my card.

The font on the Lawn Fawn paper is a good match for the PTI Happy die. The Happy is cut from the panel three times, then stacked with three layers of cardstock and set back into the patterned paper panel.

The bright summer colors and birthday sentiment make this card eligible for the current Seize the Birthday Summertime challenge

Our "Toppings" option this time is

"Summertime"

My second card combines the Freshly Made Sketches #140 with The Card Concept #12 to make a Father's Day card for my daughter to give her dad tomorrow.

The sentiment might be a bit unusual for a Father's Day card, but it really suits the relationship between my daughter & husband.

Wplus9's Dockside stamps & dies were combined with the wood veneer pieces to make the diagonal panel.

The big question is which category does this fit for The Card Concept challenge - Clean & Simple of Clean & Layering?

Thanks for stopping by,

Jacquie

Fusion + MIM #168: Baby Wipe Stamping

I have a card to share today that combines the current Fusion Challenge with Ashley Cannon Newell's Make It Monday #168: Baby Wipe Stamping. You can check out the MIM tutorial here.

I love the gorgeous colors in the Fusion photo and knew as soon as I saw Ashley's technique using reinkers, I would be playing with yellows, pinks and oranges.

Harvest Gold, Summer Sunrise and Hibiscus Burst inks were randomly dropped on the baby wipe to create an ink pad. Three sizes of Funky Florals flowers were inked, masked and stamped on a white panel. 

The centers and star burst shapes were layered on next.

A couple of strips of cardstock are layered down the side, along with the sentiment.

Before I go today, I just have to share a crafty project my noncrafty daughter made this weekend for a class assignment. Her original vision was much bigger and would have involved plywood, drills and a string of lights, but dad was out of town and she really wanted to get started before he would be back, so she left the garage and started poking through my art supplies.

After applying a Gesso coat, the sentiment (die cuts and computer generated) was adhered to create a mask and then the canvas painted navy blue. The masks were removed and she painted in the word "dream" with Tim Holtz Gold paint.

I only knew you could buy a short string of battery operated lights because a friend (hi Pat!) had used them on a beautiful birdcage project a few years ago. Slits were cut in the canvas and the lights fed through and manipulated to follow the lines of the word. These lights were soooooo easy to work with and the battery packs sat nicely on the wood frame at the back of the canvas.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jacquie

Muse #70

I loved the MFT stamp set that Vicki Dutcher used for her Muse #70 card - many fabulous, amazing awesome sentiments in it! 

This is one of those cards that took a couple of days to come together and looks nothing like what I was thinking at the beginning.

I white embossed a few of the sentiments on teal cardstock strips and finally decided just to stack three of them over the larger sentiment.

Three white strips (leftovers from a cover plate) are adhered together before the sentiment was stamped. The entire panel is cover with Wink of Stella and a couple of Gooseberry gems finish it off.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jacquie

CTS79 + The Card Concept #11

I'm sharing a quick Father's Day card I made and popped in the mail today. I'm not sure my dad will appreciate the layered "happy" stamping, but I like the way it came out. The yellow "happy" was stamped first, then sentiment was stamped off multiple times in gray. You can't really see it here, but the white panel is impressed with a Linen IP after all the stamping to add a bit of texture.

The color palette comes from The Card Concept Challenge #11, where I am entering the Clean & Layering category, and the design is based on CAS(E) this Sketch #79.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jacquie

MIM #167: DIY Notebooks

Even though it's only been a week, it feels great to play with paper again! Erin Lincoln has a terrific challenge for Make it Monday #167: DIY Notebooks. Head over to Capture the Moment to check out her video tutorial and join in the fun.

I pulled out my first ever PTI stamp set for this quick little project. Yes, it was the Take Note stamp set that sucked me into the stamping world, although I didn't really dive into card making until a couple of years later. 

A few pieces of Library Ledger papers were cut and stamped with Aqua Mist images to make the notebook pages.

I followed Erin's instructions closely until it came to adding the cover.

I left the back cover a litte longer so that it wrapped back up the front of the pages. A vase die was selectively cut to provide a tab on this piece.

A paranthesis was cut out from the front panel to provide a slot for the tab, allowing the notebook to close completely.

I left my craft room and family last week to indulge in exploring a new (to me) city. A few months ago my oldest BFFs and I co-ordinated the schedules, set dates and booked flights for a trip to Chicago. We thought the hard part was done (it takes work to get flights from 4 different cities to land within 30 minutes of each other!) and then ran into a minor problem: every lovely hotel room in the city was booked for the ASCO. What the heck?! Apparently we picked the weekend that 30,000+ Oncologists take over the town.

While we have been friends for 40+ years and have slept together on everything from basement floors to tents, the minimum standards for our biennial eating/shopping/exploring trip are pretty high and require at least 2 rooms.  I've used VRBO and AirBnB for family trips before, but this is the first time for I've used this type of service for a girlfriend weekend and I'm not sure we will go back to a hotel again. We gave up daily housekeeping, but found a fabulous condo, with 24 hour concierge services, that didn't require sharing rooms and suited us perfectly.

Our sweet Bella is almost fully recovered and thrilled to be free to roam the house again. I had to laugh at my daughter very seriously assessing her last night and determining that there was no reason Bella couldn't sleep in her room once again.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jacquie