January 2018 PTI Blog Hop

Happy New Year!  I'm going to try to participate in each month's Papertrey Ink blog hop this year.  For the month of January, we were inspired by this fun party image:

photo source: freshmommyblog

So many fun elements in this photo, it was a bit hard to decide what to pick.  I finally decided on the ice cream cones and pulled out the Colorful Treats stamps and dies--a set I hadn't used yet in my collection--and colored the ice cream and cones in with Prismacolor pencils.  The confetti on the cones was stamped in Raspberry Fizz and Pale Peony inks; the sentiment was stamped in Dark Chocolate ink.  I paired the stamps with a sheet from the Confetti Toss patterned paper pack (this paper has been discontinued).

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I'm off to check out the projects from other participants!

Winter Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

I'm back to share a few cards I made for the Winter Coffee Lovers Blog Hop. I have many, many coffee-themed stamps and it's always hard to decide where to start. For my first card, I followed this month's sketch challenge on the Pebbles blog and I pulled out a new stamp set and dies from Newton's Nook. It has some darling mugs with sweet patterns, including a cat! But for this blog hop, I stuck with a more traditional winter image. I also used some holiday cookies from Lawn Fawn's Sprinkled with Joy set and some festive patterned paper from Michaels.

And here is the inside of the card. The snowman is an older Amuse Studio wood mount stamp and the sentiment is from the Newton's Nook mug set.

For my final card today, I needed to make a thank you card for a co-worker. She replaced one of my favorite Starbucks tumbler mugs that she accidentally broke. I made this card to write a thank you note to her. This card uses sets from Lawn Fawn and Lil Inker Designs.

Thanks for stopping by! Can't wait to see what others have done for this festive hop!

"We Love Dawn" Blog Hop

I'm back to share a card I made for the blog hop in Dawn McVey's honor.  After many years of health problems, she recently underwent a small intestine transplant and is now on the path to recovery.  Papertrey Ink fans were invited to make cards using products she's designed over the years for the company and I was happy to participate.  I've always admired Dawn's use of bright color and her love of flowers, so the card below incorporates both of those elements.  I'm anxious to drop her a note inside and get this card in the mail to her!

Wishing Dawn continued best wishes for her recovery!

Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

It's time for the Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop!  Coffee and crafting are two of my favorite things, so it's always a treat to participate in these seasonal events over at the Coffee Loving Cardmakers blog.  Fall is also my favorite season and I'm so happy we're about to start this wonderful time of year!

I pulled out a few older favorites from Papertrey Ink and paired them with a sentiment from Right at Home and patterned paper from a 6 x 6 pad I picked up in the dollar spot at Target last year.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I can't wait to check out all of the other cards!

Card Ingredients:

Stamps:  Candy Cane Christmas & Nuts For You (Papertrey Ink); How Have You Bean? (Right at Home)
Dies:  Candy Cane Christmas, Nuts For You, Signature Series: Cupcake, Limitless Layers: Circle 2.5" Collection (Papertrey Ink)
Paper:  Orange Zest and Dark Chocolate card stock (Papertrey Ink); navy and plaid patterned paper (Target); white card stock (Neenah)
Ink:  Canyon Clay, Dark Chocolate (Papertrey Ink)
Other:  Copic markers, adhesive

Stamp A Faire 2017--Carissa's Challenge: 10th Anniversary, Tin & Aluminum

Well, I've come to my final project, #21, of the weekend!  What a great event!  Even though I missed hanging out with my crafting buddy, Kristie, I'm glad I played along and took a few extra days off from work so I could fully participate in Stamp A Faire.

Carissa showcased gilding flakes for her 10th anniversary project.  While I have purchased the Nuvo gilding flakes, I actually stumbled across an old package of gilding sheets in my stash and opted to use that instead. 

I went with a wedding themed card for this one, and pulled out Propose a Toast for the glasses, bubbles and sentiment.  The "bubbles" at the top of the champagne flutes are supposed to be hearts, but my gilding flakes made a bit of a mess of them.  The flakes left behind some residual sparkle dust that didn't seem to want to come off, and I liked that look so I decided to just let it be, rather than start over.  I adhered a die cut black heart from Enclosed: Heart on top of the pearlized white panel and then layered the die cuts, sentiment and bubbles on top.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Stamp A Faire 2017--Laurie's Challenge: 10th Anniversary, Tin & Aluminum

We are at the final anniversary year, 10!  I've mentioned throughout my various posts about this last weekend that I've had several favorites, but I have to say, I think this may be my most favorite card of the bunch.

Halloween crafting will always have a special place in my heart because it's the holiday that introduced me to stamping.  I still remember my mom coming home from the local art store one fall weekend in 1992 with several Halloween stamps and sitting down with me, my sister and Grandma and we all created cards together.  Back then we used printer weight colored paper that we folded into fourths to make a card, stamped our image directly onto the card front, and used Crayola color pencils to color our images.  I think we had two ink colors at that point--black and orange.  One-layer cards is what we made.  If we added any embellishments, it was either a sticker or some glitter, that was applied with Elmer's glue.  Man, the crafting industry has sure advanced and the different types of tools at our disposal now are amazing!  My love of crafting began back in 8th grade and it still excites me just as much today as it did then!

If you're still reading this post, thanks for hanging in there with me while I reminisced!  Back to my card...Laurie showcased a unique technique for creating a tarnished foil project.  I decided to make a Halloween card as I was anxious to try the new Wicked Elixir stamp set and dies.  I found the small skull embossing folder (from Tim Holtz--another Tuesday Morning score!) in my stash and embossed the creepy image onto my tarnished foil paper, then started to die cut and stamp the labels for my bottles.  I didn't have a specific plan, but my card ended up turning into what I see as a witch's pantry!  All of her potion bottles lined up on a shelf, which have provided a nice resting point for the gleaming red-eyed spider!  Feel free to click on the photo for a closer look.

The black background paper is a scrap from a decorative envelope that was junk mail I salvaged from the recycle pile!  So glad I saved it as it provides a cool wallpaper look for the witch's pantry!

Stamp A Faire 2017--Nichole's Challenge: 9th Anniversary, Pottery

I will admit, this challenge to create a dough tag didn't excite me at first.  Seemed like an awful lot of work, but I did end up enjoying the creative process.  I'm certain that my tags didn't turn out as nice or as professional looking as Nichole's but it was still fun to try the technique!

I used the Wet Paint Holiday stamp set to stamp the word "Peace" into my dough ornament before I baked it.  Then I used the Peace Be Still stamp set to stamp my snowflake images onto tissue paper.  I noticed that the fixative spray actually made my images bleed a bit, so I'm not sure what happened there.  And while I had a brand new bottle of Mod Podge to use, it seemed like the tissue paper didn't stick very well to edges of the ornament, even though I covered them pretty well.  Still, it was fun to try, and if I had littles in my life, I think this would be a good project to try with them.