Cardabilities sketch #50

Happy Leap Day!   It's time for our last February sketch @ Cardabilities

Here is the sketch.  I love the shape on the top layer of this sketch!

 Here's my card from the sketch.  I die cut the shape with the Elegant Edges Cricut cartridge, then I embossed it with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, first inking the folder with Hero Arts shadow ink to add a little color.  (Thanks to Jennifer McGuire for teaching this technique in one of her classes!)

We'd love to see your card creations using this sketch.  Please link them up to the Cardabilities blog and you'll have a chance to be in the Top 5 spotlight!

Unique Crafters Challenge Blog - starting this week!

Unique Crafters Challenges is a new challenge blog starting up this week.  The first challenge will be posted on March 1st, but before that they are highlighting some projects submitted by followers and their new design team.  Today, I was lucky enough to be featured with this layout of DGD eating her birthday cupcake:

 This page is based on a sketch from Sassy Lil Sketches e-book, and papers are a mix of Echo Park, Jillibean Soup, and Lily Bee. 

Just a Scrappin' Design Team

Here's a page I made as my first Design Team project for Just a Scrappin'.  This photo is of my DD and DGD at our community Christmas tree lighting.  I used my Cricut and the Elegant Edges cartridge for the frame around my photo.  "Merry" was cut with the Cindy Lou cartridge.  The papers are from Echo Park.

Linda and Keia from Just a Scrappin' have a lot of fun things planned for the blog, so we hope you'll check it out and become a follower! 

Whimsie Doodles Feb. challenge

This month's challenge @ Whimsie Doodles was to create a project using one of their digi images and only scraps of paper and cardstock (other than your card base).   I used some scraps of Crate Paper and Bella Blvd. for this card, featuring the Swing Koale image (I added a little smile to the digi image, just 'cause I thought he needed one for this happy card, LOL!)  I fussy cut the cloud and freehand cut the other items.  Koale was colored with Copics and then I added some hemp twine to the stamped image and tied one end to the tree branch.  I also used some foam adhesive squares to the stamped image to give him a little added dimension.

Quilt inspired projects @ Practical Scrappers

This week @ Practical Scrappers, we're looking to quilting and quilts for some card and scrapbook page inspiration.    I decided to use the pinwheel pattern to make this card to welcome a new baby girl.  I cut 1" squares from patterned paper and then cut them in half diagonally to make the triangles.

For the nine patch pattern on my scrapbook page, I cut 1" squares from various scraps of paper.  Then for the border, I cut 1/4" x 1" rectangles, adhered them to the kraft background, and used my Sew Stamper to make the faux stitching lines.



We'd love for you to share your quilt inspired projects with us - hope to see you at Practical Scrappers!

Cardabilities Sketch #49

Time for another card sketch from Cardablities! 

Here's sketch #49:

And here's my card from the sketch.  I went with a bright yellow and red color scheme for this birthday card.  It's nice to work with bright colors during a drab grey February!

We hope you join us at Cardabilities - we'd love to see your creations!

The "little black mat"

At Practical Scrappers, the focus today is on matting your photos with black. I almost always mat my photos on a page, at least one of them anyway. I think matting your photos is a great way to accent them and separate them a little bit from the background, which is especially important is you're using a busy patterned paper as the background or using a lot of embellishments.


I used a lot of bright papers on this page, so using black photo mats helped to emphasize the photos and tone down the page just a little bit. These mats are very narrow, only 1/16" wide, so they don't overpower the photos or the papers.

I repeated the black with some yellow and black letter stickers, and sticker tabs with black "stitching". The photo is of my DGD on one of her very early attempts at eating corn on the cob. That center photo just cracks me up - she is soooo concentrating on that corn cob!

Before I got hooked on scrapbooking, I spent my free time quilting. Several years ago I took a quilting seminar with a teacher who believed that every quilt should have a touch of black or purple because those colors had so much contrast they made a quilt sparkle. I think that philosophy works just the same on scrapbook pages and cards - try adding a little touch of black to your project and see what you think!