Time for another April Cardabilities sketch!

Here's our second April sketch from Cardabilities.

For my card, I embossed the background cardstock with a diagonal embossing folder, and then used a pearl pen to make the little pearls at the grid intersections.  The scalloped oval is cut from the Lacy Labels Cricut cartridge.  The yellow cardstock strip was punched on each edge with a border punch, and then I added lace with ribbon threaded through it, and a few Prima flowers and pearls.

I hope you'll join us in this week's challenge and link up your card at Cardabilities!  



Practical Scrappers - cards w/white backgrounds

Today's challenge @ Practical Scrappers is to create a card with a white cardstock background.  I used some Hero Arts stamps for this card.   The hearts were stamped several times, colored w/Copics and then cut out and adhered to the card front.  I used a glitter pen to color in the sentiment, just to get a little shine.



amazing delightful adorable you

I love this photo of my grandaughter with her cute pigtails!  Isn't she adorable?  The flowers were cut from the Cricut Elegant Edges cartridge, and the letters were cut from the Cindy Lou cartridge.  The letters were cut from chipboard and then from patterned paper to get a little dimension.   I used words from the Hero Arts You & Me stamp set for the sentiments inside the flowers.  Papers are from the Fancy Pants Childish collection.  I'm entering this in the 2nd Unique Crafters challenge.

Another Fabulous Friday @ Frosted Designs!

This week's Fabulous Friday challenge @ Frosted Designs is to create a project using rolled paper.  While I've seen some fabulous projects with rolled paper embellishments, it's not something I've done very often so this page is a little different style for me.

I used October Afternoon's Sasparilla line, and a couple of photos of my son taken about 27 years ago.  (I started scrapping when my kids were in high school, so I have a lot of catching up to do, LOL!)  I inked and distressed the edges of the kraft cardstock, then made some cuts into the cardstock and rolled the edges around a chopstick.   I used some strips of paper to make the rolled tube embellishments on the top LH corner and under the title. 

We'd love to see your projects this week, so link them up to Frosted Designs for a chance to be in our Top 3 next week!

And don't forget to spot by the Frosted Designs blog and Facebook page next weekend to join in the fun of our National Scrapbook Day crop!

It's a chevron challenge @ Just a Scrappin!

Challenge #5 is posted over at Just a Scrappin, and it's a challenge to use chevrons on your project.

Here's my page for the challenge:

I used some twill tape to make a chevron border.  I just folded the twill to make the design and then stapled it at the top and bottom of each "v".  I went over the twill tape with baker's twine to accent the border a little more.  I also used the chevron stitch on the We R Memory Keepers Sew Easy tool to make the top border. 

Chevrons are so popular in paper crafting right now - we'd love to have you share your chevron projects with us at Just a Scrappin!

Let's do some embossing with Practical Scrappers!

This week @ Practical Scrappers, we're looking at embossing projects.  Today the focus is on cards but later in the week we'll be looking at scrapbook pages, too.   Embossing can be dry embossing, done with embossing folders and a diecut machine or with templates and a stylus, or you can do wet embossing with rubber stamps and embossing ink. 

For my card, I used my Cuttlebug and a Sizzix embossing folder, with some white cardstock, to make my card background.  Then I added a stamped image and framed it with a Cricut cut from Elegant Edges and a few little sequin flowers.

If you've never done any embossing, I hope you'll give it a try.  Check out Practical Scrappers this week to see other examples of embossing!

Sketch #53 @ Cardabilities

It's time for our first April card sketch @ Cardabilities, and the first reveal for the new Design Team!

Here's sketch #53:

And here's my card from the sketch.  I used some Little Yellow Bicycle papers (love the shade of blue!) and a Hero Arts sentiment stamp, along with my Cricut and the Lacy Labels cartridge to make the scallop oval.



I hope you'll share your card creations from this sketch @ Cardabilities.  You could be one of our Top 5 Featured artists later this month!

Another Fabulous Friday challenge @ Frosted Designs!

This week's Fabulous Friday challenge at Frosted Designs is to create a project having to do with weather - sunshine, rainbows, snow, clouds, etc.   I decided to go with snow; even though we didn't have any this Winter, I had a few pictures from last Winter that I hadn't scrapped.  

The paper is from Little Yellow Bicycle (brown snowflake & blue print) and Pink Paislee (pink print).  I printed my photos at 2.5" x 3.5" so I could fit all of them in a row across the page.  The snowflakes were cut with my Cricut and the Winter Wonderland cartridge (1.5" and 2").  I used a Ranger pearl paint dabber on the snowflakes, buttons and Thickers, and also dabbed a little across the pink paper and cardstock.

I hope you'll stop by Frosted Designs and check out all the DT work - there are some fantastic projects!
We'd like to see your weather related project, too, so please share it with us at Frosted Designs!

It's challenge time at Just a Scrappin!

This week's challenge at Just a Scrappin, is to create a Spring-themed card, using pink, green, and yellow as your colors, and include a tag somewhere on your card.

For my card, I used the flower tag option from the All Mixed Up cartridge, cutting the tags from yellow cardstock at 1.75" and the tag shadow option from green cardstock.  I used some pink & white Doodlebug twine through the tags, and then added a sticker butterfly and stamped "celebrate".  One note on the stamped image: this is a clear stamp from Technique Tuesday that is laid out in a straight line.  I wanted a curved sentiment to mimic the curve from the hanging tags, so I just curved the clear stamp when I placed it on my acrylic block.  That flexibility is a nice feature of acrylic stamps!

I hope you'll join us in celebrating Spring - we'd love to see your creations over at Just a Scrappin!



Baby cards from Practical Scrappers!

Well, I thought I had this post scheduled to go up on Monday morning, but I didn't, so I'm posting this a day late.  :(

Our Monday theme @ Practical Scrappers was baby cards.  (There will be more baby projects posted on Wednesday, too.)  I try to keep a few baby cards in stock - for boys and girls - and this time I went for a boy card.  I used scraps of several blue papers, along with a transparency sentiment from Making Memories.

I added a ribbon bow and a little plastic diaper pin (sold in packages in the wedding/baby shower aisle @ Michaels).  

It's a Frosted Designs tutorial - DIY journaling spots

Hi, and Happy Easter!  Hope you get to celebrate today with family and friends (and hopefully some chocolate from the Easter Bunny!)

Today is "Show Me Sunday" @ Frosted Designs, so I'm sharing a tutorial on how to use index cards to make your own journaling spots.   Scrapbook manufacturers are including so many cute journaling boxes in their lines today, and I have my share of them in my stash, but sometimes the journaling boxes just aren't the right size or color to go with my project, so I like to create my own.

I'm one of those people who can't write without lines on my paper; if I try, my writing is so crooked that it looks terrible, so I like to use index cards for my journaling spots so I have lines to write on.   Most of the time I use regular white index cards, but I recently spotted some small colored index cards @ Office Depot, and bought a pack to use, just for some variety.

Sometimes I don't have a lot of journaling for a page, but want to include date, place and names.  You can make a small journaling spot very easily with a circle punch.  For the ones below, I used a 2" circle punch, punching a circle out of an index cards and another circle from cardstock/patterned paper.  I cut the cardstock/paper circles into three pieces, and then adhered the top & bottom pieces to the index card circles, and then added pen stitching to one of the finished journaling spots.

If you have a diecut machines, you can create journaling spots in lots of different shapes and sizes.  The larger journaling spots were cut with my Cricut, and the smaller ones with my Cuttlebug.  I like using images with a "frame" and "shadow" option when I die cut journaling spots, so I can cut the index card for the inner portion, and use patterned paper or cardstock for the outer frame and the shadow.

Another fun idea for journaling spots is to use border punches and/or stamps to embellish them.  On the ones below, I've added border punched trim to the top three, and stamped images to the bottom two.  You can see, too, that you can ink the white index cards if you want a little color.  For the first journaling spot, I applied Antique Linen Distress Ink to get a more vintage look, and on the Halloween journaling spot, I inked around the edges with orange chalk ink.

Of course you can embellish your journaling spots with twine, ribbon, buttons, stitching - whatever you like.  On my layout, I used a small yellow index card, stamped & colored an image, and then added brads to the flower centers, and a twine bow.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and try this technique sometime!  

Creative Chemistry Class - Distress Stickles

The last class from Tim Holtz's Creative Chemistry class focused on dimensional embellishments & sealers - glossy accents, multi medium, stickles, enamel accents and distress stickles.  I'll admit that I have several bottles of Stickles that I hardly ever use, mainly because I'm too impatient to wait for them to dry.  I also have a few bottles of Distress Stickles - and now that I know I can use the heat gun to dry them, I'm sure I'll be using Distress Stickles a lot more!

Here are a couple of samples using Distress Stickles.  They don't go together, I just wanted to try different ink/stickles combinations.  The little chipboard bird was inked with Broken China and Festive Berries, and then I used Broken China and Worn Lipstick Distress Stickles.  The vintage basket was stamped with Vintage Photo over an Antique Linen background, and then covered with clear Rock Candy Distress Stickles.  It's hard to see in the photo, but the Distress Stickles gives it an almost sugary coating look.  I think I need a few more bottles of Rock Candy Distress Stickles, LOL!

Creative Chemistry Class - Perfect Pearls

We got to play with a little "bling" in this class, using Perfect Pearls to add a little shimmer.  Here are some samples showing a leaf image stamped with Versamark on dark brown and white cardstock, then brushed w/Perfect Pearls - you can see a big difference between using dark cardstock and white cardstock.  They're both pretty, but completely different effects.  The bottom images are using Perfect Pearls with Distress Inks to create a focal point image, and a background.

It's nice to finally use some of these products that I've had in my stash for awhile, LOL!

Creative Chemistry Class - paints

In Class #8, we learned techniques using paint, paint dabbers, and crackle paint.  I've tried crackle paint before, but never got it to work right, so I was glad to learn some tips for using this medium; now I know I was using too thin a coat.  Here are some samples using the paint techniques.