Another VSN weekend

I just love VSN!  I didn't have as much help from the hubby this weekend :(  He kind of spaced it and frustrated me.  My poor girl probably feels pretty neglected by Mom.  Anyway.....This little gem is probably my favorite from this weekend.  It's a pocket card!  I have never been really crazy about this kind of card, but I really like this one!  Maybe I just needed to add designer paper, I don't know.  Or maybe it was the new Verve stamps that I stamped on the inside?

So here is the inside :)  What do you think?  I am thinking gift card.  With a couple of glue dots and some working of the paper, I think it could make a really nice gift card holder.  Maybe this is what I will make for my daycare provider when her birthday rolls around.  I had no trouble making this in under 45 minutes!

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Details:  Stamps: All Year Cheer II, Seeing Stars, Because of You (Verve); Paper: Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Baja Breeze, Parisian Breeze dsp; Ink: Chocolate Chip, Baja Breeze; Accessories: Chocolate grosgrain ribbon, kraft taffeta ribbon, eyelet, large star punch, small star punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, corner rounder, sticky strip, stampin' dimensionals, glue dot, crop-a-dile, scor-pal.

Olympic-Sized Mess

Can yo u believe it?  This is part of the pit that I create in.  I'm more than a little embarassed about this shot.  I really should clean up my act.  I am going to tackle it little by little.  Wish me luck, I'll post again after a bit of time and effort ;)

VSN is coming this weekend!  I think I will put a few hours in to prepare my work surface for the festivities.  I am finding that the more I clean and get organized, the better able I am to make exactly what I want with less waste.  Go figure!

Edited to Add:  Proof for Angela!!! Explosions do happen in craft rooms!  My hubby just shuts the door!  05/04/10

March's Metallic Set

I made this card for the Christmas Card Challenge on SCS.  I am finding it pretty easy to design one Christmas card each month, cut for it and stamp all 10 in one evening in front of the television.  My family doesn't even seem to mind that I am stamping in the living room.  Who knew?

This card is pretty straightforward.  I embossed the sentiment and the image in gold.  I matted the main image on gold card stock and popped it up off the card base.  Finally, I tied a gold ribbon around the base and called it good. 

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Details:  Stamps: Merriest Wishes (Hero Arts), Warmest Regards (SU); Paper: Elegant Eggplant, Brushed Gold; Ink: Colorbox Gold; Accessories: clear ep, heat tool, stampin' dimensionals, M's gold ribbon.

My Second One Sheet Wonder

Yep, it's same as yesterday's One Sheet Wonder (OSW).  You can find it here.  I thought that I would need two different patterns for my OSW, so I cut up two different patterned papers. 

It turns out that I liked using the same papers on the card, so I ended up making the OSW two times. Fine by me! Hopefully not to boring to read!  There aren't too many differences in the two sets.

I still used pearls, ribbons and the textile embossing folder to embellish.  I did add rhinestones to the first card in this series and I used different stamps sets on each card.

I used Verve's Beautiful you on the first card, the Anna Griffin sentiment set on the next card, a set by Stamps on Life called Back2Basics on the third card and SU's Well-Scripted on this last card.

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My First One Sheet Wonder

I have been very inspired since finding the Stamp 2 Spend thread on SCS. Of course, I won't really spend all that I have earned. That is just silly given my present economic situation.

However, I can use up my stash that I do have! One of the challenges from the Stamp 2 Spend is to complete a One SheetWonder.  I havee always been intimidated by these, so I found one I thought I could work with.

I am quite fond of sketches by Julee Tilman.  So when I found this small One Sheet Wonder, I had to give it a try.  I found a really yummy piece of Basic Grey paper in the Wisteria collection and cut it up!

 

 

 

 

I used my Leaves stamp by Verve and an Anna Griffin sentiment set by All Night Media and away I went.  I embellished with pearls and ribbon and tried to keep my style Clean and Simple!

 

 

 

What do you think?  Thanks for looking!

Stamp 2 Spend Challenge

I made this card for the Stamp 2 Spend Challenge #3.  I joined the group late, so I am having to play catch up on all of the challenges.  Stamp 2 Spend, for me, is  a way to keep my spending in check and use up my stash.  I am doing quite well!  Anyway, this challenge was to "Go to your bookshelf and pull out your favorite read - preferably fiction. Create a card using the colors on the cover. This is a simple card. NO embellishments except for EMBOSSING in any form. Treat your card design as a book cover you want to catch your readers attention."  I had received Twilight by Stephenie Meyer for Christmas this year and so I pulled it out and away I went!  I really do love that the name of the stamp set I used is Bella's Bloom.  Just perfect, don't you think?

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Here are the details: Stamps: Bella's Bloom, Matchbox Messages; Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Basic Black ; Ink: Real Red, Basic Black, Versamark; Accessories: stampin' dimensionals, clear ep, heat tool, Love & Happiness rub-ons.

Clean and Simply Spring

This card came about as a result of a CAS challenge called Wishing for Spring.  While parts of our country are buried in snow and really wishing for spring, it feels like spring here in Washington!  I have the little daffodils up and blooming already.  My dogwood in my front yard is blooming and my peach tree is already budding.  This was a problem for us last year as we got a few nasty frosts and freezes after some spring-like weather that killed off most of our peaches.  Luckily, I had some peach jam from the year before to hold us over!

Anyway, back to my card! I hand cut my stem from some designer paper and used another fabulous Fall to Layout from the clean and simple stamping blog. 

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Details:  Stamps: Bella's Bloom;Paper: Whisper White, Sweet Pea dsp; Ink: Chocolate Chip; Accessories: Sweet Pea stitched felt, glue dots, paper snips, corner rounder.

Clean and Simple Wedding Wishes

Miss Boo has issued a call for DT members for the CAS challenge on SCS.  As part of the submission requirements, she asked for a new take on a former CAS challenge.  I never did get a chance to make a card for CAS32, Here Comes the Bride.  In addition to that you had to link up four other cards in your gallery with specific requirements.

This card is pretty simple, in the style of CAS, and quite pretty in real life!  The card stock is Shimmer White, so it has a subtle shimmer to it.  You can see that I colored the scallops on the wedding cake with a pink marker.  I don't think that the photo shows how I went over the pink with a Sakura Clear Star gel pen and how those scallops now shimmer too!

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Sweet Valentine Treat!

How about this little cutie! It's a chocolate inspired treat holder and 3x3 card. I thought that the Bittersweet paper was perfect for a chocolate inspired project. I made a mini pizza box from Jen Del Muro's SCS tutorial. It was really easy for the great look you get (and seriously functional!) I made this for Mandy's call for a guest dt member at Limelight for March. I have no idea how many submissions she gets but she always has fabulous dt members! Over at Verve, they are having a Tags, Tins and Treats project parade, so I submitted this as well.

So, how about this fun little treat!  Yep, it's a brownie that I jazzed up with a hand cut paper heart and some powdered sugar!  Simple, but my family loved it!  The box totally supported the brownie.  You could also put a couple of generous sized cookies in this fun little box!
 
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Cutesy Cosmo Cricket!

I just may be getting the hang of matching up paper with Cosmo Cricket paper.  It have such a distress look and I really love it!  This is a couple of patterned papers from the Earth Love Collection, plus some Earth Love rub-ons that I won from Mandy at Limelight!  I made this card from this last week's Card Positioning Systems sketch.  This week PTI is sponsoring the sketch, so you know it will be a fabby prize pack!  I had so much fun making that grass.  When I was done it was completely straight across the top.  I don't know about you, but my grass doesn't look like that, so I trimmed up my grass to be a bit more realistic!

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Matchy-Matchy is good!

Are you tired of PTI challenges yet?  Not me.  I am really quite please with what I have created by playing along!

This challenge goes along with the release of a couple of sets by Dawn McVey and Nichole Heady.  Nichole's challenge was to create some floral embellishments to give to a friend.  I do have a crafty friend that I know irl who is going through a hard time.  I think I will give this to her so she remembers to get crafty and take some time for herself!

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Folded Paper Frame technique

What a lucky break for me!  I discovered this week's tutorial on SCS fit with the PTI challenge from yesterday.  The  PTI challenge was to use origami on your card and this folded paper frame did the trick.  And it was easy-peasy!  I think next time I try this technique, I will place an image in the frame and use a sentiment to embellish the piece a bit! 

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One More for Flourishes

Today is the day that Flourishes will release it's next three sets.  They offered up another challenge especially for this release called "What's Your Cup of Tea?".  The gist of the challenge is to make a card inspired by your favorite drink.  I am a Starbuck's kind of girl through and through.  I opted for Starbuck's colors on my card, a coffee cup image and I even crimped the kraft cardstock behind the foal image to give the illusion of corrugated carboard.  I took the sketch for my card from SCS this week and also played along with the Ways To Use It challenge this week focusing on odd numbers!

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Fun With Flourishes

Flourishes hosts their Timeless Tuesday challenges each week and the week before last was a whole year of challenges.  So they had a challenge extravaganza!!!  This was the first challenge hosted by Cindy to use the sketch she provided.

This second challenge was hosted by Betty and the challenge was to cut it out and pop it up!  Now Flourishes carries some amazing flowers that are perfect for the paper tole technique, but I wimped out and only popped up my butterfly!  I used an SCS sketch for this card.

Dee hosted the third challenge and dared crafters to make a birthday card using fruit inspired colors.  Again, Flourishes has some amazing fruit stamps.  I just don't happen to own any!  I used teh chalkboard technique to hopefully make my colors bright and cheerful and fruit-like :)

Silke hosted the 4th challenge to make a 'pink' card.  This one was an easy one for me.  I went Clean and Simple with a Fall-to-Layout!

The fifth challenge was hosted by Kimberly and she challenge crafter's to "frame" up their card.  This was really a challenge for me as I hadn't really used my corner and border punches together much, but I really like the result.  I used a sketch from Our Creative Corner for this card.

The sixth and final challenge was hosted by Maki and she challenged crafters to use their favorite Flourishes stamp.  I love Coffee With Friends.  This is the stamp set that introduced me to Flourishes and I still love it!  I used a sketch from Taylored Expressions to make this card!

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A Simple Valentine

How about this for clean and simple?  Two pieces of paper, a scor-pal, one stamp, one ink, one sticker and some dimensionals.  That's all! 

I made this card for Mandy's sketch over at Limelight Papercrafts.  If you haven't visited Mandy, do.  She is super sweet, carries fab product and ships with amazing speed!

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A Special Color Challenge for PTI's Third Anniversary

The challenge for today was to create a project in a special color combination.  I chose Heather's colors, which are Kraft, Melon Berry, Spring Moss and Vintage Cream.  Of course I had to translate those to SU colors because I have no PTI yet!  For the card, I did a little fussy cutting, some distressing with a sanding block and my fingernail and some smudging of craft ink about the edges of the kraft papers. 

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Paint By Number Sketch for PTI's Third Anniversary

Nichole Heady posted this sketch and some color palettes for today's challenge!  Crafters were assigned a color palette based on the first letter of your username.  "R" for Ravengirl fell into the N-S category and received this beautiful color combination.  The PTI colors are Kraft, Smokey Shadow, Scarlet Jewel, Sweet Blush and Vintage Cream.  I translated those colors into Kraft, Basic Gray, Purely Pomegranate, Pink Pirouette and Very Vanilla.  I have zero PTI in my craft room.  It's a shame, isn't it!  Not much more to say about this one!  I am please with the result.  Thanks for stopping by!

Emboss Resist for Papertrey's Third Anniversary

I took on Nichole Heady's challenge to make a card using the emboss resist technique.  I have used this technique before, although not that often.  The resulting effect is quite nice.  I went for subtle as I needed to make a sympathy card.

I don't know anyone who likes to make sympathy cards.  I sure do not!  I especially do not like  to make them when I need them.  I think this is a lesson that I should learn right now.  My step-Dad's father passes unexpectedly, so I needed a card right now.  I didn't feel like I could use flowers on it as I have to send it to a man, so I opted for this tree.

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Papertrey Ink's Third Anniversary Celebration!

This little lovely comes courtesy of Melissa Bickford for Papertrey Ink!  Papertrey Ink is celebrating it's third anniversary with a party, complete with challenges and prizes.  All nine designers offered free download today of birthday images and any takers could make a birthday card...or nine!  I just didn't have it in me to make nine, but I made one.  I think it's cute! 

I also used some fun American Craft's paper called Blue Skies, a build-a-brad and some orange glitter glue (oops, I don't have Stickles in orange)

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A smidge of VSN

A VSN mini was this past Saturday.  Since my wedding anniversary is today, my husband took my daughter and I camping this past weekend and I had to miss most of the VSN. Normally he would allow me as much time as I wanted to play.  I only told him about VSN when we got home and he suggested I play for a while on Sunday. 

Well, I had a load of chores so I could only play a couple of the challenges.  Here is one of them.  The first challenge of the mini was called Opening Ceremonies.  This edition of VSN is called the VSN Olympics, in honor of the Winter Olympics which are soon to get started in Vancouver, BC.  For this challenge crafters were to make a card in the same colors of the flag of one of the participating nations.  In case you didn't know it, Estonia's flag is light blue, black and white.  You can check it out here.

I used a sketch (as I always do for VSN) from the clean and simple stamping blog.  Love that blog! 

Kraft-y goodness

Whoops!  I forgot about this post!  I made these last week and had a substantial amount of kraft on the brain!  This card was for a CAS challenge to use patterned paper.  I think I used a bit too much for the look I was going for!  I also need a bubble stamp in the worst way!  Doodling is my worst enemy!

This one fit the same CAS challenge, but was actually made for a CPS sketch challenge.  You can check out the sketch here!  I have had this patterned paper for quite a while.  I just never know what to do with cutesy stuff, but I like how this turned out!

I was on a roll and busted out some new Stamps of Life stamps that I was introduced to via the CPS blog!  Aren't these adorable.  Now, I know that this looks like the same sketch, but it wasn't intended to look like that.  This was actually for an SCS color challenge to use Blush Blossom, Pretty in Pink and Melon Mambo!   

This card was for the Limelight Papercraft's sketch challenge with a focus on canvas.  I had no canvas to stamp on, but I did have my good old SU canvas background stamp that looked pretty cool stamped on some dp!  This sketch was a bit harder for me to work with, but I did it anyway!

 

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