Imagine…

This is probably one of the most understated cards I’ve ever made. I just loved the FTL77 sketch (below) on the Clean&Simple blog and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to use my Unity set designed by Donna Downey – The Artist In You. I love the images and sentiments in this set!

I stamped the vines with PTI Spring Moss ink, which complemented the strip of paper from the Basic Grey Sugar Rush pad beautifully. The black scalloped border uses a SU! punch, and adds just the right amount of contrast.

I’m on a roll now with all these sketch challenges — I’m so glad my mojo has come out of hiding! I’ll be back tomorrow with yet another card from another sketch challenge.

Baby Button Bears

Try saying that 10 times fast.

I have sooooo many stamps that I haven’t used yet! I’d have to quit my paying job and stay home stamping full time if I were to ever hope to use them all. Scary stuff!

This Baby Button Bits set from PTI is one of my newer acquisitions, and since I hadn’t put it away yet, I figured I’d take it out for a spin. Here’s a pair of baby cards made exactly the same way, except for the colors and the embossing folders on each. Oh, and I used different pierced borders on them, too. The piercing template I used was the Ecstasy Small Borders Template. Kate carries it at i {heart} papers. They add such a sweet touch, don’t they?

Most of the supplies are from Papertrey Ink. The girl card uses Sweet Blush cardstock, button and satin ribbon, and the Boy card uses Aqua Mist. The image for both is stamped on Vintage Cream with Palette Burnt Umber ink. The base cards are SU! Chocolate Chip (gotta use it up!), so I lined the inside with a trimmed piece of Vintage Cream and stamped the sentiment (from the Inside & Out: Baby set) on that.

I wish I could stamp all day today, but I have so much that I haven’t done around the house yet. Hmmm…stamping as a means of avoiding housework. Nah, I would never do that ;-)

Inspired by a Crate & Barrel Ad!

This card was inspired by a banner ad for Crate & Barrel that keeps showing up on my webmail page. I thought the color combination was so fresh and modern, and I’ve been meaning to use it myself. The ad shows this room:

For the colors, I used Papertrey’s Smokey Shadow and Spring Moss, and SU!’s Tempting Turquoise (Note to Nichole: please come out with a PTI turquoise!) The stamps used were PTI’s Background Basics Text Style and Fancy Flourishes. I used the new SU! flower punch, and the glazed brad is from the Basic Grey Urban Prairie collection.

The layout I used for the card is this week’s SFYTT from Jen’s blog. I love her sketch challenges, and I’m so glad she’s back!

I hope to get some more stamping done this weekend, but the fact is that I have a lot of cleaning and laundry to do. We didn’t get much snow here in Brooklyn, but I’m not inclined to go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary!

Another Valentine

Here’s a card full of glittery goodness. What you can’t tell from this photo is that the patterned paper has a gorgeous, pearly shimmer to it.

The tree is stamped in Palette Burnt Umber. Since the hearts in the tree are all part of the same stamp, I went over them with some Magenta Stickles to jazz them up. Because the tip of the container is so fine, it was easy to cover the hearts – even the little ones.

I used my Nestabilities to cut the main image and sentiment, then airbrushed with a Copic marker. To remove the excess airbrushing from the inside of the sentiment circle, I went over it with the Copic blender.

The glittery strip across the front and the punched hearts at the top are from the Petaloo Glitter Sheets from i {heart} papers. The particular pad I used seems to be out of stock, but let me tell you, these glittered sheets are awesome in any color. They cut and punch like a dream, and there’s no glitter mess!

What I used:
Stamps: Whoo Loves You (Hero Arts)
Ink: Palette Burnt Umber, Copic markers
Paper: SU! Chocolate Chip and Purely Pomegranate, S.E.I. Noisette, Petaloo Glitter Sheets
Other: Nestabilities, Stickles 

Love U

I’ve been playing around with Valentine’s Day cards, but not the mushy kind. This was a fun one. I actually made it a couple of weeks ago from a sketch challenge somewhere, but I can’t remember which one!

It uses patterned paper from the Love Me Do collection by My Mind’s Eye, which I got from Kate at i {heart} papers. The Love stamp is from the PTI set Mega Mixed Messages. The hearts were punched out of glitter paper with my SU! punch from one of the Petaloo glitter sheet pads, although Kate seems to be out of stock on this particular pad. The big letter “U” was from a set of silver glittered chipboard letters that I picked up on sale a looong time ago; I just colored it black with my Copic marker – neat trick!

I’m not entirely please with how this came out – I think the balance is off or something. But at least I’m stamping again – I hate when life gets in the way of the fun stuff. I’ll be back again with more – soon!

Don’t Rock the Boat!

I wanted to show you what’s been keeping me busy this last week or so. It’s a cake I was commissioned to make for the 90th birthday party of a man who made and sailed boats. I was given the specs for the boat, and the sails were made by the daughter of the celebrant. Let me tell you, this is a BIG boat: 20” from stem to stern! The sails are about 30” tall.

Some details: The boat itself is molded of rice krispie treats, but made using only half the butter so it would dry harder. And boy, did it dry hard! I had to use a drill to make the hole for the mast to make sure it didn’t completely shatter by trying to force it through. It’s covered in fondant, and I painted the deck to look like wood. The buoys (which show the 3 names he is known by) and life preserver are also made of fondant.

The cake is a deliciously moist yellow butter cake with lemon filling. I coated it in blue-tinted buttercream, and then in blue-tinted piping gel.

Every time I make one of these novelty cakes I learn a new lesson. This time the lesson was that piping gel WILL soften the fondant and make the colors bleed from anything that is touching it. The underside of the hull looked like a bloody mess, and the buoys look like they were melting into the water!

Anyway, I heard the cake was a big hit, and I’m glad to have had a part in the celebration – 90 years is certainly something to be proud of!

New Year, New Calendar (IHP January Challenge)

Our i {heart} papers Challenge Coordinator, Deb, gave us the challenge this month to use these great 4x6 photo cases that Kate has in the store. Well, a new years calls for a new desk calendar, so that suited me just fine!

I did mine in seasons (quarters) instead of month by month. Kinda lazy, huh? But useful for me, actually. I like being able to see a few months at a time. Here’s the current one:
I apologize for the terrible pictures. I’ve been having computer problems and couldn’t edit my photos the usual way.

I made all the seasons the same way, using different 6x6 pads of Basic Grey paper for each one. I selected 5 or 6 different papers from each pad, punched 3/4” squares out of them, and arranged them on a piece of cheap white cardstock in a “random” quilt-like pattern, gluing them down with a glue stick. Then I ran the whole piece through my Big Shot with the Labels Eight Nestabilities die. Using coordinating cardstock or in some cases, solid papers from the pads, I backed the calendar piece and punched ovals. The seasons were stamped with my Just Rite stamps and punched with a smaller oval.

For Winter, I used Eskimo Kisses papers; for Spring, Wisteria; for Summer, Lemonade; and for Fall, Indian Summer. I figured they needed very little embellishment with all these patterns on there, so just a few pieces of bling did the trick. Here are the rest of the seasons:




Go check out the rest of the IHP Design Team’s blogs and see what they came up with:

Amber
Cathleen
Deb
Gretchen
Kate
Kendra
Lori
Lynn
Megan
Merry
Tracy

And why don’t you try making one of your own? They’re fun and easy – and so pretty that you’ll be happy to have one on your desk all year!

Moxie Fab inspired

Over on the Moxie Fab blog there's an inspiration photo (Tuesday Trigger) that really resonated with me. The colors are just delicious. Here's a card that evokes a similar feeling.

The stamp is by Stampendous (Orchid Greetings) and the paper is from the Poppyfinch collection by Memory Box.

The image is colored with Copic markers. I cut a couple of slits in the image layer so I could run the ribbon behind the stems.

Hope your week is going swimmingly -- I can't wait for the long weekend coming up!

I'm back! (sort of)

Well, my computer is still not working, but I've found a reasonably good work-around that will let me post pictures on my blog. I can use the USB cable to get the photos from my camera to the little loaner netbook I'm using, but the problem was the image editing. A little light bulb went off in my head the other day and I looked for -- and found -- a few sites that have online image editing! You upload your photo to the site, do the editing there, and save it back to your computer (or wherever you're saving it to). However, I had trouble with all three that I found, and ended up with a big headache, and ultimately had to work with the very rudimentary Paint program that lives on this Linux machine.

So without further ado, here's a card I'm just so happy with that I couldn't stop looking at it when it was done. I used one of the sweet Pure Innocence images.
All the patterned papers are from the Early Bird paper pack (which I got from Kate at i {heart} papers, but she appears to be out of it), including what I used to paper-piece the dress. You can't see it in this photo, but I used my Sakura Glaze pen to make the black shoes shiny, and there's Glossy Accents on the balloon. The ribbon is from Papertrey.

Hopefully my computer will be back in action soon. In the meantime, I will keep trying to get adequate results with what I have. Please be patient :-)

Carolyn

Happy New Year!

Well, I still don't have a means of posting pictures (other than downloaded clipart) using my temporary replacement computer, but the good news is that the new motherboard is finally "in the house" and ready to be installed as soon as awesome Cousin Mark can come and do it. I'm not touching that thing again!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I know I did! My fabulous kids and kids-in-law bought me a new flat-screen HTDV. How awesome is that?!!! My son-in-law said he'd come and hook it up when Cablevision delivered my HD DVR, and that came last night too! Can't wait!!! It's gonna be a good weekend!

As far as the new year goes, I am only too happy to say goodbye to 2009. While some really good things did happen (like my son marrying my beautiful, wonderful and talented daughter-in-law), there were some really crappy things this year, too. Let's hope that 2010 kicks 2009's butt!

I have actually been looking forward to spending this New Year's Eve quietly at home alone. This is my plan: since my goal for 2010 is to finally get published, I will spend tonight making cards for submission. At least one — we'll see how the mojo goes. I have a split of champagne (a favor from my cousin's wedding this past spring) chilling in the refrigerator, so I'm good to go!

I want to thank you for following my blog, and I hope to have lots of papercrafting goodness (and maybe a cake or two!) for you to gaze upon soon.

I wish you all a happy, HEALTHY, and prosperous new year.

So sad....

I have no pictures to post for you until after Christmas. Sadly, the motherboard on my computer is fried, according to my awesome cousin Mark (everyone should have a cousin Mark!), although as far as he can ascertain, it has nothing to do with anything I might have done (whew!). I've ordered a replacement board, which he will install when it comes, but it won't be until after Christmas.

I do have pictures of the holiday cards I finally sent out (well, most of them, anyway), but they are stuck in the limbo that is my hard drive. Thankfully, awesome cousin Mark lent me a little netbook to use until the new motherboard (hopefully) gets me back up and running. So I will take this opportunity to wish you all a happy, healthy, and joyous holiday. Hopefully I'll be able to post some eye candy before the new year!

Happy Sweet 16!

Yesterday was my niece Hannah's 16th birthday (how did that happen?!!!), and since she should have gotten her card by now, it's safe to post it here. I raided my stash make it as sparkly as possible, and used a cupcake theme because they are as sweet as she is.

The "sweet" letters are some glitter stickers I had in my stash, and the bling-y "16" is from the Zva Alphabet. The glittery hearts are from a K & Co pack I had in my stash (I have a really big stash). I used my Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder on the Chocolate Chip CS to give the background some texture. The patterned circles are cut from pieces in my stash also. I know one of them is from my Urban Prairie pad. I think Kate at i {heart} papers used to carry the cupcake paper, but I don't see it any more. The cupcake stamp is from Papertrey Ink. I embossed the bottom with brown EP, and I coated the top of it with Rock Candy Stickles.

Anyhow, if you're reading this, Hannah, I hope you had a wonderful day — and as I said in the card, your present is on its way!

Eat, Drink & Be Merry (an IHP challenge)

This month our DT Challenge Coordinator (Deb) gave us sort of a double challenge — we had to use one of the new My Mind’s Eye collection kits, and whatever we made with it had to have something to do with “Eat, Drink & Be Merry.”

I interpreted this as being anything to do with a party, so I used a sheet of the adorable paper from the Love Me Do collection kit and made a party popper favor and a cupcake wrapper (using the Bigz Perfect Settings die from SU!). You can see that the paper is double-sided, so it was perfect for this. The yellow tissue paper was the only color I had laying around at the moment (how lucky was I?), and the ends of the favor are tied with Red 1/4” Glimmer Ribbon. The favor itself, of course, is made from an empty TP roll. (And yes, I made the cupcake – several actually!)

Both pieces are super-easy. Just because this kit is intended for Valentine’s Day doesn’t limit you to that one occasion! Can’t you just see a whole table decorated with coordinating favors and cupcakes for a birthday party?

Do you have any “Eat, Drink & Be Merry” ideas to share? Join the challenge, and let me know! If you post it in a gallery, use the keyword ihp1209 so we can find it.

And check out the rest of the design team to see how they met the challenge:

Amber
Cathleen
Deb
Gretchen
Kate
Kendra
Lori
Lynn
Megan
Merry
Tracy (check hers a little later – around 11am)

Have a great day!

On the 12th day of Christmas...

i {heart} papers is the sponsor of Day 12 (12 drummers drumming) of the 12 Days of Christmas event over at Paper Craft Planet. It's a fun scavenger hunt, so go play for a chance to win!

Home for the Holidays

This is how I spent the better part of today – making this adorable gift box that looks like a cozy holiday cottage. Lauren Meader is a freakin’ genius – how she comes up with these templates is beyond me. Yes, it is very time consuming to make one of these (definitely not for mass production!), but the precision with which the pattern was made makes it go together perfectly.

I didn’t add a whole lot of detail, and I forgot about the curtains for the windows until I was doing the sides of the house, but I really just wanted to see how much of a PITA it would be to construct the first time. Like I said, time consuming, but not difficult.

I have no idea who I’m giving this to (if I can even bear to part with it), or what I’d put inside. You can’t tell from the photo, but the house is only about 5” from the bottom to the peak of the roof. It is fairly sturdy, though I don’t know how much weight I would put in it. I’ll have to give it some thought, but whoever gets it is gonna have to be someone pretty darned special!

What I used:
Stamps: PTI Home Made & Believe (for the wreath on the door)
Ink: Palette Charcoal, PTI Terracotta Tile & Lemon Tart, Copic markers
Paper: SU Bordering Blue & Going Grey, Classic Crest White, scrap of terracotta patterned paper from my Marrakech pad (Basic Grey)
Other: PTI Home Made template, Polar White Flower Soft, PTI Terracotta Tile satin ribbon