April PTI Blog Hop – Tissue Paper

This month’s theme for the PTI Blog Hop was to use tissue paper. Well, PTI stamp sets come wrapped in tissue paper, and I just so happened to have the paper from my latest order handy. I knew I wanted to make a flower from it, and I wanted to use some the new Dotty Biscotti paper. I almost never use Kraft cardstock, and I think I bought that paper to force myself to use it more.

I folded a piece of the tissue paper up to get a bunch of layers (10-12) and ran it through my Big Shot with the larger PTI Dahlia die. Then I took my Copic airbrush and RV25 marker and tinted the pieces, concentrating on the outer edges and leaving the centers lighter. I poked a hole in the center and held them together with a rhinestone brad, and then scrunched and fluffed them up a layer at a time, from the top downward. Here’s a closeup:

Of course I had to add some more bling to complement the flower center, so I punched out a few butterflies with a Martha punch and added some rhinestones to them.

The layout was inspired by one of the sketches in the new PaperCrafts Go-to Sketches magazine (p.144), but specifically by Kimberly Crawford’s card on p. 145. What a treasure that issue is—so full of inspiration!

What I used: (All PTI unless otherwise noted)
Stamps: Signature Greetings
Ink: True Black
Paper: Kraft, Raspberry Fizz, Dotty Biscotti
Other: Rhinestone brad (SU!), clear rhinestones (Hero Arts), butterfly punch (Martha Stewart)

The Hop starts at 8:00 tonight, and I can’t wait to hop around and see what all the other fabulous stampers did with this month’s challenge!

Wedding Invites

I just finished up an order of wedding invitations for a super-sweet couple whose guest list kept growing and growing! We started out at 150 and ended up at 190. That’s 190 invitations, folks — not guests. So yeah, I’ve been busy! I do love working with couples on their invitations, though. There’s something really special about making their vision come to life and having a small part in such a special occasion.

Anyhow, here’s the outside. I used Vertico pocket folds from cardsandpockets.com in Champagne. This is the equivalent of Stardream Opal, if you’re familiar with that. The monogram seal was done with circle punches. TIP: I printed the monograms in the cutting borders of the invitation panels to cut down on waste.

This is the invitation opened up. All printing was done on 80# Creamery Felt cardstock, so it has a lovely texture  that contrasts nicely with the smooth shimmer of the pocket fold.

The flourish is stamped with Papertrey’s Fancy Flourishes stamps in Brilliance Platinum Planet, which is a shimmery pigment ink that matches the outside of the invitation perfectly. Here’s a close-up:

In case anyone is wondering, I do my invitation layouts with Adobe InDesign. If you have any other questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.

I hope Christine and William don’t end up spending this whole beautiful day inside addressing and stuffing envelopes. Tomorrow it’s gonna rain!

April Showers Bring…

This month’s challenge for the i {heart} papers Design Team was to use flowers. Well, that’s an easy one for me! So I decided to combine it with this week’s sketch challenge from Our Craft Lounge. I must say that it did turn out to be an unusual color combination for me.

I started with the beautiful bouquet image from the Flowers For You set (an oldie by goodie that Kate happens to have on sale!). I colored it with my Copic markers (see below for the colors), and then went about figuring out how to give it some texture and dimension. 

The first thing I thought of was Flower Soft, so after I cut it out with my Nestabilities, I used some of the new Ultra Fine stuff and tiny little dabs of their glue on the flowers that appear towards the back of the bouquet. Then I remembered that I had some adorable tiny wired roses in my stash. I punched two small holes at the sides of the stems where I wanted them to be tied together, and ran some narrow golden yellow silk ribbon through, catching the stems in it and tying it off tightly on the back. I made a small bow using the same ribbon and my Bow Easy, and attached it with a couple of mini glue dots, hiding the holes I had punched.

I had chosen my colors with the plan of using this paper from the Basic Grey Green at Heart 6x6 pad. I think the “grandma’s wallpaper” feel of this piece complements the bouquet nicely. I have no idea what made me use the yellow, but I think it just makes the card look so sunny and happy!

What I used:
Stamps: Flowers for You
Ink: Memento Black; Copic markers (YG93, G94, G99, RV19, RV29, R21, R22)
Paper: Green at Heart; Old Olive, Summer Sun (SU!); Berry Sorbet (PTI)
Other: Golden Yellow 1/4” Silk Ribbon, Bow Easy, Circle and Petite Circle Nestabilities, wired roses, Flower Soft, SU! circle punch, PTI twill ribbon 

We’d love to have you play along with the IHP challenge. Surely you can think of a way to use flowers! If you post it to one of the galleries (SCS or PCP), use the tag/keyword ihp0410 so we can find it. Check out what the rest of the design team did, and then make your own. 

• Cathleen
• Deb
• Gretchen
• Kendra
• Loretta
• Lori
• Lynn
• Megan
• Tracy
• Kate

Happy stamping!

Happy Anniversary!

Today is my son and daughter-in-law’s first wedding anniversary. I’m gonna assume that this card will be getting there on time today, so I’ll go ahead and post it here. My kids seem to have a talent for adding awesome people to our family, and I feel so blessed that they are all so happy.

Anyhow, these two lovebirds (on the card, I mean) were made with the SU! punch and my SEI Claire 6x6 paper pad. The card is full of texture – the cream center piece, cut with the Labels 4 Nestabilities, is some of the luscious velvet paper from the matching Claire Velvet Paper assortment. See, it cuts like a dream, and you can stamp on it! And the Claire patterned paper has some gorgeous foiled designs in it, adding even more texture. The anniversary greeting is from the oh-so-versatile Hero Arts set Everyday Sayings.

And because I can’t help revisiting that wonderful day a year ago, here’s a picture of the real lovebirds cutting their Chicken Wedding Cake. (If you want to see more about the cake, go back and see this entry.)

I can’t believe it was a whole year ago, and I’m so excited that I’ll be visiting them next month for Mother’s Day. I miss them since they moved to Michigan!

Oh, and happy Tax Day, everybody!

Just Sailing By…

When I finally got my hands on the new Paper Crafts Go-to Sketches magazine last week and saw the sketch on p. 68, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it! This super-adorable digi-stamp from Chicken Girl Design was just made for this sketch!

I printed it out on some of the new medium-weight Copic cardstock that Kate is carrying at i {heart} papers, as well as on some Brocade Blue. With digital stamps and MS Word (or most any other program that handles graphics files), it’s easy to use the cropping function to print only selected parts of the images.

The little scene is colored with Copic markers, which I unfortunately put away before writing down the colors I used, and the background is airbrushed with Copics. The waves are the reverse cut made with my Big Scalloped Petite Nestabilities, the added bonus being that I now have a pretty scalloped piece of Brocade Blue waiting for another project.

I cut this card shorter than usual to accommodate the sun sticking up on top, so it’s actually 3-3/4” x 5-1/2”, and it will fit in a regular A2 envelope.

There are so many great sketches in that magazine – it’s sure to jumpstart anybody’s flagging mojo! Can’t wait to play more with it…

Hippity-Hoppity (variations on a theme)

When I saw this adorable Easter card by Julie Ebersole yesterday, I couldn’t stop myself from running out and picking up a Martha Stewart bunny punch of my own. I loved how she used the paper from Basic Grey’s Green At Heart for the ground, and I’ve been wanting to dig into that paper since I got it from i {heart} papers last week. I was turning her idea around in my head all night and then this morning I had a sort of vision of how I would adapt it to make it my own. 

I’m so excited that it came out just as I had pictured it in my head! I’m sure you know how many times that just doesn’t happen. Now this is what I call clean and simple – accent on simple!

As I often do, I made two of the focal pieces at the same time, but on the second one I didn’t use the yellow circle for the sun. This card is a little more “fussy” but adorable too.

I love the look of the scalloped oval Nestabilities debossed on the white cardstock. The olive silk ribbon is wrapped around the front of the card and tied with gold cord. The sentiment is popped up on foam dots. And please forgive my yucky bow and ribbon ends – I seem to have misplaced my Bow Easy, and I definitely need to remember to use my Tim Holtz scissors for cutting ribbon.

Both cards use SU’s Bashful Blue for the oval and Papertrey’s white cardstock for the base. I outlined the punched bunny with a Copic marker (C0) and glued a little white pompom on for a tail. The best thing I’ve found for holding those little suckers on is the Inkssential Matte Accents.

Hope you like my take on Julie’s card. And if by some chance you’re reading this, Julie, thanks for the inspiration!

Juggling Bunny

I just realized I forgot to post this last night, so I’m gonna quickly get it up here while I’m trying to get ready for work.

This uses another one of the adorable Chickengirl Design digital stamps exclusively available at i {heart} papers. I printed it out on the new medium weight Copic-friendly paper that Kate is carrying, colored it with my Copics (sorry, I forgot to write down the numbers before I put them away), and then covered the eggs and the bunny’s nose with some Matte Accents to give them some dimension. The colors were chosen to match the paper from the Sugar Rush 6x6 pad that I used. Such pretty spring colors on it!

The image was then cut out with my oval Nestabilities, and then backed with a layer cut with the new Big Scalloped Ovals. I edged the bottom with a piece of lace that Kate used to carry. And the sentiment is from, once again, my go-to little greetings set, Happy Greetings.

OK, gotta run now! Have a great day!

It’s Officially Spring!!!

And with that comes the promise of beautiful weather, which we have been fortunate to have had here for the past few days. With it also comes my allergies, which I managed to forget about, thinking I must be coming down with a cold. Ugh. Time to get a new prescription for my Flonase.

And with spring also comes Easter. I’m more of a Passover girl myself, but someone at work asked me to make her some Easter cards for the kids in her family, so I thought I’d use some of the new Chickengirl Design digital stamps for them. This one is appropriate for either a girl or a boy, I think.

I used Technostamper’s Monday Lunchtime Sketch Challenge #114 for this. I also used my new Kioshi paper (just got an order of yummy stuff from Kate at i {heart} papers). Skater Bunny is colored with Copic markers (C1, C3, V01, V04, B34, B37, R81, G21, 0). The image is cut out with Nestabilities Labels One. The contrasting strip of paper is Papertrey’s Plum Pudding, which goes beautifully with the patterned paper. My monitor doesn’t handle purples too well, so the color is probably off a little.

I’ll be back with another one tomorrow. I just love how these cards came out, and I can’t wait to share them with you!

Off to sleep now – need to be ready for the new week. Thanks for stopping by!

Going Green! (IHP March Challenge)

This month the i {heart} papers design team’s challenge theme is “Going Green” — “green” as in using something reused or recycled on our card or project, with the use of  the color green as an option. OK, more pink than green going on here, but it sings “spring” to me, so I’m happy!

We are also using the sketch challenge that’s going on at Paper Craft Planet this week.

I looked around my desk area for something that could be recycled into a card element, and my eyes fell upon a few sheets of white tissue paper that had been in a gift box. Now, I don’t know when I got that paper, and I don’t know why I saved it, or why it happened to be sitting right next to my desk, but it seemed like serendipity to me! I could make a tissue paper flower!

So I got out my Nested Peony Nestabilities and cut through several (about 10) layers of the tissue paper. I attached them through the center with a little brad, crumpled them up, airbrushed them with a Copic marker, and got this sweet thing. It reminded me of cherry blossoms, so I pulled out my February Unity Store Kit (which Kate seems to be out of, but I bet she’ll get more if you ask her nicely) and stamped the trees twice in Palette Burnt Umber. I cut it out using one of the Classic Scalloped Rectangle Nestabilities and trimmed three of the sides straight. I matted on a similarly cut piece of pink cardstock. Then I glued some pink Flower Soft onto the trees to make them look like cherry blossoms.

I dug through my stash and found a piece of this striped paper from MME’s Penny Lane collection. It had just the right spring-like colors, and the built-in scalloped edge was the perfect complement to the tree panel.

The ribbon was salvaged from my scrap bag – I must have cut it at some point with the intention of using it on a card and changed my mind. And the “spring” came from one of my favorite little Hero Arts stamp sets, Happy Greetings. It always seems to have just the word I’m looking for, and it’s such a fun little typeface!

Supplies from i {heart} papers:
Stamps: Life is Fabulous (Unity), Happy Greetings (HA)
Ink: Palette Burnt Umber, Copic marker (R83)
Paper: "Ballet" Free Flowing Stripes (MME)
Other: Nested Peony & Classic Rectangle Nestabilities, Soft Baby Pink Flower Soft, Sugar Rush glazed brads

Check out what the rest of the IHP Design Team did with this challenge:

Cathleen
Deb
Gretchen
Kate
Kendra
Loretta
Lori
Lynn
Megan
Tracy

We'd love to see what you create too. Upload your project to an online gallery using the keywords ihp0310 and sk031310, or leave us a link to your blog.

Here’s hoping spring, and those cherry blossoms, come along soon – I’ve had more than enough of winter!

Sour Grapes?

Here’s a birthday card for a wine lover. I just got this gorgeous Artistic Grapes set from Kate at i {heart} papers and couldn’t wait to use it. I have a friend who loves wine, loves purple, doesn’t read my blog, and whose birthday is coming up in July. (No, not you, Pat – you’re reading this, aren’t you?) This will be the perfect card for her, and now I’m way ahead of the game. I just hope I still remember that I have the card in July.

Digging through my stash of papers, I came across some quarter-sheets from the Enchanted collection by Upsy Daisy. I must have gotten them at CHA last summer, but Kate has them in her store. They were the perfect papers for this elegant stamp. The greeting came from an old Orchid set that Kate used to carry.

Yes, I did some fussy-cutting. With a good pair of sharp little scissors it’s not so bad. When trying to decide what to mount the piece on, I remembered that I had a couple of sheets of thin cork hidden away (although I can’t remember where I bought them). Yup, that’s real cork there – the perfect backdrop for the grapes. And it cuts beautifully with Nestabilities. I used Labels Four for this.

To tie it all together I used a piece of scrumptious antique gold/champagne satin reversible ribbon that Kate also carries in the store. Oh, and these are the Copic markers that I colored with. (That’s me trying to be all artistic by putting the markers in a wine glass – I crack myself up!) 

Hmmm… I think I might open a bottle of wine if I have enough WW Points left tonight. Seems like a good way to help myself adjust to the time change. (That’s me attempting to rationalize.) I didn’t miss that hour of sleep too much this morning, but I know I’ll miss it tomorrow!

Now I’m going to go do what I was supposed to be doing today before I let myself get sidetracked by this card. Enjoy what’s left of your weekend!

Chicken Girl Design goes Digi!

I’m excited to announce that the Chicken Girl Design line, exclusive to i {heart} papers, is moving to digistamps! This will allow more frequent releases, more seasonal releases, and overall, more flexibility.

This month there are 9 new images being released. The complete collection is shown here. The images above are colored to give you ideas, but of course, the actual files will leave the coloring to you!

Each individual image is only $2.50, or you can get all 9 images as the March Collection for $20. The previous clear polymer sets will remain available until inventory is depleted. 

If you’re new to digi, here is how it works. You buy the stamp and on your emailed order confirmation invoice there will be a little icon that you click to download you file. See here:
Click that little icon and a little box will likely pop up asking you where you want to save your file; save it so you can find it (I usually make a folder in My Documents or save to my desktop) and then open it in Word or your image editor and print it. It’s that easy!

The files are 300 dpi transparent PNG files, but if you require a JPEG or other file type, just send Kate an email after you’ve ordered and she’ll help you out.

This is i {heart} paper’s first attempt at delivering downloadable content through the shopping cart and while it has been tested and tested and tested, there may be a few hiccups. If you experience any issues, please contact Kate and she will work to resolve it immediately. 

So, now that all the technical jibber jabber is over, how about you go look at some amazing creations? There have been some changes to the previous CGD design team, so here is the updated list:

Kate
Christy
Tammy
Judy
Lori
Loretta
Shelly

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you’re as excited as I am about this release! I’ll be playing with these images myself soon, so keep checking back.

Have a great day!

Thankful Thoughts

I just got the Gina K set, Lovely Labels, and thought it would be nice to use one of them in this week’s SCS sketch challenge. The crosshatch design in this one reminded me of the papers in the Cosmo Cricket pad, Early Bird, so that’s what I used. This is such a great sketch for showing off pretty papers – I think I may have to make another one that’s more Spring-y. I seem to be falling into more subdued colors lately, and I really need a dose of bright!

The sentiment is a little freebie I got in a Verve order a long time ago, but it fit nicely, style-wise and size-wise, into this frame. The ribbon is from my SU! stash, as is the Riding Hood Red paper and ink. The little dots in the lower right corner are just 1/4” punches from the paper I used on the left side. I glued them down and applied big globs of Glossy Accents on them.

Sunday night – time to get myself prepared for the week ahead. Hope you all had a great weekend, and thanks so much for visiting!

Hello, chicken!

I seem to be re-connecting with my Chicken Girl Design stamps lately, so when I saw this week’s FTL81 Clean & Simple sketch challenge, I got an idea about how to use this cute little chicken from the Into the Forest set on it. 

I punched out some 1” circles from my Garden Variety paper pack to fit the sketch, but for one of the circles, I punched a hole to show through to the inside of the card.

The chicken is colored with Copic markers, and the bottom edge of the front layer is punched with a SU! border punch to enhance the country feel of the card. The ribbon was colored with the same Copic marker that I used on the chicken. I just love how easy it is to coordinate elements using these markers!

What I used: (stamps, markers & paper available at i {heart} papers)
Stamps: Into the Forest (CGD)
Paper: Garden Variety (Cosmo Cricket)
CS: Naturals Ivory & Riding Hood Red (SU!)
Other: Copic markers, black gingham ribbon & scallop trim border punch(SU!)

Hope you’re enjoying your weekend – I sure am!

 

Nothin’ but blue skies…

Well, the crappy weather we’ve been having in the northeast seems to be giving us a break, and we’re supposed to have a really nice weekend! So in honor of that…

Ha! Bet you thought you’d seen the last of that paper from the MME Love Me Do collection. But I love those clouds, and I’ll keep finding ways to use it until it’s all gone!

This card uses stamps from Unity’s February kit called, appropriately enough, Nothing But Blue Skies. To dress it up a little, I cut a cloud using a Quickutz die out of a scrap of shimmery cardstock (but of course you can’t see the shimmer in the photo – trust me, it looks cool!) and popped it up with foam dots.

The panel with the rainbow is actually white. After I stamped and colored the rainbow, I used some Eclipse Masking Tape to mask it, and then used a Copic marker with my airbrush to spray the sky. This left the clouds white (yes, there is another cloud under the die-cut one).

I freehand-cut the green rolling hills and ran them through my Big Shot with an embossing folder. The squares, both plain and scalloped, are cut with Nestabilities dies.

Hope your weekend is wonderful!

My Favorite Monsters

I love these silly monsters from the Chicken Girl Design set called, um, Silly Monsters. I’ve been looking for an excuse to use them again, so when I saw this week’s Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 58, I knew just what I was going to do with it.

The monsters are colored with Copic markers, and here’s a little trick I just figured out: if you want to have a mat that’s the exact same color as your images, create one with the same Copic marker! I added drops of Glossy Accents on the monsters’ eyes to make them pop.

Oh, and for those of you who love children’s book illustrator Jannie Ho’s images, and have been waiting for more Chicken Girl Design stamps, a little chicken told me that you might not have to wait too much longer. But you didn’t hear it from me!