Another week to play along with Music Saves My Soul. I haven't had much time to feel inspired by any new tunes last week, since I was on a business trip. So not much car radio action going on :)
Since all the talk about Oscars were going on, I thought what better song than Queen's "Under Pressure." I bet all the nominees are sitting on edge. Are you watching the Oscars tonight?
I am debuting today as a new design team member for MamiDoodles and am super excited. The talented Elisa has put a couple of cute digis onto the page, so go check the new additions out! Today we are having another rocking challenge on the MamiDoodles. The theme is Monochromatic Green.
Green is perfect for this lucky fairy of clovers. And since my two new DT gigs have been due to two fantastic Irish ladies (Elisa and Sandie), it is only perfect to do a lil ode to the Irish.
Keira, my fairy of good luck (yep I decided to name her), needed a little pop of color. I therefore decided to give her a little golden ring to sit on and some gold-green clover crown that I have dusted with some Perfect Gold. This is so much fun! To bring the whole card stocks down to some earth-friendly tones, I also distressed the cream card stock to shades of Antique Linen and Vintage Photo.
I bravely "brushed on" Elmer's Glue onto Keira's wing and generously dusted her with iridescent glitter to give her some extra special magic. The swirls looked a tad too "black" and the gold Sakura gel pen helped dull it into the background a bit more. And because I wanted to play with my new Mister Huey, I decided to give my card stock some misting treatment. I didn't realize that the nozzle was this fine, so I took the top off and flicked the applicator around to get some speckles and dots.
Anyways - come play along with this week's Mami Doodle challenge! I'll try to stop by and say hi and remember that Mami Doodle digis are at stake. You could be the lucky winner!
I was really excited when Ashley and crew started up their Embellish Challenge, so I made a point to get creative. Their posters are always so inspiring - super fun and fresh communication design style, don't you think?
So my idea & implementation design is centered around using felt for the hearts - who doesn't love warm, fuzzy hearts with all this snow still lying around? Why I haven't joined the felt trend earlier, is beyond me. But last year when I made my Chinese Kraft Box orders from Dudley & Tyler, I also bought an assortment of felt from them. I have only cut four little hearts into four corners of felt, so I am not ready to assess how I feel about their felt product.
I don't have enough inking on felt experience, so some hearts didn't show the white as well as other. But I noticed the longer I left my acrylic block with ink on the felt, it showed up better.
So far, what I really like about Kunin felt is that it is eco-friendly and easy to cut with scissors. I haven't had a chance to run it through my Big Kick yet, so I will report back when I have done that :) The other brand for felt that I wanted to try is Papertrey Ink. They have felt that would match beautifully to my card stock and some inks. What are your favorite brands for felt that you can swear by?
Another week has flown by and it's time to share new pick for Music Saves My Soul. I heard this Taylor Swift song in the car recently, and I was reminded how much how much I like this song!
Have a song to share, then hop over to Marcea's blog to post one up. Otherwise, I leave you with a great rest of your Sunday!
I received a sweet email from Elisa, the owner, creator and brain child of Mami Doodles, requesting if I had interest in joining her Design Team. Evidently, she found my blog through a friend and liked what she saw and thought I'd fit in with the team.
Funnily enough, my first run-in with Mami Doodles was through Vera when Vera organized the Caring Hearts Card Drive. One of the generous sponsors was Elisa where she offered up some adorable digis from her store. So, I immediately was all ears to her invitation. Her digis are adorable, sweet and fun - fits right into my "style" of cards.
Can I just say how flattered I am to be part of the Mami Doodles Design Team? Thank you Elisa for this wonderful opportunity. Your email really made me blush!
So by now, if you have read this far, I owe my crafting buddy Vera a big shout out and thank you for passing on my blog to Elisa! It's so exciting, because I met Vera last year at CHA Chicago 2010 and we just clicked. Ever since then we have remained crafting and email buddies! I'm really honored to have Vera as my big sis on my two new Design Team gigs :)
So starting this week, you will be seeing some Mami Doodle creations. There is a challenge every other week and for every round there are prizes to be had...so I hope to see you join in on the fun!
I was so sad when I could not make the January Waltz that I made a note to put on my waltz shoes for February! So here I am, a tad late, but with a card with plenty of Buttons (which is this month's theme)!
Since my mom will be seeing my grandmother soon, I thought of making a card for her. I had my buttons all laid out to make a heart (you can tell it's a heart, right?) and was delighted that I get to play with my new Jenni Bowling dye ink.
I bought both "Cough Syrup" and "Chili Powder"; I'm delighted to report that both reds work with Papertrey Ink's Pure Poppy. I also love how my clear Waltzingmouse stamps took on the ink so easily. See the next picture for a sample of the Cough Syrup on the Papertrey's White card stock:
For the buttons I wanted to thread them with Baker's Twine so they would not look so naked. I also decided to up the elegance by using my dusty border punch and add a layer of back card stock behind to let the border pop.
The inside of the card reads "you mean Everything to me" which comes from the fabby "Roses in Bloom" set.
Thanks for stopping by. I'm so glad I got to waltz along with you amazing ladies. Can't wait to see everyone's creations!
I am debuting today as a new design team member for PaperPlay - the ever so fun challenge blog ran by Sandie. This week's theme is "Add Shine," so what better way then to whip out my shiny flowers and some Stickles to complement this fun image from our sponsor Just Some Lines.
Crystal's hair was immediately colored black, probably subconsciously inspired by my real-life friend Crystal, who is Asian ;) I replaced the little flower from the digi with a metal Colorbök flower that was blue and shiny:
In general I wanted the little dress and shoes on Crystal to pop, so I opted to choose blues and green as the background. In the end, the MemoryBox paper pulled from my stash created a perfect background scenery. After a sentiment I declared this card done since it spoke for itself.
So - my first contribution to the PaperPlay team. Hope it offers inspiration for you to play along. I feel so lucky to be designing alongside with such talented gals. Check out what they have whipped up this week, and don't forget to play along. You have until next Wednesday to show us your "shine."
Remember this card? I was going to gift this card to my mom to gift to my dad...
But alas, this is what I found when I went to go fetch it:
I placed the card on the dining room table and went off on my business trip, not thinking anything of it. With my forgetful brain, I thought it a brilliant idea for the card to sit and wait for me. But two sneaky little cats decided in the meantime to contribute to their fun of valentines day...
Simmi looking calm and collected when I asked him if he saw the missing heart.
Jojo avoiding the question by pretending to be busy...I say that's one guilty little cat ;)
For this week's music picks, I was not sure what to share. There are so many great songs playing right now, but this one always seems to tug at my heart strings. I also have a faint feeling that it is time to out myself as a country music lover and give a little shout-out to my hometown state - Tennessee!
I am sure they will be part of tonight's Grammy's award show. Will you be watching?
Who knows the talented & sweet Sandie Dunne? A year ago, I would not have raised my hand to that question. In fact, a year ago I did not even have any paper crafting supplies. But then I fell into this addicting hobby (thanks to a certain other smallhanded friend) and became a convinced clear acrylic stamp user and quickly fell in love with Waltzingmouse Stamps. I learned of Sandie Dunne through her DT position with Waltzingmouse Stamps and am always amazed with what this creative, innovative woman comes up with!
Since Sandieannounced it over at PaperPlay Challenges, I can shout it from the mountain tops. I get to work with this amazing woman! Thank you, Sandie! I'm looking forward to my DT position and can't wait to get to know the gals. They are one talented bunch too! So, starting next week, won't you hop over to PaperPlay Challenges and play along?
Also, a big and special shout out to Belinda who has been my cheerleader and Jedi Master along my paper crafting journey!
Ok, back to being silly excited like a grade-school kid ...
Scrap Our Stash'sFebruary challenge is to do a Love project. Go read all about it! With February and Valentine's Day just around the corner, this is the perfect project to put some color and warmth into our icy, cold winter days. I'm ready for the ice to just go away - every where I look at our flat New Jersey landscape, I see a bunch of snow mountains. Time for them to go away.
So here is my contribution by celebrating "Love" :)
The heart is crocheted from my stash of scrap yarn. Here an up-close look:
I used the same frame concept, inspired by the lovely Princess Belinda but instead of it being stamped, I drew mine out with pencil, pierced the frame, and back-stitched the entire thing with black thread.
Truth be told, this was a great card to make, since I could do a lot of it away from my actual craft work space. All I needed was my Momento black stamp pad, an acrylic block, my trusty Waltzingmouse Stamps, some adhesive and a piece of white card stock. I'm still in the process of trying to build my craft workspace together...So, thanks for hanging in there with me!
I woke up this morning to go about my day. Everything was kind of normal until I was backing out of my carport. Just when I was swinging my car back into forward gear and was ready to head down my 200 ft driveway did I realize that I could not get out. It was covered with branches and cable, although it did not register at first what that mess was. My first thoughts went to Rip van Winkle and I feared I had slept through a growth spurt of my own trees. Who can blame a bleary-eyed, over-imaginative girl before her morning coffee run?
Evidently, the poor little tree branches were weighed down so much with ice that they started breaking off the trees. All is fine until those tree branches decide to crash down on cables. So I could not drive out at this point. I got out of the car and tried to assess the situation. To make matters more fun, it was raining big rain drops and my driveway was a melty but icy sheet of fun. Where are those ice skates when you need 'em?
In the meantime, a couple of cop cars pulled up and were looking at the cable situation, since I have a rather busy two-laned road in front of my house and the cable was precariously hanging into it. But cars whisked by in both direction without much concern. While all that was going on I decide that the cables hanging into my driveway were phone line and Comcast cables; so, off I went to start clearing my driveway one fallen tree branch at a time. Bear in mind, it is slippery, raining and some of those tree branches were heavy. If you are starting to see a comedy unfold in your imaginations, you're right ;)
Luckily the nice local law enforcement officer came over to help the damsel in distress and we cleared my driveway in no time. I should count my lucky stars or thank my guardian angel, because at one point I was tugging at one of those stubborn branches when another one came crashing down about one foot away from me. At that point, I declared myself wide awake.
Twenty-five minutes later, a soggy, frozen-to-the-bone, but relieved Ren-Yi made it into work. I even made it in time for the business call I was scheduled to be in.
All this ice and snow reminded me to post my current project. While I try to get my paper crafting supplies out and back into order, I am crocheting an afghan. Winter time is always the best, because all that cold makes plenty of incentive to get that afghan knocked out. It's nice to have all that warm, soft yarn be bundled over one's lap. Unfortunately I am only one of six strips in, but making steady progress.
That's all I have for now. I hope you had a less eventful day ;)
On the way to work I heard this "older" Madonna song. Very dance-tastic! It's hard to pull songs from Madonna, since many of them are so great. Interesting how this artist came out in mid-80s and has stayed in the top charts until today. I guess she is great at re-inventing herself and evolving her music to meet the demands of modern day music listeners...
Well I hope this music gives you the extra beat to make it through the rest of your week :)
