Papertrey November Blog Hop Challenge

This month the PTI blog hop challenge begins with this inspiration photo:

What stood out to me is the white label shape, and the pretty colors of teal, turquoise and lime green with silver accents. My next challenge was to look through my PTI products and see what I have that might lend itself to this project. I settled on the Circle Scribbles stamp set, backed my label shape with silver, and stamped the circles in the challenge colors. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the smallest circles and the sentiment are embossed in silver.

I do love challenges -- it keeps me from sitting in my craft room wondering what to do next!

Card Shower

Jennifer McGuire is sponsoring a card shower for two children fighting cancer and their families. I had a lot of fun making six cards to send:

For Xander, age 10, who loves paintball.

For his big brother, Jaden:

For Emily, age 6, who loves dark pink and animals:

And her little sister, Evelyn, who likes pink and purple:

And a Christmas card for each family:

I've had the splats stamps for some time, but just realized how much fun they are to use!

Holiday Style, Day 7

Day 7 of the OnlineCardClass.com Holiday Style class was all about shimmer and shine. Between foil and glitter, I've had a wonderful time!

The first two projects called for glitter embossing paste, which I don't have and probably won't invest in. On the first card, I inked a Hero Arts tweed stencil with soft pool ink, then without removing the stencil applied translucent embossing paste and dusted it with a fine shimmery powder. The second card was just white embossing paste stenciled on kraft, then finished with white glitter while the paste was wet. The problem with both of these was the amount of glitter that didn't stick. In the end I misted each with hair spray and that worked pretty well.

The next two cards dressed up the sentiment with glitter paper or a fun ombre touch.

I may or may not try a project from Day 9 -- I'll have to come up with something that makes use of the techniques being taught and I don't have similar supplies. Meanwhile, the last class day is tomorrow, then a few days to catch up before wrap-up day.

Holiday Style, Days 1, 5 and 7

Played around a little more today in the craft room, making holiday cards for the Online Card Class in progress called "Holiday Style". 

Finished up two of my favorite cards from Day 1. I fell in love with both the snowflake border and the stitched snowflakes from Simon Says Stamp, and immediately ordered them. I couldn't for the life of me get my little strip of a sentiment stamp to curve, so I gave up and just stamped a greeting in the white space.

Day 5 was devoted to cute little critters, which I don't have many of; but this little snowman reminded me that he's cute too. 

Day 7 was full of sparkly projects. A couple of mine are still drying, but I did finish this one. I see the silver background reflected everything around it.

Hope to play some more tomorrow!

Holiday Style -- Days 1 and 3

I love, love, love OnlineCardClasses -- I always learn something new and end up with some cards I really like. Now... I don't send out all that many Christmas cards...mostly just to siblings, but I really enjoy making them. So I was thrilled to see that Jennifer McGuire and some other artists are sponsoring a Caring Hearts card drive to distribute handmade holiday cards to nursing homes. Yay! I will have a home for whatever I can't use.

The OCC format is a bit different this time, with a lesson every other day, and samples on the off days -- thus we have had lessons on Days 1 and 3 so far. I try to make at least one example from every day. Here's what I've played with the last couple of days:


Day 1 -- Clean & Simple. I used a poinsettia instead of holly. There are scored lines adding interest to the white part, but they don't show up at all in the photo.

Day 3 -- Classic & Elegant. The next two are meant to look vintage. The tree turned out better than the bird. Both have touches of gold which don't show up in the photo.

And this one was fun -- using some of those tiny stamps that never get ink on them to fill in a shape. I should do this more often -- goodness knows every stamp set comes with some tiny flowers, stars, dots. I went with pink and lime here instead of red and kelly green.

Only rarely do I have the same materials as the designers, but part of the fun is the challenge of coming up with something similar to use to implement the lesson.

I have some snowflakes on order -- one of Monday's designs was just too pretty to wing it, and I always send my daughter a snowflake.

PaperTrey September Blog Hop Challenge

I really enjoy the PaperTrey Ink challenges. I always learn something new, and the September 2015 Blog Hop Challenge is no exception. We used stamps, embossing, white ink and white pencil to create a blackboard look.

My first attempt was such a hot mess, I can't even salvage any part of it and it hit the waste basket. Then I remembered that the Ruby Rose set has two sentiments, one birthday and one thank you, that would be perfect. And I also remembered that I have the Vintage Labels stamp set, which perfectly fit my Sizzix Labels Two dies. From there it was a simple matter of culling through my tiny flourishes and leaves until I found a couple stamps that would fill in the rest. I even found a white pencil I didn't know I had! So here's what I came up with, and I'm happy with how they came out:

I had planned to be done with these, but then I realized that the inspiration piece had a Fall theme, so I used misted gelatos to stamp my own leaf background. About this time I recalled that I had two of the Boutique Borders stamp sets, Birthday and Thanks. I thought I'd see what they looked like on a blackboard, and I just kept rolling:

One of the most appealing things about this technique is that it gave me a chance to use some of those itty bitty images that never get any love. Thanks, PTI, for another fun challenge!

Darnell's NBUS Challenge

I'm participating in Darnell's NBUS (Never Before Used Schtuff) challenge for the first time. The idea is to create something using some of that great stuff we just had to have, but never used. Surely none of us have anything like that hiding out in our craft rooms -- oh, wait, I do! Quite a bit in fact!

Actually, I just got a small order of stuff I'd had my eye on at PaperTrey Ink which had been out of stock for a while. I had great fun making these:

PTI Mighty Bloom Cover Plate. I also stamped a pale background with a gingham stamp I won from Our Daily Bread Stamps.

PTI Quilted: Summer. Love this stamp/die set and I may collect the other seasons as well. I cut and stamped a quilt square, and also stamped a border and raised it on kraft:

Lastly, I used the curvy Paper Smooches Stitched Wise die to impress two lines of stitching down the front of this gatefold card, and then carefully snipped along the stitched line since the die just impresses, and doesn't actually cut. Found a use for a pretty piece of ribbon too. I'm adding this one to my Valentine stash.

I can only add 3 to the challenge, so I'll probably link up the last ones. If you've never been to Darnell's blog, take a look. Not only does she make great cards, but she has an amusing writing style that always makes me smile. And a hamster for a craft assistant!