Independence Day!

I decided to make an Independence Day card for a friend of mine...I saw a sketch at Clean&Simple Stamping that just spoke to me and said..."I would make a great patriotic card!".  Here is the original sketch:

Of course, this was just a sketch and the stars could be anything but I decided to do something different and use...uh, yeah....the stars as STARS!

I actually have this wonderful Creative Memories star punch that also embosses that my friend, Cyndi, gave me a while back.  I love it.  It does a regular 5 pointed star and then it does a cut out star that is embossed.

Here is my take on the sketch:

I used some very old red and white Making Memories paper I had, white cardstock from who knows where and a piece of blue Bazzill.  The little blue stars on top of the white stars were done from Pink Paislee paper and punched with a little Fiskars thumb punch I have. The sentiment was done with various stamps I had around...the happy was from a Stampendous set...and the 4, t, h, and ! were from some teensy wood mounted stamps from Hero Arts that I've had for nearly 10 years.  I cut the sentiment out with an EK Success punch.

Below you can just about make out the bit of embossing...even though it's a bit blurry.

I've always loved red, white and blue together....they just make you want to stand at attention with your hand over your heart.
I'm entering this in the following Challenges:
Little Scrap Pieces: Use a Star
More than Favors: Wacky Wednesday #73 4th of July Theme
Paper Crafting Journey: Challenge - Feeling Krafty 
By the way, my friend Donna sent me the following video the other day.  It's of 2 girls and a boy (all siblings) singing The Star Spangled Banner a capella.  It is amazing....I hope you enjoy it. It gave me goosebumps and brought a tear or two to my eye....

Happy Crafting!

Cricut Challenge 24: Sentimentals and SHE'S DONE IT AGAIN!

Heheheheh...and what exactly has SHE (read: MOI!) done again?  Why.... she totally finished a scrapbook layout!  All in one evening.  All in less than 2 hours (give or take a few minutes).  Finished, fertig, terminée, terminado, klaar, समाप्त (that's Hindi).

OK...so I will admit...it makes it a whole bunch easier if you use an 8x10 photo on a 12x12 page.  You see...there are 144 sq inches of space on a 12x12 layout.  An 8x10 photo which has 80 sq inches already...so you are already halfway to completion of your layout.  That makes no sense I realize but for a minute it did seem a bit logical.  Seriously if you get a really great picture and you enlarge it...well, you already have the beginnings of a striking layout with not much work.
I love this photo of Taylor (NBG) and her mother.  

We were at the park and I had snapped a few pictures and I just loved the way this one turned out.  She's just all pink and cute, you know?
I did do something different on this layout.  The title (Darling) is actually cut with the Sentimentals Cricut cartridge into the brown cardstock...So the pink print paper is placed below it.  I used some foam tape to give it some dimension.  The pink paper is Paper Pizzazz, the green is Basic Grey and the brown cardstock is Bazzill.  I also used a ladybug stamp from a Making Memories Set and put some Bazzill bling on the wings.  Some Offray ribbon finished it off.  
And Donna...I know there is not much journaling...well, ok...there isn't any! BUT the photo speaks for itself. It will go in a scrapbook of many photos of Taylor and her mommy so this one will just have to do with no other journaling.  But if it bugs you, Donna, I can always write who the people are on the back!
And by the way...this layout was made with yet another Cricut cartidge I have that I had not posted a project on yet...SENTIMENTALS!

Maybe tomorrow SHE'LL DO IT AGAIN!!! AG is going to go to Mother's Morning Out 2 days a week beginning soon and we are going to the Open House tomorrow.  Photo opportunities abound!

Technique, Technique, Technique and Challenges!

I had the most fun making this card!  I decided to pull out my Distress inks and make a background paper.  This is an "old" Tim Hotlz technique.  You basically use your foam applicator to rub the distress ink colors you like onto cardstock.  Then you put Versamark on your chosen stamp...spritz it with water and then stamp it on your distress inked cardstock.  The water will act as a resist with the Distress Inks and the result is so great looking!  I loved it!

So I made this little card for the CAS-Friday challenge which is doing a joint challenge with Clean&Simple Stamping.  Frankly I'm not sure if my card fits the clean and simple requirement....but I'm hoping that it does!  It sure was a fun card to make and will definitely do this technique again!

I cleaned up my room yesterday (trash day) and apparently threw away the list of the things I used...but the stamps were all Hero Arts, I put a few layers of UTEE on the butterfly.  The floral stamp was embossed with white Zing embossing powder. I added a little Baker's Twine around the embossed image.

Here's a closeup:

I just love that bleached resist effect on the cardstock!

Note to self...buy more Distress Inks!

And I made a whole bunch of these yesterday which is a direct scraplift from the Nicole Heady of Papertrey Ink's blog:

I loved the simplicity of this!...done with the PTI Parisian Doily and a square of cardstock...a little embossing for the sentiment and a nice but simple card. I'll be making more of these!

Happy Crafting!

Don'tcha Just Despise...

....when you get a whole bunch of new toys but are just too tired to try them out?!  I did a little shopping today at Archiver's where there was a 40% off sale on all stamps and when I got home about 8pm there was my order from Paper Trey Ink! I ate a bit of dinner and now it's 8:30 and I am just toooooo tired to play!  Sad...

But the good news is that there is tomorrow...and I'll get going on something tomorrow. 

So I will just put up another layout I did recently of my daughter's annual trip to the beach.

I will tell you that I'm really proud of this 2 page spread because it was done almost entirely with Fancy Pants and Unity stamps. I did all the background stamping with it...the edges under the photos were stamped and then cut out.  I put a little bling on some of the little stamped images...a button here and there and a journaling block on foam tape.  I really loved the way it turned out.  I don't mean to toot my own horn (well, maybe I do...I am the Queen of my Blog, remember)...but it is much cuter in person! I rarely do a ton of stamping on a layout so this was particularly fun!

Back to the Business of Making Stuff!

Once I clean up my room I usually have trouble motivating myself again because I don't want to mess anything up.  It's like when you clean your kitchen really well and then don't want to cook or even boil water because you're afraid you'll make a mess...or you wash you car and then don't want to take it out of the garage because you don't want it to get dirty.  Follow me?  It's another one of my many issues!

But I decided that I was going to forge ahead with the business of making stuff.  So, I went to my "This ain't no Ikea-Showcase-Pretty-Colors-On-the-Wall" studio.  BTW...I'm from Georgia.  We say things like "This ain't no" or "ain't got no"...and even though there are two negatives as in 'ain't' and 'no' it does not create a positive.  "Ain't no"....means IS NOT or ARE NOT  "ain't got no" means NONE, NADA, NOTHING, NICHTS!  So if you are not from the south perhaps you will feel enlightened to our way of saying things a bit.

Anyway, my husband's birthday is coming up shortly so I decided to make him a card with some leftovers.  (He loves leftover by the way...)  I don't think anything I used on this card is something I purchased within the last year.  Old, old, old....just like my husband will be on his next birthday! 

Actually my husband is 2 months younger than I am....he's smart, though...he never throws that up in my face.

So here is the card I made using the weekly sketch from Clean&Simple Stamping.  It's really quite simple and didn't take long at all to make. 

I used kraft paper from a pack I bought at Joann's, printed papers by MOD (I don't even know if this company exists any longer...), Stamps by Hero Arts and Page Pebbles by Making Memories.  I also used a Fiskars border punch...I love that spiral notebook paper edge.  I also Baroque Burgundy Stampin' Up ink.  A little twine tied at the top finished it off. 

Simple, simple, simple.  And it only took me about 5 minutes to clean up my mess! :)

I am also putting this in the CAS-Fridays challenge which was to make a masculine card and use kraft paper.

All done! 

Happy Krafting (terrible pun....I know...it's late....my room is clean....I don't know what to do with myself...)