Butterfly Moments

Welcome to another Saturday and another challenge from Our Creative Corner! This month's hostess, Dana Grothaus, has a fun challenge for us: use butterflies on your card or project. I confess I've never been especially drawn to butterfly images, but I think my opinion might be changing now that I have the fun butterfly dies for the Big Shot.

On this card I wanted to use one of my preordered stamp sets from the summer mini, and I thought Elements of Style would look pretty with butterflies. I went hunting for a sketch challenge and came across this week's Viva la Verve challenge. It seemed like a great sketch and it also had an inspiration component with three different living room photos. The first one called out "Baja Breeze!" to me and I was off and running. (I'm sure I'm not alone in being beyond thrilled that this color is coming back!)

OK, the card. I first stamped the rose image to make a toile-inspired background with Baja Breeze. I also sponged the edges then added a black layer with a super-skinny border - I had never tried a 1/16" border before but I love it. The center panel uses the damask image from Friends 24-7 (rock and rolled with Baja Breeze and Basic Black) and the "inspire create share" text stamp from Charming (stamped off once) with more sponged edges. I followed the sketch and used a strip of 5/8" black grosgrain ribbon down the center. The sentiment comes from Elements of Style and was oval punched, then layered over one of the cutout shapes from the Matchbox die. My butterflies are made with A Walk in the Park DP and basic black cardstock, and the Beautiful Butterflies and Beautiful Wings dies. I added white pearls from the Pretties Kit in the centers. I did have to move my butterfly off-center because of the size of my elements, but I can't seem to do a sketch without fiddling with some element of it, LOL!

I'm really loving this card - the new stamps are wonderful and I'm just so happy to be using Baja Breeze again. I'm also happy that I got a new light tent and finally had a chance to set it up. The original one I had purchased on eBay was driving me crazy, so I decided to upgrade and so far I definitely think it was worth it.

OK, that's it from me. Make sure you go see what all the other talented OCC ladies have to show you today, and then get out your butterflies and play along! Have a wonderful weekend!

Divine Diva Inspiration Challenge #26

To all our American readers, happy tax day! LOL! We will try not to "tax" you with the challenge this week. I loved the vibrant colors in these Herbal Waters from Sunsweet Naturals. I found these shown on the Lovely Package blog, which has become one of my favorite sources of inspiration.

I zeroed in on the first bottle, the lavender mint. I have hardly used my Herb Expressions set, so it seemed like the perfect time to pull out the lavender image. My layout (slightly tweaked) comes from a sketch blog that I visited for the first time, Sweet Stop Sketches. I'm sure I will be back to check them out again! If you are ever in need of a sketch, you can find lots to choose from on Allison Fillo's blog, Stampin' When I Can. She has daily postings of sketch challenges from all over. For my colors I kept the purple and green, and I decided to feature some of the colors that will be retiring with the new catalog: lavender lace, mellow moss and handsome hunter. I thought this was going to be a clean and simple card but I guess it didn't end up that way, LOL.

First I stamped the lavender image three times on naturals ivory cardstock, then colored it in with markers. With a dauber and mellow moss ink I added the "grass" underneath, then I used the color spritzer and mellow moss marker to add texture to the background. Finally I covered the whole panel with vanilla Smooch Spritz - a new product that will be available in the summer mini catalog. It's beautiful for a subtle sparkle - you might just be able to see it in the photo.

For the smaller panel I stamped the Cornish Heritage Farms Pretty Pattern backgrounder with lavender ink and cardstock. I added pearls from the Pretties Kit to the corners and a sentiment from the new set Watercolor Trio (also from the upcoming mini). The ribbon and bow use some champagne ribbon from my stash, a flower from the Blossom Party die (naturals ivory cardstock sponged with lavender ink), and a vintage button tied with hemp twine.

Be sure to check out the cards made by all the Divine Divas for this challenge!

Anne

Chris

Donna

Julie

Kerri

And for something special, this week we have a guest designer: my fellow OCC team member Sarah Gough! Her work is amazing so stop by her blog to be wowed!

Because I was ill last week I forgot about the card kit drawing. I am so sorry about that. In light of that, I'm going to extend the prize to count for this challenge as well, and I will pick a winner on Thursday, April 29.

The keyword for this week's upload is DDIC26. We hope you will come and play along with us - we always love to see what you create! Our next challenge will be on May 6 so be sure to come back then!

What a week

I am really glad to see this week come to an end. I've been laid up most of the week with cellulitis - my lower left leg was quite swollen and infected so I've had to take it easy. I'm finally feeling better so I did manage to get a card made for the challenge at Our Creative Corner - it's not my favorite card ever, but it'll have to do for this week!

The challenge this week is bows. You know I love 'em. I had a couple different ideas but this is what I ended up with. I used the Flower Folds die to cut flowers out of melon mambo and bermuda bay designer paper - you know the solid sheet that comes with the patterns packs? If you emboss it with the Big Shot then sand it, you get the white core coming through. Actually with using the Finial Plate folder rather than a texture plate, which I've done before, the impression is so good that it does a lot of the distressing for you, so if you don't want it to look too rough, go for the plates instead of the folders.

For the center I used one of the Sending Love brads on a 3/4" circle of the same bermuda bay paper. The "stem" is the large image from Wedding Sweet - its flowers are stylized enough that I think they can pass for pretty swirly stems with flourishes. I adhered a pretty in pink satin bow on the stem and then added a sentiment from the same stamp set with some piercing on either side.

Be sure you go check out what all the fabulous OCC ladies have made for this week's challenge, and then we hope you'll play along with us!

Lovely Button Flowers

When I saw this image posted at Lovely Package, I immediately wanted to make a card inspired from it. Isn't it such a brilliant idea the way the designer did this packaging? I decided to use this design for my card for this week's Our Creative Corner challenge. Our hostess for the month of April is the fabulous Dana Grothaus, who is kicking off the month with a challenge she's called Break Out the Buttons! Yay, buttons are one of my favorite things to use on cards.

I feel like I have to first apologize because I'm having photography issues. For some reason I just couldn't get a photo of this card that I was happy with. Ugh! I started out by cutting leaves with the Little Leaves die out of sahara sand textured cardstock and I sponged them lightly with sahara sand ink. Next I used the Birds and Blooms dies for my flowers. I actually stenciled these flowers onto whisper white cardstock with pale plum and rich razzleberry ink and then cut them out (that's a long story), but you could also simply die-cut the flowers from white and then sponge them. For the center of each I put a smaller razzleberry flower with a whisper white Latte button in the center.

I put this all on a tall card to mirror the original packaging. This one is 9 1/4" x 4" to fit in a #10 envelope. My flower pot was cut from sahara sand cardstock that I ran through the Big Shot with the harlequin texture plate and sponged with sahara sand ink. I added razzleberry ribbon to the top of the flower pot to pretty it up a little. Lastly I did the sentiment, which is from Heard from the Heart, by coloring "wishing you" with sahara sand marker and "happiness" with razzleberry. The sahara sand came out lighter than I wanted, but by this time the card was all done so I'll just have to live with that!

Go check out what everyone else on the team has made for this challenge - you know it's going to be fabulous. We also have three new team members to welcome this weekend, Julie LeBlanc, Sarah Gough and Diane Gilbert - their work is fabulous so go show them some OCC love!

April Card Kit of the Month

Here's my latest card kit for the month of April! With this card kit you’ll receive complete instructions and all the consumable supplies needed to make 6 of each of these card designs – a total of 12 cards. The price of this kit is just $15, including envelopes.

If you purchase the monthly kit, you will also have the opportunity to purchase the coordinating stamp set at 15% off retail price (tax and shipping not included). This month the featured stamp set is Greenhouse Garden. It’s an even better deal because for the month of April, this stamp set is already on sale for 20% off!

Greenhouse Garden stamp set regularly $25.95, 20% off $20.76, with purchase of kit $17.65

The rest of the products used in making these cards are given in the list below. If you have all of these then you’re ready to go, but just let me know if you’d like to order any of these items. You can also use the kit to make your cards with the supplies you already own.

Please get your orders to me by April 15. You will receive your kit before the end of the month.

Lori Rider
loririder (at) verizon (dot) net
978-486-8102
divastamper.blogspot.com

I have a new shopping cart system set up - please make sure you click the right item (if you need to include shipping or not). You can edit the quantity to purchase more than one kit.

Local customers: To purchase your kit please click the "Add to Cart" button below.




If you need to receive your kit by mail, click on the "Add to Cart" button below. The shipping calculator is supposed to work for anywhere in the world, which means I can now ship outside the U.S. This is my first time using it, though, so let me know if you encounter any problems.




Additional Product List

• Dusty Durango Classic Ink ($5.95)
• So Saffron Classic Ink ($5.95)
• Certainly Celery Classic Ink ($5.95)
• Not Quite Navy Classic Ink ($5.95)
• Not Quite Navy Stampin’ Write Marker ($3.25)
• Curvy Verses stamp set ($23.95)
• Sincere Salutations stamp set ($23.95)
• Paper piercing tool ($3.50)
• Large oval punch ($15.95)
• Scallop oval punch ($15.95)
• Ticket corner punch ($5.95)
• Paper snips ($9.95)
• Bone folder ($6.95)
• Stamp-a-Ma-Jig ($11.95) (optional)
• Stampin’ Dimensionals ($3.95)
• Stamping sponge (or paper towel) ($3.50/set of 3)
• SNAIL adhesive ($6.95)

Please let me know if you have any questions about this month's kit!

Divine Diva Inspiration Challenge #25

I'm happy to tell you that with this challenge, the DDIC team is celebrating its one-year anniversary. Time really flies! I know I'm speaking for the whole team when I say that we have a blast doing these challenges and we really appreciate all of those who come out and play along. In honor of our first year as a team, I'm going to offer one of my card kits (February and March seen here and here; the April kit will be posted later today) to one lucky player who links to their card in the comments here. I'll choose the winner randomly on Thursday, April 8, at 2 p.m. Eastern. The winner will get to pick from the three kits I've offered so far.

OK, on to this week's challenge! It's another image from Pier 1. The flower made from cups really caught my eye - isn't it clever?

For my card I used the basic color scheme of red, yellow and green, but I made it bolder and brighter colors than in the photo. I was just in the mood to punch it up a bit.

I started with the Pink Flamingo DP - the prints are so cheery. I chose this summer sun print and punched an extra-large flower from it. For the center I stamped one of the flowers from Petal Pizazz with real red, then I cut out just the center, using the inked image as a guide for where to cut the uninked paper. The stem and leaves (also from Petal Pizazz) were stamped in old olive. Once I had this flower all put together I realized I needed to make a big card to really do what I wanted, so this is a 5x7 card.

For the background I added a couple of panels of DP - more of the summer sun and some old olive polka-dot DP. The sentiment from Bella Blossoms fit nicely on the large oval punch, which I put under the flower. As an accent I added real red dot ribbon that's tied with linen thread and accented with an olive button from the Playground set. I love how Lee Conrey makes her gorgeous bows (like this one) so I definitely had hers in mind while I put this one together, but clearly I need more practice!

Be sure to check out the cards made by all the Divine Divas for this challenge!

Anne

Chris

Donna

Julie

Kerri

Hope you are inspired to come and play along. Just leave a comment here with a link to your card. We can't wait to see what you create! The keyword for uploading on online forums will be DDIC25. Have fun and look for the next challenge on April 15!