The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 7

Whew, the time is flying by... I'm back with another card! This one is the most involved I've made so far, and it's also very heavy - lots of dimensionals. I will probably recommend to my card buffet stampers that they make it a flatter card - you could even leave the knot off the ribbon. But I decided to go all out with my card, since it's always easy to simplify things later.

Today's card is also for the featured stamper challenge, which is honoring Christine (chrisations.ink). I have seen Christine around SCS a lot - in addition to her beautiful cards, she is one of those wonderful stampers who is very good about leaving comments. From Christine's lovely gallery I chose this card, thinking it would be great as a Christmas card.

I liked Christine's use of metallic cardstock, but I wanted to use this twill ribbon from the holiday mini catalog, which I didn't really want to pair with gold or silver. So I turned again to my shimmer paint. For the punched snowflake (from Berry Christmas) I repeated the technique of combining reinker (old olive) with shimmer paint (champagne mist) as I described on this post, but I also used a dauber to apply the champagne paint directly to the stamp for the olive panel. Again, you need very little paint - one tiny dab will do it.

For the rest of my card, I used the tiny dot texture plate with vanilla cardstock. I loved how Christine put the white on white on her card, so I emulated that with vanilla. I used the pennant die for my scalloped edge and a sentiment from Four the Holidays - I couldn't decide whether I wanted real red or old olive ink for it, so I used markers and got both! I really love how this one turned out - I think it's one of my favorites so far.

I just want to give a quick shout-out to my readers and new subscribers - I've now passed 30,000 hits and I obviously couldn't have done it without you! I really appreciate all of your wonderful comments, and don't forget to keep leaving them to be entered to win the hidden Christmas blog candy that will go to one lucky commenter on my Twelve Days of Christmas posts!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 6

Wow, I can't believe this challenge is halfway over. It's going by too quickly - that means I have less and less time to get ready for next weekend's events! I think I should probably clarify one little thing - I'm not attempting to incorporate the Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas" into my cards. ;) There have been some interesting coincidences, like the gold on Day 5, or elements of two and three on those days, but it hasn't been intentional! Connecting my cards to the song didn't even occur to me, LOL. But I will say the song has been running through my head all day!

Well, anyway... Here is today's card. I found a great inspiration piece on the Jonathan Adler web site for the inspiration challenge on SCS: the utopia bird vase. I translated this into a card using very vanilla, kraft, chocolate chip and ruby red with the Gifts of Christmas stamp set. I really wanted to stick to clean and simple today - hence the wide vanilla border and the large central image panel. I colored the image with markers because I wanted to stamp a different sentiment onto the base of the card, and while I was at it I went ahead and colored the flowers ruby red and the rest chocolate chip. This was pretty fussy coloring but I think it was worth it. I also stamped the dove a second time on vanilla, cut it out and popped it up. The sentiment is from Many Merry Messages. I did use some chocolate chip taffeta ribbon and piercing on this card since I have done very little embellishing on these Christmas cards so far, but I think this could easily be a nice SIP (stamps, ink, paper) card for the workshop folks. We'll see. Like I said the other day, I'm too indecisive to say for sure right now!

Pumpkin Patch

Welcome to the first November challenge for Our Creative Corner! This week we have an inspiration challenge from our November hostess, Jennifer Meyer. It's a photo of pumpkins decorated with faces, and when I first looked at the photo, I thought, "pumpkins... faces... scrapbook page!" So my project this week is a page I designed in My Digital Studio, using some photos from my trip to the pumpkin patch with my kids. I recommend clicking on the photo to enlarge it since the thumbnail may look a little pixellated.

A few days ago I was browsing my old Stampin' Success magazines looking for ideas for my workshop and card buffet, and I came across an article where a designer had found the inspiration for scrapbook page layouts in various packaging. I decided to try this approach for my own layout. One of the ICs on SCS had used a great site called Lovely Package, and it's always fun to browse. My layout came from this meat packaging (yes, really, meat). It seemed like a great layout for using several photos, and I knew I had a few good ones that I could use.

This is a pretty basic page... I'm still new at this, you know! ;) I used a pumpkin pie background paper and decreased the opacity to lighten the shade. My stamps are from Holiday Blitz, and I also put the Basic Black Distressed stamp over everything to get the distressed edges. The only embellishment is a Button Latte button, with a pumpkin pie grosgrain ribbon knot. (I hope we get some other possible ties for our buttons in a future download - I hate leaving them naked!)

I hope you'll play along with us, and don't forget to check out all the fabulous work from the rest of the OCC design team! Thanks so much for stopping by today!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 5

Five days into this challenge and I decided to do something different for today's card. I chose less traditional colors and made it a religious card. The layout is Beate's weekend sketch challenge.

For this card the colors came first - I thought the combo of rich razzleberry, bashful blue, and night of navy would be elegant and striking. I chose this image from Holy Triptych, which I stamped with basic black and colored with markers (the above colors plus close to cocoa and blush blossom). I wanted to make the star and halos stand out in some way, so rather than just coloring them, I added some two-way glue and gold galaxy glitter. Then to add a little more sparkle, I put more glitter in the corners of the card and on the scallops of the sentiment (which is from Many Merry Messages). Gold brads would have looked better, but I don't have any, so this will have to do. I may end up changing this one - I love how the image turned out, but I am not sure about the rest of it!

Don't forget to leave a comment on any of the Twelve Days of Christmas posts to enter to win the surprise blog candy that I've hidden somewhere during the challenge. My first post tomorrow will be for the OCC and will not be a Christmas card, but I will be sure to do a Christmas card as well. Thanks for visiting!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 4

This was a toughie today... I had a hard time finding a challenge that was suitable and not a whole lot of time! Finally I happened on the Viva la Verve sketch challenge and I decided I could make that work. It was also a limited supply challenge, and it wasn't easy, but I did it! The limits were one (type of) embellishment, two cardstock colors (plus a neutral), and three stamps.

I'd seen a swap card at the Portland regional that used the five petal punch to make a poinsettia. I've since seen the idea elsewhere, so I think it's caught on! I decided to try it on today's card. I punched two real red flowers and two garden green flowers, then on the red ones I scored each petal, folded them in half a little for dimension, and sponged real red ink on the edges. I put the red flowers together with a very vanilla 5/16" brad and then added the "leaf" flowers behind them.

The largest circle is made with Stampin' Up! products - but not what you might think. The large scallop circle comes from the scallop circle #2 die; the inside circle is traced from a chipboard circle and cut out. Inside the vanilla circle I stamped the snowflake from Delightful Decorations several times with chocolate chip. The sentiment is from the large block stamp in Season of Joy, and for my third stamp I used the French Filigree background with garden green ink and cardstock. The designer paper is from Merry Moments.

Gotta run... I'm just in time for the bus dropoff! Whew, I'm glad that came together quickly! Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to leave a comment so you can enter to win the surprise Christmas blog candy that I'll give to one person who commented sometime during my Twelve Days of Christmas challenge!

Divine Diva Inspiration Challenge #15

It's so nice to be back with a new Divine Diva challenge for you - three weeks seems like a long time! I'm taking a break from Christmas cards for this week's challenge.


I decided to use some rich colors - melon mambo and elegant eggplant, along with old olive and whisper white. This wasn't my original plan - I was trying to do something a lot more complicated and it just wasn't working. When I'm in the middle of struggling with a card, and I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall, it takes me way too long to remember that simplifying things usually solves my problem. But eventually I decided to try fewer colors and a simpler design, and this is what I ended up with.

The main image is from Charming, and I colored it with melon and olive markers then cut out with Nestabilities. I used a larger layer of eggplant cardstock behind it. The card base is also eggplant, with a background of melon cardstock that I stamped tone on tone with the Cornish Heritage Farms sophisticated swirl backgrounder. The sentiment (from Papertrey Ink's Mixed Messages) was stamped in eggplant right onto the image panel. To finish off the card, I added olive ribbon (from the holiday mini) and three Martha Stewart adhesive pearls.

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

Anne

Chris

Donna

Julie

Keri

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 SCS will be DDIC15. Have fun and look for the next challenge on November 19!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 3

I'm back with my Christmas card for today. This is a pretty simple one - in fact, I think it could end up being one of the make and takes for my upcoming workshop. (I am so indecisive that I may not make up my mind until the day of!)

This card uses the most recent Mojo Monday sketch. It's a contest week and I probably strayed too far from the sketch to even hope of winning, but I still like the card!

Looking at the sketch, I first thought of Patterned Pines to fill that large focal area. I then went to my Merry Moments designer paper and chose the old olive snowflake print to use for the background, and stamped the trees with olive ink on very vanilla cardstock. I placed a single layer of chocolate chip on a vanilla card base, then added the 4" square of DP and a strip of olive cardstock, leaving a border around the outside and in between. I put my chocolate chip punched snowflake in the upper left, with a 1/4" punch of old olive in the center. Then I just needed to figure out where to put a sentiment, and after considering lots of options, I cut out chocolate chip letters with the Timeless Type dies to spell "joy" down the right side.

This is a great Christmas card for mailing because it's totally flat - you could always pop the layers up on dimensionals, add brads or ribbon, etc., if you wanted to dress it up. I think I'll keep this design in my back pocket in case I need to crank out some last-minute cards this year. (What, me wait to the last minute? No way...)

Thanks for visiting and don't forget to leave a comment - there is surprise Christmas blog candy hidden somewhere during my Twelve Days of Christmas challenge and you never know where it might turn up!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 2

Only the second day of my challenge and I'm having such fun making these Christmas cards! Today I tackled the color challenge, neutrals with a pop. Of course, it wasn't until I finished the card that I remembered the challenge was to use only neutral cardstock... but I really needed the red in the two places I added it so I'll stand by my card! I feel like this card must be a CASE of someone but I don't know who... I've seen so many great cards with this set, Delightful Decorations.

I have been wanting to try out the shimmer paints from the holiday mini for a while now and finally had an excuse to break them open. Andrea Walford has some great tips for using the shimmer paint, so I tried two of her techniques. First I combined 91% rubbing alcohol (Andrea used 99% - I'm not sure we have that in the US) with a few drops of champagne shimmer paint and soft suede reinker, then I sprayed it onto soft suede cardstock. Maybe the soft suede reinker wouldn't have been necessary - I'll have to play around more and see! That gave me a nice shimmery background when the alcohol evaporated. For the ornaments I mixed reinker and shimmer paint: real red and frost white, and soft suede and champagne. I used a small plastic lid to mix a tiny bit of each together, then applied the mixture to the stamps with a sponge dauber. It's a really lovely effect. Tip of the day: You don't need a heavy coating of the paint mixture - in fact, if you get too much the blank spaces in your image will start to get filled in with paint. So just aim for a light coating - I was able to cover the images nicely with one dab of paint.

This is one of those cards that I feel just doesn't photograph well... it's hard to see the shimmer, especially on the ornaments, and I think the red ornament doesn't look so pink IRL. But you know how that goes. This photo might give you a slightly better view of the shimmery areas.

I embellished both ornaments with a rhinestone brad for a little more sparkle. To finish the card I drew hanging threads for both ornaments with my soft suede marker, mounted the ornaments with dimensionals, and glued a red grosgrain bow on top of each one. The sentiment is from Teeny Tiny Wishes and was punched with the word window and modern label punches. This has to be my current favorite combination of punches for sentiments!

Don't forget that there is blog candy hidden somewhere for you while I'm running my Twelve Days challenge - leave lots of comments because you never know which day the winner will be chosen from!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Cards) - Day 1

I have a couple big events coming up in the next couple weeks. The first is my first ever workshop, on November 13, and the second is my Christmas card buffet on November 15. I'm issuing a challenge to myself to get ready for both at once, by making at least one challenge card each day between now and November 13, which just happens to be 12 days. This is so I have a nice display of cards I've made to show at the workshop and also use at the card buffet.

Considering the limitations of the challenge, these cards will most likely be:
1. SUO (Stampin' Up! only)
2. Christmas cards (at least until I've finished the ten designs for the card buffet)
3. On the simpler side - and probably flatter as well, so that they will be easy to mail.

I hope you'll come check out my cards each day, and you are more than welcome to join in the challenge yourself - with whatever sort of Christmas cards you feel like making. And just to make this a little more fun - and to put a little more pressure to myself to keep up with the challenge - I'm going to offer some surprise Christmas blog candy to one randomly chosen stamper who leaves a comment on these cards. I didn't manage to give away any 25K blog candy and now I'm getting close to 30K, so it seemed like the perfect time for some goodies. The blog candy will be "hidden" on one of the twelve posts, so the more comments you leave, the better your chances of winning!

OK, now on to the first card. I know I've seen other cards that use this glittery embossing technique with the Scenic Season stamp set - so I'm not even sure who to credit with the idea. (You can see the glitter better if you click on the photo to enlarge it.) I thought this would be a fun card to make at the buffet and hopefully a wow at the workshop. I also used the Clean and Simple sketch challenge, although I had to fiddle with it a lot because my oval was so large.

I colored the trees on the stamp with a handsome hunter marker and the bird with real red, then stamped onto whisper white and cut out the oval with the scallop oval frame die. Next I took my Versamark pad directly to the paper and embossed right over the image with iridescent ice EP and added the real red frame. The strip of paper comes from the Christmas Cocoa specialty paper in the holiday mini, then I added the sentiment and the frame from Lots of Tags. Finally I adhered the bow, made from ribbon that's also in the mini catalog. (At the card buffet I will make the bow optional if folks are concerned about making sure it's flat for mailing.)

Vintage Thanks

It's the last Saturday in October - and my fifth (and final) October challenge for Our Creative Corner. This time around I picked something near and dear to my heart - vintage. I love using vintage items on my cards - whether they are actually old or just vintage style. It's such a fun look with lots of possibilities!

I combined my card with the limited supply challenge - "what's the weather?" Our weather forecast didn't give me a whole lot to go on - fall-like temperatures, a little sun, some clouds, some wind, possibly some sprinkles... kind of all mixed up. So I made a fall-themed card with some windblown leaves and a couple mixed-up prints of designer paper. The LSC also came with a 2/2/2 requirement: use three sets of two of something. So on my card I have two vintage items (buttons and trim), two patterned papers, and two circles.

The leaf image from Wandering Words first popped into my head when I read the weather forecast. Since we are supposed to see the sun, I wanted to use yellow and chose the crushed curry paper from The Write Stuff specialty paper. The other print in ruby red is from the same collection, and I made soft suede my brown since that color is in those papers as well. Once I chose my papers, I inked the stamp with markers and stamped on very vanilla, then used soft suede to dirty up the edges. Behind the stamped panel I used the two Nestabilities circles cut from the DP, also sponged with soft suede. To add my crochet trim to the bottom, I adhered it to a thin strip of cardstock, then glued that right onto the card base. The finishing touch was my vintage button tied with linen thread.

I've had a great time hosting the OCC challenges this month. Please visit the OCC blog to see everyone else's creations, and come back for more fun challenges in November!

I did it!

I made a challenge card just for fun! Woohoo for me! LOL. I have been wanting to do this for days and today I just made the time. It may not happen again soon so enjoy this one! I did three challenges with this card, actually: the inspiration challenge on SCS; Beate's weekend sketch challenge; and the Color Throwdown. For the IC, which features Anthropologie this week (one of my favorite stores!), I chose this soap set.

I noticed there was a butterfly in the center of the soap set, so I looked at all my stamp sets that include a butterfly and chose For All You Do. I stamped the flower squares in taken with teal, the butterfly in purely pomegranate, and the dotted background (with the help of the Stamp-a-ma-Jig) with certainly celery. Tip of the Day: If you want to make a background with this stamp, you need to slightly offset the image each time you stamp it so that the dots look right. Just center the edge row of dots in between the dots of the previous edge and it'll come out nicely spaced.

After I cut out my squares with Nestabilities, I decided to change the center shape to an oval, leaving room to add the flowers. (I used a marker to ink the stem so i could leave off the buds, then I added an extra leaf to the stem with the Stamp-a-ma-Jig. Turning the stamp sideways allowed me to position it wherever I wanted.) I folded the butterfly wings up for dimension and glued it over the flowers before positioning my die-cut shapes. The finishing touches were pomegranate ribbon, a celery panel embossed with the Perfect Details texture plate, and a sentiment using the word window and modern label punches, another stamped flower that I cut out, and two teal leaves that I made with the Little Leaves die.

OK, that's it from me today. I'm going back to my project of the week: making Christmas cards! Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful weekend.

Black (and Red) Velvet (or Suede)

The month is just flying by - I can't believe it's time for my fourth OCC challenge. (I'm lucky enough to get five Saturdays so you aren't done with me yet!) This week we are honoring Halloween with a special challenge. I had to put a twist on it, of course - so my challenge is to make a card or project that's inspired by a scary book or movie. As you'll see from my sample, it's OK if your creation isn't Halloween related.

I had a little help from Todd on this one, seeing that Halloween is his favorite holiday and he loves all things related to Halloween and mad scientists and nineteenth-century British literature... but I digress... I am really not a fan of spooky stuff, but I still thought this would be a cool challenge. The first thing that came to my mind was the story by Edgar Allen Poe called "The Masque of the Red Death." The story progresses through a series of seven apartments, the last of which is the most important to the story, and it's described in this way:

The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet -- a deep blood color.

That description is what inspired my card. Well, that, and a card I made in My Digital Studio while I was working on my certification this week. I actually made that card before I made this one, but I kept returning to that idea as I was thinking about this challenge and ended up with some of the same elements. I'll show that card a little later in the post. Now back to the challenge...

I started my card with the red damask print from the Christmas Cocoa specialty paper in the mini catalog. I used it as the background and also stamped the ornaments from Tree Trimmings onto the paper with black craft ink and embossed with clear EP. After I cut the ornaments out, I adhered them to whisper white cardstock with dimensionals and added the hanging strings.

Black velvet cardstock would have been really cool on this card, but since I didn't have any, I made some faux suede cardstock instead. (This was the technique challenge on SCS a couple weeks ago.) I did have some red velvet ribbon that's been in my stash for a while. The sentiment (from Christmas Punch) was also embossed and then layered on a die-cut from Lots of Tags, which I saw on this lovely card from Andrea Walford. My final touches are a wooden glittery snowflake that came in a pack I picked up on clearance last year at Cost Plus World Market. I thought they might come in handy someday! I added a Stampendous sticker to the center of the snowflake and used the Scribbles Swirl die to further embellish it.

So there you have it - my Poe-inspired Christmas card! How's that for crazy? ;) I hope you'll take on this challenge - have fun with it and just go wherever it takes you! And be sure you stop by the OCC to check out the samples from the rest of our awesome team!

Now, if you're still with me, here's the card I created in MDS. I used the same colors and the same Tree Trimmings ornaments. The sentiment is from the "stamp" set Wishes & Greetings (these are actually rub-ons in the catalog) and the rest should be pretty self-explanatory! I'm having a lot of fun learning more about this program as I go through certification. I even sent this card off to be printed, and I'll be so excited to get some copies of it to mail off this Christmas!

I think I might be hooked

I'm home from the regionals in Portland yesterday - which was so fun! - and I'm a little under the weather. Since it was a rainy day and I wasn't feeling up to doing much, I decided to crack open the My Digital Studio software that arrived last week. I'm going to get certified, and I'm sure I have a lot more to learn, but I wanted to share the very first scrapbook page I made with the program.

I started out by watching some of the training webinars SU has made for demos. Well, it wasn't very long before I had the program open and was playing around with it myself. I started out with a template page from the Happy Birthday scrappin' kit, but then I changed the background and took out a whole bunch of the elements that were there and added my own. Obviously there is lots of room to add more, but I decided not to go crazy my first time out. And I'm liking a cleaner and simpler look more and more these days anyway.

This was so fun, and really easy. I have to stress, I have never done digital scrapbooking before. Heck, I've hardly done traditional scrapbooking. But this was very simple to do, and I love the result! Stay tuned as I learn more about what this program can do. So far, I am really impressed!

Thankful Thyme

Welcome to another week of my October challenges for Our Creative Corner! This week it's a color challenge: blush blossom, soft suede, sage shadow, and handsome hunter. I came up with this combo idea a while ago and this seemed like the perfect time to use it.

My first instinct was to make another Christmas card, but I decided to go a different route this week. I wanted to use a stamp set I hadn't played with much, and my eyes landed on Herb Expressions. I think these images and sentiments are so lovely. I chose the thyme image - I guess there was a little creative license since it appears that thyme flowers are white. But I covered up the name anyway, so it'll just be our little secret, right?

I colored the image with soft suede and handsome hunter markers, stamped it on very vanilla, and colored it with blush blossom and sage shadow markers. Then I cut and layered with oval Nestabilities and sponged soft suede on the edges. I wanted to use designer paper but didn't have a lot of options - the soft suede DP from Thoroughly Modern seemed perfect for the image, and the sage striped paper from Autumn Leaves (retired) added a nice contrast.

I wanted some kind of pretty bow and I played around with several different arrangements of ribbon. In the end I first put down a strip of soft suede ribbon with the solid side up, then the strip of the peachy color, then the dark green organdy bow. I have no idea what ribbons those last two are - just stuff I found in my stash! I left room for the sentiment (also from Herb Expressions), which I framed out using Frames with a Flourish. To finish off the card I added more sponging and lots of piercing - I toyed with other ideas of things to add but in the end I kept it simpler. Sometimes that really is better! :)

Be sure you stop by the OCC and check out the lovely samples from the rest of the team. And then come and play along - I'd love to see what you do with these colors!

Divine Diva Inspiration Challenge #14

Welcome to another challenge week! For this week's inspiration I chose this cool Japanese fabric. It's by Kobayashi and it's called Chrysanthemums. Sorry that I don't have a link for it - I saw it on Etsy but it's no longer available anywhere. I fell in love with it anyway, so that's what we'll be using this week!

I kept my card pretty simple - I am the victim of not enough time once again this week. Saturday I'm headed to my first Stampin' Up! regional so I've spent a lot of time working on my swap cards. I am hoping that next week I might be able to play a challenge just for fun - can you imagine? It's been a very long time since I did that. Anyway...

On to my card. I made the background first, inspired by the patterns and colors in the fabric. I used dusty durango, crushed curry, old olive, and not quite navy, with stamps from Circle Circus, Enjoy Every Moment, and Think Happy Thoughts. My cardstock is naturals ivory, which I have recently discovered and really love. How did I live without this stuff for so long? The flower is from Petal Pizazz, and I used the oval scallop frame die to make a big statement. Then I added the sentiment from The More the Merrier, with the modern label punch and Movers & Shapers die. I didn't have a lot of room for embellishment, but I did add a Playground 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

Keri

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 SCS will be DDIC14. Have fun and look for the next challenge on November 5!

Season of Christmas

I don't know about you but suddenly it's hitting me how soon it's going to be Christmas. I have hardly started making Christmas cards, so when I sat down to do my card for the OCC sketch challenge, I decided it had better be for Christmas.

First of all, you may be saying, "Lori came up with a sketch challenge?" I know - not really my specialty! But I knew that the OCC players like them and we hadn't done one in a few weeks. I came up with the sketch based on this card (for the OCC purposes it's simplified just a bit).

Looking through my Christmas stamps, I decided that Season of Joy would look good with this layout, if I made a row of trees. This stamp set is not new, but it's new to me, and I love it! I based my colors (real red, old olive, very vanilla) around this set of Christmas paper - which is from two years ago! I recently found a huge stash of SU Christmas paper that I plan to use for lots of Christmas cards this year.

I first stamped the tree twice, leaving room in between, then stamped the third tree, cut it out, and added some red Galaxy glitter. The word panel was made with the large stamp from this set, stamped multiple times with the Stamp-a-ma-Jig. I fiddled with the sketch a little because I wanted more of those fun words to show - I even slid the olive layer in between the vanilla layer and its red background, just to be different!

The sentiment comes from the same set, and I used my favorite oval punches. I covered the snowflake in "JOY" with a punched poinsettia, which I also gave the glitter treatment. The upper right corner needed something, so I stamped and cut out the poinsettia, added glitter to the berries, and placed it on top of a bow made from the olive Mistletoe ribbon that's in the mini catalog.

I hope you'll come and play along with the sketch challenge - I can't wait to see your creations!

More inspiration

Have you had enough inspiration challenges from me yet? I promise, this is the last one, LOL.

I had one card left to make for the Card Buffet and I was really struggling with what I wanted to do. I knew it was going to be a birthday card but I couldn't seem to move forward. Lucky for me, I had the SCS inspiration challenge to turn to. Steph picked - for the 200th challenge! wow! - the site Kir DeVries. What a fun site to browse! I picked this In the Ground water bottle.

I started my card with the Cheep Talk branch, stamped with close to cocoa and certainly celery markers. Then I added a ruby red bird (not quite a squirrel, but I have no squirrel stamps) and little flowers punched from blush blossom and ruby red. These are made with the trio flower punch that's one of the Deals of the Week - a great punch to have in your collection. The sentiment is from Teeny Tiny Wishes.

The background is a panel of dot paper from the current Patterns Pack (hostess level 1) embellished with celery wide grosgrain ribbon and a chipboard flower. I embossed the flower using blush blossom craft ink and clear EP, then added a Sherbet celery button threaded with a tiny strip of ruby red cardstock.

OK, I'm officially done prepping cards for tomorrow. I'll try to post some of the others as I get time. It's going to be a fun event - I can't wait!

I'm not ready for cold weather

Brr, the chilly fall temperatures have arrived in Massachusetts and I'm not enjoying it much! Maybe that's why I made such a springy card for this week's challenge at Our Creative Corner. This is going to be a fun month for me because I am the hostess for the five challenges in October. I hope you'll come and play - I think I have some good stuff in store!



The challenge this week is my favorite kind - an inspiration challenge. I know you are shocked! I chose these journals by Monique Duval because I loved the style and the words on the front.


For my card I wanted to make something pretty. I took the colors from the green journal and used old olive, pink pirouette, and chocolate chip, with naturals ivory cardstock for the base and the image. The dogwood from Soft Summer was stamped in chocolate chip and then watercolored using ink pads and an Aqua Painter. I made the background by stamping one of the Park Avenue Patterns stamps in chocolate chip, using the Stamp-a-ma-Jig for placement, and I sponged lots of chocolate chip ink on the edges. To give the dogwood image an overall smaller footprint and show more of the background, I used the out of the box technique when cutting it out.

To finish, I added a chocolate chip bow and a sentiment from Best Yet, inside the frame from Great Friend. The sentiment is a faux tag, thanks to a little hemp twine. The outer edges seemed to need something behind the olive panel, so I cut the ends of the Top Note die with chocolate chip scraps and adhered them to the sides. Then I threaded two pink buttons with more hemp twine and added them in the corner.

There you have it - I've kicked off the October challenges and we're ready to see what you come up with! Please visit the OCC blog and check out all the wonderful samples from our fabulous team, and then make your own! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Eat, Drink & Be Scary

Here's another card for my Card Buffet on Sunday. I had this idea to make a bat out of punches a while ago, and I finally got a chance to use it. It's very simple - the wings are ovals (I used the wide oval) and the head is a 1" circle. To make the wing shapes, I used the same circle punch to cut into the wings. It's very forgiving - if you don't like the shape the first time, you can usually fix it. Then I just attached the wings to the head and added eyes with white gel pen.

I stamped the background with the Baroque Motifs swirl, then put the rest of the card together with Taylor's sketch challenge for today. The paper is from the Night and Day specialty pack, and the sentiment is from Eat, Drink & Be Scary - colored with marker since I wanted a circle instead of a tag. I added white dots with the gel pen and a bit of black grosgrain ribbon.

I'm looking forward to having people over to stamp on Sunday - the cards are going to be lots of fun, so if you're local it's not too late to RSVP!

Divine Diva Inspiration Challenge #13

Wow, it's October, and we're on our 13th challenge! Today we have some artwork by Jo Moulton, which I found at art.com - I loved the rich fall colors and the distressed look of this piece.


When it came time to make my card, I kept things simple because (1) I'm pressed for time and (2) I wanted to make my first card for this weekend's Card Buffet. We will be making cards for 10 different occasions, and this is the sympathy card.

Now that I'm looking at the inspiration piece again, it looks much more green than my card. Well, I wanted to use In Colors, and in my memory the yellow color stood out more than the green. So there you go! I first cut a piece of cardboard (the backing from the designer paper packs, which is my favorite cardboard) with the scallop square die, then used it as a mask over a 5" square of whisper white. I sponged crushed curry around the edge, leaving the white scalloped square in the center. Of course you could just cut out the scallop square from white cardstock and put it over a larger curry square, but my goal here is to minimize layers and keep the cards quicker than my usual.

The image from Lovely as a Tree was colored with crushed curry, dusty durango and soft suede markers. Then I added the sentiment from Close as a Memory in durango. I wanted to bring the lovely flourish from the artwork into my card somehow, so I cut out the Tulipe die with soft suede and just used two pieces of it, held together with a 5/16" white brad and adhered with a pop-up glue dot.

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

Anne

Chris

Donna

Julie

Keri

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 SCS will be DDIC13. Have fun and look for the next challenge on October 15!