Papertrey May 2012 Blog Hop Challenge

Its that time of the month again! Its a time to browse such lovely creations made with PTI goodies.
This month's inspiration photo:

I was a bit short on time preparing for this Hop as I was preparing for a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate my 40th birthday (AHHHH!)
I usually make three cards for the Blog Hop, not intentionally, just always happens that way because I get so inspired by the photo one card is never enough! But this time I only had time for one so here it is:

The stack of plates in the inspiration photo of course made me think of circles. And as you know, PTI Mehndi Medallion set is my all-time favorite, go-to in a pinch set. I used Momento Tuxedo Black and PTI Simply Chartreuse to create the design of various medallions and added some Kaizercraft green rhinestones. Then I realized that the green bling was more of a match to New Leaf ink so decided to add a few medallions in New Leaf too to balance the bling. Sentiment is from PTI Beautiful Butterflies. I love the result and never would have made a card with these three colors.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the Hop!

Play Date Cafe # 132

I'm having a blast playing along at the Play Date Cafe. What an honor to be selected as the Cream in our Coffee last week!

For this week's challenge, the colors are black, white, and a splash of mustard yellow.

I was inspired to make three cards. For this first one, I made a card using my favorite PTI double ended banner dies and some striped paper from Reminisce I've had in my stash for a while. I used Brilliance Galaxy Gold ink as my 'splash' of yellow. Its the closest ink I had to the inspiration photo. I used a PTI Think Big Favorites sentiment but it didn't show up as brightly as I had hoped.

Next I tried the same card on white cardstock instead and liked the effect of my 'splash' much better -

But my favorite card using this color combination was a teacher thank you card I made to fill up my stash for the end of the year gifts coming in a few weeks.

I used Becky Higgins grid journaling cards on black cardstock to make the background. Stamps were from PTI School Time set and sentiment from Think Big Favorites and the same Momento Black and Brilliance Galaxy Gold inks.
I love how it turned out and that its very different than the red/green apple themed cards I made for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Thanks for stopping by!

Playdate Cafe #131

LOVE the colors at Play Date Cafe this week. Made two cards using Papertrey Ink's Super Stars set and their Ocean Tides, Aqua Mist, and Orange Zest inks with a little Momento black as the accent.

Thanks for looking!

CR84FN54

This week's color challenge at CR84FN uses these pretty colors:

Here are my two cards:

I used Papertrey Ink's Heart-2-Heart#3 set with Enchanted Evening, Aqua Mist, and Kraft inks. Sentiment is from Think Big Favorites.

Thanks for stopping by.

Teacher Appreciation Week

Just wanted to share some of the cards & wrappings I made for our Teacher Appreciation week gifts....

For our Sunday school end of year cards, I made these cards which were a lift of a card from the amazing Danielle Flanders.

For the school teachers, I got them personalized wood-mounted stamps from my new favorite crafty daily deal site Pick Your Plum.

And for one of their teachers, a box of her favorite tea:

I get to take a break from teacher gifts for at least a couple of weeks and then it'll be time to make end of the year gifts.

Thanks for stopping by!

Moxie Fab Damask & Brocade Challenge

I celebrated my 40th birthday this weekend (along with Mother's Day) and need some fabulous thank you cards for some of my friends who gave me lovely gifts when we went out for margaritas one night to celebrate.

I made this card using some A Muse damask cardstock that I've been hoarding. I split it into pieces and heat embossed the PTI Think Big Favorites sentiment with American Crafts Zing Silver embossing powder.

For the second I did made the same card except I popped up alternating strips to give some dimension. Looks better in real life as I couldn't quite capture the dimension.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week.

Card Patterns Sketch 164

I found a new site with a great card sketch challenge every week - Card Patterns. A sketch is always helpful to me when I need to make a quick card but don't have an idea where to begin.

I paired this sketch with this Papertrey Ink color palette:

to create this:

My brother is newly engaged so wanted to make a card for the happily engaged couple using hearts. I stamped the Penny Black All Over Pattern background in Versamark and embossed it with American Crafts Zing powder in Frost. The hearts were die cut in PTI Pure Poppy and Raspberry Fizz and added a few Keisercraft rhinestones along the end of the PTI double ended banner die. The sentiment is A Muse stamped with Adirondack Espresso.

Thanks for taking a look!

colourQ challenge #136

I am still on a high after being selected as a ColourQueen Courtier last week. Its always fun to play along but even more fun when your card is recognized among all the wonderful entries.

Here's my take on this week's colour palette #136:

All supplies from Papertrey Ink. I used the Heart-2-Heart #2 balloons in Spring Moss, Orange Zest, Harvest Gold inks with Ripe Avocado balloon tails. Love how cheery and bright the card is. Made 8 balloons so my daughter can use it for her best friend's 8th birthday.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful weekend and Happy Mother's Day.

A World of Gingham

Here's a bright and cheery card I made for the Gingham Challenge in the Moxie Fab World blog using the new Trendy Tree Tops stamp and die set from Papertrey Ink which is fast becoming a favorite along the all the gingham loveliness in the Lily Bee Double Dutch paper line. I used foam adhesive to bring dimension to the red gingham heart and the kraft gingham landscape.

Thanks for stopping by!

MIM #65 - Patterned Paper Scrap Backgrounds

Well, if there's one thing I had a TON of, its patterned paper scraps. I have a weakness for patterned paper so I had plenty to draw from for this week's Make It Monday challenge.

I made this background using various scraps from different lines...and since they were scraps from long ago, I'm not entirely sure who made them. I do know the striped is from Chatterbox (yes, THAT old!) and I think the blue is My Mind's Eye. I'm a coordinated kit type of girl so matching different colors across different lines was a little bit of a challenge but I think it turned out great. I used the Papertrey Tie die as well as the block alphabet dies for the DAD and even busted out my Fresh Alphabet stamp set (never used before!) to spell out BEST on the diecuts.

Thanks for taking a look!

National Scrapbook Day Recap

Wow, what a great weekend of scrapbooking! I played along at the Creative Crop at Big Picture Classes and on the Echo Park Blog. They both had some great challenges that had me going all day.

Despite the fact that dear hubby was working most of the weekend and the girls and I had a birthday party, softball game, and our last Sunday school class of the year, I was still able to create 3 cards and 9 layouts. And I had a great time making them, though with less sleep! Thank goodness the challenge deadline at Big Picture gave me until Sunday night.

Here are my layouts for the Creative Crop:

CHALLENGE #1 - Feature a photo with a fanciful frame.

CHALLENGE #2: Grab a photo from a few years back and a photo from today and tell a story about the way things are different or the same.

CHALLENGE #3: Use photos and/or page accents to create a page that talks about reflection, literally or figuratively.

CHALLENGE #5: Using iPhone photos.

CHALLENGE #6: Use this Sketch!

CHALLENGE #8: Add a mini flag to your layout.

CHALLENGE #10: Use any cast-off object on your layout.

CHALLENGE #11: Scrapbook a favorite memory from your childhood.

CHALLENGE #12: Utilize kraft in two different ways on a project.

For the fun on the Echo Park blog, I completed 4 projects and posted about them on my blog already. The exciting news today is that I won the prize for the Echo Park sketch challenge - YIPPEE! I'm getting a prize package of border punches from Fiskars. Fun! So cool to see my layout featured on their blog...it was a great surprise today.

Thanks for taking a look at the fruits of my NSD labors.
I had a blast! Now I should go clean up the disaster in my scrap space.

Echo Park Sketch Challenge

For Echo Park's Challenge #4 using a this sketch, I had to search through many pictures to find ones that would be good for a layout that included a banner. I have never really caught on to the banner trend but really like how this page turned out and how easy it was with the banner stickers included in my Walk in the Park collection kit. LOVE Echo Park's kits because they include everything I need to make great pages so no need to hunt for separate embellishments.

I blurred the journaling a bit for posting. Love how bright and happy the layout is. Thanks for taking a peek!

Echo Park NSD Challenge #6

For Echo Park's Challenge #6 Project Playground, I used Kandis Smith's project "Style Essentials Ready Made Layout" as my inspiration:

I had never heard of Kandis Smith before today but I really like her style since I was drawn to two of her projects today.

Here's my interpretation on her layout using the Walk in the Park collection which seemed PERFECT for this layout about my girls.
I even made little banners using the stickers in the collection using a lovely idea from BPC's Creative Crop.

I'm really having fun with Echo Park today. Thanks for stopping by!

Echo Park NSD #3 - Scraplift a Design Expert

For Echo Park's NSD Challenge #3, I chose to scraplift Design Expert Kandis Smith.

Here's my card using the Echo Park This and That collection as well as the sentiment and double ended banner die from Papertrey Ink and buttons from Cosmo Cricket.

Hope you are enjoying National Scrapbook Day! Thanks for stopping by!

Echo Park Challenge #1

Here's my card for Echo Park's challenge #1 - Speed Scrap a Card. I used the 'Walk in the Park' collection. I didn't see the challenge until 15 minutes before the deadline. Fortunately Echo Park's great paper collections include awesome stickers and colorful papers which make creating a great card so easy!

Thanks for stopping by!

colourQ challenge #135

I love, love, love the colour combination at colourQ this week! Here's my take using one of my new favorite sets from Papertrey Ink, Trendy Tree Tops and some great new Lily Bee papers I just got.

Supplies:Cardstock:PTI,Patterned Paper:Lily Bee & Echo Park, Dies:Papertrey Ink In the Meadow, Trendy Tree Tops, Double Ended Banner,Embossing Folder:Cuttlebug, Ink:Papertrey Ink Pure Poppy.

Thanks for looking! Have a great weekend!

Color Inspired Layout

Today's prompt for Lain's Layout a Day "Scrapbooking Outside the Box" challenge was to use holiday colors for a non-holiday layout. As I was looking through my pictures for inspiration on what holiday colors I could use for this challenge, I came upon these pictures of my husband and daughter that I love. I noticed that some of the girls dresses were a deep purple and red which made me pull out the color palettes for this week's Papertrey Make It Monday challenge for color inspiration. Love it when it all comes together so quickly! I even used the Rule of Threes Nichole talks about in the video.

True, I didn't complete the requirements for today's LOAD prompt but the beauty & fun of LOAD is that you don't have to! All you gotta do is make a page.

I used a textured grey paper as my background. Closeup of my Rosie Posie embellishments....a first for me to use my PTI stamps on a layout!

My inspiration colors from PTI:

Thanks for stopping by!

Make It Monday #64 Color Inspiration

If you've never seen a PTI Make It Monday video, THIS oneis a MUST see. Nichole Heady goes through the making of a card using color inspiration and shares her thought process for putting it together. Great video!

I was inspired by several of the color combinations posted so, here are my three cards:

Here I used my much loved but often neglected PTI Quatrefoil die. I stamped a little medallion from Mehndi Medallion set in each of the windows with fine linen on the outside and vintage cream closer to the center sentiment. A little hard to see the medallions in the photo since the inks come out so light and delicate against the kraft cardstock.

For the second card, I used the Quatrefoil as an impression plate on the Winter Wisteria cardstock and layered the other colors on top.

For my last card, I stamped the heart from Heart 2 Heart #3 in the various inspiration colors along with the sentiment (Stampin up') on a cut off Wine Bottle tag die cut.

Thanks for looking!