Sunday Recap

Sharing a couple of projects I created today while catching up on some shows. It was 14 degrees outside today and WAY too cold to go anywhere. First up is a wine bottle tag inspired by the Tag You're It! inspiration from Donna Mikasa. 

I cut a wine bottle tag out of black card stock and layered a smaller white tag on top. On the white tag I stamped these colorful medallions (from Round Repeats) and layered a die cut sentiment (Wonderful Words Thank You cut in two) on top.

For the next project, I created a one layer card. Card design inspired by CAS(E) This Sketch challenge. I used my new Clear Scraps Spiral stencil on the bottom corner and blended Summer Sunrise ink starting dark in the corner and working my way out. I'm getting the hang of blending inks now and love the effect.  I added a hot air balloon from Up, Up, and Away and colored it with Copics. 

Entering this into this month's One-Layer Simplicity challenge. 

Hope you are enjoying the long weekend! Thanks for stopping by! 

Snow Day Creation

Another snowy day here in NJ. Not fun snow but heavy wet snow. Ugh. Despite the fact that my girls were home all day and there was some bickering going on, I got some time in my craft room this afternoon.

I had fun playing along with this week's Make It Monday challenge Layering Coverplate Diecuts. After seeing Dawn's video I knew I wanted to layer my horizontal and diagonal striped coverplates. The hardest part was selecting the colors to layer. After trying several combinations I settled on my three favorite PTI colors - Hawaiian Shores card base, Enchanted Evening horizontal stripes, and Aqua Mist diagonal stripes on the top.

Love these colors together! Sentiment from Keep It Simple series and I added a Jenni Bowlin pale orange vellum butterfly for some contrast. 

I also made a tag inspired by Debby Hughes' gorgeous and elegant creation for the Tag You're It Challenge. 

Since I'm in the midst of a snow storm right now, I wanted to make a bright tag for the summer so I colored my embossing paste with Summer Sunrise reindeers and used it with my Heidi Swapp arrows stencil in the same direction as Debby's sunburst. I added coordinating washi tape to the bottom of the Hawaiian Shores die. Sentiment and popsicle from Summer Sweetness. 

I clear embossed the Hibiscus Burst popsicle to give it a shiny, wet look. Love all the dimension on this tag. 

That's all for me tonight. Hope you are warm whereever you are and thanks for stopping by! 

Three For Thursday

Happy Thursday! Here today with three cards to share and a fabulous recipe for you to try.

First up is my card for the CASology cue card FRIEND. I made this for a friend that I don't see very often but think of often. 

I heat embossed the FRIENDS from Wet Paint in black and added small scattered hearts in some of my favorite bright colors. I left lots of white space so the hearts were not overwhelming. The white card panel is mounted on black cardstock to give nice contrast to the colorful hearts. 

I'm playing along with the Tag You're It! challenge for the first time. Figure if I play along with every challenge I'll build a good stash of gift tags.

I was inspired by the gold in Heather's beautiful tag and the scribbled circles under her cluster of flowers.  My tag features a favorite color combination - gold and teal (Hawaiian Shores & Aqua Mist). I used some gold Washi tag for the bottom of the tag and stamped gold circle scribbles to anchor my balloon. I scattered the stars on the tag to go along with the stars in the balloon. Finished it off with some Hawaiian Shores ribbon. 

I also used the tag reinforcer circle die at the top - never used it before but just realized the die came with one of my tag dies. It was beginning to annoy me how the hole at the top would always rip when I used ribbon. 

My last card to share uses this week's Make It Monday - Three Panel Card challenge. Thanks Ashley for the easy directions and measurements. Super easy! Got a head start on my end of year teacher thank you cards. 

I stayed away with traditional 'school' colors, the primary colors but opted for bright fun colors like teal and orange. I used one of the edgers die for the flap and stamped a bunch of different THANKS from the Thanks All Ways set. The bottom flap has the dotted lines from Ombre Builders (my FAVE stamp from that set). Love how the orange twine finishes it off. 

For the inside I used the sentiment from Wonderful Words:Teacher leaving lots of room for my daughter and I to write a personal note in there. 

I created a pocket cut out of Summer Sunrise on the bottom panel to hold the gift card and stamped some flip flops in Summer Sunrise for a tone-on-tone look and the sentiment (both from Flipping Out) in Hawaiian Shores to stand out. Can you tell that Hawaiian Shores is one of my favorite colors?? 

Also going to start sharing some recipes here on my blog. One of my New Year resolutions is to cook more and to cook outside the box. I'm going to be trying a lot of new recipes this year since I've got a gazillion food related pins on Pinterest and a hundred ripped out recipes from magazines that I'm determined to tackle this year. I'm a foodie - love to eat, love exotic ingredients, and watch all sorts of cooking shows - but finding it tough to balance cooking for practicality (we all gotta eat right?!) and cooking for fun. So I'll be sharing my successes here - both the quick & easy meals as well as the fancier complicated ones that I may try. 

Last night's dinner was a complete success. I made Slow-Cooked Salmon, Chickpeas, and Greens from Bon Appetit magazine. It was so delicious and even the kids loved it. Well, 2 out of 3 because the 3rd hates salmon so there's no preparation could make her love it.  The chickpeas were creamy and the fried capers....yum. Kinda like popcorn when you can't stop eating them. The slow roasted part threw me a little as I am used to cooking either fast or at a high temp and I was doubtful that 30 min at 250 degrees would result in anything good. But wow, the salmon was moist and perfectly cooked. The recipe is a little complicated as there are four distinct components to be cooked/assembled before the whole thing is put in the oven but definitely was worth the effort. 

I used kale instead of mustard greens and I doubled the recipe because we are big eaters and also love leftovers for lunch the next day. 

Thanks for hanging till the end of this extra long blog post. I appreciate you stopping by and hope you are having a great week.