OLS,ColourQ, & NBUS

March is here! That means there's a new One-Layer Simplicity challenge. This month's challenge is Let Green 'March' In which means we can only use shades of green and one neutral. 

I fought the temptation to use black ink on my card and used only green inks on my card. I blended a few different green inks (PTI Limeade Ice, New Leaf, and Simply Chartreuse) using one of the new PTI Modern Background stencils (which in case you are wondering are a perfect size and very durable).  I added two flowers and sentiment from the new BE set. Sentiment stamped in PTI Pinefeather. 

Also linking to Darnell's fabulous NBUS challenge since these are the new PTI goodies. 

I am LOVING the colors at ColourQ this week. Totally right up my alley as you know! :) 

I used one of the images from the PTI Enclosed Star set to stamp a pattern in Memento Teal Zeal & Blue Danube, Mama Elephant Smoke, and Avery Elle Aquamarine. Used my Misti to stamp the Wet Paint sentiment in black several times so it stood out against these bold colors. 

Hope you are having a great week! Thanks for popping in. 

ColourQ, CAS(E), & Create With Us

Hi friends - 

Checking in with two colorful cards today. 

First one was inspired by one of Lizzie Jones' PTI release cards this month for the Create Along With Us challenge.  Her card featured colorful fun Peep-like bunnies. 

My card features a colorful row of ice cream cones from PTI Sweet As Can Be using the same colors Lizzie used. I split the panel and stamped the sentiment in the space. I used a Jennifer McGuire trick of using fun foam to lift the panel off the card base instead of strips of foam tape. I used fun foam in orange to compliment one of the ice cream cones. You may see the orange peeking out in the photo. Looks kinda whimsical in real life. 

Second card is inspired by both the ColourQ and CAS(E) This Sketch challenges this week. I blended the three different pinkish shades using a Dylusions Dyan Reaveley Stencil. Wet Paint sentiment is heat embossed in gold. 

Temps dropping in NJ this weekend! :( Stay warm! Thanks for popping in! 

Papertrey Anniversary Part 2

I'm sharing a few projects today for the PTI Anniversary festivities. First up is the Day 3 Bagged and Tagged Challenge.   For my tag, I die cut part of one of the tag dies (can't tell which is which anymore since I just have them all in one basket) and used a couple of the sketched shapes circles to match the gift bag. The tag is for one of my daughter's friends next week and I wanted to glitter it up with a number 9 glittered American Crafts Thicker.  The Happy and the 'TH' are from Big Birthday Wishes. 

This next project is a card for the Day 4: Build a Bouquet Challenge. I used flowers & leaves from a variety of sets - Ruby Rose, Ruby Rose Reprise, Mini Blooms, Oopsie Daisy, and Friendly Flowers. Wow, who knew I had that many floral sets. Sentiment is from Keep It Simple - Thank You. I added a bit of Smokey Shadow striped paper on one side and finished with a couple of enamel dots. 

And finally this last project is for the Day 5: Spring Into Action Challenge where we are challenged to use a stamp set that we haven't used before. I chose to use Wet Paint II which I think is primarily for scrapbooking and since I haven't scrapbooked in ages this set has just been collecting dust. From this set I used "This Moment Documented" to introduce my journaling block for this great photo I have of my daughter. The page design is inspired by one of the May 2014 monthly sketches with my Simple Scrapper membership. Been a long time since I've made a page and I'm loving this one. 

Have a good week. Thanks for stopping by! 

What A Little Coffee Can Do

Don't know about you but I'm absolutely addicted to coffee and not ashamed to admit it. Not the fancy lattes or espresso drinks with syrup (though those are yummy on occasion) you can get at Starbucks. Just a plain old cup of coffee with sugar and a few of drops of milk for me. So two cups of coffee this morning are what inspired and energized me to makes these cards in less than two hours this morning.  So any fellow coffee fans out there??

First card uses the often forgotten Latte Love set which I was inspired to take out for this week's CASology cue word HOT.  I used the technique Tasnim Ahmed shared in the Clean & Simple class day 6 - masked stripe background. I stamped the image of the stacked cups and colored them in with Copics. I love this technique because even with the striped background there feels like there's still a lot of white space left.

For my second card I used a discarded chevron coverlet piece from my experimenting the other day with various cover plates for the Make It Monday challenge. I layered the Limeade Ice chevron over a white card base. For the center panel, I used a card from one of the Monthly Moments sets, stamped a candle in Limeade Ice, sentiment from Wet Paint, and added a touch of Stickles on the candle flame. Design inspired by CAS(E) This Sketch challenge. 

Last card today was inspired by the pretty colors at ColourQ which I wanted to pair with the Big Hugs set I haven't used very much. 

I stamped the scripted HUGS in Hibiscus Burst, Orange Zest, and Sweet Blush and the sentiment in Pure Poppy. I wanted the red card base to be showing at the top and bottom of the card so to emphasize I scored a line on the white panel for added interest and added a few enamel dots to finish. 

Thanks for stopping today. Hope your having a great week! 

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. 

CASology:Flutter

Quick share with you tonite. Working all day today and I'm exhausted but tomorrow promises to be even busier so wanted to get this in before deadline Monday. 

Wish I was a little more novel on my take of CASology challenge cue FLUTTER. First thing I thought of was butterflies of course and didn't take it any further than that. 

I wanted to simulate movement so I die cut three colorful butterflies from Beautiful Butterflies and also die cut the same out of the white card base so the colorful ones could be inlaid into the card stock.  Finished it off with a Wet Paint sentiment. 

Hope you are having a great weekend. Thanks so much for stopping by! 

CASology #107: Stripe

So back in June, the CASology challenge had a contest to celebrate it's 100th challenge....you had to guess the 100th cue word.  I didn't win that one :( but they did pick one of my guesses for their cue word.

I'm honored and excited to be their guest designer this week using the word I suggested STRIPE.

I've been in love with the Ombre Builders set so I wanted to use the dotted stripe stamp. I love this stamp because the stripes are subtle and can be used for making great CAS backgrounds. 

I stamped a monochromatic background using three colors - tropical teal, aqua mist, and hawaiian shores. I embossed the big sentiment from Wet Paint in black and stamped the rest of the sentiment below. To make the background stand out even more, I mounted the panel on a black card base. 

And while I had this set out, I made another card.....

What I love about this dotted stripe stamp is that it reminds me of string. I stamped it in four bold colors on a smaller card panel slightly overlapping to look like string being tied around the panel. I mounted it on tropical teal card stock to highlight the bold colors. 

Head on over to the CASology challenge to see what the DT has created with STRIPE. I'm excited to see what you all make....so many possibilities!  And thanks to CASology for the opportunity to play along with you all! 

Now maybe I should put this set away now and give some other stamps some love..... 

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you are having a great week.

Colour Me.....! #31

Wow, summer is flying by! Hard to believe its almost August already. Hope you are having a fabulous summer where you are.

This week marks the a special Colour Me! challenge since we have five weeks this month. For this challenge YOU get to choose which colors you want to create with.
You can either play along with ......

Option 1 - Strawberry Slush, So Saffron & Hello Honey 

(playing along with 'Team Hayley')

OR

Option 2 - Night of Navy, Soft Sky & Garden Green 

(playing along with 'Team Tara')

I'm playing on Team Tara this week. I LOVE this color combination.

I wanted to used the beautiful PTI butterflies because the cut out wings are perfect with some many   gorgeous color combinations. I layered a butterfly cut out of enchanted evening leaves patterned paper on top of aqua mist card stock.  I stamped green medallions from Snowflake Flurries to create the butterfly's path stamping a few twice to create lighter medallions. Sentiment from Wet Paint. 

I didn't adhere the top layer of the butterfly and folded the wings a bit to give the card more dimension. And of course, no card of mine seems complete without adding a few enamel dots. 

The Colour Me....!  team has made some amazing cards this week so head on over there to check them out.

Claire Broadwater

Hayley Kew
Joanne James

Julia Altermann

Tara Bourgoin

And our lovely featured designer for July even create two cards this week.....
Anja Curvers

Hope you can play along with us this week. Can't wait to see you in the gallery!
Thanks for stopping by!

July 2014 PTI Blog Hop

The 25th means its Blog Hop Day! 

This month's theme is to draw inspiration from this photo. There's lots design inspiration in there but generally speaking I'm not drawn to it as a whole.  Maybe its too shabby chic for me? Birds, buttons, and sewing aren't really my thing so I don't have stamps along these lines in my stash (though I really wish I could sew on a button!)  And if you've read my blog before I'm not a bird person though I will admit that stuffed polka dotted one is quite cute. 

I can't wait to see what others create with these.  

I did find a few details to draw inspiration from. I liked the bit on the bottom right - the doily heart with the red flower.

My card uses a kraft doily I've had in my stash which I used as a background for my flower. My card bases is vintage cream instead of white. Haven't used vintage cream in a while. I cut the flower from Happy Hydrangeas and paper pieced the stem and bloom together. The hydrangea was cut from textured dotted paper from Bazzill. I liked the weathered wood background in the inspiration photo so I used woodgrain patterned paper for my sentiment banner.

I was inspired by the colors in the inspiration photo to make a second card. Love the cute little spools of thread in aqua mist, sweet blush, and pure poppy.  I used the dotted lines from Ombre Builders to create a background and used a die cut Wet Paint 'Happy' along with the birthday from another stamp. (UGH, can't find my 'birthday' Wet Paint sentiment!). 

That's it for me today. Can't wait to see what everyone made using this photo. It's always amazing to me how very different the Blog Hop cards look from the same starting point. Love that. Thanks so much for stopping by and see you around the Hop! 

Colour Me....Playful # 30

It's Wednesday and its time for a new Colour Me challenge. This week's playful colors include the fun colors of hot pink and gold.

These colors seemed perfect for the Wet Paint font so I stamped the sentiment repeatedly in the challenge colors. 

And of course, gold enamel dots finish off my card. LOL, I will probably have to replenish my enamel dot stash soon! 

The Colour Me team has made some fabulous and fun cards this week so head on over there to check them out.

Claire Broadwater

Hayley Kew
Joanne James

Julia Altermann

Tara Bourgoin

And our lovely featured designer for July...!
Anja Curvers

Hope you can play along with us this week. Can't wait to see you in the gallery!
Thanks for stopping by!