Papertrey April Blog Hop

Its that time of the month again! Papertrey's Inspiration Challenge for this month is this beautiful photo and I was inspired to make three cards since my card to-do list for April and May is so long!



For my first card, I was inspired by the colors in the inspiration photo so I made this card using Raspberry Fizz and Spring Rain with an older set - All About You & All About You Additions set. Finally used a bit of the Raspberry Fizz patterned paper too.



For my second card, I used these colors to make a card for my niece's upcoming birthday. I had just intended on using my newly acquired Just The Ticket border die but also wanted to incorporate something 'princessy' for her so I used the castle from the Little Princess set.



For my third card, I was drawn to the stack of patterns and colors in the photo which I tried to recreate here using the wine bottle tag die and foam dots.



See you around the Blog Hop! Thanks for stopping by!

CPS 262

Another Teacher Appreciation card...this time using the sketch from Card Positioning Systems

I used patterned paper from Crate Paper and Bazzill Swiss dotted paper and embossed the small sentiment on the bottom with American Crafts Zing powder in Leaf.

Thanks for stopping by!

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge # 49

I've got TONS of Teacher Appreciation cards to make for the upcoming celebration week in May. Here's my take using the great sketch for this week's CAS-ual Fridays Challenge:

Used some bit of patterned paper from Creative Imaginations and embossed the sentiment from the All About You PTI set.

Thanks for taking a look!

MIM #62 - Step It Up Layering

Betsy Veldman's Make It Monday video for Papertrey Ink was so inspiring this week. It was wonderful to see a fabulous creative at work. Her challenge was to create two cards - a single layer card and another that is 'stepped up'. In her video she used the Rosie Posie and Turning a New Leaf sets which were two sets that I have rarely used so I decided to make a set of cards using these same stamps & design but with different colors - Raspberry Fizz, Hawaiian Shores, and Scarlet Jewel. Why mess with a good thing?

My one layer card:



For my second layered card, I used bling instead of buttons and changed the sentiment to Happy Birthday since I needed a birthday card this weekend. I used half a Jillibean Soup Journaling Sprout as my grounding element.



Now that I've made my version of Betsy's card, I'm going to try to make another Step It Up set using different stamps.
Thanks for taking a look!

MIM #61 Take Two

Here's the original flower I made for this week's Make It Monday #61 challenge. It uses the Tree Tops die. It turned out a little bigger than I thought so I had to go through different card bases/designs until I finally found one that I think worked with such a big flower (my girls like it looks more like a snowflake than a flower!). Fell back upon my trusty Thing Big Sentiments to match it and some Fancy Pants patterned paper. Embossed the sentiment to make it stand out.

Thanks for looking!

PTI Make It Monday #61

What I love about Make It Monday Challenges is that it pushes me to do things outside my comfort zone. What I hate about it is that it isn't always easy for me, like last week's challenge with generational stamping. I usually start something as soon as I watch the video on Monday and sometimes it takes all week before I make something I like. This week wasn't a walk in the park either but it was a lot of fun.

Challenge #61 this week was to make a flower out of a non-flower die. I didn't want to use leaves but one of my very different dies. Here's the card I made using the recently released 'Tie' die. It was my second attempt at a flower.



Thanks for taking a peek!

Retro Sketches #6

With Teacher Appreciation Week coming soon, I thought I'd get a head start on some cards for the girls' teachers. Maybe for once I won't be scrambling at the last minute. Here's the card I made using the Retro Sketches Challenge #6:



My inspiration sketch:



Thanks for stopping by!

PTI Make It Monday #60

When I first saw Ashley Cannon-Newell's Make It Monday video, Generational Stamping. I was inspired because it looked relatively easy and gave beautiful results. All during that week though I attemped a card 4 times, each time frustrated that my card wasn't coming out the way I had expected because my 'second' impressions were pretty light, almost invisible. OK, obviously my fault because I picked pretty light colors like Summer Sunrise and Aqua Mist. So then I tried darker colors like blueberry sky and smokey shadow and got very light impressions too because I had pressed down so hard on my first impression that there was no ink left. I blame this on my choice of stamps - Mehndi Medallion - which doesn't not yield a complete impression for me unless I press down on it really firmly. I also tried Ashley's technique of reinking and stamping off and that worked a bit better. I also consulted the lovely stamping friends on the PTI forum and learned to give the stamp a puff of breath before stamping the second impression. Voila! Those two tricks yielded a better card that you see here. Not perfect but much better than the foiled attempts. Lessons learned - keep trying and that the forum is a wealth of information! I love this technique and will keep practicing it so be prepared to see this again on other cards. Thanks PTI and Ashley for continuing to inspire me.

Thanks for stopping by!