Chevron Happy Birthday

Every year, a few of my college friends and I get together and we celebrate our birthdays. We have one December birthday, two January birthdays, and one September birthday but we usually aim to meet sometime between January-March. We all have work, school, extra-curricular, and/or family obligations plus one of us drives from out of town, so you can just imagine how difficult it is to find a Saturday that accomodates all of our schedules. Well, this past Saturday was our day. We went to see a play, had dinner at a nice restaurant, and then came back here to exchange presents, have cake and do a little beading!  

 

I opted to make the same style birthday card for each of them. I was really intrigued with this sketch from the Clean and Simple Stamping Blog.

I really love the example which uses the negative space for the word and wanted to try that out. The sketch was from the 15th but I hadn't had a chance to play with it because I've had tennis elbow (from stirring sand, alum, and cornstarch together in a pot on the stove to make treasure rocks for my preschoolers -- how do I explain that to people?!) and I have had to rest my arm. But there's nothing that motivates me like a deadline so I worked on Saturday morning...yes the morning before we were to meet! I used my Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge to make quick work of cutting the letters out of my Lagoon (teal) cardstock and got three panels with the word, "HAPPY," cut out of them, lickedy-split! It's difficult to see but the paper backing the, "HAPPY," panel is a lighter blue houndstooth pattern from a long retired CTMH paper called Splendor. I added the little flower from the Card word Puzzle set stamped on honey for a little pop (and I popped it up with foam tape)!

 

 

Supplies Used (All CTMH)--

Patterned Paper: For Always (love that chevron pattern) and a scrap of blue houndstooth from the retired set called Splendor (used behind the HAPPY)

Cardstock: Lagoon, Honey, White Daisy, Black

Stamp pad: Archival Black

Stamp sets: Card Word Puzzle and Card Chatter-Birthday (I cut Birthday... off of the rest of it's sentiment-you could just mask it too)

Embellishments: Baker's Twine Neutral Assortment, Opaques Licorice Adhesive Gems, foam tape

 

I have also been wanting to play along with the Heart2Heart challenges but my arm has been bugging me too much. I was so happy to see that this week's chalenge is for  CAS-Clean and Simple. Yay! So I'm linking this post up to this week's challenge at H2H.

 

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Shopping Our Stash #83: All White or Cream

I love tone on tone cards and the "All White or Cream" examples the design team made for the Shopping Our Stash Challenge #83 are just gorgeous! There so much texture going on there so I decided to use an embossing folder on my card too. I definitely "shopped my stash" and used a chipboard shape and some brads that I've had for a long while. The sentiment stamp set is very old but the fowers are more current. The cream colored background mat was a scrap from my scrap drawer (yay!). I'm sorry about my picture being angled but it does border all the way around! I popped up my flowers and added 3-D flower ribbon for more dimension. Hope you like it!

Supplies Used (All CTMH except for the Cuttlebug Argyle Embossing folder) -

Stamp Pads: Bamboo, Cocoa

Paper: Scrap from Roxie, White Daisy Cardstock

Stamp Sets: (Retired) Birthday Script, (C1494) Card Word Puzzle

Embellishments: (Z1336) Opaques Pearl Adhesive Gems, (Z1333) Opaques Mocha Adhesive Gems, (Z1800) Colonial White Rosette Ribbon, (Z1151) 3D Foam Tape, Dimensional Elements Frame, Colonial White Brads

Tomorrow, I'll post more of my journaling cards that I'm premaking for my Project Life, CTMH style album.

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Happy Birthday: Mojo Monday 249

I love this sketch from Mojo Monday and I wish I had looked at it earlier! Well, better late than never. :-)

The stamped bicycle image is embossed in black and I used the Cruisin' paper pack. Right now Cruisin' is only available as a Workshop on the Go and will retire on Auigust 1st when the new catalog goes live. Love this paper!

Supplies used: (X7154B) Cruisin' paper pack, (C1439) Enjoy Life stamp set, (C1494) Card Word Puzzle stamp pad, (Z2105) Black stamp pad, (Z2124) Grey Flannel stamp pad, (Z670) Black embossing powder, (Z891) Versamark stamp pad, (Z1701) Neutral Assortment Baker's Twine, (Z1686) Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge

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Card Word Puzzle - Congratulations

One of my favorite stamp sets is Card Word Puzzle and I've been having fun trying out my copics on the gorgeous flowers in this set. I'm following along with Heart 2 Heart's current Wedding Challenge and Freshly Made Sketches #41.

Please keep in mind that I am a beginner in coloring with Copics so I'm sure I didn't exactly put my shadows where they should all be but I will continue to practice!

Here's a close up of the flower so you can see that I popped up the middle section with foam tape.

Supplies used (all CTMH except markers and embossing folder): (C1494) Card Word Puzzle stamp set, (retired) Silhouette Level 2 paper pack, Cranberry cardstock, (44751) Archival Black stamp pad, (Z1151) 3-D Foam Tape, Cuttlebug Victoria Embossing Folder, Copic markers

Don't forget...Stampaganza only lasts until Saturday! For every two My Acrylix^® stamp sets (sizes A, B, C, D, or E) you purchase at full retail price in June, you'll receive a third stamp set of your choice (of equal or lesser value) for free!Pin It

Pemberley Celebrate

A few college friends and I try to get together once a year to celebrate our birthdays and exchange gifts. Part of my gift to each of them this year was a set of handmade cards. We met yesterday but of course I hadn't finished my cards beforehand and was working in the morning before we met! My daughter was watching me create  and she said," No offense Mama, but you leave things to the last minute!" No offense taken darling! Yes, I definitely have procrastinating tendencies.

I do love one of the cards I came up with to go into my friends' gifts. I used my favorite new paper pack and favorite new stamp set from the CTMH Spring/Summer Idea Book: The Pemberley paper pack and the Card Word Puzzle stamp set. 

I followed along with Freshly Made Sketches #21. Isn't this a great sketch?

I love the design teams interpretations and got the idea of using crimped paper and the Lacey Circles Nestabilities from them! Here's what I came up with.

Supplies used (all CTMH except for Nestabilities and paper crimper):
Stamp sets: (C1494) Card Word Puzzle, Stamp set from Z1686 Cricut® Art Philosophy Collection ("Celebrate") 
Stamp pads: (Z2140) Outdoor Denim
Papers: (X7148B) Pemberley Level 2 paper pack, (X254) 5 1/2" X 4 1/4" White Cards & Envelopes
Embellishments: (Z1263) Bitty Sparkles
Other: Fiskars paper crimper, Nestabilities (Lacey Circles and Standard Circles Small)Pin It

Thank You Sew Much!

I had a chance to craft this weekend and came up with the following card.

Supplies used (all CTMH):
Stamp sets: (C1442) Tailor-Made, (C1494) Card Word Puzzle - new
Stamp pads: (Z2105) Black, ( 1467) Baby Pink,
Papers: (X7148B) Pemberley -- yellow piece for dressmaker form, White Daisy Cardstock, yellow and pink patterned papers (retired)
Embellishments: (Z1384) Pink Ribbon Collection, (Z1702) Baker's Twine - Paradise Assortment - new, (Z1104) Sparkles, (Z1151) Foam Tape, Yellow and pink flowers (retired), Sorbet ribbon (retired)

I was inspired by Heart 2 Heart's challenge from last week to use a CTMH stamp set you haven't used yet (the THANK YOU is from a new set but the rest is from an older set). I raided my scraps drawers and used some much older paper...yay me!
I was also inspired by the CR84FN46 Color challenge to use Light Pink, Yellow and Neutral. I am typically drawn to high contrast so it was tough for me to use these beautiful soft colors (I had to throw in a couple of medium pink accents!).


Finally I was also inspired by Challenge #18 over at Freshly Made Sketches.


In other news, I received my very own Copic markers as part of my birthday present last week from my wonderful husband! I am now the proud owner of three markers in the red family (I specifically asked for a small grouping so I could try them out without going overboard). I experimented today with an open flower stamp from the new Card Word Puzzle set and am loving them (even though I don't really know what I'm doing!). If I'm brave enough, I'll post some of my experiments! If anyone has any Copic advice for beginners, please send it my way!Pin It