A Little Treat Card - Heart 2 Heart Challenge

Here's my entry for Heart 2 Heart Challenge - Warm vs. Cool Challenge.

Since I wanted it to be a to go cup with tea, I stuck a gold sequin over the stamped coffee bean on my cup. I'll have to make another card with a coffee cup though! That little bean is so cute! I'm just loving the Treats of Friendship stamp set! I used the Paper Fundamentals Basics Assortment and the Jackson paper packet on this card. The orange chevron paper is from a piece I hoarded from Treats of Summer, the special from last month. The tea bag string is retired Colonial White Waxy Flax...remember that?

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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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Paper Doll - It's Your Birthday

I have another sneak peek for you of one of my favorite new stamp sets from the new CTMH catalog. This cute girl is from the set (D1547) Paper Doll which will be available on February 1st. She was a lot of fun to color. I am slowly adding to my marker collection. Both copics and CTMH. I have yet to get a black alcohol marker (and shades of it) though and my daughter was extremely annoyed that I did not color the paper doll's hair black, which is the color of my daughter's hair! It gives me a good excuse to buy more markers, no?

This is the first time I have ever made a Center Step card. I used a wonderful tutorial from Beccy's Place. She has great tutorials for all sorts of differently folded cards here and is working on putting up more.

 

 

Here is a view of the inside...

...and here's a side view just to give you a better idea of what the card looks like.

 

Supplies Used (All Close To My Heart)--

Patterned Paper: Chantilly (available 2/1/13)

Cardstock: Crytal Blue, Buttercup, White Daisy

Stamp Sets: (D1547) Paper Doll, (D1475) Card Chatter-Birthday

Markers: Pear set, Sorbet set, Sky set, Cotton Candy set, Honey set

Stamp Pad: Archival Black

Embellishments: Hollyhock Brads, Foam Tape, Just Blooms Paradise Paper Flowers, Twill Ribbon (retired)

 

I'm linking up with Heart2Heart for their Fancy Fold Technique Challenge, Friday Mashup 93: Making a Birthday Project with some Brads, and ABC Challenges.

 

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Gnome Home

I love the CTMH stamp set Gnome Garden but, as so often happens with me, I set it aside after getting it and never inked it up because I was waiting for the right inspiration! Well, now it will be retiring soon so I thought it would be a shame if I didn't use it before August 1st rolls around. Heart 2 Heart's latest challenge is a wonderful sketch and helped me put my stamp to use.

Here's the sketch:

Here's my card!

Supplies used (all CTMH except where noted): Cranberry cardstock, Creme Brulee cardstock, Chocolate cardstock, White Daisy cardstock, (X7148B) Pemberley paper pack, (C1470) Gnome Garden, (44751) Archival Black stamp pad, (Z1701) Baker's Twine Neutral Assortment, Retired Cranberry buttons, (Z1686) Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, Spellbinders nestabilities (circles large and small), Cuttlebug embossing folder (Victoria and Seeing Spots), Copic markers 

My daughter and I have a long term project (translation: we do a little and then stop, then we do a little more and stop) of making a sort of fairy garden spot in the backyard. So I'm picturing using this stamp set on a scrapbook layout for pictures of our little fairy garden if we ever finally get around to completing our project! Isn't that funny? Getting a stamp set to go with pictures you don't even have?

;-) 

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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

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

So Grateful - Heart 2 Heart Color Challenge

Happy November everyone! The last part of October just seemed to go by at lightning speed!

I unfortunately lost most of my files from my computer due to a virus (even though I do have an anti virus program). The main files I am really missing are my lesson plans from last year so I am having to take some time to rework those. I had just bought a memory stick to back up my files but, of course, didn't! Also some pictures of a couple of projects which I had hoped to post got lost as well. Sigh...I can retake them but I decided to move on and do something new!

This week the challenge at Heart 2 Heart is a color challenge: Terra Cotta, Juniper, Bamboo.

Captured Moments is one of my favorite stamp sets but I haven't pulled it out too much so I thought I would play with it today using these colors. I also used Harvest Happiness with the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge for the leaves up top. I decided to sponge the Colonial White panel, which has the main image stamped on it, in all three colors. What a nice palette for a fall themed card! 

 Supplies used: (C1423) Captured Moments stamp set, (C1463) Harvest Happiness stamp set, (X7139B) Typeset Level 2 paper pack, (Z1248) Juniper Waxy Flax, (Z1249) Sorbet Waxy Flax, (Z697) Round Sponge, (Z1686) Art Philosophy Cricut CartridgePin It

Lucky Little Pumpkin Studio J Layout

I've been neglecting my Studio J layouts! I usually place an order every month but didn't have time to last month with school (and work) starting up. I finally had some time to play and I was inspired by the Heart 2 Heart Challenge Blog. The challenge was to do a layout and journal/tell a story about your pictures. I had this idea in my head since Monday but only got a chance to work on it today! Anyway, it's about a cute little pumpkin that actually survived and grew in our tiny, somewhat dim backyard garden. Click on the picture and it should enlarge for you so you can read the journaling. Enjoy!

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H2H 76 and CFC 22

This had the potential to be a relatively quick card, except that I was trying to help both of my kids with their homework at the same time! I think I prefer my 3rd grader's multiplication to my 8th grader's geometry!

Anyway, I combined the current Heart 2 Heart sketch challenge (H2H 76) and the current CAS-ual Fridays (CFC 22) challenge.


The CFC22 challenge is to "Create a Clean And Simple project using a ribbon tab or loop. Big loops, tiny loops...get creative but the loops on a bow don't count."

I thought that both challenges were good ones to help me use up some scraps, both of paper and of ribbon. I love it when I can do that! I also used one of my favorite techniques of having random squares and rectangles of scraps standing in to look like presents. Although my loops are supposed to look like bows, I didn't have to tie them into bows. Much easier!

Although the papers I used are "old" or retired, they just don't seem all that old to me! Didn't Close to My Heart just come out with these? The paper with the greens is from Veranda and the ones with the pinks and reds are from That's Amore. I still love them and for once, I'm glad I hoarded!

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Here's to You

My card for today is a very simple one but I like how it came out. I originally started it with the CAS-ual Fridays Challenge CFC13 in mind, CFC13-The Long and Short of it: Create a 4 x 9 card and keep it Clean And Simple! Then I thought I would try to just use the colors red and aqua to fit in with the color challenge at Our Creative Corner. Then I saw that the challenge at Heart 2 Heart was to create a project themed toward a child's birthday. So I think my card can fit all three of these challenges! Whew!

Supplies used (all CTMH except for ribbon): (D1462) Splendid Day stamp set, (Z2194) Sky stamp pad, (Z2195) Lagoon stamp pad, (Z2166) Tulip stamp pad, Tulip cardstock, (retired) textured cardstock for the card base and blue strips along the bottom, (Z578) corner rounder to make the scalloped border,

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