Happy Birthday, Friend

Once your kids start school there is a definite increase in birthday party invites! I think I may need to keep a stock of boy and girl toys from Costco on hand and start having a bunch of cards made ahead of time!

Amie was invited to the 4 Cats Art Studio for a little boy's party. They have very cool parties there, but you definitely have to wear clothes that are ok to have paint splatters on. We wore the same clothes from the last party there - and now yellow joins the pink and purple splatters from the last visit! We actually framed the splatter art poster from last time and hung it up on the wall.

Of course, having 3 girls means I have more pink, flowery paper and embellishments on hand than boy stuff, but I pulled out some shiny silver and blue cardstock and used some stickers from the Rocket Age 12x12 shape stickers page by October Afternoon. I embossed a 'Make A Wish' sentiment with Silver Tinsel embossing powder on a hand cut banner and followed a sketch from this week's challenge at the Scrapbookers Paradise blog and Amie was all set!

Challenges:

Playing In Paradise - sketch

Drunken Stampers - Birthday theme

 

Envelope

Amie's framed splatter art!

Enjoy the Journey

Time and time again I come back to Tim Holtz's products.  For this week's travel challenge at the Playing in Paradise blog I used some stamps by Tim Holtz, Distress Stains and Distress Inks and love the vintage feel of this card.

 

 

I smooshed some stains onto my craft mat and spritzed with water, then rubbed a piece of watercolor paper through using a 'Wrinkle-free Distress technique'. You can find lots of tutorials on You Tube! I then stamped the old-time truck with Archival Ink and added the key, 'Enjoy the Journey', the file tab and the tickets, below.

 

I stamped these tickets on Kraft paper and then rubbed Distress Stains directly on top and then went over them with a sponge and Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  As a finishing touch I sprayed them with Frost sparkly spritz.

 

Be sure to check out the Scrapbooker's Paradise blog for lots of fun ideas!

Art Journal Pages 3 & 4

This weekend my sister came over and we worked with some more Dylusion Inks - so fun! She sprayed on watercolour paper and cut it up to make some really cool card backgrounds, which she embellished.

I worked on my Art Journal. I sprayed my background first and then spritzed through a stencil with water for a bleached effect. I used the Dyan Reaveley stencil with the circles and then used Picket Fence Distress Stain on the checked border. I also picked up her stamp set with the leaves and borders, which I love!! I did some stamping and painting and then wanted to brighten it u a bit so I stamped some balloons on watercolour paper with Archival Ink and watercoloured them using Tombpw markers. I stamped a few of Tim Holt's stamps on white paper, distressed them and glued them on. I also had a piece of sticky back canvas which I cut out a couple balloon shapes and circles from and stuck them on my page.

I am really loving these mists, and I think they will actually get me using my other mists more!! What fun :)

Challenges:
Scrapbookers Paradise - Using Mists
http://scrapbookersparadise.blogspot.ca/2013/01/playing-in-paradise-101-using-mists.html?m=1

Celebrate Love!

We recently got some family pictures done and I had them take a few extra of the baby since we didn't have any recent professional photos.  I saw a really cute and easy video mini album tutorial by Linda Bauwin using one sheet of 12x12 cardstock and decided to join in the fun over at Scrapbooker's Paradise Celebrate challenge this week where they are celebrating their 100th challenge! They have some great prizes to be won so be sure to check the blog!

I also found 2 new (to me) challenge blogs so I'm entering those too! Dutch Dare blog's challenge this week is to use buttons and Card Crafter's Circle challenge is to use layers.

I am using the CTMH Wings kit, which has lots of beautiful paper and fun stickers and embellishments, including buttons! The mini album is made from Kraft cardstock - which I love!

The cover:

I used heart rub-ons, a Love stamp along the bottom and two sticker buttons layered on top of the paper.  I stamped Celebrate along the paper band.

Inside:

I layered a length of paper over the bottom pockets and placed my tags inside.

Photo tags:

I used black soot Distress Ink around the edges and cropped the photos to fit.

White tags:

I used red ink to Distress the edges of these tags and stamped along the bottom of each tag.  I added stamps, stickers, brads and ribbon.  Have a look at the black brads below the ribbon - they are little tiny buttons! How cute!

 

Inside:

I cut a piece of matching butterfly paper to fit inside above the pocket.

I thought Celebrate Love was a great title to my mini album.  There are so many things to celebrate - Erica coming into our lives and her recent birthday to name just a couple.  I think I will add journaling to the back of the white tags and it will be a great keepsake for her :)

Thanks for joining me! Happy Monday!

Playing in Paradise Guest Designer

I was so fortunate to have won the challenge over at Scrapbookers Paradise 2 weeks ago, and now I get to be the guest designer!

This week's challenge is a color challenge. These aren't colors I normally choose to use, but I decided to pull out my Distress Inks in Old Paper, Iced Spruce and Evergreen Bough and create a tag. I first blended the inks on the background, distressed my edges, used a bit of Vintage Photo, and then gave a spray with blue Smooch Spritz. I used a gears Tim Holtz embossing folder In the top left corner and blended the Iced Spruce over top. Then I stamped Tim Holtz stamps on the bottom and middle and used some Crackle accents on part of the timepiece. I also sponged on ink to add color to the ribbon before tying it on.

This is one of the reasons I love doing challenges; you get to try something you normally wouldn't and then your mind starts thinking about all the other possibilities!

 

Happy Friday everyone! Have a wonderful, crafty weekend and be sure to play along at the Scrapbookers' Paradise Blog!

Guest Designer for Scrapbooker's Paradise!

Since I was so lucky as to win the challenge last week, I also get to be the Guest Designer for Scrapbooker's Paradise this week! How exciting is that?!! This week, the challenge is:

Please join the Scrapbooker's Paradise blog to play!

For my Guest Designer project I wasn't sure at first what to do... Graduation isn't something I normally have a card to make for, but after thinking a bit I decided I really wanted to make a scrapbook page that I could frame for my 5 year old.  This is her last year in Preschool and she'll be starting Kindergarten in the fall. 

I found a really cute digi stamp by Heather Ellis who designs Pure Innocence stamps and sells them on Etsy for only $1.70 CAD!  For that price you can get tons of cute images to color! She sells them as a JPEG and I simply open them in my word processing program and resize them as desired. I also found a graduation cap at Birds Cards website, where there are lots of other free digi images and sentiments. I colored both images with Prismacolor markers and added a few Stickles.

The printed paper is by Cosmo Cricket - I just love their papers! and I used my Spellbinders banner dies, which I distressed around the edges and popped up with foam dots.  I also printed out part of a Dr. Seuss poem "Oh the places you'll go", as well as my titles, which I framed with cardstock, and, of course, I added some Distress Inks here and there!

This was a fun challenge! Hope you will play along too :)

Tags, Tags, Tags!

For last Toonie Thursday and on Tag Tuesday this week, Scrapbooker's Paradise has focused on tags... Fun!!

Dianne's Tag last week was so cool! We sprayed the tag with glimmer sprays after embossing gold snowflakes in the background.  We then stamped a great window stamp from Inkadinkado and covered it with Sookwang tape and then micro glitter to make it all sparkly and popped it up with foam dots over some sprayed leaves, fun twisted wire and fuzzy rickrack.

Below, are my two versions of this tag using some different colored glimmer sprays and silver embossed snowflakes on the yellow/pink tag.  Can't wait to dress up my Christmas packages with these!

Yesterday for Tag Tuesday we were shown how to make these awesome tags.  The snowflakes are punched from Spellbinders Dies, layered over some neat embossed paper (sold in a 12x12 sheet) which we used Distress Inks on.  We added a sentiment, torn around the edges and highlighed with some white ink and some rhinestones.

The Dream tag is layered over a plain black tag, then we added a die cut butterfly, some twine, a silhouette and a sentiment and tied a ribbon around the bottom.

Great tags! I'm going to see what I can do with the Cricut to make these :)

Scrapbooker's has some amazing tags featuring the Tim Holtz techniques starting next week!

Playing in Paradise #39

Whenever I think of making a masculine card the Tim Holtz Distress Inks and sanded Core'dinations paper come to mind! For this week's Playing in Paradise challenge the request was to create a masculine card or project. 

I inked the edges of the card with green Distress Ink and embossed the top Core'dinations paper layer with a winter folder, which I think could have many uses! Then I placed it on top of another Core'dinations paper embossed with a circle folder and layered this on top of some Tim Holtz music paper.  Below I added a strip of edged paper, which I sanded, and topped it off with a metal key.

Supplies: Sizzix embossing folder, Winter Botanical set: Botanical Patch; Cuttlebug embossing folder, Spots and Dots; Core'dinations cardstock; Tim Holz seasonal paper stash; Fiskars edge punch

Recent Card Making Endeavors :)

I'm a little behind on doing some postings... so thought I'd share a few cards on one post today!  I love that Scrapbookers' Paradise has Toonie Thursdays.  I can bring my 4 year old, who loves crafting, and she'll sit quietly and help me put a quick card together.  Often they will feature a new technique or product to use and what is more fun than getting to play with paper?!

In this card we stamped an image, then colored it in with the sponge pads and Distress Inks after stamping with a clear Versamark pad and a 'writing' stamp. Neat effect.

 This is a gift card holder stamp, which we cut apart and stamped on various papers before reattaching.  The lid opens to reveal the slot for the card!  We embossed the coffee cup area before attaching and pleated some cool paper tape.

 This is my own card I made for a cute Fall card idea.  I used a Hero Arts digi stamp I downloaded from Two Peas in a Bucket and colored with Prismacolor markers. It is a set that comes with a few versions of adorable owls!

 Inside view - I put a little guy in the corner of the inside of my card :)

I made this card for a friend's birthday. I embossed the red cardstock, attached my colored image and added a flower and ribbon.  Very easy, but turned out pretty cute!

Right now Two Peas in a Bucket has a free digi kit from Hero Arts with tulips, paper, buttons and other extras you can download.  It's worth checking back every once in a while to see what they have.

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/shop/hero-arts/83753-free-digikit-ha-sketch-tulips/?filters=_hero+arts_%2Fhero-arts-digital%2Ffree%2Fdigital-kits

Playing in Paradise Challenge 30

Well, just spent 2 beautiful weeks in BC! It was actually HOT, and we definitely aren't used to that, except for the odd day, in Calgary... We had beautiful beaches to swim in and great camping spots and amazing mountain scenery.  It was +35 there and today, back home, we are looking at a rainy, cool 8 degrees! Oh well, we had fun :)

I used Scrapbooker's Paradise sketch challenge this week to make a cute card for a friend.  I used the CC Designs stamp (that I picked up at Scrapbooker's Paradise!) and colored them in with my Prismacolor markers, and of course added some Stickles.  I used some great CTMH paper which I used on the card front and a CTMH sentiment.  After I popped up the apples on the side of the card I covered them with Glossy Accents.

Hope you are all enjoying the rest of your summer! Here's hoping for an awesome September :)

Moyie Lake, BC 

Cranbrook, BC

Driving through BC

Fairmont Hotsprings, BC