Play Date Cafe Challenge #23

Coming in just under the wire with this one!  The challenge at The Play Date Cafe this week is to work with this gorgeous inspiration picture of wonderful blues.  I decided to BOA - bring out the ancient!  The papers are from K and Co. and Laura Ashley (the printed vellum).  Seriously old - using up that stash!  The stamps are from Cornish Heritage Farms - Vintage Chintz backgrounder and Beautiful.  I added a little Rock Candy Stickles and Diamond Dust to the butterfly to bring some sparkle, and scrunched up some blue ribbon by pulling and gathering it along the twine that ran down its center.  Nothing too complicated, really.  A very fun challenge, since it's my favorite color! :)  Take a look at all the wonderful creations this week at The Play Date Cafe... the design team have really outdone themselves with their beautiful blues.

Tag Tuesday Sketch

The Tag Tuesday challenge this week at Kard Krazy is to use a Sketch, a fun one that Louise provided.  I haven't gotten a chance to craft in several days, and it was so much fun to jump back into it with this challenge.  I used my brand new Ferris wheel stamp from Paper Artsy, along with a bunch of stamps from Artistic Outpost's Paris Exposition plate.  The little balloon is underneath a Fragment from Tim Holtz' Idea-ology line.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and Easter holiday (if that's what you observe, of course :)).  I'm hoping to get crafty lots more this week... there are some wonderful challenges going on at Gingersnap Creations, The Play Date Cafe, and The Shabby Tea Room that I'm just itchin' to try, and of course, I'll be working with some fun new Cornish Heritage Farms releases.  Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Easter

None of my creations today, only one of His.  This was the scene this morning after the Sunrise Service at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University.  Just glorious.  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Go Blue Devils!! :)

Shabby Tea Room Week #3 - Get Scrappy!

 No new sheets of patterned paper were harmed in the making of this card.  Seriously.  This is a 100% pure scrap-made card!  The challenge over at The Shabby Tea Room this week is "Let's Get Scrappy."  Oh, how fun and liberating it is to make yourself work from your scrap box!!  C'mon, you know we all have them... hoards of little scraps of beautiful patterned papers that we just can't bear to part with.  I take that one step further... I have a box of stamped images and leftover bits of "techniqued" papers that I save.  Usually they are the result of my stamping too many images for a project, or I stamp on ivory and decide I really should have stamped on white, etc.  Sometimes I try out a technique and either don't use the entire piece or decide to go with different colors, for example.  I save all of these misfit scraps, and today, I finally actually used some of them!

I should also mention that the fabulous Melissa Phillips is the guest designer this week at The Shabby Tea Room.  She has her own little inspiration challenge, which currently centers around this gorgeous photo, which I took as a springboard for the colors in my card (didn't stick with the scheme exactly, but that's what an inspiration photo is for, right?  a starting point....my creation is decidedly using the shabby-vintage version of this color scheme...;)

So, working up from the bottom layer... the light blue patterned paper is an ancient Anna Griffin design.  Next up are two scraps from a "Couture Pack" of paper by Autumn Leaves.  The stripe is actually a little altered piece I made - I had stamped various Cornish Heritage Farms stamps on it and clear embossed them, then ran over the whole thing with a brayer and brown ink of some kind.  I was trying to come up with an idea for the CHF Summer Stamp Star Design Challenge using "resist" way back when, but decided to go in an entirely different direction.  I saved that little experiment, though, and here it is making it's debut, LOL!  The music is vintage, already torn and left over from THIS project.  Even my Tree Swallows image is a leftover..... it's an extra from THIS artist trading card project months ago.  I had made extras, just in case....  For the flower fringe around the image, I took some inspiration from the gorgeous Prima trim I used in THIS project, and made my own, coloring some Prima flowers with my Copics, folding them in half, and affixing them to the back of the image.  A scrap of twill tape, shabbied up, is the base for the sentiment (Hero Arts).  My tape was gleaming white, and I didn't have time to tea-dye some, so I cheated:  I just ran the pad of Antique Linen Distress ink over it, then ran the edges over the Tea Dye pad and presto!  This is a good technique to use in a pinch if you only need a little snippet of twill.  And that's it.  Everything old is new again.  So try it out.... it's fun... you know you've been meaning to use those scraps.... so go on now, do it! ;)

Stamp of the Month

It's April 1st, so that means it's time for another Stamp of the Month from Cornish Heritage Farms (and that's no foolin'!).  This month's image is Fawn in the Grove - a delicate and delightful little spring scene.  I've paired it here with the Trees backgrounder and a sentiment from the Ornamental Beauty set.  I colored the image with Copics, making sure I preserved some white spots on this little fawn's back.:)  I nestled her amongst some white birch trees - reminds me of where I grew up in northeastern PA.  The leaves are from a big box flower sprig (I always save both the leaves and the petals - ya never know when you'll want some leaves, too).  A little twine ties it all up in a rustic sort of way.  As always, there will be lots more samples in the gallery.

Happy April Fools Day to my U.S. friends (if you can really say it's happy..?)!  Hope you don't get fooled too badly! ;)