It's Raining...

Happy Sunday! Are you all having a great weekend? It's actually not raining here, it's HOT! Where was this warm weather a few weeks ago when the high was only in the 70s every day?! Mother Nature is strange sometimes...

I'm all settled into my new home (yay!) and now that I've got a feel for my new living space, I can start working on some decor pieces, which I'm pretty excited about. I went to Michaels this morning and picked up some canvases - it'll be my first time creating wall art! That'll be my project for next weekend, so stay tuned for a post - as long as the pieces turn out okay. :)

I only had a little bit of time to get crafty this weekend, but I managed to get a card finished for this week's sympathy card challenge at Peachy Keen. No matter how busy my schedule is, I always make time to play along in their super fun challenges each week.

Sympathy cards are a challenge for me, mostly since I'm used to making bright and cheerful cards. I did the best I could to still pull some brighter colors into the card, while still being sympathetic. The sentiment is from Sweet Stamp Shop. The set comes with an umbrella too, but I wanted to make my own umbrella so I could add a Peachy face. :) The umbrella is cut from the April Showers Cricut cartridge at 2.5" and I stamped a face from PK-493 Everyday Character Face Parts. Papers are from Echo Park's "This & That" collection, and I embellished with pearls and 3 Girl Jam crinkle ribbon.

I'm off to get some more homework done (I can tell it's going to be a crazy semester!) and then I'm hoping to get started on my first Project Life layout, so I can share it with you all this week!

Have a great rest of your evening. :)

Kissing

Happy Monday! Everyone have a good weekend? I spent most of it doing some much-needed relaxing, and got some crafting done as well. I've got some laundry to do this afternoon and a bit of crafting to finish up, and then I'm off to the Chicago White Sox game tonight! It's been a while since I've been to a game, so I'm pretty excited. :)

One of the projects I got done this weekend is a card for the current Use What You Have Challenge at Sweet Stamp Shop. I've been a faithful participant in these challenges for a couple months now and love digging through my stash each week to see what I can find!

I am in LOVE with how the background of this card turned out! I used my stash of Tim Holtz Distress Inks (see below) to create the background. I used Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick, and Barn Door. To give it a watery look I applied each of the inks on wax paper, sprayed them with water, and then pressed the paper onto the wet ink until the paper started to absorb the color. For faster drying I used my heat gun, but you could also let it sit overnight. As for the hearts, I stamped a teeny, tiny heart stamp (it came in a Gnomies sample set I won from a UWYHC a while back) in Spun Sugar and made the hearts look like they were floating up from the bottom. 

My "stash" of Distress Inks.. I may or may not have all of them. :) Because I've only been crafting for a couple of years, my stash is nowhere near as abundant as other crafters. Sure, there are a few things I bought when I first started crafting that are still lying around, but for the most part my "stash" is constantly growing, making it harder to find "old" things to use. Since I'm a girl who likes to have every color of everything (hence all the Distress Inks, Liquid Pearls, Stickles, you get the picture) I like to find ways to use my stash of these since they spend most of their time on my shelf. Coming up with techniques like the background on this card is a fun way to ensure they get used!

Now I bet you're wondering where I got these awesome stamps, right?! Both the sentiment and the two cuties are from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Kiss Me" stamp set - one of my favorites! I stamped the sentiment directly on the background once it had dried. As for the kiddos, I stamped them on white cardstock in Tuxedo Black Memento Ink and then cut them out and adhered them to the card using pop dots. Love it!

I'm off to get my laundry started, have a great rest of your day and thanks for stopping by!

Sealed With A Kiss

Happy Hump Day! One week today I'll be getting ready to move! Hard to believe that day is almost here. I should probably finish packing, too, but first I want to share with you the card I made for this week's Anything Goes challenge at Whimsical Designs!

I know it's not anywhere near Valentine's Day, but I saw the "Sealed with a Kiss" sentiment from Whimsical's "With Love" stamp set and couldn't resist! Even if the card is a bit lovey-dovey. :)

The hearts under the sentiment are from a sample stamp set I won from Sweet Stamp Shop! They were just what I needed when finishing off this card.

Any guesses as to what the lips are made of?! If you guessed Liquid Pearls, you're correct! Wondering how I did it? I'm feeling pretty generous today so I'll share my secret. :) When I thought of the idea for the card I went searching the Silhouette store for a lip die cut I liked, and came across a rhinestone template instead. I didn't have the right size rhinestones (nor enough of them) to make three lip patterns, and that's when I thought of Liquid Pearls! I bought the rhinestone pattern, opened it up in Silhouette Studio, and changed the dot pattern from black to a very, very light gray so I could still see the pattern, but it would still be faint enough in case I didn't cover a dot exactly. 

Our sponsor this week is Miriam's Crafting Supplies, and a winner will receive a $5 gift certificate to her fabulous embellishment shop!

Hope to see you playing along! :) Have a fabulous rest of your week.

A Very "Sweet" Thank You

Happy Saturday! It is absolutely beautiful here and I'm so enjoying my weekend off work. Last night I attended a Teresa Collins workshop (more on that later this week!) and had an absolute blast. After this post I'm going to finish working on the project we made so that I can share it with you later this week!

The card I'm sharing today is for this week's Use What You Have Challenge at Sweet Stamp Shop, and I want to share a little story behind it.

For the past three years I've worked at my local library, and it's seriously been one of the most amazing workplaces a girl can ask for. Everyone there is so sweet, and there's honestly never been a day where I haven't wanted to go to work. My last day at the library is this week, because I'm moving in less than two weeks to attend a university to finish up coursework to earn my Bachelor's degree. It's bittersweet. :/ 

The past month I've been working with an eleven-year-old volunteer to help him earn his reading badge for Boy Scouts by completing four hours of community service at a library. He's the coolest kid! He's been such a huge help, and as a thank you for helping me, I made him this card and stuck a gift card to a local ice cream place inside. :)

The sentiment is from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Packaged Pretty" stamp set - one of my favorites!

I pulled out a few bottles of acrylic paint from my stash and spattered the colors onto plain white cardstock (I had chosen the paper first so that I could find paint colors to match). Then, I pulled out my stash of chipboard banner pieces...

...and adhered patterned papers from Echo Park's "A Boy's Life collection" to the banner pieces using my tape runner. I cut off the excess paper, and distressed each piece. Super fun technique! Added some twine to hold the banner together, and ta da!

I'm really glad I made the card and the gift certificate because when I went to give it to him, his mom had just arrived to pick him, and he had brought me flowers to say thank you! I was SO touched. Like, so touched I could have cried. It was super sweet. :)

Have a lovely weekend. :)

Sending Love

Told ya I'd be back today with another post! Two posts, actually, as it's Wednesday and there's a new challenge at Whimsical Designs, which you can read all about here. :)

On to my project for Heartstring Designs today! Using a piece of Kraft cardstock and chipboard embellishments for their Summer Lovin' kit, I created a CAS card:

I created the background using Tim Holtz Distress Inks (I believe in Tumbled Glass, Broken China, and Pine Needles) and water. I put some ink in each color on wax paper, misted it with water, and then pressed my paper onto the wax paper to let it absorb the ink, then helped it dry using my heat gun. Super easy and fun technique! There's also some enamel dots on there from My Mind's Eye, and the 'sending love' sentiment is from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Packaged Pretty" stamp set.

As this is my last post for Heartstring Designs, I'd like to give a quick shout to Madge for giving me this awesome opportunity and thank the design team for being so warm and welcoming! It was truly a pleasure creating with your kit and being inspired by all your projects. :)

Use What You Have Challenge #10

Happy Monday! How was your weekend?! Mine was okay, it was pretty chilly for late July here in Illinois - our highs were only in the upper 60's/low 70's! Talk about a fall-like weekend. I was able to get a bit of crafting done since the weather wasn't all that great, and whipped up a card for the current Use What You Have challenge over at Sweet Stamp Shop:

The background papers, enamel dots, and Memories flag are all from Teresa Collins' "Memories" collection. Love the color combo! The twine and ribbon are from my stash, and the gray polka dot card is actually a Project Life card! I've got quite a few of those around here and thought it would be fun to use one on a card for a change. :)

From my stash, I pulled a couple of My Mind's Eye tags - the arrow and the teal tag - I bought a huge lot of them months ago thinking I'd use them all the time on my projects, and have really only used a couple. So this week I gave them some love!

The 'Miss You' stamp is from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Simple Sentiments" set. I just ordered a few more sets from their awesome collection and can't wait to get them!

Sweet Stamp Shop's UWYHC # 9

Hi everyone! What a busy week this has been. The countdown has officially begun - I'm 30 days away from moving! That means it's time to start cranking out the DT projects to get a bit ahead of the game, and start figuring out how I'm going to pack all this crafty stuff!

Enough with all the stressful stuff, let's get to the card I made for this week's Use What You Have Challenge at Sweet Stamp Shop.

I did something a bit different this week to use up my stash. I found a 6x6 paper pack that only had two sheets of paper left in it and I decided it was time to use those babies up!

I also pulled quite a few colors from my twine collection...

...And came up with this!

I created a tag using my Cameo and embellished it with leftover scraps of paper, and a Thank You stamp from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Packaged Pretty" stamp set. The edges of the polka dot paper is distressed with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink by Tim Holtz, and I added some enamel dots (my new favorite embellishment!) to the corners of the card. 

I'm off to finish up some other projects! Within the next few days I'll be sharing my first guest designer post for Heartstring Designs, and my DT project for the next Whimsical Wednesday challenge. Lots of exciting projects in the works! :)

Neon Stickles!

Happy 4th of July!! Anyone have any fun plans? Me, I'm just enjoying the day off and getting crafty. :) I also have a post up at All that Stickles that I'd like to share with you!

Every Tuesday and Thursday at All that Stickles the design team posts tips/techniques/tutorials involving Stickles. Today I'm over there sharing how Stickles fit in with the recent neon trend, so be sure to check it out if neon is your thing!

The card I made to go along with the tutorial is actually being entered into this week's Use What You Have challenge at Sweet Stamp Shop!

To make the card, I of course used my stash of Stickles:

(These are all the regular and Distress Stickles, I have another container with the Ice Stickles and Glitz Stickles, along with my Liquid Pearls collection)

And CANDi pieces:

(I love these and really don't use them as often as I should!)

And now for how I combined the two stashes together...

A CAS neon card! I Stickled the pieces of CANDi, and heat embossed a sentiment from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Packaged Pretty" stamp set. I adhered it with the same pop dots used to adhere the CANDi pieces. I love how even though it's really simple, it's still fun and bright!

Thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to check out my post at All that Stickles!

Miss You

What a crazy weekend! This past Friday and Saturday I attended the Standard and Intermediate Copic certification classes and had a blast! I learned lots of new tips and tricks and am even more excited about coloring. In fact, I'm taking a break from coloring right now to write this post! Later this week I'll post about my experience at the Copic classes for those of you who are curious. :) 

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a card I made for this week's Use What You Have Challenge over at Sweet Stamp Shop!

The purpose of these challenges is to use what you have in your stash! I have a small stash of CTMH stamp sets that come with the exclusive CTMH Cricut Cartridges (Art Philosophy, Artiste, and the soon-to-be-released Artbooking, although I haven't decided I'll be getting that yet!) and while I loved that the cartridges came with coordinating stamp sets, they don't necessarily get used as much as I thought they would. So, I pulled them out and found a stamp I wanted to use for this week's challenge:

Using the flower from the set on top, I made a CAS 'miss you' card:

The card is 5.5 x 5.5, and all I did was stamp the flower multiple times using Picked Raspberries, Ripe Persimmon, and Squeezed Lemonade Distress Inks by Tim Holtz. I wanted the card to have a bright, summery look, and I think that desire was achieved! I think it could almost pass for neon, too! 

I used some enamel dots from My Mind's Eye to serve as the centers o the flowers. The 'Miss you' sentiment is from Sweet Stamp Shop's "Simple Sentiments" set. It's one of my favorites!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm off to finish up some coloring and watch the premiere of the final season of "Dexter" - I love that show!

Happy Birthday: Washi Tape Style

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I lucked out this weekend and had Saturday off, which doesn't happen often when you work part-time! It was so nice to have the whole day yesterday to craft and be kind of lazy. I think we all need that once in a while. :)

One of the projects I worked on was a card for this week's Use What You Have Challenge at Sweet Stamp Shop! I played along last week and won (yay!) and couldn't wait to play along again.

I may or not be a washi tape addict, even if it doesn't get used as often as I think it will when I buy it. :) So for this week's challenge, I decided to use some washi from my collection:

While it's not a huge collection, it's definitely a lot! Especially considering how much tape is on each roll. Reverting back to a card idea I saw on Pinterest a long time ago, here's what I came up with:

I used 5 different tapes from my stash and cut them all at different lengths so that they could layer on top of one another to form a cake. I cut the cake stand using my Cameo, and added some pearls in the corner of the card to match the colors of the tape.

The 'Happy Birthday' sentiment is from Sweet Stamp Shop's 'Simple Sentiments' set. These challenges always get my creative juices flowing and I love that! It's fun to go searching for supplies you don't use a lot and then make a project with them - you should give it a try. :)

Congrats

Happy Monday! What a crazy morning it's been so far - went for a 5 mile bike ride, finished my workout, caught up on some "housekeeping" things, and here I am! Have some more running around to do this afternoon before work this evening, but first I want to share with you a card I made for this week's Use What You Have challenge over at Sweet Stamp Shop!

This is my first time really playing along in the challenge, and I had so much fun! It's basically an anything goes challenge, as long as you use what you have in your stash and take a picture of it!

This was one of the FIRST paper pads when I first started scrapping two summers ago. I wanted some basic patterned papers to play with, and this seemed to do the trick. Now, it pretty much goes untouched since I've learned about all the different papers there are, so I thought it would be fun to pull it out for this challenge and give it some much-needed love!

I searched through my scrap stash to find the matching polka dot papers from that particular collection, and off I went!

Here's what I made! This card is inspired by a card on Pinterest I pinned a LONG time ago, so not only did I go through my physical stash, but my Pinterest stash of inspiration as well! I cut the vellum envelope using my Cameo, then used a hole punch to punch a ton of pieces of each color paper. Most went in the envelope, but others are scattered on the card to make it look like the confetti is being shaken out of the envelope. The 'Congrats' stamp is from Sweet Stamp Shop's 'Simple Sentiments' set. Wow, that was a lot of S's! Try saying that three times fast. :) 

Thanks for stopping by! I'll be sure to be playing along in these challenges as much as possible. :)