Life Outside the Fishbowl

A Few Cards

I had some time this week and was able to participate in My Mind's Eye's card challenge. I started with some of the leftover scraps from my designer's challenge layout  - and ended up with two cards.

I used papers and embellishments from the Miss Caroline collection - "Dilly Dally," except for the die cut tag which is from the "Dolled Up" group. *Love* the patterns and tickets.

For the second card I grabbed a few extras My Little Bicycle alphas, although they don't seem to photograph true to their color.

Supplies: My Mind's Eye paper from Miss Caroline: "Adventures" Fair, "Best" Vines, "Hello" Flannel, "Curious" Petals; Die cuts: "Adventures" Journal Card, "Best" Title, and "Cute" Title; "Best" Pins & Buttons, red twine, Martha Stewart border punch, Vintage Photo distress ink, My Little Bicycle chipboard alphas, Studio Calico wood alphas.

Oh Happy Valentine's Day

This morning after everyone left I sat down to make a few cards with GCD Studio's new line, Oh Happy Day, by Heidi Sonboul. I used the paper as backgrounds for my cards and cut out pieces of GCD's Splendor "Labels and Tags" to use on top, as well as a few odds and ends from my stash.  The paper is bright and cheerful and the Hopefully it'll be a nice surprise when everyone gets back home from school and work tonight.

Pink for Rachel, of course. And flowers.

For Thomas, some fun stamping. I stamped the chevron with a stamp from Tim Holtz Valentine Silhouette set then dusted it with Perfect Pearls. On top of that a random selection of hearts from Purple Onion Designs.

And my final one... more frilly. Hmm, better hide this one from Rachel. She's likely to take it.

Supplies: GCD Studios paper: Oh Happy Day - Priscilla, Splendor - Labels & Tags; Stamper's Anonymous - Valentine Silhouette and Letter to Santa; Ranger - Perfect Pearls, Archival Ink, Vintage Photo Distress Ink; Tim Holtz/Sizzix - Love Struck die; Purple Onion Designs - Doodle Hearts; Making Memories - ribbon; Prima - Sculpture Flowers; Jillibean Soup - stick pins; Kaisercraft - paper flower; ScraPerfect Best Glue Ever and Perfect Crafting Pouch; Golden Gesso.

Happy Thanksgiving

... to everyone. We've got our desserts done, stuffing ready to cook, onions prepped and turkey in the oven. We're packing up to drive over to Burke to share the day with friends. Hope you have a wonderful, pumpkin-pie filled day!

Card supplies - My Mind's Eye paper, Martha Stewart paper doily, Cornish Heritage Farms stamp, Ranger Archival Ink, ScraPerfect's Best Glue Ever and Perfect Crafting Pouch.

More Fancy Pants

A couple more Fancy Pants projects with this month's ScrapbooksPlus kit - 

These are old pictures of Rachel - back from her 2nd Halloween. She "helped" me by pulling out M&M packages -- and eating as much as she could.  I used Karen's pagemap for the month to put together this layout.

And a fun card ...

Back to School

For one of the kids, anyway. A somewhat cold and rainy morning, but it couldn't dampen our spirits. All those happy, bright, smiling faces at the bus stop. And the kids were happy, too ;)

Rachel, after throwing up for the umpteenth time this morning, asked whether she'd be able to go to school.... poor thing...

And on that note, I put together a card for ScraPerfect. I had picked up some of Graphic 45's ABC Primer collection last week and it was just calling to me last night. I used several pieces to make the card, adding a bit of dictionary paper inbetween layers.

Then I grabbed my Perfect Crafting Pouch, a Hero Arts stamp and some black ink. Using the pouch on top of patterned paper helps give a crisp, stamped image. Using a piece of leftover vellum, I treated it with the pouch, then stamped a row of numbers with a Studio Calilco stamp from a kit this past spring.

The Perfect Crafting Pouch makes it super easy to get a great stamped image - even on vellum! I used Ranger's Adirondack dye ink on the vellum.

After trimming my vellum to size, I adhered it with four small dots of the Best Glue Ever. I also used the glue to ahere these Prima flowers - just place a small drop where you want the flower to go, let it dry (it gets tacky), then stick on your flower. No bleeding through the fabric, no mess.

A few tiny type stickers from Cosmo Cricket and a super cute ticket from my friend Susie Bentz and I'm all ready for the new school year - even if my kids aren't.

Supplies used:

Fabric and Vellum Cards

We just got back from a fabulous 10-day "holiday" in England and while I'm uploaded photos, doing loads of laundry, etc. I thought I'd post a couple of cards I made for ScraPerfect before I left.

I've been playing around with fabric recently, and used a length of (Mist)able ribbon from Pink Paislee to make the flower on this card. I rolled the fabric into shape and used the Best Glue Ever to adhere the flower. After the glue set, I misted it with a few different colors from Smooch Spray to Tattered Angel's Glimmer Glam. I started with the Smooch Spray. After that dried I decided I wanted a bit more glimmer, so I broke out several colors of Glimmer Glam.

For the background, I used clear embossing powder & a Hero Arts stamp after treating my paper with the Perfect Crafting Pouch. Then, I broke out many, many colors of Distress Ink. This was then adhered to a scrap of Cosmo Cricket paper, wrapped with a red ribbon. I added my fabric flower and a stamped tag.

This card is on it's way out to some good friends, who not only met us for dinner and brought the kids books - which they won't put down - but had to suffer through Thomas getting sick all over the restaurant.

And another card....

This is vellum layered over some cute cloud paper from My Mind's Eye. I had just gotten these stamps from Red Lead Paperworks and couldn't wait to use them. I stamped them onto vellum using Memento ink in London Fog after treating the vellum with the Perfect Crafting Pouch.

Once the ink dried, I took the Best Glue Ever and loosely traced around the circles. After the glue was tacky I used silver foil.

To ahere the vellum, I also used the Best Glue Ever. Seriously - it's the best thing I've ever used for vellum. You only need tiny, tiny dots to hold the vellum and they are virtually invisible.

Finishing up the tag I stamped onto a smaller manilla tag, added a few buttons and ribbon (from Red Lead), and a cut-out of the bird.

My Mind's Eye Projects

And we're at the end of another month - almost. Let me share some My Mind's Eye projects that I made for the store with items from the "Mabel" collection that didn't get posted while I've been sick.

This month the store got in a bunch of Kaisercraft paper flowers. And I bought them. Lots of them. I love these 3-D paper flowers. They're so realistic looking! So I went a bit wild on this layout, hence the photo. It was really just too dimensional to get a good scan.

I added a ribbon border along the bottom of the layout, using the Best Glue Ever to adhere the ribbon. This really is my go-to glue. All you need is a thin line to hold your ribbon - and it never shows through. Just let the glue dry for a few minutes until it's tacky, lightly press your ribbon down and you're done!

And here's a more simple layout - made with photos taken with the Hipstamatic app for iPhone. I love using this app - you get such cool results. This time, I took a few shots of the never-ending piles of laundry on my coffee table. I used a bit of Tim Holtz here - dying some of his ribbon with his new Distress Stains and a bit of ruler ribbon.

To finish it off,  a cool wooden dress form for Kaisercraft. Kaisercraft makes these fabulous wooden embellishments. You can paint them, ink them, cover them, glitter them, etc. but I just love how they look raw.

And, a Easter card. A bit late - I was in no shape to do more than browse emails last week, let alone post. I picked up a foam bunny at a craft store in the kids' crafts sections and used it to trace around.

And another quick card I put together. Bo Bunny has some really interesting embellishments this spring, including these cameos. I put one in the middle of a Tattered Angels glimmer chip butterfly, with a resin flower for an accent.

Little Yellow Bicycle

And my final projects for the month with Little Yellow Bicycle's Twig collection ....

This card was fun. I really love the corrugated shapes!

And I made a very Tim-inspired tag.

 

 

Neverending Cards

I found instructions to make a neverending card thanks to the All Things Tim yahoo group. A neverending card keeps opening and opening until you get back to where you began. And, you can turn the card over and do the same thing  - never ending!

These cards are quite easy to and quite addictive. Last weekend I ended up making four of these -- three for my kids to decorate and keep. Rachel went through my scrap baset and pulled out lots of pinks and flowers. Thomas wanted his to be all Star Wars. And I plan to make another one with my March ScrapbooksPlus DT kit.

You can find instructions for making the card all over the web.  Creations by Christie has an easy to follow video tutorial with dimensions.

Here's my card - the four sides you get when opening from the front.

Hero Arts Card

I picked up the Hero Arts "Enjoy the Season" cling set back in December. When I got the January  DT kit from ScrapbooksPlus I knew they would be a perfect fit.

I stamped one of the snowflakes onto a piece of Ranger sticky-backed canvas with Distress Ink. After cutting it out, I inked a bit around the edge of the canvas. A bit of layering of the Bo Bunny paper and a sentiment stamped with another Hero Arts stamp (from Holiday Cheer Messages) and it was done. I attached the sentiment to the ribbon with a Making Memories pin.