Year of the Brown Earth Dog

In the Chinese calendar, 2018 is a Year of the Brown Earth Dog. A friend recently got a dog, so I combined the occasions to make this for her. The hedgehog (Penny Black stamp) & gold-and-burgunday flowers are because she also has a hedgehog named Hedgie Potter!
I used my "Surprise Box" die set from Our Daily Bread Designs. I decorated it with two of my favorite papers from my stash.

The sentiment was cut from a paper covered with an adhesive sheet with a Spellbinders die and coated in flocking. I added brown Flowersoft to the dog (another Spellbinders die) & hedgehog.

Inspiration:
Dragonfly Journeys #112: Year of the Dog

Penny Black Saturday Challenge: Anything Goes with a Penny Black stamp + optional: Scraps

 

Thank you for visiting & best wishes to you in 2018,

Happy Year of the Fire Rooster

Wow, it's 2017 — here's to another crafty year. The Chinese New Year doesn't start until January 28, so I couldn't resist making a Year of the Fire Rooster card for my BFF!

I created the rooster background in SCAL & cut the layers on my Silhouette Cameo. 

Inspiration:
Dragonfly Journeys: Year of the Rooster
Naughty or Nice #35: New

Thank you for visiting & best wishes to you in 2017,

Happy Year of the Green Wooden Sheep!

I always enjoy an excuse to send a card and I especially enjoy making Chinese New Year cards, so I just had to make a card to celebrate the Year of the Green Wooden Sheep.

For the sheep-y background, I used an idea from a card I made in 2012 ("Do Sheeple dream of electric Peeps?") but I started with a polka-dotted Graphic 45 DP. I made faces & legs on some of the dots with a black pen and then filled in those dots with a glittery white Wink of Stella brush pen. The piece was cut with a Spellbinders die that I just purchased with some holiday money.

I had too much fun making the sheep embellishment! I painted a wooden clock, cut clock hands from a shiny white paper on my Silhouette, backed the clock with the same paper, added black bits and a pom-pom tail, and attached it to the card with a brad I heat-embossed in glittery white. It reminds me of Tock!

The wood-panel paper is a scrap from my 2014 Chinese New Year card, and I've had the light wood-patterned backing paper since last year as well. The numbers were cut on my Silhouette from a small scrap of a different wood-patterned paper. The banners are ARC crafts wood tape, something I just had to have but have just used! I inked the smaller piece with Vintage Photo distress ink.

Sketch #383

Inspiration/Challenges:
Crafty Calendar: What's New? (New Year & new stash)
Mojo Monday: Sketch #383



Thank you for visiting,

Horsey Hello

This week at Pile It On! we're focusing on Animals. January 31st begins the Chinese Year of the Horse, and I couldn't resist using this hilarious Saddle Up digi stamp and the corresponding Hay Bale digi set from Doodle Pantry.

I wanted a "model" for the horse, so I decided to color it based on Jubilee, the new horse of Chris, the coordinator at Paper Playful. I really enjoy working with Chris, and have enjoyed hearing stories about this beauty. You can see photos of Jubilee here on Chris's blog. 

The horse, pre-colored hay bale, sentiment, and backing papers are all from Doodle Pantry. The woodgrain paper are scraps of an October Afternoon DP. I colored the horse with Copics, and used a texturizing effect with Blender Solution on the background. The faux stitching on the sentiment banner was done with a TEKwriter gel pen.

For the background, I colored drywall tape with a gold leafing pen, and added some twine as well. The little metal horseshoe is actually a prong snap button, but I cut off the little prongs and attached it with Glossy Accents.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Challenges 4 Everybody #37: Anything Goes
Crafter's Cafe #47: Funny or Whimsical

Craftitude - Anything goes or Fluffy

Just Inspirational Challenges: Anything Goes
LEJ Designs #85: Anything Goes
My Sheri Crafts: Use a Digi
Paper Shelter Challenge #144: Digi image + sentiment
Simon Says Stamp: Humorous (3rd entry)
WordArt Wednesdays: Anything Uplifting Goes

Thank you for visiting, and hope you'll join us this week at Pile It On,

Chinese New Year never-ending card

My Crafting with Dragonflies teamie Susan is the new coordinator at UnstampaBelles, the blog that challenges you each month to create something without using any stamps at all! Quite a feat, really.

The January theme at UnstampaBelles is "New beginnings + New product/technique" so I decided to make a 30th birthday card using the new-to-me Never-ending Card technique.

I decided to make a Chinese New Year card, as it's coming up at the end of January. I used papers from Graphic 45's Bird Song collection.

Mom and I recently took a class at Scraps of Love with Leslie Foley to make a Never-ending Scrapbook page, and a fellow crafter also showed us how to make a smaller card version. I've never made my own from scratch, however, so I used the Never-ending Card tutorial at Dawn's Stamping Thoughts (she also has a video tutorial here).

Every time I make a Chinese New Year card, I have a bit of a panic about whether or not the images I'm using are actually Chinese. You'd think I'd be a bit more confident after going through this a few times, but it never hurts to do your research again (well, basically Wikipedia). As I always learn, the "Chinese" calendar New Year is celebrated throughout Southeast Asia, and was recognized by Japan until the late 1800s (Wikipedia again). One reason I was worried is that I'm 99% sure that the papers & stickers I used are Japanese-inspired, but I think it works! The larger images are fussy-cut from actual Chinese New Year gift envelopes that I got from our local Asian grocery. The banners were also cut from these envelopes.

I had a great time using the Glitter Masking with Outline Stickers technique. It's definitely time-consuming, but worth it.

The gold paper I used for the backings and the message page is really thin, so when I ran it through my BigShot in an embossing folder, some of the pieces were cut out. But I think it's definitely a happy mistake!

Inspiration/Challenges:
The Corrosive Challenges #190: New Beginnings
Digistamps 4 Joy #83: Glitter/Sparkle
Make My Monday: (C6) Embossing (heat-embossing on horse and dry embossing on gold paper)
Quick Quotes #35: A Bright and Shiny New Year
Unstampabelles: New Beginnings (no stamps!) + Optional Twist: Use new product/technique

Update: This placed in the Top 3 for Quick Quotes #35! Thank you!
My mom's friend saw this card and ordered 10 similar cards!

Thank you for visiting,

Happy Chinese New Year!

I wanted to make a card this evening, so I whipped together this Chinese New Year card with help from the following challenges:

Mo's Digital Pencil Challenge #117: Clean & Simple w/Mo Manning Image

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #35: Clean And Simple project with scallops

clean&simple Fall-to Layout #173

I used InDesign to combine Fan's Cricket by Mo Manning and the sentiment by Create with TLC, and printed it onto the smooth side of a banana/coffee bean paper Mom bought on a trip to Ecuador. The backing paper is actual Joss Paper that I bought years ago at a local Chinese market. After coloring the image with Copics & gel pens, I glued the pieces together and ran the whole thing through my Big Shot with a Spellbinders emboss/die. I cut the bottom off of the top piece to reveal the ruffle. It's simple, but very textural.

Have a lucky day!