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,

Something New at OSAAT

OSAAT January Prize Pack

This fortnight at One Stitch at a Time (OSAAT), our theme is Anything Goes with Something New. StitchyBear's Digi Outlet has hundreds of digital products from many wonderful artists. Even if you don't use a store image, you'll still be in the drawing to win the super-duper January prize pack.

My "new" item is the gold-and-glitter peel-off stickers. I also used a new transfer sheet to make this New Year's shaker card using A Toast from Reece's Scrap Pieces as well as this great freebie sentiment from Coosty Creations.

I filled the card with a mix of clear & gold microbeads.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Card Mania #64: Make it Sparkle! / Let's shine!
Creative Moments: Anything goes/ New Beginnings
Hambo Hoedown January Challenge: New Year's Stash
The Male Room: New beginnings (Few men could resist something sparkly for the New Year! I made this for a man, Roosevelt.)
Natalie and Amy's Challenge #28: All Things New!
Paradise of Stamps: New Year

Thank you for visiting, and hope you'll join us at One Stitch at a Time,

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 Scrappy New Year

We're not sure when my parents picked up the tradition -- probably when they moved to Spain -- but my family always rings in the New Year by eating 12 grapes, one for each toll of the New Year's bell, for good luck. I can't remember if we found our first plastic grape-holders at El Corte Inglés or Pryca, but they are some of our most precious possessions, and I think my folks still use theirs. I know where mine are...in the attic! I haven't really kept to the tradition since seedless grapes became the norm (because it's kind of cheating!), but I like to send my parents a grape-themed New Year's card (Um, Mom, if you're reading this, it will be in the mail tomorrow!) This year, I broke out my bag of Washi tape:

I used some white scrap paper to adhere the Washi tape and punched out the circle with a punch, and stuck them to the card with pop dots. I used 12 circles to represent the 12 grapes, and topped it with a leaf-shaped brad.

Using baker's twine and Glossy Accents, I made the vine spell out "2014". The sentiment is from a Dilo En Español set, and was heat-embossed in a shiny green powder (Stampendous). I added some decorative tapes as a banner, and made a hand-drawn border with a PITT pen.

I sure had fun making this, and am looking forward to a new crafty year!

Sketch Saturday #290

Inspiration/Challenges:
C.R.A.F.T. #239;: New Year/New Beginnings
Cuttin & Stampin Challenge #52: Use Something New (the lacey tape and camera-themed Washi tapes are new)
Opus Gluei #173: Leftovers (used scrap paper for the washi tape pieces and the yellow background is literally "leftover" from an old project)
Perfectly Rustics: Washi Tape
Sketch Saturday: Sketch #290
The Crazy Challenge: Celebrate the new year
Twisted Tuesday: New Beginnings (New Year) + Twist: Use something new (the lacey tape and camera-themed Washi tapes are new)

Update: This was chosen as the Winner/Top Pick for Perfectly Rustics' Washi Tape Challenge. What an honor, thank you! I'm so glad I was inspired by the challenge, I never would have thought of these Washi Tape grapes without it!

Thank you for visiting and best wishes for 2014,

Mo's Wonderful Time of the Year

How has it already been another year ... I guess time goes fast when you're crafting! I've had a great December full of traveling and visiting family, and now I'm looking forward to a new year full of ... well, all those things that come up when you're an adult!

I thought that the current challenge at Mo's Digital Pencil would be a nice way to both reflect on 2012 and welcome in 2013: We're to pick our favorite Mo's Digital Pencil project of 2012. I was sort of surprised to see that I only made four projects in 2012 (You can see all of my projects using Mo's images here), but I just had to choose Silky Puppy Love:

Silky Puppy Love, February 20, 2012

As you can tell, I had too much fun making that card!

Last year I used Mo's Fan's Cricket to make a Chinese New Year card, so figured I should do the same for 2013. Didn't get this in the mail in time for Western New Year's, so maybe I can send it to someone for the Chinese New Year! 

I printed everything (including the sentiment by TLC Creations, which I inverted) onto shiny Recollections papers (gold, charcoal, white). I was inspired by the lovely sketch from The Sketch File. I used the font Silentina Movie for the Charlie Chaplin quote ("Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles."), some beautiful Graphic 45 paper, and added a bit of white leaf ribbon. 

The Sketch File

Inspiration/Challenges:

1. ATCs & Cards With Attitude: Celebrations
2. Brown Sugar: Happy New Year
3. Fat Pages With Attitude: Celebrations
4. Kenny K's Krafty Krew: It's Party Time (NY celebration card)
5. Little Claire's: Happy New Year
6. Paper Pretties Wednesday Challenge #238: New Year Inspired
7. Polka Doodles: Happy New Year
8. Pixie Dust Studio: Any Celebration will do
9. Sunny Challenges: New Year's
10. The Sketch File: Sketch

Update: This was awarded a Top 3 spot at Brown Sugar. Thank you!

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!

Happy New Border Punch

I've been wanting to make a window card, and thanks to the blogosphere I found the inspiration!I designed the card and the window in Scal so that I could get the fold I wanted; but for the pretty lace elements I pulled out my shiny new border punch and used my scraps. The text was made in InDesign and printed on gray paper. I stamped the little green birds on the brown paper, aligned clear acetate over it and stamped the cages in black. The window frame is "aged" with a gray marker. And I couldn't help but decorate the back of the card in brown with the larger version of the bird.

Inspiration: Color: ColourQ Challenge #65: old olive, kraft, basic gray, basic black, vanilla & whiteTheme: Freshly Brewed Challenge #28: Celebrate/New Year'sSketch: Cardmaking & Papercraft magazine Sketch Challenge #5

Supplies:
My Mind's Eye Lost & Found/Market Street "Adore" silicon stamps, Martha Stewart border punch, ColorBox & StazOn inks, Recollections & Staples cardstocks, Graphix clear plastic, Cricut personal cutter, SCAL2 software, Velcro, ZipDry glue, HP printer & ink, Guinness Extra Stout font, Copic C-5 Cool Gray marker