Crafty Ann's final challenge

I was bummed to see that Crafty Ann is closing her online shop & challenge blog, but I know we all have other lives! But I certainly didn't want to pass up the chance to participate in her last challenge, "The Sound of Music." I downloaded her Freebie Blank Bauble Kit for the occasion.

The branch is from a Tim Holtz Alterations stamp set, and I heat-embossed it in a shiny green. I made the sentiment in InDesign, and the rest of the ornament is from Crafty Ann's clever kit. I sprayed the pieces with glimmer mist, and then painted the silver parts with Creative Medium. I painted Creative Medium onto the back of the bauble so to make easier to form. I adhered it to the digi paper with foam tape.

I made the little holly pieces with cuttings from the wired garland and red adhesive gemstones.

I made the background with a white/red piece of Core'Dinations cardstock from their Whitewash collection. It's embossed with a Fiskars texture plate in my BigShot. It's difficult to see, but I also embossed the red ribbon, which I first adhered red paper.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Crafty Ann's Challenge #84: The Sound of Music
Christmas Card Challenges: Anything Christmas Goes
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas: Ribbons
Just Us Girls #178: Sketch
Paper Crafting Journey: Bingo (middle column: Gems, Embossing, Ribbon/twine)

Update: I was a random prize winner for Crafty Ann's Final Challenge.

Thank you for visiting,

Sporty Slider Boxes

I've promised several of my friends penny-slider boxes, so the Slider/Shaker challenge at Here Come the Boys was just the incentive I needed to make a couple.

Both use paper & embellishments from Smirk for Men. The front of the Soccer box was created from the pre-colored digis from Crafty Ann's lovely Safe Pair of Hands set. That box is a penny-slider and a penny-rocker. The fisherperson on the fron of the second box is a stamp that I colored & cut out.

Hope everyone's having a great day.

Update 9/19/11: Wow! This project was chosen as one of the top 4 for this challenge. Thank you!

Trouble-Free

The challenge this week at Mo's Digital Pencil is "Black and white with one contrasting color." A perfect opportunity to use The Tramp by Mo Manning herself. I'm loving everyone's take on this challenge.

I made a Shadow-box card, which I learned about through the Stampin' Dymonz Cardmaking group. The oval is traced from a plastic template and hand-cut.

I was also inspired by Crafty Ann's Dry Embossing challenge. The black and white pieces were embossed on my Sizzix; the paper for the back (photo on the right) was pre-embossed.

Inspiration:
Mo's DP2 Challenge #91: black & white with one contrasting color
Crafty Ann's Challenge #45: Dry Embossing
Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack Cardmaking Group: Shadowbox card

Shadowbox Card tutorial: Splitcoast Stampers

Stamps: The Tramp digi by Mo Manning
Paper: Recollections, Core'dinations, Hammermill, DCWV, Relax
Tools: Marvy heat tool, Fiskars papercutter & deckle scissors, Tim Holtz scissors & paper distresser, HP printer & ink, Adobe InDesign
Other: ZipDry glue, Versamark & Memento inks, Copic markers, Sakura gel pen

Crafty Ann's daughter's card for the Crafty Ann's Challenge!

Ha ha, my mom's name is Ann and she's very crafty, so whenever I visit the Crafty Ann's site I think of her! I also think of this particular Crafty Ann, of course, whose work I've enjoyed for some time. I've participated in a few of her challenges, but I'm finally entering one with one of her lovely images.

I grabbed this lantern digi for my card for the CDAC challenge sponsored by Crafty Ann's, and since it's a freebie I saved it for a challenge like this. I had so much luck heat-embossing it on vellum last time that I did it again, with my new sparkly purple embossing powder. LOVE that stuff! I did the same with the lantern stamp.

And the back:
Inspiration: Crafty Ann's Challenge #42: Oriental

Stamps: Good Fortune Lantern by Crafty Ann's; Lantern and Cherry Blossoms from Asian by Design set by Stampendous
Paper: Brazzill, Recollections vellum, Staples résumé paper
Tools: SCAL, Cricut, MS detail scissors, HP printer & ink
Other: Sakura & Elmers gel pens, Copic markers, Memento ink, ZipDry glue, Stampendous embossing powder, Marvy heat tool, Versamark & InkItUp inks

Download my Tent Card template for SCAL (please leave a comment and let me know you're using it. And I'd love to see any resulting cards!)


Update 6/9/11: The Lantern Sentiment worked! I'm very pleased to have received a top three placement in the Crafty Ann's Oriental Challenge.

Kashmiri Flower Card

I first discovered Priyanka's Creations when I saw her gorgeous bed card, and now that she has her images for sale at Gillu's Gallery, I just had to buy her Kashmiri Girl.

Kashmir is known as one of the most beautiful places in the world (Priyanka told me it is called Heaven on Earth), and the people bring most incredible varieties of flower to market in small boats. Kashmir is one of the few places where Saffron grows. We always have saffron on hand, for favorites such as paella and tah chin, and once you see how it is grown you'll understand why it's so prized: Just two threads of saffron grow in one delicate purple flower. I love the color combination of purple and red, despite being from a culture that mostly doesn't like it, so I took the opportunity to use it! I made the sentiment in PhotoShop, and you can download it through the link at the bottom of this post.

The colors of her cloths were inspired by this photo on Flicker.

Inspiration:
Crafty Ann's Challenge #39: Fancy Folds
Digi stamp: Kashmiri Girl by Gillu's Gallery
Pop-out flower cut file: 3D Flower Cards set from SVGCuts.com

Adobe Garamond Sentiment: Download

Supplies: Relax, Recollections, and X-Press Copic cardstocks, Recollections vellum, Copic markers, Sakura Gelly Roll pens, Stampendous clear embossing powder, HP printer & ink, SCAL & Cricut

Sketchin' Hos / Raisin' Smiles

What a title, right‽ This card was inspired by a couple of "crafty" blogs: Crafty Hos' Color/Sketch challenge and Crafty Ann's challenge#38 (Raise a Smile), as well as the Two-color Card Cupids Challenge.
The colors chosen by Crafty Hos are Spring Green & Pastel Pink, but I included white and black details too, as well as two shades of the main colors. This small card shows off my two current favorite techniques: paper piecing & heat embossing.

I asked Mom if she had any spare easter-ish stamps, and she sent me the most wonderful box-full! She & Dad will be traveling throughout most of the Spring, so she sent me all the stamps she won't get to use this season. It's so nice how close crafting has made us, despite the 2000 actual miles.

I wanted to make sure I used the funny and seasonal "Easter Ribbit" she sent me, and remembered the humorous theme at Crafty Ann's...I wish I could have used one of her digi stamps, but this stamp was just perfect for this challenge!

Easter Ribbit stamp: Whipper Snapper Designs
Decorated Egg stamp: CraftSmart
Supplies: Martha Stewart two-toned paper, detailing scissors, border punch and pink embossing powder, Core'dinations cardstock, Versamark watermark ink, Stampendous embossing powder, Marvy heat tool, Sakura and Elmer's glitter pens, ZipDry glue, ZIG 2-way glue pen, tulle

Easter Candy Holders

I had so much making sliding treat holders with Crafty Ann's Faberge Egg digi stamp that I decided to use both the image and the concept for the following challenges:

The Pink Elephant Challenge #97: Easter
The Pixie Cottage Challenge #64: Paper Piecing

I printed the image on three different papers: glittered-yellow, glittered & patterned, and light blue. Sorta wish I had made the eggs bigger, as those pieces are pretty small! If I were a little more skilled at decoupage cutting (O my aching hand!) I would have pieced the pattern on the egg too, but using the patterned paper & adding detail with a gel pen was a good compromise.

I kept holders relatively simple, as I love the texture of each piece. But it feels very precious and Easter-like to me...all I need now is a bonnet.

Supplies: Faberge Egg 1 digi stamp by Crafty Ann's, Colorbok glittered paper, pre-embossed cardstock (Paper Co?), HP printer & ink, Martha Stewart border punches and detailing scissors, Offray ribbon, ZipDry glue, Marvy heat tool, Sakura Gelly Roll pens, tulle, flower eyelets, Crop-O-DileII

Sliding Treat Holder tutorial: Pioneer Party

Faberge Egg Treat Holders

As I recently mentioned, I'm a bit addicted to sliding treat holders at the moment. Honestly, I can't believe we haven't devoured the chocolate rabbits yet! I think these are also the perfect size for a packet of baby carrots...you could put a rabbit on the treat holder and then they would be "bunny snacks". I know I always fell for that when I was a kidlet!

I decided to make some using the Faberge Egg digi stamp I bought from Crafty Ann's for my Easter card, and I can't wait to get my hands on more of her eggs, 60 pence at a time (which is exciting for an American, especially when PayPal does the exchange rate for me)!

I really wanted to show off how easy it is to emboss digi stamps right off the printer. The fool-proof method seems to be to print on Vellum (the Recollections brand letter-sized version works great; they call it transparent but it's vellum) at Photo Paper/Best. It prints a bit slowly, but the ink stays wet long enough for the powder to stick right to it. Here, I used glittered-gold, so there's a rough, glitter texture to it. I wasn't sure how it to stick to the fine details, but I shouldn't have worried! I colored the egg on the back of the Vellum. I'm entering the card in the middle (CU below) into A Spoon Full of Sugar Challenge #146: Tons of Texture. There're at least 4 textures: the glittered cardstock, the polka-dot embossed white paper, the glittered-gold embossing on the egg and details, and the smooth clear embossing on the sentiment.
I'm submitting the orange & purple ones into Craft Your Passion Challenge #52: Anything Goes. Supplies: Faberge Egg 1 digi stamp by Crafty Ann's, Happy Blessings sentiment from Regal Greetings set by {ippity} Stamps / Happy Spring sentiment stamp from Studio g, Core'dinations glittered cardstock, Recollections Vellum, Stampendous gold/glitter & clear embossing powder, InkItUp ink, HP printer & ink, Martha Stewart border punches and detailing scissors, Offray ribbon, ZipDry glue, Marvy heat tool, Copic, American Craft & LePlumeII markers

Sliding Treat Holder tutorial: Pioneer Party

Make this card!

I'm really enjoying the creative challenges at Stampin' Dymonz Creative Space (you should definitely put her on your challenge list!) This month she's been featuring projects by Elizabeth Currie-Matsko, and we're challenged to "copy" her multi-layered, gold-embossed egg card. In need of some Easter cards, I thought I'd try it out.

I did my best to copy Elizabeth's card with the supplies I had on hand. I used one of Crafty Ann's Faberge Egg digi stamps, printed it on vellum and heat-embossed it in gold. I pasted the vellum pieces onto pink and lavender cardstocks and then colored the pieces with Sakura gelly roll pens (much like Elizabeth). I made the "swirly" background by copying a bit of the pattern from the egg. I used the "basket weave" texturing plate for the backing paper.

Inspiration: Stampin' Dymonz Creative Space

Digi stamp: Faberge Egg 1 by Crafty Ann's

Supplies: Recollections cardstocks & vellum, Brazzill cardstock, Elmer's, Smirk and Sakura glitter pens, Walmart ribbon, pop-dots

Cityscapes on the rise...and popping up

As you might have noticed, beautiful cityscapes have been going up all over the crafting blogosphere this week, thanks to the Cityscapes Are on the Rise challenge at Moxie Fab World. Not only did Cath provide us with great inspiration, the projects people have created are a-maz-ing. Three that stood out to me were My Creative Journey (building made of stamped sentiments), Mackenzie Mae Designs (the layout & colors), and The Stampin' Bean (innovative & just plain beautiful use of fonts).

Thanks to the Elvis Song Challenge over at Crafty Ann's, I found a perfect sentiment in his cover of "Home Is Where the Heart Is". I love cityscapes, despite the fact that they are apparently "hip". I decided that this challenge was just the excuse I needed to finish my city pop-out cut file that I've been working on; it's part of a series working off of my original pop-out house. Due to technical problems with SCAL and Cricut it took me a lot longer to cut these pieces than it might have, so I'm rushing to make the deadline. But I think I like the end result!

The yellow pieces are just a light, white cardstock sprayed with bright yellow spray ink and "banana pudding" chalk ink. This took forever to dry and flatten, and, even after rubbing off the excess "shine" after drying, it got glittery chalk everywhere, but the color is great and totally worth it. And if you clicked on the "banana pudding" link, you'll know what song I had stuck in my head the whole time!

I think this layout would make a great version of Chen Rosenberg's fantastic Hanukkah card I discovered on the Tuesday Trio blog. I love the idea of the cityscape with a candles in the windows...


Inspiration:
Moxie Fab World Challenge: Cityscapes Are on the Rise
Crafty Ann's Challenge #37: Elvis Song
Pop-out pencil holder: Extreme Cards & Papercrafting

Supplies: Recollections cardstocks, pre-embossed paper from stash, Inkadinkado spray ink, Tattered Angels chalk spray ink, Martha Stewart and Recollections border punches, SCAL & Cricut, Fiskars papercutter and scalloped circle punch

Good Fortune from Crafty Ann

I ran across Crafty Ann's Digi Stamps when I bought her adorable Easy Chair for some Holiday Thank-you notes, and was later pleased to see that she's also on the Crafter's Digital Art Center (CDAC). So I was really excited to see that Crafty Ann's is hosting this month's CDAC Color Challenge, and is offering a lovely freebie for us to use. The challenge is to use purple, lilac and pink, which aren't usual Chinese-theme colors, but boy are they gorgeous!

This project overlapped with the arrival of a box full of crafting goodies from my mom, including Chinese-inspired stickers and a TON of glitter mist. I really had a tough time not using all my pretty new stickers (did I mention they are glitter-embossed?!), but I really wanted Crafty Ann's Good Fortune Lantern the star. I guess I could have omitted the use of stickers all together, but I couldn't pass up this lovely frame. I know that it sorta messes up the color scheme, but I just really like how it works!

As for the glitter spray, it's all over this project! I stamped the lantern pattern in three shades of purples onto pink cardstock, and then gave each corner a spray of purple. I used the same spray to color the lantern. First, I printed the image onto vellum and then clear-embossed it. Boy, that works great! Many thanks to CDAC for the tutorial. Then I sprayed it (before cutting it out), and added details with gel pens. I also added a little color with Copics onto the back of the piece.

I think my favorite part about this card is all the texture. It's lovely to look at, even better to touch!
Inspiration: CDAC Color Challenge cdaccc19: purple, lilac & pink
Digi Stamp: Good Fortune Lantern by Crafty Ann's
Supplies: HP printer & ink, Recollections and DCWV cardstocks, Recollections vellum, MS detailing scissors, ZipDry glue, Fiskars papercutter, MS and ColorBox inks, Inkadinkado stamp, Tattered Angels glimmer mist (Haunted Shadows), Elmer's and Sakura gel pens, Copic markers, Sparkling Embossed sticker by Joy!Crafts

Easy Chair Polka

Being Polish-American, I have a soft spot for Polka. Sadly, I barely have the coordination for a slow waltz, so my Polkas are usually kept to the dot variety. I had an extra chair digi stamp that I printed on the opposite side of the paper for my Easy Chair Bookmark, which happened to be polka-dotted. As was the plan, this card is for the "two patterned papers" challenge at Craft Your Passion.

I found this great sketch at the There She Goes blog, and had a lot of fun with it. The plum and blue/green papers are Core'dinations, my favorite for dry embossing and tearing. This is certainly an I Heart Fiskars project, in that I pulled out both my texturing plates and tear edger (ruler with a deckle edge). I worked the paper a but with an emery board, and used deckle scissors for the edges I didn't want to tear. I used a glitter marker to edge the callout and the faux ribbon, and a gel pen for the "stitching". The sentiment is stamped in green and clear-embossed.

Digi stamp: Easy Chair by Crafty Ann's

Inspiration:
There She Goes Sketch Challenge #91
Craft Your Passion Challenge #42: Use two patterned papers

Supplies: Stampin' Up! paper (Subtles Patterns 2010), Recollections and Core'dinations cardstocks, ProvoCraft deckle scissors, Fiskars papercutter, deckle Tear Edger, and texturing plate & tool, ZipDry glue, MS detailing scissors and border punch, Xyron sticker machine, emery board, ColorBox liquid chalks, MeltArt clear embossing powder, Marvy heat tool, sentiment stamp by Hero Arts, Smirk glitter marker, Sakura gel pen

Wintertime, and the sittin's easy

I've been inspired to print-and-cut digi stamps ever since I read Jeannie's excellent technique post at the Polka Cabana; I haven't done it the old-fashioned way since I got my Cricut and SCAL. Jeannie shows you how to use digital papers, but I decided to be really old-fashioned and use some of my Stampin' Up! paper. I printed Crafty Ann's adorable Easy Chair digi stamp onto pink-on-pink and green-on-green, text-patterned SU paper, and then cut out details from the pink, ran them through my sticker machine, and adhered them to the green. Isn't this a funky chair?! I want it!

Mom took a corner-bookmark class and brought me the directions. I was really impressed with how cute they are! I've been wanting to try it again, so I was pleased to see the Bookmark challenge at Crafter's Digital Art Center (CDAC). SU paper is perfect for this, because of it's weight, size, and silky texture. I scalloped some scraps for the frills. For the sentiment, I used this sweet one from my new Hero Arts set. I've recently discovered that my ColorBox liquid chalks, which usually are poor for stamping because they don't dry well, really pop when I clear-emboss over them. This also multiplies my stamp-color choices!
Digi stamp: Easy Chair by Crafty Ann's

Inspiration:
SP Color Combo #84: Pale Plum, Rose Red, Wild Wasabi
CDAC Other Theme Challenge (cdacotc15): Bookmark

Supplies: Stampin' Up! paper (Subtles Patterns 2010), ColorBox liquid chalk, HP printer & ink, Fiskars papercutter and scalloped scissors, ZipDry glue, MS detailing scissors, Xyron sticker machine, MeltArt clear embossing powder, Marvy heat tool, Hero Arts polymer stamp

My favorite use of this bookmark (top right photo): Keeping Time, Passager Books