Pilin' on a Pink Pop

The theme this month at Pile It On is Thank You and/or Shades of Black & White + Optional Pop of color. We're sponsored by Sasayaki Glitter Digital Stamps, and I couldn't resist using their Winter Flamingos digi stamp again!

I was inspired by the fact that flamingos are naturally gray/white & get their pink color from their diet. Guess this guy ate all the shrimp!

For the background, I dry-embossed a black-and-white textured cardstock (Core'Dinations); I sanded the black side, and inked the white side. The sentiment piece is made with the same paper. I stamped the round sentiment in gray & the center sentiment in black (both stamps are from Scrapper's Paradise). The base card, mat, and image frame are 3 different gray cardstocks.

I colored the Flamingos image with Copic markers; mostly their Warm and Cool Grays. The background was colored with W1, then textured with alcohol & a paper towel. I added white flocking to the gray flamingos. The pink guy was colored florescent pink. The ribbon (Offray) has been in my stash forever. I had lots of fun making this!

Inspiration/Challenges:
2 Crafty Critter Crazies : Anything Goes with a Critter
CCEE Stampers #177: Baby It's Cold Outside
Classic Design Team Open Challenge #21: Any DT Project
Simply Create Too #134: Use Embossing
Tuesday Morning Sketches #436: Sketch

Thank you for visiting! Hope you'll join us at Pile It On,

Pilin' on the Thankful Family Flock

The theme this month at Pile It On is Thank You. The only real rule is to be inspired by more than one papercrafting challenge. We're sponsored by Sasayaki Glitter Digital Stamps, and I used their Winter Flamingos.

We spent the Christmas holiday in Arizona with my parents. We took a little drive through the rose fields in the desert to the Wildlife World Zoo. When I was a child, it was mostly a rescue zoo that you could drive through & view the animals, but these days my family is more interested in eating BBQ & watching the shark tank at Dillon's Restaurant! Their patio looks out onto the Flamingo pond, and I captured this photo. The photo of me is actually from a few years ago, with a plastic flamingo in Baltimore's Sherwood Garden.

No visit with Mom would be complete without a trip to her awesome local craft store, Scraps of Love. She let me pick out a Christmas present, and I just had to have this Newton's Nook snowglobe die set. The "merry" is from the same set, and the number dies & flamingo die are from Mom's stash. The base card is made with a favorite piece of Graphic 45 DP. The speech bubble stamp is from Latina Crafter, and I hand-wrote the silly sentiment. I sent this to my folks as a memento of another memorable holiday.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Alphabet Challenge: U for Use 3 of Something
Crafty Animals #10: Anything Goes + Animal
Creative Sketchy Girls: Christmas/New Year
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Something New (Snowglobe die was a Xmas gift)

Thank you for visiting!

Royal Birthday -- Pilin' on the Fantasy

The theme this month at Pile It On is Fantasy. The only real rule is to be inspired by more than one papercrafting challenge. Be sure to stop back on the 3rd Sunday of the month for a bonus theme! We're sponsored by Sasayaki Glitter Digital Stamps and I used their adorable Dragoon digi stamp.

I got together with my local crafting buddies last week, and we made a quick stop to the new Tuesday Morning and their fairly impressive craft aisle. I got a die & some vinyl, but I ended up taking my husband back the next day for the "castle" die (Crafter's Companion/Downton Abbey) and star-patterned embossing folder (Darice). We also got our boy Walt a new bed; you can't quite tell from this photo, but he was thrilled with it and I barely got it in the house before he made me drop it and he cuddled right in, ready to watch me use my yummy new craft purchases! To make this story even better, when I got home I realized that two of the castle die packages had gotten stuck together! I only paid for one, and called the store to let them know, and they let me keep the second one, which I gave to the friend who took me shopping in the first place!

The shaker background square is filled with paper crowns & gold star sequins. I had cut the crowns on my Silhouette Cameo for a previous project. The DP is from Graphic 45, as is the little sentiment strip on the bottom castle, which reads: "Life is the most wonderful adventure." The Happy Birthday die is from Impression Obsession, and is cut from a patterned paper; actually, I cut this for a different project but it worked so great with this!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge: Anything Goes
Crazy 4 Challenges: Interactive Card
Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes
Sisterhood of Crafters: Use Your Dies
Sketch-Tanten Challenge #36: Any Card / Optional Sketch 
Use Your Stuff #281: Old & New Stash (Old: I made the die-cut crowns well over a year ago; New: castle die & stars embossing folder)

Thank you for visiting & inspiring my crafting! Hope you'll join us at Pile It On,