the game of march!

i'm just squeaking in under the wire at collage obsession this week, even though i knew immediately what i wanted to make the minute i saw that the challenge was weather. march really is the ultimate weather month, isn't it? it is here in new jersey, anyhow. in the past month we've had temperatures ranging from 0 to 62F... sometimes both in one week! we've had sunshine, snow, rain, fog and high winds. all of this is more or less normal for march, but it does make it hard to plan your day. for example, how do you dress if you're leaving the house in the morning in one set of weather circumstances, and returning in the evening to something completely different? it kind of feels like someone's randomly spinning the wheel from a giant cosmic board game, doesn't it? yeah. i think so, too! :)

something else i haven't done yet this week is check out the weather gallery at collage obsession, so that's where i'm headed next. care to join me, darlings?

the spirit of xmas (cards) past!

as you know, two of my favorite things are vintage paper and making my christmas cards throughout the year at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so today is especially awesome because i get to combine them both. yepper, we're having a vintage theme this fortnight AND we're sponsored by my very own etsy shop, just enough stuff, so there are some tasty christmas themed vintage goodies as a prize, woohoo! here's my card:

(vintage: christmas card illustration, lace, doilies, sheet music; patterned paper: reminisce; floral: prima; glossy cardstock: ranger; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, scotch gluestick, gluedots, sewing machine)

i should probably mention that you don't need to have any ACTUAL vintage ingredients to link up your card with us this week, we're just going for an "old fashioned" feeling, so you can use some of the wonderful brand new products that have vintage flair; or you scan/stamp (or surf for?) and print out copies of old postcards, greeting cards, etc. we're going for the vibe, here, not the provenance! in my case, i've got some of "the real deal" just because that's the sort of thing i love and collect. so my focal image is cut from one of the old christmas cards my uncle's mother used to save, the vintage lace is from the collection of a seamstress my mom's neighbor used to know, my white tree is made from garage-sale-acquired doilies, and the tree behind that one is beautifully patina-ed old sheet music.

if you'd like to see stephanie's gorgeous vintage-inspired card, not to mention a photo of our prize this week, why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ where you can start planning your own card, too!

SOS144: use your oldest tree stamp

for this week's challenge at shopping our stash, the direction couldn't be more simple, could it? use your oldest tree stamp. easy peasy! in cases like this, i'm always embarrassed to admit to being stumped, but i was. partially because my oldest tree stamp is a 2.25 x 1.25" row of palm trees that my friend barb found in hawaii, years and years ago. which i totally *LOVE* but somehow i just couldn't think what sort of card i could build around such a small image. then suddenly, i had a really WEIRD idea! want to see?

(palm tree silhouette stamp: from the long's drug in the ala moana center, c.1996, stamped with stewart superior permanent india ink on top of a pink orchid photo printed on kodak premium glossy paper; basic grey oversized chipboard letters used as a template; palm tree clear-background stickers: creative imaginations; dimensional hibiscus sticker: sandylion; cloud patterned vellum: maggie holmes/crate paper; adhesives: 3m foam tape, xyron machine)

yeah. told you, it's a little odd. the stamp actually isn't the focal point, but i still think it makes the card! the pink letters are built on top of an enlarged (and extensively photoshopped) picture of orchids i took in hawaii. i printed it on a full page of glossy paper, stamped the palm silhouettes, then traced some oversized chipboard letters over top. that process looked a little bit like this:

the whole idea is inspired by something even weirder, that i made last summer:

it's an index card from the ICAD project i participated in, via the daisy yellow art blog, and i think it's a pretty good illustration of why i love doing "pointless" art journally type things. well, the main reason is, they're FUN and i enjoy them ;but sometimes they can also turn out to be a tiny bit practical, in ways you would not have seen coming!

and now i urge you to visit SOS and see the beautiful work of my teammates, who have definitely put the TREE in "treat" for you this week!!! :)

now even greenier!

we're still celebrating holiday foliage over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and with so many types to choose from-- holly, ivy, pine boughs, poinsettias, mistletoe, etc-- this theme should pretty much be flexible enough for anyone! here's what i made this week:

(patterned paper: basic grey; sentiment sticker tag: papaya art; greens: prima, recollections, making memories, may arts leafy ribbon; florals: we r memory keepers; white felt snowflake: recollections; silver filigree embellishment: momenta; large gem center: glitz design; embossing folder: tim holtz; decorative scissors: michaels; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, low temp hot glue, sewing machine)

yep, i've got a whole garden on there again; plus a little cluster of stacked goodies that combines snowflakes and flowers; not to mention one of my favorite glittery papaya art sentiment tags. i took the layout and some of my details (like the embossed panel and overhanging sentiment) from the current sketch (#95) and crop of designer cards at cardabilities:

i'm sure you want to see what stephanie has made and check out the divine readers' gallery, so i'll meet you over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ darlings!

love saves the day!

this week at collage obsession, the challenge is mark-making. i have to confess that when it comes to old school paper-and-glue collage making-- which is kinda my favorite-- i seldom think about anything BUT the paper and other pre-made ingredients. which is possibly short-sighted, because there's so much i could be doing ON TOP, isn't there? so this time i played around a lot more:

i made a base of randomly glued white and off-white text papers. then i added the words by blending a bunch of different shades of water-soluble wax crayons. then i made a sort of sunburst around the words, using semi-translucent washi tapes. i liked the result, but the words didn't really stand out as much as i wanted, so i hit the sewing machine for a bit of outlining. ordinarily i'd've said this took fifteen minutes or so, but as it happens, i sat down at the machine right after putting a tray of fruit in the oven to roast, and the timer went off just before i finished outlining around the edges. so i know for a fact this took forty minutes! yikes! but i really like how it looks, so i'd say it was worth the time. (and the fruit was tasty, too!)

soomething else that's always worth the time is a nice cruise of the collage obsession gallery-- want to come?

all buttoned up!

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is "buttons and bows". half of that equation-- the bows-- are no worry at all. i can work a bow in anywhere. even a guy card! no problem. nope, it's the button part that gets me. now i'm pretty sure everyone but me will think, "ooooh! buttons! awesome! slam-dunk!" which it is. unless you happen to be button-using-impaired. which you probably aren't, since i just made that up. but even if that happened to BE an actual crafting disorder, judging by the fact that everyone but me is able to routinely use loads of buttons in really cool and innovative ways, you probably still aren't. but i am. so c'mon and make a card to show me how it's done, k?!!

(patterened paper: crate, teresa collins, american crafts, echo park; florals: recollections, petaloo; bird sticker: basic grey; fabric flower sticker: amy tangerine; scalloppy border: heidi swapp; buttons and seam binding from my stash; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, low temp hot glue gun, sewing machine)

having said all that, i do really like my card; and i have used four buttons. i seriously doubt ANYONE would consider that an impressive quantity; neither are they used particularly innovatively-- three flower centers and the top of the tag-- but they're there. so they count! like i said, the bow was easy. i originally planned to place it as part of my horizontal strip, near the two border stickers. but as soon as i had a tag (with a hole in the top, score!) i moved it up there, instead. the key to my whole placement was yet another extraordinarily fab sketch. this time from deconstructed (#142):

my card is admittedly a loose rendition, but i think you can see the bones? i swapped the two little horizontal flags at the top in favor of the aforesaid horizontal band that anchors my grouping of elements. which maybe means the whole thing morphed too far to still be considered a sketch card? but i was inspired by, and started out following, the deconstructed sketch... so it's only fair to give the credit!

speaking of credit, i know you want to check out the fabulous cards at SOS and leave my teammates a little loooooooooooooove. so off you go, darlings! ♥

under... where?

this week's challenge at collage obsession is called "under". it won't take you any longer than it did me to realize there are about a ZILLION ways to go with that: under the sea, under pressure, under the weather, under the table, undercover, understanding, underground... well, you get the idea. the point is, with so many awesome choices, only a real weirdo could wind up with "underwear". yeah. that'd be me. :0

(vintage: magazine clipping, newspaper text, sheet music, lingerie lace, sewing pattern, book page; found objects: japanese rice paper, postage stamps from a direct mail solicitation; doily patterned paper: amy tangerine, american crafts)

in my defense, i've been "saving" this corset illustration from a badly damaged but still very lovely 1907 copy of "the delineator" ladies' magazine, ever since i found it stuffed into a box of old record albums at a book sale a couple of years ago. it was the very first thing that popped into my head when i read the prompt. then i realized-- almost simulaneously-- that i had some beautiful fawn colored vintage lingerie lace, and they'd be perfect together. see?

i'm still somewhat obsessed with the "stapled collage" idea i started playing with over the summer during the index card a day and daily paper prompt projects via the daisy yellow art blog. i hadn't intended for this to be an example of that technique, but it just sort of happened, so i went with it. since i had the layer of super-wide lace towards the back of the collage, this one is held together by more than just the one staple... (i've sewn along the left and top edges of the lace, echoing the stitching on the patterned paper) ...but pretty much all of the rest of my ephemera is held by that one staple in the center, where those butterfly stamps are.

i don't know why that makes me so happy, but it does! another thing that makes me smile is seeing all the different ways the other players at collage obsession will interpret this theme, so that's where i'm off to next. wanna come with? ♥

the holly and the ivy

hooray for friday and hooray for a new ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ prompt! it's going to be hard to beat last fortnight, because we had that amazing sketch stephanie drew, and i seriously think i could easily use that thing another two-- or forty-two-- consecutive weeks without tiring of it! but it's good to branch out, right? so this time we're embracing holiday foliage! of course the eponymous holly and ivy are some of the first things i think of, but there's also mistletoe, and pine boughs, and did you know that all of the leaves on a poinsettia, whether they be red, or pink, or white, or cream, ARE leaves and not flowers? ok, admittedly, i had to check wikipedia to find that out, but it's true! :)

(patterned paper: recollections, echo park, dcwv, october afternoon, basic grey; cardinal and mistletoe transparency elements + border sticker: little yellow bicycle; small velvet florals: petaloo; velvet holly leaves: making memories; pressed paper holly and ivy leaves: prima; resin pinecone stickers: martha stewart; poinsettia and holly stickers: sticko; holly diecuts: kay and co gems: recollections; red pearls: kaiser; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine)

weirdly enough, this is not only one of my favorite cards i've made in 2014 so far, but it's also one of the fastest cards i've made all year. ok, i guess i should stipulate that it was fast for ME, lol, which is not necessarily "fast" in the traditional sense! i suppose the reason is that once again i had the PERFECT sketch for the job, this time from karan gerber at cardabilities. i mean seriously, how could you go wrong using this?

and now i'm pretty sure you'll want to be heading over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ because you definitely don't want to miss stephanie's gorgeous card! ciao, darlings!

SOS142: sentiments, only

i really like this week's challenge at shopping our stash! we're putting the focus on the sentiment, and we want it to really make a splash. so while you don't have to eschew embellishment altogether, we definitely want the words be the predominant aspect of your design. think quotations, think subway art, think BIG text stamps, think oversized stickers, etc. if you need some help, inspiration-wise, remember my SOS teammates are there for you, and-- as usual-- they've each made something utterly awesome! here's my card:

(patterned paper: girls paperie, jenni bowlin + scraps of recollections, dcwv, doodlebug, creative imaginations; black chipboard thickers: american crafts; black swirly digiframe (printed on inkjet transparency): scrap-n-fonts; sequins from my stash; ink: prima; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick, sewing machine)

if i said this thing took longer to photograph than to make, i'd be exaggerating... but alas not by alllllll that much! as everyone in the papercrafting realm knows, reflective materials are a BEAR to capture well, and as you can see the whole front of my card is covered by a transparency frame that i've stitched on to hold in some super-fun (well, i think so!) sequin confetti. here's another angle for ya:

and now you will definitely want to hop over to shopping our stash, because the gang have outdone themselves this week! ciao, darlings! ♥

this time, the "E" is for ♥EMMA♥!

Hello and welcome to my blog! Today is going to be especially special! As you know, there's a group of EAD Designs fans* who've been meeting up online once a month to inspire each other to use our goodies! This time, what all of our projects have in common is that we're all using EAD Goodies and our challenge theme is: Kid-Friendly!

But here's the very best part: all the cards from today's blog hop will be going to a special girl named ♥EMMA♥! Please read about the card drive hosted by Kelly Bertram, who we're so excited is joining our hop today. She chats about the card drive on this post which i hope you'll be sure to check out!

Here's how it inspired me:

(gnome, tree and mushroom stickerz by EAD designs; patterned paper: my mind's eye, crate paper, dcwv, creative imaginations, american crafts; "sweet" rub-on: fancy pants; red chipboard thickers: american crafts; kraft cardstock: core'dinations; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

For today's hop, did I mention there's some surprise blog candy?! The more comments you leave on the participating blogs, the better your odds to win! Want another chance for a prize, while doing something AWESOME?! We'd love for you to join in the card drive! Make a kid-friendly card for Emma, send it to Kelly** and link up over on Amy's blog! Commenting and card link up will be open until Monday, March 24th at 11:59 pm (pst). Winners posted on Amy's blog on Monday, March 31st.

♥Have fun hoppin' for this wonderful cause!!!♥ 

Amy  

Colleen

Julie Smith

Julie Tucker-Wolek

Katie Brooks

Kelly

Lauren Bergold (that's me!)  

Liz

Rose

Shannon

Stephanie 

Wendi 

*In case you don't remember, EAD Designs created the most awesome vinyl stickers and rub-ons; the company closed up shop about a year ago, and they are SORELY MISSED!!!

**The address to which you mail your kid-friendly cards for Emma is in this post of Kelly's; there are also a few important guidelines on what to include... and what NOT to include... so be sure to read the whole thing, ok? ♥♥♥

pillow talk*

it's been a heck of a week in these parts. long story short: my mom had "surprise" surgery, which thankfully turned out to be a lot less involved than anticipated**; she spent several days in the hospital; and will be recuperating here at the bergoldplex for a few days... or until we know for sure she's just skiving in order to get first class treatment, lol! :)

so today's a kind of catch-up post, because i found these pics the other day and realized that i never showed the pillows i crocheted for nieces lindsay and riley in the course of the last few months:

lindsay's favorite color is purple and i really really fell in love with both the background stitch of the pillow and the big dimensional flower!***

you can see that i'm still SERIOUSLY hooked**** on granny squares and flowers...

...luckily so is riley, who expressly asked for rainbow-colored ones, which i put on the back! now i bid you a fond adieu for the moment darlings, and wish you a wonderful weekend!!! ♥♥♥

*the rock hudson/doris day movie was on tcm the other night, but for some reason i am hearing mike meyers' voice, ala "kawfee tawk" with linda richman! :)

**can i just take one minute to say, if you or a loved one is coping with a long-term health crisis, whilst also keeping up with work, family, home, etc; you are NOT getting enough credit!!! please take two hugs outta petty cash, from me!!! ♥♥♥

***somewhere in my home there is another yellow and purple flower center thingy, which eluded a serious amount of searching the weekend before lindsay's birthday. neither jeff, myself, nor a specially trained team of yarn-sniffing dogs could find it. so i made another one realllllllllly fast, amidst much cursing. true story.

****for once, the crochet pun was unintentional, i swear!

sketchy double header

we're still rockin' stephanie's gorgeous sketch at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ let's just look at that thing again to refresh our memories:

the day before i sat down to make my card i saw this amazing layout by marcy penner, and immediately thought that i could make it into a great version of our sketch; assuming i rotated the sketch 90 degrees counter-clockwise. i was proven correct, but not before i first made a card that really just DOES NOT WORK. liiiiiiiiike... at all. in the interests of full disclosure, i feel i need to show it to you, if only so you'll be impressed when i reveal version two, the one i *do* like. but first, the "misfire":

(vintage: santa scanned, flipper, made smaller, and printed on matte cardstock + buttons from my mom's sewing room; patterned paper: october afternoon, basic grey, and scraps of studio calico, dcwv, echo park, etc; snowflake punches: martha stewart; stickers: creative imaginations, making memories, fancy pants, dcwv; twine: doodlebug; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

yeah. it's got all the good stuff from the original layout, it follows the sketch quite faithfully, and it has the awesome vintage santa that i scanned from one of my beloved vintage holiday books so that i could re-size it. i'm not sure *WHY* everything doesn't mesh. i think it has to do with contrast? there's not enough color differential between the "clothesline" elements, but too much with the red background, maybe? whatever. i just know i really don't care for it. so contrary to my usual modus operandi, i decided to have another go. this one worked out quite a bit better, imo:

(vintage: santa scanned, made smaller, and printed on matte cardstock; patterned paper: my mind's eye, studio calico, and scraps of dcwv, my mind's eye, love elsie, basic grey, etc; snowflake stickers: martha stewart; rub-ons creative imaginations + tpc; gems: recollections; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

phew. that's better! it's got a lot of the same ingredients, but i've paired down more, and scaled back to a smaller size, and somehow it just came together. ok, granted, i had to put the santa on the wrong side, because i forgot to flip the image before printing. (duh!) i'm really pleased i let myself make the second card. so what will i do with the first one? i'll still send it to somebody! i mean, heck, it's a handmade holiday card, and that's NEVER a bad thing for anyone to find in their mailbox, is it? even the "ugly ducklings" find a happy home somewhere, and i trust this one will, too.

a place there are NO ugly ducklings whatsoever is over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ where both stephanie's card and our readers' gallery are well worth a few moments of your time. meet you over there, k, darlings?!

monkey business!

that's the name of this week's challenge at collage obsession. of course your collage doesn't have to have *LITERAL* monkeys... but it can, if you want! mine does. see?

i was actually going in a completely different direction, but then i found those cuuuuuuute little guys and that was IT! i'm slightly afraid my inky, hand-cut, machine-stitched, dictionary paper jungle leaves might be a little overpowering to the small scale of the illustration, but i really like those, too, so hopefully they aren't "too much". bottom line: i had a lot of fun making this, and i never would've done so if it hadn't been for this fun prompt!

SOS141: 3...2...1

nope, we're not counting down at shopping our stash this week, more like tallying up! this challenge is a liiiiiitle tricky; ok, not really, it just requires a pause to consider the ingredients you're going to use. because we want to see 3 of something + 2 of something else + 1 of another thing. does that make sense? here's an example based on my lovely fellow DT jessi's totally FAB card: she used 3 colorful brads + 2 adorable stamps + 1 patterned paper. i had to put on my thinking cap for this one. because, as you know, i'm not really a "less is more" kinda gal; but i LOVE a challenge! so here's my card, on which i've used 3 patterned papers + 2 rosette embellishment thingies + 1 cute vintage style flash card:

(patterned paper: american crafts, echo park, crate paper; rosette thingies: american crafts; vintage style birthday flash card: october afternoon; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

does it seem like i cheated? because of the banners, i mean? i didn't, actually, and i'm sort of proud of my cleverness (or sneakiness?) on that point because i wanted a banner, but couldn't figure out how to make one that wasn't all ONE PATTERN (which, to a maximalist like myself would be far too dull, lol) ...until... i found this piece of patterned paper from echo park's sweet day line, with multicolored banners printed right on it! score!!! :)

i cut them very close indeed, tacked only the very very tops of the triangles with my gluetape runner, then stitched them onto my card so the little triangles would still have some dimension. i really like how they came out:

then i was a bit stymied as to how i could double-mat the (smallish) "c is for candles" card, since i only had two patterns left in play. ordinarily i wouldn't have thought to use the soft pink music paper twice, but i think it works. which illustrates what i love most about "tricky" challenges... they really make you STRETCH!

if you'd like to see more examples of how to make the 3-2-1 formula work, hop on over to SOS where, coincidentally, ALL of the dt cards are made to that specification, and WOW, they ♥ROCK♥!!!

happiness is...

...loads of vintage paper, scissors, gluestick, stencils, spray inks, a sewing machine and-- especially-- using all of the above to make a freeform collage for this week's collage obsession prompt which just happens to be called, "happiness is..."! so here's what i made:

i had a blast with this one, though i confess that it took me (parts of) more than one evening to get where i wanted to be. i had the buddha and the random background the first night. the arch (from the second night) changed everything and got me in the ballpark. but the butterflies saved the day: punched ones from a hindi language newspaper, digital brush ones that i had printed out on clear labels but never used, and finally masked and sprayed ones. the tiny flowers were the very last thing i added, and they are the one truly premeditated element... i realized quite close to the end that i needed to pull the brown and gold colors from the buddha out into the frame area.

now i can't wait to check out the "happiness is..." gallery at collage obsession. wanna come, too?!