Wish Big!

Have you seen the new Eyelet Outlet Fairy Brads? They are one of my favorites from the Spring release. And I can envision them working in so many ways, but this being the height of summer gardening season, I decided to go a bit nature-y!

Both of my cards are built on trimmed-down journal cards from Prima Marketing's Havana collection. I loved the way the soft foliage colors made the fairies blend in just a tiny bit... because fairies like to hide! For my first card I added three Fairies, in pink and green, and let them flitter around the card. (Each pack has an assortment of pink, green, blue and purple fairies.) I added bits of white Pearl Swirl Bling to convey movement and magic. There was a pre-printed sentiment at the top left of the card, so I covered that with Sun and Cloud Brads, and added my own words, lower down, via alphabet stickers... probably my favorite craft supply after brads and paper, lol!

 We also have fun new Crown and Tiara Brads, and as soon as I thought of the sentiment, "Wish Big" I knew that I had to put a crown on a Frog Brad and surround him with a few more Fairies. Again, the Pearl Swirls are meant to imply that the fairies just miiiiiiiight be in the process of working a little bit of magic... or possibly mischief? It's sometimes hard to tell with fairies!

Whether you're into Fairies or Frogs or BOTH... the Eyelet Outlet Online Store (and Tradeshow Booth!) has brads style to make all your crafty wishes come true!

Better Read Than Dead

The new challenge at Shopping Our Stash is called, "Base It On a Book" which I suppose is fairly self-explanatory, lol. Though I guess I could mention that in addition to being inspired by a specific book (like, say, Alice in Wonderland) you could also go with a general book theme, or use book pages, or a quotation from your favorite book or... well, you get the idea, right? I went with books, generally, as you can see:

patterned paper and packaging: prima marketing, inc; brads: eyelet outlet; label maker: dymo; ink for edges: ranger distress in hickory smoke; glossy black cardstock: the paper cut; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sookwang scor-tape

The (admittedly longish) quote is Groucho Marx and it's one of my all-time faves. I've even made a previous card based on it, back in 2017 when the Eyelet Outlet Book Brads were first released. I've used those handy brads again, along with some paper from Prima's Pretty Pale collection that incorporates book pages; not to mention some paper from the Havana and Angelique collections that aren't really book-based but matched nicely lol. The other "bookish" thing on this card is the library pocket into which I slid the three faux library cards made from ancient Prima packaging that was too pretty to toss. To make it, I liberated an actual library pocket from my collection of old falling apart books to use for collage; traced around it, cut and scored and folded et voila! But there are lots of templates available online and I think I even saw SVG cut files!

And now it's time to announce the winner of the xmas stash Blog Candy from last fortnight! The fine folks at Random.org have selected the lucky number 5 which means the lucky winner is: Karen Letchworth! Congratulations Karen, if you can send me your snail mail (llaurenb@hotmail.com) I'll get your prize in the mail ASAP! ♥

Be sure to hop over to SOS and see the beautiful cards from my design team darlings, then start planning your own book-inspired masterpiece! ♥

lots of collage...

...in this week's batch of cards for ICAD2019. hard to believe this is the last full week of july AND the last full week of index card art. where does the time go, eh?

day fifty: off prompt

inspired by... SOCKS? well, yeah, actually. someone sent me the photo below; and of course i can NEVER resist a diabolical pun, lol! 

day fifty one: number

somewhat tangential to the prompt, though all of the papers in my background collage have numerals on them. why is there a hummingbird?? ummm... it kinda fit and the colors kinda matched... :)

day fifty two: mandala monday

the fact that i see serious flaws in my mandala (just tiny things like scale and placement lol!) does not interfere in any way with the fact that this instantly became one of my fave ICADs everrrrr!

day fifty three: note to self
in this case, the note to self was, when you don't love what you've made, there is NO downside to experimenting! chop your work into pieces, re-assemble the bits, maybe add 21 or so staples...?! :)

day fifty four: off prompt
a collage version of mondrian's broadway boogie woogie... set further downtown... somewhere around canal street, apparently... :)

day fifty five: off prompt
another case of finishing something and deciding i didn't like it. so i carefully cut nearly all the doodles from the original vintage library card (neatening up the edges and curves a bit as i went) and mounted them on foam tape on a second card. i'm honestly not sure why that was enough of a difference for me to like it again, but it was, lol, so i went with it!

♥♥♥

i'll be back on thursday with the last few ICAD's and a bit of a wrap up!

Rustic Glam Redux

We're still making cards based on elements from this beautiful inspiration photo at Jingle Belles and you're still invited to join the fun!

Having gone seriously Maximalist last week, I had intended to pare down this time. (I stress the word INTENDED in that sentence, lol.) I was still very inspired by the incredible tree, and wanted to make a bauble-shaped card which was mostly white-on-white, but with little hits of green. That part did actually happen. The pared-down-ness... not so much... 

I started with a fairly neutral base of nearly white from Prima's Pretty Pale Collection, because I had what I thought might be a pretty cool idea: to add some snowflake stickers, as well as punching some snowflakes right into my bauble shape. I popped the area directly around the snowflakes up on foam tape so that there'd be a sense of depth between the layers, but I left the edges flat. Then I sewed around the two layers. Up until this point, my bauble-shaped card was still pretty CAS. I embellished with some fussycut patterned paper leaves and added a seam-binding bow to the top. Still sorta CAS. I figured it couldn't hurt to add just a few flowers, from various collections, old and new. I may have got sliiiiiiightly carried away, because as you can see: it's no longer even remotely clean or simple, lol. Ah well. I do love how it came out and I think it's a nice tribute to the tree in the inspo photo. 

Stephanie has another awesome card to inspire you and of course there is a tiny little prize for one random cardmaker this fortnight. You know, if you like that sorta thing? You should probably head over to Jingle Belles and check it out... ♥

Diamonds...

...are indeed a girl's best friend. Especially when combined with papers from Prima's Misty Rose collection (and maybe a little vintage sheet music?) then topped off with (neutral) embellies from Georgia Blues. See?

About eighteen months ago my friend Elisabeth gave me an older set of nested diamond dies that I admired and I've been periodically obsessed with them ever since. I've cut and layered the shapes a bunch of different ways, including multiple variations on argyle. Then, the other night, when I was trying to fall asleep, I suddenly thought of doing layers of the negative space that remains after the diamonds are cut out. As it turns out, this was a really good idea and I'm glad I woke up enough to email it to myself! ;)

The only counter-intuitive thing to remember about "layering" negative space is that you have to use the smallest shape in the lowest/farthest back layer, and get progressively bigger as you move towards the top of the card. Once you wrap your mind around that, the process is exactly like layering regular diecuts. Oh and as a bonus, you can take a few of the shapes you've cut out of lower layers and add them to the top of the card, for even more texture and interest. I distressed the edges of my positive and negative diamonds, added a bit of grungy stamping to my sheet music layer, and did some machine stitching. You'll notice I went only moderately wild with embellishments... not out of any newfound minimalist tendencies, but because the more I added, the less you could see the diamonds. I couldn't resist grabbing my punch board and making a custom envelope for my finished card. 

And now I really must be going, because I have quite a few sets of nested shape dies, and I'm kind of curious if this concept will work with ALL of them...? ♥

Revved Up Gift Set

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that masculine cards and gifts are harder to make than those with a feminine theme. Or maybe I'm the only one who used to think so? But thanks to Eyelet Outlet I'm now definitely an Equal Opportunity Embellisher. For this gift set, I combined lots of EO Gear Brads, Compasses, Anodized Stars and manly washi tapes with papers from Prima Marketing's "Craftsman" collection. I think it's a bit of a match made in heaven!

I made the bag first. I added a nice thick band alternating layers of torn paper and Brick Tape, Circuit Tape, Map Tape, Road Tape, and Wheels Tape; but really ANY combination of tapes which work well together would be equally good. I adorned the picture wheel with tiny 1/16" Round Brads in gold, and added some old-school Brushed Brass Eyelets to the corners of the label shape. Finally I added the fabulous vintage car (snipped from an old falling apart book I got at a garage sale) and a few Anodized Stars. The extra eagle-eyed will notice that in with the gears I've slipped a few Film Cans from our Movie Brads and Faucet Valves from the Pipe Brad Set; because they both look like they belong, and you don't always have to just use things the way they were originally intended! ;)

When it came to making the card, I basically made a pared down version of the same design, but I added a sentiment. It's a combination of small foam letter stickers and my own larger diecut alphas, made from cardstock covered with Map Tape! The background again uses the Map Tape, Brick Tape and Circuit Tape and I've thrown in another Compass and some Anodized Stars.

When it comes to creative embellishing, Eyelet Outlet *always* has your back!

Just a Reminder...

...we're still celebrating Christmas in July at Shopping Our Stash, and you still have time to join the fun. There are even some "presents" on offer... in the form of blog candy from some of our design team members, including me! So be sure to leave a comment on my original post to have a shot at that! Meanwhile here's a second card I made, using lots of older stash combined with Prima's brand new holiday collection, "Christmas in the Country" which I just picked up at Paper Anthology.

I know it doesn't sound like our SOS core values to have built my card around a brand new paper collection, but we're definitely not ANTI-new stuff at Shopping Our Stash, we just like to make sure we're using up the old stuff! And truly the patterned papers are the only non-stash items involved in this project. They did provide all the inspiration I needed, though, including the colors and even the wreath motif.

Most of the embellishments on this card consist of diecut foliage pieces, made from every shade of green cardstock and glitter paper in my scraps file. And seriously, I think there are easily 30 different cuts making up the wreath. Because building a wreath on a card is pretty much exactly the same as building a real wreath: you start with many, many separate stems and you just keep piling them on. Which is exactly what I did! Once I had a great base of various greens, I added a Prima Primed Chipboard branch that I had snipped apart into smaller segments. Then I scattered around some pretty compound flowers from the Love Clippings collection, as well as a bunch of tiny (ancient!) deep red original Got Flowers blooms. I added the sentiment at the bottom of the wreath to ground my fussycut vintage-style Santa and his reindeer pals. The wood-look chipboard letters were exactly the style and size I wanted, but they blended in just a little too well. So I took a black brush pen, and working very carefully, from the back, I "inked" the edges so that they stand out really well from the background.

Once the wreath was completed I added a few Eyelet Outlet gems and some handsome Cardinal Brads. Then I matted the panel with a few more lovely patterns (including one from Prima's lonnnnnnnnnnng ago Angelique collection!) and called it DONE.

Don't forget to visit my original post and leave a comment for a chance at my fun blog candy, then check out the original post at SOS to see the other dt cards and link up your own masterpiece! ♥

yay! index cards!

we're coming into the home stretch of the index card a day project, but i'm still having fun making tiny, random, experimental works of art each night. coincidentally... here are some now:

day forty three: direction

i started out following the prompt with this very cool vintage map of norwegian shipping lanes. as it turned out, that was as far as i went with it, lol, after that we moved into abstract collage. 

day forty four: pool

in this case, it's more like a tidal pool... or, if you prefer, an excuse to swirl around some of my favorite shades of colorburst, such as indigo, turquoise and violet!

day 45: mandala monday

i love how this one came out, but it was impossible to convey in one photo, so you're all invited round to see it in person. i'll make extra coffee! basicially, it's two layers of colorbursted shapes, cut from watercolor paper, pieced like a quilt, and then machine stitched to stay in place. the top layer is a clear index card divider thingie, a fact which is impossible to tell, even in the second pic i've placed below:

day forty six: amethyst

another quilt-piecing type of colorburst expedition. i often think it's a shame i dislike sewing on fabric because i really would enjoy many of the aspects of making a quilt. on the other hand, paper doesn't slide around quite as much...

day forty seven: off prompt

i realized, on this night, that i actually had enough different colors of index cards to make nearly the entire rainbow (ok, yeah, i skipped indigo) once i had them all glued together they looked a bit forlorn so i added doodle shapes to each color.

day forty eight: off prompt

J is for jellyfish... which i painted in merlot, alizarin and jupiter shades of colorburst. for no other reason than i suddenly thought, upon seeing a pattern for kawaii jellyfish amigurumi, that i probably knew how to paint a kawaii jellyfish. and i was right! :)

day forty nine: off prompt

on thursday i saw the first redwinged blackbird i have seen in quite a few years. it seemed only appropriate to celebrate that fact with a vintage paper collage.

here ends the penultimate full week of ICAD2019... which seems impossible, doesn't it? where did the whole entire month of june go, eh? can anybody tell me that?! ♥

Golden/Glam/Rustic...

...is the vibe we are channeling this fortnight at Jingle Belles. Or at least, it's one possible interpretation of the beautiful inspiration photo we're using as a jumping off point for our holiday card designs. I realize I should probably show you that pic first, but I'm just too excited about my card to wait:

And now here is the inspiration picture, of which you can use as much or as little of literally ANY aspect you choose. Maybe you'll go for a palette of all neutrals? Maybe you'll focus on ALL THE SPARKLE? Maybe you'll just choose one element, like the stockings hanging from the mantel? Or the frosted evergreen garland? Or even something super-specific, like the amazing texture of that sisal rug? It's 100% up to you!

It's pretty obvious that I focused mainly the neutral-but-never-boring color palette... specifically the many shades and many textures of WHITE which are in that gorgeous holiday room. I've incorporated plenty of metallics, as well, from gold to silver to copper. And I couldn't resist adding some floral elements and sparkly snowflakes, like the ones included on that amazing tree. 

I also loved the fact that each area in the photo had layers (and layers!) of different decorations and elements, so I started with a beautiful collage-style white-on-white paper from Prima's "Pretty Pale" collection, added some sparkly white stenciled snowflakes and about a third of a sheet of gold holiday-themed rub-on transfers. The copper metallic elements are part of the paper; which is the reverse side of a pattern called "Seasons of Love". The small raised hexagons-- which are the last few from a very old version of Prima's "Say It In Crystals" line --show the other side of that same paper and add yet another dimension to the design. I don't think the hexies are as old as the "Monarch Diamond" Bling at the Center of my flower stacks, however; which I serendipitously found stuck down behind a drawer about a month ago. I put a few Eyelet Outlet Pearl Brads in the center of the snowflakes, tucked in a couple of velvetty white holly leaves and added lots of messy machine stitching, by which time I felt like I had a pretty good card version of that beautifully maximalist and elegant holiday decor from the the inspo pic.

Stephanie also has a fab card and it's possible there miiiiiiiiiiiight be a little bit of blog candy over at Jingle Belles for one lucky random cardmaker who links up with us this fortnight. Just sayin'...

Waving Hello

My sister just returned from a week at the Jersey Shore, and thanks to the wonders of technology and social media, I was able to follow along while she and her family had fun at the beach, thus I was properly jealous! Alas, I don't have a seaside trip scheduled any time soon, but luckily I do have Eyelet Outlet Shell Brads and Pearl Swirls, so I was able to make my own little ocean scene, in card form!

I get cardmaking inspiration from all sorts of places, but it's not very often that a whole entire idea pops into my head fully formed. This was one of those times, though, so I was very excited to get to work. My thought was to make "waves" of torn paper that would overlap a neutral colored beach on which lots of Eyelet Outlet Sea Shore Brads, Shells and Shell Corners had washed up. As I was getting out my supplies, I spotted some white Pearl Swirl Bling and it sort of reminded me of the way seafoam makes little designs on the sand. So I tucked some snippets in and around my shells, starfish and sand dollars.

Here's a little behind-the-scenes process that typically doesn't make it into my post, but I've talked about "dry fitting" the elements of a card fairly often, and this pic really shows what I mean. Before I've poked a single hole to set a brad, before I've even touched the adhesive, I lay out every element I'm going to use, in the place I think it should go. And then... (this is vital!) ...I snap a photo with my phone, so I remember where it all went. As you can see, I've trimmed all the papers (which are from various Prima Marketing collections, including Georgia Blues, Misty Rose and Havana) roughly to size for my 6" square card. I've torn the "waves" so they overlap nicely. I've snipped my letters from their backing sheets and arranged them --for size rather than correct spelling lol. Now I am ready to assemble the layers for real!

You can see that I did make one or two changes during the assembly process. As I was sticking down the letters I realized that "comes in waves" would fit on one line, rather than two, and I liked it better that way. When I decided to add machine stitching to the layers of waves, I knew the sewing process would be much easier if all the pearls were on the beach. I also decided that a little more sparkle was in order, so I made a mat by adding strips of Glitter Gold Tape to the edges of plain white cardstock cut just 1/4" larger than the central panel.

Whether you are headed to the beach, the farm or the zoo this summer, Eyelet Outlet has brads and tape that will work for ANY destination! ♥

'tis (technically) NOT the season!

on the other hand, "christmas in july" has become a bit of A Thing in the wonderful world of online papercrafting, so that's what we have for you this fortnight, which also happens to be our 400th challenge at shopping our stash. if you make a christmas (or hanukkah!) card and link up with us this week, that's one less you'll have to make in december, and you'll be pleased about that when the holidays roll around, trust me! there may also be a present or two involved in this shindig, but more about that in a minute. first, here's my card:

patterned paper: basic grey; chipboard: echo park; burlap flower: petaloo; velvetty flower: we r memory keepers; velvet holly leaves: 7 gypsies; round brads and poinsettia brad: eyelet outlet; ink for edging: ranger distress; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots

i used last week's sketch saturday, even though i knew it would not be live by the time i posted this. still, it was a great sketch and a huge help getting me started! i've got nothing but elderly stash here: ancient and well-beloved basic grey papers, chipboard from (i think) the very first echo park holiday collection (or at least... the first one i ever saw, lol), older flowers with loads of texture and even some totally old skool round brads!

in the spirit of SOS and also of the holiday season, i have some super-fun blog candy to give away to one random commenter on this post. some of these goodies are old-but-unopened; a few are gently used, but all have plenty of mileage left in them! to enter the giveaway please leave a comment telling me one of your favorite holiday cardmaking "go to's"; whether it's a specific brand or product, a favorite style of image, a never-fail color palette, or even the perfect playlist! comment as many times as you like, i'll announce a winner on the last day of this challenge, which is monday, july 30th!

be sure to head over to sos to help us celebrate challenge #400 and check out the rest of the design team's blogs this week. i cannot guarantee they will all have blog candy, but they will DEFINITELY all have inspiration! ♥

now even ICADier!

i'm still plugging away at an index card a day. is it just my imagination, or does summer fly by a little bit faster each year?

day thirty six: thesaurus

as you may have guessed from the rainbow assortment of michelle ward's exclusive ink pad stencils, this was a day of gel printing! and the base paper of lady liberty actual is a page from a thesaurus, so i did start out with the prompt in my head; but clearly the collage took a much more new-york-y turn midway through, and i was fine with that.

(and NO, once they are dry, as long as the crud that is on my stencils is stable and won't contaminate the next project, i never clean my stencils! julie balzer doesn't either and says life is too short SO THERE!!!)

day thirty seven: botanical

a very simple collage. that i actually really like.

day thirty eight: mandala monday

i've done lots of mandala icads and plenty of tiny car icads, but (somewhat incredibly... how is this possible...?!) i had never done a tiny car mandala icad. until now. 

(vroom! vroom!)

day thirty nine: color chart

this idea is 100% a lift of something i saw on gill corrigan's instagram account, rowans cottage. except hers was painted ON A WALL in her house!!! i'm not as brave as that. on the other hand, you can't add machine stitching to a wall...

day forty: blueprint

i started with a much more sensible idea, honestly! and somehow it became appliqued and stitched lattice on a gridded card with every shade of blue stripes inside the raised areas. yeah... i have no idea, either...

day forty one: off prompt

a random collage of wavy papers, stitching and a tiny car. 

(vroom vroom!)

day forty two: card catalog

circling back to the  prompt i skipped yesterday. layered ex-library catalog cards, adorned with narwhals and mermaids from this month's pipsticks pack; and a blendy ocean-ish colorburst mat in between.  

♥♥♥

hope this weekend will find you with a little extra time to have some artsy FUN!

♥♥♥

still TIC-ing

or rather, we are still TIC-TAC-TOE-ing our way to fabulous holiday cards at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and you still have plenty of time to join the fun. just choose any row, column or diagonal from this fun board and incorporate all three items into your card!

this week i chose the top row, so i had SNOWMAN + GLITTER + STAMPING to work with. i stamped my pretty pink posh happy snowman (for a bit of a two-fer!); then grounded him on some fun glitter-bedecked paper from pebbles. as a bonus, i gave my handsome snowman an eyelet outlet hat brad and added some snowflake brads to the glittery snowflakes printed on the patterned paper.

stephanie also has a beautiful card to inspire you. why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and see that right now, darlings!