What's Red and Green and FUN All Over?

The answer is this fortnight's challenge at Jingle Belles where we'd like to see cards that feature the traditional colors of Christmas... red and green! Here's what I made:

I've been trying to whittle away at my Christmas scraps. One helpful technique is diecutting the smaller scraps. The other is to make paper-pieced backgrounds. I've done both here! Using my ancient Nestie diamonds, I cut a bunch of mostly red shapes, matted them, and made them into a background. Then I machine stitched around and added a green Memory Box tree, with a darker green shadow so it stood out better. Finally a (red!) sentiment cut from an ancient Echo Park Journal card and I was done.

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's awesome card and start making plans to link up your own Red and Green masterpiece!

Caffeine and Sarcasm, Perfect Together

It's not that often a sentiment stamp makes me literally laugh out loud, but Technique Junkies' "Prison Orange" Cling Stamp definitely did, so I couldn't wait to pair it with my Eyelet Outlet Coffee Brads for snarky card perfection. Hop over to The Ink Pad Blog to read all about it!

Life Really is Better in Flip Flops

Amongst the new Eyelet Outlet Summer Brad release are Flip Flops, which come with three colors in each pack: brown, black and hot pink. Amazingly enough for me  I didn't use the pink ones first??!

Rest assured that pink is still my favorite color, but in this case, as I worked on the card, these ancient cork alphabet stickers, plus our beautiful Shell Brads, Shell Corners and Sea Shore Brads meant my card was becoming distinctly neutral and natural, so I opted for the brown Flip Flops this time. A scattering of pearls finishes off my slimline shoreline card design.

Other new releases include our Boat and Lighthouse Brads, White Daisy Brads and Dragonfly Brads. Be sure to check the EO Blog often to see inspiring ideas from the design team!

I Can, Therefore ICAD

It's hard to believe we're only seven days away from the end of ICAD 2021, but the calendar assures me that is the case. Is it just me, or has this been the fastest summer everrrrr?? Meanwhile, here's the index card art from the week:

day 46: off prompt

a very fast collage made with pre-cut-out bits from my collage box. i like it, though.

day 47: off prompt zen doodle extravaganza

bold crisp oxide ink colors inside my michelle ward hex pattern stencil from the ink pad; curvy, detailed doodle lines in between.

day 48: off prompt

another handcut, machine stitched, patterned paper pattern. this one's inspired by my favorite scaly-skinned mammal, the pangolin!

day 49: mandala monday

i've had an idea about combining layered shapes with hand-drawn mandalas. this, frankly, isn't quite it... but i'll definitely be revisiting the concept!

day 50: typography

basically an excuse to combine a bunch of texty scraps, lol... 

day 51: off prompt

having already done a few cards with handcut letters, this time i went with numerals!

day 52: ice cream

who can resist hand cutting and sewing a triple decker ice cream cone?

(not me, clearly!)

day 53: botanical

the black and white flower illustrations were my starting point for this collage, which i had envisaged being all botanical ingredients over green background pieces. then the car showed up...

♥♥♥

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

...and all through the Jingle Belles blog, we're making holiday cards inspired by our favorite holiday books, tv shows and films. Here's what I made this week:

My family read Clement C, Moore's, "The Night Before Christmas" together every Christmas Eve of my childhood. So perhaps it's not surprising that since then I've collected several dozen copies of the poem, ranging from beautifully illustrated, to cute, to comic book. For this card I scanned and reduced a page from one of my favorite vintage editions and paired it with North Pole inspired papers from Pebbles and Elle's Studio. There's an Eyelet Outlet Holly Brad on there, but the illustration is so lovely I didn't want to add too much embellishment.

Head on over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's awesome "A Christmas Story" inspired card and link up one of your own!

Seal of Approval

My love affair with sealing wax continues! This time I'm playing with Elegant Icon XL Brass Wax Seals in Rose, Fleur de Lis, Cherub and Teapot designs from The Ink Pad. I've made a bunch of sweet vintage style tags to show them off; as well as a page in my Traveler's Notebook. Hop over to The Ink Pad Blog to see them and read all about my sealing wax adventures! 

Smooth Sailing

The new Eyelet Outlet Boat and Lighthouse Brads could not be more appealing, and I can think of so many ways to use them! For example, how about a ship... or in this case a sailboat, lol... in a bottle?

I made a little background from paper scraps to represent sky, sea, sand and a bit of a cliff. Then I stamped my mason jar on top in Archival ink and cut it out. Inside the jar, I added a Boat and a Lighthouse Brad as well as the Sun from our Sun and Cloud set; to the foreground of the card I affixed one each of the three styles of Shell Brads. My sticker sentiment wishes the recipient, "Smooth Sailing Ahead"... and I think we could all use more of that, right?!

SOS450: Quit Bugging Me

As you may already have guessed, the brief this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash is to create a card that features insects; so round up those ladybugs, bees, grasshoppers, spiders, dragonflies, ants, or... BUTTERFLIES!

I'm somewhat obsessed by grids at the moment, especially grids that are composed of circles. Since I have a 1.5" circle punch and a butterfly punch that fits perfectly inside it, this was a super-easy card to make. All the pink and green patterned papers are scraps, the sentiment is composed of older Avery Elle ("happy") and Lawn Fawn ("birthday") stamps and the A7 background paper is either Doodlebug or Carta Bella. Apologies in advance for overusing this idea, because I can already think of about 12 different variations, just using punches and scraps... of which I have many! 

Be sure to head over to SOS to see the fabulous cards the crew have made especially to inspire YOU! ♥

Week 7... Seriously?!

Yes, as difficult as it is to believe, we're heading into the last few weeks of ICAD and here are the index cards to prove it:

day 39: off prompt

a patchwork of various patterned paper scraps, which i embellished and outlined.

day 40: silver

admittedly there's more green than silver. and in the photo the silver looks grey, but still... this was fun to draw, based on a swatch of wallpaper i cannot imagine in any room anywhere lol!

day 41: off prompt

more embellished patches of patterned paper... apparently this is becoming A Thing?

day 42: mandala monday

rainbow colors courtesy of my sadly neglected pilot frixion pens.

day 43: off prompt

this week's bonus idea is to make an ogee pattern and reminded me how much i've loved doing those in the past. this one is drawn with pitt pens and colored with my trusty tombows.

day 44: off prompt

surprise... another ogee! this one is handcut paper shapes, with machine stitching on top.

day 45: kaleidoscope

pipsticks gem stickers, arranged on a gridded card... not the fanciest ICAD ever, but fun to make!

What the Dickens?!

This fortnight at Jingle Belles we're creating cards inspired by the holiday books or movies that we all adored in childhood... and some of us still adore today. Whether you love, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "Frosty the Snowman" or “It's a Wonderful Life”; take some aspect of your favorite holiday book or movie and create a card!

I'm a big fan of “A Christmas Carol” (I revisit both the original novella and several film adaptations most Decembers) so I was pretty excited to have found this ancient Graphic 45 tag to use as the centerpiece of my card. The background collage consists of vintage sheet music, a page from an old garage sale holiday story anthology, and some cancelled xmas postage; plus a scrap of plaid ribbon from my stash.

Be sure to visit Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's amazing card (inspired by "Christmas Vacation") and start making plans to link up your own fanciful creation!

On the Grid

The Ink Pad's exclusive line of NYC-themed stamps and stencils, designed by Michelle Ward, is a constant source of inspiration. This card features Michelle's beautiful Downtown Map Stamp against a grid of Manhole Covers. All the details, products and links are on The Ink Pad Blog!

Happy Birdie(s)

Flamingos are not the only beautiful and vivid bird featured on Eyelet Outlet Funky Bird Washi, but they are my favorite (who doesn't love a bright pink bird with really long legs?!) and since I also had a pack of Flamingo Brads, I decided to make them the stars of my cards.

I lined up a few strips of Funky Bird Tape on some plain white cardstock and used my Altenew Bold Alphabet Dies to cut out the keyword. I added the rest of my sentiment in stickers and then embellished with Flamingo Brads, Tall Palms and White Round Sequins.

For my second card I added the tape directly to my graph paper background, on top of some Pink and Green ZigZag Washi. Another sticker sentiment, Flamingo Brad and a few Sequins complete the design.

Prefer your flamingo tape a little less funky? We've got five other varieties* so I'm pretty sure you'll find at least one to love!

*for the record... I own three of those five tapes! :)

ICAD: Week Six

The Index Card a Day project... and the summer, for that matter... are just FLYING by at warp speed! Let's freeze time for a second and enjoy this week's allotment of ICAD art: 

day 32: off prompt

it's a gallery wall of cancelled postage. i confess that i thought there was going to be a second layer, but nothing i tried to add looked right...

day 33: feather

serendipitously, i found a dove's feather on our driveway about a day before i saw this prompt on the list, so obviously i had to use it in a collage, right?!

day 34: gingham

i made a diagonal background with tombow brush pens, skinny washi tape and machine stitching. it ended up more like lattice than gingham, so i added some gelprinted flowers and called it a day.

day 35: mandala monday

collaged vintage paper scraps, a pitt pen mandala and smooshes of tombow color on top.

day 36: off prompt

a one-staple cleanup collage of random bits that were laying on my worktable, including the blooming violet stencil my friend linda edkins wyatt designed for stencilgirl!

day 37: oasis

palm fronds. lot of 'em!!!

day 38: postcard

pretty sure this is going to be a major obsession, so i apologize in advance for making way too many random collages on top of vintage postcards!

Starry Stripes and Stripey Stars

We're still celebrating Stars and/or Stripes (of ANY color!) at Jingle Belles and you are still invited to join the fun and get a jump on those holiday cards! Here's what I made this week:

Three biggish scraps of striped paper do most of the work this time. One of them got itself diecut with my largest star Nestie and became home to the adorable D-bug Santa and Missus Claus. An ancient sticker sentiment and a scattering of red and white Eyelet Outlet Star Brads round things off nicely.

Head on over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's card and link up your own Starry and/or Striped masterpiece! ♥

Calendar Girl

When I saw this super-fun, extra-wide Calendar Washi in the Eyelet Outlet Store, I knew immediately that I wanted to adorn it with a year's worth of seasonal brads. I confess it didn't occur to me that I'd wind up with with 29 brads from 21 sets on a 6.5 x 5.5" card; but that's cool too!

Here's the brad list, month by month; try to spot my very silly mistake! January: Penguin and Snowflake Brads; February: Heart Brads; March: Bluebird and Robin Brads plus a Mini Bee; April: Chick and Colored Egg Brad; May: Colored Daisy and Mini Ladybug; July: the Hat from our patriotic Flag and Hat set; June: Tall Palm Tree and Colorful Sunglass Brad; August: Ice Cream and the Sun from the Sun and Cloud Brad set; September: Book Brad and a School Bus; October: Pumpkin and Mini Spiders (they're on sale!); November: Mini Leaves and the Rake from our Lawn Mower set; December: Santa and Mrs. Claus.

So did you catch the error? Yep. I accidentally swapped June and July!!! And what's more I didn't even notice until I was writing up this post! Oh well, technically June has Flag Day and July is still a nice month for the beach, so let's just keep this between ourselves, ok? Thanks!

Sandy Claws

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash, we're celebrating Christmas in July, which I think is pretty straightforward, so I'm going to jump right to the part where I show off my card, k?

It's no secret that I love Doodlebug generally, their holiday stuff particularly, and especially their stickers. So here's a card with lots of all of that! There are a few non-D-bug pieces: the starry background paper inside the windows (cut with my trusty Nestabilities circle dies) is MME, the ancient sentiment sticker is Crate Paper (I think?) and there's a super skinny mat of shimmery pink cardstock which came from Paper Anthology. Not the fanciest card in the world but definitely colorful, cheerful and fun.

Speaking of FUN... I hope you'll head on over to SOS to see what the other design team darlings have made to inspire you!!!

ICAD: Halfway Point

Hard to believe that we're already into July and thus the first of our two Index Card a Day months is over? Where exactly did June go, does anyone know?! Meanwhile, here are the index cards I completed this week:

day 26: maple

i started with maple leaves, which makes sense. the map and the little car were in my "collage bits" envelope and i probably chose them as much for color as anything...

day 27: matalasse

yep, i had to look it up! matalasse is a sort of tone-on-tone design with lots of top-stitching... though technically real matalasse isn't a *quilt* because the detailed stitching is sewn on one piece of fabric, without batting or backing. my card took quite some time and sort of looks like very very fancy quilted toilet paper, but it was interesting to learn about, so there's that, lol!

day 28: mandala monday

i'm a bit sad that my fancy green postage composition in the circle got covered up, but otherwise i'm pretty happy with this combination of collage and drawing.

day 29: quilt

ok, so yeah... this looks like lots of work, but the triangles are 1" squares, cut on the guillotine and sliced in half; all the stitching is straight lines and done in one go. this is the perfect card for me at 10:30pm when i'm too tired to think creatively, but not yet sleepy; methodical OCD-style repetition is quite relaxing...

day 30: vine

definitely a stylized take on a vine; really it was mostly an excuse for me to hand-cut lots of similar shapes and then stitch on top of them!

day 31: off-prompt

a one-staple collage that's probably too over-hangy to wear well, but i like it. that rose is from an ancient piece of patterned paper and i'm sort of excited that i still have a couple more like it... :)

♥♥♥

Hope your July is off to a good start and wishing a 

Happy Independence Day to all my American friends!

Stars (and/or) Stripes; Forever!

Rolling into Fourth of July weekend at Jingle Belles, so it only seems right to be featuring Stars and/or Stripes, right? They needn't be together, and they can come in ANY color scheme you'd like! Sound interesting? Here's what I made:

I combined stripes (and bunnies and text) from Lawn Fawn's Snow Day Remix with stars from My Mind's Eye's Merry and Bright; then added some ancient glittery foam stars and an Eyelet Outlet Candy Cane Brad. I couldn't resist using my older Mitten Brads even though they're out of stock; and I gave the bunnies Santa Hats because... well, just because I could, lol! I used this week's Sketch Saturday, though I rotated it and rearranged it a bit, so they may disqualify me, though I thank them for the inspiration!

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's card and link up your own Starry and/or Striped Masterpiece! ♥

It's Mandala... Thursday?!

There are few things more magical in the Craftiverse than an opaque pen which writes smoothly and shows up really well on black paper. Here are the newest ones I've added to my arsenal: Metallic Poscas, Zig Acrylistas and the good old Uniball Signo which, if anything, is even better than I remembered! There are lots more opaque pen and black paper choices at The Ink Pad and I mention a few more of those on TIP Blog today!