in the (GAH!) pink

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is hosted by miss donna, and here is what she bids us to do:

Challenge 308 - June 20 - Think Pink 

June 23rd is National Pink Day. 

I know Leslie would have LOVED this challenge, as she rolled her eyes! 

(Use the color pink predominately on your project!)

okey dokey, missus. for the record, you had me at "PINK"! ♥♥♥

patterned paper: echo park, american crafts (amy tangerine and dear lizzy), glitz design, sei, authentique; stickers: doodlebug, fancy pants, echo park, amy tangerine; flamingo brad and washi tape + palm tree brad plus paper flowers: eyelet outlet; 

my apologies to anyone who lives in the northeastern united states and wanted to participate in this challenge. because unfortunately, that may prove impossible, seeing as how i've used ALL the pink embellishments. every. single. one. sorry about that! ;)

helping me to organize all this goodness is this week's awesome crafty roadmap from sketch saturday; ably assisted by the fabulous "sorbet" theme at curtain call inspiration challenge!

be sure to check out all the awesome PINK goodness from the design team at SOS!

SOS290: heartless

happy valentine's day, darlings! ♥ we've got a bit of a tricky one for you this week at shopping our stash. are you ready? seeing as how we're beginning this challenge *ON* valentine's day* we'd like to see something romantic; but... (here comes the tricky part!) ...you cannot use hearts!!! once you wrap your head around it, this is a pretty cool idea. here's what i made:

doughnut brads and coffee brads: eyelet outlet; typewriter journal card: my mind's eye; alphabet stickers: kelly purkey/simon says stamp; patterned paper: basic grey; adhesives: elmers brand glue tape, 3m foam tape 

a couple of things got me over the need to use hearts for this, and in the spirit of full disclosure of course i'm going to tell you what they were. first, i had a packet each of eyelet outlet coffee brads and doughnut brads. and i've been longing to use them together! second was finding the mme journal card with the typewriter and the blank page, which is exactly the right size for two brads and a typed sentiment.

but maybe the biggest thing was the curtain call inspiration challenge which ended last friday, so obviously i knew i'd be too late to link up with them, but their theme was "XOXO" and several of the design team's cards had background papers with that design. i didn't happen to have any store bought paper with those on, but i did have ledger paper and alphabet stickers... cha-ching! card FINISHED!!! 

of course there are LOADS of ways to take this, and my clever SOS dt darlings have thought of lots of them to help inspire you. why not check those out right now?! ♥


*in my family, february the 14th is more commonly known as "riley's birthday" since my niece just happened to have been born on this day in 2002. those of you mathy types will have noted that is FIFTEEN years ago... HOW did that time go by soooooooo fast, eh??!?! luckily we adults in the family are aging at a completely different and much slower rate, lol! :) :) :) 

duck... duck... GOOSE!

we're celebrating our fine feathered friends this week at shopping our stash by making projects with a bird or with a feather on them. and no, it doesn't have to be a duck or a goose, but isn't that a fab title? i'm pretty sure you're expecting to see a flamingo card from me --and goodness knows i was verrrrrrrry tempted-- but after i saw the current curtain call inspiration, i changed tack entirely and made this:

beautiful, funky bird fussy-cut from a piece of 1980's wall paper and outlined with faber-castell's pitt artist pen (XS/.1mm); floral layering stamps and inks: hero arts; patterned papers: pion design, basic grey + a bit of vintage dictionary paper; pearl flourishes: prima; velvet florals: petaloo; scalloped muslin trim: pink paislee; leafy ribbon: may arts; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine

before i tell you more about it, i s'pose i should really show you the curtain call challenge graphic so you'll know why i wanted to use it:

factor into this equation the fact that i was lucky enough to have the lovely miss june here for art camp last week, and she brought along some gorgeous floral hero arts layering stamps and inks in exactly the right colors. since i was already longing to use those, it wasn't hard to make this strikingly lovely bouquet my starting point. i reallllllly wish i had taken a photo of the floral collage BEFORE i attached the vintage-wallpaper bird, because it's quite beautiful; a fact that you cannot see AT ALL because the bird hides most of it. the biggest occupational hazard of collage is that sometimes the really cool stuff in the bottom layer gets covered up.

something which can never be covered up or diluted is the brilliance of my SOS dt sisters. they're all birds of a feather, with gorgeous cards to show you... why not treat yourself to an eyeful of their inspiration right now, darlings?! ♥

all flamingos, all the time

some people might argue that i've been making and posting a few too many flamingo cards lately. they're wrong, of course, but i do sympathize. what can i say? i like birds, generally. i like bright colors, especially pink. i like a tropical setting. flamingos tick all of the boxes. plus they have those awesome, long, bendy legs that look like they were invented by one of the more avant garde designers at ikea. i mean, really, what's not to love? 

patterned paper: pink paislee, my mind's eye, echo park, doodlebug; flamingo stickers: sonia j design via studio calico; leaf stamps from the "tiger tiger" set by sheena douglass for crafter's companion, stamped in viridian and leaf green archival inks; watercolor circle painted with ultramarine, turquoise and pthalo green color burst pigment powders by ken oliver crafts; heart stickers: sandylion; alphabet stickers: doodlebug; kromekote cardstock: the paper kut; ink for edging: blackbird chalk ink by colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

this time, though, it's not my fault, the current theme over at curtain call inspiration challenge is "FLAMINGO" so obviously i had to play!

there's another totally AWESOME sketch over at atlantic hearts sketch challenge this week (#173), and that inspired a lot of the elements i used for this card.

i stamped the large glossy white cardstock circle with two different tropical leaf stamps using two shades of green archival ink, then outlined them kinda loosely to give them a little more visual weight. the small circle is punched from watercolor paper painted with a few different blendy shades of color burst in blue and green. the birds, pineapple and flowers are all from the same sticker sheet, which was a bit of a splurge but i was helpless to resist such epic level cuteness. i hemmed and hawed about a sentiment because technically, the only flamingos in hawaii are at the zoo*, but in the end i went with "aloha" anyway, just because i wanted to. (so there, lol!) i used two sets of cardstock alphabet stickers in the same font so that my pink letters would pop against their black shadows. 

and now i wish you a fond flamingo farewell and a very happy thursday, darlings! ♥

*there are also a few in the exotic bird habitat at hilton hawaiian village in waikiki. because even waterfowl appreciate luxurious accomodations with modern amenities at reasonable prices. 

best (watercolor) fishes

if you've read my blog for a while, you know that my friend gina is one of my all-time favorite artists, and one of my fave people, generally, for that matter! sadly, she has left off blogging in the last year or so, but i hope she'll be back, eventually. meanwhile, we email and text and plan future thrifting expeditions! i mention all of this to give you the backstory on today's card: having started, last year, to do some drawing and painting of my own original images, i wanted to make a uniquely painty card for gina's birthday. especially when i realized that one of the things i've gotten pretty good at drawing are funky fishes:

koi watercolor paints on strathmore paper; faber-castell pitt pens in s and xs nibs for outlining; white sharpie paint pen for bubbles; cardbase made from paper accents black glossy cardstock

i happen to know miss g. loves fish*. she draws them, paints them, and has carved amazing fish stamps like this one and this one! the latter was the most direct inspiration for my card... but let's face it... it's nothing like what she does. for one thing, her fish are stylized versions of actual fish you might see in an aquarium, whereas mine is smiling! in my opinion, you don't see enough smiling fish in nature, but i suppose modern life is stressful for everyone, and we shouldn't judge.

i've mentioned before that when i want to try to draw something, i usually look for examples of how other people have done so, to gather some ideas that i think might be within my capabilities. this process typically takes a few days and is being done "in the background" of life; often while i'm on the treadmill or exercise bike, i'm scrolling through images online and letting them marinate in my head. i tend to do stylized line drawings, ink them in with permanent pens, then go mad with watercolors. in this case, i looked at a lot of gina's own fish stamps and things, then i did a few different pinterest searches. some specific things i liked and thought i might be able to interpret in my own way were the happy faces of these cute goldfish, the scales and pink splashy coloring of this koi, and the layery waves of this doodly ocean. i wound up doing the fish and the ocean separately, so that i could fussy-cut the fish and pop it up on foam tape for more dimension. i briefly considered machine stitching along all the waves of the ocean, but luckily, jeff talked me down.

i was inspired by the colors and general swirly-ness in the current (HA! fish! current! geddit??!?!?! ok, sorry, nevermind...) curtain call inspiration challenge board:

oh and there's one more thing i have to show off, only because A) my other big obsession recently is hand-lettering** and B) i hardly ever do anything awesome INSIDE my cards, but for once i actually did! go, me!

it's such a grey and rainy day here in the northeast, i should probably go out and check our backyard for stray fishes at this point! fortunately the temp has gone up to a blistering 36F and the especially dangerous icy road conditions of this morning have passed. i'm hoping the rain will stop before it gets cold again tonight. meanwhile, wherever you are, darlings, if you're driving in wintery weather be especially careful and especially safe! ♥♥♥

*speaking of gina and fish, a couple of years ago, she designed some totally awesome digital papercrafting kits, (which sadly are no longer available) including one called "of the water" which i happen to own and still absolutely adore! i was honored to be on her design team for that project, and in the course of writing this post i found some of the cards i made using her kit, in this post and this one, which i happen to think hold up pretty well. nothing like a little stroll... or in this case swim... down memory lane, eh? :)

**this style of wonky faux-calligraphy is one of my faves, i stole the idea and technique from this cool tutorial on the jones design co blog!

new year, new stash?

as you know, at shopping our stash, we're all about creatively using the stuff we already have; but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy getting our hands on new things, too; especially (but not limited to) during the holidays and the after-xmas sales! so this week we want to see any project, in any colors, with any theme... but... we want to see you use something that's either brand spankin' new, or new to you! easy peasy, right? yeah, we thought so!

you can see that i've made myself a planner/journal for 2015, but i want to re-emphasize that your project doesn't have to be new-year-themed in any way! i just happened to need a planner, having failed to find a pre-made one i loved as much as my cool kinokuniya student dayplanner from last year. so i used one of broderbund printshop's embedded calendar templates to fashion something similar to-- but a bit bigger than-- some i've made in other years.

being a lucky so-and-so with some really awesome crafty friends, i was spoiled for choice when it came to cool NEW stuff i wanted to incorporate: the birch bark pattern on the chipboard numerals is actually very realistic-looking, textured giftwrap i got off the sale rack at pier 1. i'll warn you right now that i'm slightly obsessed with this stuff, so you can expect to see it fairly often over the course of the coming year, lol. the gold leather-ish scalloppy trim came in a crafty gift box from the lovely june; it is both more sparkly and more dimensional in real life, and thus even cooler than the photo implies! the brown shipping tag and vintage library card came from the lovely amy tsuruta, as did my very favorite thing on here. see the little bit of red paper with the poppies on it? that was a wrapper from some chocolates that amy's boss brought back from a trip to russia! amy selflessly forced herself to eat some of said awesomely-bedecked sweets, just so she could send me the fab wrappers--now THAT is friendship, people!!! :)

i was inspired by the gorgeous combination of white and neutrals in the "winter wonder" theme at curtain call inspiration challenge; ok yeah... i added a tiny splash of red, too...

i used the new sketch at stuck on u to guide my layout; but it's admittedly quite a loose take:

i tried to add some swirly bits under and around the tag,  to make my project a bit more like leah's gorgeous sketch, but since my background is another of the torn-layers collages i sooooo love making, it's already quite busy; and additional embellies never really looked right. plus, i know from experience that the cover of a journal that will get used every single day needs to be pretty streamlined; any fussy sticky-out bits are destined to be caught or torn or wrinkled beyond recognition within the first month of laureny use.

each of the 52 or so pages inside the book has a week's worth of space for recording things i've done, and the back is either a coordinating print of crafty double-sided index stock, or some vintage paper i've fused with the modern calendar page using my xyron machine. below you can see a sheet music cover that's definitely got flaws... but to me that just adds to the cool-factor!

there are a few "not-so-vintage" pages, as well, i am a sucker for foreign text magazines, so whenever friends are traveling abroad and ask if they can bring me anything, i give them $10 and tell them to pick the most interesting thing on the rack at the airport before they come home. this has netted me everything from arabic newspapers to french fashion bibles to thai gardening to icelandic gossip magazines! i love the variety and the fact that everyone i know interprets the dictate, "most interesting" in a completely different way! :)

   
this is the biggest planner i've ever made, the cover is 8.5x11" with the pages trimmed to just slightly smaller.

the spiral binding was punched and set with my bind-it-all, and with quite a bit of help from lovely husband jeff. i used to say that he was my bindery assistant whenever i make books, but really i'm his assistant, since he's the one who remembers all the little adjustments for making the machine punch multiple identical sets of holes on multiple sets of pages, whilst still getting everything to all line up correctly at the end. on these occasions i'm basically just an extra set of hands, which perfectly suits my skill-level for engineering-intensive tasks, lol!

having waffled on for far too long already, it's about time i should send you over to see the gorgeous creations of my SOS design team sisters, then break out those new goodies and get your craft on, darlings! ♥