mayday! MAY DAY!

this week at shopping our stash we're celebrating the arrival of ♥MAY♥ after a particularly long, cold, winter with a burst of color and enthusiasm! let me give you the official brief:

May 1st is May Day. 

Use something inspired by the May Pole -- can be ribbon, something twisted, rainbow colors, or just something very tall and skinny -- LOTS of options!

there are also a few photos of may poles over at the SOS blog to get you thinking. this is my favorite...

 ...and i think you can see it inspired my card pretty literally:

(tapes... ok, there are LOTS and i know i won't hit them all, but i'll give it a go: my mind's eye, october afternoon, bazzill, hambly, teresa collins, heidi swapp, love my tapes, freckled fawn, recollections, oriental trading and... ok i THINK that's about it, but if there's one you really love, just ask me and i'll try to figure out whence it came, ok? patterned paper: prima; white glossy cardstock: paper accents; ink: colorbox + stewart superior; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

of course, on the card, that's not ribbon, it's tape! i don't know about you, but lately i tend to grab for washi or deco tape in situations that previously would have called for ribbon. don't get me wrong, i still LOVE ribbon; but in a situation where texture isn't terribly important, i find that tape is just sooooooooo much easier to work with. i mean heck, for one thing, it's got it's own adhesive built right in, which is really very helpful! 

i tried to duplicate the color and exuberance of the ribbons on the pole by covering a panel of scrap cardstock with tape. to make sure that none of my selections would try to peel themselves off in future* i wrapped the ends of each tape around the back of the panel, and then i stitched the panel to my 6x6" card. i've got a diecut star raised on a layer of foam tape, and had planned to add a big "WOOHOO"** in black foam thickers, but despite trying a few fonts and a lot of different positionings, it just didn't look awesome; so i moved the sentiment inside the card, instead.

speaking of moving, i heartily recommend you hop over to SOS where there is loads more may day goodness to impress and inspire you! ciao, darlings! 

*because let's face it, not ALL tapes are created equal, and some stick a whoooooole lot better than others, don't they?

**this is a high school graduation card for our nephew andrew, of whom we are very fond and very proud! ♥♥♥

swapping heads? sign me up!

that's the fun and funky challenge at collage obsession this week. it's a branch of collage i always enjoy seeing, but somehow have never really attempted, so i was keen to have a go. here's what i made:

i have to tell you this was *HARDER* than i thought! turns out, it's actually not all that difficult (with a little trial and error) to find images of inter-species heads that mesh pretty well with the body you've selected. the problem is logistics; at least, it is if you also want to use the background any of your characters are in. which i did, obviously, since it had that awesome circus poster! keeping the background means that heads not only have to be "compatible", but also, the new head has to be big enough to completely cover the old one. so my first idea of having this boy with the wagon turn into a slim-necked giraffe just didn't work at all. sadly, i didn't think to photograph the illustration before making the collage (i never do, alas!) but here's a similar shot of the same kid from the title page:

the thing i liked most about him-- that he was turning his head to check out the poster-- was the thing that thwarted the giraffe plan. which, as it turns out, was kind of cool, because i had to keep looking, so not only did i find an utterly awesome elephant; he actually had a be-parka-ed eskimo child* on his shoulders, giving me a SECOND HEAD to swap out, hooray! then i decided that the white space in the foreground would be a great place for a gator-dog. ok yeah, the clown-mallard is the sign i was starting to get just a little bit silly. in my defense: it's not every day you serendipitously happen to find a clown and a mallard who are exactly the right scale for a head-swap! how could i resist? the title of the story, "who wants to run away?" was originally at the top of the page, but the eski-duck's egg covered most of it, so i moved it down to the bottom. i patched in some nondescript trees in the distance so that there were no elements extending up and out of the scene.

so here we have one of those weeks where the assignment was totally fun from start to finish, i learned a lot of cool new stuff, AND i really like my finished piece. pretty much the collage trifecta right there!!! :)

check out the comments of the "swapping heads" post at collage obsession for links to the other readers' awesome and whimsical creations!

*they were all in a very badly damaged little golden picture dictionary, under "E" (hence the easter egg!) luckily the part of the page i wanted only had a few little stains on it and no big rips! :)

all bundled up!

don't worry, it's still SPRING out there in the northern hemisphere!!! we're not piling on extra clothing at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ this fortnight, instead, we're adding lots of layers to our holiday cards! so bring on your matted shapes, extra embellies, lots of overstamping because we want to see cards with three or more layers of... well... something! here's my card:

(patterned paper: mambi, my mind's eye; journaling cards: webster's pages (which i shaped into an oval) and making memories (which i trimmed down a bit); plain white copier paper and cardstock: staples; floral: petaloo; "merry" chipboard: my mind's eye; deco scissors (!): michaels; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

i know what you're thinking. you're thinking, "hey lauren, this is actually pretty restrained for you! in fact, i bet this will actually fit into an ordinary envelope with a little bit of coaxing!" and you're right, i played it pretty low key this time and went with lots of flat paper mats to prove a point: you can make an eight layer card and still mail it!!! so there's no excuse not to give this a try, right? and heck, if you want to pile on lots of lovely lumpy bumpy things* you can always send that card along with a wrapped package that you are posting, or just hand it to your lovely recipient in person!

helping my design process this week was the current sweet stop sketch, which is rather fab, i think you'll agree?

speaking of all things "rather fab" miss stephanie has a very lovely card to show you, why not join her at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to check it out?

*stay tuned for my card next week, i have a feeling it might be a bit of a record-setter, lol, to make up for being all sensible this week! :)

ice cream makes me happy...

...and vice versa. for example, just recently, i made these two very happy ice cream treats for my friends carlos and isabel. i used this fab pattern set from the needlenoodles etsy shop, with lion brand vanna's choice yarn in delicious ice cream colors.

these were super-fun to make and hopefully will be equally fun to play with, but i'll let you know what the birthday kids have to say on that point! ♥

SOS148: happy earth day

good morning and happy earth day 2014 to you! at shopping our stash we're celebrating by making projects which contain re-cycled or up-cycled elements, and we'd love for you to join in! here's what i made:

recycled: sheet music; prima and kay-and-co packaging; red marbled paper; soda can used to make metal wings, heart swirl and crown; pearl swirls: recollections; red fabric paper: kate's paperie; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i'm proud to say that almost all of my card is made from re-purposed elements! the red heart is marbled paper from a brochure; the cream colored papers (ranging from biggest to smallest) are: sheet music; the packet from some prima flowers; and the backer from k and co rub-ons; and the metal parts of my die cut heart and wings are made from a flattened out soda can*-- the wings are the natural inside color of the can, the swirly heart has been stamped with black permanent ink, and the crown has been scribbled on with a gold paint pen.

the above came together so easily that i decided to work on a second idea that i've been thinking about... and saving containers... for a while. a little backstory here: one of my favorite guilty pleasures is to stir a spoonful of "suisse mocha" international coffee into my freshly brewed cup of coffee in the morning. and probaby the only container that routinely gets saved more than international coffee is the dreaded altoids tin, am i right? but there's a reason for that, they're the perfect size for small embellishments, which i coincidentally notice are increasingly coming in NON-re-sealable packets. (what's up with that?) i'm usually pretty lazy about things like this, but the other day i got some new deco tapes and had a brainwave:

ok, so yeah, it's not exactly earth-shatteringly original, but this was definitely one of the smoothest and quickest altering projects i've ever done; no paint, no mess, no hassle; just tape + containers. if you really want to get fancy, you can cut the tape with scissors and smooth the ends down really neatly so they don't show. easy peasy! within about an hour i had a whole stack of neat little homes for my goodies:

and now head on over to SOS for more awesome earthday goodness! ♥

*if you read this blog regularly, you've already seen this trick; but believe it or not, i don't think i've ever used it for anything but xmas card reindeer, so it was fun to branch out! if you don't know what i'm talking about, there's a step-by-step explanation of how to diecut soda cans on this post! :)

cupcakes, anyone?

it's no secret that three of my favorite things in life are cupcakes, fancy giftwrap, and using up paper scraps. so i have to say that this was a pretty good week, since i managed to combine all of these things into what might just be my favorite kids' gift bag ever!

you can see that i've used pretty much ALL scraps for this, but (hopefully) in a way that makes that a virtue and not just a necessity. my favorite part is the "chocolate cake" element of the cupcakes, which is made up entirely of strips... not even neatly trimmed strips, either, just whatever size they were, i lined them up and glued them on. 

i should back-track a little bit and say that this is totally basic paper-piecing, just on a slightly bigger scale than when we do it with rubber stamps. to start out, either draw or download a line drawing of a cupcake, sized to fit your project. glue your "cake strips" to a scrap of cardstock slightly bigger than you'd like the finished product to be. then find three slightly bigger scraps, which look nice together; these are going to be your icing layers. cut apart (or copy and print multiples) the drawing and use the different sections as your templates. i usually do this by stapling the master copy to a couple of layers of patterned paper, so that i only have to cut each shape ONCE... because i'm lazy like that, lol! :)

this is the perfect time to embellish: machine (or faux) stitching, rub-ons, sequin sprinkles, inked or distressed edges, whatever you like, bring it on!

next is is assembly. i happen to ♥LOVE♥ dimension, so i raised each successive cupcake layer from the one below with a few pieces of foam tape. so the cake portion is flat, the largest icing is up on one layer of tape, the medium icing is on two, the small icing is on three, and yes... the cherry is on FOUR layers of 1/16" foam tape! i realize it doesn't make a huge difference in the photographs, but in real life, it makes the the whole thing stand out!

the finished cakes, which in this case are not quite 8x8" would make awesome birthday cards; but you could do these pretty much ANY size. small ones for a birthday banner, would be cool, i think. i made mine this size so they could be the centerpieces of birthday bags for my young friends carlos and isabel.

they happen to have their birthdays in the same month, (and often receive their presents from us on the same day) so i will sometimes use one idea to make a "two-fer" like i did here. to make the cakes into decorative 8x11" panels i only needed to trace some chipboard alphas to personalize each bag with the kids' names. i used up the rest of the colorful scraps by making a circle-punched scalloped border; tacking the circles to the back of the panel and then stitching around the perimeter with the sewing machine for extra security.

i like to anchor the elements to each other pretty securely, but only ever attach the panels to the bags with 4 or 5 small pieces of foam tape. this way the whole panel can be easily removed and become a sign for the birthday kids' bedroom doors! can't wait to see these guys next weekend and give them their presents! ♥♥♥

trash to treasure

there are two kinds of people in the world: people who save pretty magazine pictures, pieces of wrapping paper, and cool graphics; and people who call up the show "hoarders" to turn in the people who are saving the magazines, giftwrap and other ephemera. guess which one i am??!?!?! ok, yeah, you already know, i'm a "treasure saver". i like to think i have my habit under control by virtue of the fact that i do actually USE the stuff i save. and not just when we ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ are celebrating earth day by making cards that feature re-used, re-cycled or up-cycled items; although we are, and we'd love for you to join us! here's this week's card:

(santa and sleigh cut from an old clothing catalog; patterned paper: making memories, october afternoon, my mind's eye; journal card sentiment (trimmed down to fit): echo park; adhesive: staples brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

can you guess what my "trash" is here? i'm kind of slightly hoping you can't, but of course i'm going to show you, anyway:

yep, the santa's sleigh was from the cover of a j peterman clothing catalog from a december or two ago. i just thought it was too lovely to toss away with the rest of the recycling, and i was right!

want to see some more fabulous trash-to-treasure holiday cards? check out stephanie's card and also the earth day readers' gallery at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥!