Gourd-geous

It's a Smashing Pumpkin Mandala Monday doodled with all three sizes of Ranger's Black Letter It Fineliners in my Dina Wakley Kraft 6x6 Journal. Hope your Halloween Week will be full of fun and treats! ♥

Happy Narwhal-idays!

This fortnight at Jingle Belles, the prompt is called, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" which is a nice musical reference to the fact that we want to see critters (lambs, reindeer, penguins, robins) or creatures (yeti, monsters) in any style you'd like. I went with narwhals, as you can see:

As I was getting out my much-loved Lawn Fawn Winter Narwhal mini stamp set, I also found a sadly neglected Critters in the Arctic set, as well as Jen Long's Tons of Love Sizzix stamp and die set and Rubber Moon's adorable Nerdy Narwhal. (Those latter two, sadly, are out of print though the Lawn Fawn sets are still available.) And since obviously it'd be IMPOSSIBLE to just choose one of the above, I decided to stamp my own little pod of narwhals to star in their own punny card inspired by my favorite Narwhal and Jellie book, "Happy Narwhalidays"! I used stripey Thickers and Doodlebug My Type alphas to create the sentiment, clustered the paper-pieced pod around it, added a few mats and called it good!

"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" (JB2421) will run until Wednesday, November 6th and you're invited to link up with us at Jingle Belles!

Boo and Stuff

It's a BOO-tiful day to go a-haunting! Eyelet Outlet Ghost Brads have found the perfect house, and they've brought along a Black Cat Brad (for luck, of course) as well as a Pumpkin Brad, a Witch Hat and a couple of high-flying Bats. Mats of Spider Web Washi and Glitter Black Tape complete the design. 

Super Spooky Shopping List:

Ghost Brads

Black Cat Brads

 Pumpkin Brads

Witch Hat Brads

Bat Brads

Spider Web Washi

Glitter Black Tape

Eyelet Outlet has all the embellishments you need, for EVERY holiday you celebrate! ♥

SOS533: Birds of a Feather

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash is for the birds! Or, more accurately, about them. Because we'd like to see cards that feature our fine flying friends OR their feathers OR both! 

I have A LOT of bird stamps... and dies... and vintage bird books; but as I was deciding which of those to choose from, I realized I've had a beautiful set of Jane Davenport Feather dies for at least a couple of years and NEVER used them, so this seemed like the perfect time. I diecut the feathers from a "rejected" Alcohol Ink background (no idea WHY I didn't use it at the time but happy to find it now!) and then used the cut out feathers to position the dies on a watercolor background and cut out the shapes so I could back the apertures with deep blue cardstock and inset the feathers. The sentiment comes from Dina Wakley's Scribbly Birds Stamp Set which I've had for probably close to a decade and used many mannnnnny times; I don't think I've ever used the sentiment WITHOUT the birds before, but I thought it was just right for this card.

The SOS Crew have been working hard to inspire you, so there are plenty of birds and feathers flocking together at Shopping Our Stash; why not fly on over and check them out? Then start planning what you will link up with us between now and Monday evening, November 4th.

MM43

It's a Very Vecchi Mandala Monday featuring the adorable kitty from Wendy's Halloween Add-On stamp and die set in Spellbinders' NOT Your Ordinary Card Collection. I haven't quite used alllllll the dies from this impressively substantial set, but I did manage to work in the cat, spider web, spiders, tri-color candy corn, smaller iced candies, stars, and it wouldn't be Halloween without bats, now would it? I cut nearly everything from scraps of cardstock and apart from the dies I only needed a supplemental scattering of Liquid Pearls dots (leftover from the fun Treat Bags last week) to complete this 5.5" square card design!

I hope your week is off to a good start and that you'll get the chance to do something creative today! ♥

You're Not the (EM-)Boss of Me!

Flashing back to Wendy Vecchi's first collection for Spellbinders (The Garden Collection) and specifically playing with the Flowers and Foliage 3D Embossing Folder with a selection of Wendy's Archival Inks from Ranger. I've used a bunch of different techniques that Wendy has shown off in various Tip Tuesday posts, such as inking and spritzing the emboss- or deboss-side before embossing; painting the flowers with diluted Archival Reinkers from the back or front; applying ink directly from the Archival Ink Pad (on the emboss- or deboss-side); and inking, stenciling, stamping (with some older Studio 490 stamps) and/or doodling on top. I love how you can get so many completely different variations with the same embossing folder, but they're all equally beautiful!

PINK Christmas: Week 2

It's the second week of our gala PINK CHRISTMAS celebration at Jingle Belles, in which we are asking YOU to make holiday cards that are predominantly pink and WE will donate to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each card that gets linked up! Visit the original PINK CHRISTMAS post at Jingle Belles for all the details as well as the Linky Tool to add your cards. Meanwhile, here's what I made this week:

I raided my happy little stash of Doodlebug Design papers, journal tags and stickers to make this sweet (in every sense, lol) little card that's mostly pink... with touches of tan gingerbread and reindeer; as well as some fun green Christmas tree cookies. I used an ancient pink background paper with a strong horizontal element to it, which made lining up the decorative strips super-easy!

Link your gorgeous PINK CHRISTMAS creations (because YES, you definitely can make as many as you'd like!) on the original post at Jingle Belles. This challenge (#JB2421) runs until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, October 23rd.