Pumpkin Spice...

...and Everything Nice can be found at Eyelet Outlet, in the form of Pumpkin and Leaf Brads, as well as Mini Leaves and Sunflower Brads. Making the design even more autumnal are background panels made of Nature Tape, Wide Sunflower Washi and Brick Tape as well as white and green Paper Flowers.

I'm linking up with the Coffee Loving Papercrafters, whose Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop runs until this Friday, November 8th!

They have lots of awesome prizes and you absolutely cannot beat that gang for inspiration, so be sure to check it out! ♥

SOS534: Time for a Hot Drink

It's time for a new challenge at Shopping Our Stash and this time we'd like to see (as the title implies) cards and projects which feature your favorite hot beverages. Mine is (surprise!) COFFEE!

I'm fairly proud of my stash usage here, I've gathered a bunch of sadly neglected items and given them some love. Fair Warning: the three lynchpin items are sadly out of print. The Caffeinated Flamingo was one of my all-time favorites from The Rabbit Hole Designs; the Coffee Pots Embossing Folder from Darice seems to be similarly unavailable. The former was a prize I won in a Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop a few years ago; the latter a gift from my friend Michelle. I don't use either of these enough, and somehow I've NEVER used them together, so it was especially exciting to combine the pair. I stamped, colored and paper-pieced the flamingo, and I'm taking bonus points for remembering to stamp the legs onto my background paper so that I wouldn't have to cut them out. (Go, me!) I embossed the coffee pots on watercolor paper and then painted them a bit wonkily, mightily resisting the impulse to outline all of them with a .01 Fineliner. The "blahmingo" sentiment came with the flamingo; the second sentiment is from Honey Bee Stamps' Perfect Blend Stamp Set, which... you guessed it... is also out of print, but that's ok because the point of Shopping Our Stash is to unearth the older things YOU already own and I bet --like me-- you've got some awesome goodies you've forgotten all about and will enjoy reviving again!

Completely coincidentally, this theme lines up perfectly with the 2024 Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop (they have some AMAZING prizes, if you like that sorta thing; their hop ends on Friday, 11-8-24) so you can enter both by making just the one card, woohoo! The Time for a Hot Drink Challenge (#SOS534) runs until the evening of Monday, November 18th.

Plaid(ish) Stripes

Stretching the concept of Mandala Monday pretty far with a (sort of) plaid design made by masking off a few horizontal and vertical stripes with tape, watercoloring over the masked bits with analogous colors of Liquid Pearls, letting them dry, peeling the tape, and doodling mandala(ish) shapes with my Letter It Fineliners inside the unpainted bits. 

There's a bit more detail about watercoloring with Liquid Pearls on this Thank You Card post and this Birthday Card post both on the Ranger Project Tutorials Page, which is absolutely loaded with awesome ideas from a variety of papercrafting artists. Plus you can filter or search by occasion, product or project type which is handy! ♥

Creatures... Stirring

Over at Jingle Belles, Stephanie and I are heading into week two of our celebration of Christmas critters and creatures, and you still have time to join us for, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks"! 

Here's what I made this week:

I found a beautiful (somehow unopened?!) older pack of adorable holiday animal stickers from Recollections so I immediately knew I wanted them to be the stars of the show. I didn't realize how well they'd coordinate with that very fun October Afternoon critter-bedecked washi tape; but having seen a few Team Spellbinders cards in which the smallest two sizes of Wendy Vecchi's Pinking Edge rectangle dies (from NOT Your Ordinary Card Collection's Birthday Add-On set) were used to make the most fabulous frame for a little scene, so I worked in that idea, as well. Ancient Heidi Swapp decotape and skinny mats of black glossy cardstock complete the design.

"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" (JB2422) runs until 6pm (Eastern) next Wednesday evening, November 6th so you still have plenty of time to join our Jingle Belles fun!

Happy Halloween

Couldn't resist making just one more PURR-fectly adorable Halloween Card using the sweet kitty mascot in Wendy Vecchi's Halloween Add-On Stamp and Die set (from her latest Spellbinders' release: NOT Your Ordinary Card Collection!)

I diecut the cat from some very cool sticky-back wool felt sheets (<-- that's a link to them; they come in lots of other colors too!) which Wendy was kind enough to share with me, so IRL, he's just the tiniest bit furry, which is obviously even more awesome. 

I used the Essential Envelope die to make a pocket which holds a pull-out card created with the Pinking Edge Birthday Add-On; adorned with more candy corn, spider web and spider diecuts from the Halloween Add-On and the "Happy Halloween" sentiment, as well. I used the "Boo" sentiment to stamp some cotton ribbon which works as a pull for the tucked-in greeting.

All the sets are very generous, and each has a lot of extra "accessories" that can be combined in many different ways to make your projects unique. Because Wendy really is a crafter as well as a designer, she's thought of the details we need: like making a separate solid base for the cat and the candy corn... making it easy to add the details to a surface rather than trying to just assemble them all on a finished card. BTW, if you're not catching the Tip Tuesday series via Wendy Vecchi's Instagram Feed or the awesomely inclusive Make Art with Wendy Vecchi Facebook Group, you're really missing out on great info, inspo and ideas!  

The Build-a-Plaid Layered Stencil Set remains one of my FAVORITE elements, especially when used with Wendy's Designer Series Archival Inks from Ranger. In this case, Pink Peony, Peachy Keen, Sunflower and Goldenrod.

I'm linking this up with the super-creative ladies at the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers for their "H is for Halloween" challenge (#255); where PINK is optional (but a nice touch since October is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month). The SNARK is also optional, by the way (sorry guys mine has none unless you find the cat's expression humorous, which I do, lol!); you can find outstanding examples of both by checking out the fabulous DT cards at SoSS!

PS: Happy Halloween!

Wishing you a day that's all treats and no tricks!!!

Happy Halloween

'Tis the day before Halloween and all through the blog, Jack-o-lanterns, Witches and Bats are a-stirring! On this card, they take the form of Eyelet Outlet Witch Hat and Witch Leg Brads, as well as Bat and Pumpkin Brads; with a background (and diecut letters) made from Pumpkin Washi and Spider Tape.

The Eyelet Outlet Store has fabulous embellies for Thanksgiving, Autumn, Christmas, Birthdays and pretty much any other occasion you might like to celebrate in card form; and the Idea Gallery is full of examples to inspire you! (Just sayin'...)

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! ♥