Pumpkin Pandemonium

It's a Perfectly Pumpkin-centric Mandala Monday... though clearly I'm stretching the definition of "mandala" to include a pumpkin shape filled with mandala-inspired zen doodling... which seems like an excellent idea on a Mandala Monday which happens to fall on the day before Halloween, right?

Shout out to my sister Amie who reminded me about doodling inside shapes and to Stephanie who brought her Lindy's Magical Pigment Powders and ninja-skills for using them when she came to visit a few weeks ago!

JB: Creature Feature (week 2)

We're still celebrating Holiday Creatures at Jingle Belles, which means we'd love to see cards with dogs, cats, polar bears, penguins, moose, cardinals, yeti, gnomes, etc.; but of course there's no critter that says, "Traditional Xmas" more than reindeer, right? Case in point:

Admittedly, not all reindeer are portrayed driving home for Christmas, but luckily Lawn Fawn's Car Critters have fixed that crucial gap in the stamping market. I've had my original set (which has sweet little bears) and the Holiday Add-On (which has the reindeers) for a couple of years, but I'm still not tired of thinking up little scenes for them. In this case, I've used patterned paper for everything but the deer themselves, which I colored with my Tombow Dual Brush Pens from Paper Anthology.

I'm entering this card into Lawn Fawnatics Challenge #159 as it is both Lawn Fawn centric AND Monochromatic!

Be sure to check out Stephanie's awesome card at Jingle Belles, then start thinking which Creature YOU will Feature when you link up with us! Challenge ends next Wednesday evening, November 1st.

Witches and Ghosts and Monsters, Oh My!

There are so many fun styles of Eyelet Outlet Halloween Brads that it takes a couple of slimline cards to hold them all! This collection includes: Witch Hat Brads, Witch Legs, Bats, Pumpkins, Spiders, Small Eyes, Ghosts, more Spiders, and more Eyes! 

Visit the Eyelet Outlet Online Store for even more awesome seasonal choices, including Monster Brads, Sugar Skulls, Scarecrows, Spooky Eyes, Black Cats, Aliens, Leaves, Sunflowers, and more!

SOS508: Color Challenge

We've got a gorgeous color palette to inspire you this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash, from which we'd like you to choose at least three of these rich, autumnal shades to use in your card or project:

photo credit

Having stumbled upon the remains of Dare 2B Artzy's Fall Harvest collection from Paper Anthology a year or two ago, I had most of them together in one place, see?

Then, as it turned out, I also found some Photoplay Fall Breeze journal cards and half a sheet of Echo Park's Celebrate Autumn stickers, all of which coordinated really well together, so this was one of the fastest cards I've made in a while... or at least... it would've been if I hadn't decided to fussycut allllllll those leaves! Which is still considerably less tedious than RAKING leaves, however, so I'm callin' it a win!

Head over to SOS to see what our talented crew have made to inspire you, then start sorting through some of your neglected goodies to see what YOU can link up with us this time! This challenge, #SOS508 runs until Monday evening, November 6th.

Going Round in Circles

It's a Magical Mandala Monday...again! I've used another of the fun, colorful backgrounds I made when Stephanie was here and we were playing with her collection of Lindy's Gang Magical Pigment Powders. This time, I made a bunch of circle shapes and filled them with mandala/zen doodle elements; then added little pops of extra color with my Tombow Dual Brush Pens from Paper Anthology and a white Posca!

Collactober Continues

I'm still having a ball participating in #collactober2023 on Instagram, a month-long collage challenge hosted by @lofficinedenative and @_agazart_ two very talented and inspiring collage artists. This group of 4.25" vintage paper mini collages covers the following prompts: Celestial, Fern, Self Portrait, The Serpent, Typography, Inner Child, Call, Spellbound and Abstract. To see each individual collage, visit my Instagram account @llaurenb for all the details.

One More Neon Card

Having gotten myself thoroughly hooked on Ranger's Neon Embossing Bundle, I couldn't resist making one more card, especially since this one addresses the question, "When you've embossed with multiple colors at the same time, what do you do with the leftovers?" Because NO... you shouldn't put them back in their original jars! 

I've discovered that when I'm "painting" with powders, since I'm carefully sprinkling each color on in a specific spot, I tend to use smaller amounts and thus, it would probably be fine to just throw that little bit away. But this time, I'd made several samples, and had more leftover powder, so I did a little experimenting. If you can tip the colors carefully off onto a sheet of paper so that they are more or less separate, when you've stamped something else in Emboss It Clear Embossing Ink, you can sort of scoop up the colors together-but-separate, and get a cool rainbow effect like on these Simon Hurley's create. Sentimental Flowers. On the other hand, if the powders have mixed together, you get a rather nice variegated effect, such as happened here on the Letter It Let's Party sentiment, where the mix had mostly Yellow Neon and Pink Neon; and you can definitely see places where one or the other dominates. So two very different results, but both are quite interesting, I think. If you try a multi-powder technique, consider setting aside the leftovers and see what happens!

Not a Creature Was Stirring

It's time for our annual Jingle Belles Holiday Creature Feature, when we ask you to break out your animals... it could be a sweet little sheep or perhaps a reindeer... okay, or even a monster, gnome or yeti if you're in a bit of a Halloween mood and want to stretch the theme. 

Here's a funny story: the other week online, I saw what I consider Lawn Fawn's best punny sentiment ever, "Joyeux Narwhal", in their Simply Celebrate Winter Critter Add-On Greeting stamp set. I excitedly made my own version using the Winter Narwhal stamp set and some pink puffy letter stickers, and I was absurdly proud of the result. Then, as I was photographing and uploading (at the last minute, of course) I suddenly realized... I've spelled both words wrong! Ugh. Obviously I'll be doing a bit of remedial sticker-spelling, but I figured I'd post the card anyway and let you share my rueful laughter.

Be sure to head over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's (correctly spelled!) card and start planning what you'll link up with us this time.

Ranger Neon Embossing Powders with Layered Stencils

I'm excited to be back on the Ranger Project Page with a bright and beautiful card featuring the Neon Colors Embossing Powder Bundle on Black Distress Heavystock. In the tutorial, I'll show you step-by-step how I've used them sequentially with this lovely Simon Hurley create. Pretty Petals three-part Layering Stencil Set; then I'll use the "painting" with embossing powder method to add extra oomph to that gorgeous word art from Letter It's Let's Party Clear Stamp Set! (Be sure to scroll down to the very end, to see how differently the exact same combination of embossing powders looks on a kraft and a white background, it's kinda cool, if I do say so myself!)

Too Cute to be Spooky

These sweet witches in their spooky scene are already pretty cute, but they're exponentially more adorable when Eyelet Outlet Halloween Brads join the fun. The addition of a Witch Hat, a handsome Bat Brad, a mischievous Kitten checking out a Pumpkin, a cute but creepy Spider and some pink Rose and Colored Daisy Brads make the illustration come to life; then a double mat of Glitter Black Tape and Halloween Dot Washi tie it all together.

Stay tuned to the Eyelet Outlet Blog for more Halloween and Thanksgiving projects to make your Autumn Crafting FALL into place!

Bring on the COLOR!!!

It's a Mighty Magical Mandala Monday, thanks to one of the fabulous backgrounds I made last weekend when Stephanie was here. She brought her collection of Lindy's Magical Pigment Powders and we had a blast making random color combinations...

...and in my case, a few not-so-random ones, because I was thinking they might make for an awesome Mandala base. A decision I stand by wholeheartedly!

Pink Christmas, Week 2

It's the second week of PINK CHRISTMAS festivities at Jingle Belles, so Stephanie and I are still making predominantly pink holiday cards and donating $2 a piece to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each pink card that you link up with us!

Here's my card:

This week I raided my stash of supercute Doodlebug Candy Cane Lane stickers and used them to make a fun little snowglobe scene. I re-used that pretty pink snowflake wrapping paper for a sky and cut into some well-hoarded Lawn Fawn Knit Picky paper to make the background. I think the sentiment sticker might be ancient Prima, but it was in the "orphaned" sticker envelope, so I'm not entirely sure.

Come on over to Jingle Belles to see what Stephanie has made this week, check out the glorious PINK CHRISTMAS Readers' Gallery and then start planning what YOU will make!

Collactober!

I'm participating in Collactober on Instagram, it's a 31-day celebration of collage, with a prompt for every single day of the month! I'm working on 4.25" squares, with the intention of making my collages into cards at the end of the event. Here are my first nine:

Starting at the top and working left to right, the prompts were: Portal, Reading, Ancestry Tree, Body Parts, Origami, Magical, Metamorphosis, Botanical and (on Mandala Monday) Root Chakra. As you can see, many of my interpretations are pretty loose, but I like the finished pieces. To see the collages day by day, check out my Instagram account, @llaurenb as well as @lofficinedenative and @_agazart_ who are hosting and the hashtags #collactober and #collactober2023 where you can see many awesome interpretations of each theme!

Hope Your Birthday...

...is A SMASH! The brand new Eyelet Outlet Pinata Brads are as cute as can be AND extremely pun-friendly, what could be better? This shaker card, filled with coordinating EO Round Sequins and surrounded by a mat of green, orange and blue Zig Zag Washi, captures the color and movement of an actual pinata, with no mess to clean up afterwards!

The other new Fall 2023 Eyelet Outlet Brads include the adorable fall-friendly Acorn and Squirrel set as well as beautiful Sugar Skull Brads, just in time for Dia de los Muertos!

SOS507: Franken-Card

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we're embracing the season and creating cards featuring something Halloween related; that could be bats, witches, monsters, costumes... whatever says Halloween to you! 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that most of the ingredients on this card are only about a year old, but I was longing to use the leftovers from Prima's super-sweet Luna collection and I have absolutely no regrets, lol! The black Kromekote cardstock, assorted washi tapes and black gingham ribbon are all fairly ancient, however, so I feel I've redeemed myself on the Stash-Shopping front a little bit.

Be sure to head over to SOS to see the creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky cards the rest of our awesome crew have dreamt up to inspire you, then start planning your own Franken-Card masterpiece. Link up by 7pm on Monday, October 23rd.

PINK Christmas!

It's the first week of October and thus it's time for PINK CHRISTMAS at Jingle Belles; the annual event where we ask YOU to make and link up as many predominantly PINK holiday cards as you possibly can, because WE (Stephanie and myself) are each going to donate $2 per card to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation! 

So what qualifies as a PINK CHRISTMAS card? It's pretty simple: the cards should be newly made, with a winter holiday theme, and they should feature PINK prominently. Does your whole card have to be pink? Certainly not. Can you combine other colors with the pink? Of course! Should you have more pink than say two or three baubles on your green tree set against a snowy white background? Well, yes... that would be good, lol. But other than that, we'll leave it to you to decide how much pink, what shade, and how to employ it! Can you link up more than one PINK CHRISTMAS card? Yes, indeed, please do!

Here's what I made this week:

I built my card around my favorite pink ink: Wendy Vecchi's Rosey Posey Archival from Ranger, and thus it seemed like a good idea to also break out the gorgeous poinsettia from Wendy's awesome Doodle Christmas stamp set. I gold embossed the blooms and used a waterbrush filled with Isopropyl Alcohol to paint them with the aforesaid Rosey Posey and Leaf Green. I added Sunflower Liquid Pearls to the centers and made a larger flower cluster on top of a background featuring some ancient Prima pink plaid paper, torn sheet music and a few strips of washi tape. I have literally no idea where that little sentiment sticker came from, but it was the perfect size and shape, so on it went!

You have until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, October 18th to link your PINK CHRISTMAS card(s) at Jingle Belles and I hope you will!

Dia de los Muertos

The new Eyelet Outlet Sugar Skull Brads are beautiful at ANY time, but they're especially cool in October leading up to the Day of the Dead. This card adds red Rose Brads, a parrot from the Tropical Bird set, two handsome lizards from our Reptile set and Heart Brads to capture a little bit of the color and spirit of Dia de los Muertos.

The new 2023 Fall Brad selection also includes festive Pinata Brads and super-fun Acorn and Squirrel Brads. Check them out in the EO Store today! And now, I'm going to go and watch the Disney Film, "Coco" again! ♥

Mandala Monday #40

It's a Micro Mini Mandala Monday for which I have unearthed my sadly neglected small Moleskine journal and stayed pretty symmetrical, with just a little bit of color here and there.