Anniversary Card Round-Up

In addition to hostessing, I also made cards for a few of Elisabeth, Shari and Linda's challenges in the Paper Anthology 9th Anniversary festivities. And here they are now:

To CASE Elisabeth's beautiful holiday card I chose a similar medium woodgrain background paper, dark green mat and a kraft cardbase. I used lots of foliage dies, plus some pretty Penny Black Pinecones. My sentiment is a slightly different shape, but I've tried to echo the corner element by placing it a bit higher.

I chose the bottom row of Linda's fun Tic-Tac-Toe board and combined about five different diecuts, some Lawn Fawn variegated twine and a plaid I hand-painted using Olive, Terre Vert, Chartreuse and Sepia ColorBurst. 

Clean and Simple cards are definitely not my metier, but I was determined to have a go at Shari's CAS with a Spin challenge. The "spin" is that you cannot use white or cream, which turns out to be harder than I thought! Luckily I had Spellbinders' Kaleidoscope Tiles die set to be my focal point and some Lawn Fawn Woodgrain cardstock to give all that (non-white) white space a bit of texture.

Many thanks to everyone who played along this weekend, there is still a bit of time to finish up challenges, answer trivia and poll questions... all of which earns you tickets for the big raffle drawing! Everything you need to know is on the Paper Anthology FaceBook Page.

Challenge #10: Hip to be Square

Welcome back to the big Paper Anthology 9th Anniversary festivities, I hope you've been hanging out on the Paper Anthology FaceBook page and following all of these cool challenges, there is some serious inspiration over there and there are raffle tickets awarded for however many you complete, with ten awesome prize packs to giveaway at the end! 

This is my last challenge for the weekend, and it's to embrace one of my favorite formats. I love square cards, they have such beautiful balance and they just always look good to me. Here's my square card, this one happens to be 6" square, which is probably my favorite size because there seems to be the best selection of envelopes:

For this card I was excited to be test-driving a brand new product at Paper Anthology: Picket Fence Studios Paper Glaze, which comes in sixteen beautiful colors AND can be mixed together to make even more. In this case I just used it straight out of the jar. I love how it retains it's bold color no matter what type of paper you use it on. I used a palette knife to spread Succulent Green through Taylored Expressions A New Leaf Stencil on glossy black cardstock, and also on white watercolor paper. In the second case, I also took a little bit of the Black Pansy, and spread it right on top of the green, so that it has a sort of feathery effect. However if you mix two colors together thoroughly (on say, a paper plate) you will get a consistent third color, which is handy!

After the glaze was completely dry, I trimmed around the white version of the design and adhered the cut out portion on top of the black one. I added Memory Box's Rose Sketch Flower Spray Die (cut from copper and purple shimmer paper) and finished off with some vintage lace trimming, stick-on pearls and Hero Arts Sequins.

Cue Elvis!

Have you been joining the fun of Paper Anthology's 9th Anniversary Party on the Paper Anthology FaceBook page? We've been having a lot of fun and we love that our friends from all over the world are able to play too!

There have been some AWESOME cardmaking challenges revealed so far, now here is my latest, it's called Blue Christmas. Did you already guess that the brief is to create a holiday card which is predominantly blue? If so, you're ready to roll! Here's what I made:

I started with a base of blue chippy-peely woodgrain patterned paper from Craft Consortium's 6x6 Wood Texture Paper Pad, added a fussy-cut snow globe and a couple of pine cones from Ciao Bella's Northern Lights Paper Collection, and embellished with glittery blue foliage using Penny Black's Juniper, Holly Branches and Bountiful Berries dies. I stamped one of the sentiments from Taylored Expressions' Flip the Snowflake set onto Lawn Fawn Pearlescent Vellum, added a Eyelet Outlet Cardinal and Pinecone Brads and called it a day.

I hope you'll join us at Paper Anthology's 9th Anniversary Party, the fun continues through Sunday night! ♥

It's Paper Anthology's 9th Anniversary!

In other years, we've celebrated this festive occasion over the course of a riotously fun weekend, in-person, at Paper Anthology in Kenvil, NJ. Obviously a party with loads of people jammed into one place with self-service food is not on the cards for 2020. But... we've come up with an alternative that features four days of fun, challenges and prizes on the Paper Anthology FaceBook page (which means our friends from all over the world are invited to play along!); plus four awesome Take and Makes for anyone who shops in-store or online during the party, and there might just be a few surprises as well.

There will be twelve awesome cardmaking challenges revealed over the next few days on the Paper Anthology FaceBook Page. I'll be hosting three of them, and the first is called Put a Doily On It. If you've already guessed that the brief is to create a card, layout or journal page with a DOILY ON IT... you are definitely on the right track, lol. Here's what I made:

My card is a bit like a Greatest Hits collection... it has all my favorite elements: Prima and Blue Fern Studios papers, dimensional florals, distressed edges, machine stitching and of course, the inspiration for the whole thing: a lovely 3" paper doily. Of course your card needn't be shabby chic, your doily doesn't have to be white and for that matter, you might make something besides a card! I can't wait to see what it will be.

I hope you'll join us at Paper Anthology's 9th Anniversary Party, the fun continues through Sunday night! ♥