SOS371: upcycling

i love challenges where i get to re-use, re-cycle or up-cycle a non-crafty ingredient, especially when it's something i might actually have thrown away. more on that in a minute, but by now you'll have sussed the this week's challenge at shopping our stash is to perform such a feat, and here is the card i made:

upcycled plastic packaging as a shaker card window + flower images cut from an old falling apart book; mason jar stamp and die: art-c; patterned paper: k and co; crystal drops: little birdie; butterfly sticker: sticko; stamping ink: staz-on; ink for edges: ranger distress; glossy black cardstock: the paper cut; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sookwang scor-tape 

yes, that's TWO shaker cards this year-- a new record for me, lol! but i recently found an entire tin of little crystal beads, which reminded me of the glass marbles used in flower arranging, and thus the idea for a vase/shaker emerged. luckily, i had the sturdy plastic box in which my colorburst inks and reinkers were packaged, so i had the perfect material to make a somewhat realistic mason jar:

I stamped the jar with staz-on, and used the coordinating die on my absolutely ancient k and co paper... which, by the way, i still really love! i've got a sort of secondary-line in upcycling on this card, too: instead of stamping or diecutting flowers, i chose a lovely vintage illustration from a falling-apart garage sale book, backed the slightly brittle paper with scraps of cardstock, and fussycut the flowers. i generally run just a tiny bit of distress ink around the edges at times like these, otherwise you get that glaring white of the cardstock backing. i mounted the blooms on a bit of foam tape for even more dimension, and this pretty butterfly sticker came and perched on the leaves!

don't forget to check out the glorious cards from the SOS design team for more inspiration!

how do ya like them apples?

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called "apple of my eye" and i'm pretty sure you'll already have sussed that we'd like to see projects which incorporate apples. it can be a loose interpretation, though, so things like apple blossom, or apple pie would also qualify. OR, although it is not yet officially sanctioned, if you manage to work in an i-phone, a macintosh computer or fiona apple, i promise to go to bat for you with the SOS judging committee and insist that's a valid representation of the theme!!! meanwhile, i  chose the classic fruit, albeit quite a stylized version. it's from the ancient SEI "fruitstand" collection (thus making it particularly stash-o-licious) the papers of which i bought several times over and have never failed to enjoy using, including right here:

the only problem with choosing your embellishments first, is then you have to go back and find something you can embellish with them! which is somewhat "cart before the horse" lol. i'm not sure i've ever seen a cupcake with an apple on top, but in fairness it's a BIG cupcake and it's got TWO layers of frosting, which hopefully will provide enough support. my top layer of icing has white embossed swirls made by one of my verrrrrry oldest and most beloved stamp sets: rhonna farrer's "flourishes" which i've had for at least ten years and maybe longer! thus i'm jumping in with the "anything goes" challenge at retro rubber!

hop on over to SOS to see the amazing creations from my dt darlings, and start planning your own apple-related masterpiece! ♥

are CAS and grunge fundamentally impossible to combine?

seeing as CAS stands for "CLEAN and simple" it would seem so, wouldn't it? and yet i think you'll agree that, in the laurniverse, the card you are about to see is about as minimal as any i've ever made in my whole entire life. which ought to count for something, surely? but why does the question even arise... especially HERE, of all places? if you've guessed that there's a CAS-related challenge at shopping our stash this week, you're headed in the right direction! in fact, july 12th is national simplicity day, so we are paring down to just the essentials. which i think you'll agree i have actually done fairly successfully.

in the spirit of full disclosure, i have to admit that i somewhat cheated. because whereas i can recognize and LOVE a very minimal design when i see it, i have a hard time coming up with one on my own. so i decided to find an awesome CAS card and try to recreate it. i picked this card by an SCS member called biggan, and i stayed fairly true to the original. i even used a PLAIN WHITE BACKGROUND and stamped my sentiment right on the plain white background. which is how i lost the "clean" from "clean and simple". because i used a new set of woodmount alphas in a typewriter font that i absolutely love. and when i stamped them on scratch paper they came out beautifully clean. but... (you can see what's coming here, can't you?) ...when i stamped on my actual card i got a big honkin' black mark. i could have just started over. but i wanted to see what would happen if i added a few more black marks, and a tiny bit of distressing, to the design. so i added the 2nd and 3rd impression from all the other letters to the area around the sentiment, and the 2nd and 3rd impressions from several ink-ups of my favorite texty background stamp to the area underneath the hearts, to which i'd already added a little bit of crackle embossing paste, just to get some texture on here somewhere. so i'm not sure it's still CAS... but i think it's still simple?

you may --or may not-- be wondering where the hearts came from; but since they involve the stamping that qualifies me for the current retrorubber challenge (#66: going to the chapel: make a wedding card) i'm going to tell you, lol.

when i was designing the garden friendship book, for one of my july/august paper anthology classes, i tried out a lot of ideas using a beautiful tim holtz cling stamp set called "garden flowers" which is from either last summer or the summer before (2015, i think; but i'm honestly not sure!). a couple of the techniques involved smooshing together a few of my favorite shades of colorburst (peony and wisteria for the flowers; pthalo and turquoise for the leaves) on watercolor paper, letting it dry completely, then stamping the flower outlines on top to achieve that really loose watercolor stamping look i love.

in the end, i had several extra panels that didn't work for the book, but were much too pretty to toss away. i've used a couple in various ICAD collages, and for the remainder, i traced heart shapes onto the back of the panels, cut them out, and machine stitched them to the card. which brings me full circle, to my original question: is a card still CAS if you've grunged up all your elements??

meanwhile, my dearest SOS dt darlings have made beautiful cards that are clean AND simple, and i'd love for you to go marvel at their skill!!! ♥

aloha, summertime!

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called, "lazy summer days" and what we'd like to see is a card, atc, journal page, canvas, or any other project of your choice that illustrates how you plan to relax this summer; or perhaps, how you WISH you could relax this summer. for me that's easy, i'm off to hawaii... in my dreams, at least!

patterned paper: anahata katkin/papaya art, american crafts/amy tangerine, imaginisce, doodlebug, sei, authentique; gelly stickers: doodlebug; word sticker: echopark; aloha stamp: stampettes (via long's drug store, waikiki, 2011); ribbon:michaels; markers: tombow dualbrush pens; sdhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i've got loads of really elderly stash on this card, including the cool pink background that's one of a very few bits i have left from a papaya art clipart book that i absolutely adored in like... 2003? lots of ancient paperscraps with interesting edges, a tiny bit of pink ribbon that really seems like it was too small to save ...and yet... i did, lol! my favorite "golden oldie" here, however, is the fabulous ALOHA stamp, which i bought at long's drugs, in the ala moana shopping center, our first night in hawaii, back in 2011. i mention this because i've used the gorgeous new sketch at retro rubber to lay out my design!

there's loads more "lazy summer days" inspiration over at SOS, be sure to check that out, ASAP, darlings! ♥

tie one on!

for our first april challenge at shopping our stash, we'd like to see projects that feature a bit of ribbon, twine, cord, string, ric rac, yarn or... well, you get the idea, right? here's what i made:

(newish super-sale acquired) green patterned paper: recollections; pink paislee journal card from... 2014 or so? petaloo dogwood flowers and leaves from last year; ancient white vinyl thickers that i nearly threw out b/c i couldn't imagine using them plain... but now that i've stamped and grunged them up, they are MY FAVORITES, lol! pattern stamps on letters: hero arts damask, stampin' up typeface, glitz design music; pattern stamps on edges of journal card: stampin' up distressy fabric texture + cherry pie crackle stamp; inks: most of the various browns and tans of ranger distress ink; ranger black and brown archival (on the vinyl) as well as several shades of copic marker; "HAPPY" alphabet stickers are a couple of years old and were found at a thrift shop by a non-crafty friend who very excitedly and kindly bought them especially for me because, "maybe you could use them on cards?"! ♥ adhesives: elmers brand glue tape, gluedots, sewing machine

ok, yes, the smooshy, ruffley seambinding wound up getting a bit more covered up than i anticipated, but you can still see it (i hope, lol) and i assure you that it inspired quite a bit of this design! something else which inspired me is this fab sketch from the retro rubber challenge blog:

if you've ever played along at retro rubber, you'll know that one of their criteria is that participants must use at least one stamp that's more than a year old, AND mention/estimate the age of the stamp in question. which makes their challenge an awesome one to pair with shopping our stash, since we both value using our OLDER crafty items! in this case i've used three of my favorite pattern stamps to alter and embellish some plain, slightly shiny, white vinyl thickers that were the right font for my sentiment, but emphatically NOT the right style or vibe! the damask pattern is one of the very first hero arts cling stamps, circa... 2011 maybe? the sheet music stamp is part of a set of four or five 2x4" pattern stamps from glitz design that are not quite as old as that, but i definitely had them before we moved (2013) and i still use them quite often. the alphabet with the beautifully clear-but-tiny sans serif typeface is stampin' up stamp that i only acquired last august, but since i got it at the annual paper anthology papercrafting garage sale, i'm guessing it's at least a couple of years old. 

before i set about stamping the patterns quite randomly across my sentiment in various brown and black inks, i hit them with a celadon green copic marker, and added some darker green splodges, so that it would sort of chime in with the fab grungy green background paper i chose to use for my card base. i also did a little bit of inking and "distress stamping" with some very neutral patterns (crackle and a sort of denim texture--both of these stamps also date from 2011 or 12 i think?) around the edges of my greyish-white journal card, just because it looked a liiiiiiittle too clean and bright with the rest of the card, lol! 

be sure to check out the rest of the design team's goodness at SOS, it is a trip worth taking, i assure you! ♥

it's december first!!!

battle stations, everybody: the holidays will be here in like FIVE MINUTES!!! but there's still time to make a few more cards and things, like this one right here:

patterned papers: american crafts, crate paper, making memories, we r memory keepers, dcwv, pebbles; assorted holiday washi tapes: eyelet outlet; ancient but still cool tree stamp: DOTS; ink: ranger archival; white kromekote cardstock: the paper cut; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape

i've used the rather fab current sketch from retro rubber challenge for this:

so of course i needed to use a stamp that's more than a year old AND mention its age. i'm not actually sure how old this D.O.T.S. christmas tree is, but i'm fairly sure it belonged to my sister, and that she gave it to me (with a bunch of other stamps) a year or two after my niece maddie was born, so that's gotta be 10+ years.

in this case i've paper-pieced it, by stamping the tree on a bunch of scraps of green patterned paper, then cut each layer from a different pattern to make a funky-fab quilty-style tree. i've paired it with a whole bunch of my favorite eyelet outlet holiday washi tapes, too, standing in for the strong horizontal and vertical lines of the sketch.

hope you're having a great week, but if not... cheer up, tomorrow's friday! ♥

hey, ghoulfriend!

we're getting our halloween on at shopping our stash this week and we hope you'll join us for some papercrafty tricks and treats!

ancient (12++ year old) foam mounted PSX bat stamped with ranger archival ink and colored with gelly roll pens; trick or treaters from a vintage children's book; journal card and trick or treat sign from a basic grey embellishment pack; patterned papers: basic grey; black glitter paper: doodlebug; adhesives: sookwang tape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i've mentioned before that i don't have a lot of halloween stash (i'm not sure why? i like halloween!) so it's always a bit of a scramble to pull something together. gina gave me a cool basic grey embellishment pack for my birthday though, and i have some falling-apart vintage kids books from which i found the adorable trick-or-treaters illustration.

my *ONE* halloween stamp is this ancient foam mounted bat, that i think came from one of the very first PSX sets i bought, when there was a rubber stamp store i used to absolutely love, near my mom's house. that place has been closed for at least ten years (maybe longer?) so the stamp has to be 12+ years old. and to answer your question, no, i have no idea what happened to the rest of the set, or why i hung on to just the bat, except he's really cute and still pretty useful, lol, so there's that. i mention all of this because the current retro rubber challenge is also halloween based, and i'm jumping in with them.

there's lots more scary-good halloween inspo from my ghoulfriends at SOS... hop, fly, waft or otherwise materialize yourself over there to check it out! ♥

i love you a latte, amy tsuruta!

i enjoy coffee quite a bit, too; and we all know that making cards is my favorite thing, so it's a bit of a puzzle that this is the first time in a couple of years i've gotten my act together to make a card which celebrates all of those things, but at last i've made something for the 2016 fall coffee lovers' blog hop, woohoo!

i'm hoping this is autumnal enough for the seasonal hop... i went with a sort of loose back-to-school theme is somewhat fall(ish) colors, at least partially so i could add the gorgeous eyelet outlet book washi tape which i absolutely love. the fab new coffee cup and coffee bead brads are eyelet outlet, as well, and so is the skinny hearts washi. i've also got a dictionary page with COFFEE actually on it, that i consider a bit of a triumph, lol! and a couple of the tiny sunflowers from a bouquet my aunt found at a garage sale.

vintage dictionary page + sunflowers from my stash; coffee brads and washi tapes: eyelet outlet; cardstock diecuts: october afternoon; patterned paper: american crafts, october afternoon, with scraps of basic grey and doodlebug for paper piecing; pink twine: lawn fawn; ink: ranger archival for stamping, colorbox chalk for edges; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape

i'm jumping in on the current retro rubber challenge (#48), "all tied up" and for once i know EXACTLY how old my stamps are! mick and keef, the two adorable monstas, were carved for me by my girl gina for a monsta swap we did in 2009 (!!!); the coffee sentiment stamp is from the first set of stamps my friend becca cruger designed for stamplorations (in sept 2015), it's called "literary caffeine-ations" and is still available from that fine company! :)

be sure to check out the fall coffee lovers' blog hop, say "hey" the lovely miss amy and soak up the glorious inspiration in the readers' gallery. oh, did i mention there's a chance at some amazing prizes?! you know, if you like that sorta thing... 

anything goes? that sounds very laureny, lol!

i'm super excited to be the guest designer on the retro rubber challenge blog this week, especially since it's a sort of free-style week and you can basically do whatever you'd like! just remember to use at least one stamp that's more than a year old, AND you must mention the stamp and it's approximate age in your post, ok? other than that, you can go as wild as you want! here's my card, or at least... here's one of the cards i made:

paint chips from my mom's friend valerie, who gave me a whole entire huge keyring book of them, which i loooooove! thanks, valerie! ancient flourish stamp: sassafras lass... and yes, the package still said "lass" which shows you just how old these were, lol!; red background paper, floral and wooden button: prima; black swirl pearl bling: eyelet outlet; archival ink and black glossy cardstock: ranger; adhesives: elmer's brand gluetape, 3m foam tape 

ok, so, you can see i've taken the assignment of "anything goes" quite seriously, lol! my card was inspired by... wait, you'll LOVE this: a brochure i found in home depot! (see pic below) i saw all those colorful hexagons and i thought, "i have a hex punch! and i have paint chips! and i can stamp flourishes on top of them, then add some eyelet outlet bling!!!" and thus, my idea was born. the flourishes on this card are old faves from a set of sassafras lass clear stamps. i knew they were considerably more than a year old, because of course sassafras closed longer ago than that. what i didn't realize was that they had closed in 2011! and these were not new, even then. so they are well and truly *OLD* you guys. for that matter, the giant tattered angels flourish stamp that i used on my other card is pretty old, too. possibly not pre-2011, but at least pre-2013 because i know i had it before we moved into this house. 

so here's the other card, which is actually the one i made first. there's no bling on this one, but i've matted it on some rather gorgeous croc-textured vinyl paper, and i outlined the flourish with a sharpie to make it stand out a little more. oh, and i sewed around the edge, for texture. but other than that, it's the same idea, accomplished in the same way. 

i hope you'll come on over to retro rubber, see the other designers' awesome cards and join us in having fun with some of your older stamps! remember to mention the age of the stamps, and please note that your card may be submitted to a total of no more than *10* challenges, including retro rubber!

ready... set... STAMP!!! ♥

down on the farm

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called, "mary had a little lamb" and we'd like to see... well, personally, i'd like to see some tasty recipes, actually, but the brief is to make a project featuring a farm animal. which i suppose makes more sense seeing as we are a papercrafting blog, afterall. here's what i made:

farm illustration from a falling apart old book; sunflowers from my aunt, i cannot imagine WHERE (or why!!!) she had them, but they're great on cards if you nip the stems off!); chicken brad: eyelet outlet; cloud chipboard: october afternoon; cardstock label sticker: crate paper; alphabet stamps: freckled fawn (colored with red prismacolour pencil); "girlfriend" stamp: unity; patterned papers: dcwv, crate paper; ink: ranger archival (for stamping) and colorbox cat's eye chalk ink (for edges); adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, tiny bit of hot glue for the sunflowers

i was slightly shocked to discover, in the course of planning my card, that except for the admittedly AWESOME eyelet outlet chicken brads, i don't own ANY products with farm animals on them. go figure! i do however, have quite a nice stash of falling-apart vintage children's books that i grab up at garage sales... (people are always stunned that i'm actively seeking the ones whose covers are dangling and which contain more scribbled-on pages than clean, lol!) ...this page from a visual dictionary seemed like the PERFECT background for the theme!

i'm jumping in on retro rubber's "critter time" challenge again, since i have an animal or two (or six!) on here, lol. i also have a couple of older stamps in play: i've inked only half of unity's, "hey girlfriend" sentiment (which was an xmas present some years ago... maybe... 2012ish?) and swapped out the "hey" for the more farm-centric "hay" using a freckled fawn alphabet* i treated myself to last summer. 

need a little more rustic inspiration? head on over to the SOS blogstead, y'all, and check out the DT's amazing creations!

*this has since become my all-time favorite alphabet set, and i'm so pleased i grabbed it at the time, because when i went back like 2 weeks later it was GONE... and i've never seen it for sale ANYWHERE since then! carpe deal-um, my friends; seize the clearance sale bargains!!! :)

aloha, labor day weekend!

yes, i'm still marveling at the fact that it's september already... time to say, "ALOHA" to another summer. in light of this year's mega-hot august temps and especially high humidity here in the northeast, i'm actually looking forward to autumn a bit more than usual. meanwhile, i'm still making cards, and here's one for the retro rubber challenge blog's "critter time" challenge:

whale and fish stamps: lawn fawn (critters of the sea set) from... 2010 or 12??; transparency and journal card set: basic grey; paper scraps for piecing critters and sunshine: basic grey, doodlebug, cosmo cricket, dcwv, mme; aloha sticker: ehco park; ink: ranger archival (for stamping) and colorbox cat's eye chalk ink (for the edging); sticky back black pearls: eyelet outlet 

one of the requirements at retro rubber is not only to use a stamp that's more than a year old, you also need to discuss the approximate age, so here's my whale and fish dudes, who are from a lawn fawn set called "critters in the sea" and are copyrighted 2010. i know i won this set in a challenge, and i'm positive it was before we moved into this house, so i've had these guys for AT LEAST 3.5 years and maybe more. they are suuuuuuuuuuuuuuper-duper cute, though, don't you think? 

i paper pieced them to use on top of this very elderly basic grey journal card + transparency overlay, for which i also made a bit of a sunshine from scraps of yellow patterned paper. btw, i think from now on ALL whales should be plaid. seriously. we're going to need some marine-grade, pet-safe, vegan paint and a few realllllly big paint rollers... ok, no, maybe just the whales on cards should be plaid, and whales irl can remain a solid color. yeah. that's probably a better idea, i really don't want greenpeace protesting out in my front yard, especially now that we've got a bit of rain and the lawn is looking nice!

i was pretty excited that my pink circle-y SOS card was the winner of retro rubber's recent sketch challenge (ta v much, ladies!) and i'm looking forward to guest designing with them later this month. 

wishing my friends in the usa a very happy labor day weekend, and a very happy ordinary weekend to everyone else. g'head and take monday off if you like... tell your boss lauren made you an honorary american, so it's ok! :) :) :)

stand up and be counted

we're crafting by the numbers this week at shopping our stash, so we'd like to see projects which feature numerals. here's what i made:

scrap of numerals paper: very VERY elderly ki memories, gosh i miss them... scraps of cartabella, doodlebug and recollections papers used for piecing, glitz design border punched with a recollections punch; brads: october afternoon, doodlebug, sei; flowers: making memories, prima; cardstock elements: simple stories; teeny tiny epoxy stickers by a variety of companies so old i have no idea whence they came; kromekote cardstock: the paper cut; ink: ranger archival (for stamping), colorbox chalk (for edging); adhesives: elmer's brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots  

this past saturday was the papercrafting garage sale at my lss, paper anthology, so i actually spent most of last week sorting thru my stash. this netted me a bit of trash, a nice pile to sell, and also quite a few re-discoveries of things i'd forgotten i had but, once i saw them again, i still liked. so clearly i piled MOST OF THEM on this card, lol. :) i did find a lot of *little* bits: tiny stickers, epoxy buttons, mini brads, etc. and i remembered how fun it was to combine a lot (or in this case A LOT) of little things into a grouping. so i did. i've been loving the challenges on the retro rubber challenge blog lately, and this week (#45) they have a very cool sketch:

 

part of the retro rubber challenge requirements is to use stamps which are at least a year old; but you also have to tell which ones they are and their approximate age. mine are the winged heart from pink paislee's "love struck" set, which i definitely remember using on cards before we moved to this house, so it's pre-2013 at least; and also the hero arts candles which has a price sticker from kate's paperie-- who haven't sold stamps in at least 4 years, alas-- so i think i'm covered on both counts. i've paper-pieced and fussy cut both of those, so they'd blend really well in the overall collage.

there are loads more number-based projects to see over at SOS... why not count on those for inspiration, darlings?!

aloha, summer!

i was pretty excited that my double rainbow card was one of the top picks in the retro rubber blog's "brads and eyelets" challenge, and even more psyched to find out that their new prompt is "summertime"... which is one of my go-to card themes, so i had to play along. here's what i made, it features two of my all-time favorite eyelet outlet items, tall palm tree brads and sun and cloud brads:

one year-old alphabet stamp set: "lili" by freckled fawn (alas, no longer available); brads: eyelet outlet; ancient and beloved pink sparkly flamingo sticker: meri meri; patterned paper: my mind's eye, american crafts; white kromekote card stock: the paper cut; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

my "retro rubber" in this case is my all-time favorite set of alphabet stamps, it's called "lili", i got it from freckled fawn as part of a little birthday treat/shopping binge last june. (making it only just eligible for the challenge, who ask us to use something at least a year old!) i'm really glad i splurged on it at the time, because not only do i use it constantly, but when i went back to try and find it again for someone who asked about it just a few weeks later, it was already out of stock and i've never seen it again anywhere.

i'm linking up at the atlantic hearts sketch challenge for the first time, having used this corker (#170) of a sketch:

and just a little reminder that the machine stitched border on this would qualify me (were i not a dt member, lol) to enter our "a stitch in time" challenge at shopping our stash, which will be open until next monday night, woohoo! ♥