this might be the MOST LAYERS i've ever put on one card (and remember it is *ME* saying that!)

i blame sean connery.

i'm pretty sure it was because i became so engrossed in viewing "from russia with love"* (for the umpteenth time) that i may have gone just the tiniest bit overboard, even by my own high standards in these matters! i was aiming for a sort of "grandma's treasures" feeling, as if one had discovered a beautiful old roll-top desk in an antique shop, and upon opening it, found it filled with postcards, recipes and keepsakes; each thing lovingly saved because it was special in some way.

i was inspired by the new prompt (#117) at the city crafter challenge blog, where i am very pleased and extremely proud to be guest designer for the rest of this month! as you know, kirsty, linda, cheryl and ros not only think up the best challenges each week, they illustrate them with the MOST INSPIRING dt samples around, and it is always an honor to be in their company! this week, linda has asked us to create a recipe card, which i think is an incredibly cool idea... except sadly... i don't cook!*** so i decided to be a bit metaphorical and make up my own recipe for a happy marriage, as a centerpiece for this very vintage (and VERY embellished) anniversary card:

(recipe card: designed and printed using broderbund printshop and "manuscript" font; vintage: trading stamps; patterned paper: creative imaginations, laura ashley, graphic 45, webster's pages; decorative postcards: webster's pages; chipboard: sassafras; metal brads: my mind's eye; flower brads: oriental trading; white flowers: from a silk stem found in michaels' floral dept; tiny paper flowers: prima; leaves: trimmed from may arts ribbon; lace: from lovely linda brun (takk!!!); paperclip: unknown; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine)

i designed the recipe card using broderbund's printshop software, printed it on some greyish-tan cardstock, and distressed the edges with ink. the inspiration for the colors and embellishments was a pair of identical webster's pages postcards, one of which you can see peeping out at the top left of the main collage, and the other from which i've cut the large heart at the bottom right; i loved the combination of fruit, flowers, and foliage... and you can see i've carried that theme throughout the rest of the card! most of the rest of my ingredients came from the "leftovers" box in which i keep items from my various (and beloved) pixie dust paperie kits; the paperclip is an old "designer" one i picked up ages ago; the bright yellow panel that looks like a pane of vintage trading stamps actually IS a pane of vintage trading stamps, picked up on my travels.

if you're thinking, "that must be a pretty BIG card!" well yes, you're quite right. at 8 x 6.5 inches, it's not even CLOSE to being the biggest i've made, but definitely larger than the average. i used to worry about things like that, and also about how to send really lumpy things through the post. now i just protect the uneven side with corrugated cardboard and use a padded jiffy mailer. if it helps, think of them as "occasion-based collage art" and consider the additional stamps a sort of tariff that buys you the freedom to work without having to fit in any particular envelope! :)


i hope you will head over to CCCB, check out the amazing inspiration from one of the very best DT's anywhere, and then start thinking about your own design for this fun challenge! you have until next monday night to link up with us, and apart from anything else you'll want to check out the fabulous prize! ♥♥♥

*it's "bond month" on the encore movie channel, for which they are playing a 007 film every evening  at 8pm**. color me happy! :)


**surely it should be "007 pm"??!?!?! (but eight is actually more convenient, so i'll let it slide.)


***yes, i am serious. i do not cook at all**** this is 100% lovely husband jeff's department, for which i am extremely grateful. although i will NEVER be a size eight again, that's for sure!


****g'head and hate me, i COMPLETELY understand!!!!! :) :) :)

that was the week that was (ICAD-wk5)

last week was the first one since i've started the index card a day project on the daisy yellow art blog in which i didn't necessarily get to make a whole card each night, and i have to say that i really MISSED it on the nights that (owing to an overload of real life + neck issues) it just didn't happen. i *DID* do something towards the project every day, however, even if it was as simple as finding the bits i wanted to use for the next prompt on the week five list, or gluing up a background, or adding stitching or additional embellishments to a card from the night before. then, on saturday night, i had a little "ICAD fest" and finished up... which in its own way was a lot of fun, too! ♥

card#29: flag of your country

is it just me, or do the old stars and stripes look TOTALLY AWESOME when "re-interpreted" using patterns instead of solid colors??! no offense to betsy ross, but maybe it's time for an update? anybody wanna hit the quilting store with me?

 card#30: collage of pinks

this one's pretty self-explanatory, right? 

(which is not to take away from how much i ♥LOVED♥ making it!!!)

card#31: butterfly

the monarchs are from a magazine ad*, the scrap of music paper was a leftover masking experiment; i put them together and then went a bit mad and free-form on the sewing machine; and finally colored in the blank bits with chalks and pastels. this is one of my favorites from the entire series, both in terms of being fun to make and pretty cool-looking at the end.

card#32: colors of your outfit

ok, this started as a joke, because truly, most of my clothing *IS* solid black, and i was thusly dressed when i read the prompt. i was planning something along the lines of a reverse "snowman in a snowstorm" (my lovely blogging friend jan's awesome card from last week!) when the idea of a pie chart hit me, and i could not resist. (for the record, although i just made up the NUMBERS... this is a good representation of my clothes!)

 card#33: dramatic

again, i had a completely different idea for this, until i happened to find this picture of sarah bernhardt in an old book i bought to use in my ephemera packs and it reminded me of a funny childhood story.

 card#34: layers of color

could this *BE* any more "dina-inspired"???!?! right down to the star stamp, for pete's sake! but to me there are few people in the world who can make A LOT of layers of A LOT of different color really WORK, so i used this opportunity to try out some techniques i have seen her use... and a few i just sort of made up myself. in terms of sheer amount of fun making something, you cannot exceed how happy i was whilst this was going on!!! ♥♥♥

card#35: zebra inspired

yep. sometimes i am THIS literal. go figure! :)

(i do also happen to LOVE zebras... for one thing... we have the same wardrobe, lol!)

*it was actually an ad for some very expensive jewelry; my husband jokes that i am the only woman in the world who tore it out of vogue magazine and saved it for the butterflies!!! (but that's pretty much everything you need to know about ME, right there!) :)

"it is a fact, universally acknowledged..."

"...that a papercrafter, in possession of COOL NEW STUFFS, must be in want of USING THEM IMMEDIATELY!!!" 

--jane austen 

(very slightly paraphrased by lauren)

(although it's quite obviously what jane would have said, had she liked making cards better than writing novels!!!)

as it happens i *AM* in possession of some verrrrrrrrry cool new stuffs, including a bunch of pink paislee paper and embellishements from various lines; lots (and i do mean LOTS!) of deco tape; and some entirely luscious papaya stickers (from stephanie! ta, missus!!!)... so i made this:

(paper: pink paislee; glossy white cardstock: ranger; diecuts and word strips: girls' paperie; stickers: anahata katkin, sticko; gem and plastic flower sequin: queen and co; brad: eyelet outlet; ink: prima; tape: 7 gypsies, love my tapes, hambly, queen and co; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape)

i used a gorgeous card map from a site i just found called sketch support; i was SERIOUSLY excited by this discovery until i found out that not only is the sketch itself quite old, the site is also apparently not posting new ones anymore, so that's a bit of a double bummer... 

...on the other hand it's the PERFECT sketch for using a bunch of different tapes, ribbons or paper scraps, and there's no time limit on usefulness, is there? so in fact, i've printed it to save, and you can pretty much count on seeing this one again, too! :)

i mentioned earlier that something i was not in possession of for most of this week was a neck that would correctly support my head without extreme and completely thought-supressing pain. which was a bit of a problem, since nearly everything in life requires holding up one's own head, thinking, or both. for a while there, i thought i might have to run for congress, just so i'd fit in!!! :) :) :) luckily my chiropractor is a trouper, and extremely kind about squeezing in an extra appointment, even on a very busy night before a holiday, so i *think* i'm genuinely on the mend now, and totally ready for a brand new week!

i hope ♥YOU♥ will have a happy one, or at least a not-very-painful one, darlings! and if you're in the northeastern united states-- or indeed anywhere else that's currently just TOO DARNED HOT-- do keep cool and drink lots of refreshing beverages! ♥♥♥

two in a row??!

two cards in a row, i mean, made from the very same sketch? i don't think i've EVER done that before, but between a serious neck issue... (which now SEEMS to be quite a bit better thanks to emergency chiropractorification) (yes, that IS TOO a word!) (well, it is in OUR house, anyway!) :) ...and the festive the mid-week holiday, i wound up having a verrrrrrrrrry small window of opportunity in which to make my second "vintage style" card for jingle belles, so i needed to do something easy and QUICK! and since i knew that mojo monday sketch #248 would result in a FABULOUS card that didn't require much embellishment, i went with that. again!

 (vintage snowy trees page from ideals christmas magazine; scanned and re-sized vintage book image printed on kodak premium photo paper; patterned papers: dcwv, love elsie, echo park; ribbon and brad: my mind's eye; felt and acrylic snowflakes: recollections; dies: nestabilities; adhesives: scotch gluestick, tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine)

luckily, i had already chosen and cut out my vintage santa image. as you know, i USUALLY use the actual vintage bits on my cards, but this time santa not only came from my "night before christmas" book collection... (with which i could never consider parting; however this spring i was lucky enough to find some additional, seriously distressed copies, that i could use in holiday ephemera packs!) ...it was also just a bit too big to fit on a non-gargantuan card, so i made a nice color copy onto photo paper using my scanner's 75% setting and came up with both a useable image, and a sentiment i created by diecutting a bit of the text from the same page!

here's a quick reminder of the lovely sketch, which you still have a couple of days to play along with:

since i needed my largest nestie to make a shaped panel which would accommodate santa and his sleigh, i streamlined the sketch a tiny bit; and since there is A LOT of pattern here (because i'm still ME, even in a hurry!) i "unified" the design by keeping to the main colors of the illustration, and only choosing snowy prints. believe it or not, i only noticed AFTERWARD that i had, in fact, created a red, white, and blue holiday card on the fourth of july; but i quite like the symmetry of that!!! :)

speaking of holidays, and time... ♥YOU♥ still have nearly a week to link up at JINGLE BELLES where we've got a lovely guest star in the form of our fabulously talented friend linda brun, and a very cool (if i do say so myself!) prize from my etsy shop, just enough stuff! hop over and check it out, then post your own "vintage style" creation by next wednesday!

"house warming" seems redundant at this time of year!

nevertheless our very dear friends are not only buying their first home, they are moving back into the area after several years away, and such splendid occasions need to be marked with a pretty cool card!  

(patterned paper: webster's pages, cosmo cricket; chipboard heart: studio 18; crinkly ribbon: pixie dust paperie; key charm and ink: prima; die cut bird: the girls' paperie; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine, needle and thread) 

believe it or not, all but the background paper came from the same sheet of webster's pages' called "love and dreams" which i confess to buying specifically in order to use that sweet little house on this particular card! by cutting into three different sections from the front, and another bit from the back and was able to have everything coordinate perfectly without ANY thought at all, gotta love that, right? further helping quicken the card-making process was this gorgeous sketch from mojo monday, which i followed EXACTLY, because let's face it, it's pretty PERFECT:

and now i hope all of the "love and dreams" from the paper will be transferred to our friends, the rojas family, in their new home!!!

triple TRIPLE threat sketch card! (woohoo!)

what the heck am i talking about? well, this week's challenge at shopping our stash is a really, REALLLLLY fun one:

Challenge 58: Triple Threat

pick any three of these: 

ribbon, flowers, lace, pearls, glimmer mists, punched elements or die cut elements, rhinestones, doilies (stamped will work too), dry embossing or scoring 

OR 

use three of one type of embellishment

so there's NO excuse to not play, right? because basically you can choose the things you like best and create your own challenge!!! here's my card:

(patterned paper: pink paislee; glossy white cardstock: ranger; flower: prima (originally white but sprayed with glimmer mist; please note that IRL it does NOT clash with the pink doilies in the paper!  arrgh!); embossed chipboard butterfly: studio 18; ribbon: buy the yard; lace: from my friend linda brun--ta v much!!!; pearls: want2scrap; diecut heart: girls' paperie; glittery tag: anahata katkin, papaya--from the lovely miss stephanie; ink: colorbox; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine)

ever the over-achiever... (some might say "show off"!) ...i did a TRIPLE triple threat! i've got:

1. flower
2. pearls
3. lace
4. ribbon
5. die cut (heart)
6. dry embossing (on the chipboard butterfly)
7. mist (on the flower)
8. doilies (on the paper)
and
9. there's a total of THREE butterflies! (ok, technically there are only 2.5 butterflies because the chipboard one DID NOT want to slide easily under the tag and thus forced me to chop one of his wings off. this sort of ruthlessness may be why my husband treats me so well... lol!) :)

for the placement of my items, i used the current unscripted sketch, #165:

i had a blast with this challenge, and i think ♥YOU♥ will too, so be sure to hop over to SOS and link up with us this week!

ICAD, you CAD??!

here are my daily exercises based on the fabulous "index card a day" prompts, week four, from the daisy yellow art blog. i don't think i even have to tell you again how much i am LOVING this process, do i? i cannot believe this two month experiment/project/art lab is already HALF OVER!!!*

card #22: mondrian

every time i see one of piet mondrian's grid-like canvases i think, "i bet that'd translate really well to patterned paper and tape". uh-huh. totally.

 card #23: disco ball

one of my favorite book sale finds last year was a weirdly scholarly 1970's volume called, "the official guide to disco dance steps". i bought it to use as "extra pages" in my sheet music packets, mostly b/c i fell in love with the wealth of priceless (and LITERAL) step-by-step, "which-foot-goes-where" illustrations; but the photos and chapter headings-- (i've used one of each, here; over a stripey sunburst i made) --are pretty awesome, too. :)

 card #24: quote

i love-- and agree with-- this quote. the base of the card is a magazine photo from which i used the sunglasses for another project; but when i saw the negative space left behind, i realized it was equally (if not more!) cool!

card #25: draw an ice cream sundae

if i were in the fourth grade, and my school was having an art show, i am pretty confident this would get an honorable mention!!! ok, yeah, i AM NOT AT ALL good at drawing... but i am loving that this project is pushing me to draw anyway; and guess what? it doesn't have to be GOOD to be fun, and satisfying, and valuable as an exercise. (though i secretly think the *cherry* turned out rather well!) :) 

 card #26: fabric/quilt

this one mixes a prompt from this week with one from the first week. it also uses up all the tiny scraps from last week's red, white and blue SOS card! i've been wanting to try the idea of really geometric straight-lined paper scraps with really flowing, curving "quilting" on top. i used a rhonna farrer swirl stamp to "shortcut" the process a little bit and then machine stitched over it. the result is waaaaaaaaaaay over the top... but at some point you WILL see a toned-down and much more aesthetic version of this. so there.

 card #27: snowman (kama'aina)

this is what you get if you say the word "snowman" to me at 11:45 on a HOT june evening, when i am watching classic "hawaii five-0" on netflix. mahalo!

card #28: use a fortune from a cookie/recipe card
another combination of two prompts from this week, inspired by this particularly funny fortune which i had saved a couple of years ago AND the fact that i have a whole pack of these hilarious puffy stickers my friend deborah found in thailand; every sticker is a serving of food-- ranging from cake slices to bowls of noodles to chiles and fruits-- and each one has a happy smile. definitely the *NICE* cake who was waiting for me!

*which is by no means to say that it is TOO LATE to start! if you've been watching the process on other folks' blogs and thinking, "that looks fun... but i just don't have time" well, yeah, i hear ya on that one; but the weird thing is, spending 15 minutes or so a night (or first thing in the morning; or at lunch) on AIMLESS, non-deadline, non-assignment art play, sort of counter-intuitively "pays for itself" in terms of sparking ideas and getting one's creativity "warmed up" as it were. sort of like stretching before you work out, but without the annoying hamstring pain! plus it's sooooooooooo darn much fun! just sayin'... ♥♥♥