i can see clearly

happy tuesday y'all and hooray for a new challenge at shopping our stash. this week it's "i can see clearly" and what we'd like to see (clearly, lol) are projects with some sort of transparent element. so you could make a clear card, or construct a window or shaker, or just play around with a few prominent acrylic elements, or... well... whatever else you can think of that meets the brief. i made a clear card, because it's been ages since i've done so.

pink flourish transparency: hambly screen prints, oh how i miss you!; notebook patterned paper: basic grey; tag: amy tangerine/american crafts; florals: prima + petaloo + garage sale sunflower + joann fabrics tiny felt blossom; brads: my mind's eye, doodlebug, we r memory keepers; acrylic heart: heidi swapp; puffy stickers: recollections; tapes: freckled fawn, lora bailora, october afternoon, love my tapes, heidi swapp, recollections; tiny scraps of ribbon from my stash; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, hot glue, sewing machine

i ♥LOVE♥ clear cards but it's funny, because i can forget all about them for months at a time until someone says, "hey let's make clear cards!". this week's retro sketch (#185) is especially cool, and i thought it'd work really nicely for this since that horizontal strip (mine is composed of various washi and deco tapes) lets you hide your interior sentiment and greeting behind it.

i know it's sometimes hard to tell which bits are where on a clear card, so here's an "action" shot with the front lifted up. and thus you can see (i hope?) that the larger notebook paper panel is inside the card, whereas all of the other decorative bits are outside.

there's loads more inspiration over at SOS this morning, won't you stop in and enjoy some of it right now?

♥PINK♥ christmas! (2015 edition)

if you've played along with us at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ in any of our previous years you probably already know that the first prompt of october --which is, of course, breast cancer awareness month-- is always PINK CHRISTMAS, that the brief is to make a holiday card which (perhaps you've guessed, lol?!) has at least a bit of pink in it, and that stephanie and i each donate $2 for every card linked up with us during this fortnight.

this year we'll be donating to the breast cancer research foundation, which focuses strongly on the research aspect of the disease and has earned very high marks from charity evaluation sites such as charity navigator, charity watch and give.org. we'd love for you to join us this fortnight, just link up on our pink christmas post before 6pm on wednesday, october 21st! easy, right? ♥♥♥ 

meanwhile, here's what i made:

eiffel tower cut from a very verrrrrry old piece of michael miller fabric paper that i'm pretty sure they don't make anymore;  patterned paper: marion smith designs, basic grey, sei; flowers: michaels; brads: oriental trading, queen and co; memory box jingle bell die used on american crafts POW glitter paper which is extraordinarily sparkly without being textural and diecuts LIKE BUTTAH!!!; border punches: martha stewart; doily from my stash; white glossy cardstock: paper accents; computer generated sentiment flag in "quill" font; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots

ok, yeah, this is one of those times when i almost feel like i'm cheating because let's face it, i looooooove pink, and i make plenty of pink cards all year round. none of them mean as much to me as the ones i make in october, however, so i like to go all out, as you can see. since i just happened to find a bit of somehow totally forgotten (?!) pink fabric paper with eiffel towers on it, my card took a bit of a french twist, with a sentiment to match. i used the very last (boohoo!) cardabilities sketch (#132) to guide my layout:

i hope you'll join us for PINK CHRISTMAS --early and often!-- this fortnight, and to that end i'm gonna stop talking right now and send you to see stephanie's lovely card over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥!

journal page to card: butterfly edition

i'm not sure i'd ever done a direct, art-journal-to-card conversion before the narwhal card from this past weekend, and yet i've already done another one. i'm onna roll. or something, lol. first here's this week's sisters with heart in art page, our prompt is "things with wings". we'd love for you to join us and all types of art are welcome; post your art on instagram with the hashtag #sisterswithheartinart.

ok, so, a mixed-media extravaganza right here and i had twenty-four hours of dark blue inky fingertips to prove it! lots of vintage paper, stencil action, modelling paste, stamping and a boatload of loose and swirly machine stitching... the whole nine yards of grungy je ne sais quoi. in the course of which, i made that butterfly into a stencil... (it was a piece of copyright-free clipart i found online, re-sized and cut from stencil film) ...and since i can never, ever, just cut one layer of anything, there were a couple of extras. meanwhile, i wanted to make a very special card for a friend who is having a really really hard time of it at the moment, and it occurred to me that butterflies are an awesome symbol of both hope and transformation. so basically i scaled the whole thing a bit smaller and simulaneously turned the grunge knob down and the glam control up. et voila:

oh and is it just me who winds up with two or three (or fourteen lol) "rejects" for every stenciled or spray-misted background that turns out looking really cool? well, *don't* throw those out because they make absolutely awesome die-cutting fodder!!! in fact both of the butterflies above came from "essperiments" that were... ahem... seriously (SERIOUSLY!) unsuccessful, and yet they are my favorite element of both these projects! so there. :)

you say it's your...

...BIRTHDAY??!? well that's awesome because this week at shopping our stash we want to see your oldest birthday-themed supplies!

patterned paper: dcwv, junkitz, sei, basic grey; balloon stickers: susan branch/colorbok; cupcake sticker: martha stewart; paper flowers: making memories; brad: american crafts; tape: love my tapes; heart gem: queen and co; glossy white cardstock: paper accents; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

if you've been papercrafting for a while, you'll no doubt recognize with nostalgia how much golden-oldie goodness is on this card. because YEAH, we're goin' back a bit! suuuuuuper-old dcwv birthday stack paper without which the early-21st-century craftroom was incomplete... cupcake and greeting from the front and back of my favorite junkitz ('member them??) pattern... susan branch balloon stickers so old i had to put new foam adhesive on them... ok, so you get the picture, this is OLLLLLLLLLD stuff. and yet, i have to say, i still kind of like all of it, and i think it makes for a fun card. so there!

something else that pretty much guarantees a fabulous outcome is the use of a crooked stamper sketch challenge sketch in the making of one's card. as you can plainly see. (ok, yes, admittedly i've piled quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite a bit of stuff on top of miss leslie's glorious CAS lines, but it's there, i promise!) :)

speaking of miss leslie, of course she has made an awesome card to inspire you... so have all the other lovely SOS ladies... won't you hop over and enjoy those right now?! ♥

words... and rust...

once again i somehow missed posting not one, but two, sisters with heart in art (#sisterswithheartinart) prompts so let's remedy that right now. first this week's topic, which was chosen by me, and it's "WORDS". as always, it can be interpreted in whatever literal or tangential way you'd like: song lyrics, hand-lettering, poetry, collage of text papers, photos of great typography or signage, anything goes! i went with a quote over top of some hand-cut stencils. because... ok, really, there was no great thought process, i just happen to really love this quote:

last week's prompt was "RUST" and i had an equally fun time making my page, which was inspired by what i've always felt were the "beautiful ruins" of the old bethlehem steel plant that's about an hour from my mom's house in pennsylvania. apparently i'm not the only one who loves the history and the industrial vibe of the place, as a few years ago, the sands casino built a fairly large and deluxe hotel, casino and entertainment center ...but kept the old stacks as a backdrop. i think that's pretty cool.

whatever you're making today, i hope you have as much fun as i did making these! ♥

because... ♥NARWHALS♥!!!

i could call this post, "why it's not always a bad idea to do something pointless just because you feel like it" but for one thing, that's a really long title; and --more importantly-- it doesn't mention ♥NARWHALS♥ at all!!! i've been slightly obsessed with said unicorns of the sea ever since sprint used the narwhal song in a commercial that only ran for like three days in may, but made an indelible impression on both lovely husband jeff and myself. then last week i saw this pink plushie narwhal on etsy. consider my mind officially blown. clearly the two ideas were meant to be combined in my sketchbook. clearly. duh. :)

my excuse at the time was that it was the first day of kathy racoosin's third  "30 day coloring challenge" (#thedailymarker30day3) and i did this in marker, and even shaded it a tiny bit, but really... i just wanted to draw a pink narwhal in a swirly sea with hand-lettered lyrics. so i did. i've found that when an idea --however silly or tangenial-- is burning a hole in my brain, it's best to just go with it and get it over with. but in this case, it actually led to what i think is a pretty cool (well, definitely unique, anyway, lol!) birthday card for niece lindsay. because having drawn a narwhal, it occurred to me i could paper-piece a narwhal; and then obviously i'd also need to paper-piece a skyscape* for her to inhabit. with a rainbow that emerged from clouds of ice cream. obviously. 

white ledger paper background: basic grey; other paper scraps from: recollections, scrapbook wizard, prima, k and co, american crafts, glitz design and... probably a couple more too small to identify; also a scrap of hobby-lobby kraft cardstock that i had "faux croc-ed" and then not used... turns out faux croc makes an AWESOME ice cream cone... just sayin'; tiny "birthday" letters: mme; "happy" is cut from scraps of vintage music paper, i had actually stamped the letters using an old autumn leaves alphabet set but wound up using this layer --that was held behind the one where the actual stamping took place. so basically, there's another "happy" in this same font that will get used eventually; there might also be another couple of pink patterned narwhals, who can say??; brads: oriental trading and queen and co; wooden sunshine: freckled fawn; cloud punches: ek success; ink: colorbox and ranger distress; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine

the really interesting thing about this card is that lindsay-- who just turned TWELVE, btw (!!!) --and her cousins had absolutely no problem with the logic of it in any way. afterall, we spent the summer drawing kawaii foods, feathers, minions and in nephew matthew's case, quite a few "lego guys"; to them it is perfectly reasonable that you draw whatever you most love drawing at any given time, and further, that you give your favorite drawings to your favorite people on their birthdays. period. i think there's a fairly awesome lesson right there: stop overthinking and just make something you love... then give it to someone you love. easy peasy. i'm off to do just that darlings and i hope you are, too! ♥♥♥

*for those of you who'd argue it should possibly be a seascape i'd like to point out that whereas ordinary narwhals swim... the pink plaid ones totally fly. seriously. you could look it up in narwhalpedia. g'head, i'll wait. :) :) :) 

kinda flaky

...and this week it's not just *ME*, lol, my ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ card is kinda flaky too. snowflaky, that is! because we're still making cards for our friends who don't necessarily celebrate christmas, so there are a few different choices as far as themes go: hanukkah, solstice, kwanzaa, new year or... as i've done this time... a sort of general "happy winter" type of thing; for which snowflakes are spot on, dontcha think?

colorburst watercolor powders: ken oliver; watercolor paper: strathmore; snowflake dies: tim holtz/sizzix + spellbinders used as both diecut elements and to make a little stencil through which to apply versamark ink and emboss with psx white powder; glitter paper: pow/american crafts... which... is AWESOME, you guys... suuuuuper-sparkly but diecuts amazingly well, it comes in loads of fah colors too!; silver mirror cardstock so old i'm not sure whence it came; star/snowflake stamp: psx from like a million years ago; rhinestones: recollections; brad: my mind's eye; ink: colorbox; glossy white cardstock: paper accents; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine with denim blue coats and clarks thread

i'm still having loads of fun with the colorburst powders over here. this time i used a few different shades of blue in an emboss/resist technique and i love how it came out. and yeah, i know, i make a lot of cards with a stack of snowflakes on them; mostly because i have a number of different snowflake dies and a serious jones for sparkly glitter paper. so there ya go. if it ain't broke, don't fix it, that's my motto! :)

miss stephanie's mojo is most definitely in good condition and to prove it she's made a lovely card to show off to you at  ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so off you go darlings!