ICAD: Week Six

The Index Card a Day project... and the summer, for that matter... are just FLYING by at warp speed! Let's freeze time for a second and enjoy this week's allotment of ICAD art: 

day 32: off prompt

it's a gallery wall of cancelled postage. i confess that i thought there was going to be a second layer, but nothing i tried to add looked right...

day 33: feather

serendipitously, i found a dove's feather on our driveway about a day before i saw this prompt on the list, so obviously i had to use it in a collage, right?!

day 34: gingham

i made a diagonal background with tombow brush pens, skinny washi tape and machine stitching. it ended up more like lattice than gingham, so i added some gelprinted flowers and called it a day.

day 35: mandala monday

collaged vintage paper scraps, a pitt pen mandala and smooshes of tombow color on top.

day 36: off prompt

a one-staple cleanup collage of random bits that were laying on my worktable, including the blooming violet stencil my friend linda edkins wyatt designed for stencilgirl!

day 37: oasis

palm fronds. lot of 'em!!!

day 38: postcard

pretty sure this is going to be a major obsession, so i apologize in advance for making way too many random collages on top of vintage postcards!

Starry Stripes and Stripey Stars

We're still celebrating Stars and/or Stripes (of ANY color!) at Jingle Belles and you are still invited to join the fun and get a jump on those holiday cards! Here's what I made this week:

Three biggish scraps of striped paper do most of the work this time. One of them got itself diecut with my largest star Nestie and became home to the adorable D-bug Santa and Missus Claus. An ancient sticker sentiment and a scattering of red and white Eyelet Outlet Star Brads round things off nicely.

Head on over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's card and link up your own Starry and/or Striped masterpiece! ♥

Calendar Girl

When I saw this super-fun, extra-wide Calendar Washi in the Eyelet Outlet Store, I knew immediately that I wanted to adorn it with a year's worth of seasonal brads. I confess it didn't occur to me that I'd wind up with with 29 brads from 21 sets on a 6.5 x 5.5" card; but that's cool too!

Here's the brad list, month by month; try to spot my very silly mistake! January: Penguin and Snowflake Brads; February: Heart Brads; March: Bluebird and Robin Brads plus a Mini Bee; April: Chick and Colored Egg Brad; May: Colored Daisy and Mini Ladybug; July: the Hat from our patriotic Flag and Hat set; June: Tall Palm Tree and Colorful Sunglass Brad; August: Ice Cream and the Sun from the Sun and Cloud Brad set; September: Book Brad and a School Bus; October: Pumpkin and Mini Spiders (they're on sale!); November: Mini Leaves and the Rake from our Lawn Mower set; December: Santa and Mrs. Claus.

So did you catch the error? Yep. I accidentally swapped June and July!!! And what's more I didn't even notice until I was writing up this post! Oh well, technically June has Flag Day and July is still a nice month for the beach, so let's just keep this between ourselves, ok? Thanks!

Sandy Claws

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash, we're celebrating Christmas in July, which I think is pretty straightforward, so I'm going to jump right to the part where I show off my card, k?

It's no secret that I love Doodlebug generally, their holiday stuff particularly, and especially their stickers. So here's a card with lots of all of that! There are a few non-D-bug pieces: the starry background paper inside the windows (cut with my trusty Nestabilities circle dies) is MME, the ancient sentiment sticker is Crate Paper (I think?) and there's a super skinny mat of shimmery pink cardstock which came from Paper Anthology. Not the fanciest card in the world but definitely colorful, cheerful and fun.

Speaking of FUN... I hope you'll head on over to SOS to see what the other design team darlings have made to inspire you!!!

ICAD: Halfway Point

Hard to believe that we're already into July and thus the first of our two Index Card a Day months is over? Where exactly did June go, does anyone know?! Meanwhile, here are the index cards I completed this week:

day 26: maple

i started with maple leaves, which makes sense. the map and the little car were in my "collage bits" envelope and i probably chose them as much for color as anything...

day 27: matalasse

yep, i had to look it up! matalasse is a sort of tone-on-tone design with lots of top-stitching... though technically real matalasse isn't a *quilt* because the detailed stitching is sewn on one piece of fabric, without batting or backing. my card took quite some time and sort of looks like very very fancy quilted toilet paper, but it was interesting to learn about, so there's that, lol!

day 28: mandala monday

i'm a bit sad that my fancy green postage composition in the circle got covered up, but otherwise i'm pretty happy with this combination of collage and drawing.

day 29: quilt

ok, so yeah... this looks like lots of work, but the triangles are 1" squares, cut on the guillotine and sliced in half; all the stitching is straight lines and done in one go. this is the perfect card for me at 10:30pm when i'm too tired to think creatively, but not yet sleepy; methodical OCD-style repetition is quite relaxing...

day 30: vine

definitely a stylized take on a vine; really it was mostly an excuse for me to hand-cut lots of similar shapes and then stitch on top of them!

day 31: off-prompt

a one-staple collage that's probably too over-hangy to wear well, but i like it. that rose is from an ancient piece of patterned paper and i'm sort of excited that i still have a couple more like it... :)

♥♥♥

Hope your July is off to a good start and wishing a 

Happy Independence Day to all my American friends!

Stars (and/or) Stripes; Forever!

Rolling into Fourth of July weekend at Jingle Belles, so it only seems right to be featuring Stars and/or Stripes, right? They needn't be together, and they can come in ANY color scheme you'd like! Sound interesting? Here's what I made:

I combined stripes (and bunnies and text) from Lawn Fawn's Snow Day Remix with stars from My Mind's Eye's Merry and Bright; then added some ancient glittery foam stars and an Eyelet Outlet Candy Cane Brad. I couldn't resist using my older Mitten Brads even though they're out of stock; and I gave the bunnies Santa Hats because... well, just because I could, lol! I used this week's Sketch Saturday, though I rotated it and rearranged it a bit, so they may disqualify me, though I thank them for the inspiration!

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's card and link up your own Starry and/or Striped Masterpiece! ♥

It's Mandala... Thursday?!

There are few things more magical in the Craftiverse than an opaque pen which writes smoothly and shows up really well on black paper. Here are the newest ones I've added to my arsenal: Metallic Poscas, Zig Acrylistas and the good old Uniball Signo which, if anything, is even better than I remembered! There are lots more opaque pen and black paper choices at The Ink Pad and I mention a few more of those on TIP Blog today!