Let's Get Inky!

Trying my hand at some of the challenges during Paper Anthology's Creation Staycation on FaceBook, which started on Wednesday and runs through this coming Tuesday night (4/14). There are a total of *16* different challenges, four of which I was the hostess, but I'm trying to take time and play along with the ones invented by m'colleagues. Shari Morris is the QUEEN of Ranger products at our store, so she has asked to see cards or other projects with a Distress Ink background. Here's what I made:

Apart from the Core'dinations cardstock, basically everything on this card is from my stash of fun vintage goodies: a slidemount framing up a fussy cut 1960's auto from "Illustrated Motorcars of the World"; a torn receipt collaged with old trading stamps and a beautiful map of York, Pennsylvania. Here's the background without the collage:

Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky and Faded Jeans Distress Ink, blended quite randomly through a beautiful Anna Griffin stencil. With a little Hickory Smoke around the edges and over the top to unify the smudgey tone-on-tone goodness.

For the record, this will be my uncle's belated birthday card, as he is a huge fan of vintage motors and also has the most vivid blue eyes of any man I've even seen in real life! Hope you are finding time to be crafty on this lowkey "holiday" weekend. If you need inspiration, visit the Paper Anthology Facebook Page, where everyone is welcome to join the fun! ♥

Crafty Tic-Tac-Toe

It's the last day of Challenge *REVEALS* for Paper Anthology's Creation Staycation, but of course the event continues until Tuesday night and there will still be trivia questions, daily prizes, Zoom chats and more! The last of my challenges as a hostess is a crafty version of Tic Tac Toe. First, here's my card:

Now here's the board, but of course if you're playing, you need to link up in the comments of the correct post on the Paper Anthology FaceBook Page! I'm putting the board here, though, because it makes it easier to explain what I did. I used the diagonal that starts in the top left corner, which gave me FLOWERS + Stash More Than a Year Old + BLING.

Pretty much EVERYTHING on this baby is more than a year old, so there's that out of the way. (The Indian-inspired background paper is from a store that I think closed in... 2012??) My flowers are for once NOT in your face, they are kind of cameo appearances, to the little wooden elephant with the henna design. The bling is a Prima "Say It With Crystals" and I cut it apart a bit and pieced it back together to fit the space better. There's also a scallopy bling border which was in the box with all my miscellaneous bling, which means it's VERY old and I have no idea whence it came. But for being a weird cobbled together card, I really love how it came out!

That's the great thing about challenges, they push us out of our comfort zones! 

Feelin' Blue?

Then I have the antidote for you! Because we are smack in the middle of Paper Anthology's Creation Staycation, a weeklong virtual crop of sorts, with sixteen (16!) different challenges to pick and choose from, plus prizes, games, live Zoom chats and more! Paper Anthology is, of course, my lss and located in Kenvil, NJ, but crafties from all over are welcome to play along! Hop over to the Paper Anthology FaceBook Page for all the details!

My friend Linda Duke is the hostess of this challenge, it's called Christmas With a Twist and the "twist" is that you cannot use red or green! 

I actually LOVE non-traditional colors for Xmas, so I was all ready for this one! One of the things Linda wrote in her introduction was that the absence of red and green meant no Santa in his distinctive suit, and no Xmas trees. I respectfully refute the latter! See?

blue landscape from an old ideals magazine; paint chips from benjamin moore; tree die: echo park: snowflake dies: sizzix and impression obsession; trees and hills dies: penny black; blue dotty cardstock: core'dinations; white patterned papers: bella blvd, teresa collins and best creation glitter paper; snowflake gem and snowflake sequins: eyelet outlet; sentiment tim holtz/ideaology; ink: colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, xyron, 3m foam tape, sookwang scor-tape 

My inspiration is the cyanotype landscape from a vintage Christmas Ideals magazine that I've used as my background. If Ideals could print pages that were all blue --and they sometimes also did other colors, but I think nearly EVERY copy I've ever seen had at least one page that was ALL BLUE-- then my card can be all blue too! If the design of this looks eerily familiar, it's because I cannot expect to play along in a bunch of fun flash challenges this week, and keep up with everything else, whilst "reinventing the wheel" every time. So I basically just made a second version of this week's Jingle Belles card. But without the green, obviously! :)

I hope you'll check out all the different challenges and maybe even pick at least one to play along with! ♥

Peace on EARTH DAY!

This is one of my favorite Jingle Belles challenges, we've celebrated Earth Day each year since 2011, by making holiday cards that include a re-cycled, re-used or up-cycled ingredient! It's easier than you might think: upcycle a pretty tissue box, reuse those beautiful old xmas cards you couldn't bear to toss, recycle a piece of plastic packaging as the window in a shaker card... the possibilities are almost endless. Here are my "ingredients":

The beautiful backers from Prima flowers and Little Birdie chipboard, some old paint chips and (not pictured) another piece of white on white cardstock that was from... shoelaces?? (it was pretty, so I saved it, lol!) and some clear plastic from a salad bar container that I used for the shaker window in my card, which looks like this:

Ok, so... I think you can see where each element ended up, right? The deer is diecut from the woodgrain packaging; the trees from the paint chips. The Prima ledger papery piece is the inside of the shaker and the white unknown packaging is the larger snowflake. I've also got one or two new(ish) things: Simple Stories woodgrain and snowflake paper, Best Creation Glitter cardstock and some brand new Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Sequins inside the shaker!

Jump over to Jingle Belles and see Stephanie's awesome card (trust me, it's a goodie!) then start raiding the recycling, the trash and that box of "too-pretty-to-toss-out" things to make your own creation! ♥

Queen of the One-Layer Card?!

Ok, technically, I've only done this twice, and the last time I sorta cheated by adding mats and stuff, but I do feel like I'm getting better at the dreaded OLC! Here's one I made for a fun FaceBook event that Paper Anthology is having, Paper Anthology's Creation Staycation. It's a week long event featuring challenges, trivia, prizes and... surprises! Anyone is welcome to join the fun, so be sure to CHECK IT OUT. Meanwhile, here's my card:

This is Challenge #7 (don't worry you have til NEXT Tuesday night to complete as many or as few challenges as you'd like in ANY order!) and it's hosted by Elisabeth. It's the aforementioned dreaded One Layer Card.

I used my largest oval label-shaped Nestie to make a mask, stamped The Ton's Peony Dreams right through it in black archival and outlined around the edges. Then I used ColorBursts to watercolor it in layers, so I'd get a nice gradation of shading!

Kinda psyched at how much progress I am making just by PRACTICING more with the coloring! :)

It's a SHELFIE (Get It?!)

It's been a very strange time, recently, hasn't it? There's a lot of worry and uncertainty, for sure; but there are a few good aspects; one of which is that many of us are spending more time at home, and have more time to craft! Which miiiiight just mean that a slightly more ambitious project than usual, suddenly seems like a fun thing to try. Case in point:

Shocking true confession: I am not super-confident about coloring stamped images. I am also the World's SLOWEST Color-er! But when I saw Hero Arts' Bookcase Peek-a-Boo stamp set at The Ink Pad, I just could not resist it because I collect books and plants and... well, basically I love ALL the stuff in that bookcase image. So I was determined to give it a shot.

While I definitely did not improve my speed at all in this project... (no, I'm NOT telling you how long this took!!!) ...I feel like I learned a lot! For one thing, I love Ranger Black Archival Ink and Canson Watercolor Paper for coloring; because I know I'm safe, no matter how wet it gets! For another, with a big stamp, the MISTI is invaluable; if it turns out there's a spot that didn't quite get inked strongly enough, you just ink up again and fix it! When it comes to a big or complicated background, you should fill that in FIRST; and a pale shade of watercolor is an excellent choice. I chose the very lightest blue in my Gansai Tambi Watercolors, and I diluted it quite a bit! I used watercolor for many of the books and Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers for the rest. Whenever I decided a color was too strong or too bright, I toned it down with a little bit of tan watercolor, to get the beautiful soft palette of vintage books. I found that I could get a pretty good shading effect by painting each book just a tiny bit too dark, then painting over it with clear water and blotting the excess with a tissue. (Though Derwent Colored Pencils are also great for shading!) A medium-sized round brush was ideal for the background; I swapped it for a smaller filbert to do the spines. I did the details like the metallic silver on the camera and picture frame with a fine tipped paint pen, as well as adding just a touch of gilding to some of the fancier books. At the very end, I (sparingly!) used a clear Wink of Stella brush on the glass dome, spectacles, etc.

I hope you've got a bit of extra crafting time these days, and that you'll be inspired to try something new... OR... practice at that field you've always wanted to improve! ♥

Lauren Bergold

thinks she might someday

LOVE coloring!!!

It's an EGG-stravaganza!

Easter is only a few days away but I couldn't resist making one more special card with my leftover Eyelet Outlet Easter goodies!

I still had plenty of the adorable Chick Brads, but only three Colored Eggs. So i decided to "make a scene" lol, in the literal sense. I've got Cloud Washi and a Sun and Cloud Brad for sky; and punched two levels of patterned paper grass, so I could raise one on foam tape to "hide" the eggs. I scattered a couple of Mini Stitched Flower Brads in there too, for extra interest.

Wishing the happiest of Easters to everyone who is celebrating! ♥