Project 164: Buttons, Bunting and Birthday Bloghop!

Happy Birthday MAWTT!

It is a huge honor to be a part of the birthday celebrations this week for Moving Along With the Times. Before we get started, here are the rules of the blog hop:

You must visit the following blogs:

Hazel (Didos)
Sue
Pami
Hazel L
Carole
Judith
Wendy
Janice
Debs
Karina
Laurie
Tammy
Susan
Claire
Jessie (you are here!)

Sarah

Blog Hop Rules.

To be eligible for the prizes you must visit all the blogs, leave a comment and collect a letter from each.  Then email Hazel at didosdesigns@yahoo.com with the word you have made with Blog Hop Word in the Subject Line.  You must send the word to us to be in with a chance of winning!

Each DT Member will announce their winner on their own blog from the comments. 

My prize is a free digi at Kenny K so make sure you get involved!

NNNNNow the theme: we have a buttons, bunting and birthday challenge for Team A and when I saw these gorgeous stamps from our sponsor Aurora Wings, I couldn't resist.

The headline card is the feature for the challenge. I took a bit of liberty with the bunting component and instead punched out purple stars using a Recollections star punch from Michaels. I hand drew the stitching to make it look like bunting.

I colored the image using ProMarkers and I wanted her to be ethereal and fairy-like, which is why I went for the purple and blue and slightly yellow skin tone. I added glitter and a bit of bling to the stars and die-cut her out using a scallop circle die from Xcut.

The purple flag with the greeting is stamped with a new greetings collection Claire bought me from BoBunny - such a great set of messages and I loved the mixed font on this one. I used purple buttons and a strip of bling to make it a bit more festive. The bling may be too much. Oh well, here we all are!

This little guy is from Aurora Wings as well and I just had to use him:

I went for a more woody color scheme this time and colored him (her?) in greens and browns. I cut him out with a scalpel for precision and then layered the image over a die-cut circle of Trader Jane paper from Recollections. I love the pattern on this paper, I'm a bit precious about using it - but MAWTT deserves the best :)

I kept the rest fairly simple, using some dew drops from Paperchase, a gold candy and gold glitter glue for the little spots.

I can't wait to see what you all do to celebrate our birthday with us!

If you thought I was making a typo above, I was giving a hint! Your letter from this blog post is N - if you did the blogs in order then you are nearly there :)

Check out MAWTT on Thursday

Just a quick note to say that we have something exciting happening on Thursday to celebrate our birthday at Moving Along with the Times - be sure to check it out as there are LOADS of prizes! 

Project 163: I do like to be beside the seaside

One of the great things about having a craft buddy is the endless in-jokes you can revisit through the medium of crafts. So you get to laugh about things not just through retelling a story, but you can create new extensions of the joke.

This card above is an expression of so many jokes I have with Claire and - if I do say so myself - it totally rocks!

Claire introduced me to Bugaboo stamps so when I saw her I do like to be beside the seaside theme for MAWTT this week I had to use Poppi Penguin as the feature. He's just too cool for school here with his surfboard and sunnies. I die cut a circle from a circle die set she gave me and then cut out Poppi with my Fiskar finger blade - another tool Claire insisted I get which I love/hate her for.

The background paper is from Pink Petticoat and it's covered in seagulls. Why does a seagull paper exist? I know - crafters have to have everything - even seagull paper. This particular piece is actually a scrap from a playdate so I wanted to use it for her challenge.

Then we get to the little greeting: I decided Poppi speaks Spanish! (from the Fiskars thank you set I got for Christmas)

Finally along the bottom are a bunch of crabs, punched with a Martha Stewart punch. Crabs are one of the longest running jokes that I have with Claire and I use them any time I get a chance. Here I used yellow card and Hippie Chick glitter paper.

All in all - this is a fitting tribute to my dear craft buddy.

Happy MAWTT-ing everyone!

Project 162: WOYWW and the letter Z

Happy Wednesday everyone!

I haven't been able to play What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday for a little while with crazy work commitments but I was determined to get involved this week. My desk looks staged but I promise it's genuine!

My big letter Z is something I'm making for the dog - Zippy - who sleeps in the kitchen and I thought I could make a big magnetic Z to hang on the back door above his bed. I haven't finished trimming it but it's a start!

On the right is a spare fashion girl stamp I colored and decided not to use in this set I made for a friend. I may make a one-off with it, we'll see. On the left is the set all finished and ready to be packaged up.

All around are the scraps from both projects, still haven't cleaned those up yet!

And then if you can make it out is a bunch of stamps I'm purposely leaving out as I want to use them - a set of hot air balloons, a big heart, and some chevrons.

All the usuals are left - promarkers, candi/bits and bobs storage, pencil box (with UHU sticking out the top) and just in shot in the far left is my ATG.

Because I can't help showing him off, here is Zippy:

Can't wait to see what you all have on your desks this week!

Project 161: Vintage feel hot air balloon cards

I wanted to thank some of my colleagues who had been especially fantastic these past few weeks/months. Two guys in particular really went above and beyond to help out with a project and I think a little gesture like a personal card is perfect for these occasions.

I had been given a bit feature hot air balloon stamp from my parents as a gift and I thought it would be perfect if combined with steampunk papers for a masculine feeling card.

I stamped the image on white and then added the greeting to the banner - it's left blank on the stamp and comes with a few variants but the "you're the best" greeting that I put in there is actually from a separate collection. I love that it's blank and you can personalize it, great feature. I then went over the whole image with gold, orange and mustard inks to give it the distressed and textured feel. I was particularly heavy handed with the metalic gold to give it some intentional splotches.

The orange paper is Chronology and the plain orange border was punched with a Knock Outs border punch. I thought it added to the industrial feel without being too girly. The pattern on the paper fits the celebatory theme of the card I think.

Finally I added some gold bling in the corner to finish it off.

This second card was following the online stamp course I've been doing and I think my coloring lets it down but it is otherwise pretty cute! I stamped different hot air balloon shapes off of four individually cut cards. These stamps are from Little Claire - a previous splurge. Apologies the photo is blurry - I've taken it a dozen times and am too frustrated to try again!

I colored the different details using ProMarkers and then textured each of the squares using a mustard-colored ink.

There was a different greeting stamped but I spilled one drop of water and it smudged it beyond repair so I just decided to cover it with a big fancy peel off. All in all I'm pleased though I will be a bit more careful with coloring/water/image taking next time!

Project 160: Pink zebra Kenny K anniversary card

It is no secret that I love Kenny K images and when I saw the blog hop challenge this week I
literally stopped what I was doing to explore all of the DT blogs then and there. Really good fun and some great inspiration out there. This anniversary card is my Anything Goes response afer my blog hop.

I decided to pop over to Color Throwdown to see what they were using and when I saw all the pink I knew I had to use this sexy cupid! Here are these week's colors:

Of course, when it comes to coloring, it's got to be ProMarkers for me so I wanted to link up to I Love ProMarkers's Digi Challenge. The colors I used were:
- Henna and Cinnamon for her hair
- Coral for her lips, Blush for her skin and Duck Egg for her eye
- Pastel pink for her wings
- Dusky Rose and Burgundy for her dress and arrows
- Cool Grey 3 and 4 for her boots and bow

As she's a sassy lady, what better than some pink zebra to spice up an anniversary card? I used an American Craft Knock-Outs scallop heart punch for the layers in two different pinks. I die cut the image using a circle die and added the pink bow and candy to give it a bit more balance and texture. Originally I had some hearts layered in the upper right corner and it was just so busy with the pattern that I abandoned the hearts and stuck with a more CAS layout.

I love the finished result - not sure I can part with her now!

Project 159: Father's Day at MAWTT

This week we have a Father's Day theme at Moving Along with the Times and I thought it was a great opporutnity to have a bit of a experiment from my usual Father's Day cards.

My dad had his first job at John Deere and has always loved mechanics as a side hobby. I decided to go down the steampunk look for his card and am thrilled with it.

I used a Chronology paper as the background and then added the brown cog-embossed strip to add some texture. The embossing folder is a new treat from Cuttlebug that I bought myself after pay day in April. I decided to feature the reverse of the embossed side, just decided it looked better than the raised version.

The orange strip is stamped out with Do Crafts Urban Stamps typewriter alphabet stamps - another pay day treat. I added the patterend tape to give it a bit more stand out. I didn't perfectly align the letters on purpose, I wanted to give it a bit of a skewed look.* Also, I had to abandon my fanatical stance on punctuation as I don't have an apostrophe. Sad times.

I decided to stamp out a key using a Papermania urban collage stamp and cut it out, just to add another little steamp punk element. Finally some hardware candies and I decided it was fancy enough. Can't wait to send it to my dad, he's going to love the mechanical elements.

I thought I would also link up to Pink Elephant's Orange challenge this week - the central greeting is orange as is the hue of the clock paper (not sure why this image is a bit green!).

Can't wait to see what everyone else does for fathers!

* total lie. I wanted it straight and couldn't manage because the individual letter stamps are a bit too fiddly to align perfectly. Here we all are. It looks fine. I'll get over the little dips and just call it intentional.

Project 158: Fashion girl card set

Lately I have been making card sets for people as gifts or on commission and I haven't been using as many images because they take a bit longer with the coloring. I found a bit of time in the week to do some thought and decided this gorgeous image from one of Claire's stamps and would make a fantastic set for a friend.

I colored each of the ladies a different color and then decided to use a similar color for the punched border while keeping all of them on a black lace print. The border punch is a new gift from my mom, an EK Success beauty.

The black lace is from the Femme Fatale set from Michael's that my sister bought me years ago - I am down to a few scraps from each page and I ration them out so this was a bit of a splurge for me to use it across 4 cards!

I topped them all off with a blingy diamond stud earring and two corresponding gems in the top righ. I think the font of the best wishes greeting goes perfectly - it's one of my oldest sentiment stamps and the mixed font feels classy and modern here.

All in all I was pleased with the set - a great way to bring in the month of June!