Project 227: A bottle of wine for dad

I had an idea for a Father's Day card and thought I could make it really personalized for my dad.

I cut up paint chips to create this wine bottle mosaic. It's intentionally a bit helter skelter - I tried all straight lines and it just looked weird and not very bottle like. I added the tag with a handwritten message and left it really simple.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

Project 226: A simple green and red coloring challenge card

I am doing a 30 Day Coloring Challenge with Claire and it is great. It is making me think of different things to color, different ways to look at card making and generally evaluate everything I have in my stash with, 'can I color that?'

I will do a round up post soon with some stuff I've done, but here's one I did today.

I liked the simple and bold colors at the Color Throwdown Challenge and decided to make that my color scheme for today's entry.

 Gorjuss stamp is the feature here, colored green and black with ProMarkers, and embellished with a bright red ribbon and bling. I used a bit of green for a border stamp from KnockOuts.

It's maybe not as cute as I envisioned it, but that's ok, I'm trying a new combo and sometimes it doesn't work. There's always tomorrow's challenge!

Project: Retro birthday challenge

Happy birthday MAWTT! This week, in honor of our 6th birthday at Moving Along with the Times, we are doing a birthday themed challenge. You have until 8pm GMT Wednesday 10th June.

I decided to do something fun and cheerful for my celebration card. When I saw that CAS-ual Fridays was doing a summery challenge it sounded great: white, tan and a bright color. I wanted to use turquoise and thought white and tan would be a great trio.

I already had in mind using this stamp set from January's Creative Stamping magazine and I decided to do something a bit different with it. I paper pieced the dress from bright paper and used a spotted paper for her apron. The greeting is from the same set.

I backed her against a sparkly tan sheet that has been in my stock and used an off-cut of the turquoise in her dress for the border. The spotted ribbon is ancient in my stash and I thought this was a good was to add texture.

I tried candies and all sorts to finish it off and settled on a little trio of gems - 3 colors, 3 gems, why not? - and really like how clean and bright it is. I hope it's CAS enough for the challenge but more than anything I'm just pleased it's a cheerful birthday card for our MAWTT challenge.

Looking forward to see your projects this week!

30 Day Color Challenge - Day 1

This is getting posted late - already slipping - but Claire found this great 30 day colouring challenge and I wanted to get involved.

It's going to be tough to commit. Yes I know, even 10 minutes shouldn't be that hard but it will be! Case in point: this post is going up Tuesday instead of Monday because I had some technical problems and gave up pretty easily.

Sighs.

Anyway, this little green flower is a digital stamp and I colored it with different green ProMarkers. I love this image, it's from Claire and I think it's so cheerful.

I'll be sure to commit and check in later today with the next colored piece!

Project 225: A special mother's day card

I have been meaning to post this for ages - I had to wait until the recipient had the card before posting and then it just slipped my mind altogether. But I'm super proud of this project so there's no time like the present to share it!

I wanted to make a special card for my mom this year and browsed Pinterest for some inspiration. I loved a few iterations that I saw of a flower pot card (this one was particularly cute), where you pull out the flowers to reveal a message.

I did a step-by-step tutorial here and found it really helpful in making the pot pocket. I decided to go for tulips for the flowers, and made them out of pink scraps and a petal die I had on my desk. I then added some green petals for flowers. I was really pleased to use a lot of scraps that I had at my disposal - even the little pink insert on the message is a scrap!

The rest is pretty straight forward really. I punched a scallop edge to the pot and added a little daisy-chain border to the bottom. The ribbon is from Tiger, really cheap and really good quality. 

I didn't take a picture but on the back I simply wrote 'Pull me out' in case it wasn't clear that it was something that could be separated. She really liked it and it's definitely a layout I can now make again. 

Project 224: A tic-tac-toe challenge

I love a tic-tac-toe challenge as it makes you think of your stash in different ways. I also love The Paper Players and decided to play along with Claire and this week's challenge when we had a craft playdate this weekend! This was their board: 

I decided to tackle the far right column: Sequins, Flower, Yellow. 

My image is a Little Claire daisy border stamp and I kept it black and white without colouring it as I wanted to keep it to just yellow, black and white. The yellow paper is from Studio Calico and the black spotted paper is Dove Crafts. 

The little black sequins are from a big bumper box - I had to pick out these from a much bigger variety, I really wanted just the flat ones - and I added the layered flowers and button for extra cuteness. I'm really happy with the finished project. 

In the spirit of honesty, I thought I'd show another one that I did trying to tackle the middle column. I have no idea why this was such a challenge! This is card attempt 2 or 3 and I just couldn't get the elements to come together. I tried blue, patterned paper and embossing here: 

It's ok. I don't love it. But it'll do for the stash I suppose! 

Project 223: An autumnal woodland critter birthday

I got a great brief from a colleague to make a birthday card featuring woodland creatures in golds and oranges. She pointed to two specific images on my blog that she liked and unfortunately they were both using materials I no longer have/have access to.*

But that didn't stop me - I knew I could make something that would work to the brief. 

I found these puffy stamps from my stash - Claire sent them to me a while ago and from what I can see they were a billy bargain! - and as she specifically called out foxes, hedgehogs and squirrels being the recipient's favourite animals I thought I'd go for these lovely orange stickers. I usually don't work with stickers like this; it feels a bit like cheating. But I thought if I put enough craft into the other elements it would balance my fear of taking a shortcut.

As there were three animals I went for the Sketch Saturday layout this week:

I embossed the brown paper with a diamond pattern (reminded me of a beaver's tail) and layered this on shiny gold paper, followed by navy to make it pop. The backing paper is slightly textured, it's a gorgeous Recollections Trader Jane paper. The orange paper is punched using an EK Success punch and the banner is stamped with a Fiskars greeting.  I added two spotted brown candies on the bottom to finish it off.

I really like the autumnal feel and the cuteness of the images. I still feel a bit like it is cheating but it is true to brief so I'm happy with it!


*Yes Claire. I'm referencing the  lack of access to your stash.  It's sad times not being able to rifle through your things, stealing/borrowing things to my heart's content. :*(