Handmade Flower Challenge

Craft Warehouse is throwing a very fun and festive blog party this weekend with lots of great challenges and prizes. Make sure to hop over and try to make some time to play along. I thought I would join in the fun and share a couple of handmade flowers I've made... To see more inspiring Handmade flowers click on the link HERE

I made the handmade flowers on this project last year just by layering and crumpling several scalloped circles which were secured in the center with a brad and then hidden with a more decorative button on top.  Most of the papers on this project were made from various My Mind's Eye collections.

This is probably a stretch, but for this project I diecut my "handmade" flowers on my Silhoutte machine and then crinkled and distressed the leaves which were cut from a patterned paper. This layout was created for a past Craft Warehouse Scrapbook Club in which we were challenged to use the leaf button and a leaf print paper (which turned out to not really be my taste, but after some alterations I was pleased with how well they blended in with my other Basic Grey papers used).

Thanks for peeking! I'll be back tomorrow to share a layout I created for Elizabeth's scraplift challenge. :)

I'm so excited!

I'm so excited! I have been invited to join this year's design team at Craft Warehouse! Last Thursday they posted on facebook that they started making calls at 4pm. Of course my phone never rings, but it rang about a half dozen times that day and of course it was never Craft Warehouse.... :( By the time 7pm rolled around I was feeling pretty down that I hadn't made the cut. I was so sure they had already called everyone for their 11-person search. Anyway, when the phone rang at 7:30 I thought it was one of my sister's calling me back and I was completely speechless when it was Jeanean on the other end. I stammered over my words and made a complete idiot of myself, but I've been secretly floating on a cloud ever since. I'm not sure why, but I've been sort of savoring the invite and have only shared the news with like 3 people so far (two of which include my husband and oldest daughter). :)

Anyway, I thought I would share my winning enteries...

We were asked to submit 1 altered project...

Used mostly different My Mind's Eye paper lines on this one. Tried to mix it up a bit because I knew I wanted to use the bird from the Quite Contrary line, but I also wanted to tie in the blue color from another home decor pieces I had made for my room. The yellow floral paper is by Echo Park. I couldn't find the right blue flower for the top that I had in mind so I ended up buying a white one and adding chalk ink to achieve the color I wanted (Stamped Home phrase by Papertrey Ink Boards & Beams). :)

Two Cards...

A cupcake Card using Echo Park's Little Girl line. Embossed the folds in the wrapper using Martha Stewart's Scoreboard tool and inked with chalk inks for added definition. Applied glossy accents to pink polka-dot paper to give the "sprinkles" extra shine.

Made this card using My Mind's Eye Alphabet Soup Collection, Martha Stewart border punch, Basic Grey Buttons.

And Two Layouts...

For this one I used Echo Park's Be Mine collection and wove the paper and glued between each weave. I then used my spellbinders to diecut the woven paper into heart shapes. :)

For this one I started by trying to sew a running stitch on the outside of the paper circle to gather it into a flower (like you would with fabric), but I quickly realized this technique was for the birds so I had the bright idea to wrap my paper around a quarter for a perfect circular flower everytime. Just remove the quarter template, glue down with my favorite Beacon's 3-in-1 glue and top with a brad. Would also work with a spellbinders template for different sizes. It was a major Woo-hoo moment! :)

(Papers by Basic Grey's Hello Lucious)



(All paper and most supplies can be found at your local Craft Warehouse store). Thanks so much for stopping by and peeking. :)

A couple more Spring Cards

OK, so I completely dropped the ball on having a new post for each day of the week last week so today I have two cards to share. :)

I made this card for last month's Card Club using Unity stamps to match Cosmo Cricket's Pixie-Licious Mini Deck. We were challenged to use the green ribbon and little "beads" on our card in some way...

This second card started out as a Craft Warehouse make-n-take at Card club this month, but it was a bit too simple for my taste, so I dressed it up to put my own mark on it. I added the pink stripes (using Impression Obsession background stamp), cut out a scalloped frame (using Spellbinder dies) which I stiched on, added the fun little white enamel dots to the berry (by Ranger) and added the bow, button and baker's twine for some extra flair... Between the two of us I think it turned out pretty cute--Marilyn had the most clever idea to use flower petals cut apart from a daisy punch to use for the green part of the strawberry! (Other supplies: patterned paper by Doodlebug and Itty Bitty Stamp by Unity).

An early Mother's Day Card

I was so inspired by this card I found made by my scrapbook idol Jennifer Gallacher (you can see her blog here)...

...that I made my own version on the Silhouette as early mother's day cards. I ended up making four of them for mothers and grandmothers in my life this year. :)

I used the teacup card shape found here
that I stretched and pulled the dimensions on so that it would perfectly fit an A2 sized card (4.25 x 5.5)


Additional Supplies:
My Mind's Eye "Luscious" patterned paper
Hero Arts "Elegant Brocade" wood stamp
Papertrey Ink Sentiment Stamps
Spellbinders Circle and Scalloped Circle Dies
Sizzix Original Tag Die
Colorbox "Creamy Brown" Chalk Ink
Baker's Twine and Button
Prima Flower

Thanks for peeking! :)

A Lollipop Birthday Card

Today I'm sharing another card which I made when I was challenged by my local scrapbook store to make a card using the pinking circle diecut and this hot pink brad on a card somehow. I chose to create a cheerful and fun shaped card using the Sweet Lollipop card template by Silhouette America.



After I cut out and adhered all the pieces, I went over the swirl with Stickles glitter glue. The inside Spellbinders pinking circle was stamped with a Hero Arts Scalloped circle stamp and the cute sentiment is from the Fillable Frames #1 series by Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for stopping by. Tomorrow I will try to set a new personal record by posting yet again. For those friends and family that subscribe, but don't scrapbook (wink-wink) I apologize in advance. :)

Some Spring Cards to share

Thought it was about time to dust off this blog and share some fun new stuff I've been working on. I have finally pretty much finished selling off my mountains of Ebay inventory (sold 1700 articles of children's clothing in 2 months time, working about 60 hours a week plus some for a good long time). I am so burnt out on that and so very excited to be back doing something creative. I'm going to try my best to update this blog once each day of this week with some new cards I've been busy making.

Today I'm sharing a couple cards featuring a cloud kick I was on. My local scrapbook store challenged us to make cards with the theme "things that fly". I got so inspired I made three cards. Here are two of them...

We were required to use an ivory card base (something I found very challenging with the bright, cheery "things that fly" theme so I added an ivory banner behind the plane to tie in the card base. We also were required to use the brad I used on the propeller (which proved to be another huge challenge for me).

This card is my favorite. I made hand cut the sunrays and used my Silhouette to cut out the fun hot air balloon. It's not to often that an idea in my head actually works out on paper, but this one did. :)


Thanks for peeking and hopefully I can stay on top of my schedule to be back tomorrow to share another card I've been working on. :)

My card featured in Lawn Fawn's CHA booth!

I am literally buried under a mountain of work. The day after Christmas I bought over 1500 Spring and Summer clearance items at Gymboree to sell on Ebay and for the past 1-1/2 months I have been preparing those listings and selling the items off. It actually took me about a month to get them ready and I then listed them all at once. Anyway, in the 19 days since I listed them I have sold and shipped out 1000 items. Phew! I am exhausted and unfortunately barely have had time to sleep, let alone be crafty.

I did just finally get around to catching up over at the lawn fawn blog though and thought I would share a picture she posted of my card that was featured in their CHA booth. Yeah! It's so fun to see it among all the other great winners!


They're pretty simple, but here are a few other cards I managed to sneak in just in time for Valentine's Day...

The first two feature Unity Stamps that I just had to have a year ago and they're just now finally seeing ink. Colored the images with Copics and finally played around a little with masking off the mailbox image and pulling out my Copic airbrush for the background. I still have some learning to do in that department.


This last one uses just some of those cheap $1 stamps from Imaginisce and some paper scraps I had laying around. I made several so I could have some quick birthday cards on hand. The sentiment is by papertrey ink who I am in love with.

Thanks for peeking. Hope you all have a very Happy Valentine's Day! :)

One more Lawn Fawn Card...

Here's my last Lawn Fawn card I was working on. I had to run to Joann's to get the tulle today to complete the idea I had. For $.17 I came home with enough tulle to embellish 3 or 4 cards. Such a deal and yet I think it was the perfect finishing touch!

It's really hard to see, but the darker green has a bow print and the lighter green has a flower print. I think I need to switch to a darker ink, but luckily the subtle look works for this card.



Thanks for peeking and thanks again to Lawn Fawn for the entertaining challenge--If nothing else it was a pure pleasure to have a good excuse to play with my toys! :)

A Fun Lawn Fawn Challenge

It's once again been a long time since I've updated. Apparently I need a good excuse and today I have one! Over on Lawn Fawn's blog they've posted a fun new challenge here looking for ideas using their adorable "Sew Lovely" set. Actually they're looking for ideas for several sets, but I only have two of their sets and this just happened to be one of them. I love these stamps!!! They're so whimsical and made from excellent quality polymer for crisp images every time!


Part of the challenge was that we couldn't use patterned paper and could only use the stamps from this set so I ended up making my own "homemade" patterned paper by repeating many of the stamps in the background. Some of them are hard to see in the picture but almost every paper has a pattern. I was having so much fun I ended up making 5 different cards. I'm still putting the finishing touches on one of them though so I'll just share 4 of them today:

CARD #1

CARD #2

CARD #3

CARD #4

We were having an extremely gloomy Northwest weather type of day today so I was having the hardest time getting good photos. The stamped images appear more washed out than they are in real life. Thanks for peeking! It was such a fun challenge to play along with! :)

An Unexpected Endeavor!

Yeah! It's official! We heard that the developer has accepted our offer on a Prune Hill lot we put in an offer for yesterday. It will be a little scary scraping up the down payment so close to Christmas shopping, but I'm thinking this glow can get me through it. Our plan is to hold onto it for a couple years and "maybe" start building in 18 months or so.

It's hard to see it, but our lot is just shy of 1/3 acre on a steep culdasac back there. Yoshi and I were talking about maybe selling in 4-5 years, but on a whim we both woke up last Saturday in the mood to window shop for houses to see where the market is. Before we knew it we really fell in love with this great location in Camas close to the freeway on a subdivision that went bankrupt 2 years ago at the height of the market. It felt ideal to buy and hold for a better time to sell our current house. Now we're thinking maybe we'll sell in 2 years right before Sydney enters middle school. I can't believe how quickly the deal is going--God has actually made everything fall into place so easily. It turns out I called the realtor just 5 minutes before he was heading into a meeting to sell the remaining lots to a builder that they were in discussions with. Bless that builder's heart--They said they would be willing to give up the lot we we're interested in! We close in 30 days! To think this time last week we had no intentions of buying anything... :)

This is our view from the edge of our culdasac/Front side of our lot:

Nightviews of NE Portland off the back of our lot

If you squint, far off in the distance on a clear day you can see downtown portland from the backend of our lot. I think I'm going to pin this inspiration photo next to my monitor to remind me to stop all my frivilous online spending (particularly when it comes to scrapbook supplies since I already need a dedicated u-haul to move what I have). We'll be pinching our pennies for that scary construction loan downpayment! :)

Well, I'm off to daydream about my future scrapbook room! :)