Another a"maze"ing card

Happy Halloween! The kids woke me up bright & early wanting to get their costumes on for the parties at school. I certainly feel sorry for the teachers today! Both of my boys wanted costumes from their favourite video game "Minecraft". The youngest is "Steve" (check out that diamond sword) and my oldest is a "Creeper" (the bad guy). I had a late night cutting & pasting these costumes together (just printed cardstock glued over paper bags) but the kids are happy so it's worth it.

My other crafting project has been the creation of Halloween cards for the kids. This card is the one I made for my younger son.

I made a set of cards with mazes on the front for the BC Children's Hospital and the boys asked to have similar cards for themselves. For this one I used a digi from Dustin Pike's Doodle Dragon Studios which I inserted into a dollar store maze. The papers are Bo Bunny and the border punch is Martha Stewart. The sentiment is printed off my computer. This was a very quick card to put together - I think the longest time was spent prying the maze apart so thatI could replace the inside image with the digi.

Have a wonderful Halloween!

Challenges:

• 2 Sisters - Halloween colours
• 4 Crafty Chicks - Halloween
• ABC Challenges - Halloween in a hurry (make the card in less than 30 mins)
• Craft Punked - Halloween
• Crazy Amigo - Halloween
• One Stop Craft - Halloween
• Top Tip Tuesday - Halloween

It's been a punchy Christmas

I recently purchased one of the 3-in-1 punches from Stampin' Up and I have been having so much fun with it! I decided to use the punch for this year's Christmas cards (see the sample one below). I mixed & matched the glitter (Glitter Ritz) as well as the papers I used, thus getting very different looks.

I also used the same punch for my gift tags this year. Along with the Stampin' Up punch, I also used the Martha Stewart pine branch punch. And I have to brag at my thriftiness (LOL) because the clear beads/gems added to the sprig of pine actually came from the Christmas crackers we used 2 years ago! How's that for using up stash!

 

Challenges:

• 4 Crafty Chicks - something new (the punch!)
• Charisma Cardz - anything goes
• Cooking it up with Katie - anything goes
• Divas by Design - Christmas
• Little Red Wagon - something new
• Partytime Tuesdays - anything goes
• Unstampabelles - Christmas

Oh Christmas tree ...

Update:  Yay me! These trees were showcased by UnstampaBelles and chosen by My Sheri Crafts.

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I just love the cover project on Paper Creations Magazine this month and so I had to try re-creating it for myself. Well, the tree ended up being so fun & easy that I made 3!

To keep the project super simple and to ensure that all 3 trees coordinated, I used double-sided Christmas paper from "My Mind's Eye" ("The Merry Days of Christmas" collection) along with some inexpensive red cardstock. I topped 2 of the trees with fuzzy green ribbon and a few buttons from my stash. I followed the instructions in the magazine pretty closely for the first 2 trees but got a bit creative with the last one (in front). Instead of looping the paper, I used my Martha Stewart fringe scissors to cut the strips - once the resulting fringe is curled and then layered, the end tree looks almost fuzzy. I'm thinking about doing a couple more - maybe using ribbon instead of paper.

Challenges:

• 2 Sisters - holiday
• Crafts 4 Eternity - Christmas decorations
• Craft Your Days Away - buttons or bows (buttons on tops of the trees)
• Craft Your Passion - anything winter or holiday
• My Sheri Crafts - decorate for Christmas
• Our Creative Corner - include a Christmas tree
• Ribbon Reel - anything goes
• Totally Papercrafts - Christmas
• Unstampabelles - trees

Spooktacular Halloween

It's been awhile since I made anything but a standard card so I decided to make this Halloween card an easel design. The digi is from Dustin Pike's Doodle Dragon Studio (I just can't get enough of Dudley the dragon) and I've coloured him using my wonderful Copic markers. The corners are punched using one of Martha Stewart's around the page corner punches.

Challenges (lots of halloween inspiration this week!):

4 Crafty Chicks - marker it up
Southern Girls - stripes & polka dots
Crafting for all Seasons - halloween
Creative Card Crew - spooky fun
Creative Stamp Friends - halloween
Digital Tuesday - halloween
Dream Valley Challenges - halloween
Here Come the Boys - halloween
Magical Monday - halloween
One Stop Craft - halloween
Paper Creations Ink - halloween
Paper Take Weekly - halloween colours
Quirky Crafts - halloween
Simon Says Stamp and Show - stripes
The Crazy Challenge - halloween
Whimsical Wednesdays - halloween
Sentimental Sundays - fancy folds
Through the Craftroom Door - halloween

Tough enough to wear pink

This was a totally fun card to create. The image is a freebie at Dude Time Doodles and we were asked to create a project using pink. Now pink & gargoyles don't really go together in my mind but I'm actually really liking the finished card.

Along with the DTD  image, I've used patterned paper from Martha Stewart. And in the 2 corners, I've embossed two pieces of scrap acetate (from packaging) using a funky Halloween Cuttlebug folder. The sketch is from Card Positioning Systems.

Cards for Men - make us laugh
CAS Sunday - think pink
Corrosive Challenges - flying things
Crafty Cardmakers - cute with a dark twist
Creative Stamp Friends - halloween
Dream Valley Challenges - halloween
Here Come the Boys - halloween
Incy Wincy Designs - recycle (the acetate)
Magical Monday - halloween
Paper Creations Ink - halloween
Simon Says Stamp and Show - things with wings
The Crazy Challenge - halloween

A Gothic Hallowe'en

Another Halloween card to donate to Cards for Kids (Canada) (a charity that provides handmade cards to hospitalized kids). This time I decided to go very simple and kind of gothic, using a Martha Stewart acetate die cut (the chandelier) and a layered sentiment die cut.

Challenges

2 Sisters - black, white, 1 other colour

365 Cards - make your sentiment stand out

Craft Fancy - die cuts

Crafting When We Can - anything goes

Fab n Funky - bingo (I chose embellishments, ribbon, die cuts)

Pretty in Pink

Every year while I was growing up my grandmother and/or great-aunt would make my sister & I matching outfits for pictures. As a result, I have a stack of photos of my little sister and I in outfits ranging from adorable to quite hideous (and I leave it to you to decide which end of the spectrum these land in). I am slowly starting to scrapbook the pictures and I'm really trying to do them justice.

I was 6 (& my sister 2 or 3) in this picture but I still remember loving this poncho - I would play with the pom pom constantly.  This picture was quite a challenge to scrapbook though because the photo itself is quite damaged. Aside from the scratches and dust, there is also quite a bit of discolouration on my sister's face (she's the one with the weird green blotch across her eye). I cleaned up the picture as much as I could using Photoshop but I just couldn't get rid of the green until I converted the picture to black & white. Unfortunately, that also meant that the wonderful pink of these hand-made ponchos was lost. In the end I added the colour back to the ponchos while leaving the rest of the picture black & white. I'm quite pleased with the result.

I started this page with a raspberry Bazzil cardstock, then overlaid a white eyelet cut-out paper to mirror the crochet pattern of the ponchos. I then triple-matted the photo with subtle patterned paper. The sentiment was designed using SCAL and then cut on the Cricut. I added some gems to the "i" for a bit of shine. The flower was made from a disassembled cardstock flower (the first layer was the wrong colour so I replaced it with one I made using a spellbinders die). I also added gems to the cardstock sticker borders to add shine.

Recipe:

• Bazzil cardstock
• Making Memories white diecut eyelet paper
• Basic Grey patterned papers & cardstock border stickers, "Bittersweet" collection
• Cricut (to cut out sentiment)
• Gems (stash)
• Spellbinders nestabilities
• K & Company chipboard flower & hearts

  Challenges:

• Scrapbook Challenges, recipe (4 DP, 3 letter/word title, 2 chipboard accents)
• Scrapbook Challenges, colour (pink, light blue, light brown) (pink is the dominant colour but there is lgt blue and brown in the accents)
• Midnight Madness, sketch
• A Spoon Full of Sugar, cute & girly
• Incy Wincy, blast from the past (it doesn't get more retro than these ponchos from the 70's)

Making better use of images

Just like most crafters, I love to acquire stamp images and other supplies but I don't always use what I have.  With that in mind, the latest challenge fromthe PCP group for Phindy's Place is quite a good one for me. Phindy has challenged us to use one image in two different ways (all the better to justify our purchases). I am still working on the second card using this image, but I wanted to post this first card today as it is based on a sketch for the Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge ending tomorrow.

Other challenges:

• Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge - sketch

• Pile It On - animal-riffic
• Hand Full of Stamps - something sweet (what's sweeter than a hug?)
• Cute Card Thursday - dimension (I've got layers, popped up embellishments, thick ribbon)
• Play Date Cafe - colour challenge

Another vintage card

I was so happy with the way my last card using a vintage image worked out that I decided to try another. This card is to congratulate my husband's nephew on the birth of his second daughter. I found the image on the Digital Two for Tuesday site and just fell in love with the sweetness of the two little girls holding hands.

Once again I am using a sketch from Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge. Their sketches are just so good and they always include two versions - one clean & simple and one fancier.

I'm also entering this card into these additional challenges:

• Digital Tuesday Challenge - create something girly
• Fab 'N Funky Challenges - theme is "it's childish" (this card is to welcome a new baby)
• Stampotique Designers Challenge - theme is "love" (this card just screams of sisterly love to me)
• C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - digi colouring

Recipe:

• Patterned paper - Basic Grey
• Digital image - free vintage image from Digital Two for Tuesday
• Spellbinders nestabilities die cut
• miscellaneous buttons

Halloween Cards

Trick or Treat Everyone!

This is a record, 2 blog posts in one day but this will be a quick one. I just wanted to post my Halloween cards before Halloween is actually here!


This first card is my very favorite - the bats & stars are altered with glitter and glossy accents and then connected with orange wire. The stamp is from the Recollections "Halloween" set. And thanks to Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge for the "Hocus Pocus" inspiration. I just love the witch on this stamp since the spray of stars following her tones down the "scary" and pushes up the "whimsy" (kind of like the movie). I wanted to add some dimension to the card so in addition to layering the papers, I also added punched bats and stars that were embellished with glossy accents and attached to orange wire.




This card is totally thanks to my friend Jacqui since I used her stamps (another Recollections set). The images are coloured in with Copics and then cut out and mounted with pop dots.




This card is another favorite from this year. I used a Penny Black stamp along with the Cuttlebug web embossing folder. The bats are punched with Martha Stewart bat punch and then glossy accents added for shine. And, of course, I used my Copics to colour everything in.




I got the idea for this card from a UK paper-crafting magazine. Pulling gently on the sides of the card causes the stamped witch legs and ghost to pop up. The stamp on front is a Stampin' Up image that I pulled off a make & take. The paper is super distressed to give the entire card a spooooky look.