Vintage dancer

It's almost 11pm (which for anyone who knows me, knows is VERY late for me) but I really wanted to finish this card while the idea was in my head. I made this card for an 18-year old girl who recently discovered she has MS. McKenzie loves to dance and when I saw this vintage newspaper photo on The Graphics Fairy I just thought it would be ideal. This dancer's smile and attitude just shine, in much the same way that this modern girl shines (to hear more about McKenzie, check out Dustin Pike's blog).

I used my brand-new, delivered yesterday, Basic Grey "Cappella" papers & stickers. The photo is straight black & white but printed off with a bit of a sepia tone so the colours are just perfect. The sketch is from Midnight Madness and was a stretch for me - I don't usually do stitching on cards but I love how the laces echo the lacing of ballet slippers.

Recipe:

• Basic Grey "Capella" papers & stickers
• Fiber (DMC cross-stitch floss)

Challenges:

• Midnight Madness, sketch
• Create 4 Fun - make a vintage card
• Pile it On - out of the box (although I love vintage, using a photo and addingstitching is very "out of the box" for me
• Simon Says Stamps Challenge - pink, green, brown
• Polka Doodle - sew & sew
• ABC Challenge - "V" is for vintage
• Paper Play - "up in the air" (I'm probably stretching it, but I believe that ballerinas do fly through the air)
• The Crazy Challenge - girly

Special RAK Event

Lisa is a design team member for several of my favourite digital stamp designers and she recently posted the following:

I am having a special event for my sister Jayme. She is in her early 50's and has terminal lung cancer. To make it worse, her sweet dachshund Molly passed away a couple weeks ago. Today we learned her cancer has spread to several other areas and her time is running out. I am asking for all my card making friends to send her a fun card...not really get well cards obviously, but something pretty or funny that will make her smile. She is a frog collector so frog cards would be awesome!

I think its wonderful that all of us crafters are being given a chance to (hopefully) brighten someone's day by doing what we love. I made the following card for Jayme - I hope it makes her smile a little bit. If you want to make a card for Jayme too, check out Lisa's blog - she is also offering some great candy for everyone that participates.

About the card:
I went a little crazy mixing & matching designers for this card. The princess is from Mo's Digital Pencil, the sentiment ("I better get a new palace out of this") and frog are recent freebies from Tiddly Inks (PCP group only) and the mushroom is from Stretch 'n Bubbles. All are coloured with Copic markers, then liberally bling'd up with Stickles. I fussy-cut the frog and then attached him with pop-dots to the mushroom - it looks really 3-D in real life. I'm proud of myself for pulling out some unused stash, too - I used chalk pastels that I haven't touched in 6 mths around the edges of each shape. Finally, I couldn't decide which ribbon to use so I ended up using both. I think the double bow enclosure gives the card an interesting finish.

Recipe:

• Mo's Digital Pencil, "Kissy" digital stamp
• Stretch 'n Bubbles, "Mushroom" digital stamp
• Tiddly Inks, sentiment & "Prince Charming" digital stamps
• Cornish Heritage Farms, "the Kim Hughes collection - MochaChica" papers
• Ribbon, stash
• Copic markers
• Stickles glitter glue

Challenges:

• Mo's Digital Challenge - love
• Stamp Something - use two of something (2 main images; two-fold card; two ribbons)
• Totally Gorjuss - bling it up
• Paper Sundaes - favourite book, poem or fairy tale (princess & the frog)
• The Crazy Challenge - girly
• Digital Tuesday Challenge - cute people (how cute is this little girl?)
• Everybody Art Challenge - fairy tale (princess & the frog)
• Crafty Creations - use your favourite stamp (easy to see why I love Mo's little princess)
• Creative Card Crew - pink & green
• Crafty Ho's Challenge - photo inspiration (if anyone would wear this hat, it would be this girl)

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)

You rock!

Another quick card for a couple of challenges that are ending today. The picture isn't very good (there is no natural light today, at all, due to the heavy rain) and hopefully I can remember to replace it with a better one soon.

I made this card with a bunch of freebies. The background paper was created in Photoshop using a Polka Doodles download pack, and the image is a freebie from Tiddly Inks (her PCP group members only, so join if you haven't already). The Polka Doodles challenge was to add texture/dimension so I layered the paper, popped up the sentiment and stamp image and finally added some buttons. I wish I had some flat rocks to add (wouldn't that have been the perfect touch?) but I figured these buttons were sort of suggestive of rock.

Recipe:

• 
  
  Tiddly Inks, digital stamp
• 
  
  Polka Doodles, digital pack
• 
  
  Buttons (stash)
• 
  
  Bazzil cardstock
• 
  
  Copic markers
• 
  
  Adobe Photoshop

Challenges:

• 
  
  Polka Doodles - add texture dimension
• 
  
  Tiddly Inks - don't use designer paper (so I made my own!)
• 
  
  Totally Gorjuss - round & round; use circles
• 
  
  Crazy 4 Challenges - must have a pocket (his shorts' have pockets and I also found one of the buttons in the pocket of my son's pants!)
• 
  
  Our Creative Corner - masculine birthday
• 
  
  Stamp, Scrap & Doodle - masculine
• 
  
  Charisma Cardz - 3D

Phindy's "Christmas in Spring" challenge

Just a quick post today and no, I haven't missed the fact that Spring is here (although it's kind of hard to believe considering the rain that's been falling). Today's card is in answer to a challenge from Phindy's Place - to make a Christmas card.

I had lots of fun pulling out the Christmas papers and looking through the winter images. I decided on this one of a boy sledding as he reminds me of my kids when they were sledding this past winter. I created the snowy hills by tearing and inking (with Copic BG0000) the edges of some sparkly paper recovered from last Christmas' crackers. I love how it looks like he's flying over the top of the snow!

Recipe:

• 
  
  Basic Grey "Eskimo Kisses" patterned paper
• 
  
  Sparkly card (stash, old Christmas crackers)
• 
  
  Brad (stash)
• 
  
  Phindy's Place, digital stamp
• 
  
  Copic markers

Challenges:

• 
  
  Phindy's Place Challenge - Christmas in Spring
• 
  
  Corrosive Challenges - easel card


• 
  
  Paper Sundaes - easel card

Generations

When my Dad came to visit over the winter he brought a folder of photos and notes from his genealogy research. I spent some time scanning photos and now need to get them scrapbooked. I just love old family photos - they can tell us so much about our history and where we came from.

This page has a photo of my great-grandmother and grandmother. The photo would be early 1920's. My grandma would have been 3 or 4 years old at the time - isn't she adorable? I find it amazing how similar my sister looked at the same age, although it might just be the pageboy haircut.

I wanted to draw the eye to Gramma so I added some colour to her sweater (using Photoshop). This is the first time I've tried this and I'm quite pleased with the result. To embellish the page, I made my own flower embellishments by fussy-cutting some of the flowers out of the patterned paper. There weren't enough flowers on the sheet so I scanned it, used Photoshop to isolate the flowers, adjusted their size and then printed them off. I added some fabric leaves from my stash and then layered everything onto the page using pop-dots. I finished off with a few green pearls to add a bit of bling (everything needs bling) and then a raised journaling square.

Recipe:

• 
  
  Bazzill cardstock
• 
  
  Imaginisce "Scratched" rub-ons
• 
  
  Fancy Pants Designs "Pansy" patterned paper
• 
  
  Fabric leaves (stash)
• 
  
  Pearls (stash)

Challenges:

• 
  
  Fab n' Funky - make your own embellishments
• 
  
  Practical Scrappers - use patterned paper (used for background and to make embellishments)
• 
  
  The Pink Elephant - use pink (pink for embellishments & matting)

Encouragement card for a stranger

I love making cards but just don't have that many people to give them to, so when I read in her blog that, Phindy's Place designer, Philomena's sister was very ill and needed some encouragement I decided this would be a perfect opportunity to make a card that would actually be sent to someone.

I used a crocus image from Paper Garden which I coloured with Copic markers. The sentiment is from a Melissa Frances sentiment set. I didn't have anything of the appropriate size/dimension so I just stamped the image repeatedly over the 2 squares which I think ends up looking quite nice. The final touch were border strips along the side and bottom. I decorated the envelope with a third copy of the crocus image.

Recipe:

• Paper Garden, digital stamp
• Melissa Frances, sentiment
• Martha Stewart, border punches
• Copic markers
• Basic Grey, patterned paper

Challenges:

• Crafty Ho's, sketch