Totally Papercrafts #163

TGIF! This has been a long week and I am *so* glad that it is Friday! I'm also glad to be bringing you a fun Totally Papercrafts challenge this week - Monochromatic. We are being sponsored this week by DigiStamp Boutique. I chose these lovely poppies from the Sketchy Flowers set.

Supplies: Sketchy Flowers (DSB), For Mum digi paper (DSB), diamond dp (Creative Memories), 

ribbon (Michaels), pearls (Recollections), silver cs, 

Aqua Lagoon pearlescent cs (Paper and More) and Copics.

I did include a few bits of accent color (yellow flower centers and a silver mat behind the flowers), but everything else is done in shades of aqua. The floral dp is actually a sort of "happy accident". It's from the "For Mum" digi-paper set and is supposed to be green. However, my color ink is low and it came out this lovely aqua blue instead.

I'm submitting my card into the following challenges:
Shelly's Images - April Showers Bring May FLOWERS
Rhedd and Rosies - Monochrome
Creative Moments - Spring (I'm assuming flowers count as a spring image)
Nutcrafters - Anything Goes

Hop on over to the Totally Papercrafts blog and check out the other DT monochromatic cards. Be sure to play along for a chance to win some digis from our fantastic sponsor, DigiStamp Boutique!
Lisa

A Saturated Challenge!

This week's Totally Papercrafts challenge is sponsored by Saturated Canary, so our theme for this week's challenge is to use saturated colors. That is, colors that are intense and bright like these:

Somehow, in the excitement of choosing an image for my card, yours truly completely forgot the theme and chose... Wedding Day. You know - Wedding as in "all dressed in white" - as in no color, much less saturated color. Oops!! However, I realized that she did have hair and eyes that I could color vibrantly. She was carrying a bouquet. And, the more I looked at card samples on the web, I found most people colored the underskirt that peeks out from the front of her dress. So, being able to saturate those elements with color along with some pretty saturated dp yielded this card:

The swirly paper is from The Paper Studio and the dotted paper is a scrap of PTI Raspberry Fizz Bitty Dot dp. She's colored with Copics (of course!) with some pearls, silver ribbon, ultrafine glitter and pearlescent fabric paint (the dots of her crown/headband). Because the paper was rather fussy/busy, I kept the card embellishments to a minimum.

I always have the worst time trying to catch the shimmer of glitter, but hopefully you can see some of the details here:

She is a beautiful bride, isn't she?

You know the drill. :) Head on over to the Totally Papercrafts blog and check out the other dt members cards (and give them a little love on their blogs, if time allows - everyone loves a compliment or two on their cards). Then, play along with our Saturated Color challenge for a chance to win a prize from Krista and Saturated Canary!
Lisa

Another Totally Papercrafts Challenge

Happy Friday! Welcome to another fun Totally Papercrafts challenge! This week's challenge is simple - just include ribbon and/or bow(s) on your card. Our sponsor this week is Stamp and Create. Play along with the challenge for a chance to win a $20 gift certificate to the Stamp and Create store.

This was my Valentines Day card for my oldest daughter, Jess. It's not the most traditional of Valentines images, but she *loves* giraffes so I just had to include one on her card. :)  This PWCO stamp (no longer in business) started out as just a plain giraffe. I added a heart punched out of cardstock, shaded it with a Copic marker and placed it where it would be if he was holding in his mouth.. Then I stamped a second giraffe head, cut it out and layered it on top of the heart. (If you look closely, you can see that part of the image stands out from the rest.)

I'm entering this little cutie in this week's Hearts challenge on the Catered Crop blog as well as the Ribbons and/or Lace challenge on the Let's Ink It Up blog.

Head on over to the Totally Papercrafts challenge blog to check out all the ways that the DT included ribbon and/or bows in their cards.

Happy Friday!!!!
Lisa

Keeping It Simple with Mo

So much for having lots of time over the 3 day weekend to stamp. Ha! However, I did get the bulk of my craft room clean up done and could even vacuum it today, I don't normally get excited about vacuuming, but in this case, it was an exciting accomplishment! ;-)

I did, however, have time to put together a quick card for this week's Digital Pencil/Mo Manning challenge - Clean & Simple. This has always been one of my favorite Mo images, yet I've never made a card with it. However, as part of my craft room clean up, I challenged myself to only use an image I'd already printed/stamped and to only use paper from my scrap stash. (Believe me, with as many scraps as I have this was not a hardship! lol!)

This project started out as a birthday card. However, while going through my word stamps, I found this old phrase stamp from The Angel Company and I thought it fit this image so perfectly. So, now it's a thank you card with "Thanks!" typed on the inside. :) I am also entering this card in the following challenges:
Sentimental Sundays - Ribbon (and a sentiment)
Crafts and Me Challenges - Anything goes
Cute Card Thursday - You're Having a Laugh

Well, no more fun in my nice clean stamping room tonight. (And, yes, I did clean up after myself!) Back to work tomorrow - yuck! At least it's a short one.

Have a great week!
Lisa

Friends are the Flowers of Life - Tiddly Inks Blog Hop

I actually have two posts today. (Shocking, but true! LOL) If you're looking for this week's Totally Papercrafts challenge, scroll on down. After you check out my entry into the Tiddly Inks blog hop, of course. ;-)

I'm so excited to be participating in today's blog hop. I've been a fan of Christy Kroll's work ever since I "discovered" her through her work for Stamping Bella. I love, love, love the new Wryn character. She is just too sweet - but you can see she has a fun and maybe even a slightly spunky side to her, too. She reminds me a lot of my youngest daughter. (Even though my own little Wryn is now a teenager and taller than me!)

Without further ado (or blabbing from me!) here is my "Friends are the Flowers of Life" blog hop entry. I used this week's Sweet Sketch Wednesday sketch for my layout. I hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed making it.

I can't wait to see all the other great cards along the blog hop!
Lisa

Spots and Stripes

It's Friday so that means it's time for another fun challenge from Totally Papercrafts. This week's challenge is "Spots and Stripes".  While cleaning out my craft room, I found some cute yellow and aqua spotted Amuse notecards. (Not sure when or where I bought them. Eek!) I was anxious to use of one my new Your Next Stamp (YNS) stamps, so I decided to pair the YNS chick with a yellow Amuse notecard. I had to cheat a bit on the stripe part of the challenge - if you look carefully at the mat behind the little chick, you'll notice the subtle stripes in this Wild Asparagus paper.

Other challenges I'm entering:
Cupcake Craft Room - anything goes
My Mums Craft Shop Challenges - something new (the YNS chick)

I've recently rediscovered my Prismacolor pencils. As much as I love my Copics, I do still love the feel of laying down colored pencil on paper. And I love the shading I can get when I use OMS (odorless mineral spirits) with the pencils. I guess I never did outgrow my love of coloring. :)

I"m also happy that I think I've finally figured out a good arrangement for my light box and light. I am plagued with a house that doesn't have a single good place to photograph with natural light. I found a tip online to use clamp on work lights from the hardware store along with full spectrum light bulbs (GE "Reveal", for example). Ta-da - lighting success! I hardly had to fiddle with Photoshop at all!

Head on over to the Totally Papercrafts blog and check out the other Spots and Stripes samples. And be sure to play along for a chance at a great prize from Alota Stamps!
Lisa

Fab Fourth Fab Friday

This week's Fab Friday post has a 4th of July theme. I recently signed up to receive emails from Bo Bunny (love their paper!). I received an email today promoting their free desktop calendar themed wallpaper. This month's wallpaper has a patriotic red, white and blue theme. Great! They even have a detailed PDF file with instructions on how to upload your own photos into the wallpaper template. Fun! I can't wait to try it out! Here's the link:

Bo Bunny Freebies

Today's card isn't exactly Fourth of July, but it does feature this Kraftin Kimmie bathing suit beauty, Eleanor. For me, Fourth of July means hot weather and swimming at the lake! (Oh, and fireworks, too, of course!) I am so happy to finally have time to participate in one of Kraftin' Kimmies challenges again. And this week's challenge is "Make a Splash". This was perfect as I own three swimming themed different Kraftim Kimmie stamps.

For all those in the U.S. - Have a wonderful holiday weekend!
Lisa

DP2 Challenge #18

Things have settled down and I'm happy to be back participating in challenges again. Last week, I was able to participate in Mo Manning's DP2 Challenge and waited anxiously for the this week's challenge to be announced. Oh no! The new challenge was a color challenge - use red, white and pink along with a heart on your card. I love it! The problem was THIS was my card last week. Hmm, seems the red/pink/white/heart thing had just been done...

I still wanted to participate but didn't want to make a traditional Valentine card again. So, I came up with this card:


This is Valentines Day card that I'll put away to give my teenage daughter next year. I wanted the dog and cat to resemble our pets, so the dog has yellow Lab coloring and the cat resembles our cat Tiger. (That's Tiger you see up top in my blog banner. You can see a picture of Dixie on this post.) I had a lot of fun coloring in this image!

Gratitude

I have a lot to be thankful for this week. Not only did I get to keep my job next year, I got proof once again of how wonderful my co-workers are. They were so sweet when they found out I would still be there next year. One gave me a hug, another told me that he emailed the principal to tell him all I did for the department, etc. My bosses both deserve a big thank you for putting in a good word for me with the principal. So, I made thank you cards for both of them.


This first card is for my female boss. I used this adorable Ketto (sorry - don't remember which one she is) along with some scraps from my stash. For the layout, I used week's MojoMonday sketch. (I love this sketch! It was a lot of fun) The image was colored with Copics.


This is the card I made for my male boss. I don't have too many "guy images" but I thought this retired Western set from TAC would work. I used a scrap of TAC's Rustic Chic along with TAC's brown and kraft cardstocks. I always have a hard time with masculine cards. All the usual card embellies - flowers, ribbons, etc. - are too girly. I did have some antique metal brads and twine in my stash, though. I also used my Heidi Swapp distressing tool to rough up the edges a bit to give it a more masculine/rustic feel. The image is colored with Prismacolor pencils and a blender pencil.

I'm hoping for a more calm, less stressful work week this week. Have a great week!