Papertrey Ink Casual Mid Week Challenges 10 & 11

I just realized that I have a camera at work that I can use while mine is gone. Only problem is that the batteries are dead. I have them on the charger and hopefully will be able to post a few updates soon.

Batteries are charged and ready to go so here they are:

The first was a sketch challenge, but we could use our own choice of colors and stamps. We were supposed to use stamps that we hadn't used before, but instead I used ribbon that I have been wanting to use for a long time, but never did until now. The base is PTI kraft, the ribbon is from the $1 bin at Michael's, and the stamps used are Honey Bees and Simple Little Things. I stamped my flower images and then used distress ink over the entire thing. I followed that with some stickles and a few tiny seed beads for some sparkle.

The second card had a sketch also and we could use whatever stamps we wanted. The three images to the left had to be the same stamp, but the sentiment could be different. I used PTI's Simple Little Things set again for both. I used black, white, Spring Moss, and Everyday Blessings patterned paper. As a last minute addition, I decied to put some beads on this card too. Since I used a jewelry headpin instead of a normal stick pin I was able to curl the end to finish it off instead of having a sharp point.

I had a small glue emergency on this card, but luckily the patterned paper is a little more forgiving so it's not so noticeable. Next time I need to be more patient with slow moving glue--it WILL come out eventually. I need to remind myself that patience is a virtue. :-)

Thanks for looking. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Quick & Easy Papertrey Ink

I ordered some fun ribbon from Ribbons and Bows Oh My! (http://ribbonandbowsohmy.com/) and I immediately had some ideas for a few quick cards with my PTI stamps.

When I saw the red/black polka dot ribbon I immediately thought of using Little Lady with it. Here was a quick card I made last night.


When I saw this yellow/black lollipop ribbon I immediately thought of Honey Bees. I used my black glaze pen for the dots and for the black parts of the larger bee. I used some Doodlebug yellow glitter for a little sparkle. The yellow ink is Lemon Tart from PTI.

I was able to make both of these cards in about 20 minutes. I can't wait to see what I can come up with when I have more time. :-)

Hopefully later this week I will have some time in my stamp room since my bf is going to be out of town for a few days. Unfortunately he's taking my camera with him so I won't be able to post any more photos until next week.

Thanks for looking. I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Embossing Folders

If you're like me you're always checking and hoping that Michael's and Hobby Lobby are going to get some new Cuttlebug embossing folders in stock. You're probably just as disappointed as I am to see the there are only the same few that you already have/want.

Well, yesterday I went to Hobby Lobby and I almost couldn't believe my eyes. They had a bunch of new ones (new to me) that I had been looking for. I ended up getting: Birds & Swirls, Textile Texture, Snowflakes, and Script Texture. I have a few more on my list--especially since I checked out the newest ones on ProvoCraft's website, but I'm working my way to a nice collection.

Scrapbooking

I haven't made any cards this week, but over on the PTI forum we've been discussing scrapbooking so I decided to share some pages I made from my FL trip last year. I'm not much of a journaler, I just try to make the pages look pretty. I may have to go back and add some details later.

This is the first page of my album. The flash sort of overtook the picture--there is a sailboat behind us and it's just after sunset at Mallory Square in Key West. I found all of the fun metal charms and the sea-themed paper at Red Lead Paperworks.



Here is a close up the Florida tags. I used Distress Inks and stamped various images for the backgrounds, then for the letters I used a fun alphabet set called Cowboy's Ransom and popped them up on dimensionals.

Next is a page from our stop in Jupiter to see the Cardinals play a spring training game. It was a beautiful (but hot) day and I loved Roger Dean Stadium. You can get so close to the players/field it's a really great experience--even though we lost that day. I {heart} my St. Louis Cardinals.

The last page is from our time in Key West. It has photos of several things I loved about being there, including the chickens. I painted the chipboard letters with acrylic paints to match the theme of the tropical fish paper.

I have never been to a more laid back place where everyone gets along because they're all there for one thing--to relax and enjoy themselves. (I don't think there's a place in KW that you can't wear flip-flops to.) I definitely would like to go back there again.

Thanks for looking. I hope you enjoyed the peek at my Florida trip. I have a lot more pictures to scrap to finish the book, but who knows when I'll actually get to working on them.

New Cards

I had a few hours to myself in my craft room yesterday so I took advantage of it.

The first card uses stamps by Inkadinkado. I colored the image with my Copic markers and was actually happy with my blending for the first time. The card needed a little something so I added a few feathers that I picked up in the clearance section at Michael's.

The second card starts out with Papertrey Ink white cardstock. I used some Provo Craft deco-edge scissors (the $1.99 ones at Michael's) for a little more interest and then I used Berry Sorbet cardstock from PTI on the decorated edge. Next I used PTI's Spring Moss, Berry Sorbet, Sweet Blush, and Lavender Moon inks with some stamps from Rubber Stamp Tapestry called Pretty in Pink. They are individual rubber stamps that can create such pretty floral/leaf designs. The sentiment is from Butterfly Kisses and the butterflies are made from a Martha Stewart punch in Berry Sorbet, Sweet Blush, and Lavender Moon.

The third card was a PTI weekly challenge, following a sketch given online and some color guidelines. We were to use any PTI stamps, kraft as a base, and Lavender Moon as one of our colors. I used the small lady bug from Little Lady on my squares and mounted them on larger squares of Summer Sunrise paper. On the Lavender Moon paper background I used the coordinating ink to stamp some of the flowers from Honey Bees. The ribbon on the side is Summer Sunrise in satin and the flowers/brad are from my stash but I don't remember who makes them.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Thanks for looking.

My best friend had her babies last week so I've been spending some time visiting with them instead of stamping. I'll be back with more as soon as I can.

Last weekend I did some stampin'

Here are the cards I made last weekend. Two of them were challenge cards for PTI.

For the first one, the challenge was to use PTI's Lemon Tart and Lavendar moon to make a circular card. I haven't invested in a good circle-cutting system yet so I traced a bowl from my kitchen and cut it out--that should explain a lot about my circle. :-) The ornate circle stamp and the sentiment are from Simple Little Things. The lavender "pointy" circle was an individual design element from the Borders & Corners {oval} set. I stamped it in each scallop until I had a complete circle. I used a regular office hole punch for the small yellow circles. All stamps, paper, and ink (except black - Palette Noir) are from Papertrey Ink.

The second card was another weekly challenge card as well. We had a sketch to follow and our guidelines were to use a monochromatic color palette and whatever stamps we wanted. I started with a PTI Kraft base and used their Lemon Tart and Summer Sunrise as the first 2 colors. The second 2 were from my stock. I used Polka Dot Basics to stamp the little bridal flowers from Michael's and accented with Dew Drops. The sentiment is from Simple Little Things and the accents around it are from Boxes, Bags and Tags (all stamps used are from PTI).

The next card started out with PTI Kraft paper as a base also. Have I mentioned how much I love this paper?! The flower and bee stamps are from Honey Bees and the dragonfly and sentiment are from Pond Life + Sentiments. I curved the end of the sentiment to appear as if it is "taking off". I finished it off with some Berry Sorbet twill tape. All stamps. paper, and ribbon are from PTI.

The nex two cards were inspired by a fellow PTI member Donelda. She used this brayer technique to create a sunset look that contrasts very well with the black stamped images. The first card uses PTI's Out on a Limb stamp set. The second uses Pond Life also by PTI.

Thanks for looking. Have a great rest of today. :-)

Another one of those fun blog list things....

I started on this Friday, but had to leave before I was finished so my To Do List is a few days old......

What was I doing 10 years ago? - I was single, working full time as an admin. asst. at an engineering company, and bartending at the local bowling alley a few nights a week.

Five Snacks I Enjoy: graham crackers, pretzels w/cheese, chips and salsa, popcorn, and apple slices

Five Things on My To Do List Today: Make it through the rest of my workday, buy gas for my car (uggh!), go to Hobby Lobby (haven't been in weeks), wash/change all the bedding at home, and finally get going on my weekly challenge cards for PTI.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Resign immediately! (sorry boss!) The rest TBD after a long vacation somewhere tropical.....

Five Jobs I have had: Retail sales clerk, bowling alley bartender, waitress at Italian restuarant, AA at geotechincal engineering company, now I'm the AA, executive asst., office manager, janitor, etc. all rolled into one at my tiny sales office. Most days it's me by myself, some days my boss is here too. I keep the place running.

Five of my bad habits: biting my nails/all of the skin around them, biting off the acrylic nails I wear on top of my poor bitten nails, biting the inside of my mouth (lots of biting going on here....), procrastinating, waiting until the clutter is almost unmanageable before I clean my room.

Five Places I have lived: I've lived in 7 different houses/apartments, but they're all in Missouri. (St. Louis, St. Charles, O'Fallon)

Six random things: I live in the midwest but am deathly afraid of sharks, I got my kitty cat (11.5 yrs old) from a shelter when she was 5 yrs old--she had been abused previously, I didn't learn to drive until I was 19, I didn't learn how to ride a bike (sans training wheels) until I was 13, I still don't know how to swim, I can't sleep for more than 4 hrs at a time.

I hope you enjoy reading my answers and please feel free to play along on your own blog too.

Stamping on Onesies

I finally had a little time to work on the Onesies for my friend. Her twins are coming in less than a week so I was running out of time. I used one as a guinea pig and stamped with several differt types of ink. I heat set by putting in the dryer for about 20 minutes and then I ran through a wash cycle. I was surprised at how well the inks stood up.

I ended up using Colorbox Fluid Chalk inks in Yellow Ochre, Lime Pastel, and Warm Red. (These colors went well with the other baby items I had already purchased.) I also used Black Nior Palette ink for some of the sentiments. The stamps are all from the Bitty Baby Blessings set from Papertrey Ink. There are a few spots where I had excess ink that showed up where it wasn't supposed to, but I hope my friend will be able to overlook that while she's busy with two newborns and a 4-yr old. :-)

I hope everyone has a great weekend. I plan on catching up on the last two PTI weekly challenges.

New Slippers!

No card to post today, just a pic of some new fuzzy slippers I got last night. They're super soft and were only about $6 at K-mart. I couldn't pass them up! (And I got a pedicure yesterday so I was OK about taking a picture.)

This weekend I'm going to my parent's lake house for a few days. Unfortunately my bf won't be able to join me since he has to work all weekend, but it will be nice to take a few days to relax and the weather is supposed to be beautiful. Can't wait for some sun!

I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

Quick Little Lavender Lady

I didn't have much time to try out my new stamps last night because we went lamp shopping instead, but we ended up with some very pretty Tiffany-style lamps with dragonflies on them and we're both happy. I think that was probably the only way that we were both going to agree on a lamp style. :-)

I did however, make this quick card so that I could try out the new Papertrey Ink color Lavender Moon. It's such a pretty pinkish-purple. I used my new Little Lady stamp set for the first time too. It was a little rushed, but it gave me a general idea of how much I'm going to like the color and the stamps.

PTI Challenges

Over on the Papertrey Ink forum we have a casual weekly challenge going on. I'm very glad it's casual because I just caught up on the last two this weekend so I should be ready for the next one. You can find the forum here: http://forum.papertreyink.com/forum/gallery2.php?g2_itemId=8507&g2_GALLERYSID=09bd266e85cea0cdf42e5e14c856c162


First we have my queen bee card for week 5. There was a sketch to follow, insect and/or reptile stamps were to be used, and colors were to be kraft background with blues, greens, and purples as accents. I put that all together and came up with this:

I made the background with PTI's Polka Dot Basics set and the little accent from Butterfly Kisses. I went over the main bee image with my Spica glitter pens (black on body, clear on wings) and it gives it just enough sparkle in person.

The second challenge was a sketch challenge only and this is what I came up with:

The patterned paper is from Making Memories 5th Avenue collection (part of my bargin shopping at Target). The sentiment is from PTI's anniversary set--it has great sentiments.

For both of these cards I actually broke out my red rubber mounted stamps. I've been using my clear ones almost exclusively lately, but it was nice to get some ink on these too.

PTI GSS Entries

As soon as I opened up Pond Life from Papertrey Ink I knew I was going to have fun with this set. I immediately made 3 cards in the first 2 days and entered them into their monthly Guest Star Stamper contest.

Last month was my first time entering and my card ended up being an honerable mention on Nichole's blog. I was blown away by the other submissions--there are some extremely talented ladies over on the PTI forum. I tried to step up my game for this month and came up with 2 birthday cards and a Father's Day card. (My favorite is the FD card.)

I used a kraft base and white chalk ink to stamp the backgrounder (Cracked Montana Earth by Cornish Heritage Farms). I used Spring Moss cardstock and ink, Aqua Mist ink and twill tape, Jumbo Java (Versamark) and Coaco (Colobox) inks were used for the sentiments, the duck, and the tops of the cattails. I used a tag from the Tiny Tags Cuttlebug set and attached it with some thin hemp rope. I really like how this card turned out (and I hope my Dad likes it when I give it to him on Father's Day).

The second card is a bright, fun birthday card using Lemon Tart cardstock as a base and some green and blue paper from my stock (Not sure who makes it-it came in a multi-pack with about 50 colors). My color scheme for this actually came from that fabulous striped ribbon I found at Wal-Mart. I stamped the frog in Olive Pastel fluid chalk ink from Colorbox and used the same colors as above for the water and the cattails. The sentiment is from Green Thumb, but it worked perfectly for this card. I stamped it in Spring Green from Impress dye ink using a slider tag from my Cuttlebug set. I think my nephew will love this card for his birthday in a few months.

The third card was fun to make. The colors used were all Aqua Mist and Summer Sunrise from Papertrey. The background paper was from the Everyday Blessings collection. For the fish bowl I used my Giga circle punch from Marvy and cut off the top. I cut out a small piece for the rim, outlining it and the rest of the bowl with a white chalk pen. I used my Cuttlebug to cut the fish and bubbles out and used foam dimensionals to make them stand out. I used Ranger's Glossy Accents on the bubbles and to make the bowl "relfections". I used another CB slider tag for the sentiment.

Thanks for looking. Wish me luck with the GSS contest--I know I'll need it with the stiff competition!

Target Goodies

I ran to Target today on my lunch break and found some goodies in their $1 Spot and their scrapbooking aisle.

In the $1 Spot I found:

-Round and square (20 each per pack) corrugated coasters w/fun prints on them
-2-pack frosted glass coasters with photo insert area ( I got 4 total)
-20-pk epoxy stickers with baby theme
-Wedding-themed acrylic stamps (6 in set)
-Vacation-themed acrylic stamps (5 in set)
-4"x6" magnet with liquid measure equivalents (very handy!)

In their regular section I found some really cute epoxy buttons and matching paper from Making Memories (their 5th Avenue collection) and the Fiskars fingertip craft knife.

For a quick shopping trip I was able to find lots of goodies and only spent $20 total. That makes me happy.

*Edited to add that the stamps are the thinnest acrylic I've ever seen, but they seem to stamp OK. Can't really complain when they were only $1. (Target has their $1 stuff on sale so each of the stamp sets only cost $0.50!)

Mother's Day Continued (Again)

Well, as usual I changed my mind and didn't end up using either of the Mother's day cards on here. Instead I made 4 different ones on Saturday night. Unfortunately I left my camera at work over the weekend so I was unable to photograph them before I gave them to their recipients. It figures since was much happier with them than the ones I have already on here. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

I will definitely have to try some of the techniques I used on future cards including flocking and stamping with acrylic paints. I'll just have to remember to grab photos when I do.

I hope you all had a happy Mother's day!

Mother's Day Continued

I finally finished this card last night. I wasn't sure how it was going to come together and it changed about 10 times before I decided on this.

The bird is from Inkadinkado's Birds Galore set--it's stamped in Warm Red fluid chalk ink from Colorbox. The background is flourish stamp from Target (I'm pretty sure it was $1.99 in a 2-pk with another clear stamp) in Yellow Ochre fluid chalk ink from Colorbox with a tiny accent from PTI's Borders and Corners Oval set in red. The sentiment is from a set at Michael's that is sort of a "happy everything" clear set, but I don't remember who made it.

Mother's Day

Mother's day is coming up fast and I've finally finished one of the cards I've been working on. This card uses mostly Papertrey Ink products: Stamper's Select white cardstock, Spring Moss cardstock, ink, and twill tape, Green Thumb stamps (flowers), Pond Life (sentiment), and Boxes Bags & Tags (tiny decorative accents around the sentiment). I added some sparkle with my purple Spica glitter pen and some Diamond Stickles.

Just in case I don't get back here before the weekend, I hope all of you mothers out there have a great day!

Busy Week

I've had a busy week without much time for crafting, but after all of the discussion about Copic markers over on the Papertrey forum I decided to get some more practice with mine. I used PTI's Sweet Blush cardstock, twill tape, and ink for the sentiment (from Year Round Puns). I also embossed some Lemon Tart cardstock with Swiss Dots with my Cuttlebug.

The main stamp is from Great Impressions and I colored it with my Copics--I stamped the image in Smokey Gray VersaMark ink. I really like the look of the gray as opposed to black with pastel colors.

I colored a boy version too, but didn't have time to assemble the rest of the card yet.

Patterned Paper and Weekly Challenge

Nichole from Papertrey issed us a challenge to use stamps to create our own patterned paper. I met that challenge with this card and (unintentionally) with my Week 3 challenge with the ladies on the PTI forum.

The challenge was to use a predetermined sketch with bird/animal stamps and the new yellow/orange PTI colors. I turned the sketch sideways and came up with this: