SAS4K DT Card: Birthday Fun - A Groovy Flower Power Birthday!

Good morning, my crafty friends (and Mom & Ken! LOL)...

First, a whine about Blogger. Apparently Blogger can't decide how many blogs I'm actually following. Over the past week the number has grown to the accurate 200+ and shrunk by 30. I'm missing fun crafty posts and it's making me a bit cranky! So if I haven't been to visit lately, it's because Blogger and Google Reader have been hiding you from me! Either that or they are developing software alzheimers. =[ Sigh. Anyway, hope to catch up with all my MIA bloggy friends soon!

Now.... on to the FUN!  Time again for a fantastic challenge to Send A Smile 4 Kids...  Birthday Fun! As usual we have some terrific sponsors who are offering up prizes for some randomly chosen winners:

 Stamp Shoppe Creations ~ a $15 gift certificate

Tickled Pink ~ 2 digis of the winner's choice

and Shelley's Images ~ a $9 gift certificate

Tickled Pink also generously provided my teamies and I images to play with! There were lots of birthday images with presents and balloons and such, but 60s Willow caught my eye as I was browsing through the website and I inspired to create something with some girly Flower Power:

Although I kept the embellies a bit simpler as I do on my kids cards, I love how this one turned out. My pictures are a bit better but yes, Ken, I do need to figure out my lighting and build a little box out of white poster board. Plus I haven't had time to figure out how to knock the camera off the autoISO setting so I can play with it a bit. (Having a photographer in the family can make photo-taking quite intimidating hahaha)

I colored Willow with  combination of Copics and ProMarkers (for the pink top). I had a problem with a bit of bleeding this time because of my depth perception issues and that the details and lines of this image are so tiny. It felt like I was trying to park a jumbo jet in a mini Cooper-sized parking space. LOL From a normal distance it looks good, so imagine my embarrassment when my closeups revealed all my flaws! LOL But it's ok... I wasn't planning on going pro anytime soon. ;)

My floral paper is from a Provocraft Spring stack, with dark purple and green cardstock to set it off from my card base, which was a super light purple that I have inked to death with Dusty Concord Distress Ink. I can't remember which number it is, but I used a Nestabilities die in two sizes for the center panels, then cut dark purple squares to layer them. I ended up rounding off the corners of the purple cardstock as the pointy corners seemed, well... too pointy. LOL

I used a scrap of tie-dye glitter cardstock to create a couple of flowers with my C.C. Designs Five Point Flowers die. Unfortunately the bigger flower fell on the floor and was taste-tested by my lab, Zoe, but it recovered nicely. LOL I added pearls to the centers and popped them up on foam dots.

My sentiment was made on the computer with a font called Bell Bottoms and I used a thinner foam to give that some dimension, too. (I will leave it to my *ahem* older brother to let me if "groovy" was actually in use in the late 60s. hee hee)  My ribbons are Berwick-Offray... a white sheer and a light lavendar rickrack.

I used Distress Stickles in Spun Sugar and Milled Lavender on the flowers on the jeans. The look I wanted is the color of painted jeans and the Distress Stickles worked perfectly for what I wanted. I used a little bit of Yellow regular Stickles and used Stardust Stickles on the little flowers on the jeans and a few of the flowers in her hair. A few little Liquid Pearl dots were added to the jeans, too.

My final touches were these silvery Robin's Nest tear drops that remind me of the little silver studs on jean designs and a few pearls scattered about around the sentiment. Voila! =)

So that's my take on Birthday Fun - hope you like it!  Don't forget to head on over to Send A Smile 4 Kids to see the rest of the fun Birthday bonanza my teamies and our guest designer have created for you!

In the meantime, I will be adding my card to the following challenges and link-ups...

Crafty Ann's Challenge - #67 It's  Girl Thing!
Inspire Me Fridays - #63 Anything Goes
Stampin with the Dragon - Anything Goes
Aud Sentiments Challenge - #56 Any sentiment suitable for a child's birthday
Cute Card Thursday - #221 Punch Drunk
The Lollipop Ladies - #47 Jelly Babies
The Paper Shelter - #68 Anything Goes
Sassy Cheryl - #119 Birthday Celebration
Bunny Zoe Crafts - #25 Girls, Girls, Girls
Craft Your Passion - #114 Anything Goes
Creative Stamp Friends - #53 Birthday
Lexi's Creations - #67 Happy Birthday

Til my next card... happy crafting!
Christy

PCJ DT Card: Jellypark - Photo Inspiration

Greetings, crafters!  Yes, time is flying and it's already time for another challenge at Paper-Crafting Journey!

This week's challenge is a photo inspiration

Photo Source

and our sponsor is Jellypark, home of some really cute digital images!

Before I get to my card for this challenge, I want to mention Jellypark's special stamp collection. 100% of the proceeds from the 2012 sales of their special collection of Fundraising Stamps go to support Little Havens Children's Hospice in the UK. More details about this charitable project and Little Havens can be found at Jellypark here and you can visit the Litte Havens site here. Check them out - super cute stamps and a really great charity! =)

So... my card for this week. Jellypark provided a few images for the design team, but I thought they were so cute I went to check out their site and I fell in love with two of their images and was inspired to create this:

From the photo inspiration, I took the idea of cake (yum!) and originally the colors pink and blue as my main card colors. As my card developed, I ended up replacing the pink dp with a warm yellow, but I've got lots of pink touches, from the cupcake srapper to the pink pearls and the pink in the printed cardstock. All the printed cardstock is from the DCWV stack Sweet and I used a textured white cardstock as the 6"x6" card base.

I immediately saw this sweet little guy as baby brother to this darling little girl with her cupcake. He is part of the set Let's Fly Away that also includes a kite and a balloon. I flipped him in Word and sized him to stand next to his big sister. =) I also bought the Happy Birthday tag. The bunting is from this set.

I colored all my images with Copics. I wanted some texture to my cupcake icing, so I tried Adirondack acrylic paint dabber in Snow Cap. While it was wet I sprinkled a tiny bit of Doodleburg glitter in Bumblebee over it and I added Distress Stickles in Spun Sugar to what looks like a little gumdrop on top of the cupcake.

After I colored and fussy cut all my images, I tucked the birthday tag under the little boy's arm and tied a little bow on the tag with some twine. I did a little embossing, rubbing a large-balled stylus around the back to give a bit of a curve and dimension to the kids and popped them up on foam squares. Then I went a bit crazy with the pearls. I just got a bunch of Hero Arts pearls and I couldn't resist them! Last but not least I added a little silver "M" for Melissa, whose birthday was this week.

I also did a very simple inside using the bunting again and a small image of the Cake Shop. I did a quick coloring for the inside, not trying to be too careful or detailed, almost like an imcomplete watercolor. 

So, there's my Jellypark birthday card... I still love those two kids... so cute! I will definitely be visiting the Jellypark shop and creating some Jellypark magic again. =) 

In the meantime, why don't you head on over to Paper-Crafting Journey and see the other DT cards - they are FABULOUS! 

Have a great couple of days 'til the weekend and I'll see you soon!

Happy Crafting!

Christy  

Guest DT Card: Flutterby Wednesday's Card Drive Challenge

For my Paper-Crafting Journey Pretty Pastels Challenge post, click here

This week Hilde and I are guest DTs over at Flutterby Wednesday challenge blog where they are doing a Card Drive for Send A Smile 4 Kids! You can check out the challenge details here and see all the Design Team's flutterby and fairy creations on their Inspiration Post! This week everyone who enters is encouraged to send their creations in to Send A Smile 4 Kids to be forwarded on to children in hospitals:

Send A Smile 4 Kids is a charitable blog created for the purpose of collecting donated handmade cards to be distributed to children while they are inpatient at Children’s Hospitals. Currently we are donating them to the Children’s Hospitals in Neenah and Milwaukee, WI, University of Iowa Children's Hospital, Iowa City, IA, Blank Children's Hospital, Des Moines, IA, Sandford Children's Hospital, Sioux Falls, SD, and to the B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia and Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada.   On any given day, there are many children inpatient in these hospitals so we would love to receive as many cards as you can send to cheer them and their families. 

My first card is a fairy card, using Sweet November Josie's Cupcake, available from All That Scraps as both rubber and digi stamps.

I won this stamp - and nearly all of the supplies I used on the card, including the card base - from Amy over at A Thousand Sheets of Paper during the release bloghop a couple months ago. Josie is one of the Fairwees and they are ADORABLE! I can't wait to get them all. =)

 I used Copics to color my stamp, with a little Stardust Stickles for Josie's fairwee wings, Liquid Pearls for the icing decorations and some Perfect Pearls mixed with water for a shimmery icing.  

The papers are DCWV Sweet and I used some yellow dotted ribbon and aqua twine that was part of the kit Amy sent me. I used a Martha Stewart border punch and deckled oval Nesties from my own stash. I couldn't find a sentiment stamp that quite fit and I wasn't in the mood to create one in Word so I handwrote my sentiment in a dark purple metallic gel pen. The last accent were some of the flatbacked pearls Amy had also included. It was really nice having such a wonderful collection of papers, cardstock, ribbons, buttons, embellies and flowers to work with. I have enough to make lots of cards yet, so you'll be seeing more of these bits soon!

Challenges for this sweet treat: 

All That Scraps - Anything Goes

Stamping with the Dragon - Challenge #6 Things With Wings

My second card was this cute butterfly from a Paper Smooches set I picked up recently. I love the kid-friendly graphic look of Paper Smooches stamps and I always marvel at the stunning CAS creations she features on her blog... there are lots of her sets on my wishlist. =)  You can even pick up some great digi freebies here.

I started with these ProvoCraft papers and went for a very girly pink and purple scheme. I inked the edges of my papers with Dusty Concord Distress Ink and layered them up.  I used Copics to color my pretty little flutterby and used something new in my stash - White Picket Fence Distress Stickles - to give a subtle shimmer and glint to her wings.

I cut a cardstock circle and a Spellbinders Dahlia, inked the edges and stamped on a sentiment from the same Paper Smooches set, using Dusty Concord Distress Ink. After an errant water drop made the s bleed a bit, I recovered by using my purple metallic gel pen over the stamp lines and added some random dots.

I also used something new in my toolbox... this 5-point flower die from CC Designs, also available at All That Scraps. I cut two large, two medium and one small flower out of lavender cardstock and another dp from the same ProvoCraft slab and very lightly inked all the edges with Dusty Concord and Spun Sugar Distress Inks. I spent a bit of time playing around, bending petals back and forth to get some dimension to my flower. I popped through the middle with a tiny little brad from Making Memories and then glued it down over some sweet pink and white twine. I can see why everyone is falling in love with this stuff. =)

 I added a few pearls here and there then stood back and died of diabetic shock from the final sugary-sweet girly cuteness of it all. LOL  I do love this one. My inner crafty four-year-old doesn't want to give this one away. I may have to wait until she's asleep so my outer adult can get it into an envelope, address and mail it so that a 'real' child can enjoy it. <grin> 

I'm springing this card into these challenges:
Frosted Designs - Things with Wings
Penny Black and More @ Allsorts - Springtime
Let's Ink It Up - #21 Flowers
Crafty Sentiments - Things With Wings
Simply Create Too - #9 It's Spring

Don't forget to flutter on over to Flutterby Wednesday for inspiration and join us this week in the card drive for Send A Smile 4 Kids! You can find some simple guidelines for creating cards to donate HERE.


I'll be back soon with my DT post for our SAS4K challenge! See you soon - Happy Crafting!
Christy