A Chummy Boss's Day Party

Ahhhhhhhh!  I feel like a bear coming out of winter hibernation… my short-lived excitement in Spring gave way to the realization that I had a few nuts and berries that I needed to inventory and get straight before I could go running off in the crafty forest to sniff and color the flowers, bother the bees for their honey to glue my papers together, and capture a few fairies for some fairy dust… because who can make a card without a liberal sprinkling of glitter and magic?  So I retreated to my cave and got to the business of me for a bit. I missed crafting, but I knew if I focused on one thing at a time, when I did pick up a stamp again, I could really enjoy it. Health issues now in check, off meds, and nuts and berries mostly inventoried and organized (LOL), now it’s time to get out into the creative wilderness!

My first foray was, appropriately, on World Cardmaking Day last weekend. My coworkers had asked me to make our group card for Boss’s Day, which is October 16^th here in the States. I’m not even sure other countries celebrate Boss’s Day. The American commercial card industry has made just about everything a card-celebrated event by now. LOL  But I digress…  so, group card.  I was thinking through my stamp stash, trying to remember what group images I might have. I didn’t want to go the classy, floral route this year. First card back in 6 months, I wanted fun and “pop”. I remembered I had two Paper Smooches sets that I could use together to make my own crowd… and, hey, what’s a party without balloons?  So out came my recently purchased Simon SaysStamp balloon dies. (I must mention, to keep my sanity, I still ordered crafty supplies during my hiatus. I think it kept alive the belief that I would, indeed, be back in the craft room eventually!)

So this is the party I created…  (and please forgive the not-so-great cellphone pics. Took the card to work and almost forgot to take any photos!)

I stamped each of the Chubby Chums and Chubby Chum Pals with MFT Hybrid Ink and colored ‘em up with my Copics, who were quite pleased to be brought out into the light of day again. They weren’t so pleased that I was using a cardstock not really intended for Copics. My blending leaves something to be desired, but hey… this card is for non-crafters. If I have learned anything, it’s that non-crafters are too amazed by the artistry to notice the imperfections that cardcrafters immediately see… not to mention, they don’t ogle and drool over the works of artists like “The League of Supercardcrafters” –Jennifer McGuire, Kathy Racoosin, Kristina Werner, Sandy Allnock, Lauren Bassen, Heidi Crowl– or some of my faves Squirrel, Delphine, Lisa, Faye and Annette.

But again, I digress…  I fussy cut my little chummies and used black marker to clean up the edges and gave their eyes a bit of shine with some Glossy Accents.  I colored in the balloons with my Copics as well and then gave them a good sparkly emboss with Judikins Iridescent Sparkle powder. Then I spent the next half hour playing them in the light, and exclaiming, “Ooooh, sparkles!” over and over again. LOL  I fixed my front and inside white panels on a pretty sheet of blue raspberry cardstock from MFT and added a dotty border with Glossy Accents (inspired by Lauren Bassen), leaving it overnight to dry completely.  

I originally planned to fold my 8.5x11 paper in half lengthwise, but decided I liked a final 5.5x8.5 size better, so my little group had to budge up closer to each other than I had planned. I used foam tape to pop up two levels of chummies and did the same with their balloons, using a light thread to tie the balloons and give my chummies something to hold on to. I especially love that Pup on the end chose to tie his to his tail. =)  Since the front panel had gotten a bit crowded, Bear had decided to hang out on the inside of the card with a few small balloons and have a party of his own.

So, I’m off to gather some more materials and hit the craft room. My fingers are itching to get into some more stamps and I still have a crafty haul that has been sitting there waiting to be put away for a couple of months. Then I can wander out and have a good poke at the beehive and gather up some flowers and fairies. I’ve given myself a baby-step goal of at least a card a week… and Christmas is coming, so I’d better get cracking. =)

I might stop by and link this party up to the Paper Smooches Sparks challenge where it’s Anything Goes this week. I know the balloons are SSS, but it’s those adorable little Chums that steal the show. =)  You can find their challenge HERE: 

Til next time, happy crafting!

Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Buttons and ribbons (and a bow if you're not me)

Hello again, my crafty friends! 

OK, so I've been crazy-super-busy the past few weeks and oddly hinting that I would share the why with you. Last week was National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and as an admin, I'm on the Committee that plans and puts together all the celebrations. This year I had stepped down my commitments and was "only" assigned a few pre-Week tasks. These included both a Tshirt sale and... candygrams.

I suppose I have only myself to blame as several years ago I suggested it as a way to improve morale, get more people interested, and create a way to sort of "advertise" our week elsewhere in the hospital. Our Lab employees buy a card that they fill out on one side with the name and mailcode of the recipient, who may be anywhere in our health system, and the other side with a little message. Then a group of us get together and prep little white paper sacks of candy, fold em up, staple on the cards and mail out at the beginning of Lab Week. The most we'd ever done was about 800 altogether... mostly chocolates, but some hard/chewy candies and we even offer sugar free chocolates and sugar free non-chocolate candies for the diabetics among us.

This year.... this year we topped out at a jaw-dropping 1760! There was a BIG jump in the number of candygrams sent out to non-lab departments. I am soooooo lucky that this year I actually had a handful of volunteers because some years it has been just me, or me and one other person with her two kids. This year I had two adults and five kids (kids make great candybag filling slaves! LOL) most of the day and a few hours each from three other adults. Also fortunately it's very organized and well-thought out assembly line style which really keeps the pace up. We did 1400 in 8 hours and I did another 300 the next day and 60 more latecomers early in the week. None of them had ever helped before and one told me that she if never sees another little white bag full of candy again it will be too soon. LOL  If I can get a picture one of them took of the tables full of little white paper sacks standing at attention and being filled up with sweets, I'll share it... but what I can share with you is my photo of how much candy I bought on my first run to the store.

This is what $1000 worth of candy looks like:

And yes, I got many, many, many weird looks while shopping. Usually people selling candy buy the full bars and people assume they're at a stand or filling vending machines. But bags and bags and bags of miniatures really had them guessing. I had to make another trip to pick up sugar free items and more chocolates as we sold probably close to 1500 of those. So, with making flyers, candy shopping excursions, printing candygram cards, the TShirt sale, assisting with planning the educational lectures and helping with some other prep work, I was lucky to be home to let the dogs out to pee on a regular basis, poor pups.

Anyway, I am now free from Lab Week responsibilities and ready to get back to my normal crafty creativity. This week I got to spend some time coloring!

Send A Smile 4 Kids has a great challenge up today.... buttons and ribbons and/or bows!  I jumped on the "and/or" because I just don't seem to leave room in my imagination quite yet for bows when I'm thinking through my design... or I never have just the right ribbon I would want to use.

Our sponsors this week have generously granted us some great prizes for THREE randomly chosen winners:

$10 for Di's Digi Downloads

$20 for The Paper Shelter

$12 for A Day For Daisies

There's something about the angles in so many of her drawings that made me pick A Day for Daisies as the focus of my card for the challenge. I chose the image Puppy Love.

Although I am no Delphine or Coops, I have been practicing my coloring, although not as much as I'd like, and played a bit more with texture and light sources, which are two of the things I admire most about these very different card artists. I particularly worked on getting the sort of mottled look of some of the acid-washed, beat to death denims we have these days, but without any rips or tears. And I decided on a stronger light source this time and from a definite direction. If this little charmer's blond hair doesn't point you the right direction of my light source, I really failed. LOL I also see now why some Copics coloring champions also use pencils to deepen the darkest edges. Getting what should be dark crevices the right color is going to take (much) more practice, but I'm happy with what I've learned so far. One thing I'm not happy with is the errant gray mark on his ear that I had to kind of color over and blend in... I have some depth perception issues and I have to be more careful about how far away from the paper my pen tip is or "oops!" happens a lot. LOL

The papers are DCWV The Pet Stack. I love the bits of blue in all the earthy colors in this stack. I wish that DCWV did more smaller papers and brought the pattern down to scale. I used Walnut Distress Ink on all my edges. The buttons and the twine are from the candy stash that I won from Michelle O last year. I haven't really buttoned up much, but she sent a whole bunch of vintage buttons and I love the look with the colors of the DCWV papers. My ribbons are a mesh wired ribbon layered with a brown sheer, both from Berwick-Offray. A little puppy button from Jesse James adorns my sentiment and a few teeny pearls finish my other corners. My image is ... (you know what's coming) popped up on foam dots. I did use a stylus to just slightly round out my image a bit around the edges too.

My teamies have beribboned, buttoned and bowed up some fabulously gorgeous cards... head on over to Send A Smile 4 Kids Challenge to oooh and aaaah over them, then get to crafting and share your kid-friendly cards with us for a chance at those super prizes. Even better, follow the guidelines here and make a couple to send some cheer to a girl or boy of any age who's stuck in hospital on these gorgeous spring days! (And even if it's raining and the world is waterlogged, who wants to be stuck indoors at a hospital?)

Thanks for hanging in for this VLP (very looooong post) and have a crafty week! I will see you all soon!
Christy

SAS4K Challenge: Spring/Easter Card for Kids - Over Da Wall Puppy

Good morning and happy Saturday! =)

Just popping in for our Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge post! It may be cold and dreary, at least at my house, but we're thinking SPRING! Our challenge is Easter/Spring cards for kids and we're sponsored by two great digi stamp sites,  Delicious Doodles and Robyn's Fetish. One lucky winner will receive 4 digis of their choice from Delicious Doodles and another will win 5 images of their choice from Robyn's Fetish!

Our sponsors generously provided a number of images for the DT to play with. Now, I have to be honest and admit the image I chose was not my first choice, but I was a bit of a late start and most of the DT had picked those delightful bunny images that they used on their wonderful Spring cards. I felt a little sorry for this poor little puppy, sitting there, forlorn and unchosen. Having caught my attention, she realized this was her chance and sent me the hint that she would be a perfect first try for 3D decoupage or paper tole that I've seen here and there in bloggyland. So I printed her out...again and again and again! After coloring and layering her up, I must admit, she was the perfect choice. Just goes to show what a difference a a pair of scissors, a bit of Copics and a touch of glitter plus time and crafty love can make. =)

 Isn't she a sweet pup? =)  I chose to layer in three sections. First I did the entire image as a back layer. This was my first attempt at coloring stones in a wall. In my trial-and-error practice I tried to blend some blue into a mix of gray and brown, but I wasn't quite getting it, and I was using a basic Georgia Pacific with a little less blending power than the smoother Heavenly Weight paper I've used. So, I went for a more simple look just using my ProMarker warm greys. I will say, too, that my favorite rocks got hidden under my sentiment and flowers, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for layout's sake. LOL The rest of the image was colored using Copics. I used a combination of scissors and an X-acto knife to cut all the fiddly bits out between the flower stems and leaves as I knew I was going to lay the image over a blue field.



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My next layer was the flowers, her entire head and the ledge with her paws. I used just a little Diamond Stickles on the flower centers and curved the petals a bit to give them a little more dimension. Then I attached the layers with 1/16" foam dots. Still working on hair and fur techniques, so she's not got too fancy a 'do, just a little shading.

The third layer was her muzzle and her paws. I used a bit of glossy accent over her nose to give it a little shine. These were also attached with the 1/16" foam dots.

I added a sentiment circle from Lili of the Valley which was originally white, but it was too stark, so I colored it over with an even coat of the lightest green I used in the leaves and stems. I cut two more flowers out of the extra layers and colored and Stickled them the same way as the others. I attached these with 1/8" foam squares so they would be about the same height as her paws and the nose.

I used papers from the DCWV Spring Stack. and some ivory and peach textured cardstock from DCWV and Colorbok, respectively.  I used a little Distress Ink in Pumice Stone for the edges as the cardstock was fading into the background papers. A few little flower crystals from Colorbok, and there you have it. One cute pup, ready for Spring!

If you're inspired to color up a pup of your own, you can find Over Da Wall Puppy here at Robyns Fetish!  Come join us over at Send A Smile 4 Kids and check out the rest of the DT's creations and then create a Spring or Easter masterpiece of your own! See you soon! 

Happy Crafting!
Christy 

Hambo Puppy Bailey & the newest SAS4K DT member!

Happy Saturday, my bloggy friends!  Considering patience is not a virtue high on my list of personal attributes--maybe it's something to do with my inner 4-year-old--I've done a good job of keeping some surprise news to myself. Karen Hasheck and the DT at Send a Smile 4 Kids have asked me to become their newest Design Team member! The focus at SAS4K is not just making cards for kids, but also collecting handmade cards for children in hospital, either for them to receive or to be able to give to their families and friends.  You can read more about it here.
I was excited and honored to be picked for the Paper Crafting Journey DT, but I never expected to be asked to be on one! Over Christmas I fell in love with making cards for kids - colorful, bright and FUN (and less challenging than vintage hahahaha), so I'm eager to get started!

This week's sponsor for the Anything Goes challenge over at SAS4K is Hambo Stamps. Their latest digital stamp is an adorable puppy based on their new furbaby, Bailey. My own Zoe is also a yellow Lab, so I couldn't resist.

Isn't their Bailey stamp sweet? I was rather pleased with my coloring and I love these papers from DCWV (The Pet Stack). The glittery hearts are cut out from one of the papers and I popped the little yellow heart and the image up with foam dots. I added just a few gems and these cute bones and puppy paw from the Jesse James line Dress It Up! line. The Puppy Love stamp is from a clear set, Simple Thoughts-Dog from Cloud 9 Design.

So, look forward to lots more kids cards from me for the bimonthly SAS4K challenges along with my DT cards for the great challenges coming up this year for Paper Crafting Journey! Can't wait to get started playing with my new DT crafting buddies! =)

Happy Crafting!
Christy

Bugaboo Valentine Puppy

Good morning! Up early, so I’m posting my card from last night. I intended to do some crafting the night before, but my body’s desire for sleep and my brain’s desire to craft were not compatible and I ended up going to bed early. I’m a night owl, so anytime I voluntarily go to bed early is a clear sign that the world is off-kilter. LOL

So… inspired by the oh-so-cuteness of this Bugaboo digi which I recently won, the color combo challenge from Enfys at Going Buggy, the sketch at CPS, and the Valentines for Kids at Send a Smile 4  Kids challenge, I came up with this:

I was practicing coloring “black” on Sunday… this was my 3rd try. I now understand why you have to use dark grays and not actual black. It’s still a bit dark on the paws, but you can still see the digi stamp lines, so I’m calling it a win. =)

The two heart papers and the plaid are digi papers from Stamp Fairy and the image can be found here at Bugaboo Stamps. There’s a little series of him and totally cute! After I colored with Copics, I used Glossy Accents to fill in his nose and his heart balloon. I sprinkled some Glamour Dust on the heart for just a hint of sparkle. My die cuts are the Nestabilities Square Hearts and a heart Sizzlit. I added some grosgrain ribbon layered up, inked the edges with Soot and Barn Door DIs and scattered about a little bling here and there for the finishing touches.

Challenges I’m entering:

Catch the Bug – January Anything Goes

Send A Smile 4 Kids - Valentines for Kids

Going Buggy – Grey or Black, White and Red

CPS – Sketch #250

Digital Tuesday – #142 Punch It Out

Papertake Weekly – Die Cute Special

7 Kids College Fund – #38 Try Something New (coloring black with alcohol markers)

Cupcake Crafts - #174 New (new Digi, new Copics coloring choice)

Lollipop Crafts – #62 Anything New Goes

Crafty Cardmakers – #59 No floral embellishments

That’s it for now. I’ll be back soon… and maaaaaybe with some exciting news! Stay tuned! ;)

Happy Crafting!

Christy