Retiring to a Rose Garden

Hello, fellow crafty folks! =)

I have been a busy stamper the past two weeks and have officially made more cards in the last two weeks than in the 6 months before that. Which feels good, but whew!

Here's the first... which is also the one with the most time invested. Our department VP retired after 40 years and is an avid gardener. She's been talking about looking forward to building a rose garden now that she'll have the time, so a group of us gathered together and got a rather hefty gift card for a local garden shop. My task was to create a card with enough space for 30 or so people to write messages and to 'package' the gift card. As soon as they said "roses", I knew this one had to be a Magnolia stamp. This little Tilda is one of the first stamps I bought when I officially discovered cardmaking online two years ago, and my coloring has most definitely improved since the last time I used her...

Isn't she sweet?

The rose paper from which I took my color inspiration is from a rather inexpensive Colorbok packet I was given as a gift last Christmas. I loved the deep burgundy and dusty pink together with the slightly shabby distressed look.  I cut them with stitched panel dies from My Favorite Things. Love the effect of that little bit of stitch detail! I used a bit of Walnut Distress Ink to age the edges of all my papers and the Spellbinders diecut I used for my image.   I colored Tilda, the Magnolia leaves die cuts, the largest rose, and the four little rosebuds with Copics so that they all matched.  On the image I used a bit of Liquid Pearl around her and some Lemon Ice Stickles on the rose centers.
 On the Wild Orchid Crafts flowers, just  a touch of Wink of Stella on the large rose and Stardust Stickles on some of the smaller pink roses gave them a bit of sparkle. A bit of creamy lace, a few pearls, and a little Magnolia dragonfly die finished off the front panel.



Now, for the really fun part...  again, there were about 30 people to sign the card, so I had to find a way to make the card a lot bigger... so I went for an accordion fold that goes on and on for about 7 more panels!

I had to glue together a number of burgundy card bases. I colored six sets of these Magnolia rose stamps, then fussy cut them before shimmering them up with some clear Wink of Stella.

Each panel is a triple layer of the Colorbok rose paper, a piece of white cardstock colored with the same YG95 that I used on the rose stamps, and another piece from the same Colorbok paper pad. All the edges are inked with either Walnut or Peeled Paint Distress Ink.

(The pages look slightly different colors here because there was daylight on the right panel but not the left when I photographed the panels. Oops!)

For the final page, I searched the internet for quotes about gardens. I loved this one:

"I sit in my garden, gazing upon a beauty that cannot gaze upon itself. 

And I find sufficient purpose for my day. - Robert Brault"

...so I typed it up on the computer, added my own note below it and printed directly onto the Colorbok paper. This panel was also going to hold the gift card, so I cut a notch out of it using the bottom bit of a Magnolia tag. I used the same tag to cut a tag from white cardstock, colored it with YG95 and coated it with clear Wink of Stella.
When everyone had signed, the tag was attached to a little envelope that held the gift card. Another little dragon fly perches on the the bottom of this panel as well.

To finish off the project, I created a 1" thick box out of gold metallic paper and created a little label for the front.  The box was done envelope style, with a little velcro closure on the back.

Everyone loved it... it even made her cry - in a good way, of course! =)  I won't be doing something so elaborate again for a while... it took at least 2 hours just to color and cut out all those roses for the panels. But it was well worth it in the end. A special card for a special event!

I'll be popping over to a few challenges to link my little Tilda creation...
Tilda's Town Challenges - Challenge #129 Anything Goes
Lovely hAnglar or Sweet Magnolia Challenge - Challenge #106 Sparkle
Midweek Magnolias Challenge - Challenge #101 Glitter, Lace and Pearls
Crafting When We Can Challenge - Challenge #82 Use Your Markers

My next two posts will be all about birthdays! Woohoo! Til then, happy crafting!
Christy

PCJ DT Card: Feelin' Krafty - Fairy Daisy

Hello, my bloggy friends and followers! Happy blankity-blank FRIDAY! 

I am soooooooooooooooooooo glad and maybe surprised that I finally made it to the weekend. I'm already a day late and a dollar short for the current Paper-Crafting Journey Challenge, but I'm feeling krafty now, so we're all good. LOL

PCJ is looking for new Design Team members! Having lost some of our crafty ladies (sigh), we're looking for some new happy crafters to join our team. Wendy is holding a DT call for the month of July and you can read all about it and link up if you're interested here. PLUS we've moved back to our original site here! What? It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. Often. And for no reason. =P As the new blog owner Wendy has given the site a fresh coat of paint and a new look, so check it out!

On to this fortnightly challenge...  FEELIN' KRAFTY! We want to see you use kraft cardstock somewhere on your paper craft! Don't forget that PCJ is not just a card challenge - it's open to all sorts of crafting---as long as it's made with paper! Up for grabs this challenge is a $10 gift certificate from our digi-delightful sponsor DIGI DOODLE SHOP. Although they were kind enough to provide some images for the DT, I had fallen in love with this fairy while shopping around for (ahem) my other DT and I had to buy her! She's just been sitting in my harddrive, waiting for me to print her out. =)

My new camera and I have not yet come to an understanding. What is supposed to be automatic and easy is persistently frustrating right now. The camera is so automatic that some of the settings I used on my old camera are missing. Or hiding. Or something. So adjusting my lighting after the fact is not quite working. I will persevere! I would have read the manual, but apparently paper is just so un-2012. They aren't cool enough that they sent it on a memory stick, but they did send it on a CD... so I guess I will have to load up and do some reading this weekend.

Sorry... back to business...  here is my krafty little creation for this challenge:

This image made me wonder... she's smiling, not pouting, so she's not in a fairy time out. Maybe she's just sitting, eyes closed, breathing in the morning air and enjoying the moment. Sounds so refreshing and relaxing. Hmmmm, wonder if I can find a daisy big enough for me? LOL Anyway, I colored her up with Copics.  I glittered her wings with Stardust Stickles and a bit of lavender Liquid Pearls. I also added a touch of yellow Stickles on the daisy center.

I embossed a piece of white cardstock and layered that over a lovely lemony yellow. I cut the yellow cardstock a little longer so that I could use this oh-so-cute daisy ribbon trim that I've had for a few years. The centers were already yellow, but I used a bit more of the yellow Stickles on them to tie in to the daisy image. Then I added my image, popping my little fairy up on foam dots because, well, as you know, I am obsessed with popping things up with foam dots. I am sure I have mentioned this at least once. Per post.  LOL

So... there's my fairy. It's simple, but a pretty little card IRL... not very photogenic, but she's sparkly and sweet and I think I know just the person who needs a little lift. I think her butterfly wings will be just the trick.

Though the ranks are a bit empty at the moment, my remaining teamies have krafted up (har har) some great cards for you that you can find over at Paper-Crafting Journey! Hope you are inspired to get a little krafty with us! 

Have a fantastic weekend wherever you are and happy crafting!
Christy

(Psssst... Before I go... just a quick tease that July will be an exciting month around I Never Went to Kindergarten-land...  be sure to stop by in a few weeks when Santa's Elves stop by with some yummy Christmas-in-July candy! See you soon!)

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

SAS4K DT Card: Anything Goes for Kids - Sweet Spring Birthday Girl

Happy Saturday to you, my crafty friends!

I cannot tell you how glad I am to have survived to the weekend. Too bad it's only two days before it's back to the trenches. There has been so much going on at work lately that my boss is getting stressed out not having enough time to feel like he is on top of everything. Late yesterday I managed to capture him for enough time to plot out the next two weeks' schedule so I can cancel meetings and reschedule service so he has some time to work on the projects. Hopefully next week we'll be surfing the wave instead of being tumbled under it as it crashes into shore. LOL

Earlier this week I finished a card that I thought would be for today's post... and realized I'd used the wrong images! Apparently my boss's mental disorganization this week was catching. LOL So I got my hands on the really sweet images from Sylvia Zet's Wee Stamps, one of our two generous sponsors for our Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge... (it's an easy one!)... ANYTHING GOES! Yep, whip up any kind of card for a kid and you can enter it as the SAS4K challenge from now until June 1st! Randomly picked winners will get 3 digital stamps of their choice from Wee Stamps or Karen's Doodles, our fantastic sponsors for this challenge!

Even better... this challenge we will be linking up with Paper-Crafting Journey (my other DT!) so you'll be able to enter your creation in both challenges and have twice the fun! The PCJ challenge goes live Thursday, May 24... but you'll be able to backlink as long as you've also entered it in SAS4K, so you don't have to wait to post your cards at SAS4K! =)

On to my card for SAS4K... this is Suzi with Bunny...

Isn't she totally sweet? I love Sylvia Zet's images, but the hair has always put me off. LOL There are stamp images like Wee Stamps, Mo Manning and Make It Crafty that I love, but that I just haven't felt ready to tackle yet. My coloring is getting better and I'm hoping to have some time to practice lots and lots this summer when I can be outside while the pups play, the kitty lounges in the sun and I can color while ignoring the growing grass and the weedy edge of the backyard. LOL Since I was a bit hurried this time, I'm not altogether happy with her hair, but she'll do. And that face is so sweet, it distracts you from her hair. LOL

I colored her with a combination of Copics and ProMarkers. I tried my hand at one of my favorite Coops Tricks... shading darker on one side of the image and barely or not at all on the other side to get some depth. It lightened up a bit on my photo, so she doesn't quite pop off the page, but I like the effect and it does look better on the actual card, so I'll be practicing and borrowing that technique again. (thanks, Coops!)

I used Liquid Pearls to color the flowers in her basket. I got a little carried away and the white center dots spread a bit more than I would have liked, but I love the colors and the bit of shine.

I even did a BOW on this card, can you believe it? I used a pale greenish-yellow ribbon on my card and paired it with a Martha Stewart border punch... I can't remember its name right now, but I love the art deco shell design. A little elegance.

The papers are from the Spring Fling DCWV line... I picked up the 180-page pack of combined Spring Fling and Summer Days for less than 10 bucks. Not that I needed more papers. (Has anyone created a Paper-Addicts Anonymous group yet? I seriously need an intervention. LOL)  Paper hoarding aside, I love the rose design and found the perfect little WOC rose to match in my stash. The sentiment was done on the computer and I used one end of a Nestie Labels Eighteen to create a tag. The image panel was popped up on foam dots. (can't do a card without those!) Some Kaiser pearls, a little Distress Inking in Spun Sugar, Scattered Straw and Shabby Shutters on my edges and done!

My teamies over at SAS4K have created some really wonderful cards using not only Wee Stamp images but a few great Karen's Doodles, too, so get on over to the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge post today! Can't wait to see what fantastic kids cards you create... and even better, you can choose to donate them to kids in hospital by following the guidelines here.

Zoe just ran away with the cat's jingle ball, so I'm off to get it back before the silly creature swallows it... in the meantime, happy crafting and I'll see you all soon!

Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Mother's & Father's Day - Bears and Roses

Good morning!  Sorry I'm a little late to the party this morning but Blogger is, well... the software gremlins are up and about today. Need to add some anti-glitchy gremlin spray to my shopping list. =)

It's the first Saturday of the month... time for another great challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids! This fortnight our challenge is Mother's and Father's Day cards for kids to give to their parents. And we have FOUR terrific prizes from our sponsors:

* 5 digis of your choice from  Whimsy Stamps *

* Digi Doodle Shop is offering a $10 gift voucher *

* $15 towards a purchase at the Crop Stop *

* 5 quid to spend at Cuddly Buddly *

Prizes are picked randomly, so anyone can win! And better yet, you can send in your cards to be donated to children in one of seven hospitals. See here for more details!

Digi Doodle Shop and Cuddly Buddly generously offered the DT some images... I knew right away when I saw this little guy that I wanted to paper piece him. And I knew just what papers I was going to use...

Except for the dark blue cardstock, this card is entirely digital papers and paper-piecing! I used Summertime Designs' Fathers and Fedoras Kit and Vintage Oreos. She has some fabulous, fabulous kits... and free! I used several prints from the Fathers kit for the layers and for my bear's little hat and coat. I still don't like my fur coloring yet, so I used the lighter and darker damask papers in her Oreos set, tweaked just a bit for color temperature in Word, for the bear's fur and the Hedgehog's prickles.

 I started by printing my digi on white cardstock for the base layer before printing all my designer papers out on 20-lb printer paper and running them back through to print my bear image over them. I layered them up one at a time starting with the bear's fur; since the paper is so thin, there's not as much dimension as using cardstock and burnishing it in the style of Mariska (LOVE!), but it still adds a little something in person.  I used a black pen to add in some more spiky detail on the hedgie and colored his face, hands and feet with Copics, too.  I added some Copics grays on the bear fur and his little plaid outfit in an attempt to achieve a little more dimension. Plus (of course!) I popped him them up on foam dots. I admit my addictions. LOL

My sentiment was created Word, using the old style Word Art and filling the "Dad" with one of the digi papers. The finishing touch on my clean and simple card were two gray screw-head brads I picked up at Michael's. I see this morning that my teamie Karen had similar ideas with paper piecing and used similar brads. Great minds! LOL 

  

For my Digi Doodle card, I looked through the website a few times to let something 'speak' to me. Lots of images were shouting, so it was a hard decision! I finally settled on this lovely floral heart.

I colored my image with Copics, sticking with the R30s for the roses to get a coral color that would match my digi papers, which this time are from Nitwit Collections - Thimbles and Threads. I spent some time burnishing my floral heart image with a large-balled stylus so it would have that great dimensional curviness when I popped it up on foam dots.

 Again, I went thin and printed on basic printer paper, except I printed a bit of the quilted coral on cardstock to punch my Martha Stewart butterflies. I kept seeing these teeny tiny beauties on other cards, so I finally located a punch and bought it. I keep resisting the urge to punch butterflies out of everything I see. LOL I took some light orange and yellow pearls which I touched up with R35 Copics to more closely match my papers.  

To finish, I added some peachy-pink sheer wired ribbon. I had it the way I liked it for about 60 seconds, before a nosy dog peeked up from under the craft table, knocking it out of my hands. The bow went wonky and I ended up fussing and faffing about with that darn bow forEVER. So much so that looking at it now, I see I forgot to add the tails. No wonder it doesn't look right. LOL  Well, I can always give up bows like my friend Squirrel (although between you and me, I think she's a right bit harder on herself than she needs to be). I added one of the punched butterflies with some pearls to the bow as my last touch. The finished card isn't exactly what I pictured, but it's pretty... and each card is a learning experience for the next one. (Bows with tails, Christy... bows with tails.)

 

My teamies have whipped up some fantastic creations of their own... click on over to the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge blog and get inspired!



See you soon, and until then... 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