June ODBD challenge

It's the second-to-last June ODBD challenge for Operation Write Home, so I had to join in, especially because it was for Missing You cards.  I wanted to make this one masculine, so I used the Deer stamp and papers that have been patiently waiting for me to use them.  Here's what I came up with:

 

The stamp is from Stamps of Life and those are thin buttons - no thick ones for OWH!  I'm also entering this into the Words 2 Scrap By June challenge - It's a Man's World . 

 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope your weekend was a nice one!

ODBD Challenge at OWH

One of my New Year's goals was to participate in every ODBD challenge over at Operation Write Home and I missed the February challenge already!  The sad thing is, I had my card ready and just didn't get it posted in time.

 

Today I'll catchup on the February and March challenges.  I made frogs for the Animals challenge; both a his and hers version:

 

These cards are in my comfort zone - papers, layering and die cuts.  I've been seeing so many technique videos that I want to try too and one of them is the Bokeh technique from Splitcoast stampers. I used watercolors in the background and then layered Colorbox white pigment ink on top for the background.  I used a My Favorite Things stamp for the March challenge, which is Sentiments :

And that ribbon technique?  Why, it's by Sandy Allnock from her days as a Ribbonista here: May-Arts.  I use that technique often.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

 

 

 

OWH Sketch #248

When I saw the latest OWH sketch (#248) , all I could envision was....fish.  I guess those circles just sent me into the water.  I cut out some cute fish on my Silhouette, along with a wavy line background and added a digi stamp from The Alley Way:

 

I was going to add small circles for bubbles, but I couldn't find my circle punch, so I used another punch for the at sign punches (is that what you'd call them?)  I'm also submitting this card to the ODBD February challenge, which is animals.

 

I enjoyed the wavy Silhouette file so much that I used it to make a thank you card:

This was a good way to use up leftover strips from a 6x6 pad that I'm trying to "disappear"! 

 

Thanks for stopping by - stay warm!

 

 

 



OWH Red Friday Bloghop

Operation Write Home is hosting a Red Friday bloghop and since I had a bit of extra time, I joined in.  Laura Bassen's card over at Doublestick Heaven below inspired me to pull out my Distress Inks and play.  Here's her card and my four (!) cards that I made:

I didn't have the stencil she used, so I made my own.  I cut a heart with my Silhouette and then overlaid another stencil on top.  My first card used the Tim Holtz Doily stencil:

Card #2 used the Tim Holtz Dot Fade stencil:

Card #3 used the Tim Holtz Stripes stencil:

Card #4 used a stencil I made on my Silhouette:

Other details:

Sentiment is from the Silhouette store: #6818

Distress Inks: Seedless Preserves, Salty Ocean, Wild Honey, Mustard Seed, Worn Lipstick

I'm also adding one of these cards to this month's ODBD challenge at OWH, which is Hearts.  

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you can find some time to create today!

You are my inspiration

I've been back from my summer vacation for a week now, but my mojo hasn't returned.  Maybe it's still in Martha's Vineyard?  Changes are happening at Operation Write Home as we reduce the number of cards in preparation for the overseas drawdown, which is a good thing.  It feels like a bit of a letdown, so I'm going to focus on making cards for myself and participate in challenges.  Really - there are so many great challenge blogs and it's fun to play along!

I'm hoping that the next Online Card Class (Stretch Your Stamps 2) will help me find my mojo!  That starts tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it.  

In the meantime, I made a card for the August ODBD challenge, which is stars.  I used the DCWV glitzy paper to cut the stars and the embossed silver sentiment is from the Hero Arts You're a Winner set:

It's a simple card, but this was my second attempt.  At first, I tried to make a starburst and it just didn't come together, so I salvaged the stars for this card.  Sooner or later, I'll get my creative juices flowing again.

I'm also entering this card in the August A2Z challenge - Encouragement.  

I hope you're having a great weekend!  Thanks for stopping by.

Bugs & Kisses

Happy Sunday!  The latest challenge over at Fantabulous Cricut is - Spring Cleaning  - create a project with a Cricut cartridge I never used before.  There's only one cartridge in my stash that this applies to - Living Simply.  The images on this cartridge are quirky and I chose the lady bug for my card, using today's OWH sketch - #220

 

This card will also work for this month's ODBD challenge, which is Insects.  I added a bit of Wink of Stella to the hearts and the sentiment is from My Pink Stamper (out of business).

 

My second card uses the same OWH sketch but this is a masculine version.  Today's sketch certainly was a challenge for me without measurements, but I like it and plan to make more cards using it. 

Sentiment is by Fiskars Holiday hoopla and papers are from my stash.

 

Well that's it for me today - hope you enjoy the rest of your day!

 

 

March ODBD Challenge

Happy March to ya!  It's time for our monthly ODBD challenge theme, which is Thank You.  My card uses scraps:

 

Hmm...don't remember the paper this came from, but I cut the flowers by hand.  Sentiment stamp is from Simon Says Stamp.

 

And because I don't like missing out on one of the Midweek Throwdown challenges, here's a card for the Teal  challenge:

The "Just a note" cut file that you can get from my SVG files page. 

 

I'm at a crop this weekend, so I'm busy scrapbooking for once!  It feels good to get back to doing pages, which is how I started papercrafting (before my card obsession took hold!)

 

Have a great Saturday!



Challenges for Saturday

Hello!  I'm entering a few card challenges today - a good way to keep that creativity flowing. 

 

The first is a new card challenge blog started by two OWH bloggers - Words 2 Scrap by.  The challenges take their inspiration from words and this month's challenge is to use a lyric from "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music.  I listened to the song and chose the words - "wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings" and imagined geese flying against a setting sun.

 

Here's my card:

 

First I made a circle mask for the moon and put it onto the watercolor paper.  Then, I used Distress Inks to create the sunset background, which I misted over with Perfect Pearls.  The geese are from the Silhouette store (#5442), stamp from Technique Tuesday. 

 

This challenge pushed me to try a new technique and that's always a good thing.

 

The second challenge is the monthly Our Daily Bread Designs challenge at OWH , which is stripes.  Here's my card:

I used three Memento Dew Drop inks and made a simple design, pulling the colors from the striped paper.  I used OWH sketch #201 for this card design:

 

I'm still looking over the many cards posted in the OWH Top 13 of 2013 blog hop and writing down cards that I want to CASE.  There's so much inspiration in the blog world.

 

Hope you have a chance to enter these challenges in between the football playoffs, that is!

 

 

1 sentiment - 3 sketches

I took a blogging break during marching band, but the season is now over and I've got time to craft.  Yay!  I've got stamps that are new to me and can't wait to break them out of their wrapping.

 

 The November ODBD challenge is to make love/Valentine's Day cards and I used a sentiment from the PaperTrey Ink We go together set.  After embossing the sentiment three times, I challenged myself to make three cards with different OWH sketches using the same black/tan papers.  Here's what I came up with:

 

Card #1 - OWH sketch #77

 

 

Card #2 - OWH sketch #83:

 

Card #3 - OWH sketch #184:

 

Since my sentiment was a circle, I searched for sketches with circles. It was fun!  Although I enjoy the OWH Unboxing videos that show talented ladies making multiples of one card, I get easily bored doing that, so this was a good alternative for me.

 

Enjoy your day and thanks for stopping by!

 

 



ODBD September Challenge

It's time for September's ODBD challenge posted here  and this month, we're challenged with wheels.  I used a Hero Arts stamp set called "Going" to make this card, based on OWH sketch #187:

 

I kept it simple for a masculine card.  My teenage son greets his friends with "Hey", so I thought that would be good for someone to send their teenage son.

 

Thank you, ODBD, for sponsoring these challenges and supporting OWH!



Sunday Cards

Hello there!  I've had a busy weekend sewing and crafting.  It's marching band season again and I'm the uniform chairperson, which means sewing and measuring, but I enjoy working with the students so I don't mind.  I'm learning how to cut with fabric on my Cricut, but it's the most frustrating thing ever!

 

#1 - Challenge #29 at A Blog Named Hero

ABNH challenged us to re-use something we intended to throw away.  After my last card (see here), I was going to throw away the extra circles I cut out.  I played around with the shapes and came up with this card:

 

The large scallop is imperfect - one of the scallops was cut clean off, but I hid this underneath my circle sentiment, which uses the Hero Arts Fancy Basics stamp.  So, I re-used the imperfect scallop on a card!  Pretty pleased with myself.  (Ink is Versafine Smokey Gray.)

 

#2 - August ODBD Challenge

Our Daily Bread Designs provides a monthly challenge at Operation Write Home and this month, we're challenge to make something using the colors brown, green, and pink.  I  came up with cherry blossoms as my focal point, which was a free file from SVG Cuts - cherry blossoms -

 

#3 - Sketch #184 at OWH

This week, Doodle Pantry is sponsoring our weekly sketch.  The last time they did this for us, I bought several digi stamps from them and received the Rounded sentiments free with my purchase.  These stamps are exactly what I was looking for on my cards and I printed several of them for today's sketch:

 

This card was my best for today, but here's my first two cards using the sketch:

 

Thanks, Doodle Pantry!  Hope ya'll enjoy the rest of your day.

 

 

 



Through my window

Today's OWH tutorial is on making window cards.  One of the ladies I follow is Kittie over at KittieKraft and she rocks window cards!  While I'm nowhere on her level, I tried making a literal window on a card, looking out at a mountain range, which I'd love to see outside my window every day!

 

I popped the window off the card, although I didn't show you that.

 

My second card is for the June ODBD challenge, which is water this month.  I really struggled with this one, and when Bugaboo Stamps offered this freebie stamp I was inspired to create this card:

The embossing folder is from Tim Holtz, sentiment from Simon Says Stamp.  That little girl makes me feel like getting in the water!  Here's another version I made, with a diecut sun ray image I made:

 

 

I will be entry #41 in the June ODBD challenge - we only need 9 more to get to 50 and then ODBD will pay to ship another box of our cards!  Let's go, ladies!!!

 

Hope you're having a great week so far.

 



Mojo Monday and Our Daily Bread Challenges

Hey there!  I worked on cards tonight for some challenges: one at Mojo Monday and two at OWH: Our Daily Bread Design challenge and this week's MWT color challenge.  OK - here goes:

 

This is the Mojo Monday sketch:

Here's my card, which I'm also using for the MWT challenge:

I used a tutorial by Laura B on plaid stamping here to make the Happy Birthday square.  This was my second attempt, but I enjoyed it and will have to try it again someday.  This card uses my favorite color combo - the rainbow!  It's fun to use all of those colors together and I think it makes for a happy card.  I always am happy to see a rainbow in the sky. 

 

My next cards use images from Lettering Delights, who had a $1 sale on all their SVG files.  I bought the Doug's Outer Space collection and cut out this rocket and planet for the ODBD challenge:

 

I printed the sentiment because I tried in vain to find a digital stamp with this sentiment.  This card comes pretty close to using the rainbow colors too - just no red.

 

I made another version of this card too:

I made the dark blue background by cutting small stars on the background.

 

Well, that will do it for me tonight.  Thanks for looking!

 



OWH MWT and ODBD challenges

Happy Wednesday! OWH's midweek throwdown is cards for kids.  I diecut birds from Lettering Delight's Mulberry Lane and used a stamp from My Pink Stamper:

 

I also made a card for this month's Our Daily Bread Design Challenge.  When I think of fruit, all I could think of was fruit puns:

 

The grapes were a free file from SVG Cuts: Grapes tag.  I may make some more punny fruit cards to add to my OWH box. 

 

Hope you're all having a great day.  Thanks so much for your comments.



January ODBD challenge

It's time for another ODBD challenge at OWH.  This month, Our Daily Bread Designs challenge is dry embossing.  I recently bought the stars embossing folder and used it to make a kid's card.  The image I cut is from the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge - Super Boy!  I used stamps from the September card kit from Simon Says Stamp.

 

My cat, Suzume, is back from her visit to the vet.  She had her back paw lanced and is feeling better now.  I'll never know what bit her.  She's ready to get back outside, but I'm waiting until her paw is fully healed.  She's half asleep here....what a great life she leads!

I'll be posting again today for our weekly OWH sketch challenge!