Paper Punch Art Challenge

My friend Paola is currently hosting a swap featuring punch art cards on Splitcoaststampers.  She is now having a weekly challenge Tuesday through Thursday for those taking part in the swap and friends that features punch art cards.  This week the challenge is to make a punch art card using the negative space left by the punch.   I used a butterfly punch along the lower border, a Martha Steward Punch Around The Page butterfly punches for the gold panel and a single Martha Stewart punch on one side of the the panel.  The panel has an overlay of vellum with the sentiment stamped on it fastened with a butterfly brad and a yellow rhinestone brad.  A little black and gold fringed ribbon is wrapped around the bottom of the black panel that is mounted on the gold metallic cardstock.  To find out more about this swap check out this link:
http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/cards-f107/new-punched-art-swap-%2Adue-april-2-2012%2A-t545218.html

Dueling Darling's "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"

It's the 15th of the month and time for another duel between the Divas and the Dazzlers.  This month Diva Carol and Dazzler Debbie, aka Lildj, chose the theme "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and isn't that appropriate for the month of February.  I'm part of team Divas and was awestruck with the beautiful kit I received from Carol.  Carol was afraid she didn't sent enough embellishments.  So not true!  I have enough left over after making this card to create more cards.  The only item on my card that wasn't in the kit is the base cardstock and the metallic silver die cut framing the image.  

I've been a little under the weather for over 3 weeks now.  Either dealing with a severe cold and sinus infection or having to have oral surgery last week for an infection.  I'm still in recovery mode and have to admit I'm not operating at full capacity so my card is a little late in getting posted and is rather simple in style. Without further fanfare here it is:

This darling image is from Mo Manning called "Young Love" and isn't it sweet?!  So perfect for the the theme!  It's colored with Copic markers and die cut with the Blossom Nestabilities and framed with a metallic silver die cut trimmed with pearls.  The beautiful heart embossed background paper is called Sweet Cakes from the Doodlebug's Heart to Heart collection.  I used one of the gorgeous ribbons in the kit to create a bow, attach it to a glittery silver punched heart and added one of the very pretty pink ribbon flowers in the kit.  Below the image I created a panel with the satin fuchsia ribbon placed behind the fantastic sheer heart ribbon.  I attached one of the small glittery silver punched hearts to the middle heart of the ribbon and trimmed the remaining four with the bright pink heart shaped rhinestones.  Well, that's it. What do you think?

 Please visit the rest of the Diva team here:
Kelly: http://sandcastlestamper.blogspot.com/
Carol: http://lostinmycraftroom.blogspot.com/
Barb:  http://inkingintoretirement.blogspot.com/
Jamie: http://butterflystamper71.blogspot.com/
Joan:  http://msearlgrey.wordpress.com/
LJ:  http://buckygirl.blogspot.com/
Tami:  http://blueinksdesign.blogspot.com/

And also visit the Dazzlers starting with their leader Jeanette here: http://creativeplayischeaperthantherapy.blogspot.com/

Below I have several cards I managed to make with a valentine theme:

This card was made using Card Patterns Sketch 152.  We R Memory Keepers makes this bright and fun heart designed designer paper. I used one side for the background and the reverse side for the strip beneath the oval layer.  Those hearts were the inspiration to stamp hearts in similar colors around the oval which was created using oval Nestability die and mounted on another scalloped oval Nestability die cut.  I used an SU punch to create the two hearts out of another d.p. and attached buttons trimmed with twine. The candy stripped twine wrapped around the heart strip has a tag attached that was stamped from a Clear Stamp.  Corners were punched with a scalloped corner punch:

This card was delivered to my next door neighbor who is originally from the South Pacific.  I've had the pleasure of watching her perform the hula and sing with her ukulele so I thought this adorable image for The Greeting Farm was really appropriate. It was colored with Copics, cut out and mounted on the card with dimensionals  Sorry I can't remember the name of this beautiful d.p. I thought the lacy heart in the design was appropriate for the day.  It's trimmed with some beautiful prima flowers with rhinestone brads and a heart punched strip layered with green and pinky-plum satin ribbon.

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day. Mine was quiet except for the big excitement of a brief snow storm here in the AZ desert.  It isn't often we get snow let alone rain here so it's a big event when it happens.
Today we're back to blue skies and sunshine and just a bit cooler than normal temps.

Wishing you a blue skies and sunshine day wherever you are! Sending you HUGS AND KISSES!!

Butterflies and Belleek

It's been awhile since I've made a card for an SCS challenge.  I loved the "Try A New Technique" challenge posted today called "Inspired by Belleek Pottery".  The challenge is to create the look of this pottery by using the negative embossing technique.  We were challenged to emboss a piece of white or light colored cardstock with an embossing folder that has the front or top of the folder inked with a light colored ink.  I used ivory cardstock and Stampin' Up's River Rock with a Cuttlebug folder featuring butterflies.  Here's my card:

The embossed panel was matted on River Rock cardstock and attached to the card base of Blush Blossom cardstock.  The sentiment "Thinking of You", from Stampin' Up's Friend to Friend, was stamped in Blush Blossom, die cut with Nestabilities oval die and sponged with Blush Blossom.  The oval was attached to a tag of River Rock cardstock cut with Spellbinders Fancy Tags die.  To strips of eyelet bordered ivory satin ribbon I added prima flowers and butterflies cut with a Martha Stewart punch in shades of peachy pink cardstock.

It's my birthday today and I think this card suits me to a tee. I love butterflies and love this shades Peachy Pink!!

New Year, New Cards

It's almost the halfway through January and I'm already behind in my goal of posting to this blog at least once a week.  Today I'm posting a number of birthday cards I've recently created for friends and family.  The first one was for my friend Bill whose birthday is January 1st.  I used Mojo Monday sketch 214 for the layout and designer papers are by DCWV La Creme Stack.  The sentiment is from Gina K's  Inside and Out stamp set and the finishing touch was a plaid ribbon attached with a medal button with the word "birthday" engraved on it:

 The inside of the card features another sentiment from the Gina K Inside and Out stamp set:

 The second card was for my sister Donna who celebrated her birthday on January 3rd.  Because teal is one of Donna's favorite colors I used this paper from DCWV The Downtown Loft Stack.  The image is a stamp by Elizabeth Bell for Ladybug and Friends called "Hello Sunshine".  The prima flowers were just the right touch for a pretty card for a special sister:

 The third birthday card is for my nephew's wife Linda who celebrated her birthday January 8th.  The layout is from Splitcoaststampers sketch 365.  Papers are by DCWV All Occasion Glitter Stack.  The sentiment is from Gina K's Inside and Out stamp set.  The fushia flower give this black, silver and white theme a punch of color along with a glittery brad:

 On January 10th we celebrated my BFF Barbara's birthday.  She loves red so that was the theme for her card.  Papers were from Stampin' Up, DCWV La Creme Stack and Bazzill.  Mojo Monday sketch 223 was the inspiration for the layout.  The red layer with the lacy black overlay was made on my Cricut with cartridge Paper Lace.  The large 'B' was made with my SCAL software and outlined with Black stickles.  I created the sentiment on my Word program.  The final touch was a bow made from sheer red ribbon topped with black, cream and red flowers.

 Last but certainly not least is a card I created for my cousin Jim who is celebrating his birthday today.  The layout was taken from Splitcoaststamper's sketch367.  The plaid d.p. is by Pebblesinc. The green layer framing the striped designer paper was punched with my EK Success candle punch.  The sentiment with spinner is a Stampin Up stamp "Take A Spin".  Two silver square brads add a little embellishment to what I hope is good masculine birthday card:

What Not To Wear at the Dueling Darling's Holiday Party

It's November 15th and time for another Dueling Darlings' challenge.  This month our esteemed hostess's and group leaders, Kelly for the Divas and Jeanette for the Dazzlers, have chosen the wackiest theme of What Not To Wear to this year's holiday party.  The tv show of this same name is the inspiration for the challenge.  In the words of our host: "Stacy and Clinton find unsuspecting women (craziest, wildest, most bizarre, worst-dressed) and give them lifel-chanign fashion makeovers and fasion advice, HOT OR COLD or no matter whjat the season or are you live in (another hint!).  So in this kit of "craziest, wildest, most bizaree kits - full of papers and embellishments that at first glance look atrocious" we are to create a card using the darling In Style stamp, Lilah and put her in the party.  Now Kelly added an extra challenge for the Divas.  She included two of her favorite holiday items - gigerbread men and candy cane twine from the twinery.  She requested we use these items and one of each of the designer papers from MME, CI and DCWV she included in the kit. Whew!
When I first viewed this kit and read the instructions my mind was in a whirl.  What am I going to do?   Well, in the spirit of the show I felt it was only appropriate to give lovely Lilah a makeover, so you're going to see my card in several views, one with Lilah before her makeover and one after her makeover and one that show the "suspension" card:

Here's Lilah in her "atrocious" outfit, top and skirt paper pieced from DCWVpapers, yellow ribbon bow, orange boots.  The tree is decorated with many items from the kit including the candy cane twine and the gingerbread man.  How do you like that red and white stripe ribbon at the top of the frame?  Here's Lilah after her makeover:

Our Lilah is now ready to be the star of the holiday party.  She's been "made over" with new hair color  and a sparkly silver dress with matching boots made from the wonderful glitter d.p. and her yellow ribbon has been replaced with this sparkly gem head dress and giving her sparkly aqua eyes.   WhooHoo! Let's party!!!

I was hoping to show a picture of the suspension element of the card with a peak at the interior. That was the only way I was going to get papers from the 3 different groups on the card.  But I'm having problems today uploading pix so you're not going to see one of ME wearing something crazy, wierd, or atrocious! That was the other challenge.  Sorry!
Let's go check out what the other Diva's have done with this challenge starting with Kelly here:

  Kelly * LJ * Barb * Carol  * Judy (you are here)  * Jamie * Joan * Tami

and to see the dueling theme from the Dazzlers, you can find them here!

Happy Harvest For The Dueling Darlings!

It's October 15th and time for team Divas to duel with team Dazzlers.  Our leaders this month, Tami for the Diva's and Darlene for the Dazzlers, have chosen the theme Happy Harvest.  Tami send the Diva's a great card kit including this adorable image from the "Sweet Season" Stampin' Up set and a wonderful collection of papers and embellishments.  From this collection I chose to use the Heidi Grace dual sided Floral/Green dotted paper, the TPC dual sided Fall words/plaid paper and the GSilk bronze glitter paper.  From the wide variety of embellishments Tami included I used colored rhinestones, red maple leaf brad, narrow chocolate satin ribbon, and a tiny green safety pin.  The layout is from Card Patterns Sketch 136 by Michelle Bertuzzi.  I used Martha Stewart maple leaf punches on the image panel and colored the image with Copic markers. For the base of my card I used SU "Old Olive" cardstock and added a panel of gold bazzil cardstock.  Here's my October Dueling Darling entry:

Please check out the rest of the Dueling Darling cards starting here:

Kelly * LJ * Barb * Carol  * Judy (you are here) 

 * Jamie * Joan * Tami

and to see the dueling theme from the Dazzlers, you can find them here!

In addition to creating a card with this fantastic kit the Divas and Dazzlers were challenged to include in this post a favorite autumn recipe.  I especially love having soup when the weather starts to cool and here's a favorite of mine:

Easy Vegetable Soup

1 cup brown rice

1 cup lentils

2 carrots, sliced

1 onion, chopped

2 stalks of celery, sliced

2  49 1/2 oz. cans chicken broth

1/2 tablespoon dried thyme

1/2 tablespoon dried basil

1/2 tablespoon dried oregano

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 drops of tabasco sauce

2   14 1/2 oz. cans of pasta sauce

Put everything at once into a big soup kettle. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. 

This smells heavenly and is a wonderful meal when accompanied with bread and a salad.  Easy!

School is Cool for September's Dueling Darlings

The challenge presented to the Dueling Darlings this month was to create a card around the theme "School is Cool".  For those of you not familiar with the Dueling Darlings we are a group of papercrafting friends who have formed two teams, the Divas (my team) and the Dazzlers.  Each month a member from each team consults with one another, chooses a theme and, often, a challenge for the teams.  Based on the theme, a card kit is created and sent by that member to each of her team members and on the 15th of the month the "duel" begins as we all upload the cards we've made from the kits we've received.  This month the Diva's recieved this  terrific kit from Jamie that included some fabulous DCWV designer paper, some coordinating SU cardstock, stamped images and sentiments, die cuts, ribbon, buttons and brads.  Using some of those elements plus a few of my own here's the card I created:

School's Cool & So Are Teachers!

I used both sheets of the DCWV d.p, the perfect paper for this theme.  My main image is a digi stamp by Guylou's Inimitability which I colored with Copic markers and cut out and mounted with dimensionals on the die cut d.p.  I thought it was the perfect complement to the theme and all the elements I used from the kit which included these two quotes, the terrific "Have Fun/Always Creating/ Never Stop Learning" pencil image, ribbon, sparkly red apple and blue book and the white clip.   The sentiment on the red tag reads "America's future walks throught the doors of our schools each day" and I believe that sentiment applies to both students and teachers.  So I'm dedicating my card to all the teachers who played such an important part in my life and also for one special teacher in my life, my sister-in-law who will be retiring at the end of this school year.  This one's for you, Tina!

I almost forgot!  We were asked to share a favorite school memory.  I guess it's not surprising I forgot...It's been so long ago that I was in school.  There is no one event or person that stands out in my mind but a series of experiences and most of all the friendships I made.  I still keep in touch with my best friend from grade school and a BFF and I go back to high school days.  This summer I was able to reconnect with many of those old friends as we got together for a picnic to celebrate the year we turned 70! Yikes,  how did that happen so fast!

Please check out the rest of the Diva's September duel cards here:

Kelly * LJ * Barb * Carol  * Judy (you are here)  * Jamie * Joan * Tami

and to see the dueling theme from the Dazzlers, you can find them here!