Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Birthday Scraps

For this card, I tried to limit myself to paper scraps, not that I think any less of the person I'm giving the card too!! :) For some reason I already had a card base folded in Soft Sky and so I tried using paper in my scrap drawer to come up with something original. I also wanted to use my new Making Memories Slot punch -hehehe. Now that I think about it, I should have used the chocolate chip rub-ons to draw out the chocolate chip mat more but I think it turned out ok. Sometimes my color combos just don't look right and sometimes, they're great... Just takes more practice, I guess.


Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Birthday Basics
Paper: SU! Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip CS; SU! Ginger Blossom DP; PTI Spring Moss CS
Ink: Pallette Burnt Umber
Accessories: SU! Rub-on's, Hodgepodge hardware, Ticket Punch; Misc. Ribbon; Making Memories Slot punch; Rain Dots

Inchin' by...

Though it was a week late, I decided to to the Casual Weekly Challenge #3 that Em posts on the PTI fourm. I really liked the sketch for it's simplicity and really didn't take very long to make.

I wanted the caterpillar to "inch" across the four panels so I stamped first, then cut. Just had to make sure I measured to take into account all the borders. I kept everything plain, except for adding a background with Polka Dot Basics to my card base.


I also gave the caterpillar some sparkle with my pearlescent chalk. This picture shows the sparkliness... I'm really liking my new chalks! Click on the photo to enlarge.



Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Pond Life, Pond Life sentiments, Polka Dot Basics
Paper: PTI Lemon Tart, Stampers Select White CS; SU! Summer Sun CS; Misc Orange CS
Ink: PTI Lemon Tart; SU Summer Sun; Pallette Burnt Umber
Accessories: PTI Lemon Tart Satin ribbon; SU! Pewter Brad; sponge; Pebbles Pearlescent Chalk; Versamark marker


Thanks for looking!!

Blogs I Read

I'm slowly asking people if I can add them to my 'blog roll'. I'm not sure about the ettiquette, but I figure, it might be nicer to ask first. :)

***EDITED to Add***
My Blog Roll is up and running, if you see yourself and don't want to be on my site, please let me know and I will remove you. THANKS!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

First Birthday

I made this card for a friend's daughter who celebrated her first birthday. I don't totally love the color combination but it was mainly an original concept, except for the fact that it's a "file folder" card. Sorry that I had to white-out some of the personal information. The peony stamp is from Stampworx 2000, which was featured a long time ago on Martha Stewart and then subsequently featured on Weddingbee.com. So of course I had to get them! I used the small peony for this project.

PTI's Simple Alphabet is awesome for personalizing anything. The letters are definitely small but relatively easy to line up, especially if you have a grid-linded acrylic block. It was a cloudy day so the pics didn't turn out that great. I'm debating if I should get a photo box or not... I tried making my own with 5 sheets of white cardstock - LOL. It kinda worked...


Fine Print:
Stamps: Peony Stamps (Stampworx2000); PTI Women of Life, Simpe Alphabet, Birthday Basics, Out on a Limb
Paper: SU! Old Olive CS; PTI Spring Moss, Sweet Blush, Stampers Select White CS
Ink: SU! Old Olive; PTI Perfect Match Spring Moss, Sweet Blush; Palette Burnt Umber
Accessories: PTI Sweet Blush Satin ribbon; Rhinestone stickers, ProvoCraft Large scallop scissors; Crop-o-dile; SU! Tab punch


Thanks for looking!

Monday, April 28, 2008

Birthday Fishes

I CASE'd this card from Heather Nichols. I LOVED the color combo for a masculine card, so I only changed the size and the sentiment. I did make it into a pocket card so that it would be easy to put in $$ or a gift card. I kinda wing'ed the pocket and added the extra panel to keep money from falling out. This is also my first time using Hodgepodge hardware! I've had the box for awhile but always kept saving it (a.k.a. hoarding it). Speaking of Heather Nichols, I love, love, love what she does with Kraft cardstock, so much so, that I bought a pack for myself. I like how colors look a little washed out with it, hopefully I can come up with just as many uses for it!

I added a few Rain Dots to the bubbles to make them stand out a little.

Here's the inside, where I used a sentiment from Birthday Basics. I also cut one of the fishies out and popped him up
Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Pond Life, Pond Life sentiments, Birthday Basics
Paper: SU! Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Kraft Cardstock; Misc. Vellum
Ink: SU! Old Olive, Whisper White; Pallette Pallet Noir; PTI Perfect Match Aqua Mist
Accessories: SU! Hodgepode Hardware, Wild Wasabi DS ribbon; Rain Dots


Don't know who the lucky person will be who gets this card!!
Thanks for looking!

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Stay tuned...

Sorry for not posting in a long time... I was out of town and busy in general. Enough time to MAKE cards, just not enough time to post about them :). Stay tuned for a bunch of cards - Mother's day and birthdays galore! Thanks to my readers (if any :))!!

I've also been busy trying to organize (again)... I decided to follow Nichole's lead and wind all my ribbon onto clothespins. The only issue is that I have lots of very wide ribbon I use for making diaper cakes and for decorating around the holidays. I also have LOTS of thin satin ribbon, 10yds or more, so it was better to leave those on spools. I was able to cut down on some space. I definitely do not have enough to put them into color specific storage (yet!) so they fit into one box.

Here is the before: (haha, ignore the tv show in the background)


Here is the after:

It kinda works out 'cuz the ribbon in the boxes, I only need for specific reasons. The ones on the clothespins and in the ribbon organizer, I tend to use more so they are more easily accessible. We'll see how this method works.

The ladies at the PTI forum have been discussing ribbon organization - which sorta got me goin'. So thanks!

Friday, April 18, 2008

Earthquake?!?

Ok, I live in the NW suburbs of Chicago – earthquakes are not a part of life around here. Yet at 4:36am this morning, I was shaken awake in my bed and heard the walls creaking. At first I panicked because I thought someONE was shaking my bed… but then I realized in a sleep daze, “Oh, an earthquake, interesting.” One might ask how I would have known it was an earthquake being a hard-core Midwesterner?
Well, back in October 2006 while we were on our honeymoon on Maui, there was a 6.7 magnitude quake the morning of the 15th. Well actually it was off the shore of the Big Island, you can read about it here. Of course we were a bit unsettled but there were a bunch of Californians there reassuring us that it was no big deal. It totally felt like a train was running under the building. Luckily there wasn’t that much damage where we were, other than the electricity being out for a few hours.
So back to this morning… the bed was shaking pretty heavily for about 10-15 seconds, then there was sort of a constant light shaking for another 30 seconds or so. It obviously felt like a lot longer at 4:30 in the morning. This is significant because I am a pretty heavy sleeper so it was enough to wake me up. I was contemplating getting up and seeing if everything was ok but, people, it was 4:30 AM. Apparently the quake’s epicenter was in West Salem, IL, near the southern tip of Illinois. I didn’t even know there were fault line in the Midwest! According to the news, it was a 5.2 on the richter scale. And here at work, around 10:15am, a bunch of us felt a tremor, which is being reported as a 4.5 or something, with two other aftershocks measured at 2.6 and 2.5. Just wanted to record this “momentous” event, since things like this don’t happen much around here.
The best quote from today is from my brother who lives nearby, “Man, someone’s shaking the house...I think I’m getting robbed. So I went back to sleep.”

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Guest Star Stamper- March Entry

Though I did not win :) I thought I'd post some details about my entry. This card is a bit outside my "typical" style... though I'm not sure what my typical style is - generally a little more simple but the PTI stuff just makes you wanna keep going :). Also, I don't think I followed the directions for the challenge correctly... Oh well... :P

Well here it is...

Close up of the card... please excuse my finger! hehehe...
I made the inside a pop-up. I got this really cool book in Japan that has all sorts of pop-up cards... from simple to very complicated. The only problem is that it's all in Japanese, and nope, not Japanese :). I guesstimated and used the pictures and examples to get it to work. This one was not too hard to do, PTI cardstock is so thick that you have to make sure to cut and score very well. I freehanded the fruit... Doesn't the Chocolate chip Carstock make the cake look like chocolate cake?? YUM!
I also made a matching tin full of sour-patch kids - my friend likes sour candy. I altered a cookie tin to match.
Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Birthday Basics, Boxes, Bags & Tags, Women of Life, Simple Alphabet
Paper: PTI Spring Moss, Sweet Blush, Stamper's Select White; SU! Purely Pomegranate, Chocolate Chip, PTI Pink Patterns DP
Ink: PTI Spring Moss, Sweet Blush; Pallette Ink Burnt Umber; SU! Rose Red, Whisper White
Accessories: PTI Spring Moss & Sweet Blush Grossgrain, satin & stiched ribbon, making memories brad, SU! mellow moss grossgrain ribbon; Marvy Giga Scallop Punch, Mega Circle Punch, Jumbo circle punch; Fiskars border punch, scallop scissors

I also wanted to thank Nichole from PTI for giving me a mention awhile back - never got around to posting about it here. As you can see I only blog in spurts :). Aaaannnnddd... do you guys notice that the colors from April's release are strangely similar to my project... a coincidence?? I think not!! JUST kidding! I was ridiculously happy that day... it was really nice to be put in the same category as such talented people!

Thanks for looking!!
Debbie

Card-Scrapbook/Scrapbook-Card!

The ladies at the PTI Forum started a scrapbooking forum... awesome! It will definitely get me going on finishing my honeymoon album and get started on one for our 1st year. Just wanted to post something I thought was interesting. At my first SU! demo, the demo-lady mentioned that basically any card could be "exploded" into a scrapbook page and any scrapbook page could be, I guess, "imploded" (?) into a card.

A bunch of my crafty co-workers and I decided to get another co-worker started on her baby album - she had a new baby girl in January- and make her some pages. Sorta like a card, but bigger! So for my idea, I took a card from Melissa Bickford's blog and "exploded" into a scrapbook page. Hope she doesn't mind!!! Loved the color combo... Just thought I'd share this little tid-bit, it was actually my first time doing this.

Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Out on a Limb, Beautiful blooms; SU! Because of You
Paper: PTI Spring Moss, Sweet Blush; SU! Bashful Blue; Misc. DP
Ink: PTI Spring Moss & Sweet Blush; Pallette Ink Burnt Umber
Accessories: PTI Spring Moss double-stitched ribbon, Making Memories paper flower & brad, pretty in pink SU! marker to color paper flower

Thanks for looking!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Anywhere Inspiration



Hello! You know you can get inspiration from anywhere! I had a really good friends Bridal shower and bachlorette party last Saturday and I created a gift basket. I bought a basket (on sale, no less from Michael's) and filled it with things from her registry. As I was putting things in, I realized that it needed a little something extra. I found these really beautiful embroidered dishtowels from Crate & Barrel. I took the motif and expanded it into a card!

I used Papertrey's Out on a Limb & the flower from Little Lady to replicate the flower design. SU! Pumpkin Pie & Summer Sun were pretty close matches to the flower colors. Cardstock is SU! Chocolate chip & Summer Sun w/PTI Spring Moss & White. To highlight the flower centers, I used markers in pumpkin pie & summer sun then went in with my Sakura Stardust pens to make them sparkly. I also carried the theme on the inside, this picture shows the "sparkliness."



Fine Print:
Stamps: PTI Out on a Limb, Little Lady, Mixed Messages
Paper: PTI Spring Moss, Stampers Select white; SU! Chocolate Chip, Summer Sun
Ink: PTI Spring Moss, Palette Burnt Umber, SU! Chocolate Chip, Summer Sun, Old Olive
Accessories: PTI Spring Moss saddle stiched ribbon, Fiskars Large & med oval punches, Sakura stardust gel pens, SU! Ticket Corner punch, MM Rhinestone brads

Here is the final product if you'd like to see!

Thanks for looking!