Monday, May 28, 2018

Freshly Squeezed Sunshine Card

Hello, Stampin' Friends! I wanted to squeeze in one more May SOTM project before this stamp set rolls away at the end of May. This week's Atlantic Heart's Sketch Challenge included a sweet wreath element, and I thought, "What about a wreath of lemons?" I'd already done yellow lemons, and this big pink Polka dot print from Beautiful Friendship caught my eye and I thought, "What about PINK lemonade?" Aaaaaand, then the sun just smiled down on this project!
I stamped a bunch of lemon clusters, which I colored in using Pixie Ink, Fern Ink, and my Bashful pink Shimmer Brush. After a satisfying session of fussy cutting (am I the only one who finds that soothing?) I trimmed a circle out of the pale pink dotted paper from Central Park and used the edge of the circle to adhere my lemons into a wreath shape. Before adding the lemons I stamped the dotted banner and tiny banner images from the SOTM across the circle. 
I decided I wanted to have this be a cheerful Friend card, so I got out the Central Park - Scrapbooking stamps and stamped the cool 2 step Sunshine sentiment using Pixie Ink. How cool is that dropped shadow? I painted over the SUNSHINE letters with more Pixie Ink picked up with the Bashful Shimmer Brush, and did a faint skinny outline with a pale gray Zig Clean Color brush tip marker for a bit more emphasis. I trimmed out the SUNSHINE sentiment and popped it up with thin 3-d Foam tape. I stamped the FRESHLY SQUEEZED label image and carefully trimmed out the two words I wanted to complete my wreath center and sentiment.
I decided to embellish the bottom banner from the AHSC sketch a bit with some ink rolled lemon slices. I used more Pixie Ink picked up with the Bashful shimmer brush to deepen the slice centers. The Just for YOU sentiment (and that teensy butterfly) is recently retired from Chelsea Gardensin the last Expressions book, and I outlined it using the delicate dotted line image from the SOTM set.  I love all the little extras in this lemony SOTM set, like the dotted lines and banners and the striped straw that makes an excellent border (not to mention that large mason jar - swoon!).

I'm linking this sweet card up to the Heart 2 Heart When Life Hands You Lemons Challenge. I hope it brought you some some of the Freshly Squeezed Sunshine I felt while making it! #craftingismytherapy

Friday, May 25, 2018

Hogs and Kisses Card

One of my favorite crafty escapes is watching our CTMH team training videos on Mondays. Our fearless leader Naomi makes these live videos for us each week, with craft challenges and new techniques to try out and it's just so friendly and fun! 
This week she challenged us to use a sketch from the new Make It From Your Heart, which is super simple and so versatile. You might have noticed I'm the kind of crafter who LIKES ALL THE THINGS, so simple isn't usually my bag, baby...but I really enjoyed using the sketch in my own way. I combined the idea of that sketch with the Seize the Birthday weekly challenge, with the topping of using patterned paper. I chose this sweet watercolor dot paper from Central Park, which I changed up by adding in a sentiment from the Operation Smile charity set called Punny Pals. I bent the sentiment in a circular shape and stamped it around some of the circles, and then completed the circular embellishing with hand drawn dots, customizing the patterned paper for my project. The blue dotted paper is actually the backside of the watercolor dots - love that double sided patterned paper! I mounted some Coral Shimmer Trim under this stamped patterned paper panel across the top of the card base and just above the bottom of my card front, which I tore to expose the blue dotted B&T I mounted inside the card. That shimmer trim is on clearance right now for a super good price, and I'm desperately trying not to buy the rest of the stock myself right now!

I stamped the background of my banner piece with my second sweet sentiment in Pebble ink before also popping it up in Ruby ink. I colored my little Punny Pal Pig with my zig clean color markers before adding his little googly eyes. I'm partial super dupe sad that we've only got a short time left with Punny Pals...and partially super excited to see what we will get next since the Operation Smile charity sets tend to be pretty high on my favorites list each year!

While I haven't been blogging as regularly as I'd like, I have been crafting a LOT more as I come back to my real life. My team made really adorable t-shirts (PLUS my favorite shirt to wear right now) for our trip to Las Vegas convention next month. I also made ten adorable cricut signs for my fourth grader's Pioneer day. Sometimes I'm still sad, maybe even a lot of the time, but every day, and with every project it gets better. #craftingismytherapy . Stampin' Friends, and I am sending out lots of Hogs and Kisses to all my fellow craft therapy group buddies! 

Monday, May 14, 2018

Awesome to the Core Teacher Appreciation Card

While I've been traveling and moving a lot of things kinds of fell by the wayside. One of those things was Teacher Appreciation Week. I'm so grateful for the teachers my boys have been lucky enough to learn from, and I figure late is better than never... 
I started off with the new sketch from Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge. I combined it with some inspiration from this week's Muse Challenge: I pulled the grey from the elephant for the apple basket, the yellow and pale blue elements for my color combo, the stars which I moved into the washi tape, and I added the leaves scattered about the main image like the original stars. The stamp set I used is a sneak peek of the June Stamp of the Month, which isn't quite available yet.
I colored the apples with my Shin Han Markers. I used the fine tip of the Pastel Green marker to pull color from the Leaf Green and Carmine markers to make the speckled apple surface. I paper pieced the basket of apples with papers from Central Park (blue grid and yellow sunburst) and Fresh Air (grey wood print) paper packets. I couldn't capture it with my photos, but the sunburst paper and the AWESOME sentiment banner are outlined with shimmer pen for a little extra something something. 

I hope you'll hop on over to Atlantic Hearts to play along with this week's adorable sketch!

Friday, May 11, 2018

When Life Hands You Lemons

Hello, Stampin' Friends. I swear I just wrote a post about coming back from an unexpected break, and then I went off on another break. Life has been quite the roller coaster around here. Since we last visited, I've lost my mom, and one of my sisters, and we also suddenly and with almost no notice  moved. I've barely had time to breathe, never mind put ink to paper, and that has certainly not been a happy place to be. I'm slowly unpacking and reorganizing what's left of my stamp room finally. When I ran across the May Stamp of the Month I thought it was about time that I started making space in my life for crafting as therapy, so I stopped unpacking and took a moment to enjoy the feel of inky paws again. 
I started off with this week's sketch from Freshly Made Sketches, and combined it with this week's Color Throwdown. Sometimes it helps to have a helping hand to get going! I stamped the white cardstock background with lemons and the banner dots in Lemon and Pebble inks. I layered that stamped panel with Poppy cardstock and some brick wall B&T from the new Central Park paper packet. The mason jar was stamped with Pewter ink onto vellum, and colored with a zig clean color marker on the back, but stamped with ice cubes in Lemon ink on the front. I'm also linking this project to the Heart 2 Heart Creative with Vellum challenge.
I stamped and cut out some lemon slices and the straw to slide behind the mason jar, which was glued behind the coloring so the adhesive wouldn't show. I "sugared" the lemon slice images and the LEMONADE sentiment using a shimmer pen. I especially love the tiny dot border/banner images in this set

I'm not going to promise to blog every day, or even very regularly right now. Some days I'm fine, and some days I'm super sad. I'm grateful to all of you who are still here with me while I'm learning how to make some lemonade out of the lemons life has been handing me so often of late. 

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