Cupcake Inspiration Challenge #8

With tomorrow being Memorial Day, this week's Cupcake Inspiration Challenge at Hope Stamps Eternal is just perfect!

90% of the time, I make the standard A2 size card. Occasionally I'll mix it up with a 4.25" square, but I tend to get stuck in a rut. So today I thought I'd do something different and I made this card that's 8.5" x 3.5". It fits in a standard #9 or #10 business envelope, so it's not difficult to mail.

I happened to have a bunch of leftover stars that I had stamped and cut out for another project, so this was the perfect chance to use them! The stars are from the PTI anniversary set Everyday Classics. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the red stars are popped up with dimensionals just to give the card a little something extra.

The ribbon is white twill that I colored with a copic marker (B29) and I tied some red embroidery floss through the ribbon to tie in the color scheme. The sentiment is from Verve and the little blue gems are from this awesome crystal wheel from Hope Stamps Eternal. I love having the right color gem for any project I'm working on, all stored in one little container!

If you want to play along, upload your creation to Rachel's post by next Saturday evening to be included in her collage on Sunday!

Supplies
Stamps: PTI Everyday Classics, Verve Floral Whimsy
Ink: SU Brilliant Blue, PTI Pure Poppy, Copic Sketch B29
Paper: PTI white, Pure Poppy, SU Brilliant Blue
Other: foam dimensionals, Zva Creative crystals from Hope Stamps Eternal, PTI white button, PTI white twill ribbon, embroidery floss from Joann's

Gift Bag Inspiration

One of my friends that recently had a baby has a jungle/safari theme for her son's nursery, so for her shower, I bought wooden jungle animal cut-outs for the walls. When he was born, I stuck with that theme and found the most adorable little outfit with a lion on the bib and on the back of the pants. So when I saw this gift bag in Target, I knew I had to get it. The colors are so fun and bright, plus the bag was glittered, though that doesn't show up in the photo.

Since I'm a big fan of themes and matching stuff, I wanted to make a card that fit the gift bag and what you see here is what I came up with. I used the colors from the bag as my color scheme for the card and used the only safari animal stamp I own - the elephant from Bitty Baby Blessings. Some of the animals on the bag are polka dotted, so I mimicked that with the background as well as the polka dot paper I used to paper piece the elephant. And of course I had to draw in the glitter somehow, so the edge of the turquoise circle framing the sentiment is covered with turquoise Stickles. I think the card and bag look so cute together and am really pleased with how it came out!

Here's a closeup of the card so you can see the paper piecing and sparkle a little better.

Supplies
Stamps: PTI's Bitty Baby Blessings, Polka Dot Basics
Ink: So Saffron, Tempting Turquoise, Palette Noir
Paper: PTI white, SU Pumpkin Pie and Old Olive, SU Turquoise Prints patterned paper
Other: SU circle punches, foam dimensionals, turquoise Stickles, PTI Summer Sunrise twill ribbon

PTI Birthday Card

I haven't been doing a whole lot of stamping lately, but I found this card stored on my camera and realized I never shared it. I made this for my friend Rachel's birthday and drew my color inspiration from two of her favorite colors - purple and green.

It's a little bit difficult to see in the photo, but the various flowers from PTI's Life set are heat embossed with a pale lavendar embossing powder from SU that I've had for years. When I first learned about heat embossing, I thought it was the greatest technique ever and stocked up on quite a pit of powder, but for some reason (probably laziness) I hardly ever heat emboss anymore.

Anyway, the circles along the side are punched out from SU Almost Amethyst cardstock and then I added the black dot embellishments to the centers. Then I traced around the black dots with Stardust Stickles for the obligatory sparkle! The circle at the top was done with a larger circle punch and then twill was threaded through a PTI True Black button.

Supplies
Stamps: PTI Life, Birthday Basics
Ink: Versamark, Palette Noir
Paper: PTI white, Spring Moss, SU Almost Amethyst, Basic Black
Other: Stardust Stickles, SU circle punches, SU embossing powder, dot embellishments from Joann's, PTI True Black button, PTI Spring Moss twill

Lauren Meader-inspired card organizer

I made this project a couple of weeks ago and am so happy with how it turned out, but for some reason I just kept forgetting to share it here! This card organizer was inspired by this project from Lauren Meader, creator of the My Timeless Templates I used here. Lauren is one of my stamping idols and I fell in love with her project right away. I knew I could never hope to make something quite as awesome as hers, but I had to try anyway!

This organizer uses two of Lauren's templates, available for only $5 each from PTI. The base is a portion of the Filed with Flair templates and the organizer boxes themselves are from All Boxed Up. I love making non-card creations but just don't have the creativity or patience to try and figure out something like this myself. So I'm thrilled to have the templates to play with and they really are so easy to put together and personalize however you want!

I really love this color combo - Aqua Mist, Berry Sorbet, and Spring Moss - and love how they look in the patterned paper I created with Guide Lines II. Each of the boxes are stamped along the binding with a sentiment that represents the category of cards I could store in there. I think this would also be a fun gift to give someone, filled with a bunch of cards they can send out as needed. The boxes admittedly don't fit very many embellished cards in each, but quite a few one or two layer cards without bulky ribbon or buttons could be presented or stored this way.

I took pictures from a few different angles so you could see what all of the sides look like. I was going to leave the back blank, but Lauren is always saying that you should make your project look good from all angles, so I added an extra strip of the patterned paper to the back. And she's right - much better that way!

I just love how fresh and springy this is! In retrospect, I probably should have chosen colors that go with the walls of my stamp room (a deep brick red) but oh well, I think it's so pretty anyway! Hope you like it!

Supplies
Stamps: PTI Guide Lines II, Everyday Classics (for sentiments)
Ink: PTI's Spring Moss, Aqua Mist, Berry Sorbet, Pallette Noir
Paper: PTI's white, Spring Moss, Aqua Mist, Berry Sorbet
Other: Berry Sorbet saddle stitched ribbon, Filed with Flair and All Boxed Up My Timeless Templates

My First Digital Image

I've never ventured into the world of digital images before, but my evil enabler friend Colleen showed me this image from the Digi Shack and I had to have her! Partly because I want to be this girl right now, relaxing somewhere tropical with a pina colada in my hand! And partly because she just looked like she would be so much fun to color! When I was little my favorite coloring books were my Barbie ones, because I loved to color her outfits and hair in pretty, girly ways. So I had a blast with this image!

One of the nice things about digital images is that you can resize many of them to whatever size you need. I did decrease the size of this one before printing it, but didn't really make it quite small enough, so she rather overpowers this card. But, not one to waste cardstock and ink, I decided to use her anyway. I have a feeling I'll be coloring lots more of this image in the future. I just love her!

One cool thing I wanted to mention is that I custom-colored that twill ribbon to match the Cool Caribbean mat behind my image. I used a Copic marker, BG13, to color white twill and I am SO happy with how it turned out! It soaked up immediately, so I didn't have to wait any time at all for it to dry, and it really saturated the twill so nicely. I will definitely be doing this a lot more now that I've seen how well it works!

Supplies
Stamps: None! Image is Lani Palm Leaf from the Digi Shack
Ink: Copic markers - RV11, RV13, RV14, R20, YG63, YG67, BG13, E00, E55, E57
Paper: PTI white, SU Cool Caribbean, patterned paper from PTI Friends til the End collection
Other: PTI white twill ribbon, pink gemstones, dew drop, foam dimensionals

Cupcake Inspiration Challenge #7

It's Sunday, which means it's time for another Hope Stamps Eternal Cupcake Challenge!

That photo on the left was the inspiration for this week's challenge - aren't those cupcakes so much fun?! I'd love to eat a dozen of them!

Before I go into any explanation of my card, let me apologize for the shadowy photo. It's a gray cloudy day and after taking 8-10 pictures from all different angles, this was the best I could come up with!

My card did not at all end up how I had originally planned it. I was going to do a polka dot background. Then I added polka dots in these colors to bridal flowers and was going to use those. Then I remembered the PTI anniversary set has a polka dot cupcake in it, so I reached for that and my card sort of morphed into what you see here. One of the things I love most about PTI is that their stamps are so user friendly. This cupcake image comes in three parts - the wrapper, the cupcake top, and the cherry - which makes it so easy to customize your colors without needing to use markers or inking only part of the stamp. Not much else to note here, except look at that gorgeous textured button from PTI! I love their vintage button collections!

If you want to try out this challenge, link your creation to Rachel's post here to be included in next week's collage! Have fun!

Supplies
Stamps: PTI Everyday Classics
Ink: SU Gable Green, PTI Aqua Mist and Pure Poppy
Paper: PTI white, Aqua Mist, SU Gable Green
Other: SU scallop edge punch, paper piercing tool, PTI Aqua Mist button, PTI Pure Poppy twill

Happy Mother's Day!

This is the card I made for my mom for Mother's Day this year. I think it's pretty and girly, though I wish I'd cut the pink panel a little smaller so there wasn't so much empty space. I of course didn't come to that realization until everything was adhered, so too late!

I used my Swiss Dots cuttlebug folder to emboss the card base and my SU scallop edge punch along the pink strip on the right. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory, though I do want to add that the flourishy sentiment was traced with a black glitter pen, so it's nice and sparkly in person even though it doesn't show up here.

My parents come down today for a quick visit and it was so nice to have them here. The honeymoon period in my new condo has not worn off and I am still so happy to be here every day and so thrilled to finally have a place where I can have family and friends over. I love to cook and bake for people and to play hostess, so this has been a dream come true!

I planned a great menu if I do say so myself! When my parents arrived, I had a homemade spinach and artichoke dip and some cheese and crackers waiting for them. Then the first course was this delicious crab and avocado salad. It was so refreshing with such bright flavors. The main meal was a slightly healthified twist on my friend Suzanne's Imperial Chicken - a fabulous butter and garlic soaked chicken breast that is then dredged in parmesan cheese and bread crumbs and baked. Mmm! I served that with an orzo salad that my dad said was a definite keeper and some green beans sprinkled with fresh parmesan cheese. And for dessert I made Ina Garten's lemon cake, though I left off the glaze and drizzled each serving with a strawberry coulis (scroll to the bottom of that page for the coulis recipe) instead. Everything was fantastic!

Cupcake Inspiration Challenge #5

It's time for another Cupcake Inspiration Challenge from Hope Stamps Eternal! Isn't this week's cupcake gorgeous?! So pretty and elegant. I'm a little short on time today so I went with a quick little 4.25" x 4.25" card. I loved the script in the background behind the cupcake, so I used my SU French Script background stamp and heat embossed it in gold onto PTI white cardstock. The Certainly Celery strip was embossed with one of the cuttlebug border folders and the flower is just one that I had in my stash. Not quite the right kind of flower, but I thought the color was perfect! A black gemstone from Making Memories finished off the card and that's that! If you want to play along, link your creation back to Rachel's post by tonight to be included in her collage tomorrow!

And now I need to get busy - my parents are coming to visit tomorrow for Mother's Day, so my agenda today is packed with cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking/baking!

Have a great day!

HSE Cupcake Inspiration Challenge #4

This cupcake picture was the inspiration for Cupcake Challenge #4 over at the Hope Stamps Eternal blog. I love the fun bright colors, though they're a little outside of my normal color range. I used the scalloped fondant, as well as the colors, as my inspiration, cutting scalloped circles with my SU punch. Once I did that and arranged them on my card front, I got a little stuck on where to go next. I thought about adding letters or something like that to the scallops, but I didn't want it to turn into a kid card since I never make cards for kids and wouldn't have a use for it. So, when in doubt, bling is the answer! I didn't have gemstones in red or purple, so I used my copic markers to color clear gemstones. That worked fine, but I think I need to pick up some of these very soon - how awesome is that to have all the different colors in one convenient place?!

Rachel will be posting a new cupcake challenge tomorrow, but that doesn't mean you can't try this one too! If you try it tonight, add a link to Rachel's post for this challenge and you'll be included in her collage tomorrow. Or upload it to SCS or Paper Craft Planet using CIC4 any time!

Supplies
Stamps: PTI Mega Mixed Messages
Ink: Palette Noir, R29 and V17 copic markers
Paper: PTI white, SU Tempting Turquoise, Summer Sun, YoYo Yellow, Lovely Lilac, Green Galore, Real Red, Pixie Pink
Other: Memory Box jewel stickers in Petal Pink and Deep Lagoon, Kaiser Craft gemstones, K&Company gemstones