Magical Monday - Birthday Challenge

This week Julie Smith brings us our challenge over at the Paper Cupcakes Challenge Blog. She would like us to make a birthday card/project; it's that easy! I used a new released image "Dogwood Cupcake" by Paper Cupcakes. It is sitting in the store right now and I will be adding 10 more new images by the end of tomorrow.

I colored my image with my colored pencils and used some of my Stickles on the cupcake icing as well on the leaves and ticket. I wish you could really see how pretty the sparkle is, but I don't think it shows up that well in the pics. The embossing folder is Tiny Bubbles by Cuttlebug. I crimped my patterned paper and layered my flowers and punched my butterflies. This was a pretty easy card to make. I just loved how it turned out. The one thing I love about digis is that you can resize your image and this cupcake is fairly large. The card is a 5x7. Yum yum, it would be deadly if you ate a cupcake that large! :o)





Well, it stopped raining for two days and the rain is back. We did get our soccer game in on Saturday and the fields weren't too bad either, but the wind was a killer. I had a nice weekend, although it was busy, but hey I am use to that. Hope you had a nice weekend as well and now I am ready to start another week!

Make sure you stop by Paper Cupcakes and check out my new images in the "new arrivals" area. I am hoping to have them all up-loaded by the end of today. There will be a total of 14 new ones. Four are sitting there right now as I had to stop and move on to something else. If they all aren't there, come back a bit later in the evening (my ETS of course) and they should all be there (I hope). If by chance they all aren't there it is because I had to take my car into the shop. I have a hole in my raditor and will need to address this asap or otherwise I have no transportation. Car repairs stink!

So, have a lovely day and leave a message or a hi if you stopped by. I always love to read them.

Magical Monday - Lets be Thankful Challenge

This week over at the Paper Cupcakes Challenge Blog Jessie Fitzhenry brings us this weeks challenge. She wants us to make either a "thank you" card or a "Thanksgiving" card. I made both.

For this first card I used the image "Tulips in Bottles" by Paper Cupcakes. I kept this clean and simple as I love this image. I stamped the sentiment which is from Hero Arts in a soft pink. I colored the image with my colored pencils and Stickles the edges of the die. The background paper is from a DCWV stack. Yep, clean and simple. I love the softness to this card.

The next two cards I used the image "Fall Angel; Give Thanks" by Paper Cupcakes. I colored these images with my Bic Mark-its and used some Stickles on some parts of the image which you can't really see. These are really pretty in real life. My mom came over last week and I made these. The idea for this card was in a book she brought with her. The top right side of the card that you see with the pattern paper is actually the inside of the card which I thought was cool. I just cut the front top of the card at an angle which left the left side bottom half attached at the fold. Then you place your image like I did and then the inside paper is what you see behind the image. I should have taken a picture with it open so you could see it better. I will place the sentiment behind where the image sets which will work perfectly. The sentiment on this first card is "Gratitude" and was stamped and I wish I could tell you who's it was, but I am too tired to go look at the moment.

Well, I am thankful for you today for stopping by my little corner of the blog world and even more grateful if you left me some love. I really need to make my rounds again soon, seems like I just can't find enough time to visit everyone like I love visiting, so hopefully in the next week or two I can work a round of blogs in! And wow, can you believe it is now November? Geeze, I am not a big winter season kind of person so November never thrills me, but I do love the Holidays it brings which is the upside! Have a great week and I challenge you to notice things in your life to be thankful for!

Magical Monday - PCC Image & No Store Bought Pattern Paper

This week's challenge over at the Paper Cupcake's Challege Blog Marie Bridgeman brings us this weeks challenge. She wants us to use a Paper Cupcake image and no store bought pattern paper. This week I decided to mess around and do something I haven't tried before as a technique. So, I thought I would attempt to antique my image. I am not so sure I liked exactly how it turned out and I think I would do it a little differently the next time, but I decided to go ahead and used what I did.

The image that I started with is called "Orchid Tea Cup with Bird" by Paper Cupcakes. After I colored the image I crinkled it all up, then smoothed it out. I then sponged on some inks, pink and then a brownish color. It kind of adhered to the crinkles in the paper. I then added the clear crackle and let that dry and then went back and sponged back over that with a little darker brown to fill in the crackles. I think if I was to do this again I would just crinkle the paper, add the crackle, let it dry then rub the ink on and over the dry crackle. So, I will try that the next time and see what I like best. I don't hate this, but not sure I am thrilled with it either.

I made my flower with lace that I just twisted and glued to a card stock circle and then added a bead to the center to finish it off. The lace you see running up and down the card is the same lace I made to use the flower. Added the rhinestones and called it complete and then headed out weekend away to the water park.

I like this card much better in real life. My image doesn't really lay flat and I liked that and so it is not adhered flat to the card, but you really can't see that here at all.



Have a Heartfelt day!

Magical Monday - PCC Image & Dog Days Of Summer

Not sure how it is for everyone across the nation, but it is certainly HOT here! How perfect the challenge fits from Paper Cupcakes this week which is brought to us by Patti Nelson and it is "Dog Days of Summer". We are suppose to be inspired by this phrase and be creative. I immediately think hot for summer weather and when it's hot I want to be in water! So, I picked this image to work with from Paper Cupcakes called "Ronan & Izzy; Summer Fun". I used my colored pencils to color the seal Ronan and the fish Izzy. Bic Mark-its to color the rest. I chalked my sky for the softness with a blue and yellow and popped my front side of the pool and ball on pop up dots, as well as the sentiment. Crimped my solid yellow piece of card stock. Added some glossy accents on the water in the pool and in the grass. My little bees were rub-on and I drew the trails behind them. Added some stickles and my ribbon.





The following cards are cards I made for some of the main challenges over at CDAC. They supply a free image that you need to use with their challenge. Heck, can't beat cute free images! Since I am taking them I kind of feel obligated to do the challenge, just a way to show some appreciation I think. After all I KNOW how much time and effort goes into one of these images, so I truly do appreciate them. Plus it is nice to be on the receiving end and I personally always love to see what people do with mine and I also love it when they leave a little post of thanks.

This first one was for Sew Many Cards which was a to use this cute image Eris and make a Christmas card. I kind of went non-traditional in color and then I made him pink! LOL.. but I think it turned out cute. Plus, all the following cards I made from my scraps, which I just love doing!



This next image was for the challenge from Shelly's Images which was a sketch challenge and of course her lovely free image. This image kind of reminded me of a vintage type image so I wanted to lean my card towards that and also masculine so I colored it with my Bic Mark-its and then rubbed some brown ink over the whole image to tone it down and give it a more vintage look. Then I went with browns, blues and black to lean it towards a masculine card.


This cute freebie was from Robyn's Fetish called "Katie Kitty" and it was a color challenge "Pink". I seen a card that opened like this somewhere, but it did not explain how to make it. So I spent some time doing my own thing, but keeping with what I had seen. So, I think this works good and I will be doing a tutorial on it within the week; (I hope) so check back because I took pictures while I made this and I also had to come up with templates so I will have that for you as well as soon as I sit down and make the time to write it all out by steps. So, check back here like I said in about a week and hopefully it will be posted in a new posting. The top picture is the card closed up and the bottom picture opened. The card stock has embossed dots, but you really can't see that. I think this one is way more cute in real life.



This is a card that is a straight lift from another card. I tend to save cards I like so I can later look back. This lift really caught my eye. I actually just drew all the doodles, but I copied what was on her card. Think the stamps are actually SU images, but like I said, I drew my own there. Than I just used my Bic Mark-its to color everything. I punched white flowers and then just doodled them as well. Thought it turned out super cute. It was a bridal shower card for my nephews bride to be. Kind of non-traditional, but I walk to a different beat sometimes and thought it was hip, cute and fun.


WOW, now that was a loooong posting. I spent one day last week making these. I certainly needed a fun day. Now this week I have a few layouts I want to get done for my group over at SB.com. So, have a great day and be inspired and inspire others!

Color Combo Challenge

This week's challenge over at TMITA/PCC is brought to us by Nilla Berglie. She asked us to use colors blue, green and white as the main theme for our project. I started making my project at 10:30PM tonight and it is now 11:40PM and needless to say I am past ready to go to bed. I had the large chocolate bar that I bought myself for Easter, but have not gotten around to eating it, so I decided to make it into a treat for someone else and save myself from absorbing the calories! Of course this was a fairly easy and quick project to do and I also thought it turned out cute and I will have it on hand for a upcoming treat for a friend or to go with a birthday gift for one of my kids. OR maybe I will slide off the wrapper really nicely and set it aside and eat the chocolate THEN just purchase another one and slide it back on when I need it! So, what would you do???? :O)



OK.. off to bed with me now! Maybe I will dream of eating my chocolate bar in my sleep then I won't have the urge to eat it tomorrow!

Free Digital Image - "Lucky Bear"

This weeks image from Paper Cupcakes is this cute little bear image called "Lucky Bear". This weeks challenge is brought to us by Nilla and she asked us to distress. I distressed the edges of my paper with my scissors and then I also crumpled my paper and then pressed it back out. I really like this look on my cards. My sewing machine has been messed up for years with the tension so I figured I could use it because that would fit the look! :O) I so love real sewing on cards, so I got out my machine. I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to use this card in regards to a sentiment, so I went with this little chipboard word that said "charmed". So I will most likely use it as a friendship card. Needless to say since I wasn't sure how I was going to use it, I have not finished the inside yet. There it a little tag that comes out that is under the image. I thought I would place the word "friends" on it, but haven't yet decided. I used glossy accents on my shamrock and the bear's nose and I also added some on the dots of the flowers on the green paper. Both papers are Paper Studio. I just loved it paired with the orange card stock.

Well, thanks for stopping by and I would feel very "charmed" if you left me a comment of lovins! :O) Have a charming day!

Free Digital Image - Painted Pony

This card if for the color challenge over at TMITA w/PCC. The FREE image is called "Painted Pony" and if you missed out on the freebie you can find it in my new store Paper Cupcakes. If you haven't been by my store, make sure you check it out. It holds a lot of new digital images that you cannot get anywhere else. They are my originals.

I loved this color challenge that Patti Nelson brought us this week. I love it when the challenges include colors and/or sketches, mainly because it takes a lot of my thinking and decision making out of it. I decided to do another easel card. Although, instead of doing it square I decided to do a 5x7 that would fit into one of my envelopes. It doesn't quite stand the same, but none-the-less turned out cute and I was satisfied with it.

I colored my images with my colored pencils. The tree is a stamp by Stampabilities called "Heart Tree". The stamp is actually only about 2 inches high, but I really wanted a bigger tree and didn't have one (I know I should have just drew one) but I really love this stamp, so unlike digi's where you can just enlarge them (which is one of the things I LOVE about digital stamps) I decided to stamp this and just enlarge it on my copier (is that legal?). The enlarged tree is about 4 1/2 inches and then cut it out after coloring it. I decided to cut grass to hold up my easel and actually did 2 layers one on the base and one on the front behind the pony. I got some fancy smancy scissors from my neighbor/friend Bea/Carl for Christmas that has five blades on both sides and was perfect for cutting my grass and I was excited to actually use them on a project verses just cut things up playing! Thanks Bea! I really loved all the design detail on this pony and had a lot of fun coloring it. I added glossy accents to parts of the designs on the pony and also added it to the red heart on the tree. I placed my painted pony on pop-up dots to make him stand out just a bit as well. I drew the sun in the top corner and added some color to that as well with my pencils and then added some glossy accents to that. Added a little butterfly and thought it looked like a perfect day for a pony out in a field. I really loved how this turned out, but I think my easel part could stand up a little higher and straighter, so I will be working on a way to perfect this size of card in making it into an easel card for easy mailing!

This is what the front of the card looks like prior to folding it out into an easel card:


A more close-up shot with both layers of grass:

The full easel card:


My black is actually blacker, but I think the light washed it out! Thanks for stopping by and taking a look and I hope you can find some time to play along with us as well over at There's Magic In The Air!

FREE Digital Stamp Image: Spooktacular Pumpkin

It's another Magical Monday over at There's Magic In The Air and the FREE image for this week is "Spooktacular Pumpkin".

Well, I thought if I left my ghost white there wouldn't be much to color on this image at all and I soo love to color so I decided to venture outside the box and make a purple ghost. My neighbor was with me when I colored him and just looked at me really odd, but that isn't anything new to me! LOL... I thought purple would be fun. Not sure why I always color my image prior to picking out my papers but I usually do, which can make it quite a bit harder, but upon looking through my stash found these papers which I just ended up loving for this card. I wish I could tell you what they were, but can't! I decided to cut this image out too since it was such a simple cut around and added it to the yellow gingham paper then I drew my "x" stitches around that which I just love. I added my 3-D elements which were the stickles in diamond down the ric-rac looking line on the paper as well as my on brads. I also added liquid glaze to all my pumpkins. If you are going to cut out your image do this prior to cutting out. You will have less curling of the edges. I then matted my yellow gingham twice and the added my bows and ribbon and thought is was just perfect and fun.



I think this little guy drinks a lot of grape juice for breakfast!. Ok.... that's it for now, so have fun creating with this image and have a spooktacular day yourself!

Deco Flower - Magical Monday

This weeks challenge over at There's Magic In The Air was to emboss (heat or dry) or score something on your card. I wanted my card to be more contemporary so I leaned towards that. Leigh Anne knows just how much I LOVE to emboss, heat embossing is my favorite, but I love how easy dry embossing has become with all the folders now.

So, I decided this image would be a great image to duplicate so I made three to place on this first card. I colored these with my Bic Mark-its. I then added that gold heat embossing around the edges of each image. Then I chalked the back ground with the some colors in the image. I basicially just showcased the images. I placed black stickles on the center of the flower and the dots above it, but that is hard to tell. I dry embossed using a cuttlebug tiny bubbles embossing folder. Then just added some gold trim to match the embossing and three black jewels for some detail. This card was extremely hard to photograph, not sure why, but it truly was.



I pretty bascically did the same techniques here with a different design; and of course I just used one image and added the butterfly!



I really wish you could see these in real life, they are so much prettier! Sometimes, I really don't think the camera catches just how beautiful our cards really are, but oh well, you will just have to believe me on this!

This card I made fairly quick for a thank you a while back prior to this challenge. I added a lot of dots around the flower top to this image. I must say I really like this image.



Thanks for stopping by, leave me a measage it certainly MAKES my day!

Gigi on tube - paper piecing

This is the card I did to go along with the challenge over at There's Magic In The Air. The challenge was to do a paper piecing with this FREE image.

I paper pieced the umbrella, Gigi's swimsuit, her tube and her holves. I colored her body with my color pencils. I colored the dots from the image with the white Uni-ball pen, which is by far my favorite white pen. I really wanted to place my sentiment on the front, but I just couldn't place it where I felt I liked it, so I gave up and just placed it inside. The sentiment said "You're Sun Sational". I did my sky and water with chalks that have some sparkle in them, but you really can't see that in these pictures. I also placed Gigi's umbrella on pop-up dots to give it more dimension.





This is a card I did earlier in the year with this image. I colored this image with my Bic Mark-its:






















Well, that's it for Gigi, so why don't you float on over to my other blog and grab her and participate in this week's challenge!

In the mean time have a "Sun Sational" Day!

You Hoo..... it's "Kacey" !!!

Morning everyone! Yes, it's a Magical Monday again over at There's Magic In The Air. Below are the cards I made with the Free image "Kacey". This first card I followed the challenge over there which was a sketch. I wanted to do two complete different looks. This first one kind of soft in color, so I chose the pink with the black, which is always one of my favorite combos.



This second card I kept pretty simple, but wanted it to be way more fun in color. I really liked this pattern paper here and thought I really wanted it to do most of the work for me.... sometimes I am just that way; can you say lazy?! LOL.. but really I thought I colored the image so brightly in primary colors I thought with the paper I really did not want it to be too busy, so simple is good. I did add a few little blue flowers with rhinestones and the little red butterfly.



Now, make sure you go by "There's Magic In The Air" because this weeks give-a-way for the random drawing for participating in the challenge this week is another one of my digital images that has not been released and may never be free. So, if you want a chance on winning it, you have to participate! Did I mention it is super cute too? So go check it out. The image is full of summer fun!

So, thanks for stopping by and make sure you find the magic in today. It is everywhere; all you have to do is take notice!

Dream Big

Ok.. so I wanted to complete the challenges for the group that I am a part of over at scrapbook.com, so to do that I had to pull a couple of late nighters to get them accomplished by the due date... LOL... which I might add was today. It was well worth the lack of sleep, well it seemed good at the time! LOL.. but the end result was what I think to be 2 great layouts. This first is for the Eiffel Tower Group - April Technique Challenge In honor of April Fool's, this month's Technique Challenge is to use something on your layout that corresponds with the word FOOL(S) as follows:
F - Flora or Fauna. You must use plants (trees, flowers, etc.) or animals (ladybugs, butterflies, etc., also ok) somewhere on the layout--this could be in your actual picture(s), papers, or as embellishments!
O - Odd. You must use something odd on the layout (the "odd" thing can be something not normally used on a layout, OR--an odd number of a certain supply, such as 3 patterned paper s, or 5 brads, for example.)
O - Oval. You must use something in the shape of an oval on your layout. This can be anything.
L - Light Colors. You must use light colors on at least 50% of the layout. Think Spring! Pastels, muted colors, light colors.

All of these things make the LO worth 25 points.

TWIST:
S - Sewing Or Stitching. For an extra 10 points, you must use sewing or stitching on the layout. This can be freehand and freeform, by machine, or with a template--whatever you like!

You can also use any subject matter for this LO.

SOOO for my lo I chose to use one of Rachel's senior pics. My background cs in real life is a little more creamy/vanilla but doesn't really reflect that here.. grr the rain! LOL..

F: flora or fauna - I have that lovely lollipop flower from Prima and some butterflies.

O: Odd - Well, I actually have 3 pieces of different pp, 3 butterflies, and that green circle thingie in the bottom right corner is a washer with paint and stickles on it.

O: Oval - I made a hidden journaling tag which is to the right of the pic. I made an oval pull with the butterfly on it.

L: Light color - I believe that 50% of my lo is in light color.

S: Stitching - Twist extra 10 points - stitching.. I stitched the "X" and also stitched the washer on the lo.