Magical Monday - Vintage Card or Shabby Chic

This week over at the Paper Cupcake's Challenge Blog; There's Magic In The Air. This week Sonia Rivera brings us our challenge. She wanted to see us make either a Vintage or Shabby Chic type Christmas card. This is always one of those challenges I am not sure if I am actually hitting the nail on the head when creating, but I love the distress look and inking along with homemade flowers and lace. So... with that all said, not sure which category you would place this in, so I will let you decide!

I used two images from Paper Cupcakes, Gingerbread Boy & Gingerbread Girl. I made several of each and made a little gingerbread line. I colored them with Bic Mark-its and then inked the edges with some cat eye chalks in brown. I dry embossed the red card stock and then I gathered some lace to run along the bottom and added some brown ric-rac on top of that. I made my flower using a large 5 petal flower punch. I punched some pages out of an old daily devotional book and then inked 6 flowers total; 3 red and 3 green and then placed a brad in the middle and then just scrunched them up for the look and fullness. I really liked how it turned out and have never made a flower like this with this particular punch. Added some brown buttons and then some white ink stitches and called it... well vintage or shabby chic...LOL... but mostly I called it completed! :oD





Well, that's it for me for this challenge not sure if I hit the vintage or shabby chic, but I do like the end result of my card and that is what really matters.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving. We got to spend some time with some family and then Friday we went downtown to the monument where they light the monument up. Fifty-two strands of lights are strung vertically from the top of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to its base, for a total of 4,784 lights. Twenty-six larger-than-life soldiers and sailors, 26 peppermint sticks, and another 90,000 lights surround the monument. Santa's workshop was the theme of the stage where they put on free entertainment and where all the festivities took place. Over 100,000 spectators were expected to attend this year's ceremony and yes, we were part of those crazy 100,000 spectators that took part in the celebration. We had a good time and the temperatures were a nice 55-60 degrees, so we couldn't beat that. We parked far enough away so parking was not a hassle when it came time to leave.

I hope everyone in the US had a lovely Thanksgiving and for those who are outside the US I wish you many blessings as well. I hope we all can find something in our lives to be thankful for!

So, make it a great week and thanks for stopping by if you either came by to lurk or to leave me a lovely little note.

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.

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!

Get Inspired Challenge

I did these cards to play along with the Magical Monday challenge over at There's Magic In The Air. This week’s image was "Elvis in boots". The challenge was an inspirational challenge with color and textures. You can check it out here.

I kept my cards quite simple and concentrated more on the colors then anything. I wanted my image to stand alone and out on this card. I have a hard time keeping things simple sometimes, especially in my layouts. It's a little easier in my cards.

I colored my image with my Bic Mark-its and I used a diamond glaze on his rain boots and hat to make them more slick and also on the puddle. I thought the dotted ribbon was just wonderful with the button and thread being the perfect finishing touch.



You can see the diamond glaze better in this picture on his boots and in the puddle. The sentiment which is computer generated reads: Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves


Now isn't that button with the thread just too cute!

On this card, I kept it simple as well, but I copied the image in Print Shop Deluxe several times, as well as sized them down to smaller sizes and placed them that way on the original printout. I then drew more grass down the duck line and also added more water so they were in one big puddle. I then cut it out. I did this card, because if you have a program such as this you can crop the image close and place them closer together like in this card. This is one of the wonderful things about digital images. If you don't have a program Print Shop Deluxe is really not that expensive and fairly easy to use. It would really be worth the $50.00 to get it to do digital images in and your sentiments. You can find the program here you want to check it out.The letters are a bit brighter in real life but I took this picture in the evening. They were rub-ons and were actually a light blue, so I colored them red with my markers and then added black dots. Both these cards were colored with my Bic Mark-its. My youngest son Avery always tells me its a "Happy Day" and I just love that saying so I thought this looked like a Happy Day in a duck's life! I just also noticed on these pics that I did not color the eyes.. funny how you see stuff like that once uploaded, so I will go back and color them in now, but I am not taking more pics and uploading so you can pretend that they are colored! :O)





Well, that's it for Elvis, but I certainly will be using him a lot on other cards when I find time to do so!

I hope you find a puddle of joy somewhere today, so while you are looking for it.... have a Happy Day!