Bee Mine

Yeah! No snow yet today! But bitter cold -9F this morning and windy. I'll just stay inside and get some work done.
Instead of buying each other Christmas presents this year, my craft group decided it would be fun to dig through our stash and pass on some goodies that no longer inspired us. Then we had to make something with those items by the next week (We meet every Thursday)  I received some of Barb's quilled flowers (thank you Barb-she makes the prettiest flowers), some quarter sheets of Design paper, a retired SU stamps set (Beyond the Basics) & one of the Cuttlebug quilled flower die kits (daisies). Now, I have noooo luck making those cuttlebug flowers-they just do not work well for me. But I have an idea of what I can do with them. Let you know when I figure it out if it works!

So, for my first project I used the sketch from Seems a Little Sketchy and the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge - Clean & Simple.  I used some of the DP and one of Barb's flowers. .  I mounted the DP on a mat of green cs to match the leaves on the flower. I stamped the script heart from SU Punch Potpourri with SU Lovely Lilac Craft ink (retired) and fussy cut it out. I used the scalloped heart die from SU Hearts Aflutter die set and cut it out of a scrap of purple cs. I had this white die-cut (spellbinders labels 22) leftover from another project, and the heart fit nicely on that. I sponged the edges of the SB die cut and around the base DP, and script heart with lovely lilac ink.

I stamped the sentiment on a scarp of the purple stripe with Lovely Lilac and heat embossed it with Ranger super-fine clear embossing powder.
Since the flowered paper has little bees on it, I hunted through my stamps until I found a little bee stamp, stamped with Versafine black ink, colored with Copic markers, and then fussy cut them out and attached the body only with a spot of glue. I popped the label-heart layer up with some foam dots.  I love those bees and that flower! And it works as CAS, for me, at least.
Enjoy!

Noel

Another Christmas card today.  I have put most of my Christmas papers and such away, but had this K&Co. Christmas tag on my work surface-so I put it to use.

I used the sketch from Unscripted Sketches #240. And some scraps of SU Be of Good Cheer papers.
I matted the DP with some Bazzil Pesto cardstock. I cut a mat with Spellbinders Label 22 die for the tag from a scrap of gold cardstock. I used a piece of white bordered organdy ribbon that I colored with Copic marker R37-carmine.  Simple today =)

Birthday snowman

Hello again! Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend.

For my card today I am still working with snowmen, but a birthday card this time. I've had this cute image stamped for sometime and thought he deserved to find a home on a card. He is so cute-and that single snowflake! You would never see just one around here! We really got dumped on last week, so we now have a very adequate snowcover for the gardens. Hopefully the cold weather before we got all this snow didn't damage too many of my perennials. This would serve equally well as a Valentine with all the sweet candy and hearts.


This card I will enter in 'The House that Stamps Built' Designers choice challenge-Sweet Treats. I will also enter this in the 'Cards in Envy' challenge-Snowbuddy Like You'; the 'Creative Knockouts' challenge-Tag, Your it-use a tag; and the 'Seize the Birthday' challenge-coloring.

I stamped the image (Stampendous Jolly Snowman) with Versa-Mark ink and used black embossing powder and heat set (don't know which powder-I stamped that image a looooong time ago:). I colored the hat and heart with Momento markers. I cut it out with "Spellbinders Mega Rectangles and sponged SU Island Indigo ink while it was still in the die. I mounted the image on a piece of Stampin-up designer paper (?pack?). I then mounted that on the piece of the reverse of the blue heart DP-with all that yummy candy (sweet treats). I mounted that onto a piece of old olive cardstock. I stamped the sentiment (Stampendous) on a scrap of orange cardstock and cut it out with the SU small tag punch, them attached that to the snowman layer with a brad.

I like this one, do you? He looks so grateful for that snowflake, don't you think?
Please, I'd love you to leave a comment =).

Back again

Can't believe it has been so long since I posted on here! Just seems it was a very, very busy fall and everything fell behind. I have been making cards, but none for challenges-just working on my own designs. And it's been so long, I had the devil of a time getting into my blog! Hope I can remember what I did next time!

Here are a couple of pics of some of the Christmas cards I made.

                                                                             

At a scrapping weekend in October I picked up a sheet of angel stickers from the swap table. It took me awhile to figure out exactly how I wanted to use them, but this is what I came up with, and I really liked how they turned out. These are some I sent out myself this year. The stickers weren't in a package so I don't even know who makes them, but they were so pretty, and they worked really great with the shimmery papers for mats.

Hope everyone's year has gotten off to a great start, and that you all have a really great 2014.

Mono C. Birthday Card

No, not mononucleosis! Monochromatic! Love me some turquoise butterflies!

This started life as a 'Thinking of you' card, which would have gone in my OWH box.  But I messed that up when I used the Gel pen to outline the sentiment, and some on the butterflies. Wouldn't you know it, the ink had glitter! And it rubbed off!  So I did triage and changed it to a birthday card which I will send out to our niece next week. I know she will love it.
Well, I started with  this sketch from Tuesday Morning Sketches, but of course I missed the deadline for that.  But this does work for The Tuesday Throwdown #165 "Things with Wings."; the Flutter by Wednesday #253, Open--Anything Goes as long as you have a butterfly or fairy; and Seize the Birthday Anything Goes-"Toppings" option is " Monochromatic."

Supplies:
Stamps: Our Daily Bread Designs 'Birds and Butterflies Labels'; Sweet and Sassy 'Happy Birthday'; Hero Arts/Sizzix Dogwood and Butterflies stamps/dies
Ink: Stampin' Up Bermuda Bay (sponged over background embossing to make it pop), Island Indigo
Paper Basic Grey 'Lucille' DP, Stampin' up cardstock
Accessories: Sizzix butterfly dies, Spellbinders Labels 18; Copic Markers (on butterflies), white Offray ribbon colored with Copic Marker; Sizzix embossing folder, Recollections rhinestones, Sakura Gel pen

Retro Birthday

Woo Hoo! Post #2 for today. The challenge over at 'Cards in Envy' this go round was to have a Retro vibes. This card was a challenge for me. Retro scares me! Not sure why, but I usually avoid it.

 So thought I'd give it a try, since these Basic Grey 'Lucille' papers seem to have that retro vibe to them, especially the piece with the old-fashion sewing pattern envelopes on it. And when I thought about it, the background piece of DP that I used looks somewhat like the wallpaper that was on the walls in my bedroom when I was growing up (many, many years ago 8-). I didn't follow any sketch for this, just kind of let it happen. Looking at it now on the computer I probably should have added  a bit of distressing around the 2 pink strips, but  too late now!
I cut the roses out of one of the sheets of paper-I really didn't like the actual piece of paper, but the roses on it were okay-so I cut them out, gave them a little dimension with a stylus and mat pad, and clustered them together. I really, really. really wanted to add some glitter to the roses! But as it is for my next box of OWH cards, I CAN"T! Oh, woe is me! I have to get over this glitter addiction. I added a couple gold corner stickers and a simple vine sticker to give it a little bit of shine-gotta shine!
Do you think it works? Hope you like. Leave a comment, please.

Supplies:
Basic Grey "Lucille" design paper, Close to My Heart "Dotty for You" DP
Jen Ellory, Ltd Chip board Happy Birthday
Peel-off stickers, gold
Scraps of DCWV, SU and Bazzil Cardstock
Recollections fall brad

A simple Autumn card

Quick, simple card using stickers.

I used this sketch from the Monday Lunchtime Sketch Challenge #80 over on the Techno Stamper Blog as the layout for this card.

 I was working on some other cards and this scrap of DCWV Autumn Medley DP was among the 'scraps' that were in my fall papers. The K&Co. leaf stickers were also in with my fall papers. They were sort of laying there on top of each other. "Hmmm,  I thought to myself  "these do seem to go together" So found this layout, and it worked! Originally I had a K&Co glitter leaf border on the card, but realized I couldn't use that for Operation Write HOme, so went hunting in my border stickers and found this K&Co. border, which actually looked even better. I tried several different ways to add a sentiment, but none of them looked right, so it became an 'all occasion' card. It's simple, but it really works for me.