It’s the leap year …

February 29, 2012 By

Anything goes on this day that happens once every 4 years! I wasn’t even sure if this date was available for me to schedule this post! (I guess it was).

That’s the very easy challenge happening this week at The Pixie Cottage. Make whatever you like – Anything goes and/or use the sketch below:

Here is my anything goes card:

I used chalk to color this little birdie. This is such a versatile stamp set that I have found myself reaching for it time and time again. That adorable floral circle die is new from Memory Box – I had to try it out and it cuts beautifully! Paper is from Crate Paper.

Come join in the fun and win 2 stamps of your choice from The Pixie Cottage!

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Cardabilities Reveal for Febuary 29

February 29, 2012 By

Welcome to another Cardabilities reveal and a leap year too!

You poor thing if your birthday is today – Happy Birthday though – I hope you make up for the years of missed presents and celebrations for those years without a Febuary 29.

Without further chatter, here is the sketch for this reveal:

Gosh, this one really stumped me for a while. Specifically, I didn’t know what to do with that space above – put a sentiment there, used a patterned paper, flipped the sketch, I tried a fancy fold card to no avail – I mean, really stumped me.

Well, here’s what I eventually came up with:

 

When in doubt, use patterned paper!

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Dynamic Dimensions

February 28, 2012 By

Dear friends,

Here is the challenge from Flower Soft this week. We are to create a pop-up project and take it to new heights (literally)! Well, this is a first for me. Oh, I’ve used pop-dots to raise my elements horizontally off the page but I’ve never attempted to make an element stand vertically upright before.

So here goes:

Here’s the outside – she is popped up off the page with 3D foam.

and here is the inside, where she is standing up a whole inch off the page on a cut out “mechanism/whatachmacallit”:

And if it wasn’t for the Mabel Atwell Lucie popup kit I used that tells me exactly where to cut and where to fold, I can almost guarantee she would still be laying flat in bed.

Head on over to see what my other talented Flower Soft teamies have pop up with:

You can win 3 pots of Flower Soft sprinkles and a Flower Soft glue! Just add your pop-up creations to our comment section on our Flower Soft blog!

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Is it too early for a Father’s Day card?

February 27, 2012 By

Good morning peeps,

I manage to spend more time in my happy place (my crafting space) last night and I finished all of Class 3 at Color Me Creative Classroom! I am loving all the tips and techniques Suzanne is sharing in her class and gosh, if you do your homework (sorry – I’m lacking in that area) – Suzanne will even personally critique your work!

But I did make a card from what I learnt … and here it is:

Love the newsprint paper from Studio Calico and twine is from Doodlebug Designs. Humphrey here is my favorite from Crafter’s Companion and he is colored with Copic Markers:

  • hat and shoes: E31, E33, E35, E37, E71, E74, E50, E53;
  • elephant: C1, C3, C5;
  • jeans: B93, B95, B97;
  • singlet: W1 for highlights only;
  • tie: R24, R27, R29, YG00, YG01, YG03

Now, onto class 5 – I know I can do better with my coloring and I can’t wait to learn more. Check out Suzanne’s classes online or see if she is coming to your town!

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My Happy Place

February 26, 2012 By

Good morning everyone,

I haven’t been able to shake off the cold I got from my kids last week – you know how it goes, kids sick, me sick, kids sick, me sick, round and round it goes and so I’ve been feeling crummy lately. But I always manage to get to my happy place in my craft room – I’ve been meaning to take pictures of my crafting space as I’m redecorating it in our new home … I will get to it I promise.

Well, here is today’s card:

Made this all with Momenta products – papers, chipboard flower and sentiment. Well, the twine is from Divine twine. Love the happy colors and these stickers just make life so easy – anyone can get this card done in 10 mins or less. I can’t wait to do more Momenta shopping for next quarter.

I hope you can get to your happy place too.

Steph

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Cute little Anthony & Burt

February 24, 2012 By

Good morning/afternoon and evening my friends,

Today is the product launch for the cutest unlikeliest pair of friends – Anthony and Burt! A frog and his fly friend – a Crafter’s Companion newest release. I say this time and time again – they make the cutest stamps animal stamps EVER!

I’ve used Hoppy Birthday Anthony and Burt set for my card and here it is:

My card is fairly simple this week – I used Basic Grey papers throughout the card and added buttons and ribbons for embellishments. What I wanted to highlight today though is how I colored my image by just dotting the alcohol markers on and using the blender pen to give the froggy a molted look, as I would expected a frog’s skin to be.

Here is a close up:

I first colored the frog with my lightest color of green and I just dotted on my medium and darker greens. When all the alcohol inks are dry,  I dotted the frog randomly with my blended pen, making large and small spots on his skin to create the molted look. I also dotted on the sand he is standing on and just softened the dots with a lighter shady shade of alcohol marker. (no blending required as I wanted more texture).

Have a fun coloring day!

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Wire Works Wednesday

February 20, 2012 By

Well hello again,

I like the fact that once a month, the Flower Soft design team are featuring creative ways to use Flower Soft wires! It helps me use a product that seldomly comes to my mind when creating and I’m astound how much fun it is on my creative psyche to find ways to use them – not to mention, I’m actually using up my stash! All the more motivation!

My background patterned paper is from My Mind’s Eye, papers used for my pinwheels are from Studio Calico, the pinwheel tutorial can be found here. I colored the Flower Soft wires with alcohol markers and sentiment stamp is from Unity Stamps.

I hope I inspired you to use your stash or find creative ways to use them to add instant dimension to your work.

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Lots of Laugh from the old croonie

February 19, 2012 By

Welcome peeps,

Did the title give away the challenge theme this week at Color Me Creative Classroom? Well, the theme is lots of laughs and bright colors. The sponsor of many good things is I Brake for Stamps.

I made a tag this week since I choose a label stamp (aka smaller size) with the intent of making it into a label for a gift for a friend. Here is my tag:

And here is a closer view of the trendy and crazy old lady who makes me laugh:

I glittered up her glasses, hat pin and earrings too. Boy, was that a tiny image to color. (lesson learnt) Tag was a 7 gypsies pre-printed tag that I dressed up with a sticker from Fancy Pants and a doily diecut from Papertrey Ink. Ribbon trim is from Crate Paper – love how vintagey that looks.

To enter in the challenge, you can use any image you want as long as they are colored with alcohol markers. Your card must also be newly created. Don’t forget when you play along the entire month, you are also entered into the monthly drawing for the shopping spree at Oozak. How can you beat two prize opportunities – head on over to be inspired and get to coloring.

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It’s all about texture.

February 18, 2012 By

It’s Stampendous Saturday again – time to enter into Feburary’s Stampendous challenge – it’s all about texture this month -  use flocking, embossing powders, glitters, mica fragments, dry embossing etc. … you name it – if it adds texture, get it on your project!

Here is my card with tons of mica flakes and embossing enamel on it – it was so mesmerizing to watch all the embossing enamel melt into the dry embossing.

Check out these inspiration from my other fabulously talented Stampendous team members:

Stephanie Lee (that’s me)

We want YOU to play along with us!  Just add your direct link to your card (make sure you’ve loaded it up with tons of TEXTURE) to the linky tool below my signature (or on the Stampendous blog) no later than March 1, 2012 at 11:00 PM EST.  You do not have to use Stampendous products to play along, but we sure love it when you do!  And as an extra incentive for playing, one lucky person (drawn at random from all the entries) will receive this gorgeous Corset Ladies Perfectly Clear Stamp Set:

Due to shipping restrictions, the winner must have a US address.  We hope you get a chance to play along with us – happy stamping!

And a quick note about the linky tool below – it’s the exact same collection that is being shared on the Stampendous blog, and some of my teammates’ blogs.  You can add your direct link to your project featuring texture here on my blog, or any of the other blogs that are sharing the collection!

Pin It

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Our Creative Corner Challenge

February 18, 2012 By

Hello all,

I was completely taken by surprise and totally flattered when Tui Nathan from Our Creative Corner contacted me and asked if I would like to guest design for them. Of course I said yes – I had been playing in their challenges for a while and love the work of their design team. They also have a few new team members in place since January this year.

Well, this week’s challenge is black and white with a splash of color! Mine is a big splash of red …

Most of the supplies on the card is from Momenta – since my DT box just came from them and it’s conveniently sitting next to my craft table waiting to be used or put away. Only the white pearl-centered flower is from Offray. The doily die is from Papertrey Ink.

Everyone is welcome to play along. If you upload your card/project to SCS, please use the keyword OCCC. We do require that your project be a new project and not back-linked to a project made before this challenge started. Please be sure you link back to the OCC blog post in order to be eligible for our Top Talent award.  This challenge closes at 11:59 p.m.Eastern Time on March 2nd.

Have fun!

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My Lilac Heart

February 17, 2012 By

Hello peeps,

Happy Friday! Actually – it’s more like thank goodness it’s Friday – we have been struggling with colds all week at our household. Seems like the crud has been going around lately – my son’s kindergarten class has over 60% of his class out on school! and the school bus only has 4 kids on it all week (usually it’s a busload of 14 kids)

I am happy though to be creating this week – and today I am posting about Sheena Douglass’s gorgeous Paint Fusion flowers again. Nope – I haven’t mastered painting yet but I decided to do some “creative manuevering” with my image and created a heart from her flower stamps instead. For me, that’s the fun part in card making – you don’t have to create a flower just because it’s a flower stamp.

These were her small lilac stamps which I stamped and digitally flipped 1 over to create 2 lilac bushes facing each other like a heart (with rubber stamps, you could stamp, scan and flip digitally). I “tied” the 2 hearts together with a little ribbon from my stash – the sentiments that came to mind for me as I was “tying” the hearts together was “you and me”, “2 hearts as one”; “we’re joined together” – you get the point but I had none of those sentiment stamps. So I just wrote my sentiment out and added an Authentique Paper “&” sticker to create a contrast.

My image was colored with Spectrum Noir marker this time (DR1, DR3, DG3, DG4).  I also added some Flower Soft to the image to add some texture and dimension. Patterned papers are from Crate Paper and wooden frame is from Kaiser Craft.

I hope you have a fun and creative day yourself!

Steph

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Another Flower Soft Challenge

February 15, 2012 By

Welcome to another Flower Soft challenge this month,

This month’s challenge is to make an Anniversary or Valentine’s card – we would love to see you use a Flower Soft product on your card and include a link of it in the comments section of the Flower Soft blog.

I made my anniversary card with the Mabel Lucie Attwell 3D Pop Up Card Kit – a Flowersoft New Release. The card kits are new to me since I joined this design team and boy, it really makes card making very easy when everything is already in the kit!

Except for a bit of twine and some Flowersoft wires and flower soft for her bouquet, and a bit of white cardstock to mat the sentiment, everything you see come from the kit. How easy and quick is that to make a stinkin’ cute card!

 Here’s a list of my other Design Team members for more inspiration:

Deb Felts
Deb Seyer
Jennifer Buck
Linda Beeson
Krista Riley
Dawn Lusk
Lisa Murphy

If you upload your creation to SCS, please use the keyword FSC43 and flowersoft so we will be able to find you. The prize for this challenge is the Mabel Lucie Attwell 3D Pop-up Card Kit.

Have a creative kinda day!

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Cardabilities Reveal for Febuary 15

February 15, 2012 By

Welcome to another Cardabilities reveal.

I hope you all had a fun and romantic Valentine’s Day. And if you didn’t, I always tell myself – it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

And with all the love talk, here is the sketch for this reveal:

And here is my take:

 

I love that sentiment from Stampendous! So sweet and to the point. The border is a die from Spellbinders. Ribbon is from Offray and paper is from My Mind’s Eye.

I hope you find yourself inspired to play along too.

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Not a card …

February 15, 2012 By

That’s the challenge at The Pixie Cottage this week – make anything but a card … or you can use the sketch below to make a non-card item (I’m thinking a layout or a home decor item or anything your creative minds can come up with):

I did a tag instead … really I made it like a bookmark because I gave my other bookmark away and I really need another one and never got around to making one.

My bird was stamped on vellum and I dabbed the whole thing with distressed ink and heat set the ink stained vellum till the whole thing was crispy.

So now it’s your turn to go and create and come back and share with us. I’m very curious to see what non card item you will be creating, especially if you choose to use the sketch.

The randomly picked winner of their choice of two fabulous Pixie Cottage stamps.

I hope your Valentine’s Day went well!

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Stencilled Florals

February 12, 2012 By

Hi everyone,

Today is my 1st post as part of the Momenta D-lite team. I’ve been spoilt by Momenta with such generous products and this is one that I created from my box of goodies.

Frankly, I didn’t even know Momenta made stencils. I have only ever bought Momenta papers and stickers. It’s so easy to create a card from stencils – all I did was colored inside the stencil with some distressed ink and I have a card topper to use. Threw in some twine and a sentiment sticker and I have a quick and easy card made in less than 15 mins.

I love how this one turned out and I think I will definately be using more stencils in my crafting arsenal.

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Stampendous Colored Fragments Blog Hop

February 11, 2012 By

Hello peeps!

 

This Saturday the Stampendous team has something extra special planned for you…we have combined our regular monthly challenge with a blog hop showcasing some of the great new products released at CHA last month!  Pull up a chair, grab a warm beverage and yummy snack, and get ready to be wowed!

We’ve asked our Design Team to use our new Color Fragments for this Blog Hop, creating a card, scrapbook page, or out of the box project with these little bits of pure color. Color Fragments can be applied with any adhesive, mixed with resins, paints, clays, or just used around the house in plants, fish bowls, candles, soaps, any craft you care to tackle. They are non-toxic, don’t melt at normal embossing temperatures, and you can easily crush them if you desire smaller flakes or different shapes. You’ll love our five spring colors, and you’ll adore what our team has done with them.  Now, check out the whole list of fabulousness for today:

Here is my card using the deliciously shabby blue colored fragments:

Here is a closer look at those fragments – I mixed together the shabby blue embossing enamels, with the gold glitter and powder blue color fragments and melted it into a nice crusty finish on my card – I then inked the edges up with rusty hinged distressed ink – love the pop of orange on the blue embossing enamels:

If you have not checked out this month’s great texture challenge, you can read all the details on the Stampendous blog.  Now, check out the whole list of fabulousness for today:

Wendy Price

Stephanie Lee (er – this would be me)
& a very special guest designer for our blog hop

As you hop from blog to blog, being wowed by all the amazing new goodies we are showing off, be sure to leave some love (and your contact email) for the designers, as well as on the Stampendous blog. The more you comment, the better your chances are to win one of these five fantastic prize packs.  Each one includes a brand new stamp set and bottle of color fragments from Stampendous:

 

 

 

 


Winners will be randomly selected from all comments left on blogs, so the more you comment the better your chances are to win one!!  You have until Sunday, February 12 th at 8:00 PM EST to leave a comment on each blog; winners will be announced on Monday, February 13th. Due to shipping restrictions, all winners must have a US/APO/FPO mailing address. 

And don’t forget….We want YOU to play along with us in our monthly challenge!  Just add your direct link to your card (make sure you’ve loaded it up with tons of TEXTURE) to the linky tool below my signature (or on the Stampendous blog) no later than March 1, 2012 at 11:00 PM EST.  You do not have to use Stampendous products to play along, but we sure love it when you do!  And as an extra incentive for playing, one lucky person (drawn at random from all the entries) will receive the gorgeous Corset Ladies Perfectly Clear Stamp Set.

 

Pin It

 

 

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Fun with mist

February 10, 2012 By

Good morning everyone,

It’s Friday and it’s my turn at the Crafter’s Companion blog post. I’m sharing with you Sheena Douglass’s newest release Paint Fusion set of stamps.

 

If you have never seen Sheena’s Youtube videos on how she paints her flowers, you need to see how talented this lady is!

I am full of awe at the artists who are able to draw stamps and paint – when all I do is just color in the images drawn by someone else and with easy to blend alcohol markers (not any paint mediums)

Well, I have no courage to try to recreating her painting masterpieces. *Whimp* – actually I did try and it came out as blobs of pathetic purple mess. So I stamped my flowers and leaves and sprayed painted them with a variety of glimmer mists instead. I did paint the background with gold acrylic paint – imagining the coarse brush strokes might add a contrast to the smooth shimmer of the spray. The flower stems were Flower Soft wires that I colored with Spectrum Noir markers (JG65).

If you do venture into the realm of painting a Sheena Douglass stamp, please share your work with us at the comments section or on my facebook page. I would LOVE to see it!

Have fun with your paints!

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Announcement for my followers

February 9, 2012 By

As some of you have been aware, Google has announced a few months ago that they will be retiring the Google Friend Connect (GFC) widget, also known as the Followers gadget for all non-Blogger sites. (see announcement) Which means, WordPress blogs (like The Arty Carty blog) and other sites that utilize this feature will no longer be able to.

I have done some research and found a few ways for you to continue following my blog:

1) Follow me using my RSS feed (it’s the link that says “RSS – post” on my sidebar)

- this is the closest alternative to the Follow me gadget. It allows you to subscribe to my post and stream them automatically to a variety of readers (including Google reader).

2) “Like” me using the Facebook Fan Box on my sidebar.

- This will allow my post to stream directly onto your facebook account and it also allows you to leave comments and interact with me much like Facebook. (ditto to Twitter , if you have  a Twitter account)

3) Google recommends that in place of a GFC widget that Bloggers create a Google+ page and add a badge to their sidebar. (that’s the G+ button you see on my sidebar). The problem with this is that the features are completely different. Google+ is 100% a social network. It allows you to follow and interact with people and businesses much like Facebook, but its not a way to subscribe to a blog.

I look forward to your continued support on my RSS feed, Facebook/Twitter or G+.

Thanks my friends.

Steph

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Miss you …

February 9, 2012 By

It’s such a whirlwind going to CHA, meeting old and new people, then coming home to more whirlwind with a 2 yr old that wouldn’t stop and doesn’t go to school yet (aka – no recovery time for me).

I made this card just before CHA but never got around to posting it – now is the opportune time cause I feel like I miss the fairytale of CHA, all my blogland friends that I got to meet, my leisurely meals without getting up 20 times to cater to the whims of my children, the fact that I can get food without having to cook it and clean up – I just miss my entire experience.

Thank you to my friends who embraced me with open arms and made my trip awesome. And a special thanks to Laura Mann Weed for everything you have done.

My card was made with Stampendous Vintage typewriter stamp set, Basic Grey Paper and Prima trims.

Steph

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I Heart U

February 8, 2012 By

Welcome to another Flower Soft inspired post!

Those little pot of sprinkles are just amazing to work with and since joining the design team, I’ve discovered the card toppers and kits too that makes it a blast to make very cute looking cards!

Our challenge this week is to use any image to make a “Heart U” themed card – ya, any Valentine’s or Anniversary card that says I love you or has a heart on it. Here is my “Heart U” card …

I used Poppy Red Flower Soft as faux stitching around my doily heart. It’s simple enough to dot some flower soft glue around the heart and sprinkle those Flower Soft on the glue. I discovered that the Flower Soft does get into the other holes that don’t have glue on them so my advice is to flip the card 180 degrees upside down and tap the excess Flower Soft of the card straight off (instead of tipping it off sideways for the Flower Soft to slide off, KWIM)

Have fun with using your Flower Soft in fun and unique ways. My fellow design team mates has tons of inspiration for you as well… check them out.

Jennifer Buck 

Cibele Glazer

Dawn Lusk

Deb Felts

Debbie Seyer

Jeanne Streiff

Krista Riley

Linda Beeson

Lisa Murphy

Have fun creating.

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