GETTING MY SNARK ON!

I've been contemplating the latest Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers #251 - "D is for Die Cuts". Today I have some time on my hands, so I headed into the craft room for further contemplation. The idea I decided to pursue was to make a really pretty card and contrast it with a snarky sentiment. How do you think I did?

I used one of my favorite techniques, which I guess is called "spotlighting", starting with a 5-1/2" square top-folded white card base. Using a floral stamp from Hero Arts + Gina K (#PR101), I stamped it on the face of the card base with PTI "Soft Stone" ink, plus 2 more times on additional card stock squares. I won't go into all of the technicalities - just suffice it to say it took a bit of engineering to get all of the layers die cut with the selected square dies and trimmed to fit the card base in graduating layers. I colored the roses on the original card front with my Copic markers and over-stamped the Unity Stamp "Itty Bitty" #IB-948 and heat embossed it with silver powder. Before assembling the card I silver-embossed the outer edges of the second layer and die cut a small row of stitching holes on the colored area to pull some silver threads through.  

The final step was to assemble all of the layers and glue them to the front of the card and attaching a small die cut heart over the stitching. This photo gives a better look at the metallic silver elements:

So here's a link to Edna's invitation to join her with your creative die cutting project: 

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: SoSS #251 - D is for Die Cut

On a personal note: Sometimes to amuse myself, I check the Urban Dictionary for their definitions. I looked up "snark" today and came up with this - "A smart ass remark made by wanna be hipsters who think they cloak their douchebaggery in a self important sense of fey cleverness and ironic witticism." OUCH!! 

DOUBLE STENCILING TECHNIQUE

Happy Sunday, all! At the current Seize the Birthday Challenge, the designers are featuring an interesting stencil technique that I thought to try my hand at - Double Stenciling. They have a link to a how-to video and it's really a fun thing that I think I'll try again soon.

I began this experiment with some pale pink smooth cardstock and, using yellow ink and blending brushes, I stenciled circles. Then I overlaid an overall squares stencil and brushed on pink. I trimmed the panel down with a stitched rectangular die and matted it with mustard and charcoal cardstock. My disappointment with this card is that when I over-stamped the sentiment with charcoal ink, it really faded as it dried. I should have left it in my Misti and re-stamped it after it dried or added some clear embossing powder to deepen the color. The Impression Obsession Hollyhocks are my absolute favorite flower dies - I've used them over and over and never get tired of them. In this case, I die cut them in charcoal and coral and glued just the coral blossoms onto the charcoal bases. I also tucked in a floral stock in charcoal from Tim Holtz. 

Seize the Birthday: Seize the Birthday #285-Double Stenciling

Added June 28, 2024:

On a personal note: With school ending and all of the end-of-the-school-year activities for my husband through the month of June, I just haven't been making cards much, so it was fun to get back into crafting today. In addition to the busy social activities, I've been doing some heavy-duty gardening and our front yard is now finished! It looks a bit sparse at the moment with all new small plants, but by this time next year it should be a proper native pollinator garden.

I'll end by sharing a photo of our grand-twins at their Moving-up Ceremony last Friday evening - I can't believe that they are now high schoolers. It's Alexis, Colin, and their younger sister Kaitlyn. I thought this was a great picture of them! In September they'll be 15 and in October Kaitlyn will be 10.

PICK YOUR POISON!

Mid-June already and time for a new inspiration card for Two Old Bats Anything Halloween Challenge! I finally gave up on trying to make anything wedding-related and decided on the idea of "Pick Your Poison" from the top-left quadrant of our mood board.

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: June 2024 Mid Month Reminder

I used Tim Holtz's "Happy Hour" dies as a jumping off point and die cut the glasses from vellum.

I prepared a black 5-1/2" square card base and attached a couple of square patterned scraps I had in my stash for a background for my creepy cocktails. The sentiment was generated on my computer and trimmed to fit the width of the purple square. I selected three coordinating purple, orange, and green pieces for the drinks and fussy cut various creatures and items from some coordinating DCWV "Boo Crew" printed papers. I love these papers! You can see from the coordinating envelope paper where the bat and spider come from. The ghost coming up from the martini glass is a Trinity Stamps die that was new to me this past Halloween.

This was fun to make! I'm hoping you'll get out your Halloween supplies and play along with us this month. If we get 25 or more entries, this fun die will be randomly chosen to send to one of the entrants:

ANOTHER FAMILY BIRTHDAY

And today is my daughter-in-law's birthday! Anyone who follows me knows I haven't been very active here lately. It just seems like there's always something else to do. For me, the more active I am, the quicker the ideas come - so to step in to make a new card required a swift kick in the butt by way of a challenge. The current Tic Tac Toe Challenge #249 provided the necessary incentive. I used the first column down - Layers/Die Cut/Patterned Paper.

I think this definitely ticks off the boxes - many layers, a die cut gift card envelope and leaves, and patterned paper. I started with a white 5-1/2" square top-folded card base and attached an embossed 5"square that was matted with a 5-1/4" square of the same paper. Then, using the same white card stock, I die cut a white gift envelope and lined it with black and white printed floral paper and attached that to the front of the card. I die cut some PTI leaves from black and white dotted paper and tucked them into the envelope, along with some fussy cut flowers from the same patterned paper as the envelope liner. Rummaging through my envelope stash, I found a bright pink square envelope and decided to use it and felt I needed a bit of pink on the card to match. I white heat embossed the sentiment and die cut it into a tag. The final step was to pull some twine through the tag and attach it to the gift envelope, overlapping a couple of fussy cut flowers from the patterned paper. I also ended up lining the pink envelope with the black and white patterned paper. 

 

TTTC249 - Featured Designer Jeanie - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

Added June 22, 2024:

SPECIAL BIRTHDAY CARD

June 4th and a date I'm not likely to ever forget - my son was born on this date at 6:00 AM in Redondo Beach, California 50 years ago! He started out thinking he would celebrate tonight at one of his restaurants that is closed on Tuesdays, but as the date got closer he got less and less excited about it. Last week he announced to us that he really didn't want to make a big deal out of this and thought to wait until next Sunday when his mother-in-law has bought tickets for the whole family to go on a jet boat ride and dinner down the Rogue River. His wife said she wanted to invite friends over to their house tonight, but he was afraid that he would have to cook (he does all of the cooking in their house - Dani can barely boil water). So we offered to host and cook, and still not much enthusiasm. Finally, Dani decided this was too important a birthday to just ignore, so she took matters into her own hands and is ordering food in for a party with all of their friends.

I struggled a bit trying to come up with a decent 50th birthday card but finally settled on highlighting his lack of enthusiasm:

If this looks familiar to any of my followers, then you're right - I cheated and tore apart a previous card to build this one. I took all of the Tim Holtz people off of this card and replaced them on a new black cardstock accordion-folded card base. The sentiment that I generated on my computer seemed very appropriate!

I made this custom envelope, and here is the complete presentation as he will open it:

That's it! We went in on a new propane grill as a gift from the entire family, and are planning to take it over this evening and tell him that we're expecting him to grill for everyone. Thankfully, he has a great sense of humor!

JUNE TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

9:00 PM on June 1st here on the west coast and it's time for a new Two Old Bats mood board! It being June, this mood board features wedding imagery. I started out working on baking a wedding cake, but it flopped seriously, so I went with some skeleton imagery. I'll try again at mid-month and see if I have any more luck. 

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: June 2024 Anything Goes Halloween

As one of my lovely Design Team members has said, there's something to be said about making the paper work for you on a card! This Trick-or-Treat image has been in my stash for a very long time. I trimmed it down with a stitched rectangular die and matted it with a pale gold cardstock to pick up the tones from the fussy cut moth that was on one of the Park Lane "Haunted Hollow" papers. I love the skull image on his back! Before attaching it to the card with dimensional foam, I stamped the sentiment with Hero Arts "Unicorn" pigment ink. When it dried I over-stamped with Hero Arts "Butter Bar" ink. I was disappointed that when it dried it was not as intensely gold-toned as before drying. I'm thinking it would have benefitted with a couple more coats of the Butter Bar after drying. I'll try this overprint technique again sometime soon to see if I can get the colors a bit more intense.

The envelope was a plain black one from my stash and I lined it with a skeleton paper from American Crafts "Happy Halloween".

We would love to have you join us this month in our challenge! We're still trying to give away this really cute "Spooky Tree" die from Tutti Designs, and if we get more than 25 entries you could be a winner!

10th BIRTHDAY

I've been so busy lately with gardening and getting our new front yard finished up and have spent very little time in my craft room playing with my cards. This morning I wanted to make a card and noticed that the latest challenge at AAA Cards is "Anything Birthday goes" with the Optional Twist: "10th Birthday". My youngest granddaughter turns 10 in a couple of months, so I thought to make her birthday card early.

I loved that the image on the challenge is a monkey - Kaitlyn's father has called her Monkey since the day she was born! These two monkeys playing jumping jack are from a very old stamp set that is probably called "Spring is Sprung" since that's one of the sentiments on the set. It also had a cute little frog that I decided to use as well, since frogs are her favorite animals.

It's been a while since I attempted a shaker card, so since I had made shaker cards for both of her twin siblings for their 10th birthdays (almost 5 years ago), I thought to do the same thing with this card. Those cards can be viewed here.

The monkeys were stamped on white with brown ink and colored with Copic markers after masking them off and stenciling a pink heart as a background. I then die cut them with a postage stamp die and glued them to a pink die cut rectangle that is matted with a green rectangle. I used a layer of dimensional foam between the white card base and green rectangle for the shaker area. I'm not going to go into the engineering involved with the shaker opening - I had intended to insert an additional color behind the 0, but forgot until it was too late!

I tied a die cut heart onto the 0 with silk thread and a couple of beads. Here's a link to the challenge:

AAA Cards: AAA Card Challenge #265: Anything Birthday goes, we're 10!

 

INSPIRED BY PUMPKINS!

Mid-month May already, and it's that time again - Two Old Bats Anything Halloween Challenge! This time I'm inspired by all of the pumpkins stacked on each other in the top left quadrant of the mood board.

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: May 2024 Mid Month Reminder

YIKES! I just realized I had posted this before finishing my comments! It was pretty simple - sentiment and various patterned papers all from my scrap bin, tied off with white and black twine on a black square card base.

I have finally made myself a template for a 6" square envelope that can be cut from a 12x12 piece of cardstock!

I know everyone is really busy right now - here in Southern Oregon the weather has been fantastic for gardening. But we're hoping you'll eke out a bit of time to enter our challenge before June comes down on us. 

QUIET TIMES

I've been pretty quiet on my blog lately. Life around here has been busy with spring-time activities like gardening and cleaning and evenings with friends, but I was interested in participating over at Time Out Challenges, where Challenge #262 is a photo of a really cute handmade bag by Kim Higgins of Running Stitch Design.

The description of the challenge noted that it wasn't necessary to use dog images - but who could pass up that opportunity?  I started with a 5-1/2" square brown card base to which I attached polka dot and plaid patterned papers that I retrieved (no pun intended) from my stash. I computer-generated a sentiment and printed it in brown on blue cardstock and attached that across the card. I punched the end and inserted a brown eyelet and threaded through some narrow brown satin ribbon. The dogs are from an old Inkadinkado stamp set. I stamped them on white cardstock  with brown ink, colored them with Copic markers, fussy cut them, and glued them all to the face of the card. Very simple!

Here's a link to the challenge in case one of you might be interested in playing along:

TIME OUT Challenges: Challenge #262 - Photo Inspiration

 

On a personal note: I pretty much took the month of April off from all of my regular volunteer activities to start to get things moving on the next phase of our major front yard renovation. We started this whole process two summers ago, completely tearing out old shrubs and a very large lawn and starting over from scratch. The owner of a local nursery that specializes in native plants has been helping with design and a plant list. Last summer we had drip irrigation installed, dramatically decreased the lawn area, and got about 1/3 of the yard planted with Manzanita, Yarrow, and decorative grasses, and now it's time to finish things up. We're scheduled for delivery of a couple of boulders and all of the rest of the plantings the third week of May. In preparation I've been weeding, scraping and painting the fence around the covered patio, and getting the patio cleaned up for use through the summer. It's a lot of work, but my enthusiasm is carrying me through! 

MAY TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

I just don't know where the time flies off to (no doubt there are bats involved), but here we are again at the beginning of May and a fresh new Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge! We have a new mood board that you can use for inspiration, or submit any project relating to Halloween. Here's our inspiration board - pumpkins, skeletons, cats, and spider webs:

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: May 2024 Anything Goes Halloween

This card was obviously inspired by the lower left quadrant of our mood board. Using printed card stock from Park Lane "Haunted Hollow", I white heat embossed a deckled die cut rectangle using a Tim Holtz cobweb from one of his older Halloween sets. I matted this with white cardstock and adhered it to a black card base. I fussy cut a creepy spider with a skull on its body from one of the coordinating papers and attached it to the front of the card with some black dimensional foam. The sentiment was cut from an ancient Halloween paper and the edge deckled before slipping it under the spider's leg. I also made a custom envelope from the same two-sided printed paper 12x12 pad.

Here's a closer shot of the spider. 

We're inviting you to enter our challenge and become a potential winner of this great Tutti die:

If we have 25 or more entries there will be a drawing and you could win! Hoping to see your Halloween Anything entries!

APRIL MID-MONTH TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

Time for the April mid-month reminder at Two Old Bats Anything Halloween Challenge.  

https://twooldbatshalloweendt.blogspot.com/2020/10/april-2024-mid-month-reminder.html

This time I decided to go with a "witchy" theme, but you'll also see some pumpkins with black cats on these great coordinating papers by American Crafts ("Boo Crew" and "Happy Halloween").  

I love pocket cards and wanted to play around a bit with the idea of a witch upside down in a pocket. I started with a single 5x7 piece of black cardstock and added a couple of  printed papers to the face of it. The envelope is a die I have for gift cards and I cut it from two-sided printed paper, tied it with a couple of pieces of orange and black twine, and attached it to the face of the card.

For the insert tag I partially die-cut Tim Holtz's witch feet from a piece of black cardstock and trimmed it to the correct size. I added colored paper for socks and white heat-embossed the sentiment. I fussy-cut some of the images from the papers and glued them to the tag. 

Trick-or-Treat, pull my feet...

Now it's your turn!

LIVE/LOVE/CRAFT

Today's offering is a combination of two challenges: Time Out Challenge #261 "Inspired by Words" and Inkspirational Challenge #313 "Fold".

The sentiment and image are from Hero Arts #CM366 "Handmade Happiness" stamp set. I started with a black top-folded card base. Using a two-sided printed stock from American Crafts, I die cut a stitched rectangle, cut a slit across it, and folded it back to show the backside of the paper. Once I knew the location of the opening against the black card, I white heat-embossed the sentiment and attached the printed rectangular panel to the face of the card. I stamped the hand/scissors image on a piece of white cardstock and colored it with Prisma pencil and Copic markers and fussy cut it. You can't really tell from the photo, but I also fussy cut the blades of the scissors from silver metallic stock and glued them over the colored image. After attaching the hand and scissors, the final step was to punch a hole in the face of the card and tie on orange and purple twine.

Here are the two challenges - yes, the fold is a bit simple, but a fold never-the-less!

TIME OUT Challenges: Challenge #261 IBW "I'm a romantic! I live for long, dreamy walks down the craft aisle"

Inkspirational: Inkspirational Challenge #313 - Word Prompt - Fold (inkspirationalchallenges.blogspot.com)

Added April 27, 2024:

NAUGHTY KITTY

I felt like dabbling a bit this morning in my craft room and I had two inspirations: AAA Cards Challenge #262: Sketch and our loveable but naughty lynx-point kitty Tiger.

I created this card in a horizontal format because of the size of the Tim Holtz Snarky Cats images. I started by computer-generating the sentiment directly on a piece of white cardstock, followed by stamping the ball of yarn with blue ink. I masked off the yarn and stamped the orange cat and colored him in with Copic markers. I then trimmed the panel with a stitched rectangular die and attached it to a very narrow black mat and the face of a white card base. The final step was to stamp the naughty kitty on a separate piece of white cardstock and fussy cut him out before attaching him with dimensional foam.

This is the AAA Cards sketch that inspired the layout:

AAA Cards: AAA Card Challenges #262: Sketch

And this is the naughty kitty that inspired the idea: