Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

I haven't had a lot of time to stamp lately as I've been helping my son with his new online business, Nerd Nation, and working on some other crafty ventures that hopefully I can share soon. Quick plug - if you know anyone into comics, Star Wars, anime, gaming and all other geeky topics, please share the link to Nerd Nation with them. We would love some new visitors!!

Anyhow, I know you're here for the Papertrey Ink blog hop so let's get to it!

Our inspiration photo this month is:

And the first thing my eye went to was the pear, and the pale pink flower. Here is the card I created based on the photo:

I used Sweet Blush and Spring Moss cardstocks to make the three panels on my kraft card base. I stamped the pears from A Second Helping of Sunshine in Spring Moss and added some highlights with Copic markers. The bowls were stamped in Autumn Rose and Classic Kraft, then they were cut out and inked around the edges for definition. I added some tiny flowers along the bottom of the bowls in Sweet Blush with Copic colored centers. To finish it off, I wanted a slightly rustic feel so I added some crocheted cream lace and a few wraps of tan twine.

Thanks for stopping by and for more hopping, head over to Nichole's blog here.

Chalkboard card - PTI blog hop

This month, Papertrey Ink's blog hop is inspired by this image:

So I wanted to incorporate the chalkboard look and the frame in some way and this is what I came up with:

I decided the chalkboard look isn't something I'm very good at but maybe worth a try now and again.

I started with black cardstock and embossed the scale from A Second Helping of Sunshine stamp set and the words "bundle of joy" from Mega Mixed Messages. The primary school paper lines came from Desktop Designs and the swirly corners from Half and Half to create a wreath-type effect. These were stamped with white ink and not embossed. I used a pale blue colored pencil on the swirls and matted the piece on Spring Rain cardstock to match. I added the height and weight with stamps from another company and, as you can see, lining these up was not a success for me. That's what happens when you are working with wood mounted stamps!  The name was also created with stamps from elsewhere and added to Spring Rain cardstock mounted to a black card base.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the hop!

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

I know, I know...I haven't blogged in ages! Things have been a little crazy in my life. I recently left my job and I am catching up on a lot of things I have shoved to the back burner, so to speak. And I'm looking for a new job, as well. Creatively, I have been busy but not so much with cards. I've been trying to increase my product selections at my Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/CreativeMaryment?ref=hdr_shop_menu) so I've been trying new things and posting over there, rather than here.

But today, I took a little time to play along with the Papertrey Ink monthly blog hop cause you know how I love PTI!

Our inspiration was this photo:

And this is the card I created:

I used the Chevron Vertical Die to create the gray overlay which I adhered to the white card base. I used the Scrolling Script stamps (now in the vault) to stamp my sentiment and then hand cut and rolled a peachy/orange flower as an embellishment, which I added with a glue dot.

Simple but effective, no?

If you'd like to recreate the flower, it's super easy to do. Hand cut a circle from a piece of cardstock. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle - wavy edges work great! Starting at the outside edge, cut a spiral in the circle. Again, we're not going for perfection. Then start rolling from the outer edge of the spiral and continue rolling until you reach the center, keeping the roll nice and tight. Now let the roll relax a little and glue it in place using a couple glue dots on the bottom. That's it! Add to a card or package for a fun embellishment. You can see more of my hand rolled flowers in shadow boxes on my Etsy store (link above).

Thanks for stopping by!

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop - Navy and Pink

The theme of this month's PTI blog hop is to use the trendy colors of navy and pink. I pulled out asset I haven't used in a long time - Button Boutique - and paired it with the Aida Impression plate:

The buttons are an assortment of pink things I had that fit perfectly in the sections. The sentiment is from Mega Mixed Messages.

Thanks for hopping by!

Easter Bunny time!

Well it's not quite Easter Bunny time but I did spend a little time with my honey-bunny seeing the Easter Bunny this past weekend -

As much as he really did not like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny was pretty cool! Look at that smile - melts my heart!

I also have a card to share today that is going out to a few people for Easter -

I'm really excited about this card - it's the first I made with my new MISTI stamping tool! If you haven't heard of the MISTI yet, check out the video at this site (where you also order the MISTI). What I love about it is the accuracy of stamping you can achieve. I could never stamp a background that precisely before so I'm thrilled with the results! And the best thing? If your image doesn't stamp clearly enough the first time, just reink and stamp again in the exact. same. spot! It is just the niftiest invention ever!!

The stamps and cardstock used her are all from Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for stopping by and in case I don't make it back in time, have a wonderful and blessed Easter!

Quilted: Spring

New toys! Oh I love getting new goodies :)  This past month, one of the new sets I got from Papertrey Ink is Quilted: Spring. I have always wanted to learn how to quilt! This might be the closest I come to it:

The colors I used are Soft Stone, Autumn Rose and a little Ripe Avocado (card base is white).I used the dies to emboss the quilt image and then stamped the coordinating stamps to finish the quilt design. The flower and leaves were die cut, stamped and assembled with the flower on a piece of foam tape.

That's it for me this morning - work calls. TGIF!

Back with a "new to me" technique

Sorry I've been gone a few days. I had a few things going on that trumped blogging. This little guy is one of them:

This is right before a surgery that Alex had to have last week. Everything turned out A-Ok and he's on the mend!

I've also been working on my son's business website: Nerd Nation. Not much to see there right now - everything I've been working on is behind the scenes and will be public soon. I'm very excited for this business venture of his and hopefully it will be a great success!

But I did stumble upon a little creative trick I wanted to share with you. Maybe you already know this but it was new to me! While I was creating the other day, I needed to emboss with a die in my Cuttlebug. In order to make the plate "sandwich" tight enough for a good impression, I grabbed a couple pieces of scrap cardstock. What I didn't realize was that one of the scraps had already been used to cut a die image from:

And as I layered this with a piece of plain cardstock and ran everything through the Cuttlebug, what happened when I took the pieces apart was this:

That die cut sheet of cardstock embossed the image onto the plain sheet of cardstock!! This opens up a whole world of possibilities for using dies to create embossed images!! Did you already know this trick?

Here is the card I made from the embossed piece:

 

 

Here's another - it's hard to see the image in the one above but the colors are better:

Isn't that cute? I'm really excited about this discovery and I hope I was able to share something new with you too! Have a great day!

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

It's blog hop day and while I normally am really excited about the challenge, this one stumped me a bit. And when I finally came up with an idea, I decided to try some water-coloring on the background and - well, let's just say - I am not much of a water-colorer!!

Here is the inspiration piece:

And here is my card:

The colors are a little brighter in person - but the technique? So not my thing. I sponged colors on the white cardstock first and then impressed it with the Cover Plate - Circle die. The mat (behind the sentiment also) is Winter Wisteria cardstock, the ribbon is Autumn Rose. Sentiment is from the Scrolling Script set.

Thank for hopping by! I'll be back soon with that technique I stumbled upon and mentioned in my last post. Have a great day!

Just a little free time

Anytime I have a little down time, I try to fit in some creating, even if it's to make a card I don't really need at the moment. It just feels good to break open a stamp set to play with, choose colors and a design and end up with something that looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. This is a card I made on one of those down time evenings:

I used Papertrey Ink's City Scene set to create, well, a city scene! The taxi is added to the front with some foam tape for dimension. Simple but fun to make! Now if anyone moves into my neighborhood, I have a card ready to go!

I think the next time I have some down time, I'm going to create summer cards because I'm getting tired of arctic temperatures and snow!!

Be back soon with some more artwork and a little "technique" I discovered by accident.

Last 2 PTI challenges

These are my last 2 entries for the Papertrey Ink anniversary challenges. I waited until the last minute because these were also Valentine's items that weren't being delivered until today.

This is for the bags/tags challenge - a little something for my favorite grandson:

I used the Nuts for You stamp set to paper piece the squirrel for my tag. I freehand cut the little heart he's holding. I used some matching paper to create a band that wraps around the folded down bag and the twine goes through all the layers to tie everything together.

Here's a picture of our little cutie:

He's 16 months old already - where does the time go? And he is so full of the devil energy, you jus can't imagine! He keeps us all on our toes, that's for sure but we love him like crazy!!

This last card I made for Alex's Mommy and Daddy - my daughter and son-in-law - for Valentine's Day and is based on the metallics challenge:

We were supposed to use silver and/or gold and neutrals but I snuck in a little blue as well because I couldn't work the birds out in a neutral or metallic color. The cage is embossed in silver and the mat is a silver paper over a piece of Spring Rain cardstock. Inside the card says Happy Valentine's Day Love Birds :)

Thanks for popping by - I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day!
See you again soon!

More PTI challenges

I'm back with some more artwork for the Papertrey Ink anniversary challenges. First challenge was to create a floral card that used two or more PTI flower sets.

I managed to get three sets on this card and four different ink colors - kind of outside the box for me. I used Doodlie-Do for the main image, Funky Florals for the purple bursts and Ruby Reprise for the leaves and small yellow filler flowers. The colors are Melon Berry, Royal Velvet, Lemon Tart and Simply Chartreuse. The "frame" was embossed with a Nestabilities die and the front card layer was added to the card base with foam tape.

The other challenge was to use a stamp set that hadn't been inked up yet. Now I normally play with all my stamps right away but this one, Block Party, hadn't been touched yet so I created a simple card that would be a great invitation - to a block party or to a child's birthday. How fun would a building block party be?

I stamped all of the pieces on cardstock and cut them all out to assemble my building on the cream card front. The words were stamped with Type Strips 2 and added to the card front. So what do you think? Great party invitation idea?

That's it for me for today - back again soon!

PTI - color/sketch and Maile Belles

My favoritest ever stamp company, Papertrey Ink, is celebrating it's 8th anniversary and I am playing along with a couple of their challenges this week. Because there's product up for grabs and I'm not passing up the chance to win!! So today I have two cards to share with you. The first one is a color/sketch combo card based on the following inspiration:

And here is my card:

I used Sentiment Signs for the text panel on the right side and Polka Dot Parade #12 for the candle and the "just for you" sentiment. I managed to get all the colors in there as well with the dots around the sentiment in a Copic close to Simply Chartreuse and a piece of baker's twine that is definitely the color of Raspberry Fizz.


The next challenge I played with was using a piece of artwork designed by Maile Belles and recreating the feel and look of her card. This was tricky because her artwork is sooo amazing but I'm happy with the end result. Here are her cards I was trying to "copy" the style of:

I wanted something clean and simple with one large image to the left of the card and a sentiment going across the image and this is what I came up with:

Instead of stamping the large image, I die cut the heart from the card front and used that as my "image". The inside of the card was lined with a metallic looking red paper. The card front was also embossed with the Damask Designs impression plate, although that's a little hard to see in this photo. I added the band across the heart which was a die in the Uncorked die set. I'm not sure what set the sentiment itself is from but it fit perfectly!! The border at the top is a trimmed piece cut from the Heart Border die.

This card is also being entered at Curtain Call where the challenge is Kissing Booth and here's the inspiration photo:

Yep, I think this card fits the bill!

That's all for me tonight. I plan on being back again soon with more challenge entries and maybe a few other goodies along the way. My hope is to get this blog moving again so stay with me!! See you soon!

More felt projects

Yes, I'm still alive...hehehe...just crazy busy! Especially with the holidays right around the corner. But I had a minute (just a minute) to post a couple of recent projects. I've been crafting with felt lately using Papertrey Ink dies and I am really having fun making all these little things. These are just a couple recent items:

Christmasy baby shoes! How cute are these? The spat on the left looks a little pink but it's not - it's from the camera. Sorry about that! These were made with PTI's 100% wool felt (I've tried others and this is the best to work with!) The tree is another PTI die (Winter Snow Globe) and it was decorated with some white seed beads. These shoes went to my sister who will be displaying them as part of her holiday décor!

 This is a coffee cup cozy, also made using a PTI die but the camera was my creation based off a picture I found online. I think it turned out fairly well for not having a pattern. This went to a photographer friend for Christmas with a plate of cookies - a great combo (cookies and coffee - although I'd choose hot chocolate!)

If you'd like to see more of my felt creations, stop by my Etsy store here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/CreativeMaryment . That's it for me - have a wonderful Christmas and I will be back again soon (I hope!)

PTI Blog Hop

It seems every time I pop in here, I'm apologizing for not being around much and here it is, another month has passed and yes, I admit it - I'm a terrible blogger! But at least when I get the chance, I do try to post something fun for you! And today is no exception!

It's once again time for the monthly Papertrey Ink blog hop! The theme is snow (we've already had snow here in NW Ohio - how about you?)

Here's my project:

These are the pieces that will create a banner - as soon as I get some ribbon!! I used the PTI Shaker Shapes - Snow Globe die and the Winter Snow Globe stamp set and dies. The base of the snow globes is Crystal Blue cardstock from CTMH, the outer ring piece is cut from Soft Stone cardstock (PTI) and the base is from white PTI cardstock. I tore some cardstock to create the snowy hills and there are some random snowflakes stamped on the blue in Fresh Snow ink. The trees and snowmen were stamped in gray and prisma glitter was added for some sparkle. I also added a couple of rhinestones to the base of each globe.

Here's a close up on one of the globes with the snowman

And yes, there's a lot of glitter that needs to be brushed off the pieces before they get hung up. I was running a little late getting this project done tonight so the glue is still a little wet and I didn't want to mess with the pieces too much for now. But they'll soon be all cleaned up and added to a ribbon for hanging.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of the hop!

And if I don't see you in the next couple days, have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

I know I have been missing for awhile and I have a lot of catching up to do and I promise to do that soon but today is one of my favorite days of the month - the Papertrey Ink Blog Hop - so let's get back into the swing of things with a crafty post, shall we?

We were challenged to use a color palette posted on Nichole's blog and create a Christmas card using those colors. This is the color theme I chose:

 

 

And this is the card I created:

I started with the Shaker Shapes: Snow Globe Die and I cut the card base. By folding the cardstock in half and offsetting the die just a little, I was able to create a top fold card that I built my snow globe on.

I then cut the rim/base of the snow globe itself from Soft Stone cardstock. Actually, I cut it 4 times. This way I was able to layer each piece on top on the next and build some dimension - and some space for the items in my snow globe to move.

A piece of transparency plastic was cut with a circle die and added to the stack right under the first of those 4 layers. The base of the globe was cut from Smokey Shadow.

Inside my snow globe I added two die cut trees (also from PTI but I can't find the name of it in the products right now). These were cut from New Leaf cardstock and inked with Fresh Snow ink along the edges.

The little Winter Penguin was die cut and stamped in black and his hat was inked up in Blueberry Sky. The sentiment (also from a set I don't know the name of at present - sorry!) was stamped on a die from the Bubble Talk set.

Finally, my sprinkles are snowflakes and dots (this die is included in the Snow Globe die set) in Blueberry Sky and something close to Hawaiian Shores, and a little iridescent glitter was added to enhance the wintery look and feel.

You can find all these products at Papertrey Ink and be sure to hop around and see what everyone else has created! Have a great weekend - and I promise, I'll be back soon!!