I've really been enjoying Jen Rzasa's Runway Inspired Challenge despite the fact that I am so completely fashion challenged - jeans and a sweatshirt all the way for me thank you! I love seeing everyone's interpretation of the pictures and it's forcing me to examine things more closely and with a more open mind. Always a good thing. Anyway this week is this totally cool chick in a fabulous rainbow dress so where did my brain go? To a rainbow feathered bird of course! I've had the feathers kicking around for a while so I was pleased to put them to use along with a few more scraps of patterned paper and some more Purple Onion Designs stamps. :) 
CAS-ual Fridays is celebrating Penguin Awareness Day this week with a black and white challenge. No other colours invited to this party! I busted out the white embossing powder for my card and guess what I did AGAIN??? Yep, I spilled that entire pot o' powder. Thankfully this time I spilled it on my crafting mat and not all over the floor. *Phew!* Crisis averted (although I still said a few naughty words in that initial moment of panic). Maybe I need to have mellower music playing so there's less bopping about... 
I had a few hours to get crafty yesterday while Luis was building a little shelf for our cookbooks. This is one of the cards that I made and I played along with two challenges for it. I used the colours from the Play Date Cafe and the sketch from Skipping Stones Design. It's the first time any of these stamps have been inked up and I also used some patterned paper (from Basic Grey's Nook & Pantry collection) so I'm continuing to forge ahead with using up my stash!
The last time I entered a Market Street Stamps challenge I said I really had to get some more stamps from them besides background stamps as Hippie Chic was the only non-background set I had. Despite much temptation I haven't gotten around to ordering any others yet so it's more Hippie Chic for me for January's Paint the Town Challenge. I was pretty liberal with the pink on this card but there's a touch of sherbet on the lower patch on the dress and an aqua patch as well as the aqua sentiment. 
Hello, my friends! Today I'm playing along with LeAnne's colour combo at the Paper Players and also linking up to Unity's Friends With Flair blog hop. If you look closely at the centre of the flower you can see that it's paper pieced with Blushing Bride paper and then I punched 1/16" holes from the Pear Pizzazz paper for the dots. They were certainly a bit fiddley to stick down but I got them in place eventually. 
I'm really sad to see the Wee Memories challenges coming to an end although I understand Jenny's reasons for making the decision. Wee Memories holds a special place in my heart as it's the first challenge that I ever placed in! My ribbon flower was chosen as one of the Fab 4 last January. I was so excited to finally add a challenge blinkie to my sidebar. :) Anyway, the final challenge is a sketch challenge which almost sent me running in the other direction but I was determined to suck up my sketch fear and not miss out on this special event. I didn't really think about this before but I guess it's kind of appropriate to have made a sympathy card for the passing of the challenge! And look at all that patterned paper up there! It's from Basic Grey's Origins collection - yes, I have a lot of oldie goldies in my stash... The stamps are Hero Arts. My thanks to Jenny and the design team for all the fabulous challenges and inspiration and I look forward to seeing what comes next for you all! :)
Good morning! Popping in with a baby card for Kathy's Lily Pad Palette Challenge over at Lily Pad Cards. The elephant stamp is from an old PTI collection that I just recently got my hands on and the sentiment is from Hero Arts - it's definitely my go-to baby card sentiment! I coloured the two smaller buttons with Copics and they've come out a lot lighter in the photo than they really look... Must check these things more carefully at the time! Hope you all have a wonderful day! 
I haven't given my Purple Onion Designs stamps much love lately and I knew the Flower Framed Doodle stamp would be perfect for this week's CASual Fridays challenge to use scallops. I paper pieced it with Basic Grey's Lime Rickey papers - score one for using more patterned paper! :) It's rather Courtney Kelley-esque I think. I love her paper piecing and I discovered POD thanks to her fabulous work on their design team. Off to throw the ball for the hounds now. I can't take their "I'm so neglected" eyes any longer!
Another week of struggling with the colours at the Play Date Cafe. I don't know why they are giving me such a hard time but I am determined to conquer them! After much pondering of supplies I decided to play with some PTI stamps for this card. Since A Passion for Papertrey's current challenge is Valentine's I went for a love theme and ended up with a 2-challenges-for-the-price-of-one card. After several design attempts (see below for an alternate) I was finally happy with this one. I used my Sew Easy tool for the first time and I think I'm going to like playing with it!
It's a cold and blustery Sunday here - a perfect day for crafty time! :) I finally sat down to work on my entry for this week's Tuesday Trigger at the Moxie Fab World. This is another one of those cards that's been percolating in my brain for a while. Sometimes I'm hesitant to sit down and try and make them because I'm afraid they won't turn out like what's in my head. Thankfully I'm thrilled with how this one came out! I die cut numbers from the white panel and then from coloured paper and then put them all together. Then I took my embossing stylus and made little indents around each number to mimic the quilted look. Now, I'm not sure if you're supposed to enter a card in more than one Moxie Fab challenge but I'm going to give it a try as this card qualifies for two other challenges that are running at the moment for Cool Tools Week: the Embossing and Debossing Challenge and the Die Cutting Challenge.
There are so many awesome cards at the Runway Inspired Challenge this week. Go check them out if you have a chance. I've had an idea floating around in my head for it and thankfully I squeezed in some crafty time this morning. Obviously I was inspired by the black and white stripes but what also caught my eye was the model on the very edge of the picture. I liked the idea of bookending something with stripes and thought of this Unity bracket stamp that I have. The stamp actually has polka dots inside the brackets which I didn't want so I stamped them on the back side of my striped paper and cut them out. Now, this might be a stretch, but I'm also going to join in with Unity's Friends with Flair blog hop with this card - I did use a Unity stamp even if I only used it's shape. :) This card also fits in with Simon Says Stamp's Spots &/Or Stripes challenge. Off to work now. Have a wonderful day!
The desk cleaning project that I began yesterday got a little out of hand and I spent most of today trying to get it under control - hence why this post is so last minute! Today's card is super clean and simple and made for 3 challenges - CASual Fridays' Chip Off the Old Block challenge, Young Crafters Unite's clean and simple challenge and the chipboard challenge at Lily Pad Cards. I used to love to play Atari! As impressive as some of today's games are sometimes I wouldn't mind a simple round of Asteroids or Centipede! :)
The colours at the Play Date Cafe this week really did my head in! My first two efforts got chucked out and I finally decided to go easy on myself and keep it really CAS. I broke out some more unused Skipping Stones Design stamps so this card is also headed for the Simon Says Stamp New Something challenge. Now I'm off to dig out my desk. I started sorting it today and it always seems to get worse before it gets better. I barely have enough room to move my mouse around but I had to take a little tidying break to write up this post. :)
Have you ever been away from crafting for awhile and then really struggled to get back into it? Since we got back from our Christmas trip I've really been trying to find that awesome groove that I had going before the holidays. It has not been easy and today's the first day I finally got something made that didn't make me want to scream. It's for the sketch challenge at Skipping Stones Design. Can't believe I'm starting out the year with a sketch challenge! Maybe this will be a year full of changes... I'm also going to enter this over at Simon Says Stamp's New challenge as this is the first time I've inked up this set of stamps.
