Cards from Color Combinations

Two sites that I love and often visit for challenges and inspiration are Two Peas in a Bucket and Birds of a Feather Kit Co.  Both had color challenges this past weekend and I played along.

Birds of a Feather posted this photo for its color challenge:

I love yellow, orange and pink together, but this isn't a combination I often use on layouts.  One of the perils of being a mom to a boy.....But I thought I could easily work this combination into a card.

I added a bit of blue to ground the card a bit.  Papers are Echo Park. Chipboard is October Afternoon.  Twine is from The Twinery.

The challege at Two Peas this weekend was to pull together these colors into a project:

I thought this was a really fun color combination:  sherbert-y brights and a deep black. For a challenge with this many colors, I decided simple would be best. I modeled my design from several projects I've seen with butterflies sewn down a column. Love that look. Laura Bassen, in particular, made a sweet card similar to this that I saw on Pinterest.

I posted my take on this color combo on Sunday, using a Martha Stewart butterfly punch, papers from various Cosmo Cricket collections and a bit of stitching:

A happy surprise awaited me yesterday at Two Peas.  Of the 658 projects uploaded to Two Peas in the last 24 hours, the butterfly card was the voted as the most liked.

The card also made the top three most bookmarked projects:

 Sometimes, it really pays to go simple!

Altered Frame for Halloween

I love altering ordinary picture frames around the house, especially for the holidays. I looked around our den and spied a nice black frame in the den that holds an 8x10 family photo.  I removed the photo and ended with this.

This project was really easy to make. I started with a piece of white cardstock, cutting it down to 8x10 inches. I grabbed some of my favorite Halloween paper, Echo Park's Apothecary, adding in an orange pattern from EP’s previous Halloween release for a punch of color.  I used a square punch to make 20 squares, then moved them around in a grid with five rows across and four down, leaving a little white border between them. I also left a white border around the page so I would have some wiggle room for the image in the frame.  

I tacked the squares down lightly with adhesive, then used a sewing machine to make diagonal lines across the squares with black thread.

Here you can see the squares before I embellished them. And, yes, the project is shown upside down.  Hee! I didn’t realize that until I uploaded the photos.  I tried flipping the photo, but it looked weird. So, we’ll just go with this. J

To embellish the squares, I used element stickers from Apothecary and Happy Halloween. I backed the stickers with cardboard to give them a little dimension. You can also use pop dots but for large stickers, like the tree, I prefer to use cardboard as it gives a smoother look.

So, there you have it. A really quick, fun project that you can make for any holiday. This was my last project as guest designer for Echo Park. I uploaded this project to 2peas and was happy to look the next day to see that of 425 projects, it had made the daily top 3 most bookmarked.