Quilted Card - Cosmo Cricket Challenge

The Cosmo Cricket blog posted a challenge last week to use stitching on a project. This one was easy for me since I stitch on most projects. I had been holding on to this cute sheet of squares called “Ivy" from the Clementine collection because I knew immediately when I saw it that I would want to quilt the squares. The challenge gave me the perfect excuse.

I cut a 5“ x5“ piece from the patterned paper and lightly tacked it onto a card base. I try to use as little adhesive as possible so I don’t gum up the needle. Then I stitched down and across each row and column to quilt the squares. It was super quick to do.

To finish the card, I added a journaling spot from Cosmo Cricket’s Upcycle line and a chipboard butterfly from the Togetherness line. For the sentiment, I used a sticker and attached it to a toothpick to make a little flag.

Fun, quick, easy. And I won the challenge to boot. It was random draw!  LOL. And now I am the proud owner of all 4 chipboards from Cosmo Crickets CHA release. I love them! Cosmo Cricket has a new challenge this week, which coincidentally is to use chipbard on a project. Hmmm. You can find the details here. The challenge ends Sunday.

Going Green: A St. Patty's Day Treat

I’m super excited to have joined the Creative Team at Paper Issues, an Etsy store and challenge blog. There's such a variety of paper crafters on the team and you'll find tons of fun and inspiration on the PI blog and often prizes, too. We post a different theme every other week and everyone can play along. We hope you'll join us!

Our current theme is “ Go Green or Go Home.” For this you can use the color green, something recycled or something home inspired. Since St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner, I decided to upcycle a treat box - green, of course - for the holiday and include a coordinating card.

　

To make the treat bag, I recycled a Martha Stewart paper container. The box was 3 inches on each side, the perfect dimensions for a 12-inch sheet of patterned paper. I used the Lucky Me line from Little Yellow Bicycle. I cut a strip of patterned paper 2 inches high by 12 inches long and scored it every 3 inches.

　

I adhered the scored strip to the Martha Stewart box, then used a 12-inch border sticker around the top of the patterned paper. I added a cellophane bag into the base, filling it with green Hershey’s kisses. Then I folded the cellophane bag over and added a simple topper made from patterned paper. To complete the project, I used a cropadile to punch holes in the topper and threaded through a bit of ribbon.

To make the card, I used a Doodlebug die cut as my base, adding some Lucky Me patterned paper, an accordion flower from LYB's Paradise collection and a round journaling spot for the sentiment.

We’d love to have you play along in this challenge. Just link up to the Paper Issues blog by March 17.

A little more about my new team:  The Paper Issues creative team includes a wide variety of paper crafters including: traditional scrapbookers, card makers, altered art artists, art journal keepers,  Project Lifers, SMASHers, crazy junk pilers, mist flickers and those who have mastered a cutting machine. The newest members of the creative team are: Aimee Maddern, Amy Tsuruta, Audrey Yeager, Christine Heeren, Cristin Drewes, Heather Leopard, Izzy Anderson (that's me), Kate Vickers, Leah Farquharson, Lizzie Oakley, Lori Wilbanks, Marlene Gomez, Missy Gener, Nina Yang, Patricia Roebuck and Sarah Andreotti.  You can find the announcement here.

If you’d like to take a peek in Paper Issues' Etsy shop, you can get 20 percent off your total order by using the code IZZYB20 at checkout. The shop stocks all the top paper manufacturers and gets new merchandise in each week. You can use the discount code as many times as you like. It doesn’t expire and there’s lots of new CHA merchandise in the shop. :)

The Cure for the Winter Blues

I love trend-watching at CHA, oohing and ahhhing over all the new releases, and waiting for a few of the products to show up on my doorstep.  There's nothing better at the end of the day than driving home to find happy mail on my front porch!

Cath Edvalson of Paper Crafts Magazine is always on top of the new trends and she loves the new color trend of navy.  I do too. It's the new black, I tell you. It goes with everything. 

Cath issued a challenge on the Moxie Fab World blog to make a project featuring navy and to link it back the blog.

I decided to play along and I used the new Genuine line from Authentique that was part of this month's kit at Birds of a Feather Kit Co. 

My friend made the terrific zipper flower and sent it to me in a swap. I got the better end of that deal!  I thought the flower worked perfectly here with the denim feel of this paper line.

I used Authentique's March sketch to guide my card design, flipping the sketch on its side (as shown below) and eliminating the banner. 

If you'd like to play along in the the Cure for the Winter Blues Challenge at Moxie Fab World, you can find the link here.   The deadline to enter is Sunday, March 11.  Click here to play along in the Authentique sketch challenge. That challenge ends April 4. 

Card Supplies:
CS: Bazzill Basics
PP: Authentique Genuine (Natural)
Stickers: Authentique Genuine (12x12 Details)
Punch: Martha Stewart
Gems: Close To My Heart
Thread: Coats & Clark
Sewing Machine: Bernina

You Make Me Smile

Cosmo Cricket has a challenge on its blog this week to make something happy and sunshiney using the color yellow. For every project made and linked to its blog or Facebook page, Cosmo Cricket will donate $5 and a can of food to their local food bank. How awesome is that? I think we should load them up with all things yellow!

I really love the new Cosmo Cricket collections from Winter CHA, which feature wonderful shades of yellow. But those lines haven’t made it yet to a store near me. Instead, I pulled out some patterned paper and chipboard from Delovely, one of my favorite happy CC lines, and made a sunny card.

The sun is a doily from Martha Stewart that I inked and misted and the little die cut butterfly is from Cosmo Cricket’s awesome “butterflies and doilies” that coordinated with its Social Club, Salt Air and Upcycle lines. The stickers that spell “smile” are Echo Park. The yellow alphas are CC Tiny Type, which I have in every color. They are so handy!

If you have a chance this weekend, rustle up your own yellow creation and send it over to Cosmo Cricket. The local food bank will be awfully glad you did.

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!

Sewn Hearts

I love the trend I've been seeing on cards and layouts lately to sew columns of embellies straight down a project. I thought it would be fun to try this with hearts for a Valentine card.

I got out some Echo Park Paper scraps (mostly Victoria Gardens) and a heart punch and made nine hearts. I tacked the hearts lightly in columns on a white cardstock base. I intended to sew a single line down the middle but I got slightly off course on my first row, so I decided to make each row a double.

To make the columns of hearts into a card, I followed a layout design for my inspiration. My friend Karen Tarpley made this adorable layout with sewn butterflies.

I thought her layout would be easiliy adaptable into a card. Following her design, I added a bit of patterned paper above the hearts, then added a bit of pink trim, a doily and a journaling card.

:

Thanks for the inspiration, Karen. You can find more of her work on her blog. 

Supplies:

PP: Echo Park Paper

Trim and Resin Heart: Webster's Pages

Doily: Martha Stewart

Ink: Ranger

Mist: Tattered Angels

Sewing Machine: Bernina

I Resolve: Things To Do In 2012

With the New Year rolling in, I decided to document a few of my goals for 2012. Well, 26 goals to be exact. I made a list of action verbs that started with each letter of the alphabet. A couple of letters were tricky. My action for Z was zoom. And my action for X was to give kisses and hugs (represented as xoxo).

When I put my list into a Wordle, I got a word cloud like this:

I used the Year.o.graphy line from Simple Stories for my layout. Love that collection. It lended itself so well to this type of page. The white banner stickers and the scallop border sticker are Echo Park Paper.

This was my list of things to do in 2012:
Adapt, Balance, Create, Donate, Experiment, Fix, Garden, Hug, Invest, Join, Kneel, Listen, Make, Nurture, Organize, Pause, Question, Read, Snuggle, Try, Understand, Visit, Wander, XOXO, Yield and Zoom.

This was a really fun way to document my goals and was based on a challenge for Birds of a Feather Kit Co.

Supplies:
CS:  Bazzill Basics
PP: Simple Stories
Stickers (non letter): Simple Stories and Echo Park
Alphas: Crate Paper
Sewing Machine: Bernina

Echo Park Handprint/Footprint Ornaments

Echo Park Paper gave its in-house team and Fresh Face designers a challenge to make holiday projects with children. My child is 2 so that did present a challenge.... I went old-school and made ornaments using my son’s handprints and footprints.

This is an easy and fun project to do, but a bit messy, as it does involve a toddler with paint on his hands and feet. Right before bath time is a good time. Just sayin’.

We started with handprints. I enlisted my mom’s help and we painted Cory’s hand with red acrylic paint then stamped his hand on cardstock. We tried both white cardstock and kraft to see which we liked better.

After the handprints dried, I cut them out to form Santa’s face and beard, adding googly eyes, a button nose and a brad smile. I hand-drew a hat from Echo Park paper then used a small circle punch and some adhesive pearls for the trim. We finished the ornament with a “ho ho ho” sticker and a twine hanger.

To make the penguin, I painted Cory’s foot with black acrylic paint and stamped his foot on white cardstock. After the black paint dried, Cory used his fingers and some white acrylic paint to give the penguin a belly. We added arms (flippers) and a hat using Echo Park paper (Metro Dots and Stripes), stickers and brads. We finished the penguin with a chipboard greeting and a twine scarf.

You can find more about this project and other Echo Park projects with kids on the EP blog.  　

Supplies:

CS: Bazzill Basics

PP: Echo Park Paper (Holly Jolly, Metro Dots and Stripes)

Brads: Echo Park Paper and American Crafts

Button: Making Memories

Adhesive Pearls: Close To My Heart

Paint: Plaid

Punch: Marvy Uchida

Twine: The Twinery

Scraptastic Club Guest Designer

It’s December and I am so happy to welcome in the holiday season. Today, I officially start my December Daily and my little one opens the first door of his Lego Advent calendar.

But first I want to share that I am a guest designer this month for Scraptastic Club. It’s a great kit club that gives you a choice of two kits each month. Both kits have great add-on options too. You can find the kits here. 

I chose the Naughty or Nice? kit.

Here’s my first project. I scrapped a photo of my Dad with my brothers on Christmas morning. I love this Crate ornament paper. I pop-dotted some of the ornaments for dimension then set off the paper by adding borders punched from cream cardstock down either side.

The large green die cut is Bo Bunny and it had a blue scallop design around the perimeter, which made the die cut too big for my design.  So, I cut off the blue and stitched a red frame to ground the die cut. On top, I added a tag using a cute reindeer stamp from Imaginesce and alphas from Lily Bee.

Scraptastic Club sponsors challenges each month with great prizes. Come play along. The first challenge is to use border punches and you have until Dec. 31 to upload your entry. The prize this month is the Random Collection from Crate Paper. Oh, I love that line!   You can find the challenges on the Scraptastic Club Blog here.

Cosmo Cricket Card Challenge

On the Cosmo Cricket blog this week, DT member Debbie Olson posted this card sketch:

I loved it and used it to make this card that says: What's canoe with you?

I used patterned paper from Cosmo Cricket's new Clementine line, mixing in a bit of Salt Air, an image from Snorkel's element cards and a die cut circle and butterfly from Social Club. The alphas are CC's Tiny Type.

The card has a lift-the flap element.  The top flap is the striped paper down to the red and teal scallops.  If you lift the flap at the scallops, the card reveals a journaling spot where you can write your own note to the recipient.

Would you like to play along with the card challenge?  Visit the Cosmo Cricket blog for details.  Entries are due on Aug. 27.  Cards magazine will choose one entry to feature in an upcoming issue.