Simple Cards: My Creative Scrapbook

I think my favorite part of kit work - besides excitedly opening each new DT box - is near the end when I gather the scraps from my projects to make a card.  By then, I know the line I'm working with really well. I know which patterns I like to mix and match and I have a lot of freedom.  The layouts I obsess over are done and there are no photos to edit. It's just me, some scraps, glue and my imagination.

I have a clean style so my imagination doesn't really have to work too hard...Below are cards I made with leftovers from two different November kits at My Creative Scrapbook 

The first is from the Creative kit, which featured the lovely Walnut Grove line from Pebbles:

I admit: I unabashedly love the pennant craze.  I made the "thank you" pennant by folding a sticker around a long toothpick. 

The soft muslin pennants under the vase are Pink Paislee trim.  The bottom row is natural (straight from the packaging) and the top row is misted to match the flowers.  

The second card is from the Album kit, which featured The Good Life, a pretty new line from Fancy Pants. I really loved the colors and the punch of black. 

I thought this card was perfect for retirement.  I used a very simple design, just stitching patterned paper on part of a card, then adding a tag. 

To make the tag, I started with a plain white shipping tag.  I used a zig zag stitch around the edges just for a hint of texture and added a ribbon to cover the reinforcement hole at the top. Then, I added a sentiment sticker and a piece of chipboard that overlapped the tag and grounded it to the card. To finish, I added a couple buttons for bicycle wheels.

My Creative Scrapbook features four different kits each month.  Here's a photo of the two November kits I used.  You can find out more about these kits, including a Christmas special, here.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

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.

Gathered Ribbon Flower Tutorial and Sneak Peek

I'm really honored to be a guest designer for the August kit of Freehand Scraps. The new kit is chock full of yummy goodies, which I can't reveal quite yet. But I can show you a few sneak peeks.  Today, I am going to show you how I used a few products in the August kit to make a gathered ribbon flower.

One of the items in the Freehand Scraps kit is this Crate trim from the "Neighborhood" collection. Love Crate trims! I used the shell-colored ruffle ribbon to make my flower. This trim is perfectly suited for flower making because it has the nice elastic at the bottom, which is easy to run a needle through.

I used orange embroidery thread here so you can see my stitches. The stitches won’t show so you can use any color thread you have on hand. Make sure you tie a good knot at the end of your thread because you will have to pull on the ribbon to gather it.

Use your needle to make long running stitches on the elastic part of the trim. After you’ve stitched the length you need for your flower, use your fingers to gently gather the trim. The ribbon will naturally curl into a circle. You can make your gathers tight or loose, depending on the look you prefer. Once you have your circle, either backstitch or tie a knot in the other end of the thread to secure it. Then stitch the two ends of the ribbon together to hold the circle. Don’t worry about stitching neatly because none of the stitching will show once you add a decorative center.

The ribbon was a little too pink for my project, so after I had gathered the flower, I misted it with Tattered Angels’ “Peach Delight.” I love the way you can use mists to color ribbon and trim.  I always mist lightly first, then again if I want more color. The photo above shows the flower after a first spray with mist.  To give the flower a deeper hue, I misted it again.

The last step is to embellish the center. I used a small circle sticker from Basic Grey’s “Out of Print” collection topped with an adhesive pearl. Both the sticker sheet and adhesive pearls were in the August kit.  After my flower was completed, I used it as a decorative center on a die cut butterfly to mimic the butterfly wings in my photo.

Now you have a sneak peak at one of my Freehand Scrap projects. I'll post the full layout next week.