Weekend Recap

April 11, 2011 | cristina

I’ve had a quite busy weekend craft-wise:

Cards and hybrid projects completed: 4
Hybrid cards printed and cut out, ready to be assembled: 3.5
P365 LOs done: 0

I really need to set my priorities straight. The problem is that hybrid is so much fun it’s hard to stop! But this week I really need to catch up on my P365. In the meantime, here’s two of the things I got done this weekend. First off, the inspirational piece that has been printed for a while, but yesterday I finally bought push pins for my new cork board so now it is in place:

Credits:

Life Is Beautiful papers, elements and alpha by Ju Kneipp

(Of course, the cork board isn’t yet hanging on the wall, but one day or the other I will coerce DH into putting it up. 🙂 ) I actually ended up buying a cork board just because I wanted to hang this piece up, and square frames are hard to come by. Plus, the wallpaper in this room wouldn’t have gone well with the fun colors and patterns I plan to put up, so a cork board was the best solution.

Then I made this card:

Credits:

Life Is Beautiful papers and elements by Ju Kneipp

Font: Pea Stacy’s Doodle Script

The colors and textures in Juliana Kneipp’s kits are absolutely stunning! I got a GSO on the ScrapMatters GSO blog for this one. 😉

A Week Late…

April 9, 2011 | cristina

I’m a week late in showing you this amazing kit by Jenn Barrette:

It is such a stunning kit, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to get those pretty papers printed. Putting together this card took some time, but I love how it turned out:

Credits:

Growing Something Good by Jenn Barrette

Font: Pea Stacy’s Doodle Script

I might use it as this year’s anniversary card, unless I get inspired to do something else. I also used this kit for a P365 spread:

Credits:

Growing Something Good by Jenn Barrette

Font: CK Noah

Yes, I am positively in love with that wood paper! 🙂
ETA: I got a GSO on the ScrapMatters GSO blog!

Flowers and Bunnies

April 7, 2011 | cristina

I have been quite busy lately and I’m struggling to find time to create – but don’t I say that all the time? 🙂 I think I am working on at least 3-4 projects at the same time, instead of focusing on one and seeing it to the end, so that doesn’t help either… 😉 But I expect quite a few will come together before the weekend is over. In the meantime, last night, since DH was late from choir practice (they stayed an extra half hour, until 9:30 PM, and I was starving… the best way to get distracted was to finish up a couple things), I put together these two little things. I used a gorgeous kit by one of April’s guest designers at ScrapMatters, Laurie Ann:

Isn’t it pretty? All those springy colors! Here’s a card I made:

And I also made a bookmark for DH because 1) I couldn’t resist that bunny and 2) despite having made several bookmarks at his request months ago, he claims he doesn’t have enough (and in fact he cannot locate a few of the old ones… sigh).

I haven’t given it to him yet though, I certainly did not want to endorse his being late home last night. 🙂 I think I’ll give him both the card and bookmark together for my Project 52 Cards this week.

Week 14

April 7, 2011 | cristina

Here’s last week’s card for my P52 Cards:

You can see the Week 14 card here. 🙂

Ready for Spring

April 5, 2011 | cristina

We’ve been having some nice sunny days here lately, but the temperature has been pretty low, in the 40s or low 50s. We went running Saturday AND Sunday and it was great. I’d take the cool weather over the heat any time, for anything, actually, but especially for running. 🙂 Anyway, despite the still chilly temperatures (the highs are in the low 40s this week…), spring really is in the air. The first crocuses have popped up this past weekend in our garden, along with many tulip leaves. So it’s the perfect time to use one of my favorite kits ever by Sahlin Studio, Sunshine and Daffodils. I made this card last week:

Credits:
Sunshine and Daffodils papers, Sunshine and Daffodils elements and Snipettes: Easter by Sahlin Studio

This is the featured kit for April, so this means that if you use it for a project or a LO and post it to the Sahlin Studio gallery, you get a chance to win a GC!

Spring Album

April 1, 2011 | cristina

The new BYOC products by Sahlin Studio are soooo inspiring! Check them out:

As soon as I saw these gorgeous designs, I knew I had to print them out and make something pretty with them! So I made a Spring mini album.

I did lots of layering and used pretty lil’ things:

It’s just a darling little album and I love how it turned out! The inside pages are empty because I am planning to fill in the album with pictures and journaling about my mom’s visit next month, but I already printed and cut out the embellishments too (they aren’t adhered yet) so the album is ready to be assembled.

Credits:

A Spring Day papers, A Spring Day elements and Sponge Painted Alpha by Sahlin Studio

Butterfly shape from Sunshine and Daffodils elements by Sahlin Studio

The BYOC products are 20% off as usual, and The LilyPad is having the quarterly 30% off sale, so make sure you stock up on the other Sahlin Studio goodies while they’re on sale!

ETA: I got a GSO on the ScrapMatters gallery standouts blog for this project. 😉

Live Your Dream Today

March 12, 2011 | cristina

I swear I say this of every kit Jenn Barrette creates ;), but her latest collab with Dani Mogstad is the best kit ever!!! Check it out:

The colors and patterns are soooo amazing! I was inspired to do my very first ATC ever, for a challenge I saw on the simply ArTistiC blog.

I loved this design so much that I turned this into a card as well, but I am not finished with it yet (I’m doing more stitching on that one and I haven’t had time to finish it; we’re going away for the weekend so it might be a few days before I post it). Truth be told, I decided to make a card mostly because when I prepared the digital version of the ATC to be printed out and cut with the Silhouette, it covered only half the paper, and I somehow cannot force myself to print and/or cut if I’m not making the most of my paper (is there anyone else out there who does this?). I wonder if I’ll ever get over this! 🙂 And for this time I glad I didn’t, because as much as I LOVE the ATC, I love the card even more! 🙂 I added some distressing and I think it’s turning out really cool. Well, enough talking for now! 🙂 OK, no, there’s something else I wanted to tell you. Do you see the glitter on the one pinwheel? I wasn’t planning on adding it, but since I fought with glossy accents quite a bit (I was trying to use it to glue down the pinwheel pieces but it wouldn’t work, and it ended up tearing some of the paper) I decided to use it to cover the oopsies. I think it turned out really cute! It even passed the DH test: feeling wary after the staples incident, I showed him this ATC and asked him if it looked like there was anything amiss. He said everything looked pretty cool. Yay! 🙂

Jenn also has two new releases in her shop today (both are re-releases and they’re both gorgeous), go check them out! Here are two peeks of what I did with them a while back:

Sweet Tooth!

March 11, 2011 | cristina

Britt-ish Designs and Sahlin Studio have teamed up for a very sweet collab! 🙂

The wordart is fantastic too:

I used this collab to make a thank you card for a new friend:

I think the picture doesn’t do the card much justice (as usual…) but the card turned out quite cute. I covered the bears in glossy accents so they really look like gummy bears! I cut out the alpha and the candy in 3 copies and layered them, so they have a nice dimension

Sahlin Studio

March 7, 2011 | cristina

Krista of Sahlin Studio is one of my favorite designers ever, and I am so happy to announce that I recently joined her team!! 😉

She sells at The Lilypad and you can find her blog here. Make sure to subscribe to her newsletter on the blog, because she sends out beautiful inspiration. Every month, she picks one of her kits to be featured in Memory Lane: if you make a page with the featured kit and post it to Krista’s gallery at The Lilypad, you have a chance to win a $10 GC to her store! And the best news is that you can also just use her blog freebie. This month’s featured kit is Make a Wish, a collab with the oh-so-talented Valorie Wibbens:

With my mom’s birthday coming up at the end of the month, it was just the perfect timing to get her card done with this gorgeous kit:

Credits:

Make a Wish by Sahlin Studio and Valorie Wibbens

Doodley Borders & Frames Vol.1 by Sahlin Studio

I had so much fun adding all the dimension to this card! After I finished putting it together, I was left with too much open space between the “happy birthday” word art and the music strip, so I added in some wrapping ribbon. It was just the perfect touch!

I’m thinking I’ll probably take it off though, since I have to mail this card and the ribbon would get squashed. 🙁 I had lots of fun cutting out all the pieces with my Silhouette and inking them all up with distress inks. I glued three layers together to make the letters and the round bits, so they have a nice thickness. There’s glossy accents on the round bits too, though you can’t tell very well from the pictures.

So I was all proud of my card until I showed it to DH. The only thing he said was: “I really don’t like the staples”. Yes, that’s all he had to say! 🙁 Ugh!

ETA: Since I got a comment that agrees with my husband’s criticism, for full disclosure let me specify that I added the staples for decorative purposes only, since the paper is glued down with Mod Podge. I thought they were cool and added some variety. And I still do! 🙂

Jenn’s Rocking the Pad!

January 21, 2011 | cristina

Jenn Barrette is on fire this month! Today she has 2 new collab kits out at the Lilypad, and they’re both just amazing (and 20% off right now, which never hurts!)! First off, a collab with Val Wibbens: