Garden Whimsy

Molly DeCrow has a new kit out today: it’s a collab with Laura Banasiak and it’s full of fun, fun doodles and cute elements!

I had so much fun using it for this page!

Spring Is Near

Credits:
Garden Whimsy by DeCrow Designs and Simply Scraps by Laura Banasiak
Font: SS Whimsy

Live Your Dream Today

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.

ATC Live Your Dream Today

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! πŸ™‚ And for this time I glad I didn’t, because as much as I LOVE the ATC, I love the card even more! πŸ™‚ I added some distressing and I think it’s turning out really cool. Well, enough talking for now! πŸ™‚ 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! πŸ™‚

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:

A Few Cards…

I have not posted my P52 cards for a while, so here they are. Truth be told, I have been putting this off because I botched my week 8 card. πŸ˜› I was envisioning a light brushing of bronze glitter blended with the digital stamp I used. But of course, what really happened is I turned out with a solid coating of glitter completely covering the digital stamp beneath it. πŸ™‚ I tried to rub the glitter off with my fingernails, but to no avail. Even though I had other cards ready at hand, I decided to give the botched card to DH anyway. To my surprise, he did notice something was amiss, and even guessed I had made a few unsuccessful attempts at removing some of the glitter. πŸ˜‰ It’s cool to know that he does understand a little of what I do and can distinguish between a good and a not-so-good card, I was starting to doubt it! πŸ˜€

P52 Cards - Week 8

You can see the Week 8 card – prior to the glitter overload – here. (I mercifully defocused it in the picture so you can gloss over how yucky it is πŸ˜‰ )

Phew, OK, got that off my chest. We can now proceed to the newer cards:

P52 Cards - Week 9

You can see the Week 9 card here.

And yeah, I haven’t been succeeding in taking pictures of DH when I give him the card, because I usually give him my cards right before we have dinner, so a) the lighting is bad and b), we’re in a hurry to eat. πŸ˜‰ But he’s been a good sport, posing for pictures later, so it’s all good. πŸ™‚

P52 Cards - Week 10

You can see the Week 10 card here. This was last week’s card, and I haven’t handed out this week’s card yet, so we’re all caught up. Yay! πŸ™‚

Love the Cook!

My husband is an excellent cook, so when I saw Erica Zane’s delicious collection I knew I had to make something for my favorite cook. πŸ™‚

And here’s my little card. I’m so late posting this, I made this cards a few weeks ago already! πŸ™‚

Love the Cook Card

I also made another pretty project with this kit, for the March ScrapMatters newsletter: an altered clipboard!

Altered Clipboard

This was my first clipboard and I had lots of fun putting it together! πŸ˜‰ I actually made this first, then I liked the little cluster so much that I used it for my card as well. πŸ™‚

Altered Clipboard

I am planning to hang this in the kitchen to hold menu ideas and shopping lists. πŸ˜‰

Sweet Tooth!

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

The wordart is fantastic too:

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

You Are So Sweet card

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

Gorgeous free kit by MKC!

If you love Mari Koegelenberg’s designs, you better head on over to her blog and subscribe to her newsletter right away, because she has a free kit waiting for you! And it is so pretty!! Here’s my page using it:

Captured Moment
Journaling:
I always have to force you to take pictures… but it’s worth it! I know you love them too! πŸ™‚

Credits:
Just So You Know by Mari Koegelenberg *free newsletter subsribers’ kit!*
Font: CK Noak

I am in love with that bold background! πŸ™‚

ETA: Woot! I got a GSO at Me So Scrappy with this page! πŸ˜‰

Eonce moreTA: I got a GSO at ScrapMatters too!! πŸ˜€ BTW, do you know that ScrapMatters has its own gallery standouts blog as of this week?? Check it out! πŸ˜‰ What a true honor for me to be picked in its first week! πŸ™‚

Card Color Inspiration Challenge

It is so true that challenges push you to do things you wouldn’t have tried otherwise! Yesterday I decided I wanted to play along with the color challenge at Paper Crafts Connection, but frankly I wasn’t inspired at all by the palette. I love bright colors and I never would have picked this combination on my own!

Paper Crafts Connection Color Challenge #2

But then, as I went through my digi stash, I discovered this very combination in one of my favorite kits by Jenn Barrette:

I tweaked the colors a bit in Photoshop to match the palette better, and voila’:

Wishes Do Come True

Isn’t this a pretty palette after all? πŸ™‚

Wishes Do Come True card

I ended up with a card I absolutely adore! Yay for challenges and stretching your limits! πŸ˜‰

Sahlin Studio

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

Krista's CT

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:

Mom's Birthday Card 2011

Credits:
Make a Wish by Sahlin Studio and Valorie Wibbens

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!

Photobucket

I’m thinking I’ll probably take it off though, since I have to mail this card and the ribbon would get squashed. πŸ™ 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.

Photobucket

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! πŸ™ 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! πŸ™‚

Make Something Pretty Today

I know I haven’t posted anything in quite some time, but I have been so busy with work lately that I barely have had any time to create anything! Sad, I know… So when I saw Jenn Barrette’s new kit, a collab with Kristin Cronin-Barrow, I knew just what to make: an inspirational piece to put at my desk, so that even when I cannot create, I can look at it and smile. Here’s the new collab (and it’s 20% off!):

And here’s what I made:

Make Something Pretty Today

And yay, it’s the weekend, and I think I will be able to make something pretty! πŸ™‚

Photo Splits

Have you seen the new photo splits by Molly DeCrow??

They are gorgeous! I love rounded corners! πŸ™‚ I decided to use them for a P365 spread, and they worked beautifully!

Credits:
Photo Splits – Doubles by DeCrow Designs
Eastern Whispers by DeCrow Designs
Alpha from de*light by DeCrow Designs
Alpha (recolored) from Passion Fruit Bundle – Designs by Kat and DeCrow Designs
Rabbit from Easter Salutations by Studio Tangie and Britt-ish Designs
Font: CK Noah