Celebrating Life!

Hello and welcome to my Wednesday post for Isabella's Sketchbook. This week's challenge is "Anything Goes" combined with an Isabella's Sketchbook image. We thought it would be a great week to relax, kick back and enjoy the summer. So check your inventory of Isabella's Sketchbook images, pick one out and have a go. You could win two of Isabella's delightful images. The one I used is called Cup Stack and I don't believe it's available yet. I digitally paper pieced it, including the background of the image panel using the Sweet Violets digital paper pack from Designer Digitals. I used this week's Mojo Monday sketch and also lined the colors up with this week's Just For Fun Color Challenge which is to use purple, green and blue.

The die cuts were cut with a Cuttlebug die, the embossing folder used was from Stampin' Up! I used two different Spellbinders dies, the sentiment was a lovely freebie from Ann Vento at Raindrop Echo Designs/Sentimental Sundays Challenge. You can buy her digital sentiments from Whimsey Stamps. The mini library clip is from SU and the button is from Jo-Ann's.

Let me know if you have any questions or need more information.

Now it's time to stop by Isabella's Sketchbook Challenge Blog and the blogs of my teamies. I do so hope you will be able to play along with us this week!

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Blessings & hugs,

Pretty Peacock

Hello and welcome to another Saturday with Our Creative Corner. It's my last week to be hostess. I've had a blast this month coming up with the challenges and I hope you have enjoyed them too. This week, our sponsor is Isabella's Sketchbook, one of the design teams I represent. I'm sure you know that Isabella has over 250 beautiful digital images over at her store and she will be giving three imges to the random winner of this week's challenge.

Our challenge this week is to keep our cool and chill out using the cool colors of blue and green. I selected this Peacock digital image to work with this week. I thought the image was perfect for this color challenge of blue and green. In the neighborhood where I live, we have several flocks of peacocks roaming around, but we rarely see a male with his gorgeous tailfeathers spread. They mostly just drag them around. But when you do see the rare display, it is truly stunning it its beauty. I came home to find one large tailfeather in my driveway the other day and picked it up to use to match up the colors. I know this is a pretty simple card for me, but I thought the colors, DP design and the punch design all worked together so beautifully to support the peacock motiff. The DP is digital from Pretty Petticoat. I scanned the Brilliant Blue and Green Galore into my PSE and changed the colors on the DP to match exactly. And luckily I had the exact colors in Copic markers to color the iamge. So everything just sort of fell together for this card. The bow is a la (the incredibly talented and generous) Becka Feeken. You can check out her amazing tutorial here on making a Collar Bow.

That's pretty much all the details for this card. I hope you will pop on over to Our Creative Corner to see the other beautiful work by our design team.

♥Wendy Jensen♥Dana Grothaus♥Diane Gilbert♥Jennifer Meyer

♥Julie LeBlanc♥Sarah Gough♥Lori Rider♥

Thanks for spending your Saturday morning with me. Hope to see you again next week. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings & hugs,

Happy Travels

Hello and welcome to my Wednesday post for Isabella's Sketchbook. This week our challenge theme is Summer Fun. And what could be more fun in the summer than the annual summer vacation. So I am celebrating my week in Key West with this Happy Travels card.
I used the Suitcase Stack digital image from Isabella's Sketchbook. I just love the retro flair it has to it. I stamped the Creamy Caramel panel with the large palm tree from the SU Balmy Breezes set (retired) in Chocolate Chip and Versamark and then clear embossed it. The DP is a very light print with many travel icons on it, a digital paper from Designer Digitals called Journey Home. I created my little luggage tag with the SU tag punch, a buckle from the Hodge Podge Hardware set and a bit of narrow grosgrain black ribbon. The Bon Voyage sentiment is computer generated and the globe stamped on it is from Crafty Secrets. The ribbon and black brads are from SU and the bottom mat on the image panel is the picket fence border punch from Martha Stewart.

I hope you will stop by the challenge blog and maybe even enter this week. All you need to do is use an Isabella's image and follow the challenge theme. You have a great chance of winning 2 of her wonderful digital images plus the gorgeous "I Won" badge for your blog! And while you are at it, stop by the DT blogs and leave them some love.

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Jennifer♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥

As always, I am deeply appreciative of your stopping by and of any comments you care to leave. Hope you are having a wonderful week!

Blessings & hugs,

Golf Umbrella

Good Wednesday morning to you! It's Isabella's Sketchbook challenge day and this week we are challenged to make a Father's Day card. My DH is a golfer so I decided on this image from Isabella's Sketchbook. I love the retro look of the image, which I digitally paper pieced. The digital DP is from Designs by Krista, a pack called Candy Apples. The card stock is SU's Really Rust and Always Avecado. The brads are from Michael's and again, I don't remember where I purchased the wired "ribbon". I printed the golf ball a bit smaller the second time, printed the Happy Father's Day on it and attached it to a Tin Holtz Fragment.

I hope you will stop by Isabella's Sketchbook Challenge and see the rest of the team's beautiful work. And maybe you could take time to pay them a visit at their personal blog too.

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Jennifer♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥

Thanks so much for stopping by this morning. Hope to see you this week over at Isabella's Sketchbook Challenge!

Blessings & hugs,

Cherish Today

Good morning to you! I'm so glad your here today to see what I have made for Isabella's Sketchbook challenge. This week we have a sketch for you to follow. You can use any colors or theme, as long as you use an Isabella's Sketchbook image and follow the sketch. If you don't have an Isabella's image, check out the store. There is a free digi offered for you to use in the challenge. Or better yet, invest $3 and buy one of the many beautiful images she has for sale.


I chose to use a digital image called Girlie Apron and digitally paper pieced it using the Flour Sack digital paper pack from Raspberry Road Designs. Digital paper piecing is just the coolest thing ever. No more cutting and gluing teensy tiny pieces of DP. Just a few copy and pastes in my PhotoShop Elements and then print it out. The border punch used is from SU and the Spellbinders die is Labels 5. The ribbon color is Old Olive so I sponged the die cut panel softly with Old Olive to break up the whiteness. Oh, and the faux milk cap is from Jennie Bowlin.


I'm so glad you stopped by today. Now why don't you head on over to Isabella's Sketchbook Challenge or to my fellow DT members' blogs.

♥Annika♥Cec♥Diana♥Jackie♥Jennifer♥Linda♥Lisa♥Peggy♥Peri♥Randi♥Sharon♥Sue♥Viv♥


Any questions? Please leave them in the comments section and then stop back by to learn my response. Thanks again for coming by.


Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:
Aly's Sunday Challenge - Sewing
Creative Imaginations - Sewing
If the Shoe Fits - Down on the Farm
Stamp Something - Use a Digital Image
Incy Wincy - Paper Piecing

A Yummy Challenge

I'm so happy you stopped by today because I have a special treat to share with you! Have you seen the yummy digital images over at Isabella's Sketchbook? Isabella has so many delicious treats, all fat free, in store for you. I was honored to be invited to be the guest host on her challenge blog this week and her mouthwatering images inspired me to set the challenge as Favorite Foods. Pie is high on my list of favorite foods so I selected this rich pie a la mode as the image I wanted to work with this week.

Before I printed the image, I created the sentiment in Publisher, layered it on Isabella's digi and also set it to print with the checked border (it's so much fun to see what you can do on your computer with the digi images!). The blue and white DP was also printed on my home printer. The image was colored with Copics. The black panel was dry embossed with the Cuttlebug Victoria EF and then brayered with Versamark and clear embossed.

I hope to see a project entered for you in Isabella's challenge this week. You do have to use one of her images, but they are really reasonably priced and very high quality. Have fun browsing through her sketchbook and then whip up a delictable delight for this week's challenge. You just might win a gift certificate for more IS images! Oh, and one last note about Isabella's. She is setting up her first design team and has a DT call going on through April 26th. You can read all about it here.

As always, thanks so much for stopping by and for your lovely comments about my cards!

Hugs & blessings,

Challenges:

Paper Sundaes - No people

Sweet Stampin' Challenge - Add stitches

Birthday Blooms

Good morning and thanks for stopping by to see what I have in store for you today. This week's challenge at Creative Card Crew is to make a birthday card. Easy peasy, right? We always need a supply of birthday cards in our stash. A couple of weeks ago while cruising the challenge blogs looking for challenges to enter, I came across a wonderful new digital artist, Isabella of Isabella's Sketchbook. Her style immediately appealed to me and I have used several of her images recently. This is another one of hers. I think it is so totally cool. I love the flower pots with the wrought iron in front of them. The image was a real challenge to color because it is so small; lots of tiny, tight spaces to get your marker or paint brush into (but of course, you could print a larger version that would be easier to color). But it came out great and I had a lot of fun with it. As soon as I saw the image in Isabella's store, I envisioned it in this Mary Engelbreit style and I think it looks great done up like this. I am entering this card into Isabella's weekly challenge. This week's challenge required a circle somewhere on the card. Hence the circle sentiment. It looked a sort of bare so I did a little playing with the digital image. I cropped out one of the daffodils and carefully erased all the wrought iron from it in PSE7. Then I colored it and made it less opaque in PSE7 to create a faded, watermark type of effect.

Details: All the DP is digital, printed on my home computer. The yellow is from Designer Digitals and I don't remember where the gingham is from. I just keep using it and changing the color to match whatever project I am working on. The sentiments were all done on my computer. The image is colored with Copics and I used a Spellbinders tag die for the red Happy Birthday panel.

The Stamping Boutique is sponsoring the Creative Card Crew challenge this fortnight. They are giving an awesome prize - 5 digital images of the winner's choice. Be sure to stop by and check out their darling images. I have used several of them on projects and they are just so cute!

I'm so glad you took the time to visit me today. The other design team members at the Creative Card Crew have some great birthday samples for your inpiration. Be sure to check them out! I hope to see you playing along with us this week!

Blessings,

Challenges entered:

Isabella's Sketchbook - Use one of Isabella's Sketchbook digis, floral theme, round object somewhere

Paper Sundaes - Make a scene

Stamp, Scrap, Doodle - Birthday card

Paper Cutz - Use 3 patterned papers

Prairie Fairy Fridays - Inspiration photo

Raise the Bar - Let it Spring

Res-Q-Challenge - Let's play (this one was really fun - it was a word search and you used the words you found on your card - mine uses: dies, flowers, pattern, spring, square and yellow)

Sew Many Challenges - Use stitching

Stamp Something - Stitch something

Two Challenges in One

Springtime is the time for growth and changes and it has also brought changes to Our Creative Corner. Last week, we said sad goodbys to our team mates Silke Ledlow and Jenny Gropp. This week, we are greeting three brand new members of the OCC design team. Please help us give a big welcome to Diane Gilbert, Sarah Gough and Julie Leblanc! And the month of April brings us a new hostess too. Dana Grothaus has lined up some fabulous challenges for us this month. Her first challenge is Break Out the Buttons and I do so love buttons. But I have really been getting a kick out of making faux buttons and that is what I have done here. I know you can tell they are faux, but I think they are so cute made out of the same paper that I used on the card. The first set I made seemed a little too big, but they made great photo props. I made these using the SU half inch circle punch.

Although this is my OCC DT card, I specifically made this card to be entered into another challenge. Several days ago, happily I stumbled across a very talented digital artist - Isabella of Isabella's Sketchbook. She is just getting her business going and was offering a 20% special (sorry, through yesterday). I snapped up a bunch of her images. Her illustrations have a strong vintage flavor that appealed to me immediately. Her new challenge blog, Isabella's Challenge, is having its very first challenge this week and I wanted to enter it. It's a sketch challenge and the use of one of her images is required. I used both her image and sketch for this card.

Card Details: CS is SU Rose Romance and Pink Pirouette, the DP is digital from Designer Digitals. The image was colored with Copics, cut with Nestabilities and sponged with Bashful Blue (sky) and Old Paper Distress Ink (lower half) then sponged around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The edges of the DP were sponged with Creamy Caramel. The vintage seam binding was purchased on Etsy.

Please be sure to stop by Diane, Julie and Sarah's blogs to congratulate them on joining the OCC. And while you're at it, maybe leave some love for the other design team members too.

Wishing you and your family a blessed Easter.

Challenges entered:

Isabella's Challenge - Sketch

Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - How does your garden grow?

Stamping for the Weekend - Ribbons & Bows

Quirky Crafts - Flowers

Crafty Cardmakers - Spring into Spring

Paper Jewels - Buttons & Sewing

A Simple Thanks

For my Creative Card Crew challenge card this week I decided to simplify a bit -a clean layout with fewer layers and embellishments. I really like the way this card same out. The DP is so pretty and the layout allows more of the DP to show through. I even debated whether or not to add the glittered flourish in the corner. I had decided not to, but at the last minute I couldn't go quite so simple so I added it.

Isn't this the sweetest image? Our sponsor this fortnight at the Creative Card Crew is Prairie Fairy and the DT were all given one of Roberta's images to work with. Prairie Fairy is giving five images to our lucky random draw winner.

Back to my simple card. The details are few - the lovely paper is a mix of several different digital paper packs from Designer Digitals, one of which I changed the color on to coordinate with the others (using digi paper is SOO cool). The edges were inked with Antique Linen distress ink. I created the sentiment seal on my computer. I tried to match the font in the lettering on the DP - I got almost the same font. I cut it out with a circle Nestability and then I cut four more of the same sized circle out of CS and glued them together for more of a chipboard effect. Then, using a round tag die, I cut two and stacked/glued them to the back. The loop at the top of the tag die allowed me to thread a ribbon through it. The image was colored with Copics.

That's it for this card. Thanks so much for stopping by and for your lovely comments. Please be sure to head on over to the Creative Card Crew and see the lovely vintage work done by the rest of the DT for this challenge. I know you'll want to enter to have a chance at the drawing for five Prairie Fairy images.

Thanks so much for dropping by and for your lovely comments. Have a blessed week!

A few challenges to play in:

The Pink Elephant - Pastels

Lots to Do - Vintage

Your Next Stamp - Distressing

A Handful of Stamps - You're a Sweet One

Color Create - Your choice of pastels

Today is a Gift

I really love this quote. Each day truly is a gift from God and sometimes we need to be reminded to be in the moment and truly enjoy the day. It's a beautiful day in Miami, Florida. Its bright and sunny, started out cool, but will go to a glorious 75 degrees later in the day. I'll be heading out shortly to pick up a truckload of donated food from our local Feeding America foodbank to be distibuted later today to more than 100 struggling families via my church food pantry. I pray that God will help each one of us to see the simple human dignity in each one of our brothers and sisters as we distribute bags of food so their family can eat tonight.

But you probably came here to see what I had made for today's Creative Inspirations Wednesday challenge, right? I love what I have to share with you today. The papers are from a digital paper pack called Flour Sack from Raspberry Road. I love these retro prints that were used in dishtowels and tablecloths in the 50's and 60's. I thought they matched up perfectly with the apron that looks pretty retro too! The apron is a digital image from Sugar Creek Hollow and the sentiment is from Verve. Real Red and Whisper White CS are combined with this year's SU In-Colors Crushed Curry and Bermuda Bay. The punch is the Sale-a-Bration punch and just for fun I added a whisp of yellow paper ribbon. I think the card is as bright and sunny as our day today.

Thanks so much for dropping by today. I do so enjoy your comments. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them. I am always happy to share.

I hope you'll take time to see what the other designers have made for your inspiration today over at Creative Inspirations.

Blessings,

Challenges entered:

Fab 'n' Funky - It's all in the technique - favorite technique digital paper piecing

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - Fake it - my paper piecing was done digitally

The Corrosive Challenge - Paper piecing

One Stitch at a Time - Vintage challenge

Paper Sundaes - Paper piecing

Raise the Bar - Fruits of labor

Going Dotty...Challengewise, at Least

Greetings and thanks so much for stopping by. This is the week of the bi-weekly Creative Card Crew challenge and we are challenged to go dotty. I have so many deadlines lately that some days I think I am going dotty. But seriously, I love polka-dots so this was a fun challenge for me. I used another image from a recently discovered digital artist - Lindsay of Lindsay's Stamp Stuff. She had a great sale over the weekend (sorry, it's over now) so I purchased several sets of her digital images. She does have some freebies on her site, plus her sets are very reasonable so it's worth a visit to see if you like her style. This image is from a set called Doode Flowers. I think it looks very country, which is a style I favor. And, again, I went to my digital files for both the paper piecing and for the designer paper, which I printed on my home printer.

I used an Onare paper piercing template on the kraft card stock which I sponged with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The border punch used is the new SU one from Sell-a-Bration. I think everything else is self explanatory, but if you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them.

Be sure to stop by the Creative Card Crew blog and check out the beautiful work by the rest of the team. Our sponsor this week is Crafty Addicts and they are giving away an adorable House Mouse stamp.

Challenges Entered

Daisy Doodles - Artist's Choice + a digital image

One Stop Craft Challenge - Spots and Dots

Ladybug Summer

It's Pile it On Sunday again and this week's challenge is The One You Must. Translated that means only one color plus neutrals. This week our sponsor is The Stamping Boutique. They have both digital and rubber images. The lucky design team was gifted with an image each to use on this week's card. I picked this darling digi image Audrey with Ladybugs and teamed it up with the Designer Digitals paper pack Ladybug Summer. Since this is a digital paper pack, I used my PhotoShop Elements 7 to change the white flourishes to black for my red/black theme of the card. I digitally cropped the ladybug image out of the paper, enlarged it a bit and printed it of a number of times to create the ladybug brads (SU's Build-a-Brad). I had so much fun playing with these digital images and papers again to make this card. The "You Make Me Smile" stamp is from Verve. Let me know if you have any questions.

Pile it On - The One You Must
Colour Create Challenge Blog - Red, Black & Off White
Paper Play Challenges - Just Because
Pixie Dust Studio - 3 D Creations
Stampin' for the Weekend - It's Monochromatic Week
Stamp Something - Something Girly
Crafty Creations - All One Color
Creative Craft Challenge - Thanks a Bunch
One Stop Craft Challenge - Sew Simple
Stamp, Scrap & Doodle - Open Challenge
Pollycraft Monday - Distressing (this one is ink distressed)

Be sure to stop by Pile it On to see what the rest of the talented designers on the team have to offer this week with the cute The Stamping Boutique images. Can't wait to see what you come up with for this challenge.

Blessings,

Monochromatic Butterfly

It's Wednesday again - Happy Hump Day, everybody!! Here's my DT card for this week's Creative Inspirations challenge. This week's challenge is monochromatic. For some reason, monochromatic cards always scare me. Don't know why - maybe I think I won't be able to stick to just one color. This one was easy peasy once I decided on the color.

This cute little primitive butterfly is a creation of Tracy over at Sugar Creek Hollow, a brand new digital stamp company specializing in vintage and primitive stamps. I decided to use Bashful Blue and Very Vanilla. The DP is digital and I matched up the colors by scanning a piece of Bashful blue and changing the colors in the DP to match. Nothing too complex on this card - a bunch of layers and a mess of Spellbinder dies and you've got yourself a card. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments or email me. I'm always happy to share.

Wishing you a beautiful rest of the week!

Blessings,

A Song in My Heart

I can't believe it's rolled around to Saturday again. The time just seems to fly by. I was down with a cold all last weekend and still feeling poorly the begining of the week. Fortunately, I'm pretty much over it now. It seems that I haven't accomplished much around the house this week, but I did manage to get a couple of cards made. Here is the one for this week's Our Creative Corner challenge. This is the last of Jocelyn Turner's challenges. It's been a fun month with great challenges by Jocelyn. This week, her challenge is to use music to inspire our creations. It can be a song, music, an instrument, singer - anything music related.

For my card, I used a Crafty Secrets Clear Art Stamps set that I won last year and have never used. The music is an old Stamp Oasis stamp that I've had forever. I stamped the birds and then masked them and overstamped the music with Frayed Burlap distress ink. Everything else was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black. Coloring is done with Copics and I used several Spellbinders dies for cutting.

Don't you love the pretty blue gingham lace? I think it is from a batch I bought from Lace Heaven online last year. The coolest part is that I wanted to use it, but I wanted to match up the blues. I went through my stash of designer papers twice, but nothing was clicking. So I went to my digital paper files and found a couple of patterns that I liked. I put the lace on the bed of my scanner, scanned it to PSE7 and picked up the blue color. Then I opened my digital papers and changed the colors to match the lace. I think that is just the coolest proces and it thrills me to no end to be able to do that!!

The flowers are all by Prima and the pretty dotted organza ribbon is from Flourishes. I won the Timeless Tuesday challenge a couple weeks ago and the prize was $10 to shop at Flourishes. Of course, by the time I finished shopping my bill was $60, but it was still wonderful to get $10 off!

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you will jump over to Our Creative Corner to see how the other girls are making music this week.

Wishing you a happy, healthy weekend with many blessings.

Sweet Strawberry Girl

After my last card missed the challenges by a mile, I set out to create a card that would hit several. I believe this one will hit:

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - use hardware (red diamond brads between the flowers)

Three Clovers Designs -Tootie Fruitie

Cute Card Thursday - fruit

Cuttlebug Spot - use your favorite CB embossing folder and spot 3 of their blinkies on other blogs

Dutch Dare - use lace

Daring Cardmakers - Bejeweled bliss

This is the first time these stamps (Whiff of Joy and Flourishes) have seen ink. I have quite a few Whiff of Joy and Sarah Kay stamps that I still have not used (so many stamps, so little time - sigh). The new Flourishes Strawberries set is fabulous and I have been planning on using it so these fruit challenges were very timely. But oh, what to use for DSP? I wanted a crisp white for the dotted swiss but any rich red DPS I owned had a cream color rather than white in the pattern. So off I went again in search of the perfect DSP via a digital download. I found just what I was craving at Raspberry Road Designs. Their Flour Sack paper pack really appeals to me and it had a couple of papers with strawberry patterns. And so this card was born.

The coloring was done with Copic markers and I had a shock when my colorless blender pen ran out of ink. I have only had these pens since May. Luckily I had purchased a refill canister and a bottle of the colorless blender fluid. It was a pretty quick and easy task to refill it with the assistance of this four-part tutorial. I was fortunate that I had the refill on hand and I think next time I order supplies, I should start ordering a couple of refill colors each time I order - especially the colors I am using the most like skin tones, hair colors, basket colors, etc. I would hate to have a marker run dry in the middle of a project!!

~Card Recipe~

Stamps: Flourishes Strawberries, Whiff of Joy Willow With Basket

Paper: SU Real Red and Whisper White, Neenah Solar White for coloring with Copics, Raspberry Road Flour Sack DSP

Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black, Copics

Accessories: Martha Stewart border punch, Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots embossing folder, Nestabilities Labels Four, Stickles, lace from Jo--Ann's, sewing machine, Prima Say it With Crystals