Make Up 4 the Weekend Challenge #14

This week's Makeup 4 the Weekend challenge over at Paper Makeup Stamps is an inspiration challenge. PMS DT member Christi Snow chose a fabulous bedroom for the inspiration! I just love it! Wouldn't you die to have a bedroom like this? I'm in L-O-V-E!!! Here's my interpretation. The first thing I noticed in this bedroom was the beautiful arched window, so I knew I wanted to incorporate that into my card. I used my Marvy scalloped punch to achieve this look. I then scored the top part of the card to mimic the mullions in the window. The other parts of this bedroom that caught my eye were the aqua spread, the black & white rug, and the flowers. It's obvious how I used them in my card. The aqua is a very old card stock from SU called Cool Caribbean. Remember that one? I still have lots of it and it was a perfect match! And the pearls....a whole sheet of 60 pearls in three different sizes for $1 from AC Moore! What a steal! I just love the crispness of this card!

So why not try your hand at this challenge and see what you come up with? You can link up your post to Mr. Linky on the PMS blog. We'd love to see your interpretation.

Don't forget that tomorrow is our big Paper Makeup Stamps Birthday Bash blog hop! PMS will be celebrating its 1st birthday! It starts at 7:00 am CST and then there will be a party in the PMS forum starting at 8:00 pm CST. Also, there will be great things going on for the entire month of February! Check out the details on the PMS blog here.

Thanks for stopping by! See you tomorrow for the birthday hop!
Recipe
Stamps: Dream Big (PMS)
Paper: Neenah white, cool caribbean, black
Ink: Memento tuxedo black
Accessories: Marvy scallop punch, pearls, ribbon, swiss dots folder, sateen flowers, dimensionals

Fairy Whimsey Color Throwdown #77

Happy Sunday everyone! I have changed my Artful INKables posting day to Sunday. My previous posting day of Thursday just wasn't happening for me lately. I have more time on the weekends to do my cards. So Sunday it is!

I decided to use the current Color Throwdown colors. Great combo and it really helped get the creative juices flowing for me today!
Our Artful INKables DT memeber, Jen Pahoulis, did this tile tutorial on the AI blog recently, and I decided to use it. I had done this once before and really liked the outcome. It's nice to come back to a technique you haven't done in a while. Here's what I came up with. I used an AI set called Fairy Whimsey. There is a fairy in the set, but I chose to use the flower and the butterflies. I have to confess that I accidentally grabbed Bravo Burgundy paper and matched my copics to it to color the flower and butterflies. I realized my error and had to restamp and color the flower. I just colored over the butterflies because the parts were so small. I tried that with the flower, but just got a dark, muddy color! It just never goes smoothly!

To get the tiles, I just loosely measured the flower and butterfly stamps and then cut my 5" x 3 3/4" piece of white card stock accordingly to fit those two stamps. Then I cut the remaining pieces randomly. Each piece was sponged with Baja Breeze to get the "grout" look. I secured them to the eggplant piece and then onto my celery base. I used the Martha Stewart butterfly trio punch to get the butterflies...one in each color. There are green crystals adhered to the middle of each one. I bent them to get some dimension. I also added stardust stickles to the butterflies and the flower for some sparkle.

I hope you enjoyed today's post. I really appreciate your comments! Please join me on Tuesday when I'll be participating in the Paper Makeup Stamps Birthday Bash blog hop. PMS turns 2 on February 2, and there will be some partying going on. See the announcement on the top left side of my blog. Click on it and it will take you to the PMS forum, which is where the party will be happening Tuesday night! See you then!
Recipe
Stamps: Fairy Whimsey (AI)
Paper: PTI white, certainly celery, elegant eggplant, baja breeze
Ink: Memento tuxedo black, baja breeze
Copic Markers: BV08, 17; B52, 95; YG03; G40; W-3
Accessories: MS butterfly trio punch, crystals, stardust stickles, sponge dauber

Wild Card Challenge with Just Us Girls!

This week's challenge with Just Us Girls is a wild card challenge being hosted by our lovely and talented Dana. It's a wild card because it's the 5th week in the month, something that only happens once in a while. Dana has chosen a fun challenge for us today...make a pennant banner.There is a tutorial on SCS for these banners and that's just what I used to guide me through this. There is a bonus challenge to create your banner around a "Love" theme, so that here's what I came up with. This was super easy to do. The difficult part for me was I challenged myself to sew it all together! Issues with the thread coming out of the needle, bobbin problems, loose threads everywhere, blah, blah, blah! LOL!!! But I mananged to keep going! Here is a close up shot of one of the pennants. I used an older dp (there's my New Year's resolution again!) from Basic Grey called Blush and backed it with Naturals Ivory from SU. I trimmed the edges of the ivory paper with my decorative scissors, then sponged it with Riding Hood Red and Sahara Sand ink. The letters and hearts were cut with my new friend, the Cricut Expression! Cutting twelve hearts in two different sizes and the five letters was SO EASY and FAST! I ran the red hearts through the textile folder and then highlighted the raised edges with a metallic rub on in golden white. It really shimmers nicely. The edges of the ivory hearts were sponged in the red and sand colors as well. I sewed the pennants and the ivory satin ribbon together. I also sewed around the perimeter of each pennant, and then added the little satin bows on the point of each one.

Now you have to stop by the JUGs blog to see what the other girls have done, and then stop by their personal blogs to read more about their banners.

Kristin Bueter
Pam Imholz
Alicia Weiman
Dana Gustafson
Maria Levine
Mona Pendleton
Tracey Cuccia

Gabby Arriaza, January Guest Designer

Thanks for stopping in today. I hope you can play this week with Just Us Girls!

Just Us Girls Template Challenge

I'm sooo glad it's Saturday. It seems to have been a very busy week! But the Just Us Girls team has a great template challenge for you today and we are teasing you a bit, as well. We are being sponsored today by Lauren Meader from My Time Made Easy, and we are showing sneak peeks of her new line of Pretty Impression stamps, Pretty Packaging, and Pretty Printables. These won't officially be released until February 1st. Here's my JUGs project.The stamp set is called Critters with Heart and has several different critters made with hearts. I just fell in love with this raccoon, so I had to use it for my project. There are several sentiments that go with each of the critters. I just love this "you stole my heart" sentiment with this raccoon. He looks like a jail bird in his stripes!The template is appropriately called Happy Mail and is so easy to pull together. I used the SVG file of this template with my Cricut Expression (for the first time...yeah!!) and after a little fiddling and a phone call to my friend, Kristin, I was up and running! (I realized I didn't read all of the instructions Lauren includes with her files, which would have answered my question. I was too excited to get cutting with my Cricut!) Having the Cricut cut it for me was a dream! The digi paper is called Love Notes, designed by Kristin, and includes four different designs. This one is called Multi Hearts and I fell in love with this as well when I immediately saw it! There is a gingham print pack and a polka dots print pack being released also. Real pretty colors, too! Want to see more? Stop by the JUGs blog and see what the JUGs DT has done. You might also want to stop by their blogs for more pictures of their individual projects and leave some love. Here are the links to their blogs and our guest designer for January Gabby Arriaza. I'm also including Lauren's blog because I think she has something fabulous to share as well.

Kristin Bueter
Pam Imholz
Alicia Weiman
Dana Gustafson
Maria Levine
Mona Pendleton
Tracey Cuccia

Gabby Arriaza

Lauren Meader, My Time Made Easy

We hope you can play our challenge. You don't have to use a MTME template to play, but there is a free one you can download called Cutesy Cover. You might want to give that one a try, or use any template of your choice! We'd just love to see you play along! ***I forgot to mention a really important piece of information....There is some awesome blog candy being offered for this challenge! Lauren is offerring a $25 shopping spree to her store! So this is another reason to make sure you enter!*** Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Recipe

Stamps: Critters with Heart (MTME)

Paper: Regal rose, neenah white, Love Notes digi paper (MTME)

Ink: Memento tuxedo black, copic marker, regal rose

Template: Happy Mail (MTME)

Accessories: Nesties, regal rose grosgrain ribbon, brad, glitter, star dust stickles, dimensionals

Think Ink Tuesday Challenge

Today is Thursday (for two more hours!), and it's my day for an Artful INKables post! With Monday being a holiday for me, I got my days mixed up and thought today was Wednesday! So I'm almost late, but not quite!This week's Think Ink Tuesday challenge is to THINK SPRING!! To me that means light and pretty colors.I haven't used this set called Birthday Best from AI yet (gasp!), so I pulled it out and paper pieced this large cupcake. I used SU's Sweet Always dp which has pinks and oranges in it. I have a sweet friend that I am delinquent in sending a birthday card to, so I used the belated birthday sentiment on the front. I kept the layout really simple. The pearls are from AC Moore...there are 60 pearls on the sheet for $1! What a find! I bought them in every color!

If you want to play this challenge, head over to the Artful INKables blog and enter your card. You may win a grab bag of AI stamps! Thanks for stopping in today! I'll be back on Saturday with a sneak of something really cool! See you then!

Charity Stamp for Baylee

Paper Makeup Stamps (Katie Cotton, owner) has always had a soft spot for children and families in need. There have been several charity stamps created for these families by PMS during its one year existence. Today, we have another. I don't have a card created for this image yet, but I can share the image with you.I'm going to use Katie's words to share a story with you about a sweet young girl, Baylee, for whom this image was created:

"Recently, Paper Makeup Stamps was contacted by 2 friends (Carole Chesser and Ashley Newell) about a sweet girl named Baylee Tadlock. At the age of 9 months, Baylee was diagnosed with Leigh's Syndrome. Leigh's Syndrome is a metabolic-mitochondrial disease. The family was told to expect Baylee's life to be only of about 2 years. That she would never walk, talk, sit up or even crawl. But Baylee was a fighter and a lover of life! She loved to ride horses! She loved Disney and Princess Ariel. Baylee recently went to be with our Lord on January 9th at the age of 13. You can read all about Baylee, her too short life, and her family's amazing faith at www.adreamforbaylee.com

One of our illustrators, Diem Pascarella drew this wonderful image. All proceeds from the sale will go directly to the Tadlock family. They have set up a scholarship fund in Baylee's name with http://projectride.org. Project Ride is a program giving therapeutic recreational horseback riding instruction to children and adults with special needs. PMS is designating the funds for the Tadlocks to use as they need."

So please go to the PMS website to purchase this image. You can go the PMS blog to see the wonderful cards created by some of the DT with this image. Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Just Us Girls Color Challenge

Hi everyone! I'm here with another challenge from Just Us Girls, and let me tell you we were blown away by all the participants from our sewing technique challenge last week! It was amazing! All the girls were so happy to see so many of you participating!

It's the second week of the month, so that means a color challenge. Kristin is our hostess this week and she chose some amazing colors. Here they are. We all had lots of fun with these colors and we hope you will too. It's perfect for this time of the year with Valentine's Day right around the corner or for a birthday card, which is what I made. I used SU's stamp from Thoughts and Prayers. It's been a long time since I've used my SU stamps! I've always loved this stamp, and I've seen it colored in so many different colors, beautiful each time. It's colored with blush, gray, and burgundy SU markers, stamped on a piece of very vanilla, and then I cut and embossed it with a nestie. While still in the nestie, I swirled some basic gray ink around the perimeter of the image. I love that technique...you don't have to use a mat. The sentiment is from a set just released on Thursday from Paper Makeup Stamps, called Birthday Cheer.

You can see what the other JUGs DT have done by going to the JUGs blog. That's where you can link your direct post if you are planning on playing. You can also leave some nice comments for the JUGs girls on their peronal blogs.

Kristin Bueter

Pam Imholz

Alicia Weiman

Dana Gustafson

Maria Levine

Mona Pendleton

Tracey Cuccia
Gabby Arriaza, guest designer

Thanks for stopping in today. Happy Stamping!

Recipe

Stamps: Thoughts and Prayers (SU), Birthday Cheer (PMS)

Paper: Very vanilla, bravo burgundy, blush blossom, basic gray, Parisian Summer dp (SU)

Ink: Blush blossom bravo burgundy, basic gray SU markers, basic gray ink

Accessories: Nesties, MS scallop border punch, basic gray tafetta ribbon, stickles, Kaiser blush pearls, dimensionals