PaperFections

TESC80: Buttermilk Hen

Thanks for stopping by this Saturday. I needed a quick thank you note and Taylor's sketch challenge #80 this week was exactly the answer I was looking for. With it, this card came together VERY quickly! I stamped Karen Lockhart's Buttermilk Hen (#2094) onto Neenah Natural White cardstock and colored her with Copic markers. I started with Copic markers R85 & R89, as suggested by Papertrey Ink that would match their Scarlet Jewel cardstock, ribbon & buttons I used. G85, G99, E55, E57 and W3 were also used to color the hen. Black Spica glitter pen was used for her dots, and my custom lighter Copic YR31 was used to airbrush the background while the die cut cardstock was still in the die, leaving a nice white rim for contrast. The patterned paper was trimmed with pinking scissors and the ribbon was pleated and machine stitched to the card. Tied buttons finish off this quick card -- I'll definitely be using this sketch layout some more! I hope you are enjoying your weekend! Supplies: Stamps: Lockhart Stamp Company Buttermilk Hen Paper: Papertrey Ink Scarlet Jewel & True Black, Neenah Natural White, Graphic 45 Communique Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers... Read more →

WSC95: Groovy Friend

Time for Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge again. You can find the sketch and Beate's sample on her blog today, and log in your creation there once you're done. You can see more samples of this sketch today by visiting the blogs of these fabulous ladies: Cambria, Charmaine, Jenn, Lori. Here's what I came up with. It seems those 1970's mushrooms are making a comeback -- both in this groovy new mushroom paper from Cosmo Cricket's Earth Love Mini Deck AND Lockhart Stamp Company's Itty Bitty Mushroom stamp. I thought combining the two would be the perfect match! And with these muted 70's colors, I couldn't help but sing "Feelin' Groovy" the whole time I was making this card! <== Go ahead and click on that link and you'll be singing this song the rest of the day, too! I stamped the mushrooms onto an Inchie Arts White Inchie Square and colored them to match the patterned paper, with these Copic markers (darkest brown Copic is E57 and the clear capped Spica glitter pen is chocolate, then orange, gold and melon. YR31 is my custom lighter Copic): The Inchie was layered onto a Nestabilities Labels 3 die cut from Prism Birchtone... Read more →

My Wise Friend

My wise friends, I hope you'll join me today in Ellen Hutson's CLASSroom, where I'll show you how to make Copic owl feathers and color coordinate any embellishment to match your project! Read more →

Papertrey Ink August Blog Hop

Tonight is Papertrey Ink's blog hop and I couldn't wait to use their beautiful new Fall Elegance stamp set! The season changing to Fall is my most favorite time of the year and the gorgeous colors in the leaves are one of my favorite things of the season ... along with pumpkins! This card has lots of texture, starting with the gold background being die cut from sticky-back canvas. I then colored it directly with Palette ink pads (first in Sunflower, then Raw Sienna for the gold bottom and Papertrey's Ocean Tides for the top). Inking in the two different gold colors gave a lot of depth to the canvas, bringing out the texture. The gold background ended up being a very close match to PTI's Summer Sunrise color. The beautiful flourish pumpkins were inked first with Palette Orangerie, then rocked in Burnt Sienna and stamped directly onto the canvas. The flourish from this stamp set was stamped below the pumpkins in Burnt Sienna. Leaves were punched from different cardstocks (listed below), crumpled and then inked with Chai ink from Papertrey's Tea Dye Duo, then pressed into VersaMark Champagne Dazzle ink pad -- hopefully you can see all the pretty... Read more →

Hobby Lobby Copic Colors & Project

A fun part of being on Copic Marker's Design Team is having the opportunity to design projects for retail stores. A few months ago, I designed these gift items for a project sheet that is currently hitting Hobby Lobby stores: On the left is a gift bag (8.50" tall) made by covering a white paper lunch sack, on the right is a 5-inch square gift/greeting card, and in the background is a 4-inch tall pillar candle. All the projects use the same Inkadinkado rubber stamp image (Nest with Flowers #97148-P) and Stampabilities sentiment (Celebrate 03 - #CR1097). The instruction sheet for creating these projects, using some of Hobby Lobby's 72 Sketch marker colors and other products available at Hobby Lobby, should be hanging near the Copic display at your Hobby Lobby store, or it is available via PDF download here: Download Copic HL Project Sheet Summer low2009-Sharon Harnist. If that file is too large (it also includes the photo) and isn't downloading very quickly for you, try this sheet which is just instructions: Download Copic HL Project Instruct Summer 2009 low-Sharon Harnist. I also put together a blank Copic color chart of Hobby Lobby's 72 Sketch markers -- to aid... Read more →

Back-to-School Day & PTI

Hello All -- I sent my kiddos off to school this morning and then promptly downloaded the photos I took and somehow a big chunk of the day was taken over with digi-scrapping! :) Here's just one page I created with Shabby Miss Jen Designs' new School Time album. Over the weekend I got a little organizing done and wanted to share how I've been storing buttons ... specifically Papertrey Ink's beautiful buttons! They come packaged in a little zip lock baggie. Since my other buttons were stored on shelves in jars, I decided to give Making Memories' small storage jars for their Embellishment Center a try and much to my delight, Papertrey's package of buttons fit perfectly into these jars! Ahhh, they're all nice and labeled and within easy reach now! Now I'm off to actually try and USE some of those pretty buttons! Read more →

WSC94: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #94 today. Please visit Beate's blog to see her sample and enter your creation. These wonderful ladies also have sample eye candy for your viewing pleasure today: Cambria, Charmaine, Laurie, Lori and Mary Jo -- I can't wait to see what everyone created! I can't take credit for the idea of my card today ... that came from a challenge from a friend and I'm not sure she'd want her name attached to it, so she shall remain nameless! We were discussing our children going back to school and while we love them dearly, they are bored and ready to get back to the routine of school and their friends. So that's the story behind another way to use this center sentiment from JustRite Stampers' Christmas Treasures set: Ha! Yes, going back to school can be a wonderful time of the year ... for teachers who love their jobs and kids and miss them over the summer, for the kids themselves and yes, even us parents! :D When my new Cosmo Cricket Mini Deck-The Boyfriend arrived this week and I saw this pencil patterned paper, I knew it would be perfect for a back-to-school card!... Read more →

DDA Dog Days Challenge

Once a month the Splitcoaststampers.com Dirty Dozen & Alumni Designers get back together for a reunion and someone issues a challenge. This month, the challenge was to use some kind of dog image or dog-related saying, to represent the dog days of summer. I had forgotten about the other required element of this challenge until I just went back and read it -- to use a "heat of summer" color scheme -- i.e. orange, red, mustard. Whew, I lucked out on that one, LOL! This orange striped Basic Grey paper just happened to be laying on my desk and things took off from there. I thought this would be a good birthday card for my brother, so that's where the custom label-maker sentiment came into play ... I hope he likes my sense of humor! I didn't think I'd be playing in this challenge since I couldn't remember if I had any dog stamps but my sweet, kind friend, Jami, took pity on me and mailed me some images -- thanks again, Jami! This cutie is from Whipper Snapper. I colored him with these Copic markers: YR12, YR04, YR09, E31, E33, E35, E25, E27, YG63 & W1. I used this... Read more →

New Memory Box Fall & Holiday

New Fall & Holiday Memory Box stamps and papers have arrived in Ellen Hutson's store and I hope you'll join me today in the CLASSroom to see how I pieced together this sweet Fall owl! I'll be back tomorrow with Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge. Read more →

Just a Quick Post

Sorry to interrupt, but I think I may have messed up my RSS feed and wanted to check it out. If you are reading this in a RSS feed reader, then great! If not -- well, I guess I did mess it up and I hope you'll find your way back here for a visit and reconnect to the new feed address. You can do that by clicking on the generic orange "Subscribe in a Reader" button in my top right sidebar, under "Subscribe to PaperFections" (just scroll down a tiny bit). Alternately, you can subscribe via email and you'll receive an email notice when I update my site. My apologies for any inconvenience! I hope to be back tomorrow with some artwork to share! Read more →

JustRite Holiday Blog Hop

Welcome to JustRite Stampers' Holiday Release & Blog Hop! This is my favorite time of the year and JustRite really hit the ball out of the park, in my opinion, with all of these gorgeous stamps! There are a lot of wonderful, nostalgic images and beautiful sentiments tied up in SIX new holiday stamp sets for you! On my projects today, I used images from the Something Sweet set, which includes six borders & centers (shown at left). These stamps fit onto the 2-3/8" round wood stamper. The project I have for you today is some homemade hot cocoa mix (including the recipe & tag download!), packaged with a customized mug: To customize the mug, I stamped the cocoa mug center image with white pigment ink onto red cardstock and then heat embossed it with white detail embossing powder. The "Wishing You Warm Thoughts" border was stamped with red ink and die cut separately, then the two layered together and adhered to the mug and adorned with red gemstones. The gift tag tied around the bottle (recycled frappuccino) of cocoa mix was inked separately with red and chocolate inks. The center was die cut separately, the edges inked and then... Read more →

Thrifty Shopper Alert & Back To School Projects

This special announcement is designed exclusively for those of you who are faithful blog readers of mine, as well as Ellen Hutson's the CLASSroom & InTouch Newsletter blogs. Ellen wants you to know she appreciates all your support! I hope you'll visit Ellen's In Touch blog to see some back-to-school projects I created for this month's newsletter (that should have arrived in your inbox early this morning). Then you can use the coupon code below to do a little back-to-school shopping for yourself! :) If you didn't receive Ellen's emailed newsletter, just leave me a comment on this post and I'll be happy to tell you how to sign up for it. Enjoy!! Save 15% Thrifty Shopper Alert! This coupon is valid on EVERYTHING we carry in our store (in-stock items only.) This offer cannot be combined with any other coupon code. Please note that once an item is no longer visible on our website it means we are currently out of stock - so shop early! Please note that upon completion of your order the discounted price will be listed on the individual product line and not at the end of the invoice. Please join us by shopping at... Read more →

WSC93: Life's a Bowl of Cherries!

Today is Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #93. She's back hosting full force again and so is the sketch team -- you'll be able to find samples with this sketch from Beate, Cambria, Charmaine, Jenn, Laurie, Lori and Mary Jo today, so check those out -- it's always fun to see what everyone does with the same sketch -- and then I hope you'll join in on the fun this weekend, too! This one was very quick & easy for me, here's my sample: A box of coordinating Simple Elegance notecards by the Paper Studio (Hobby Lobby) came to my rescue -- these made it even easier to choose some patterns that worked well together, so I chopped up those notecards and made this 4.25" square one! Karen Lockhart's Cherries seemed a perfect combination for the black notecards. I stamped them with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto Neenah Natural White cardstock and then colored with my beloved Copic markers (R32, R37, R35, R39, G24, G28, T1, T3, T5, W7). I usually photograph the markers I use on my projects in order of how I layer them (from lightest to darkest). So on these cherries, I started by fully coloring them with... Read more →

JustRite Holiday Sneak Peek & Blog Candy Alert!

It's just a few more days until JustRite Stampers' SIX holiday stamp sets will be released on August 17th... these are going to blow your socks off, I tell ya! Each day this week, JustRite is unveiling and previewing a different stamp set in its entirety on their blog AND giving you the chance to enter to win that set! So be sure to keep an eye on the JustRite blog daily! Today's stamp set being revealed is the only new oval holiday set -- Christmas Joy. It fits on JustRite's Small (1-3/4" x 2-5/16") Oval Wood Stamper. I love that there are three images of each orientation in this set -- aren't they all gorgeous?! I used the "Magical Christmas" center as an accent on a 6-inch scrapbook page that could easily be used in the same size, or scaled down a bit, for a holiday greeting card: I printed this photo of my youngest daughter (who fell asleep sitting up on the sofa at the end of a very long Christmas Day!) in 3.5"x5" size and then cut a 1/2-inch frame (overall, measuring 4.75"x5") to fit over the top. The photo was then mounted on foam dimensional tape.... Read more →

WSC92 Winner & Inchie Spotlight

Just a quick note to let you know I have an Inchie Spotlight Technique over in Ellen Hutson's CLASSroom today ... I hope you'll join me there for the details on creating the project above. Now on to the Weekend Sketch Challenge #92 winner. Many thanks to everyone who sampled this sketch -- all of your cards were fabulous! The randomly chosen winner is Kathy, with this beautiful card: You can find out more about Kathy's card on her blog, Inspired to Stamp. Congratulations, Kathy! I hope to be back tomorrow with some more artwork! Read more →