PaperFections

Inchie Arts Little Village Kits

Hello, Friends ... Today I'm joining up with Inchie Arts and Ellen Hutson for a fun week-long product feature! Inchie Arts has developed some new kits for making city and neighborhood scenes called Little Villages (so far, there are two kits!). The kits were designed for unlimited scenic possibilities! Here, I've created a snowy night-time Christmas village scene: (Click on any photo for a larger view. Bold products are linked below in the supply section). The kits are die cut matboard pieces made out of the same sturdy archival white matboard used for Inchie Arts' signature Art Squares. Today I used the Little Village 2 kit (there is also a Little Village 1 kit). Below are all of the Little Village 2 pieces punched out of the 3-1/2" x 5" matboard piece from which they are die cut (the pieces come still attached in the matboard rectangle, but punch out cleanly and easily): Both kits come with an ATC (2.5"x 3.5") Art Square base, but I decided to use a little larger white 4" Art Square to create this holiday home decor piece. Since this is a holiday piece, I wanted a lot of shimmer, so I dug out some... Read more →

Advent Calendar Tags 2013

With the holidays quickly approaching, I'm trying to finish my 2013 Advent calendar as soon as possible and this week's Mix It Up Monday challenge over at StampTV helped a lot, as I'm hosting! You can read all about the challenge and the PRIZE here and these are the tags I created for it: The challenge is simple -- Monochromatic Stamping! Just choose one color of ink to stamp with, and one color of cardstock to do it on, some stamps, and you are off and running (your project does not have to be a tag)! You can find deatils about this year's previous tags I've created clicking on this link: Advent Calendar, or by choosing the Advent Calendar category from my sidebar, or direct links are below: - 2013 Advent Calendar Tag 13 - 2013 Advent Calendar Tags 1, 11, & 15-17 can be found HERE. - 2013 Advent Calendar Tags 18-25 can be found HERE. I've also added an Advent Calendar photo album in my right sidebar, with links to all 2013 and 2012 calendar tags. I can't wait to see what you create! {Supplies} - All from Gina K Designs, unless otherwise noted: GKD Stamps: Simple Numbers... Read more →

StampTV Challenge Time!

Hi, everyone! Just wanted to let you know I'm hosting this week's StampTV challenge and this time I've chosen one of my favorite things to create . . . tags! And my sample uses the brand new Spring/Summer StampTV Kit, Days of Summer, just released last Thursday! I used one of the four mini stamp sets in this kit, A Wish For You. You can find the full details of my challenge HERE, over at StampTV in the Challenge Forum. To ink up these pretty new stamps, I used Tim Holtz Distress Markers (dusty concord, shabby shutters, mustard seed, spiced marmalade, worn lipstick) and stamped onto a 3" x 5" tag I created from Gina's Ivory Heavy Base Weight cardstock. How cute is that row of tiny butterflies stamp at the bottom?! I backed the tag with Turquoise Sea cardstock and the pink ribbon is from the Days of Summer kit. A coordinating Pink Passion button finishes off the top. Be sure to check back here on Thursday, for a Gina K design team blog hop featuring this kit! ~ Sharon Read more →

StampTV Challenge Diva!

Happy Sunday, everyone! I'm just scootin' by with this sneak preview of tomorrow's StampTV Mix It Up Monday Challenge I'm hosting . . . a little sketch I whipped up: It will officially be posted this evening a little after 8pm Central over in StampTV's Challenge Forum -- just in case you might like to do a little creating this evening instead of watching the big football game! Here's the sample I made with the sketch: I used last month's release, Scooter Diva by Debbie Corbari for Gina K Designs. I'm lovin' this whole Diva series and am looking forward to another Gina K release on February 28! I stamped Diva with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto Gina's Ivory Heavy Base Weight cardstock and colored her with these Copic markers: Skin: (E00, E11); pants & hair: (E31, E33, E25); scooter, lips, helmet, purse: (R22, R24); scooter fenders & ground shadows: (W0, W1, W3); tires & scooter seat: (T4, T6). Copic Tip: What color should you use for shadows? I used the W's here, due to the warm colors of the kraft card base and red/tan in the Love Letters patterned paper I used. I added the street stripes with Versamark... Read more →

JustRite Friday Challenge Time!

A new Friday Challenge has been posted over at the JustRite Inspiration blog today . . . we hope you’ll join in and play along! The challenge is to make your own flower embellishment for a papercrafted project using JustRite Stamps! Here’s my 6-inch scrapbook page of my youngest daughter I made for the challenge: Banners are a hot trend right now and I wanted to incorporate one into this page. I discovered JustRite’s Myriad Pro 50-pt Font fits perfectly inside Spellbinders new Banner Basics die sets! I stamped the letters with Memento Rich Cocoa ink to spell out SWEET onto these gorgeous BasicGrey Hello Luscious solid papers and then die cut them all at once with Banner Basics One dies in the Grand Calibur: The letter panels are popped up with foam tape onto the banner base and then the whole banner popped up on foam tape and “hung” with twine at the top of the page: These dies have so much fun dimension to them –- love those tassels! The raspberry zigzag piece I used to frame the photo is also from the Banner Basics One die set – I like the more petite scale and think it... Read more →

JustRite Valentine & Tuesday Trigger

Today's new JustRite Friday Challenge #048 is to follow this sketch I created: Here's my sample I created: These fun papers are from Basic Grey's new Hopscotch 6x6 pad -- love them! I used a sentiment from JustRite's Friendship Nested Frames that I thought would work well as a Valentine for a dear friend! I stamped it with Ranger Espresso Adirondack dye ink onto dotted Hopscotch paper and then used Spellbinders Labels Fourteen to die cut a frame to pop up over the sentiment. JustRite just made the announcement that they are now carrying a selection of Spellbinders dies that coordinate with many of their stamps! You can find them here and more shapes will be added to their web store as they arrive in their warehouse. The heart border is Martha Stewart's Doily Hearts Edger punched from chocolate cardstock and topped with more Hopscotch paper. Some pink seam binding and a Maya Road chipboard heart (covered with Hopscotch paper) finish it off. I also used Moxie Fab's Tuesday Trigger (photo below) as inspiration, mimicking the swirly paper with the swirls in the sentiment, the scalloped box with my scalloped heart border, and the pink & brown colors, and of... Read more →

Moxie Fab Metallics Color Inspiration

There have been some fun color inspiration for card makers challenges going on over at the Moxie Fab blog, so I thought I would play along in the metallics one that uses these colors: Fun, right?!! The Bazzill equivalents are Gold Leaf Metallic, Satin Wedding White and Pinkini -- none of which I have, so I made do with what I had . . . Here's what I came up with: I used Lockhart Stamp Company's Queen of Hearts Crown, stamped onto Copic's X-Press It Blending Card and colored with Copic markers R81-Rose Pink, R83-Rose Mist, Y28-Lionet Gold. I die cut and embossed the crown with a Spellbinders Nested Hearts die and then rubbed gold metallic paste onto the embossed areas (it's actually the same color as the gold cardstock, but it's looking a little coppery in this photo!): Rhinestones accent the crown. I backed the die cut heart with a heart doily and then mounted the hearts onto a square of gold metallic cardstock. The Lockhart "Queen of Hearts" sentiment was zig-zag stitched onto the gold cardstock. The pretty Echo Park Be Mine pink patterned paper was distressed and machine stitched to the 5.25" square card base. Some cream... Read more →

Ellen Hutson's World Cardmaking Day

Happy World Cardmaking Day! Over at Ellen Hutson's the CLASSroom today, you will have the chance to win some fabulous blog candy and we'll be posting cardmaking challenges throughout the day! You'll have until Wednesday, October 6 to complete any challenges you wish to participate in. You can find full details over at the CLASSroom blog. Here's the card I made for my challenge, that will be posted at 1pm Central -- you'll be able to find all the details of my card over at the CLASSroom at that time. I hope you'll join in on the fun today! Read more →

Copics Now Available at JustRite Stampers and Your Chance to Win Some!

Today's JustRite Friday Challenge is a fall color challenge. You can find all the details of the challenge and my project over at the JustRite Inspiration blog today. I used this beautiful brand new Backyard Birds set from JustRite, combined with the challenge colors of olive, chocolate & pumpkin (more on the challenge is detailed at the bottom of this post). I made the suggestion for a bird stamp set and one of JustRite's fabulous illustrators brought it to life beautifully, I think! There are four fabulous bird images in this set and I colored one of them to resemble a Baltimore Oriole -- I hope I did it justice with my Copic markers! Speaking of Copics, JustRite is now carrying a selection of 96 Copic Sketch markers in trios & quads (and also available individually) that I helped select. Since the number one question I'm always asked is "Which colors go well together" and "What colors should I start with?", we chose a great range of color groupings that you can be assured will blend well together for expert results! There's a great 2-page chart you can download that shows all of JustRite's Copic color collections, so you can... Read more →

Dare To Get Dirty!

It's Dare to Get Dirty Week at Splitcoaststampers! If you're a Fan Club Member this is your chance to play along with design team members (aka Dirty Girls, which I am honored to say I am an alumni of!), past and present, in a ton of fun challenges! If you're not a Fan Club Member, this is the perfect time to become one -- you can get all the info here. We'd love to have you play with us this week! There are 33 challenges to choose from - play one or play them all. Today I'm hosting a sketch challenge ... you'll need to work with this sketch: You can find full details about the challenge, including two more samples from my fellow alumni Dirty Girls and friends, Jami Sibley and Jody Morrow, HERE. Easy peasy, right?!! Here's my sample, using one of Karen Lockhart's beautiful new floral images from her Summer 2010 release, Peonies ... my favorite flowers! The image is stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa onto Neenah Natural White cardstock and colored with these Copic markers: Coloring these flowers might seem a little overwhelming, but it's a pretty quick & easy process. I started out with a... Read more →

Groovy July Calendar

Yes, I know it's a little late in the month to just be posting my July calendar, but we left on vacation the last week of June and didn't return until this week! It was driving me crazy not to have it so as soon as I had a little spare time, I got to creating! This cute new Lockhart Stamp Comapny Web Lawn Chair image arrived just before I went on vacation and I knew I wanted to use it -- it's perfect for summer, isn't it? I stamped it onto an Inchie Arts Ivory Twinchie Square (measures 2-inches) with Memento Rich Cocoa ink and colored it with these Copic markers: Orange Copic Atyou Spica Glitter Pen accents the Tim Holt Vintage Marketplace Alphabet letters (sorry I didn't get a better photo of those for you) and Silver Spica was used for the metal frame of the chair. I rounded the corners of the Twinchie Square with WRM Crop-a-Dile Corner Chomper (1/4-inch side). My free blank 3-inch downloadable calendar can be found on the Download page of my blog HERE. To create the background for my 4-inch chipboard coaster calendar, I got some inspiration from Stamp TV's color challenge... Read more →

Special Day Flowers

Today's JustRite Friday Challenge is to use a sentiment stamp on the outside as well as the inside of your cards. I know I'm guilty of leaving my cards "naked", so I can use them for any type of occasion (or add the sentiment later), so this was a good challenge for me (you can see the sentiment on the inside of my card over at theJustRite Inspiration blog). I hope you'll join me and try the challenge ... you could win some brand new Justrite Christmas stamps! Wishing all my American friends a very happy Independence Day holiday weekend! Read more →

Dear To My Heart Shabby Tea Room Challenge!

There's a brand new challenge blog in town, by the name of The Shabby Tea Room and this week JustRite Stampers is sponsoring the prize package! You can read more about my card sample shown above over at the JustRite Inspiration blog and find out more details on how you can enter the 'Dear To My Heart' challenge for your chance to win a JustRite prize package of brand new stamps being released this week! Read more →

Inchie Card Sketch #2

Did you know Lisa is now posting weekly sketch challenges over on Ellen Hutson's Inchie INKlings blog? It's been WAY too long since I've made an Inchie card, so I decided to play along with this week's challenge! You can enter your creation over at the Inchie INKlings blog for the chance to win a little giveaway, so we hope you'll play along! I started my card with a Memory Box Licorice notecard and then layered a piece of Basic Grey Kioshi paper on top that I used Tim Holtz's Paper Distresser on (love that tool!). Following the sketch, I added a vertical piece of striped Kioshi paper, matted with more scallop-punched licorice cardstock. To frame my Inchie Squares, I used Spellbinders' Long Scalloped Rectangle Nestabilities die to cut more licorice cardstock. This sweet little caged bird was selectively stamped from Karen Lockhart's larger new Bluebird in the Window stamp. To do this, I punched a 1-inch square out of Eclipse Masking Tape, placed it over the rubber stamp, exposing only the caged bird. Then I inked up the stamp, removed the mask, and placed anInchie Arts Ivory Inchie Square over the inked part of the stamp, gently pressing and... Read more →

Sew Right!

Sewing on papercrafting projects is a big trend right now and this week's JustRite Friday Challenge is to make any kind of sewing-themed project or use some kind of machine, hand or faux stitching on your project. It can either/also include fabric, buttons, felt, quilting, embroidery, etc. I chose to use JustRite's Stitched With Love stamp set for this card AND included threaded buttons, twill tape (originally used in sewing), and machine zig-zag stitching! I stamped two of the centers from Stitched With Love with Memento Rich Cocoa ink, die cut them with Spellbinders Classic Square Nestabilities, and then colored them with the Copic markers markers listed below in my supply list. A tiny real button adorns the flower center on the pin cushion. Copic's Silver Atyou Spica glitter pen makes the needles and pins shimmer like they are real (hopefully you can see that by clicking on the photo above for a larger view)! Spellbinder's Long Scalloped Rectangle Nestabilities die was used to cut a frame for the stamped impages from Memory Box's Kraft cardstock. Cornish Heritage Farms' beautiful Art Nouveau backgrounder was stamped with VersaMark on the blush cardstock. If you play along in JustRite's challenge, you have... Read more →