Monochromatic card

The card I have to share with you today was very fun to create!  I started off a little differently than usual, knowing that I wanted to use my favorite color.  Instead of using cardstock as the base, I grabbed a piece of thick patterned paper.  Then I used a scrap of lighter blue paper toward the bottom as an accent.

I cut the flower and shadow from the Storybook Cricut cartridge.  The flower was too big to go through my Xyron, so I went old school and poured out some white glue and rubbed it on with my fingers, Kindergarten style.  Then I poured the glitter over it and smushed it all on.  Once the glue was dried, I adhered it to the shadow and then onto the card.  I used a stamp from Jaded Blossom's Picture This stamp set and some pearls up in the top corner to balance it out.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Craftin Desert Divas- Glitter
Fantabulous Cricut- All About You (your favorite color)
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Anything Goes with Pearls

Sophie Sunday

Today's Sophie layout is one that actually was not made during my recent batch scrapbooking, but was inspired by this month's sketch over at My Creative Sketches!

Last fall, Sophie took a faceplant off of our deck and onto our concrete patio, which resulted in a nasty gash on her chin and panic in her poor mom (aka me).  But, being the scrapbooker that I am, once I had stopped the bleeding I managed to get a picture of it, and that's how this page was born.

Anyway, for this layout I used some border strips by Doodlebug, some cork arrows from Studio Calico, some background paper by DCWV, a "Dog Days" tag from Echo Park, a couple of pieces from my dog themed bins, and thickers that I picked up from Archivers before they closed.  They look and feel like leather. 

Silhouette Challenges #10 "Box any Type"

It's the time for another challenge over at

Ch# 10 Box Any Type

Begins: Saturday, February 1

Ends: Friday, February 28

A blog dedicated to the Silhouette Cutting Machines.

You MUST use a Silhouette somehow in your project.

Sponsor this month is:

My Crafting Channel

Cute Critters Stamp Set by My Craft Spot

For my box, I decided to make a cute box that would hold something delicious!  This oven shaped box is from a file by Designs by Cloud 9.  It was the first SVG file I ever got!  I decided to cut it using some really cute polka dot Dear Lizzy paper that I got a few months ago.  The rest of the papers were scraps that I had.  

I love that I didn't have to resize the file at all to make the muffin fit!  I used an apple-cinnamon muffin instead of a cupcake because I was afraid that if it had frosting my clumsy self would end up getting the frosting on the box and ruin my pictures.  But it actually was really easy to put the muffin in the box and I never had any problems with it touching the sides at all!

I hope you'll all play along with us at this month's challenge at Silhouette Challenges and make a box of any kind!

Hop on over and link up your project today.

CLICK HERE

Spring Bunny

Hello out there, friends!  I'm super excited today, because we're in a (temporary) thaw here and I actually saw the ground yesterday!  Today we're supposed to have a tropical heat wave of mid-40s, and even though it'll be down in teens again within a week, it gives me a hint that spring is on its way!

To keep with the spring theme, today's card is a cute little spring bunny.  I used a cut file I bought from SVG Cutting Files.  I bought a pack of chalks when Archivers was closing, so I got them out and tried them on the bunny.  It was pretty fun, but I definitely need to keep practicing to get the hang of it!

I used Stickles on the bunny's nose and tail to give him a little pizzaz.  You can barely see it on the picture, though.  The background paper is from my scraps, and I used a scrap of green with a grass die too.  Then I used a little tag that I had punched from a small scrap of paper and stamped the sentiment from the Stampendous "Everything Happy" set.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
SVG Cutting Files- Spring
Die Cuttin' Divas- Love your Pets
Craftin' Desert Divas- Use glitter

Sophie Sunday!

As I mentioned last time I posted a Sophie scrapbook layout, I've been spending a good chunk of my time scrapbooking lately.  Those pages don't tend to end up on my blog as often as cards do, because cards get entered into contests and pages generally don't.  So I thought I'd start sharing my Sophie pages on Sundays, when I generally don't have any cards posting.  That's how Sophie Sundays were born!  Since I batch scrapbook Sophie's pictures (I have two whole drawers full of dog scrapbook supplies, so when I spread them all out I don't want to clean them up right away)  I have quite a few weeks worth of pages to show.  After this batch is over, we'll see how I feel.  :)

So a few months back, I won a blog contest that resulted in me getting, among other things, an 8x8 hallmark premade album.  It was wedding themed, but I already have a 12x12 of our wedding so I took the pages apart and altered them to go in Sophie's scrapbook, since she's what I generally scrapbook in 8x8.  The base of this page- the cardstock as well as the grey and brown stripes- are one of those pages. 

I layered on a Project Life dog card, some plaid paper from a DCWV stack, and some various embellishments from my dog embellishment drawer.   I know that the "woof" banner is from Echo Park and the circle sticker is from Paper Studio.

The picture I took is super blurry, but I love how it shows Sophie zooming around our back yard.  It's hard to catch a picture of her in action!

kraft and gold

Today's card was one I challenged myself to make a little differently.  I tend to always have similar patterns in my cards- patterned paper, a cute die cut, etc.  This time, I wanted to go with a two color kind of clean and simple card.

I started with a kraft card base and adhered on a gold chipboard frame.  The frame is actually something I won in a prize pack awhile ago, and never used because the colors were honestly kind of 90s.  Then last weekend I got a "I feel like altering things" kind of bug and I pulled all the chipboard pieces out and colored them with a gold paint sharpie.  Some thing I then put Stickles on, some I didn't.  Once I did that, I decided to stick with gold throughout the card.

I chose to stamp this tree from Jaded Blossom's Simple Sayings stamp set in versamark and then emboss it gold.  I'm still learning heat embossing, so it ended up really warping the chipboard and I had to set it under a pile of books for awhile.  Something to remember for next time.

For a finishing touch, I pulled out some gold pearls from my bling drawer and put them in the bottom corner.  I decided not to use a sentiment inside yet. I find that, with the exception of birthday cards that I make specifically with a certain person in mind, the cards that are blank on the inside tend to be the ones I use the most and don't just languish in my stash.  When I need one, I can pull it out and stamp the right sentiment inside without being like "man, I need a get well card and that would be perfect for that person but it says 'thanks' inside."  So when I want to use it, I'll stamp a sentiment inside in my gold pigment ink and send it along.

I had to photograph it on a slight angle to get the shine from the embossed tree. 

I'm entering this card into the following challenge(s):
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, Get Krafty

Valentine candy

It's almost Valentine's Day!  I'm having tons of fun with some love themed crafting lately.  Today I have a card using Create a Critter 2.  I cut the heart candy box at 3 inches to fit the card base the way I wanted. 

I used three scraps of Valentines paper from last year for the background, and then stamped my sentiment (from Jaded Blossom's Simple Sayings Valentine's Edition) on a hand-cut grey banner.  I added a grey button in the other top corner to balance it out.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday challenges, Have a Heart
Jaded Blossom- Crafter's Choice
Craftin Desert Divas- Red, Pink, or White Linky Party
Bitten by the Bug 2- Valentine Hearts
Fantabulous Cricut- Seeing Red (or white or pink)
Pause, Dream, Enjoy- Crafty Playtime Linky Party, Hearts