Sunday, November 23, 2014

Christmas CAS in Kraft

This card is for The Card Concept challenge with the theme :Kraft Christmas.  This blog challenge has different levels of design beginning with CAS (Clean and Simple), moving all the way out to Shabby Chic (which is usually many layers and embellishments)

This is a great challenge because it allows for all styles of submissions.  To the right is the inspiration picture for the challenge.  This card is being entered for "Clean and Layered."





I pulled out some old Stampin' Up! kraft card stock for this one. What is left of the original SU kraft stash is now down to less than a dozen pieces, so this card was worked up in Crumb Cake before cutting into the real kraft paper.

The red card stock is unknown; it is very close to SU Real Red, but not quite.  I discovered a whole pack of this red when organizing the card stocks earlier this week, but there was no label.  It is a gorgeous red in natural light. 

The dies are a set by Simon Says Stamp.  I left the spirals on the tree loose, and pulled them up a bit.  The sentiment was cut through the kraft layer, leaving the red to show through. 

The pearl embellishments are by Kaiser Crafts. 



This challenge runs for two weeks due to the upcoming holiday week.  I hope to carve out some more time to make another card for this one. 

Thank you for stopping by. 
~ Carole


Saturday, November 22, 2014

Glittering Christmas

This card is for this weeks CAS(e) This Sketch.  It was also intended for the LIM challenge "More Than One Tree" from last week but I missed the deadline yesterday. 




The trees and base edge are cut from SU!'s new white glitter (or maybe they call it Dazzeling Diamonds) paper.  The snowflake "sequins" and die are from Simon Says Stamp (Winter Trees is the name of the die) and the gorgeous deep blue card stock is Bazzill Artic.  This is my first ever shaker-card and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.  The entire card sparkles and glimmers even when just sitting on the table. 

It's raining out today so the natural light, which is best for taking pictures of glittering cards, is too low to get a decent picture.  Once the sky clears up I will attempt another picture and add it later.

Not sure this is any better, but the colors seem to be truer. 


Thank you for dropping by. 
Carole

Friday, November 21, 2014

Grateful for .....

  ..... vacation time!!  Or "stay-cation" which seems to be the current catch phrase.  Spent the week organizing the stamps, card stock and dies to make everything all uniform and easy to see from across the craft table; if necessary.  Today I woke up early and finished putting everything back in its place and then jumped into blogland to find a challenge. 

This first one up is for The Paper Players Challenge #222 which closes at noon PST.  With only about 40 minutes to make a card, take a photo, crop and post on the blog this one is a bit rushed.  The theme is "Clean and Simple Thank You" with the following icon to inspire players. 

Using the acorns and leaves as inspiration, I went straight for the new wooden embellishments from SU!.  This card also has some NBUS with the Basic Gray DP which has some lovely fall colors.

I didn't like the first card after I took a picture, so I ran back to the craft room and ripped it apart and created another card.  Of course now the first card is better, because the second one it too busy.  UGH!!

I think I should have used an embossing folder on the base and not the dots. 
 





Off to find another challenge and enjoy my crafting space.  YAY!!

Thank you for stopping by.  Carole.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Shopping Therapy

I've been working 7 days a week again; last day off was the Sunday before my last post.  :(

Getting real discouraged with the work situation and desperately want to retire.  Unfortunately I need to work a few more years before I can kiss the working world good-bye (or more likely, give it the central finger solute). 

So in order to cheer myself up I decided a bit of shopping was in order.  Some women shop for clothes, purses, shoes or jewelry when they need a little shopping therapy; but I decided to break into my savings account and hit Ellen Hutson's.  I was so happy to see the new Fawn Lawn and Mama Elephant sets.  I even bought more dies ...... because clearly I have an addiction where dies are concerned.  Some day I will get up the courage to take a picture of my dies, but only when I'm ready for a 12-step program.  LOL

I am scheduled to be off the third week of November and I might be able to take the last weekend of this month off.  If I do, I'm going to sleep one day away and then lock myself in the craft room and play with my new items.  The week off in November is tasked for making my Christmas cards. 

Keeping my fingers crossed that my time off doesn't get cancelled, and crossing my toes and fingers when playing lotto so I don't have to worry about social security or my 401k seeing through to the end of life.  :D

So anyway, here is the shopping spree that cheered me up, and thankfully I do not have purchase remorse, it was worth the dipping into savings. 

Hope everyone is having a great end of summer early fall.  Winter is just around the corner .... YAY!!!! 
~carole

Monday, August 11, 2014

Does drying time count ......

I've make my first 10 minute card if texture paste drying time doesn't count.  :)

This card is for the Colour Me! Challenge and Less Is More change from this last week.  At LIM its one-layer-card week using foliage, and over at CMC it Monochromatic using Pistachio Pudding (one of my new favorite colors).


The colors on the card look to be more than just PP but that truly is the only color used.  The backgound leaves were inked in with dabbers using the diecut template.  The texture leaf was sprayed with undiluted PP re-inker which did not come out anywhere near the actual color that is pulled off the pad.  I went over the sentiment with a clear glitter pen, which IRL looks no different than the stenciled background leaves; however in the picture it changed colors on me.  I think its the reflection that changes it since I've run into this before.   I envisioned something much prettier, but OLC's are my personal bane. 



Also meant to add ..... does using paste qualify on OLC?  I wasn't sure if it would be considered a "layer". 


We finished month end close yesterday so I made a point to get up early today to get back in the craft room.  I started another card for CMC when the current challenge was posted that I worked on over the few minutes of personal/home time I had this last 10 days, Unfortunately it was piece type work and I managed to lose some of the little pieces over the week so it was tossed this morning.  That will be a definite redo in the future because the portion that was completed, was looking really good. 

Thanks for stopping by, I plan to carve out some time in the evenings this week to leave comments. 
Carole

Monday, July 28, 2014

One more for the road .....

One more card this week before I head into the month end financial close process. 




The Colour Me! challenge this week included gold, Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, black and a neutral.  I made one card already and while cleaning up the leftovers it hit me that I could make a completely different card with all those pieces.  The first card has a black base so instead of loading down this one with a ton of color, I picked one bit from each color and let the frame and sentiment do the rest.

I'm also going to add this card to this weeks Less is More challenge since the theme is anything goes.  With the ton of white space on this card it's a must.  :)




I'm not terribly pleased with the "hello" die cut, it's too cartoonish for the geometric feel of the diamonds.  Too bad it's glued down and not taped, I'd be able to peel it off and use the gum eraser to clean up any stickies, then find a better sentiment.    Oh well.  No bling or sequins on this one but I may revisit this at a later date since I like the layout of the diamonds. 

Have a great week ...
Carole



Sunday, July 27, 2014

Shameless CASEing

Two cards in two days .... that has to be a record for me.  LOL

The card below is for the Colour Me!! Challenge which this week I find very challenging.  Color combinations of more than two and a neutral throw me, so recently I have been watching the color challenges and giving it a try.  So far all have been horrible failures but today, with what I would consider the hardest colors to mesh, I finally have a card I like.  Of course I can't take any credit because this card is a shameless CASE of one of Jennifer McGuire's, seen here





The key to this type of challenge is the balance of color, which is where I always fail.  In this case I wanted the gold and black to dominate with the Mambo and Daffodil as complements.  The neutral completely threw me, but I finally mixed a bit of Smokey Gray embossing powder in with the white to tone down the sentiment, which at full-on white was too much.  Instead of allowing the entire die to roll across the card, I shifted it so that several of the diamonds fell off the edge.  So that the gold wouldn't completely out do the Mambo and Daffodil, I covered them in a layer of Wink of Stella.  After putting all the pieces down I hightailed it over to Kim Singdahlsen's site to look up the SU!/Copic charts, she has so graciously listed in her sidebar, in order to color in some bling to match.    So the whole thing sparkles with the exception of the black base which IRL really looks nice.   :)  The only issue that I have is that the Wink of Stella changes the color on the card stock just a bit, so the lovely bright Mambo is slightly toned down, but it does sparkle so I guess it's a trade-off. 

Thanks so much for stopping by.
Happy Sunday
Carole


Saturday, July 26, 2014

Two Birds, One Card

Over at Less Is More the theme this week is "Anything Goes" in honor of  Chrissie's birthday.  First I'd like to wish Chrissie a Happy Birthday .... but since it's Saturday 9:30pm here and 3:30am Sunday in England, I think maybe it's a belated HB now.  :)

This little card is for LIM and The Card Concept which is a color challenge this week using aqua, white and lime.  I finally broke down and bought some sequins from Lawn Fawn and Verve and the color challenge was a perfect way to finally use them.  I think I went a bit overboard but ehhh ....



I used my current favorite little birds from Mama Elephant with a Memory Box HB die.  The lime is Luscious Lime from SU which retired long, long ago.  I have half a pack left and horde it like crazy; no scrap it too small.  The aqua blue is Bazzil and the birds are colored with Copics.  I put Wink of Stella on the birds and the word "birthday" so this really has a fun shimmer to it. 



Thank you for stopping by ~ Carole


A bit of fun here ....
After deciding what challenges I was going to attempt today and gathering the supplies, I walked over to my craft table and started to shove the last mess to the side so I could start on the card above.  Though I may not always post a card, at least once or twice a week I start a card with the intention of playing along.  Below is the disaster area known as my craft space.  This is my main working area where I keep everything but my cutting machine and dies.  There are easily half a dozen projects in this mess.  Either done, almost done, tossed aside because it was awful or tossed aside because I messed it up. 



The mess in the window seat is overflow from when I couldn't force another square inch of space from the craft table.





So before getting started today I took about an hour (maybe more) to clean my craft room!!!  I put everything away and it felt so nice to work in a clean space without stepping on containers and other junk that had no business being in that area. Ahhhhhhh  .....



 

Friday, July 25, 2014

Singin' in the rain........

....does anyone else have that song playing on repeat in their head?   The ladies at Less Is More challenge this week selected "singin' in the rain" as the theme.  Ever since last Saturday that song has been going round and round in my head and will not go away; even after blasting Katy Perry for hours; as soon as the cd stops this song slips back in.  LOL

This little card started out last Sunday but was set aside.  I was going for the soft colors look then I blew it with the bright green grass.  After several attempts at umbrellas I gave up and decided to just post this little guy.  Bright grass or not, it's a cute kitty and he turned out nicely. 



This is one of the many LOV stamps that has never seen ink until this week.  The sentiment is from a Technique Tuesday set called Weather, a very nice set that I have used many times.  There is small dabs of Wink of Stella on the raindrops and the little puddle to give it a bit sparkle which can be seen in the next picture.  I had to get up close with a flash to get the shot, which apparently washes out the color.  But it shows the nice sparkle that the other picture didn't capture.  :)




PS:  Meant to say I plan to round the top corners of the card as soon as I can figure out where my corner rounder is hiding. 

Thanks for stopping by.  :)
Carole

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Earth Tones ... a favorite

Over at Less Is More the challenge today is Earth Tones.  Well those are some of my favorite colors as anyone that has ever been to my home can verify.  :) 


I used Baked Sugar on the sentiment; Peeled Paint, Broken China and Peacock Something on the leaves.  I tried using SU colors but the leaves are very yellow and after testing on one of the smaller leaves I realized I had to move to the Distressed inks in order to retain good color.

The leaves turned out really nice after that.  Laying them out was a bit of a challenge because they were still wet; I was afraid to hit them with the heat gun.  So I am really pleased I don't have any smudges.  Here is a close up:


This little card started out several weeks back for a challenge called NBUS (Never Before Used Schtuff) over at Darnall Knauss' blog; but like most cards these days it was only an idea and a base card until this morning. Yay.

The leaves are from SU and go back to 2002 and I'm fairly certain I saw some lovely card made with them and just had to have it; they've been sitting in the very bottom of my SU supply drawer ever since.  So sad. 

ok ... I'm fishing here, but not for compliments, I need honest feedback.. I struggle with CAS because I'm never able to capture that wow factor. While this card is nice, I look at it and think something is still missing. This is where my creativity lets me down, I can't figure out what is missing. If this was your card, what would have done to complete it, make everyone say "Wow!!"?

Anyway, it was nice to play in my craft room this morning... in my PJs .... drinking my 20oz cup of tea ..... listening to Katy Perry ..... I have to admit, that is a pretty nice way to start the day.  Only 9 more years to retirement and I can do that every morning.  LOL 

Thanks for stopping by. 
Carole


PS:  Darnell I got your message, I'll be reaching out to you sometime today. 

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Heart of My Friend

Hi this is Alli.  I made this card for the Freshly Made Sketches and Never Before Used Schtuff.  For the NBUS I used the heart which was sitting in my Aunts drawer for a few years. This is the sketch:
I'm posting on my Aunt's blog for now, but I hope to get my own blog soon.  Thank you for stopping by. 

So here is my card. 



Sunday, June 15, 2014

FMS part two... Alli's Submission

This card was made by my niece Alli who came by this weekend to make her dad (my brother) a birthday card and a Father's Day card. 

She used the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge 140 as the layout for the FDC. 

Alli is 11 years old and these are 100% her creations.  I have no doubt that I'll be taking hints from her in no time at all. :)




 
 
 

Freshly Made Sketches

I've been away from my craft room for so long I've had a hard time getting any kind of mojo going.  So this weekend I sat down and jumped from blog to blog to see what challenges were out there and landed on a blog called Freshly Made Sketches.  The sketch was CAS and I knew right away what I wanted to make. 

My 11 year old niece Alli came by today and we each made a card for this challenge.  I have created a separate post for her submission so the links will take. 

This is my submission ........


This didn't turn out exactly how I envisioned it, but I like it just the same.  I went over the flowers and leaves with Wink of Stella to give it some sparkle.  I think it needs pearls or sequins.  I may play around with that later.

Thank you for stopping by and please take a look at Alli's wonderful creations.  She is rockin' the CAS.

Carole ~

Saturday, May 24, 2014

My New Stamping Buddy





I wanted to introduce a new stamping buddy of mine.  Her name is Alli, she is my 11 year old niece and she has recently taken up the craft of stamping. 

My brother and his family moved to north Texas last May and I am sad to say, until that time I had very little contact with my nephew and niece.  However after leaving the corporate environment in late September I have been able to "get to know" my family and it has been a wonderful experience and blessing. 

Alli and I have discovered that we both like crafting so recently we have spent a couple Saturdays playing in my long ignored craft room.  Her first card ever was the lovely creation above which she gave to me.  It was a thank you for letting her come over and play.  Believe me, I cried when I read her words. 

She did up two very beautiful cards for her mom and grandma for Mother's day the Saturday before the made-up holiday but we ran late that day so in our mad scramble to get her home I forgot to take pictures.  Both cards were beautiful and I have no doubt that in very little time she will be showing me how it's really done.  LOL 

0ur plan is for Alli to come by one day a month so we can bond and make cards, so hopefully we can dust off my supplies and start posting more. 

Thanks for stopping by .....
C