Sparkle

Snow and ice hit the mid-south again this past week. A good time to play with stamps! It's been too long since I've played with the ladies at Unscripted Sketches. I flipped their sketch this week to create a card loaded with sparkle. Rarely will you see a project without distress inks here, but here it is!

I used stamps from the February card kit from Studio Calico and some of the newer embellishments from Maggie Holmes. I adore that doily embossing folder! The bows are from Freckled Fawn.

Share Love

Today I created a tag from this week's Unscripted Sketches sketch. I was feeling a little gloomy and eager to use my new cloud dies.  The dies are a Simon Exclusive that you can find here.  After playing with ink and glitter for a few minutes, my mood improved greatly.  Almost like magic!

I wish you all Inky Magic. :)

Unscripted Collage

 

Today, I took a break from the hectic holiday preparations to create a collaged, ephemera card using this week's Unscripted Sketches card sketch.

The Dina Wakley stamped image was stamped on a very old and tattered book page.  I love that it had a useful previous life.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

 

Wee little bag

Do you know what I love about the holidays?  It is socially acceptable to use as much sparkle and shine as humanly possible.  Do you know what I dislike?  Paying outrageous amounts of money for cute gift wrap when I have a ton of fabulous paper in my craft room. There's a fun sketch at the Unscripted Sketches blog this week and that's what I used as a starting point for my Wee Work gift bag.  I was inspired by my talented stamping friend, Kimberly.  She does something that I have a hard time with.  She incorporates the sentiment in to the design.  That sounds easy, but it's often not.   I tend to add my sentiment as an after-thought and the design suffers, so I tried to keep the sentiment a prominent element here.

I used the We R Memory keepers gift bag punch board for this. I do believe that I can make enough bags over the years to justify the cost, but I wish it was a bit easier to use.  I had to make 4 or 5 bags before I felt comfortable using it.   It creates the perfect size for pretty earrings or a necklace, or a cute bracelet, or fun socks, or inkpads, or....I'd love to tell you what's in the bag, but it's a gift for my daughter.  Shhhhh....don't tell!

InLinkz.com

Sunshine Flashback

Summer may be over for some; but here in the mid-south, it's still steamy.  At Unscripted Sketches, they are celebrating "Flashback Summer" to reflect on Summer's  gone-by.  My card is from Flashback Sketch #69.  Since the sketch is a flashback, it seemed only fitting to use a few stamps from years gone-by.  The flower stamps used here were designed by Dave Brethauer and are from Rubbermoon.  Anyone care to take a guess as to how old they are?  I'm thinking that it's possible that they were purchased in the late 90's.  But maybe a few years later.  I don't remember.

The sentiment is from Ali Edwards.  And I created the background with watercolors.  Watercolors are so, so fun!  I will be using them more often!

 

Sketchy Smiles

I love using sketches.  Sketches for cards...sketches for scrapbook layouts....they're all fun!  Sometimes when I'm working with a sketch something magical happens and the pieces of the composition move into different places.  That's what happened here.

I received a some new stamps and dies in the mail recently and used a sketch from Unscripted Sketches as a starting point for my new toys.  (the lovely ladies at Unscripted Sketches don't seem to mind if I stray from the sketch a bit)

Somehow this poor old woman wandered into the composition.  I kept her there because I love old photos.
old photos+card sketches=lots-o-fun!

Psychedelic Thank you

Doesn't it feel good to use some older papers lurking in your craft hoard?  I found this groovy paper from Fancy Pants and used it with the current sketch from Unscripted Sketches.

To me, fussy cutting is so much fun!  So thats what I did.  The other papers were from my scrap box.  i got lucky when I found that the ink color matched the chevron paper.  And the enamel dots matched the Fancy Pants paper too.  I 'm normally not so matchy-matchy, but it was a wonderful coincidence so I went with it.

change will do you good

Hysterical isn't it?  Thank goodness we DO change!  I used a page from an old yearbook.  (Yes, it's authentic!) and my favorite Tim Holtz saying.

 

I was inspired by the sketch at Unscripted Sketches.  I knew I wanted to use the yearbook old page, but I wanted to have a modern edge, so I mixed in some enamel dots for a contemporary vintage card.  I love it when a plan comes together:)

Sweet As Honey

One of my treasures is a small, vintage children's book that is tattered and ripped.  It has outlived its usefulness, but it still has a few fun pages with interesting text.  I adore the little poem on this page.

Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,

But only one mother the wide world over.

 

 

Isn't that a sweet sentiment? I had to bring this page back to life!  So I pulled out my stamps and inks and some Crate Paper papers and...voila!  A card for my Mother.  I used the current sketch at Unscripted Sketches, but it doesn't look like it at first.  I flipped the sketch completely upside down.

 

 

Don't forget that there is still time to join in on my blog candy giveaway here.  Go enter!  It's super-easy. 

 

What We Could Be

Happy Memorial Day! Today I'd like to share a card that I made using this week's sketch at Unscripted Sketches.  I rotated the sketch as you can see here:

The sentiment is an older stamp from Stampers Anonymous.  I am also linking this to The Simon Says Stamp and Show "Into the Woods" Challenge.  I love woodgrain papers and this one by Crate Paper is my favorite. :)

Pink Feathered Thoughts

I had so much fun playing along with Unscripted Sketches last week, that I decided to play this week too!  I am really enjoying those sketches! Don't adjust your screen settings, there really is THAT MUCH pink going on here.  I'm not really a "pink person", but....

There is a challenge going on at the Shopping Our Stash blog for a Mother's Day theme, or pink.  I chose pink!  And it all started with that feather.   The feather originated as a vintage pink silk floral leaf.  I've had it for ages, since there's not often an occasion for a pink leaf.  I trimmed the leaf down and added some cuts and voila!  The leaf turned into a feather!

Sunny Disposition

Hello!  My daughter is graduating from college this weekend (Go Wildcats!) and I am SOOOO excited!  I have a million things to do, but somehow I got sidetracked crafting.  How does that happen? LOL!  Oh well, I'm in a such a good mood,  I don't even care about the work right now.

I stumbled upon the Unscripted Sketches blog, and since I'd never seen them before, I had to give it a try.  Sketches are always so fun!  :)

 

I have had this Ali Edwards stamp set since last year and until today, it had never been inked.  I've been feeling a tad guilty about that, so I embossed it, and now it makes me feel happy!  I am going to link this to the Simon Says Stamp Happy Mail challenge, as well as the Use Your Stuff  Spring into Pastels challenge.  Pastel colors usually aren't my "thing", so this was a stretch for me.

 

Happy Stamping!