It's A Girl!

Nope! Not for me (praise HIS name) but for somebody, somewhere...(lol).  
Hey everyone!
Just posting a cute and simple card that I came up with while cleaning out some of my scraps.  This cute little image is from Tiddly Inks her name is Faythe.  She is just so darn cute!  My goal was to make her my color.  And I do believe I have succeeded (lol), she certainly has my color!!  I used Copics on the skin and Pro-Markers for everything else.  The patterned paper is a scrap from my pinks/red scrap bag and I'm not even sure what paper-line it came from.  The base is from my white card stock scraps bag, the scalloped oval (Spellbinder, classic ovals small) is a test cut. Whenever I get a new die, I always make a test cut; sometimes 2-3 in different colors or with different materials.  I keep them in a bin, just for these types of situations. I knew I would use it someday (lol).  I added some lace and placed some seam binding over the top of the lace to give it a really girly look. Even the lace and seam binding were little left overs from another project.  On the inside, it says "congratulations" (Stampin' Up! Well Scripted stamp set).  The Ink is a combination of different pinks from Stampin' Up! and I made the envelope using my envelope punch board.  The Sweet Baby on the envelope is a very, very, very old acrylic (the acrylic is yellow now) stamps from Basic Grey called "too sweet" (the stamps were a 2008 collection). 
 Since I am trying to get more involved in the on-line crafting world and blog more, I am going to enter lil' miss Faythe in the following challenges.  Hope you come play along. 

Craft for the Craic-February-Something to Make You Smile
Crafty Catz-#313-Special Lady
Jo's Scrap Shack-No.127 -Recycled Scraps
Really Reasonable Ribbon No. 135-Celebrate with ribbon or trim
Simply Papercraft Challenge No.24-Anything Goes

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Mardi Gras French Country Initials

Bonjour mon amis!  It's one of my favorite times of the year.  Mardi Gras season and Easter!!!  Love oh love me some Easter.  It seems everything old is new again, the tulips and daffodils bloom, and the trees begin to bud, it's just wonderful.  You can't help but to smile knowing the reason for the changes...Jesus of course!  I am so inspired by these events and the fact that I need to get some projects done, that I did some initials. And what better paper to do them with but...Graphic 45's French Country!  Talk about needing Jesus, I'm really going to need a double helping of Jesus when my French Country paper stash is done.  Since it's no longer in print, I've been making everything I can think of with the paper; so whenever I look around my craft studio and my house I will always see it.

As stated above the letters are covered with Graphic 45's  French Country Collection,  I used #4500638 "Montage" and on the back; I kept it plain and covered the letters with Graphic 45's An ABC Primer Collection #4500384 "Calico Kids".  A couple of the wonderful qualities about Graphic 45 paper is that you can mix and match styles and colour.  The Letters were a very light coloured wood.  I purchased them from JoAnn Fabric.  I love these chunky letters because the bottoms are shaved flat, no need for adding a base (unless you want to). When you sand the paper edges on them, you don't destroy the letter trying to get your paper flush with the edges.  I use stain on my letters instead of acrylic paint, it gives a more natural and polished look. For these letters, I used Tim Holtz distress stain Vintage Photo.  I used his distress ink to do the edges of the paper after I sanded it flush on to the letters (I used Mod-Podge to adhere the paper to the letters).  I don't like to cover up too much of the patterned paper, so I used minimal embellishments.  Sometimes less is better.  I used some wooden flourishes that I picked up at Michael's, the pearls are from JoAnn's in the bead isle.  They come in a small pack with pearlized Autumn colours like chocolate, sienna, forrest green, light green, tan, and terra cotta.  The Mardi Gras mask charms I got from Hobby Lobby.  They were silver, so I applied some gold Rub-n-Buff to bring them in-line with the colour scheme I wanted.  The feathers are from JoAnn's and the flowers are from two different Prima collections, I  picked those up at Hobby Lobby. All of the supplies I had in my craft studio for quite a while, I took something old and made something new.  I made the wooden embellishments at the bottom of the letters by covered up some wood chips with some 6x6 French Country paper pad scraps. Since they were so tiny, I just used my Tombo Mono liquid glue to adhere the paper to the wood chips, sanded the edges,  and inked them with Vintage Photo and viola! instant matching wooden embellishments.

I love how the letters came out, they look great on my shelf.   I was looking around for a challenge to enter and I found one at Altered Eclectics, this is a challenge blog run by Ellapu.  It's really nice because it's only for altered art and mixed media, NO cards, ATCs or the like.  The challenge runs until the end of the month, so you have plenty of time to join the fun.  I love altering things so this was right up my alley.   Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the pictures, and I hope to see you in the challenge!  Til' next time, Your Grace the Duchess (Joyce).

Laissez le bon temps rouler!

Heureux de mardi gras!

 

 



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Valentine Card

Hello everyone,
I hope the week is going as planned for you.  So far, so good for, I'm staying positive.  I'm having this kind of re-dedication to my crafting studio for 2016.  I'm doing more, feeling energetic,  and wanting to craft like I'm a newbie again!  I don't know what it is but I'm just going to embrace it and ride the wave.

I am a mini album and altered art crafter primarily. I started out as a clean and simple card maker (a Stampin' UP! demonstrator) and branched out from there.  As a part of my re-dedication, what I've decided to do is to keep making cards between my major projects or when one of my major projects is getting a little tiring, I'll do a card or other projects I can quickly complete. In addition, I will try to enter some challenges again.  I stopped entering challenges because they were becoming so business like and less fun.  The entrants weren't following rules or circumventing the rules, the same individuals were winning over and over, "professional artist" were the ones who were winning, you had to belong to certain country, blah, blah, blah.  It just got to be a downer.  Hopefully, things have changed for the better and entering challenges can become fun again.   So, this will be my 1st challenge entry in along while.  

I went to Paper Playful to check out the challenges and totally forgot how to do everything.  I spent a couple of hours going over the rules and vocabulary, clicking on the blogs reading their instructions, looking at the entries, etc.  I was on the phone with my scrappin' BFF Lesia from Mema's Crafts and she had to refresh my memory about a lot of stuff! (lol).  I did manage to find a few challenges that I felt my card might fit.   I created a very simple card using some old scraps of card stock (black, red, green), a Spellbinders Die-Delight (Filigree Vase), Heartfelt Creations (Italiana Grapevines) stamp and die, Martha Stewart (Love and Hearts) punch, and I inked the edges of the grape leaves with Tim Holts (Peeled Paint) distress ink.  

 

I entered my card into the following challenges: Addictedto CAS: Challenge #80 CODE WORD RED.  Red is my FAVORITE COLOUR!! love, love, love me some red!  MyTime to Craft- Challenge #314 Love is all around; Avenue 613- Challenge #161 Anything Goes w/Optional Twist: Something From Your Stash; Amusing Challenge-Anything Goes ( the site name comes up Blessings Ink); and  Eclectic Ellapu-LOVE ACTUALLY - ANYTHING TO DO WITH LOVE.   I liked the themes of Valentines, Love, and Red.  It makes me think of my recent trip to Europe where I got to visit the UK, France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy.    I tried to incorporate that inspiration in this one little simple card.   Card size: A2  (4 1/4 in x 5 1/2 in)

I hope you all enjoy the card and get inspired to give it a try.  And if you are challenging yourself this week, good luck!  Til' next time; hugz from me-Joyce Ann