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!

 

 



(back)



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

Ladies Night Out at The Crafty Scrapper

Hey you guys, so much has been going on with me, some sad but mostly good.  I'm getting back to my old self again and it really feels good.  I decided to visit my local craft store the Crafty Scrapper in Waxahachie, TX and I lucked up on Ladies Night Out.  I rarely do card classes or any other crafting class for that matter (a little too much togetherness for me sometimes).  But this night they were doing a cute little card using Tim Holtz's new "Crazy Cat" stamps.  The stamps are a take off of his Bird stamps.  We used water colored brush ink pens from Zig to color our images.  The pens are nice, they have some really cool features, that may be a step up from the regular water colored pen.  What is even nicer about ladies night out is: It was free to make the card,  they serve deserts and beverages, and we also got a 40 percent discount off of one item.  I definitely plan to attend another one.  Below, I am showing a picture of the card inspiration that Carolyn (the store owner) made and the second card is my take on the card.  The stamps if not already, will be in the store soon. She just returned from CHA and she didn't even want to see her bill, so you know she got the goods!!! You can also order from her on-line store.  Not only does she have a large selection of Tim Holtz but she also carries many other artists and manufactures such as Wendy Vecchi, Maya Road, Bo Bunny, Prima, Kaiser Craft, 7 Gypsies, Fab Scraps, Authentique, Petaloo, Bazzill, and a whole lot more.  She has everything in the store that will take you from inspiration to a completed project.  If you live in Texas or even if you are just visiting, the store is definitely worth the trip! The prices are reasonable, the staff is most accommodating, very friendly, knowledgeable, and all inspiring with their incredible talents. 
The Crafty Scrapper
www.thecraftyscrapper.com
108 South Rogers Street
Waxahachie TX 75165
972-923-3151
Hours:
Monday-Thursday 10-6pm
Friday 10-midnight
Saturday 10-5pm
Closed Sunday

Thank you ladies for a great evening, see y'all soon; Hugz from me...Joyce Ann

Happy Paper Crafting New Year!

Hello everybody,
     Well (big sigh)...It's a new year. Another year we are blessed beyond measure to be able to create and share new and incredible paper goodies.  I was just thinking, the first month is almost gone and I haven't blogged a thing! Oh my! I decided I'd better get going, if I planned to meet my goal of blogging at least once or twice a month. Though I haven't blogged since November 2015, I have been a busy lil' bee.  If it's not my actual job of being a medical review nurse, then I've been busy in my crafting studio (yes, I've changed from calling it a lab to a studio...sounds more chic-lol).   Hmmm (tapping my chin)...let's see... I've made several cards using dies from my favorite folks Spellbinders, I've watched a lot of Becca from Amazing Paper Grace video's and made some of her cards, I finished one of at least five mini-albums to scrap my European vacation memories, I've played with my Minc Machine (thank you to my Scrappin BFF Lesia from Mema's Crafts), and today I finished a folio album tutorial by Ginger Ropp of My Sister Scrapper...whew!   So, the folio is actually my first project started and completed for 2016.  I'll show you the cards that I worked on first and then I'll do later a post for the folio.

The first card I cased from Becca Feeken, it uses her Lacey Tiers die, Spellbinders Times Rectangles, Foundations Victorian Iris (color) card stock, Recollections Cream 110# card stock, Spellbinders Nested Lacey Pennants, Recollections gems stones/brads, Wild Orchid Flowers, cream seam binding, greeting is from JustRite Stampers "Ever After Antique Labels One", sentiment is from Stampin' Up stamp set "God's Blessings" (this one may be retired), foam tape, and ink is by Stampin Up Bordering Blue (retired).

 

 

This card was inspired by Lesia from Mema's Crafts.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure where she got the idea or layout from. In this card I used Spellbinders Heirloom Legacy die, Heartfelt Creations "Burst of Splendor" 12 x 12 paper pad, Recollection cream cardstock (110#), greeting is JustRite Stampers' Large Fancy Sentiment, the sentiment from Ki Hampton Art, no name but the catalog number is SC0585,the ink is Stampin Up's Mossy Meadow (new color) #133645, and some foam tape. 

 

 

Card #3 was inspired by Marisa, who also used Becca Feeken's Lacey Tiers.  Additional products I used for this card are: Want-2-Scrap pearls, Stampin Up Very Vanilla satin 5/8" ribbon (retired), Wild Orchid Craft Ivory Cherry Blossoms, Textured Green card stock from JoAnn's, Recollection cream card stock (110#),  Prima patterned papers from an old 12 x 12 pack called "Fairy Flora", the greeting and sentiment are from Crafty Secrets "Card Sentiments Large", foam tape, and the ink from Stampin Up Mossy Meadow  #133645.

 

 

Moving right along, I have another inspired card.  This card was done as a shape card on Pinterest.  I'm not big on shaped cards; although, I will do one every now and then. I didn't like it as a shaped card, so I decided to add a rectangle base.  I also wanted my inside finished.   I used Spellbinder's Radiant Rectangles, baby pink textured card stock from Recollections, White 110# card stock from Recollections, Stampin Up Blushing Bride/Pretty in Pink inks, Wild Orchid Craft flowers rose buds, foam tape, and JustRite Stampers "Ever After Antique Labels One" clear stamps. 

 



  

Okay, well that's it for now.  I hope you enjoy the cards, Til' next time,

Hugz from me!

(Joyce Ann)