October Challenge - con't

Darlene must have jumped all over this one...no pun intended. She headed to the grocery store and picked up brown paper lunch bags. She cut ears, stamped Rosewood Easter Eggs across the bottom and coloured them. Next she added googlie eyes, drew on a mouth, fluff nose & fishing line whiskers. The tag is Rosewood Flourish Easter Egg stamped on shiny gold card stock. This cute little bag could be made in any size to deliver gifts from the Easter bunny or they would make great favour bags for a children's party.

Lauralee's bag is as usual a work of art. She stamped the Hero Arts background stamp in brown ink, coloured in the hearts with a red Marvy marker and highlighted the image with a white gel pen. She used a Nestibility to cut the heart shape in the bag and then lined the bag with some beautiful hand made paper. Walnut Distress ink on the edges of the bag adds dimension. Lauralee created her tag with the same heart shaped Nestibility in white card stock. She attached the cut shape from the bag to complete her tag. A twine bow, some walnut distress ink and raffia make an adorable bag & tag combination.

Cassie had brightly coloured bags to work with. She used a coordinating stamp and punch set from Stampin' Up to create the butterflies which she coloured with chalk. Her tag was a die cut that she stamped with Rosewood Paper Swirl and coloured with Bic Mark-Its. Cassie stamped Rosewood Friend on scrap paper, trimmed it out and dragged the edges with the red Mark-It to pull it all together.

Barb's card was layered onto a cream coloured card that she distress with olive pigment ink. The brown card stock was passed the CB folder swirls. She stamped Rosewood Northern Pine which she cut in half and layered onto green card stock. She used the same sentiment on her bag. Barb also created a similar layered image on the reverse of her bag. I apologize for the lack of a photo for the reverse of Barb's bag.


Barb had a fantastic interpretation of this challenge. She created her bag from newspaper based on instructions she found here. She did tell me that she made the bag a size bigger than the instruction make. I'm not sure where the sentiment is from but she created a great focal point by setting the brown mat off centre. The tag was created using her Cricuit "A Child's Year" cartridge. Don't you just love that shape?

Sept Challenge

Finally I am getting around to posting our last challenge cards. I am missing Barb's work however. Apparently she was scurrying around to get ready to go to play day and she forgot to pick up her cards. I will post it next week after play day on Sunday.



First is Darlene's card. She really captured the spirit of this challenge. I love the little dragonfly punch she used on the corners of her silver squares. In the next photo you can see that she dry embossed a beautiful flourish for added interest.




Jess reversed the design somewhat for this card. Somehow she managed to punch the nine patch and under the opening added some designer paper to create the base and then she used more paper from my stash to cut Tattered Florals from the Tim Holtz die. A gem in the centre of her layered flower finished her card.

Donna took a slightly different approach to this challenge and used really cute Nestibilities circles for her design. She used the clear Penny Black Beach Day set for all of her stamped images and an EK border punch to create the ocean bottom. Such a fun card!

Lauralee used Scattered Straw and Tumbled Glass Distress inks to create the background of her squares, alternating lines of colour to create a rainbow design. The stamp set is Set of Four from Stampin'Up that she stamped repeatedly altering the position of the stamps as she went across the inked page. The entire page was then embossed with clear. She punched out 1" squares and popped them across the top of the card. She stamped the dots and then punched from the inked background from above and popped a MS butterfly over the dots. Add a black gem and sentiment from Papertrey Ink. One beautiful card.

July Challenge Cards - continued

Lauralee's card is understated elegance. The grass stamp is from Hero Arts stamped and embossed with Tim Holtz distress inks and clear embossing powder. The decorative border is handmade paper distressed and inked with Peeled Paint. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. Lauralee uses a distresser on many of her cards and she put it to good use on this one. All of the elements have been distressed. She also often uses a corner rounder on her cards. So cute and something I hadn't thought of doing until I saw her cards.

As I have said before, I love Penny Black!!! For this card I dug through my stacks of designer paper to find colours that would coordinate. The decorative element is hand made paper cut with the decal edge blade on my paper cutter. The stamped image is coloured with copics. I think the sentiment is from a clear Hero Arts set. Wow now that I see the picture of my card I can see just how crooked I set the elements down. Not my strong suit, that is something I will have to take more care in finishing!

Cassie used Nestibility Large Label to create her layering pieces from designer paper. The flower stamp is from Technique Tuesday with a black gem added to the center. Cassie originally had a sentiment in the upper left hand corner but wasn't thrilled with the look. She decided to stamp a second outline flower from the same set. She added dollar store paper flower and another gem to finish. The sentiment is from a Hero Arts set.



Jacqui is our resident non-card maker. Very difficult to tell from the cards she has been making. Barb tells us she makes beautiful cards and then throws them out because she doesn't like them. She water coloured this wonderful Penny Black stamp and layered to her hearts content. The butterfly in the upper left is from Rosewood and I have misplaced my notes, so I don't know who the sentiment is from. Jacqui should be proud of this card. It is so gorgeous.

Lauralee's May Challenge Card

You may recall that Lauralee's challenge was a tone on tone card. She made a stunning white card that was extremely challenging to photograph. I did manage to get a couple of photos that show just how beautiful that card is. Lauralee posted instructions for this card on her blog HERE.

This photo has a large shadow but really highlights the number of different butterflies and techniques Lauralee used to make this card. (Double click on the photo to make it larger.)




I cut off the bottom of the card in this photo but no matter. You will be able to see exactly how white this card is.




The white on white is a challenge I'm not sure I am quite ready to tackle, but I do have friends getting married this weekend. Just maybe......

Butterflies In Resist

Today I have the last of the cards Lauralee did for Kitchener. These cards use a resist technique that can be adapted a number of different ways but still get the same gorgeous look.

Here are the cards:



And here are Lauralee's instructions in her words but cleaned up a bit:


Use up any ugly scrap designer paper (you don’t see much of it as the design shows up very faintly so it’s a great chance to use that butt-ugly stuff you have tucked away – come ‘on, I know you have some too!!!) (Using a magazine page works great for this too)

Stamp Rosewood Music Background on the butt ugly designer paper(BUDP) with black ink – clear emboss.

Using Versmark ink, stamp the butterflies randomly on top of the music note and clear emboss (Inkadinkadoo stamp – Donna gave it to me and I gave it back to her since she couldn’t find it again to reorder. I found it in clear rubber with a bunch of other butterfly images and cut mine up so I had six single butterflies instead of one long stream of them all attached. I’m such a rebel!)

I took Distress Ink – Broken China and rubbed it all over the top, paying special attention to the sides so the edges were darker. The green was shabby shutters but was too light and you can’t make out the outline of the butterflies.

Take a Kleenex and rub off the butterflies as they will have Broken China ink on them. They will buff up nicely.

I used black bazzill paper as the background layer.

I used a smaller piece of BUDP and a Nestabilities for greeting – edged the sides with ink and then stamped the sentiment on it (I think it’s from Stampin Up). Then the tricky part – I laid the whole small label in the versamark pad and covered the whole label with versamark ink. Then I clear embossed the whole thing – it makes it really shiny and stiff. Backed it with another bazzill piece that I ran through the bigger Nestability die.

I stamped a small scrap of white paper with the music note stamp and clear embossed it. Then I used the Martha Stewart butterfly punch (LOVE LOVE IT!). Inked little butterfly with the Distress ink and put two little rhinestones on it

Distressed the edges of the music note panel and card stock base with the Distress Tool.

DONE! Phew!! That was too much work.

Thank you again to Lauralee for helping Tom & Rose-Marie at the Kitchener show and for allowing me to post all of her beautiful cards. Check out Lauralee's blog here. She always got something entertaining to share.

Feeling Lazy

The long weekend has arrived. We opened the pool yesterday and although the temperature was in the mid 20's the water was decidedly cold but that didn't stop Jess from getting in. Brrrrr!!! She assured me a few years ago "It's ok Mom, you can't feel your legs after a few minutes."



Since I am feeling a bit lazy, I am going to send you to Lauralee's new blog. She is just getting started but already has quite a few posts. I will warn you however the lady has a sense of humour that rivals mine, very much The Cheeky Stamper. I still have a few cards from Lauralee's work from Kitchener to share with you. Maybe tomorrow.....