Paper Woods

Earlier this month I made a birthday card for my father, and I liked it so much that I decided to submit it to the Inkadinkado online gallery.  They accepted it!  Yay!  You can see it here (it’s the first one at the top of the page, from Kate R. – that’s me!).  I think this card would also make a great Father’s Day card!

I only used stamps from Inkadinkado (a requirement for getting your projects accepted): Old World Map (#91085), and the compass image from the Clear-On-Clear Travel Time set (#93615).   

To make the background, I stamped the Old World Map in VersaMark watermark ink and then “pounced” over it with chalk filled applicators in a couple different colors.  This gives the image a subtle, mottled look that I really like. 

The medallion was made by impressing the compass image into a pool of melted embossing powder placed over a scrap of netting.  The text was printed on vellum from my computer, using the CK Magnificent font.  It reads: “If I searched the whole world over… I would still choose you to be my father.”

Because Inkadinkado accepted my card for their online gallery, I get a free stamp of my choice from their website!!  How cool is that?!  I think I’m definitely going to try to submit to them more often!

Happy Crafting!

If so, don’t throw it out! The latest March Madness challenge I completed over at Creative Crafts and Stickers was to create something using ugly paper. Whether it was a “what was I thinking” moment of weakness in your local scrapbooking store, or something you received as a gift that you would NEVER buy yourself, I think we all probably have some paper that makes us cringe. Well, this challenged forced me to look again at some paper I had mentally discarded the instant I received it. My outcome?

I think I kind of like it!! It turns out that it really wasn’t hideous paper, it just wasn’t my style – AT ALL! So the moral of the story is, challenge yourself to use something that you really don’t like, and you might discover a style you never thought you had in you! What can you make with your ugly paper?

Happy Crafting!

Check out this sweet “blog candy” (aka. fabulous free craft finery!) I won from Nicole over at The Inkblog!

Beautiful eggplant colored flowers, spiral clips, photo turns, grosgrain and gingham ribbon, and a gorgeous bejeweled hat pin.  Nicole is such a generous sweetie.  I can’t wait to craft with my new “candy!”

Nicole gives away freebies every Friday, along with lots of other great articles throughout the week.  So hop on over to The Inkblog and check it out.  You won’t be disappointed!

Happy Crafting!

Check out this new blog called Caardvarks! They will be hosting bi-monthly challenges for card makers, with really sweet prizes. As a cardmaker I am always looking for things to inspire me to make new creations, and challenges do just that. This site looks like it’s going to be really fun and funky. I can’t wait to see what they come up with!

Their first challenge is to use photos on a card. So here’s my creation:

The photo is a picture I took while hiking in Yosemite National Park of one of my sisters-in-law and her boyfriend. I just love how the two of them are looking off into the distance together, as if imagining their future, so I thought it would make a great graduation card. The quote on the top is from Henry David Thoreau.

Go check out the Caardvarks blog, and get crafting! (Submissions for this first challenge are due March 17th)

I’m still working on writing up the sequel to my post about die-cutters, but for now I wanted to pass along this really cool site I saw on the Craft: blog.  It’s called Kuler, and it’s a nifty color palette tool with a community aspect. 

If you’re like me, you sometimes have trouble trusting your instincts on putting certain colors together in your creations.  I’m always second- and triple-guessing myself!  So Kuler, made by Adobe Labs, allows you to see an infinite combination of colors in a very neat interactive site.  But it’s more than that!  It also allows you to see color combinations that other users have come up with!  So if you get stuck trying to come up with your own color palette, just go visit Kuler and see what others have used!  You can see the most popular or highest rated palettes, and if you create a free account you can save your own combinations for other people to use too.  A very handy tool indeed!

March is National Craft Month!  This is always a good time to stop by your local craft store, because there are sure to be lots of sales and classes and extra fun to help spread the joy of crafting.

I recently started participating in an online paper crafting community at Creative Crafts and Stickers.  What a wonderful and talented group of crafters! (Hey ladies!)  They are doing some super fun challenges and contests all month long in honor of National Craft Month.  Go check it out!

The first challenge was to use some black in a design.  Here are my entries:

This card is very simple, but I like it.  I could easily turn the flowers into fireworks for a 4th of July card, or into balloons for a birthday card!

This card has been bouncing around in my mind for quite a while now, I just needed the challenge to get it out in the open!  It is inspired by this beautiful Chinese-style tunic my mother made for me.  I wore it to Christi’s wedding last weekend. 

 
(That’s me wearing it, and my wonderful husband beside me – isn’t he handsome?!)
 

Now on to the next March Madness challenge – Monochrome!  We can only use varying shades of one color in the whole design.  This will be fun!

Happy Crafting!

Well, my husband and I are now finally back home and recovered from Christi’s wedding. What a weekend! It was fabulous! We had a wonderful time together, and had a blast hanging out with my husband’s family.

The favors were a big hit! They looked great at everyone’s place setting, and I got lots of compliments on them. So mark this one as a success!