WMS July Sneak Peek - day 3

It's Waltzingmouse Stamps sneak peek time! Today is the last day of sneaky peeks before the big blog waltz!

Also check out the following ladies who also have something to share

• Claire Brennan
• Anya Schrier
• Bonnie Sharp
• Jennifer Holmes 
• Julia Aston
• Laurie Schmidlin
• Lisa Hjulberg
• Lynn Mercurio
• Carly Robertson
• Edna Morrisedie - Guest Designer!
 

My cards today center around Victorian Fripperie. It's a fabulous set with a pretty background, sentiments and other fun tidbits. :)

For the first one, I let the background piece peek out. The front of the card is not the full A2 size. I trimmed it once I scored my cardstock. This let the inside of the card peek out a little. 

The sentiment comes from Asian Garden but everything else is from Victorian Fripperie.

The next card is another card where I had a lot of fun with the background set. Even though it's a background, you can use it for a card corner or a card side.  This bg, especially, gives a nice edging.

The sentiment I stamped 3 times. It gives you a lovely look and versatility to your stamps as well. :) Smaller sentiments especially lend itself well to this.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day! Also, if you haven't yet, I'd really LOVE your vote for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol. You can vote for my basket of jam here (which btw, uses WMS's Pic-nic Patterns, another fab set!)

WMS July Sneak Peek - day 2

It's Waltzingmouse Stamps sneak peek time! Today is the second of three days of sneak peeks and I have something fun for you today. And did you see Claire's announcement? This month we have a terrific guest designer, Edna Morrisedie, and we have a new design team member joining the team! Welcome to Carly Robertson! Carly is super talented and I'm very excited to be working with her as a part of the WMS design team! Be sure to check out both of their blogs?

Also check out

• Claire Brennan (owner)
• Anya Schrier
• Bonnie Sharp
• Jennifer Holmes 
• Julia Aston
• Lisa Hjulberg
•  Lynn Mercurio
•  Carly Robertson
• Edna Morrisedie - Guest Designer!

Today I wanted to show a fun card with a mini set! Seeing how much I loved Asian Garden, I only felt it appropriate to kick off this month's releases with a card from Asian Garden Additions!

I cut a window from the white cardstock and then stamped the rain. I even added some gems to give you a fun rainy effect. The clouds I stamped on some silver cardstock and then cut out.

The sentiment is embossed with white ep and I just love how it pops off the cardstock.  I love this sentiment -- it's so true that every one needs a little rain in their life but then they get fabulous flowers in return! I also want to take a moment now to thank everyone for their support -- it's been much appreciated to have encouragement through my moments of "rain" as well!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Also, if you haven't yet, I'd really LOVE your vote for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol. You can vote for my basket of jam here (which btw, uses WMS's Pic-nic Patterns, another fab set!)

Final Week of Paper Crafts Idol! Please Vote!

It's the final week of Paper Crafts Gallery Idol and can I just say, it's been an exhilarating ride? No matter what happens, I am thankful for the Paper Crafts team for sponsoring this competition! That said, I still could REALLY use your votes for this round!

This week's challenge was to base our card off an inspiration photo. You'll see in my card, I based my card off of the jams and preserves in the picture.

So I created a basket of jam. The basket serves as a pocket card -- I embossed each cardstock strip with a woodgrain pattern and distressed it. I then weaved them together to give a basket effect. I actually based this basket off of one I found in Target. I stood there for about 10 minutes just staring at the different weaves I could try (pretty sure the Target employees thought I was nuts).

I stamped a piece of muslin with a pattern from Pic-nic Patterns from Waltzingmouse Stamps. It's trimed with some pinking shears to give it a nice effect (and to avoid fraying without me having to sew the edges).

When you pull the jam out of the basket, you see the full sentiment "Thanks for helping me out of a jam". The sentiment is printed from my computer with the font name of "Prissy Frat Boy".  I used puns for all my other cards in Gallery Idol this year, so why break the trend? I picked yet another horrible pun for the use of this card. ;-) Granted, none can beat the horribly awesome pun from round 2. 

The jam jars are created by hand cutting the jars and then tying some muslin fabric around with twine. Again the muslin is trimmed with my pinking shears. Love those little buggers! For a little added texture, I did emboss those with a linen texture from PTI.

Thanks for stopping by and please please please do take the time to vote! :) I'd love you even more if you voted for me! ;-)

Have a fantastic week!

It's time for this week's Waltzingmouse Stamps Sketch Challenge.  It would just tickle me if you would play along too.  Using Waltzingmouse Stamps is not required to play along with the challenges, but we would love it if you did. Claire has offered to sweeten the pot from time to time by offering a prize for the most inspirational project. 

Just create a project using the sketch design below and then upload your project to your blog or online gallery (please use the keyword/tag of WMSC3 when you upload to a gallery)  and then visit the Waltzingmouse Stamps Challenge Blog and leave a post with a link to your project.  You have until next Thursday at 11:59 pm Eastern Time to post your link. So if you are ready, here is the sketch for this week!

This one stumped me so I totally changed the sketch. Haha! I thought the middle would make a good wreath and then I thought let's hang that wreath on a window!

Hope you'll play along! I can't wait to see everyone's takes on this sketch because this took me awhile... ;-)

Hope everyone's having a good week so far! :)

Just wanted to share a quick thank you card with Asian Garden from WMS. 2 circle punches, some gems and a super dusty paper crimper later... we have an easy and quick card. :)

Remember, voting is still open for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol Round 3. Thanks for all the support from round 1 & 2 and I'd love your support again for round 3! :) I hope you'll consider voting for me again!

Round 3 - Ribbon Caterpillar

Let round 3 of Paper Crafts Gallery Idol begin! So thrilled to have gotten this far and I couldn't have done it without all of you guys! (Round 2 was definitely a nail biter and I think I'm lucky to have any nails left...haha! So many talented ladies this year!) Thanks for all the support from round 1 & 2 and I'd love your support again for round 3! :) I hope you'll consider voting for me again!

This time the challenge was to use ribbon. I decided to weave the ribbon and create a caterpillar body!  Each caterpillar piece is created by weaving ribbon and I've also placed some of the extra ribbon pieces inside each body piece -- this gives the caterpillar a little oomph (and dimension).

In addition to creating the caterpillar, I also wanted him to roll up. Each "body piece" is connected by a brad. By slowly unrolling the caterpillar, you can slowly see the sentiment come to life piece by piece.

 I opted to pick different shades of green to give the caterpillar some fun. I chose a dotted green ribbon, satin ribbon and grosgrain ribbon (and all different widths). Each piece I randomly wove pieces together so each body piece is unique. 

The sentiment is created using Modern Alphabet from Clean and Simple Stamps. LOVE alphabet sets to create your own fun sentiments and customized cards!

Thanks for stopping by and please don't forget to VOTE!

June WMS Waltz

Welcome to another lovely Friends of WMS Waltz! :) This month we were to focus on masculine cards. To see the full list of hoppers, start over at the Waltzingmouse House forum in The Play Room.

There will also be another thread in The Play Room for chat and to play along in our monthly blog waltz game. This time you will be looking for (and counting up) watermarks that look like lanterns in the blog posts by the Design Team and Claire. A winner of a stamp set of choice will be drawn from all the correct answers!  So good luck to all. :)

There's a couple things I try with guy cards.
1. No pinks. Period -- unless its for my husband.... then all bets are off.
2. No glitter. See exception above.
3. No scallops. See exception above.
4. No flowers. See exception above.
My poor poor husband...  he's gotten cards with all of the above including one that broke all 4 of those rules.


Anyways, back to the card. For this one, I did try to avoid all my NO NOs for masculine cards.

So for this one I tried to get my sk8er girl hat on...

I picked a sk8ter boy image and sang "Sk8ter Boi" while creating a card that had inspirations from guitars and skaters.  I wanted to create that guitar look with the threading and by popping the patterned paper over my skater boy image. I decided that while glitter is NOT ok, that shiny silver twine was a-okay.

For those of you who are confused by my pop culture reference, I leave you with this:
He was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy 
He wasn't good enough for her
Now he's a super star,
slamin' on his guitar -
Does your pretty face see what he's worth? 

For more inspiration on masculine cards, I highly recommend looking at the previous post  for other tips I have for creating masculine cards. And also check out the Paper Crafts Round 2 Gallery Idol competition (and maybe even vote for yours truly before noon MDT today ;-)  Ok, shamless promotion ending now. 

I Lawn for You - Gallery Idol Round 2

Let round 2 of Paper Crafts Gallery Idol begin! Thanks for all the support from round 1 and I'd love your support again for round 2! :) I hope you'll consider voting for me here!

Round 2's theme was masculine cards using inspiration from the garage. I've learned over the years that the guys I know LOVE puns and they LOVE interactive cards. So I decided to make an interactive and punny card for that special someone.

If you ever let a guy walk into Hallmark and pick a card, I'd put money on him picking a funny card. So with my masculine cards, I love adding something punny. My hubs pretty much groaned when I told him what the sentiment was going to be - a sign of a cheese-tastic sentiment. The sentiment "I lawn for you mow and mow" (or "I long for you more and more") is a great anniversary sentiment or a great lovey dovey but not so girly love card. And I certainly hope that each and every one of you longs for your special someone every day more and more.

I've also learned that my husband likes interactive cards. If something on the card moves, he's sooo much more impressed with it. So I decided to place part of the sentiment on the grass for the guy to pull out. (I also thought that I Lawn For You Mow and Mow might be too much cheese for one person to take at once... haha, after all not everyone has the same cheese quota as me)

I didn't have a lawn mower stamp but I did have a pen. So I hand drew the pieces. I realize that it's obviously not realistic so I took a more graphical approach to this card. The wheels I composed from buttons and the grass are strips of green paper I trimmed with decorative edge scissors.

The sentiment is composed from letter stamps that I used to spell "I Lawn" and then the "for you" is from another set I have. I embossed the sentiment as I felt like the white against black really stood out this way. The "mow and mow" sentiment is spelled out with letter stickers. I felt like I needed a stronger border so I did some simple faux stitching along the edge.

Just to give you a better idea of how I did the pull statement... There's a lot of layering and a lot of dimensional adhesive to make this work. By adding the dimensional adhesive, it holds the pull statement up and in place.

Thanks for stopping by and please remember to vote!

Fill This Day

I'm leaving on a jet plane...
and it's insanely early...

I'm not a fan of waking up early so 4am is quite a stretch for this sleepy head... however, sometimes you gotta do whatever it takes to make money (so I can put it towards stamps)!

My head's totally not straight this week with some traveling snafus, but we'll leave that story for another day. Hope everyone's enjoying their week so far and if you haven't yet, do check out the entries for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol. And perhaps even consider voting for me? :)

Ok on to the card, so I've been kinda playing around with card styles. I tried scrappy just a few weeks ago (or maybe it was last week... it's been a long week). And now lets give this vintage thing a run.

Folks, this is as vintage as I get. Try as I might, this is it...

The map from October Afternoon's Thrift Shop was just very cute. Too cute to pass up. So I decided to try stamping directly onto the paper. Why not right?

The map is crumbled up a bit and then flattened. Edges are all inked with some lovely distress ink to give it a more aged look.

I colored the basket/flowers so it could kinda stand out more... unfortunately it didn't seem to get too much better. Perhaps next time I'll pop it out.

Ok back to last minute packing and thanking my lovely hubs for getting up with me to get me to the airport at 5 am. :)

WMSC1 - Thankful for your support

Happy Saturday! This is the first sketch for the new Saturday Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenges. You'll find a fun sketch at the new Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge blog every Saturday morning (and sometimes there'll be prizes)!

You can use any stamps for your sketch - but if you have Waltzingmouse Stamps - why not use them!?!? We'd love to see them!

Here's my take on the sketch. I decided to be relatively literal this time around. This is NOT to suggest that I will continue to be so literal. Hah. If you follow my attempts at trying sketches, you know that I like to take some generous creative liberties!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I ADORE this tree from Blessed By You. So when I first saw this sketch, I knew I had to use it. And in my attempt to stop hoarding patterned paper, I pulled out some Cosmo Cricket pp.

Hope to see you play along as well!

June Blog Waltz - All My Love

Welcome to the June Blog Waltz for Waltzingmouse Stamps. :) If you happened upon my blog, be sure to check out ALL the great projects by starting at Claire's blog.

As usual, there's prizes to be won for a random commenter on the DT blogs (it could be any blog!) and a random commenter on Claire's blog. The competition will end at 11:59 pm EASTERN on June 3rd. So be sure to comment on every step along the way!

So my card. Nice and simple. Using one of my favorite sets, Seasons of Love - Tags. I haven't made anything with this set for awhile (or so it seems) and so I thought it was fitting to pull this set out for the June blog hop!

Next on the list is the fabby Lisa! Thanks for waltzing by! Have a great week!