Tinkerbell Birthday

So next Monday is the birthday of my youngest niece. My sister's baby. She will be 5 (goin on 15). And she is theee girliest girl ever. She loves pink and anything sparkly. Did I mention glitter? This girl loves glitter. And she loves Tinkerbell. She has decided her birthday shall have a Tinkerbell theme. (Yes, I said that right. She decided. LOL) As she lives on the other side of the country (much to my great dismay. No, sadness. I wish I could be with her on her birthday.  Maybe another year. This year in particular it's not happening. On Monday I shall be attending my daughter's graduation from college! But we'll talk about that in another post.) So I have sent the gifts already but I have to send the card and some tags for those presents - so at least I'll be there in spirit. And this child will be expecting an Aunt Tracy card dontchaknow.

Now, I don't have any Tinkerbell stamps. I don't even know if one exists. But the internet is a wonderful thing. I found a cute project online to make a magic wand that has Tinkerbell on it. I briefly toyed with making that magic wand (cos I know this kid would love it but I feared it would be crushed in transit) but decided to use the images to make a card and some tags. For the card I printed out the project itself. The main framed Tinkerbell and a separate star image. I cut those out and glued them together. I added some cardstock that I ran through my Big Shot with a Cuttlebug Swiss Dot Embossing folder. I used some foam tape to pop the main image up. I found a cute font and printed out the sentiment and handcut it to make a banner. And of course I had to add some glitter. In Photoshop I took the image of Tinkerbell herself and printed out a few and ran them through the Big Shot with PTI's Tag Sale #3. They really look cute - and I know she'll love it.
Alright that's all for today. I will be back to show you the graduation cards I made for my daughter. Yes, they're already done. I had to get them done ahead of time as we're heading out of town on Thursday for NYC. What's going on in NYC? Well that is a good question - and I'll be back to tell you :-) (It's "Proud Mom" stuff :-))
Thanks for stopping by. Have a good one!

Hello There Fabulous

So last week I was talking about cards being born out of desire to use a stamp set, or an idea you have for a card and then there is the technique you wanna try. Well this one is more in that last range. It's not exactly a technique - more of a media. I was stamping around making some more background "paper" with some Versamark clear embossed images. Little flowers from the PTI Mini Blooms. I'd clear embossed the images and was applying the ink and there was a piece of vellum on my drawing board - from some other card. And I got to thinking I should make some background paper with that - and what would it look like if it was layered on top of the cardstock paper with the same images. So I stamped some little flowers on the vellum and embossed with white embossing powder. I die cut the frame from PTI's Fabulous Frames, put the vellum behind that and layered it on top of the cardstock patterned paper I'd made. I also through on some sequins and used some embroidery floss I had hanging around.
Okay - gotta run - have a good one!

Happy Mother's Day

I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day. I'm hoping to get in some crafting time - specifically scrapbooking. But we shall see. In the meantime I thought I'd post this card I made for my Mom.
I was very much wanting to use my Silhouette Portrait. I've been working on using it - for me the learning curve has been big. Everything I want to do apparently isn't just straight up cutting LOL. I did cut some vinyl recently and a lovely little quote is adorning our bedroom walls now. I was very pleased with that accomplishment. (it only took looking at a bazillion videos on You Tube.... ok. I exaggerate a tad. But it took a while.)
So back to the card. Recently the Silhouette store had a lovely 50% off sale on all shapes and I bought a few with my gift card. One was the background you see here in the card. It's actually a card - but I only used the lattice part.  The peony was a freebie - the Silhouette store gives away a shape every week and I gotta say their freebies are pretty fabulous! This flower was so easy to put together - just cut and glue. My kinda flower! The tag is from PTI's Fillable Frames #9 - cut it with the coordinating die and stamped the border on. The sentiment is from PTI's Boutique Borders: Mother. Oh yes - forgot to say the latticey background there is cut from PTI's Spring Moss Bitty Dot patterned paper.
Have a wonderful day!

Even more cards (I didn't post) LOL

I know... You'd think I would just take the pics of the cards and post them right away but in the last month it just wasn't always possible so here I am with two more cards.
For this first card I had a tough time getting pictures - it didn't want to stay closed LOL.  The second pic will give you a better idea of the diecut feature. The black background is all one piece including the half circle. It was a little tricky getting that accomplished (the partial diecutting I mean) but it was worth it.
I don't know about you but for me -sometimes a card is born from a specific idea of what I want it to look like, or a stamp set that I want to use. But lately it's about techniques I wanna play with. Like in the case here. I was seeing all that ombre out there in the internet card-land. I think it is obvious I'm not too trendy LOL. I'm more of a classic kinda girl. Always have been. But I was liking the ombre. And everything old is new again now isn't it ;-) So I pulled out PTI's Polka Dot Basics stamps set and stamped a whole sheet of cardstock with some of the larger polkas. Oh yeah. In versamark. That was fun (like stamping in the dark!!!) Then I clear embossed those polkas. I grabbed some Aqua Mist ink and that Tim Holtz ink applicator with the foam - I hadn't played with that in quite some time. And I started inking up those polkas from bottom to top and left to right. The important part here is the left to right. Only going in one direction. If you click on the photo hopefully you'll see what I mean. It made the polkas 3D. They have a shadow on the right side and it just pops them right up. (it was a little squeal moment). So I became less intrigued with the ombre (which here is so very subtle) and more so with the 3D effect I was getting. I decided I had to work in a sentiment from PTI's Stylish Sentiments: Birthday and turn my little exercise into a birthday card.

I was going to post the other card but now I'm thinking that's enough for today LOL! I need to get a move on - busy week ahead. Big doings - graduation approaches and a side trip next weekend before the big day - very exciting. I'll tell you all about it soon.
Thanks for stopping by! Have a good one.

More cards I didn't post

Yes, I have a few more cards I didn't post. And I absolutely meant to do so but what can I say - I got busy. I definitely wanted to post these cos I had such a good time making them. I'd gotten the Stylish Sentiments: Birthday stamp set and saw that little diagonally striped stamp - it's maybe 1/2 inch by 1 inch. I wondered what I could do with it. And I started playing around. With one color then two colors and well here's what I came up with. I really like the way this one came out. I used Aqua Mist and Spring Moss inks and Hawaiian Shores Cardstock - the sentiment (from the same set) is stamped in Fresh Snow ink and I used white embossing powder. In case you're wondering I stamped in one ink in one direction then stamped over that with another ink in another direction and it created this cool pattern.


Then I made a thank you card using the same stamp, inks and technique - different sentiment (Think Big Favorites #3). Obviously I didn't mix the two colors just overlapped the stamping.
Pretty cool what you can make with one little stamp huh?














Oh yeah. Here's that cake I was working on. I had a few issues with the chalice at the last minute. It cracked. And there was actually leaves and grapes and wheat. But no matter. There was a time when I would have absolutely freaked out with things going wrong at the 11th hour. But I didn't. I just got rid of everything but the chalice and host, added the lacey looking frosting and voila. Cake done. And everyone, including the little Communicant, loved it. It tasted great too.

Oh and one more thing. I made cookies. I felt bad that we weren't able to attend the Confirmation for the other nephew last week (the brother of the Communicant). So I made doves - or in this case - Holy Spirit cookies :-)

Alrighty thats enough for the day. Off to make dinner. Have a good one!

Forgot to post

I realized today, while going through some pics, that I have a bunch of cards I haven't posted. So here's one -
I used Papertrey Ink's Cutting Garden. Such a pretty stamp set. I stamped all the images and used a brush and water to give it sortofa watercolor look. Then came back in and stamped over the same images again (this time leaving the ink full strength). I stamped the sentiment on vellum and clear embossed it. 
I've been busy today working on some decorations for a cake. I haven't done any cake decorating in years. I used to do quite a bit but the kids are grown up now and we don't have the same kind of cake spectaculars LOL! Some day I should dig out a bunch of cake pictures and post them. I was a little crazy (in a good way) back in the day when it came to cake decorating. I guess it's just more of that "I like to make stuff" thing. Cake, of course, come with a bonus feature - unlike cards, you can EAT what you make! And I do love me some cake! Anyhow this cake is for a Communion on Sunday (I told you... we have Communions aplenty in this family :-) and fortunately this nephew is somewhat local - only a little over an hour away - yay! so we get to go share in the festivities. ). I dug out the picture of the cake I made for my son for his First Communion and I'm recreating that cake - with some updates. Updates being I'm making the decoration ahead of time in Royal Icing (and not in buttercream like I did 18 years ago - which was crazy). Hopefully I'll have some pics to share by the end of the week. I gotta say I'm having a lot of fun. I'd forgotten how much :-)
Alrighty- thanks for stopping by and have a good one!

Papertrey Ink Blog Hop: Tilted

This blog hop challenge had me thinking since it was posted 10 days ago. Tilted could mean just about anything, right? I hadn't gotten a chance to make anything for it either in that time. Last night I had just finished putting some new Papertrey Ink stamps away - I put them in their new home :-) and take a long look at them wondering what I'm going to make with 'em. And one of the new stamp sets is called Sketched Shapes. It has a number of shapes but the one that got me thinking was the triangle. I pull out a clear block and slapped that triangle on it and grabbed the nearest ink pad and started stamping to see if what was in my head would transfer to paper. And it did. I had to go to bed (work comes so early in the morning... ugh) but after I got home I gave my idea a try on some typing paper (my stamping sketch paper LOL!) So here's what I came up with: it's three panels wide. I used that triangle and the arrow from Sketched Shapes. I also used a sentiment from PTI's Mini Blooms that I edited, separating it into three parts. When you open the card this is what you see next:

and when you open the card completely here's what  you get:

Blogger is giving me fits right now so I'm closing this up - I'm sending this card to my amazing daughter who is on the verge of graduating from college (illustration major) and I think she could use a pick-me-up right now - weeks to go and a ton of work. Thanks for coming by - have a good one! Oh  yeah.. sorry about the photos. I had a devil of a time getting pics to do it justice!

Make it Monday #113 Perfect Pearls

Okay so a funny thing happened on the way to this Make it Monday challenge (using Perfect Pearls or some other metallic powder) - I got distracted with cake.
This is not an unusual occurrence in my life.  I love cake. But I digress (as you, dear reader, know I am wont to do).
In this case it wasn't real cake.
(if it ain't real why bother, right?) I shall explain. I was filling the sugar bowl from the bag of sugar and I was about to throw said bag in the trash and I thought well looky there - right on the bag was a big fat piece of cake. See picture :-)

I thought to myself  - gee that looks about card-sized - the piece of cake. And so I cut away the front portion of the bag and set it aside until today and thought I'm makin a card with this. I cut out the cake and realized I was going to have to mount it on some cardstock (which i did). Then I knew I'd have to cover up that bit of red (the 5lb. circle that's on the right hand bottom portion of my slice o'cake). This is when the card was starting to come together in my head. I needed a big fat sentiment for that generous slice. I used the "Celebrate" from PTI's Think Big Favorites #13. I stamped it in Versamark on Dark Chocolate cardstock. I don't own any Perfect Pearls but I do have Pearl Ex - Micropearl (which looks kinda silvery - I'm just not sure how evident it is from my photo) so I brushed that on. I like how that looked and wanted to repeat the same thing in that problem area (the red circle on the cake). I cut out circles using my circle Nestabilities (Dark Chocolate and Fine Linen cardstocks) and stamped the little "Eat cake" from Cupcake Collection onto the dark chocolate cardstock. (I had to do a little masking to stack the words if you're familiar with that particular sentiment.) I diecut the wee stars from the Super Star Border die and finally I cut some Loop De Loop borders out of Fine Linen cardstock and attached those to the top and bottom of the card. 
So that's the story of my little mocha birthday card -it kinda looks like mocha doesn't it.... some kinda chocolate regardless - and in my mind all good birthday cake has some chocolate in it. Thanks for stopping by. Now go eat some chocolate cake for me!

On your Confirmation

okay so my last post was for a First Communion card. Now we're on to the Confirmation card for the brother of the recipient of that card.... did you get all that? LOL Now that lovely set I used on the Communion card has a sentiment "Confirmation" which is nice. But the images don't really reflect Confirmation. So... what to do. Gotta make my own. So here's what I came up with - the Holy Spirit :-). I just drew a dove and cut it out.

 I knew I wanted to try a few different things with that shape. I tried watercoloring with watercolor crayons then went back to the shape alone. Then tried using a little Pearl Ex to give that shape some shimmer. Finally I just came back to the shape itself (oh yeah just the dove not the haloed area). I ended up using a circle Nestabilities die to cut the circle in PTI Lemon Tart cardstock and mounted that on some PTI Spring Rain cardstock(and then a card base of white). I used some 3M foam tape to pop that dove up a bit. I added the "on your" with a Micron pen. And voila. Confirmation card done. Which is a good thing cos that little event is this week - I'd mixed it up with the Communion (which is the week after.)  I kept my original drawn cut out dove - he's tacked to my bulletin board so I can use him again next Confirmation LOL! (unless somebody comes out with a die I can use in the meantime. Wouldn't that be fine :-))
Okay thanks for visiting - have a good one!

First Communion

I have been looking for years - really - for a First Communion stamp set. I've seen some ok ones but nothing I was willing to spend some money on. So every time I had another First Communion in the family to celebrate (and there have been mmmmmmaaaaaannnnny) it pretty much killed me to go to the card store - but go I did. As recently as last month - a nephew celebrating First Communion and Confirmation all together. Right after that I happened to be looking at Marybeth's Time for Paper blog and saw her post of a Communion card. The stamp (from Serendipity Stamps)was perfect and I said "sold"! So here's my card (as there's another Communion coming up next week :-))
I colored using Copics for everything but the chalice. I tried a number of gold pencils to color in that chalice but I couldn't get the gold I wanted - so I finally used a silver Prismacolor pencil and mineral spirits. I used a Nestabilities die to cut out the image and stamped the "First Communion" sentiment from the set. The "on your" is just my handwriting with a Micron pen. I stamped out a bunch more of these images needless to say - so I could make more cards for the next First Communion. (After I hit the stamp store to get a refill on my one butter Copic pen........LOL) Thanks for stopping by. Have a good one!