OCC: Red & Aqua Challenge

I'm playing along this week with Our Creative Corner's Red and Aqua Challenge.

When I was working on my idea for this challenge, I struggled a little. Looking through my paper I realized two things. I love this color combination. I hate this color combination. I actually made a trip to Michael's to find the light blue paper. While I think its close to the challenge color, I originally wanted something with a little more green (to actually, truly be more aqua). But such is life and after I found some inspiration in some mini-cupcake liners from Martha Stewart in my stash at home, this card came together beautifully.

My niece is turning 10 in a few weeks and I wanted to use this color scheme for her card because it instantly reminded me of her. She's so cute - a perfect balance of girly-girlness but athletic, adventurous and active. I have a few little gifts to put into a box and ship up to her but I wanted to share the card. Juliana...this one's for you!

Hope it doesn't spoil the birthday surprise!

I started with two shades of blue cardstock - one for the base, one for the mat. Then I got to turning the mini-cupcake papers into a little ruffle. It took a little bit of messing around but I finally got them where I wanted them.

Punched the doily, stamped the frame and sentiment and topped it off with a cute button.

Can't wait for next week - my first real challenge as a design team member. I hope I can come up with something good!

Have a great weekend!

Holly

YAY!

Just a quick post today with my "yippeee" news.

I'm now a part of the design challenge blog Our Creative Corner. I'm so excited!

Check out the challenges each week. They're meant to be fun, a little bit challenging and a whole lotta inspiration.

Holly

Smiles Inspired by Sunshine and Seattle

A sunny Saturday in Seattle and some great news first thing this morning just made me want to smile today. We took Grady to the Museum of Flight and then we were off to Pike Place Market with his grandparents. Fun in th sun! Inspired by it all, I thought I'd pass the good, happy feelings along with today's card.

I got to use some new Papertrey Ink stamps. I love this little ice cream cone set called Sweet As Can Be. I think this will be a fun set for all the kid-stuff.

I'm submitting this to the Our Creative Corner challenge - All the Bs!

I LOVE having multi-tasking papercraft tools. So I wanted to share a little corner rounding trick I've used a few times. On my Fiskars Round n' Round medium punch, I used a Sharpie to make two small marks.

I insert the corner of the paper I'm using, line the edges of the paper up with the lines on the circle punch, and punch!

Have a great weekend!

Holly

Ode to Jocelyn

So I've shared a few times about how I love being online and finding other people who share my love of all things paper.

When I first started my blog I wanted to build a place where people would come and take inspiration, a place where I could keep track of the things that worked and those that didn't.

Meeting new people along the way, I was "introduced" to Jocelyn.

Now I don't know a whole lot about her but I do know she like me is new to papercrafting, has a daughter and has a lot of really cute projects on her blog.

I wanted to share one with you that she recently made and one that I love. What a fun card!

This is the front side.

And here's the inside.  

 Don't you just love the contrast between the two?

And its a popup card to boot. I'm insipred! I see an attempt at a popup card in my future. I don't know if I can do as well as Jocelyn, but I'll try.

Lookin' forward to the weekend!

Holly

Moxie Fab World: Tuesday Trigger

My first two-post day!! Woo hoo!

Here's a card I created which is inspired by Moxie Fab World's Tuesday Trigger.

My card was inspired by the doily pattern and the word Merci. I know it means thank you but its so avant garde, so fancy. So here's my card incorporating my two inspirations. The doilies I stamped and the merci stamp I've had forever (I used it on a project once and then never again) and still love. Don't you just love stamps like that which stand the test of time?

And here's the source of inspiration!

Have a great week!

Holly

You Won't Want to Miss This!

Glitz Design is introducing three new lines that are utterly beautiful and you can win one!

All three lines have tons of products - rich double sided papers, gorgeous stickers, detailed transparencies, luscious ribbons, clear stamps, rhinestones and my fave, "Whatnot". I think my favorite line is the Vintage Blue. I have an affinity for blue and yellow together. It just seems really happy and really balanced.

Vintage Blue

Beautiful Dreamer

Dance in Sunshine

Hop on over to the Glitz blog and follow the instructions (check out each line - there's a couple of different ways to enter for each line).

Have a great week!
Holly

Simply Elegant Holiday Card

Happy Saturday!

Despite the happy summer sunshine outside here in Western Washington, I'm sharing a holiday card today! What you say? A holiday card?

I was actually a little giddy yesterday as I made a quick trip to JoAnn's on my lunch break and noticed that they had begun displaying their Autumn decor. I have to admit, I felt a grin grow wider and wider as I observed the beautiful oranges, reds, yellows and browns.

You might know from reading other posts on my blog that I LOVE Christmas and Fall decor means Christmas is just around the corner!

So here is my simply elegant holiday card. Its inspired by this weeks White Party challenge at Our Creative Corner. I really think this challenge is pretty awesome - I've never seen one like it before. When I read about it and saw the inspiration projects, I thought it might be hard but I was instantly motivated to attempt it. It actually turned out not to be as hard as I thought it would be. **Whew**

UPDATE 7/13/11: So I'm being brave and entering this into Moxie Fab World Stamp It! Cards Week Challenge. Wish me luck!

It was the perfect card for this inking technique using paint instead of ink. I used some metallic off-white paint to stamp the snowflakes.

Using paint on your stamps is really harmless, you just need to make sure to clean them immediately after stamping. I usually take a little foam brush to the stamp while running it under water to make sure paint gets out of all of the little nooks and crannies.

Then I used a few different shades of distress ink which accent the ink stamped snowflakes. I topped them off with a little Liquid Pearl detailing. Then I let it set overnight just to give everything a chance to thoroughly dry.

The card was very simple to put together after that. I temporarily adhered the stamped piece to my card back so I could use my Spellbinders Four label die to create the window. I used foam dots to permanently adhere the stamped piece to my card after the window was cut. I closed the card and lightly traced the window to the inside of the card so I knew where to stamp my sentiment.

This technique is seldom used (at least that I can tell from the blogs and magazines I've looked at) but it is really a nice one. You can use matte paints or metallic - it doesn't matter. Its a nice alternative to ink because it seems the acrylic paint comes in many more colors than ink does sometimes and for me, I have better local access to paint than I do to ink sometimes.

Hope you enjoy! Thanks for stopping by.

Have a great weekend!
Holly