Happy fall, everyone! It's hard to believe that it is actually fall. Where did 2018 go? But seriously, I love fall with it's beautiful colors, cooler temperatures and I am super excited fall activities. Don't get me wrong, summer is my favorite season but fall is a very close second. Which is why I was super excited for the Hero Arts' September card kit, it is a wonderful fall themed kit. 

This month's kit came with a 6x8 stamp set, 18 coordinating dies, a fancy window die, 1 Daniel Smith Watercolor Dot card, 5 mini watercolor brushes, and 30 translucent maple leaf sticky notes.

For this kit, I only made three cards instead of ten mainly because time. Sadly, life has been pretty hectic and has not allotted me much time for making cards but I still managed to create five fall themed cards. 

Card 1

For my first card, I decided to blend some Fossilized Amber and Fired Brick Tim Holtz Distressed Oxide ink over a piece of white cardstock. Then I used the oval die that came in the kit to cut it before placing it on a craft card base. Then on some scrap of white cardstock, I stamped the branch with the maple leaves and the three of the single maple leaf using Simon Says Stamp Instant Black Ink. Using my copic markers, I colored in the branch and the leaves before die cutting them and attaching them to oval die cut on the card base. I placed the three maple leaves on the card in a way so that it looked like they were falling. The colors used were Hazelnut, Lipstick Orange and Lipstick Red.

I decided to use the “Hello Autumn” stamp for the sentiment on this card. Using Versamark ink, I stamped the sentiment on a piece of black cardstock and embossed it with white embossing powder. I, unfortunately, do not remember the dimensions of the black cardstock but I think it is 1/2”x 3”. I then flagged the end of the strip and it attached it to the card using dimensionals. For the bow on the flag, I used beige Wraphia.    

Card 2

For my second card, I used a similar layout as the first card and used a piece of craft cardstock for the card base. On the oval die cut, I ran my Cajun Craze mini ink spot on some white card stock before using the die cut. Once I cut out the oval, I set it aside and stamped out a vase and one of the flowers on some white cardstock using my Simon Says Stamp Intense Black Ink. I then colored the vase using my Sand copic marker and I used my garden green, coral pink, and yellow copic markers for the flower image.

Once I cut them out, I positioned them on my oval in order to figure out where I wanted my sentiment to be stamped. For the sentiment, I picked the “You are Vibrant” stamp and stamped in Versemark ink. I then embossed it in white embossing powder. Once the embossing powder has melted, I mounted the oval on my craft card stock followed by the vase and flower.  For embellishments, I used Auburn Pearl Nuvo Drops.

Card 3

For my third and final card, I wanted use the pretty maple leaf sticky notes. These sticky notes only have adhesive on a portion of their backs so I had to use my Tombow adheisive on other portion of their backs in order to use them on a card. I adhered 6 of them to a white card base and positioned them so that it looked like they were falling. I used the “Best Wishes” stamp as my sentiment. For a bit of embellishment, I used the the Auburn Pearl Nuvo Drops all around the card.

This last card was a fairly simple card and I think would make a lovely autumn birthday card.   

I plan on making more cards with with kit but I am not sure when I will be able to. As of writing this blog post, the September kit was still available but once they are gone, they're gone. You can find the September Hero Arts kit here.

You can find the September Hero Arts kit here.

Hi Everyone!

So today I finally got to play with my May 2017 Paper Pumpkin kit. It has been sitting on my craft table for quite a few weeks begging for me to play with it. Between work, family, and training for a half marathon, I haven't had a whole lot of time for crafting. But I finally took a Saturday to sit down and craft.

May's Paper Pumpkin kit was called "Sprinkled with Love" and it is a doughnut themed. I absolutely love doughnuts (my favorite are the chocolate Long Johns from Dunkin' Doughnuts), so I was super excited to see the theme. In the kit, you received the following materials:

- 6 doughnut card bases
-3 circle card bases
- 9 printed kraft envelopes
- 12 frosting sheets (6 pink and 6 vanilla)
- 6 die-cut frosting stickers (the chocolate drizzle)
- 2 sheets of heart and circle stickers
- 2 sheets of die-cut banners (1 white and 1 blue)
- 1 sheet of die cut flowers
- 50 adhesive-backed sequins
- 50 adhesive-backed pearls
- gold/vanilla twine
- dimensionals and adhesive dots
- Stampin' Up's Soft Suade ink spot
- Sprinkled with Love stamp set

Usually, with my paper pumpkin kits, I try to make at least one card exactly how the directions say it is supposed to be put together. While I think it is cute as is, I felt like it was incomplete and missing something. What do you think?

I'll be honest, I really struggled with trying to figure out what was missing and creating alternative projects with this kit. Eventually, I did come up with some alternatives. 

 These two were just a spin on the original. I took a piece of brown 8 1/2"x 11" card stock and cut it down to 5 1/2"x 4 1/4". I then added some sprinkles with the sprinkle stamp from the kit's stamp set. Once I added the frosting and the chocolate drizzle to the doughnut base, I added it to the brown card stock. I then took one of the sentiments from the stamp set and stamped it on one of the banners. I popped the banner up on dimensionals before placing it on the doughnut.

For this next card, I wanted to do something with the bag. After playing around for a bit, I decided it would be fun if the doughnut looked like it was falling out of the bag. I thought the pearls added a nice touch to this card.

For this one, I wanted to keep things simple. I took a peace of brown card stock and traced one of the doughnut bases on it. Using the sprinkle stamp I added more sprinkles onto the strawberry frosting and then adhered it to the chocolate doughnut base. I then cut the doughnut in half and added each half to a vanilla card base. For a final touch after the sentiment, I wrapped the twine around the top of the card and tied a knot.  

 For this card, I originally just had the doughnut on the pink card base but I thought it was too plain. I then remembered that I had a really cute pack of patterned paper from Doodlebug called Cream and Sugar. While looking through the pack, I found strips with smiling, sprinkled doughnuts and I thought it would make a great border for this doughnut card. I added the sequins for just a bit of shimmer. 

While I was going through the Cream and Sugar paper pack, I came across a full sheet of smiling sprinkled doughnuts and thought that would be super cute to use. I also thought that it would be cute to have a smaller version of the vanilla doughnut in the center. However, once I had the designer paper glued on the black card base, I thought it looked too busy and that the vanilla doughnut got lost. So I added a piece of light pink card stock. I'll be honest, I do not remember the measurements but I wanted to make sure that the smiling doughnuts created a border around the light pink card stock. I then popped the vanilla doughnut up on dimensionals before sticking it on the center of my card front. 

To make the doughnut in the center, I just took my largest circle die and the circle die that is two sizes smaller and cut out the doughnut from nude colored card stock. I then took a piece of scrap in the vanilla and stamped a bunch of chocolate sprinkles all over. Once I had a very sprinkled piece of vanilla card stock, I took the same two circle dies that I used to cut out the doughnut base and cut out the frosting. I then fussy cut around the edge of the frosting so the base of the doughnut would show through. 

This final card is probably my favorite. In the same pack that I found the smiling doughnuts, I saw this adorable plaid designer paper. My next thought was "how complete would a delicious doughnut breakfast be without a cup of coffee?". In my mind, not very complete. It just so happens, that I have a mug die set in my stash. I also had some of Stampin' Up's Lost Lagoon card stock in my stash that matched the blue strip in the patterned paper perfectly so I cut the mugs out of that and since the die set comes with a small oval so that you can have something that looks like liquid inside, I used that on some light brown card stock. I then made my own doughnut base out of a dark brown card stock so that I can have a chocolate doughnut with vanilla frosting with the chocolate drizzle. I then cut the doughnut in half and lined it up on the side of the card so that it was going off the edge. I then attached the mugs and popped one up on dimensionals. I wanted to add a sentiment to the front but did not want to use the banners that came in the kit, so I created my own banner using vanilla card stock. Once that was assembled, I felt that the sentiment did not make much sense. Luckily the die set also had a stitched heart die so I used that on the light pink card stock and added to to the mugs. 

Even though I struggled with coming up with alternative cards using May's paper pumpkin, I was quite happy that I was able to crank out as many as I did. I usually try to challenge myself with creating alternates from the paper pumpkin kit. Some months are easier than others, but once I got going, I found this month's to be fairly easy. 

Thank you for taking some time with me to go over these alternative cards from the Sprinkled with Love kit from Paper Pumpkin. I hope you will join me next time for my next project. 

Hi Everyone,

So I have an obsession with craft videos on YouTube. Sometimes I spend more time watching craft videos to get ideas than actually crafting. One of my favorite video series is Vicky Papaioannou's 10 cards 1 kit series using the Simon Says Stamp card kit. I have watched many of her videos and absolutely love what she creates. I decided after watching so many of them, that I wanted to try one of these kits. Below is a picture of the items that were in the Simon Says Stamp April kit. I also made a list of the items.

Items in the kit

• 2 sheets of Neenah 80# white card stock
• 1 sheet of Simon Says Stamp Island Blue card stock
• 1 sheet of Simon Says Stamp Royal Purple card stock
• 5 white tags
• 5 kraft tags
• 3 wobble springs
• 4 Simon Says Stamp ink stops (colors: Key Lime, Watermelon, Orange Slush, Lemon Zest)
• Lawn Fawn "Rainbow Plaid" 6x6 paper pack 
• Simon Says Stamp "Wild Cuddly Creatures" Clear Stamp set

As soon as I saw the stamp set, I fell in love with it. It is so cute and I absolutely love animals. My next thought after seeing the stamp set was the animals would be perfect for a little kid's birthday card and it just so happens that my nephew's first birthday is coming up. So I decided to make him a birthday card (I know he won't really card about the card, but I think his mom will appreciate it).

So the items that I used from the Simon Says Stamp kit are:

• The Wild Cuddly Creatures stamp set
• Lawn Fawn Rainbow Plaid 6x6 paper pack

From my own stash I used the following items:

• Thick White card stock cut at 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" (I folded it in half so the measurements are 5 1/2" x 4 1/4")
• Circle dies
• Tape runner
• Dimensionals
• A Happy Birthday clear stamp (I used June 2016's Paper Pumpkin stamp set)
• Melon Mambo Stampin' Up ink pad
• Delightful Dijon Stampin' Up ink pad
• Early Espresso Stampin' Up ink pad
• Tip Top Taupe Stampin' Up ink Pad (not pictured below)
• Basic Black Stampin' Up ink pad
• Stampin' Up blender pen
• Basic Black marker (not pictured below)
• Lime green card stock (not pictured below)
• Sequence (not pictured below)

First I had to decide which cute animal I wanted to use. I decided to use the giraffe since the baby shower had a giraffe theme and a lot of things in his nursery had giraffes on them (plus our family is big on giraffes). So taking my basic black ink, I stamped a few giraffes on some scrap paper. I wanted some extras in case I messed one up. I did notice that the giraffe stamp had some lines that did not connect to each other and I had to use my black marker to connect them. 

My next step was to color in the giraffe. I used my Early Espresso, Delightful Dijon, Tip Top Taupe and Melon Mambo ink pads for this. One of my favorite things about these ink pads is that when they are closed the pad is facing down. So if you squeeze the top and bottom of the ink pad together, you will get a pool of ink on the bottom. Sadly, I did not get a picture of this to show you. 

Using my blender pen, I colored in his spots and horns with Early Espresso. I used Tip Top Taupe for his face and hooves. I colored is body, outside ears, and top portion of his face with Delightful Dijon. I used the Melon Mambo for the inside of his ears and nostrils. Between each new color, I would draw squiggly lines on my scrap paper to get rid of the old color. I did this until the squiggly lies became clear. When I was done coloring in my giraffe, I had to cute him out. Since I do not have a die for this, I had to fussy cut. 

Once he was cut out, I went around the edges of the giraffe with my black marker to make him a little more pronounce and so no white was showing on the edge.

My next step was to choose one of the designer papers from the paper pack and cut it down so it would fit the front of my card. I did not want a white border around it so I cut it at 5 1/2" x 4 1/4". Once that was all set, I had to figure out which of my circle dies would fit around my giraffe. 

 I choose the one that left a tiny bit of room above his head and below his feet. Once that was decided, I took the designer paper and my white card base over to my Big Shot and cut the circle out. For my card base, I only cut the circle out of the front so my giraffe would be on the inside of the card but show through the front. I made to pop the giraffe on demesionals before adhering it to my card.

The next thing I did was work on my sentiment. Taking my basic black ink I "Happy Birthday" to a piece of white scrap card stock. The scrap I used was a half an in wide and maybe an inch and half long. I then cut a triangle out of each end for a double sided banner. 

While I was working on the sentiment, I decided that there needed to be something around the circle and giraffe. Luckily, I had some lime green card stock in my stash that matched the green in the designer paper that I thought would make a pretty border around the giraffe. To create the border, I took the same circle die I used on the designer paper and the next size up in my scallop dies. I just used Elmer's glue to adhere that down. 

After adding my border I thought I was done but as I was looking at it, I kept thinking that something was missing. For the longest time I could not think of what would be missing. I stepped away from the card for a while, made dinner, and finally figured out that the giraffe needed something else around it to help draw the eye. I went looking through my stash to see what I had that I could use. I eventually found some sequence I had that were a faint bluish color and thought they would be perfect. I added three around the giraffe. Once those were added, I was satisfied that my card was done.

In the end, I am very happy with how my card turned out and I certainly did enjoy the Simon Says Stamp card kit. I don't know if it is something I will do every month like I do Paper Pumpkin but I think at some point down the line I will order another kit. 

Thank you for joining me in my creative haven and I hope you enjoyed this card. Please let me know your thoughts and any suggestions you may have.  

 

Hi Everyone!

I have been thinking about this project for a while and I have been trying to figure out how I wanted to create this. Today's project is a scrapbook lay out. I have been wanting to start a new scrapbook, but I have been struggling on how I want to create it and what I wanted to put in it.

Last month, my boyfriend and I went on a ski trip up in Michigan. It has been years since I had gone skiing and I was a bit rusty but man did I have a blast. As a result, we took some fantastic pictures. That's when I decided that I wanted to put together a scrapbook page of our ski trip.  We had so many wonderful pictures that I could not decide which ones I wanted to use, so I decided to do a two page lay out so I can display six of my favorite photos.

The materials I used for the pages are as follows:

- 2 sheets of 12x12 card stock- black
- 2 sheets of 8 1/2x11 card stock- aqua blue (this card stock has a little bit of a shine to it)
- chipboard stickers
- Thickers letter stickers
- white sequence
- White ink
- Hill stencil
- Sponge
- Adhesive
- And of course the pictures

My first step in creating the page was to use my stencil to create a snowy hill in each of the bottom corners. Using washi tape, I taped down my stencil so it would not move as I brushed ink onto my paper. I used the Very Vanilla ink spot from Stampin' Up to create the snowy hill.

Once I removed the stencil, I brushed a bit more ink onto the bottom to make it look like the hill ran off the page.

My next step was to get the placement of my photos situated. I choose to use a light blue card stock to mat them on. Unfortunately, I can't give you measurements since I am not really sure how much I cut down the photos from their original 4x6 format. I did make sure that there was a quarter inch border. I also cut out a mat for the title of my pages.

Once I got the picture's placed in a way that I liked, it was time to lay out the embellishments and title. I stuck the chipboard stickers and the letter stickers to wax paper while I was trying to figure out where I wanted them. This made it easier to move them around before committing to a location. 

Once I decided I liked the location of the stickers, I removed them from the wax paper and stuck them to the black card stock.  The white sequence reminded me of snow flakes falling from the ski, so I added a few more than I originally planned and laid them out randomly.  

The picture below is how the pages will look within my scrapbook. I noticed after getting everything together and taken the pictures, that I misspelled mountain. Sadly, spelling is not one my strengths. I did correct it before putting it in my book. I will also be adding a sixth picture to the page but I just haven't printed it out yet. 

I hope you liked this project and I am excited to get started on my next one. Please feel free comment and let me know your thoughts. Any constructive criticism is also welcome as I am always up for learning new things and improving my crafts. Thank you for reading!

Hi Everyone!

My first project for this blog comes from Stampin' Up's Paper Pumpkin. Paper Pumpkin is a monthly subscription where Stampin' Up will send you a surprise craft project every month. Usually it is a card project but every once in a while, they send out a different kind of project. This month's kit was called Adoring Arrows and it was 24 little treat bags. I absolutely love getting Paper Pumpkin delivered to my door every month and it comes with everything you will need to create the project as well as an exclusive stamp set. You can only get this stamp set if you are a Paper Pumpkin subscriber. Now I'm not a Stampin' Up demonstrator but I know that you can find one through Stampin' Up's website (www.stampinup.com).  

From this month's Paper Pumpkin kit, I will be using the following items:

        - Adoring Arrows stamp set

        - Heart die cut

        - 1 wooden dowel

        - 1 double heart sticker

        - 1 tail sticker

Additionally, I used the following items from my own stock:

        - Bird punch

        - 1 piece of black card stock cut at 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"

        - 1 piece of red card stock cut at 5 1/4" x 4"

        - 1 piece of white card stock cut at 5 1/4" x 4"

        - 1 piece of white card stock cut at 5" x 3 3/4"

        - adhesive 

        - dimensionals

        - red ink pad

*please note, I did not use the heart punch that is pictured. I thought I would use it but decided the did not need it.

The first thing I did was make the arrow that appears in the center of the card. To do this I put the double heart sticker on one end, making sure that the pointed tip is in the center of one side the heart and then fold over the other side. On the other end, I attached the tail in the same way as the point.

 The next step is to get the love birds all situated. For this I took my red card stock and bird punch. I punched out both of the birds from the center of the red card stock (don't worry, the smaller piece of white card stock will cover up the holes that you just punched out). 

Your next step is to do some of your stamping. I decided I wanted to use the heart stamp with the word love across it and stamped it on the heart die cut.

I always lay things out before gluing them down, this way I can make sure my vision actually works on paper and not just in my head. Taking the smaller piece of white, position the arrow so it is at a slight angle with the point facing downwards. My next step was to position the heart over the arrow. Finally I positioned the birds so that they were under the heart and facing each other. I wanted it to look like they were sitting on the arrow, kissing each other. Once you have the arrow, birds and heart in the positions you want, glue them down. I used Elmer's glue for the arrow, dimensionals for the heart and glue dots for the birds (for attaching their wings to their bodies and for attaching them to the card stock). Once everything is glued onto the front of the card, I did the last bit of stamping. I took the stamp that had the three small hearts and stamped it above the birds' beaks. I only did it twice so I had six tiny hearts but you can add as many as you want.

Before I put the rest of my card together,  I decided I would stamp the piece of white card stock that will go on the inside of my card. For this, I took the same tiny hearts stamp and stamped it once in the upper left hand corner and once in the lower right hand side. In the center, I decided to stamp my "Happy Valentine's Day" but I think it would also look good if you left the center blank. 

My next step was to attach this piece to my red card stock that I punched the birds out from. You should have a quarter inch red border around the front of your card. Next you will take your black piece of card stock and fold it in half so it measures 5 1/2" x 4 1/4". Adhere the red card stock to the front. Again, you will have a quarter inch border. Finally, you will adhere the piece of white card stock with the "Happy Valentine's Day" stamped on it to the inside of your card. 

And there you have it. Now you have a beautiful Love Bird's Valentine's Day card. It can also be used as a wedding or an anniversary card. 

I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope you will join me next time in my creative haven.