Playing in Paradise

Hi everyone,

First off, a warm welcome to my blog's newest follower.  I'm so glad to have you along!  I truly appreciate each and everyone of my followers and I enjoy taking a peak at all your creations too.  You are all such a great source of inspiration and I hope I can provide a little bit of inspiration for you as well.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far.  I just have a really quick  and simple card to share today for the challenge over at Scrapbooker's Paradise.  You still have a little over 24 hours to enter this one and they have a beautiful colour inspiration for you using sand, sage and pool, so be sure to check it out!

For this card, I used a scrap from the sei chick-a-doo pack, some ribbon from my stash and a cute little Penny Black image from the eat cake set which I coloured really quickly with prismas and blended with Sansador.  The sentiment is from the SU Look who's turning set.  Apologies for the photo - it is a bit washed out, the colours are a little more saturated in real life.

Thanks for popping in and for taking the time to leave a comment.  I love reading them and seeing your creations as well!

Enjoy the rest of your week and happy crafting!

Hugs,

Dawn

A Teddy Bear and Two Birds

Hello peeps!

Hope you are all having a great week!

As threatened, I am back with my second post for the day.  My son will be turning three this year and when I asked him what he would like on his birthday card, he thought about it for about 0.2 seconds and responded "a teddy bear and two birds."  My first thought was - uh oh, I shouldn't have asked.  But then I remembered a cute little Penny Black stamp that I have from the Eat Cake set.  I pulled it out and found that it was actually a teddy bear with three birds.  Easily fixed with a piece of tape, so we were in business.

I coloured the image with Prismas blended with Sansodor, and then lucked out when I found some 3 Bugs in a Rug papers in my stash :).  I kept the embellishments very simple - added a button with a twine bow, some rhinestones (kids love stuff that shines and sparkles) and a chipboard three.  The three actually started out white and ended up sparkly by accident.  I tried to colour it orange to match, but it did not take the ink evenly and looked really awful.  So, I doused it in Paprika Stickles and I really like how it turned out.  The sentiment is from a Popcorn the Bear set (Crafter's Comp).  A MS edge punch and stitching finish it off.

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Here Come the Boys - teddy bears
Ready-Teddy-Go - how many fingers?
Penny Black Saturday - buttons and bows
The ABC Challenge - w for wishes
Cupcake Craft Challenges - in stitches
Allsorts - layers

Thanks for stopping in and for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love reading them and visiting you too! Enjoy the rest of your week and have a great weekend!

Hugs,

Dawn

The Chill of Winter

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all well.  I have a super quick post - I am racing the clock on a deadline.  I was inspired by several challenges to make a Christmas card.  At CSAYL the challenge (which closes in one hour) is to CASE your 1st Christmas card posted on your blog.  This sounded like loads of fun, so I had a go at it.  My first Christmas card can be found here, and this is the new card I came up with:

There is a little glimpse at my sense of humour - this card makes me giggle.  I kept the original layout and the same types of paper (snowflakes and stripes).  I also kept the embellishments very similar and changed up the image, sentiment and colour scheme.

Supplies:

Paper - Bazzill card, shimmery white card and the DP started out as just the green background from MME.  I stamped the patterns and embossed them in white
Stamps - House Mouse, Impression Obsession (snowflake background), sentiment from AmyR stamps (snowman sayings) and I think the stripes is a Hero Arts stamp.
Other - Ribbon was recycled from a gift bag, snowflakes are a Stampin' Up retired die, rhinestones and a Stampin' Up button, Picket fence crackle paint, and Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals in Silent Night Silver (gives a little shimmer to the snow).

This card was inspired by the following challenges:

Christmas Stampin' All Year Long - CASE your 1st Christmas Card
House Mouse and Friends - Friendship
Stampin' for the Weekend - Starting Christmas Early
One Stop Craft Challenge - no floral embellishments
ABC Christmas Challenge - R is for Recycling (the ribbon is recycled)
Crafty Catz - Christmas

Thanks for stopping in and for taking the time to leave a comment.  I really appreciate them and it gives me the chance to pop on over to visit you too.  Be back shortly with another card I just finished.

Hugs,

Dawn

Come Play in Paradise!

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a great week and that you are all looking forward to some creative time on the weekend!

I am very excited to guest design again this week for Scrapbooker's Paradise Playing in Paradise challenge.  In addition to a wonderful prize and a chance to play along as a guest designer, this week's challenge also offers the opportunity to learn and try out an artistic design principle that pretty much guarantees a beautiful project will result.  So, if you have time to do some crafting this week, I hope you will check out the challenge and join in!

The challenge this week is to design a card or other project using the 'rule of thirds.'  Huh???  What is that, right?  It is a trick that photographers use to capture stunning photos and it applies equally well to any artistic design.  Essentially, you simply divide your blank 'canvas' into thirds both horizontally and vertically.  Major deign elements and focal elements are then placed along one of the lines or at a point where the lines intercept.  Of course, you do not have to place something on every line or at every intersection.  Here is what I came up with for my inspiration piece:

The image is from Close to My Heart from the Enjoy Every Moment set.  I stamped it on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper with black Stazon and coloured it with Distress inks (victorian velvet and forest moss).  

I created my own designer paper for this card using an impression obsession flourish background stamp.  I stamped the background on shimmery white card using embossing ink and embossed it with Magic Moon Pearls embossing powder by Lindy's Stamp Gang.  This stuff is gorgeous irl!  I then inked the paper with victorian velvet and tattered rose Distress inks.  As I am an artistic design amateur, I physically divided my paper in thirds.  This made it so much easier to follow the rule of thirds, plus I like how it looks - hmmmm, there might really be something to this rule :o).  I swiped the edges with picket fence crackle paint.

I crocheted a little doily to frame my image.  I first saw this idea here where C2 did a beautiful two toned version, and fully explains how to recreate it.  That is what started my adventures (madness) in crochet.  Jessi also does beautiful crochet frames and you can see many examples on her blog here.  I created my own version with little glass pearls using their work as inspiration.

The sentiment is from Inkadinkado and the butterflies are a Cheery Lynn Designs die.

To see some beautiful inspiration, be sure to check out what the team has created for this challenge over at Scrapbooker's Paradise, where you can follow the links to their blogs for more details on their projects.  I hope you will be able to join in the fun!  Odds of winning are extremely good!

Thanks for stopping in and taking the time to leave a comment.  I truly appreciate them and love having the chance to visit you back.

Enjoy your weekend!  Hugs,

Dawn

Two hour and ten minute craft dash

Hello everyone,

The new 10 minute craft dash challenge started today and I was very excited to get creating.  So, I gathered my supplies, pulled out the sketch from the Scrapbooker's Paradise challenge and set my timer.  A couple of hours later, I finally finished my card.  Things were just not working for this one, so I'm just happy that it finally pulled together (I almost tossed it at one point) and another Christmas card is complete!  Hooray for that!!

I stamped the Inkadinkado snowman with embossing ink and embossed it with Lindy's Stamp gang two toned embossing powder in Desert Moon Turquoise, so irl it has a really nice shimmer to it.  The papers are from the s-e-i chick-a-doo line, the sparkly glittery buttons are from American Crafts and the sentiment is from the same stamp set as the snowman.  I outlined the circle in stardust Stickles (which are still wet) for extra sparkle.  Ribbon and silver cord are from my stash.

This card is for the following challenges:

Scrapbooker's Paradise Playing in Paradise, which has a wonderful sketch.  I turned it on its side and moved the buttons.
Sparkles Christmas Challenge - Sparkle and bling

Thanks for stopping in!

Hugs,

Dawn

Happy Birthday

Hello peeps,

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  I had lots of time to craft, which is always nice :o)

One of my hubby's cousins has a little girl who will be two this week, so I made her a card.

For some reason, something came over me when I was colouring this image and I just had to colour it yellow and pink.  And not just any yellow or pink - I wanted them to be fairly bright, but soft yellow and pink.  I do like how it looks, which is really strange for me - I don't usually like yellow and I don't usually do bright.  Maybe all the white saves it.

I usually pick out paper first and colour to match, and there is a very good reason for that...  I thought I would have paper to match, but turned out the pink was all wrong, so I ended up stamping all the pink papers and used a stencil for the yellow one.  Luckily I had inks to match the coloured pencils.

Paper - Bazzill (pink), BoBunny (yellow) and Stampin' Up (white)
Image - Wild Rose Studio, stamped with Momento black.  The elephant was coloured with Copics and the rest with pencils.  I'm still practising at both of these, and looking for a paper that works well with both, if anyone has any recommendations.  I put Goosebumps on the balloon to make it look like a balloon.
Backgrounds - Stampin' Up distressed dots, I think the stripe is Hero Arts and the stencil is from pink paislee
Sentiment - is from the Hot off the Press stamp and punch set
Other - Spellbinders Parisian Accents and Fancy Tags 2

This card is for the following challenges:

Papertake Weekly - A free for all (use any of their sketches) I used sketch #14
Charisma Cardz - No embellishments
No Matter Which Challenges - Die cuts/punches
Simon Says Stamp - Anything goes
Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - Animal Antics

Thanks for stopping by and taking time to leave a comment! I love reading them and visiting you back!

Have a great week & Hugs,

Dawn