Enjoy the Things that Really Matter

Hello everyone!

I want to extend a big welcome and thank you to my latest followers!  I'm so very grateful for each and every one of you!  I hope everyone is having a great week so far...almost the weekend :o).  Hope you get to spend it doing something you love.

Every once in a while, I get asked to make a custom card for someone, and today I have one of these cards to share.  This is a retirement card for a lady that my MIL worked with and all the gals in her office wanted a special card for the occasion.  Here is what I came up with:

Now, I know this isn't a typical retirement card, but this lady has a little grandson and a little dog who are the centre of her universe, so I think it works really well for her.  I used my absolute favourite Edwin - Edwin with airplane from the Magnolia Princes and Princesses collection and masked it together with the log.  Since she has a small dog, I opted to mask the dog from 'Fishing Fun' by Gillian Roberts for Stampavie into the little scene.  If you are not familiar with this image, it is of a little boy fishing and the dog is snuggled up beside him.  Not the easiest of tasks, but thank goodness for my stamp-a-ma-jig!  I am very happy with how it turned out and I think the two styles work nicely together.  The images were stamped with black Stazon on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper and coloured with distress inks (frayed burlap, weathered wood, stormy sky, black soot, antique linen, pumice stone, fired brick, walnut stain, scattered straw, and peeled paint) and watercolour pencil for skin.

I decorated the inside to match the cover, but used a lighter paper for writing on.

The tag is made from Magnolia's vintage tag Doohickey and pulls out to reveal the sentiment, which I made in Word since I didn't have one that was appropriate for the occasion.  It is made using a bunch of text boxes crammed in together :).  If you click on the image, you can see the puppy's tag is very sparkly, courtesy of my clear atyou Spica pen.  I absolutely love this pen!

Other supplies:
The card and papers are all Stampin' Up, except for the striped one which was in my stash and I'm not sure from which manufacturer.   All the edges were distressed and inked with frayed burlap.
White lace and blue ribbon from my stash.  The lace on the tag is from Kaiser - it started out white, but I died it blue.  The Doily is from Little Yellow Bicycle and the flowers were all white flowers from Pretty Petals.  The rose was coloured blue with Tattered Angels glimmer mist in bubbles and then the edges were inked with DI weathered wood.  The other two were inked with weathered wood and frayed burlap.  The leaves are a Magnolia Doohickey.

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

Crafting Life's Pieces for the beautiful sketch, which I rotated and flipped
TOMIC - anything goes (and it's their first anniversary celebration!  Congratulations!!)
Magnolia Down Under - seeing double (I've doubled up on the lace, the ribbon, the leaf Doohickeys and the little blossoms)
Midweek Magnolias - anything goes

Thanks for stopping by today and thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love reading them and love the chance to visit you too!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs,

Dawn

Simply Magnolia GDT

Hello bloggers,

I would like to extend a huge thank you and welcome to my blog's new followers!  I am delighted to have you along on my crafting journey!  I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  I wish I could say mine has been, but my little one has caught a virus and is covered in a rash, so we are quarantined at the moment.  He is handling it all very well, and had I not told him he is sick, he might not have known.  He also very generously passed his little bug on to me, so I spent last night with a fever (but, luckily no rash).

Enough moaning and on to something far more exciting.  A few weeks ago, I won a guest design spot at Simply Magnolia!  The challenge this fortnight is fancy folds with a friendship theme.  Here is my inspiration piece:

When I first dreamed up this idea, I thought it would have a lot more folds than it ended up having.  But then I decided to make everything smooth and rounded instead of square an folded.  However, there are still folds at each junction - top, bottom and where the spout meets the can, so it does still work.

I used Seeding Tilda, which was a wonderful Christmas gift from my in laws.  I wished I looked as cute as her while gardening!  I masked her with Root Cellar Door, minus the root cellar door.  I really liked the stones and flowers on this image, but it just didn't seem to make sense to scatter seeds in front of a door, so I masked it out.  It also doesn't make any sense to wear white boots to work in the dirt; silly Tilda.  The images were stamped on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper and coloured with distress inks (tumbled glass, tattered rose, peacock feathers, walnut stain, antique linen, frayed burlap, pumice stone, scattered straw, victorian velvet, and bundled sage) and a watercolour pencil for skin tone.

I made the friendship sentiment in Word (since I didn't have one) and printed it onto the vintage tag (a Magnolia Doohickey) which tucks in nicely behind the image.  The papers are from MME lime twist and Making Memories je t'adore.  Flowers are Pretty Petals, butterflies are Cheery Lynn's small exotic butterflies dies and the bottom edge punch is from MS.  Lace and rhinestones from my stash.

The flower on the spout was cut with the Forever Young cricut cartridge and the blingy button is a TH Accoutrement.

A huge thank you to the gals at Simply Magnolia for inviting me to guest design!  If you haven't been already, make sure to pop over to the Simply Magnolia challenge blog to see what the very talented DT has come up with.  I hope you will be able to join in the fun!

This project is also for the following challenges:

Just Magnolia - anything goes with optional doily
Midweek Magnolias - bling it on
Tilda's Town - use a magnolia accessory stamp with Tilda or Edwin

Thanks for stopping in and for taking the time to leave me a comment - good, bad or indifferent.  I always love the chance to visit you back!  Have a great week!

Hugs,

Dawn

Summer Lantern

Hello peeps,

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  We used ours to catch up on outdoor projects and the weather was beautiful, so we could not have picked a better weekend.

Well, I have been hard at work creating another project for the challenge over at Stamp with Fun for my second week as guest designer.  I have had a lot of fun as GDT, and want to extend a huge thank you to Andrea and the gals over there for inviting me to play along with them.  On to the challenge - this week we would love to see your creations following this recipe - 3 papers, lace and flowers.  Here is my inspiration piece:

It is not very often that I am completely happy with how a project turned out, but this one I absolutely love to bits!  I used one of my new Tildas from the Summer Memories collection (best one yet!), and paired with these sea foam green papers - it just takes me away to a warm evening overlooking a beach with a cool ocean breeze.

To make the walls, I cut chip board into strips 1/4, 1/2 and 1 inch (yes I am Canadian, but my ruler is not :o)) wide.  I then glued the pieces together for each wall, painted them white, inked the edges with antique linen DI and covered them with the papers.  I then glued the walls together - except for the back one which is attached with hinges and closes with a little latch.

The hinges were painted white with snow cap mixative - just throw them in a small baggy with a few drops and shake it up.  The roof was made with 260g (see, I am Canadian) bristol board which was much easier to cut than the chip board :) and then covered with paper.  Thin wooden crafting sticks hold the two tiers together and lace was wrapped around them.

Here are a couple more angles:

And one with the lights out:

Other supplies:
Papers - roof and base are from MME (one of the lost and founds from last summer) and walls are Fancy Pants Designs from the Lilac House collection
Stamp - Magnolia stamped with black Stazon on 300g hot pressed water colour paper and coloured with DI (pine needles, rusty hinge, antique linen, peacock feathers (my favourite!) tumbled glass, tattered rose, frayed burlap) and watercolour pencil for skin tone
Other - feather from my mother's stash, green lace from my stash, cream lace is from Kaiser, all flowers are white flowers from Pretty Petals and were coloured with DI, decorative base made with Spellbinders Parisian Accents dies and I think that is all!

I would also like to enter this project in these challenges:

Tilda's Town - water fun
Midweek Magnolias - romantic and chic (and they are having a DT call for anyone interested)
Top Tip Tuesday - dig out the old (I've had the papers for a year, the plain chip board for at least two and the Kaiser lace is about a year old too.)  My tip is for quickly colouring metal bits and pieces - my hinges and clasp were originally gold, but I wanted them white to go with a more shabby look.  So, I took a tiny baggy (with a sealing top) and placed them in along with a few drop of Adirondack snow cap mixative and mixed it all up.  Carefully remove from bag and allow to dry.
I'm also linking up to the Make it Monday linky party where it is always anything goes!

Thanks for stopping by!  Please do stop by Stamp with Fun to see the beautiful creations the DT and other GDT have made and we hope you will have time to join in with us!  Thanks for any comments you have time to leave, I love reading them and will be catching up shortly on visiting everyone back.  I love to see what my visitors are up to.

Have a great week!

Hugs,

Dawn

Stamp With Fun!

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  My wee little blog has some new followers since I last posted, so I'd like to extend a warm welcome!

I have some exciting news to share today!  I was invited to be a guest designer at Stamp With Fun - and of course I said yes!  How could I resist?  If you have never encountered their challenge, be sure to pop by for a visit.  The design team does beautiful work and you get to use your favourite cute stamps to take part!

This week's challenge is a gorgeous sketch.

I used the sketch to make a card for my MIL.

My MIL loves warm fall colours, so this is my summery take on that colour palette.  When I started, I intended to make a mostly orange card, but it kind of ended up being  mostly white.  Oops!  So I added some lace and crackle paint to shabby it up and this is how it turned out.  Looking at it now, I think the orange paper looks a little out of place, even though it is all from the same pad.   Well, I am my own worse critic.

My MIL also loves glitter, so I added clear Atyou Spica to the little butterflies on Tilda's dress.  I love how this looks - very subtle and just gorgeous when the light catches it.  I also thought it might be neat to give the fence a weathered look, so I painted bits of it with crackle paint.  I carried the effect on by adding paint around the edges of the card too.  Here is a close up trying to show both on the image.  Hopefully if you click on the picture it will show it big enough to see a little of the sparkle.

Supplies:

Paper: Bazzill card, My Mind's Eye On the Bright Side 2, 300g hot pressed watercolour paper
Stamps: Magnolia (Tilda with Butterfly Dress and Shabby Chic Fence) stamped with black Stazon and coloured with Distress inks (pumice stone, weathered wood, tumbled glass, rusty hinge, wild honey, vintage photo, walnut stain, black soot, peeled paint, bundled sage, frayed burlap, antique linen, scattered straw, pine needles, tattered rose) and watercolour pencil for skin tone.
Tools:  Cheery Lynn small exotic butterfly dies, all edges were distressed with distressing tool and inked with pumice stone DI
Other - lace from my stash, TH sheer ribbon, Picket Fence stain, Picket Fence crackle paint, Little Yellow Bicycle paper doily, pearls, flowers are all white Pretty Petals and inked with DI using a makeup sponge, and I think that is all.

Hope you are able to stop by Stamp With Fun and see the beautiful creations the DT have made and join in the fun!

I would also like to enter my card in the following challenges:

Magnolia-licious Highlights - Summer theme with twist of colour (use orange, blue and yellow if you can)
Lovely hAnglar and Sweet Magnolia - Shabby Chic or vintage
Cute Card Thursday - A touch of sparkle (add a little or a lot)
Papertake Weekly - in the garden

Thanks for stopping by and for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love reading them and it gives me the chance to pop on by your blog too!

Have a great week!  Hugs,

Dawn

May Flowers

Hello again!

I'm back as promised with a calendar page.  I have unfortunately fallen behind with these, but after the trouble I had with February's I thought it might be time to track down some new ink.  I finally ended up trying Momento's rich cocoa, which would work delightfully well with glossy accents (which I didn't even end up using) but it is not perfect for water colour as a good soaking will cause it to bleed a little, so I had to be really careful not to use too much water while colouring it in.  Does a perfect-for-everything ink exist??

For those of us who like to do things in chronological order, I know I have skipped over March and April for the time being (it is getting to me a little, but I will either get over it or it will serve as extra motivation to get them done sooner ;)  ).  Besides, this fit perfectly with the challenge over at Scrapbooker's Paradise - where I am a guest designer this week!  This was initially going to be my inspiration piece, but the little mouse took a lot longer to colour in than I thought it would, so it was not complete in time.  For details on the challenge, check out my GDT post here or visit the Scrapbooker's Paradise blog.

So, here is May:

Some details:

Base - Want 2 Scrap chipboard album

Image - House Mouse stamped with Momento on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper and coloured with Distress Ink (pads or reinkers) - scattered straw, victorian velvet, worn lipstick, tumbled glass, black soot, frayed burlap, rusty hinge, vintage photo, tattered rose, antique linen, forest moss, bundled sage

Paper - Stampin Up (from sale-a-bration, so unfortunately I think they are no longer available)

Other - calendar was computer generated and slides into a hand made pocket for reuse each year, feathers from Michael's, flowers from Pretty Petals, edge punch from Martha Stewart and I think that is all.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:

Scrapbooker's Paradise - photo inspiration (just for fun/extra inspiration, as I am the guest this week)

House Mouse and Friends - anything goes with optional tea theme

Crafty Catz - April showers bring forth May flowers (use an image with a flower in it)

Papertake Weekly - anything goes



Thanks for stopping by and for taking the time to leave a comment.  I love reading them and it gives me the chance to catch up with you too.

Have a great weekend!

Hugs,
Dawn