Winnie & Walter: It’s a Wonderful Pennant

Hi Folks! Here's the second of four Winnie &Walter sets to be released at the end of the week ... pennants/triangles, and lots of 'em! Lots of sizes, lots of patterns, lots of FUN! The first card has the chevron triangle inked in three different colors and then used for a birthday party hat. The ball on top of the hat? Yep, that's in the set too! Only, as a nativity star, in case you want to use any of the triangles for Christmas trees (I know, right?!) In this case I stamped the star three times, rotating it slightly each time so it would make a fuller ball good enough to have on a party hat. The trim on the bottom adds more "party" to the hat : )

Here's a criss-cross triangle that was just begging to be turned into an ice cream cone. I cut out a scoop of strawberry (patterned after a Papertrey ice cream die) and punched the cherry on top from heavy glitter paper. Luckily, the green part of the card looked bare when I was first done, so I stamped/embossed a few more of the triangles on either side.

Heidi Swapp paper on top, AC glitter paper with MFT headiners alpha dies, gold thread and a tab punch complete the top portion.

Now, there's more amazing projects from owners Julie and Shay on the Winnie & Walter blog. Diane Jaquay and Jenny Martin are our shining guest stars for this release. Of course, there's also a ton more inspiration on the personal blogs of our Talent:

Joni Andaya | Lea Lawson | Mayuri | Vanessa Menhorn | Gayatri Murali | Heather Pulvirenti | Laura Sterckx
 
Don't forget to comment-to-win on the Altenew blog (you've got until July 24th to be eligible). On July 25th, all the sets will be available on the Winnie & Walter site!

Thanks for stopping by, and I will see you tomorrow with yet another set!
-Kelly

Winner! + Taste of Chicago Pics

Thank you all so much for the sweet comments on the Altenew Blog Hop! Wasn't that an awesome hop, by the way?! And all the new stamp sets, holy smokes!!

Here is the lucky winner of TWO STAMP SETS of your choosing.

 

Ange, congrats! Please email me (griglion at ameritech dot net) with the two sets you would like and your address. We'll get you all set up!

Last week my husband took my youngest son to Godzilla Fest (seriously, they are huge fans!) on the only day that we could go to the Taste of Chicago. So I just went with my oldest son and took along my new camera to try out.

If you haven't been to the Taste before, it's a huge festival with local vendors where you can walk down the rows and sample a ton of different cuisines. Although, unlike when I was a kid, now the "tastes" are pretty expensive so you can't really get a ton.

 I always love going to the out-of-the-way places for photos. Unlike the entrance that most people come through north of Grant Park, this entrance faces Lake Michigan. ?!? As you may expect, not many people are coming from this direction. Even the Segway tour in the background wouldn't be able to get up the steps!

Logan convinced me to take a skyline boat tour since it was just the two of us. Love the tiny patch of light over the Hancock tower. 

He really loved being downtown with just his mom : )

Getting a Rainbow ice cream cone is part of the tradition. Five different flavors layered in a waffle cone. Orange, NY cherry, pistachio, strawberry and chocolate. Mmmm ...

Buckingham Fountain lit up at night, with the remains of our Rainbow ice cream cones.

Earlier in the week Logan had Survivor Camp where they put him in the middle of a forest and make him find his way back with a compass and other guides. At the end of the day, I announced that he's participating in Urban Survivor Camp, where he needs to find the way back to our car! We park at my husband's small parking lot at work, which is about 15-20 blocks away, so it's no easy feat. He is game.

He makes it past Pritzker Pavilion (eek, I'm SO EXCITED at how well the new camera takes low light shots!!!),

the Bean, the McDonald's we stopped at on the way there to fill up a little (like I said, those "tastes" aren't cheap!), over the Chicago river, and through the Ogilvie train station. He was off on the last block, but he assured me he would have figured it out quickly. Awesome job, Logan! 

The building where my husband works is home to quite a gifted web-spinning spider. I squealed when I saw this shot!

Thanks again for all your comments, and for checking out our pics : )

Winnie & Walter: The Big, the Bold and Blessings

 

Hi Folks! Welcome to the fourth release for Winnie &Walter! Wait until you see these four new sets, especially since two of them feature the super-trendy brushstroke words. The first set is called The Big, the Bold and Blessings and features four of the brushstroke words with so many little typeface words to match up with them.

This card also features these crazy-oversized chevron stamps from another set that you'll see at the end of the week. I was going to curve the "welcome" stamp on my block, but with the chevrons, there's a slight optical illusion that it's curved anyway.

Be sure to check out the amazing projects from owners Julie and Shay on the Winnie & Walter blog. Diane Jaquay and Jenny Martin are our shining guest stars for this release as they won the Playdate No. 2 challenge with some pretty awesome cards. Of course, there's also a ton more inspiration on the personal blogs of our Talent:

Joni Andaya | Lea Lawson | Mayuri | Vanessa Menhorn | Gayatri Murali | Heather Pulvirenti | Laura Sterckx

 
ALL FOUR of the stamp sets and coordinating cut files are up for grabs on the comment-to-win post (you've got until July 24th to be eligible). Then on July 25th, all the sets will be available on the Winnie & Walter site. Whoo-hoo!!!

Thanks for stopping by, and I will see you tomorrow!
-Kelly

Fusion Challenge - Fake Paper Piecing

Hi Folks! Welcome to another fun Fusion Challenge! This card is a fusion of the photo (color scheme) and the sketch. To match the feel of the photo I white embossed the fox and butterfly, keeping everything light. The doily is actually from underneath my son's soup! He's so sweet, whenever we go to Biaggi's for their 1/2 and 1/2 lunch special he always lifts up his bowl of soup first thing and gives me the doily underneath to make something special.

I was set to do some paper piecing of the fox, but then wasn't happy with the papers I was pairing together. So I watercolored over the patterned paper on the spots I would have pieced. To me it kinda looks like another shade of the same patterned paper. And bonus that all the lines match up!

The fox ears and the butterfly wings are slightly bent upwards.
 

Here are some fabulous cards by our design team!

Betty J.

  Danielle Robeson

Deepti Malik 

Julia Aston 

Katie Brooks

Lynn Mangan

Kimberly Wiener

Lyndal Higgins

Michelle Williams

Michelle Lupton

Sindhu

Stephanie Severin

Winners: Will be chosen by all of our teammates in two weeks. We each will choose one favorite. The winners will be announced at 4 am (PST) in two weeks!


Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

Altenew Blog Hop

 

Hi folks!

Welcome to Altenew's second Blog Hop! Altenew is a relatively new stamp company that opened its doors last April. In a couple of days they will be releasing their second collection of stamps. All the stamps that you will see here will be available for purchase at 9:00 am EST on Monday July 14th.

Prizes

To celebrate their second release, Altenew is giving away five stamp sets of choice to three lucky winners! The winners will be chosen from comments left on the Altenew blog. There is more! I will choose a winner from comments left on this post and the prize will be two stamps sets of your choice. You have until Monday July 14th 7:59am EST to leave your comments. You may enter up to two comments on each blog:

• Comment on the project, or the stamps.
• Like us on Facebook 

The winners will be selected and announced on Monday July 14th at 9:00 am EST!

You may have arrived here from the one-and-only Julie Ebersole (eek, how cool is that?!?) The cards I'm showing today come from two different sets that will be released Monday, July 14th. The Birthday Bash set has some great sentiments:

 

Again, love the sentiment, which you can easily customize by inking it up in different colors. The banner is perfect for using your own colors too (think graduations using the school colors). The triangle paper is AC Dear Lizzy 5th and Frolic. 

 The other set that I'm showcasing today is Geometric Menagerie ... how on-trend is this one?!? Plus you'll get a kick out of the sentiments. Tasnim and Jen really knew what they were doing here! I absolutely LOVE this set!!

 

 

 For this one I used the MFT Modern Landscape die and couldn't figure out why it wasn't looking right. Then it dawned on me ... the hills!! Giraffee's hang out on the flat plains, not hills. So I cut all the trees off my hilly die and taped them onto a straight piece of paper. These small trees are meant to help make my giraffe look large. Simple sponging behind the giraffe gives some focus and interest.

  

    

The geometric giraffe is so fun to color! I went with a more true-to-live version and filled in random brown triangles on the giraffee's body. I was excited to finally have a use for some fringy fibers I've accumulated, and made that into a mane for the giraffe. Love being able to get different textures on a card.

 

The next card is inspired by this card from Ardyth where she used different colored strips of paper to represent sea/land/sky. Instead of strips of paper, I just used different distress inks on the background for land/trees/sky and that got the job done.

 

 This time the geometric animal is paper-pieced and layered. You could definitely color the four different layers, but I chose to keep them stark white for contrast with the background. I added some clustered gold dots (from the Birthday Bash set) on the ground to make it a little more interesting.

 This card uses the geometric lion too ... can you see where? Do you see a slight squiggly line running across the strips of orange and pink paper? That's the back of the lion stamped and masked repeatedly. How fun to make your own background paper just by using a little masking!

My friend is turning 40 so I'll need this card on Tuesday night when we baseball moms all go out to the local steak house to celebrate. Should be a great time!

 Here's the inside of the card (Dear Lizzy 5th & Frolic paper). I love that the Birthday Bash set has sentiments that work on the outside AND inside of your card. I'm often stuck for wording on the inside, so this stamp is perfect for that. 

 

This is actually the original inside of the 40 card. After I was done with it, it looked a little too finished for the inside so I promoted it to be the outside of its own card! Instead of sequins or enamel dots I hole punched some scraps of heavy glitter paper and used those to scatter over the card.

Well, thank you so much for stopping by! I can't wait to get out there and hop myself (seriously, can you believe all the talented ladies on this one??!!) A huge THANK YOU to Tasnim and Jen for letting me play with their stamps that I've been admiring so much!! I am really so honored to participate : )

Your next stop is the super-talented woman who will try anything and make it look amazing ... Taheerah Atchia. In case you get lost along the way, here is the blog hop order:

Altenew

Darlene DeVries 

Debby Hughes 

Julie Ebersole 

Kelly Griglione <= You are here

Taheerah Atchia

Wida Miller

Thanks!

-Kelly

Julie's Birthday Bash

 

Hi all! You've either come here from the amazing Joni Andaya, or you've landed right in the middle of a fun Blog Hop for Julie Mogford of Winnie & Walter! I'm pleased to be joining everyone in wishing Julie a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY today! I'm sure you know how talented Julie is by the incredible stamp sets she creates with Shay, and by the amazing cards she creates with stunning backgrounds like this one:

But what you may not know is just how kind, sweet, supportive, encouraging, appreciative and thoughtful she is. She goes out of her way to make sure you feel the love, and is so genuine about it. Julie is the real deal and I'm so blessed to have met her through our wonderful paper crafting community.

For her birthday card, I wanted a fun background like she does so well, but I took the easy way out and just smooshed some watercolors together on cardstock (yes, I STILL have not managed to buy watercolor paper yet, what is wrong with me?!?) The speech bubble and sentiments are from Bubble Talk.
 
   

The camera is from Picture Perfect. I was being lazy (which is crazy considering how much time in total I spend making a card) and didn't ink the camera up very well, so the center lens was a little spotty. Usually I go over those areas with a black marker, but since I had my watercolors out I watercolored over it. While writing this post I realized the black is not even, but after thinking about it I kinda prefer it that way ... almost like a glare is hitting it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it : )

Here's the inside. Conveniently blurry so Julie can't read the message if she sees this post!!

Now you're off to see what Laura Sterckx has created for Julie! If you get lost along the way, here is the complete blog hop line up:

w&w blog

Gayatri

Heather

Joni

Kelly <=you are here

Laura

Laurie

Lea

Mayuri

Suzanne

Vanessa

Thanks so much for stopping by, and if you get a chance, wish Julie the happiest birthday yet!

-Kelly

CFS Feature: Heat Embossing Duct Tape

Hi Folks! And just like that we're at the beginning of another week. Boo-yah! Here's a masculine graduation or congratulations card that uses duct tape. Last year there was a publication call for either office supplies or tape, and I made this card for it.

I was so excited when I found that duct tape shrinks down and makes a neat textured piece when heat embossed!  Perfect for a guy, I think. The sentiment, which also adds to the "guyness"of the card, is from CAS-ual Friday Stamps Exclamations set. I embossed the sentiment in silver, and then colored in the negative space with a white marker that's losing some of its juice.

This card is over at the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps blog today.

Thanks for looking!
-Kelly