Purple Felt Flower Bouquet [MIM #66]

Here's a rolled felt flower bouquet inspired by Make it Monday's challenge to use your border dies to make rolled flowers. Anytime I can get more uses out of my tools I'm thrilled! So thank you, Ashley Cannon-Newell, for your idea to do this.

I also love how challenges force me to use the things I've been hording ... like the homemade paper I used for the flower wrap, my Grandma's purple felt from her estate, and an incredible hand-dyed strip of green silk that I bought from an artist at a flea market.

The paneling look from the new stripe impression plate is so neat, so thought I'd try to re-create that by scoring my own lines. It turned out OK, the scoring rolled the paper a bit so I had to roll it the opposite direction a couple times to get it straight again. Might be easier to just buy the impression plate! 

 

 For the flowers, I used the simple circles die and cut it in half lengthwise to get two flowers out of one. It was a little tricky rolling those thin strips, so I found if I rolled the strip of circles BEFORE I cut it, it was easier to then cut the already rolled bundle in half.

Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:

PTI Simple Circles Border die

PTI Tiny Tags die and stamp
Score-Pal

felt

handmade paper

hand-dyed silk

70th Birthday Card - Where Has the Time Gone? [PDCC #131, cQc #136]

We're going to a 70th birthday party tonight ... at a bar!! Love it. I'm not a drinker, but I think it speaks to how "not-70" my mom's cousin is. Thought I'd loop in a few challenges as long as I was making a card. The colors in both The Play Date Cafe, and colourQ were quite a challenge for me, but I guess that's the whole point of a challenge, right?!

I linked the die cut "70"s to make them a little less obvious. And the clocks are all pointing to 7:00 (not sure that would be noticed, but figured I might as well as long as I had to pick a time.)

Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:

PTI by the numbers die

Kelly Panici Time Flies stamps

Versamark Ink

Damask-ish Card

After seeing so many fun cards from prior challenges, I though I'd check out the current Moxie Fab challenge and participate for the first time. The challenge is to use damask in your card design. Well, no damask here, but I thought the PTI Mehndi Medallion stamp could maybe pass for a damask-ish design. Masked the center portion off, and added the ticket strip for the sentiment. Not sure if you can tell, but I notched the corners with a hole punch to mimic the look of a ticket.

Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:

PTI Mehndi Medallion

PTI Just the Ticket Die and Stamp Set
PTI Mellon Berry, Pure Poppy, and Raspberry Fizz Ink

What's the Word, Bird. [CFC #52]

You'd think owning a bird stamp would be a given after stamping for awhile, but I was surprised to find I only have one set of bird stamps. Disappointing, since the CAS-ual Fridays stamp challenge is to make a card with a bird on it. But I found one I liked. I wanted something graphic, and thought it would be fun to make a bird pattern. 

For the first row I penciled a straight line across the middle of the panel, lined up the bird's feet, and went from there. Somewhere along the way I got off, but that's what makes things custom and "one-of-a-kind" right?!? Yep.

For the blue bird perched right above the word "bird" I realized his legs were cut off with the mask I used. Bummer. But then I took a deep breath and ... drew my own. After all that bird stamping I was a tiny bit scared. But now I like how it makes the bird stand out a little more.

Happy accident : )

Thanks so much for looking!

Supplies used:

Inkadinkadoo Bird Assortment Stamps

Watercolor Pencils (yep, still no copics)

Trendy Triangles [MIM #65, LIM #66, CFC #51]

What fun playing with triangles! I had a blast seeing what I could make from various background papers cut with the PTI triangle banner die. This is prompted by PTI's Make it Monday challenge to make a background from patterned paper scraps, and by Casual Friday's Happy Birthday challenge (Happy One Year, guys!)

The first card is kind of quilt-like, with one upside-down triangle focusing on the sentiment. Originally I had the red triangle pointing up to the sentiment, but the wide end matched size-wise to the word "heart" so I thought it looked better that way.

The card is based on a pin by Ali Edwards of a quilt from Blue is Bleu. I've had it in my head for awhile, knowing it would be a card one day:

Now I'm left with a desk FULL of triangle scraps (the die cuts three triangles at a time, which is a lot when you only need one).

So what's a girl to do ....

More cards!!

This one is a simple hexagon on dimensional adhesive.

and ...

a flower note card.

wait, there's one more ...

Reminds me of a kite string (although I don't know who actually had cute little kites with decorations on the string, it wasn't me, but I always loved pictures of kites like that). Embossed paper on one side, sentiment on the other. Zig zag stitching down the middle. Really, really easy. I had so much fun playing around. And now I have a whole set of cards! These would make a nice gift set, I think. They all have different sentiments from Dawn McVey's dress form set so they coordinate in that way too.

OK, OK, just one more ...

This one is for the Less is More "Yellow" challenge. Fun cards to make!

Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:
PTI banner die
PTI dress form stamp set
PTI circles impression plate
Cosmo Cricket Hello Sunshine paper

Inspired by Family Magazine Article (part 2)

The second and last part to the Mother's Day Cards article has been published over at Inspired by Family Magazine. Please head over to check it out, and all the other Mom-centric articles they feature. There's some good stuff there!

If you missed it, here is part 1 of the cards article.

Thanks for looking!

Inspired by Family Magazine Article

The nice folks at Inspired by Family Magazine asked me to write an article on handmade Mother's Day Cards. Fantastic! Please head on over and take a look. And while you're there, check out all the other articles on crafts, recipes, fashion, inspirational messages, DIY, photography. It's a fun site to hang out at!