Out Loud

I am so excited about the strips of text in this last set of the CAS-ual Fridays release! You can stamp them repeatedly together for a background, or use them as stripes like on this card.

Other sets used here are the Zigs and Zags stamps for the Christmas tree that I cut out following the zig zags and Merry Kiss-mas stamps for the holly and sentiment.

American Crafts Kringle & Co. paper on the inside.

Lots of different possibilities with this set, even just by changing the colors. Here's a Thanksgiving-ish thank you card using the wheat and sentiment from Amber Waves. Just grab a bunch of colors and start stamping the text stripes! These stripes have less of a margin between them so they take on more of a general background look.

Paper for the circle and inside is Crate Paper's Fourteen (yes, it's Valentine's Day paper on my Thanksgiving card ... shhh)

The last three sets will be revealed and for sale at CAS-ual Fridays on Thursday. More inspiration is only a click away with the rest of the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Design Team:

Virginia

Sylvia

Piali

Lynn

Jingle

 Dana

 Angie

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Wallflower

 

Day two of the CAS-ual Fridays release! The Wallflower set is full of great sentiments, as you'll see. I love the vertical orientation of this sentiment, which lends itself to fit long, skinny design spaces.

Vintage ribbon, a strip of patterned paper, and Amy Tangerine Yes, Please paper on the inside.


 

I went for a more vintage look on this card, with the dirty gold glitter paper, and the copper ink.

 The nice thing about this set is that the border stamp goes perfectly with the $5 four petal dies. Love that extra ridge you get since it's an open die! 
  

This card was made with the left-overs from the prior two cards. A strip of washi grounds the bottom of the panel.

Stay tuned for the last set to be revealed tomorrow! More inspiration waits for you at rest of the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Design Team:

Virginia

Sylvia

Piali

Lynn

Jingle

 Dana

 Angie

Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

Butterbows - Dedicated to Samuel Scott Courtney

ETA: This post is dedicated to our nephew Samuel Scott Courtney who was taken from us on this day last year. He would have been 12 and just finishing another football season. I sure hope there are pretty rainbows coming for Sam's family, because they certainly have gone through the worst storm ever this year. It wasn't until this morning that I realized my stormy cards were scheduled to post on Sam's anniversary. So very fitting.

Sam's brother Ryan at his grave on Valentine's Day this year.

Release time at CAS-ual Fridays, with three fun sets to show you this week! First up is a rainbows and butterflies set, which turned out quite stormy for me. I guess rainbows don't always have to be for happy occasions!

The rainbow is stamped & embossed several times on different colors, cut with a circle die, then layered. The bubble label die serves as a cloud, and a place to continue the sentiment. The stormy part of the sentiment used to be on a strip, but I liked it better cut up and scattered. Kinda stormy-like : ) A white outline helps tie it in.

The Studio Calico paper on the inside happens to go with the rainbow.

Same die, but a storm cloud this time. The Memento tear drop ink pads make it easier to ink the different colors on the rainbow. American Crafts umbrella patterned paper on the inside.
  

More inspiration waits for you at the rest of the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps Design Team. Stay tuned for the next set tomorrow!

Virginia

Sylvia

Piali

Lynn

Jingle

 Dana

 Angie

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Moxie Fab Thanks

Well, it's only been a week and I miss her already! Cath's eye for design coming to my inbox daily from the Moxie Fab World always proved inspirational, and boy is her silence apparent.

What kind of card do you make for someone who gave so much of herself EVERY day? I was going to pick a favorite challenge and make a card based on that, but how do I know that she'd like the card? So I decided to make a card based on a design that she had pinned (surely she likes those).

I used the Britney Spears song lyrics card.

Loving my growing collection of alpha dies, even though they're sometimes hard to line up. Still loving patterned paper on the inside of the card. Those wide stripes just make me happy.

Cath, you are truly one of the brightest lights in our blogging community. I'm beyond sad that you are leaving your Moxie Fab World.

I'll end with words from one of our favorite artists (and given that his verses are so melodramatic and romantic, it proved a bit difficult to find something that didn't make it seem like I would be stalking you shortly!)

Let your courage be my model
That the north you find will be true
When there's no information
And the compass turns to nowhere that you know well
Let your soul be your pilot
Let your soul guide you
 -Sting

If you are hopping along, well done, you're over a third of the way there! You should have come from Dana Warren's blog. Now you're on your way to see what Taylor Usry has made to honor Cath.

Here's a complete list of stops ... holy smokes!!! I sure hope Cath feels the love : )
 (ETA: Darnell gave me the idea to remove these so the post would be easier to navigate. The list of all 285 Cath admirers is on the Moxie Fab World blog.)
  

Happy Belated Birthday, Tracey!! + Godzilla Party Pics

Happy, HAPPY, belated birthday, my friend Tracey!

I'm sorry this is so late in coming to you!  Joyce from Cards-by-the-Sea did such a great job organizing this birthday celebration, and told us way ahead of time, but it's been a crazy, crazy month for me. On the other hand, there's no way I could miss saying Happy Birthday to Tracey!

In honor of Tracey's birthday, I wanted to CASE one of her awesome cards. This wonderfully graphic creation totally fit the bill (and love the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps!)

It was the first time using two My Favorite Things Die-Namics dies ... High Rise Upper Case Alpha and Peek-a-Boo Chevrons. Yay for NBUS! Love the large alphas, LOVE the chevrons. You can remove all the die pieces for a uniform look, or put random chevrons back like I did here. With the slightly patterned paper, I kind of like how the pieces aren't put back in the same spots. It breaks it up even more.

I struggled with where to put the sentiment (which is why this post wasn't updated yesterday!) and then it occurred to me to put it over the chevron dies instead of at the top of the card where they were just floating around.
   

  

Still in love with using patterned paper on the inside of the card and for the envelope.

Thanks for looking, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TRACEY!!!!
-Kelly

Here are some pics from the Godzilla Party we had this weekend for Jackson. Lots of fun, but it was really keeping me from visiting anyone in blogland ... I really hope to be by soon!!

The food table ... random boxes wrapped with kraft paper and turned into city buildings



I was so happy with how the bunting turned out ... cut a slit through those trendy paper straws and they totally held each banner. So easy to string afterwards. 



The Godzilla boogers tasted pretty good, but they weren't terribly popular. The green food coloring really threw the kids (and adults) I think.
 

Pin the Fire Breath on Godzilla. The kids had to wear Jackson's Godzilla mask backwards so they couldn't see. Made for some funny pictures!

 

The winner was a little difficult to call.

The cake was really fun to put together. Graham crackers and royal icing made the city somewhat easy to make.

 Godzilla totally destroyed the city after the party.

Godzilla's fire breath maze. The younger kids did just as well, if not better, as the older kids.

The kids really had fun with this one and did it multiple times, until the end when they all ran through it at once. 

 Photo prop drawn and painted by my husband (with last minute help from my mother-in-law minutes before the party started!)

 Present and Favor table

Group photo time! I used the Silhouette to make Godzilla stencils for everyone's shirts. We tie-dyed them during the party.

 Party's over. I took a huge nap and left the cleaning to the next day : )

Blue Glitter Keyboard ... someone needs to make one of these!

 

If there was a keyboard that had blue glitter keys I would totally BUY IT! Haven't found one to-date, but can certainly make them on a card : )

Tech Talk
   

After fussy cutting the blue glitter keys I lightly scored the edges so I could angle them back like they looked on the old chunky & clunky keyboards. I may or may not have actually pressed them after they were on the card ....  they didn't do anything : )  

  
The black keys on top are also fussy cut so that the letters/characters would be white, but in hindsight I should have had them flat on the card. That way the blue glitter keys would be more of the main focus.  

Again, I'm so in love with having patterned paper on the inside of the card. It's 50% of your real estate after all, so might as well make it pretty! Each time I pick a pattern to use, I'll cut the rest of the sheet in the same 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 size so I have them on hand. These blue dots were on hand so it only took me seconds to add. I've been using white speech bubbles (also cut out ahead of time) to write the sentiments on, and usually one strip of paper from my scrap bin for contrast.

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

Stay tuned to the CAS-ual Fridays Stamps blog next week ... we've got three amazing stamp sets to reveal!


Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

I also wanted to mention, as you may have heard, that sadly the Fusion Card Challenge has closed. Thank you all for participating, or for visiting and supporting those who participated. I really looked forward to seeing where people took the photo and/or sketch inspiration. Personally, it was a real challenge to use the sketch, so I'm glad I was stretched in that area : ) It was certainly a fun experience.

CFC #119 - Double Emboss and Resist

Time for another wide-open challenge at CAS-ual Fridays ... either heat or dry embossing on your project. Lots of different avenues for you to head down on this one! Playing around with heat embossing, I was interested to see what would happen with multiple embossing attempts.

The first layer of clear embossing (dots) works as a resist to keep the natural book page color after sponging it with Hero Arts Neon Ink. I was surprised that the second layer of embossing (gold circle outlines) worked as normal and didn't alter the first layer.

Sure hope you'll join in at CAS-ual Fridays with your embossed masterpiece! Checking out the amazing cards made by the design team is definitely worthwhile too. The winner of this challenge will get to enjoy a gift certificate to Ellen Hutson!

Thanks for looking!
- Kelly