A Month In Photos [July 2012]

I'm not thrilled that I lost momentum on Project Life (only complete through mid-February) and Month In Photos (again, stopped after February). But since the Month In Photos project is relatively quick to complete, I decided to pick it up again this month. Glad I did.

Here are the highlights:

- watching the moon rise over Lake Michigan while waiting for fireworks and playing in the sand at Summerfest (so relaxing, except for the police helicopter with the roving searchlight),

- over-the-moon excited to be at the Craft and Hobby Association trade show for the first time,

- happy that the boys still play with each other, and are into simple things like playing dress up,

- spending hours in the sand pit at the pool, and meeting friends while working on a common project, like digging a river that ends at my feet for a spa. Or burying someone in the sand.

- loving our routine of doing swim lessons, eating at Wendy's (20 nuggets with ranch, a large fry, and a crispy chicken Cesar wrap is $8.92), and relaxing at the pool the rest of the day with friends.

- RAINBOW ICE CREAM! a Taste of Chicago favorite. Jackson doesn't drip all over his shirt this year!

- treating the kids to ice cream on the beach after hanging out in Lincoln Park all day with friends. our order was large enough that we had to figure out the total and change for the ice cream guy.

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Rebecca at Simple as That has posted a free template for you to create your own Month in Photos and is hosting a link party for everyone to share their progress. 

A Little Bleach, a Little Ink

Well I did make it into the laundry room this week ... to grab some bleach for some good, clean card making! Nichole shared a technique to stamp with bleach and then stamp with ink on top.

Chrissie and Mandi may get sick of seeing me, but it's their fault for having such a versatile sketch for us to use this week! This time I at least flipped it over.

I'm short on larger solid stamps, so I turned to Mehndi Medallion to try this technique out. Since I'm only using one stamp for this, I needed to over-saturate this finely detailed stamp with bleach so it bleeds on the paper. This way when I stamp again with orange ink, there will be a larger white area underneath acting as an outline for all the detail.

 The third time I stamped the medallion is in raspberry on the card base. I intentionally rotated the raspberry medallion so it didn't line up with the bleached/orange medallion. When they lined up it seemed to blend in too much.

Interesting to note that when I bleached the PTI raspberry paper it didn't turn color at all. So I grabbed a cheap, thin raspberry paper and the bleach immediately turned the paper to white.


Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI Mehndi Medallion, Martha Stewart Invitations

dies:  PTI Wonderful Words

ink: PTI Raspberry Fizz, True Black, Colorbox Tangerine

Blue Velvet

Anytime I look at this ribbon I think of David Lynch's movie Blue Velvet from the 80's. What an odd story. Anyway, here's a Hello card for the CAS-ual Friday color challenge.

 And the LIM sketch challenge.

 

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Supplies used:

stamps:  Inkadinkadoo Hello
impression plates: PTI Simple Stripes
other: watercolor pencil, AC stamping marker, velvet ribbon, circle punch

Orphaned Earings

When I was playing around with hexagons for the challenge at Moxie Fab World, I thought it would be neat to cut out the inside of one and use it to showcase some sort of charm. Only I didn't have any charms that small. Then I remembered some orphaned earnings in a bag of old costume jewelry I got at a flea market years ago. Perfect. Right size, good quality.

And I was happy to recycle them.

Wire cutters removed the post, but I left a little bit so I could poke them through the background and attach them to the card.

The colors are inspired by those at The Play Date Cafe this week. Not ones I've used together before, so I'm happy to participate in this challenge.

The layout is from the Less Is More challenge:

Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI hexagons, PTI dress form
dies:  Memory Box delicate chain, PTI fillable frames
ink: PTI raspberry fizz, Color Box yellow ochre
other: earings

70th Birthday Banner Cake

I wanted to dress up my mom's 70th birthday Angel Lush cake, and was inspired by all the cute cake photos with banners like this one from Technique Tuesday (Not completely sure if this counts as a "paper project," but there is paper on it.) I'm always excited when I can use my stash on things other than cards. Makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth just a little more : )

It was so quick and easy to do, and Mom was really surprised when she saw it. She loved it.

 

For the banners I cut a long strip of paper into 2" pieces, and notched the ends with scissors. They're held up with baker's twine tied between two bamboo skewers. For the "70" I glued toothpicks to the back of the die cut numbers so they would stick nicely into the cake.

NOTE, if you try this, be aware of how close your candles are to the PAPER banners!

We had a little extra excitement.

See the smoke coming from the banners? And how the banners were swatted AWAY from the lighted candles? Yep, one caught on fire. My son was impressed.

The cake was also very light and tasty, perfect for summer gatherings. I've had requests for the recipe everywhere I've taken it. Bonus that it's quick to make since you use store bought angel food cake. Here's the recipe from Kraft if you're interested:

Angel Lush Pineapple Cake

1 can (20 oz.) crushed pineapple, undrained

1 pkg. (1.5 oz) vanilla instant pudding

1 cup Cool Whip

angel food cake, sliced into 3 layers

Mix pineapple and dry pudding mix. Fold in Cool Whip (the recipe calls for 1 cup, but I use the whole tub.) Place bottom cake layer on plate, spread with 1/3 of the Cool Whip mixture. Repeat two more times. Can add strawberries or other fruit on top, but it's still delicious without it.

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Supplies used:

dies:  PTI block lower case alphabet, PTI by the numbers
other: bamboo skewers, baker's twine

Girl's 11th Birthday [PTI Blog Hop]

Needing a birthday card for a preteen girl, I took the inspiration colors from Papertrey Ink's monthly blog hop challenge.

 Branching out a little bit for me to try a more artsy/whimsical card. After spending so much time figuring out where everything should go, I have a deeper admiration for those who make cards like this look so random.

I am in love with the PTI Simple Stripes impression plate. It give such a subtle, even texture in person, but try taking a photo and it completely disappears! I used it here on the inset "Celebrating your Birthday" panel.

The "11" sits on a cake stand and is masquerading as two candles with a wire wick and hand-cut flames. This would work well for any age, but "11" is perfect for candles! 

 The flowers are masked, and I love how the little sunburst stamp fills an area. See the text? That's a fun technique I got from Artsy Lynn to put Scotch tape on a dictionary page, and then rip it off. You get the top layer of printing so it's transparent when you add it to your card. Love how irregular the shape is too. I can see using this technique quite often when a card needs a little something extra.

It was so fun using washi tape (yellow dots on top of the cake stand.) Do you know that Target now sells 4 packs of "paper tape" under their house brand Up?!? I found out about this at Taste of Chicago a couple weeks ago. The Art Institute had a craft table for kids to create their own pop art (in honor of the new Roy Lichtenstein exhibit). And they gave them washi tape! I was strangely jealous.

And although their masterpieces looked fantastic, I couldn't help but think maybe I'll steal a few strips off their paper once we got home and they forgot about it (so wrong ... I know, I know!!) Instead, I asked where the Art Institute got the tape and that's when I found out about Target. 

The best part is, they sell 4 rolls of it for ... $4! I can do a buck a roll! I think there's a fifth "multi color" package that was out of stock on the shelf (office supply section.) I grabbed one of each and feel fully stocked now.

Thanks for looking!
- Kelly

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI mini hexagons (pattern on the "1's"), PTI Movers and Shakers Sentiments, Pink Paisley Celebrations
impression plates: PTI Simple Stripes 
dies: PTI Mat Stack
ink: PTI Hawaiian Shores,  PTI Mellon Berry, PTI True Black, Color Box Yellow Ochre
other: wire, dictionary, Up! paper tape

Top Ten Mini Album

 Here's a cute, little "Top Ten of Summer" mini album for the Papertrey Stamp-a-Faire memory preservation challenge.

On the left will be a photo for each highlight of our summer. Then on the right are hexagons. One hexagon for each number. So the 5th best thing of the summer has 5 hexagons.

Here's an example of what it would look like (using our Christmas card photo as an example). Once summer is over I'll print the photos and fill out the album. I'm excited because it's 90% done and I'll be able to complete it so quickly. And if I want, I can add a short sentence in a thinner pen under the main description.

I didn't have a metal ring on hand so I just used a thick copper wire to make a loop for binding. I may switch it out once I get a ring, but for now it's good : )

I'm entering this in the hooked on hexagons challenge over at Moxie Fab. Such great inspiration in this post ... I pinned several ideas!

Thanks so much for looking!

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI Lovely Layers, PTI mini hexagons
dies: PTI By the Numbers, PTI block lowercase alphas
ink: PTI Hawaiian Shores, PTI Aqua Mist, Colorbox Tangerine, Colorbox Yellow Ochre
other: copper wire, tags