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

Winnie & Walter Share the Love: Distress Inks and Tags

 
Hi folks! Our last day of playing with distress ink at Winnie & Walter is here. Today the challenge is to make a tag with Distress Ink. Be sure to stop by Winnie & Walter to find out how you can win some awesome prizes!

 
This card is made for a specific person ... Darnell Knauss! Her birthday was on the 2nd, and Ardyth of MASKerade is so kind to host a birthday party for her.  I wanted to pick one of Darnell's cards to CASE, and I couldn't pick any other than ...



this beautiful card! I was so thrilled to receive this in the mail for my husband's and my wedding anniversary. In fact, other than my mom, it was the only anniversary card we received this year! Darnell is just that kind of thoughtful person. And did you see how she made the hearts? Potato stamping!!

So of course that's what I did too. I used Darnell's trick of pressing a cookie cutter into the potato and then cutting around the outside to make a stamp. I ended up just using the large circle as the background on the card. I was so happy that the center didn't stamp too well.


  
It's fun to use my scraps for the inside of the card. I feel like I'm leaving nothing to waste. Plus, I think it's a nice surprise once you open the card.

Still loving those vertical envelopes! The paper is Amy Tangerine. 

The sentiments are from Bubble Talk. I'm telling you, this may be my favorite set so far ... you get a ton of different looks with the big bold fonts and then the small cursive fonts. Plus the word balloons! The shoes are from Parentville.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Big birthday wishes to you, Darnell!!
-Kelly

Fusion Challenge: Congrats, Gorgeous!

 
Welcome to another fun Fusion Challenge! It was awesome joining with CAS(e) this Sketch last week and seeing all the joint projects in the gallery. This challenge is back to "normal" and I've gone with a fusion of the photo (blue stripes, red flowers) and the sketch. The double-sided paper is from Heidi Grace, "congrats" die from Papertrey Ink, and flower/"gorgeous" from Winnie & Walter.

After I put together the sketch elements, it felt a little ungrounded, so I ran it though the sewing machine at the end of the point. That seemed to work.
 

Unfortunately, we are saying "good-bye" to Cathy Weber on the Fusion Challenge team and will miss her gorgeous creations. Best of luck to you, Cathy!! 
 
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

Winnie & Walter Share the Love: Distress Inks & Stenciling

Hi folks! If you haven't heard, this week at Winnie & Walter is all about having fun playing with Distress Ink. Each day is a fun new challenge, and each challenge has *prizes*!! Today's challenge is to use Distress Inks with a stencil or mask.

For this project I used Mowed Lawn, Wild Honey and Peacock Feathers Ranger Distress Inks, an alphabet stencil that I found in an estate sale a few weeks ago, the negative potty people cut from Leave it to Dad, and my sponge.

For the background, I sponged the ink through the stencil. Because this is a thick stencil (it's from the 1980's) I couldn't use the ink blender pads. Instead, I used an airy sponge with a lot of give so it will get into the cracks of the stencil. Afterwards, I used the sponge to lightly go over the same areas so there wasn't such a stark contrast. Finally, I sponged black ink through the negative space from the potty people.

The "Missing You" sentiment is from Parentville Extras and the funky outlined and filled squares on the bottom are from Scenery: Big, Bang, Bling.  

Sure hope to see you in one of the Distress Ink challenges on Winnie & Walter this week! There are lots of ideas and inspiration flying around there. Give it a try : )

Thanks for looking!
Kelly