March Art Journal

I'm posting this a bit late, but it's actually been done for a while.  Instead of doing a daily journal, I decided to do weekly summaries.  To me, March is the beginning of the rest of the year.  Flowers like daffodils and tulips start to send up shoots, trees are forming leaf buds. I don't like winter and March gives me hope.

This page was very simple. I just inked up the background, stamped a couple of images and the rest is doodling with markers

Guest Designer - Scrapbook and Photobook

Hello!  Long time no post.  It's been a crazy year so far.  I finished up another semester as a grad student and then had our reception/housewarming party this past weekend. That was crazy!

Today I am a guest designer over at Getting Cricky with K Andrew.  Be sure to check out her store here.  She has lots of fun stamps as well as huge rolls of bakers twine for just $5 each.  Check out all the colors. I used the green in one of my projects below.

For my guest design, I used her Of Mice and Lil' Men stamp set.

 I thought up lots of ideas using this set.  My husband's family has had horses since before he was born.  They did a lot of fun local shows when he was a kid.  He got to dress up and play cowboy on a real horse.  Young me is green with envy.

For my next project, I added some fun Disney themed stamps to a Disney photo album I have been working on.  They make the perfect embellishments for anything Disney related.  

The cover:

Inside pages:

Back cover:

Recycled Christmas

This week's prompt over at the Jingle Belles blog is Peace on Earth(Day) where we are to recycle materials to make the cards. I chose to use a piece of cardboard for the front and some scraps for the rest. Most of the paper on the cardboard came off, but not all. I like the look. I slapped on some gesso then spritzed with some glimmer mist. The snowman stamp is a $1 one from JoAnn's and the words are from a stamp set by K Andrew. They're all embossed except for the snowflakes. I did follow the Merry Monday sketch from last week, but wasn't able to download the image until today, so it wasn't linked up.




 In other news...my semester is almost over! I have one crazy take home exam and possibly another. It's been a busy semester with working full time and taking two grad level courses. I'll be happy to have my evenings back for the summer and be able to make more crafty things.

The chicks are doing well. I'll be able to move them into their new coop hopefully tonight. We just have to get some hinges and latches on. I don't think I can call them chicks anymore though. They're getting so big. Pictures will come very soon of the coop and the girls.

Christmas Card

This card is for the Jingle Belles Neutral Noel challenge and



The tree and dots are actually embossed with a pretty gold powder, it just came out poor in the photo. I took inspiration from the tree pillow, then found some grungy papers and went with it. I don't think it quite works, but I still think it looks okay.

On a side note, I got chicks today! I've been wanting some laying hens for a few years, but living in apartments hasn't allowed for it. Last summer was so crazy with buying and moving into the house. So now I have some. There are six of them and they are golden comets.

Pink Christmas

The Jingle Belles challenge this week is to make a card using pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The best part of this challenge is that $2 will be donated to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure for every card that is entered. I'm not a big fan of pink, but there's no way I could pass this up. It really was a challenge creating something for Christmas with pink.



For the background I used pink card stock and spritzed it with Tattered Angels pink bubblegum glimmer mist. The tree is from a set from Hobby Lobby. The adorable little deer and text are from K. Andrew's Christmas stamp set. Flowers are Prima's, ribbon from the dollar section at target. All stamps are embossed.

It didn't show up in the picture, but below the deer and tree, I used Tattered Angels chandelier glitter paint. I haven't used it previously and wasn't sure what to expect. I wanted to add some glimmer as snow. Next time I will add a little more definition for the snow first. Maybe do some clear or slightly off white embossing then add the glimmer.

Let it Snow! - a card

I'm not at all ready for winter and am quite enjoying the warmer October weather we've had this week. However, I did finally get my KAndrew Winter Wishes stamps recently. They had a little adventure. Short story even shorter, they spent some time in the ditch across the street from my mailbox. The mailman thinks that the door was blown open and they flew out and spend some rainy cold days in the ditch. Luckily the field had already been harvested and the stamps were well packaged. They were completely undamaged and in perfect condition.



I love these stamps. This is the first, and so far only, card I've made. But I plan to use them a lot for holiday crafting. They stamped so nicely straight out of the package. I wish I could have made the circle a little wider, but that was as wide as my baby bug would allow. Really, I just wanted to make something with these stamps. It actually goes along with last week's Jingle Belles challenge, but I didn't get the time to make it before the deadline.



I also used her stamps for a fun greeting inside.

Jingle Belles Peace Challenge

The theme for this weeks Jingle Belles challenge is Peace on Earth. We are required to incorporate either a peace sign or the word Peace into our holiday card.

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I stamped and embossed the background and the lettering. The bird is from a Lettering Delights SVG file.

Mojo Monday Challenge

I recently came across the Mojo Monday sketch challenge blog. I really enjoy making cards from layouts. Probably because it's one less thing to worry about. I can follow along but still be creative and make it my own. For challenge this week I made another Christmas card.

Birthday Card

This is a card I made for my husband's aunt for her Saturday party. The greeting was stamped and embossed. Most of the paper came from K & Co along with the embellisments. The dragonfly was already printed on a 12x12 piece of paper.

Save the Dates!

Today I sent out the Save-the-Dates for our wedding ceremony and dinner. For the wedding, I'm trying to handcraft as much as I can. Thankfully we're having a small ceremony so I don't have a hundred invites to make. The Save-the-Dates are made with printable magnetic sheets. I was going to print out the text, then stamp and emboss on it, but discovered that ink doesn't take well to the glossy paper. I ended up stamping the image on white paper, scanning it in, then put the image in my template and printing out the entire thing. Each magnet is 4.15" x 2.75".



Then I made a card with slits on it to hold the magnet. I ended up adding a little note saying "It's a magnet" because both of us felt that it wasn't obvious with how thin the magnetic paper was. The outside of the card is stamped and embossed and measures 5.5" x 4.25". A perfect fit for the envelopes I have.



The stamps I used are part of a Fiskars set.

Marion Smith inspired art journal

This project is also being entered in K Andrew's Simply Sunday "All A Flutter Challenge at Getting Cricky.

I've been watching some of the Prima Live videos lately and really love Marion Smith's projects. She made a couple of altered art journals lately and I was inspired to make my own.

The cover is painted canvas art board. The lace was my grandmothers and was spritzed with blue and green Glimmer Mist. It's mostly to hide my chop job on the bottom of the cover. The paper butterflies were cut from one of Lettering Delights doodlebats font. They were inked and the dark green one was embossed. The 'create' was made with rubons, then dabbed with liquid glue to make them stay on the canvas since they wanted to come off.


Below are a few pages that I have complete. There are lots more to do.

The shapes were randomly cut from scrap paper pieces and inked.


Tim Holtz stamps were used for the tag


I love the little owl in the corner and the tree punch I used for the bottom.


My favorite page so far. The bird was hand cut and lightly stamped with black ink then embossed. The quote says "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" by Lori Holtz.

Carved stamps

A while back I participated in a book swap on Craftster. One of the items I sent along was a bookplate stamp shown below for Molly. It's the first and only time I've ever done stamp carving. It wasn't too difficult, but I found it frustrating because it wasn't easy to cover up mistakes. I'm still pleased with how it turned out. The image was stamped onto a piece of foam board then glued to the opposite side.