LOTV - Christmas Wishes...

Good Monday morning, all! I was in the mood to make a Christmas card last week, and especially in the mood for a shabby Christmas card with deeper, Victorian colors. Luckily for me, I just so happened to have the perfect patterned papers for that already on hand.

LOTV's Woodland Wishes paper pad is filled with the perfect colors for what I had in mind...so I made up a card using only papers from that collection. (I know...I hear the surprise all the way out here from some of you...the person who loves the challenge of combining different paper lines into one blended project actually used papers designed to go together. It happens now and then! LOL)

The little tag sitting in the bow is from Set 32, Christmas Sentiment Tags.  This set has become a staple in my Christmas crafting stash...there are so many uses for it. This time, it dangles from a dyed seam binding bow, accented with a small grouping of pearls, as a topper to the open frame die that anchors the front of the card...

The green pine branch is accented with a combo of Flower Soft mixed with clear coarse glitter...I made up a large batch of this last year, and still have half of it left for use this year...

This sweet sentiment is from this year's release of  Set 75, Christmas Wishes ...

  

There are seven layers on the front of this card...but it's not too bulky to mail...

Supplies:

Patterned papers:   LOTV Woodland Wishes collection

Stamps:   LOTV Set 75, Christmas Wishes;   LOTV Set 32, Christmas Sentiment Tags

Punches:   Martha Stewart Doily Lace and Beaded Ruffle

Dies:   Memory Box Tiffany Frame;   Memory Box Star of Wonder;   Impression Obsession Pine Branch; 

Impression Obsession Deer Trio

Laces:   TheFunkieJunkie.com          Pearls:   Recollections

Miscellaneous:   Hug Snug seam binding,  Gold Stickles,  Polar White Flower Soft, Martha Stewart clear coarse glitter

Before I sign off for today, I've got a few fun LOTV announcements to make sure you're aware of. 

On November 22nd, LOTV is releasing 10 new image stamps, and 3 new paper pads...have you been "sneak peeking" with the other Design Team members on their blogs lately?

Then there's this fun offer for those of you who have a few items from existing stock on your shopping list...if you can order by the 19th you can take part in this great promotion! All qualifying orders (see below) placed by 11:59 PM (BST) on the 19th will be entered into drawings for all the new stamps that are releasing on the 22nd of this month, AND a set of the three new paper pads...

And last, but certainly not least, don't forget about this month's challenge on LOTV's Ideas to Inspire blog. The theme is "Merry Christmas"...easy one for this time of year, right? :)  There's still plenty of time to get in on the fun. There are *three* great prizes up for grabs this month, and if we get enough entries, there might even be more! So I hope you pull out your favorite LOTV products for a fun holiday card, and enter it into this final challenge for a chance to win.

Thanks so much for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!

LLLC - It's Cold Outside...

Happy "Hump Day" everyone!

This week, the La-La Land Crafts Wednesday die cut team is working with the theme, "It's Cold Outside."  I chose to illustrate the theme with frosty winter colors...white, pale ice blue, and silver...with a touch of yellow and gold for good measure. It's very sparkly, and as usual, hard to show that feature in a flat photograph ...

The sides of the front are "see-through," with the scalloped Lattice Border Die highlighted with tiny clear crystals up both sides...

Instead of patterned paper on the center front, I embossed the area with Shabby Blue Frantage embossing powder. It's a beautiful mix of white and gold embossing powders, with pale blue extra fine powder that all melts together to give a chilly, wintery-looking surface with sparkle and texture. I cut apart the small snowflakes on the Snowflake Banner die, and glittered each one with clear coarse glitter and touched up with Silver Stickles. The little berries on the  Berry Flourish stems were also coated with Silver Stickles...

The two large centerpiece flowers are made with the Pretty Poinsettia dies...they're coated with Star Dust Stickles...

Supplies:

LLLC Dies:   Lattice Border,  Pretty Poinsettia,  Berry Flourish,  Snowflake Banner

Small flowers:   Wild Orchid Crafts            Yellow stamens:   ChocolateLetters on Etsy

Clear crystals:   Doodlebug Design            

Miscellaneous supplies:  Shabby Blue Frantage embossing powder,  Silver and Star Dust Stickles,

Martha Stewart clear coarse glitter

Thanks for visiting today. Please check out the La-La Land Crafts blog to see what my teammates have crafted for this week's challenge!

Art Journal - Create Everyday...

Good Monday morning, all! I'm taking a deep breath, and jumping in with both feet...and sharing a couple pages from one of my art play journals with you.

I was recently asked why I didn't post any of my journal pages. Short answer? 'Cause I'm a big ole' chicken! :)

I've got a few different art journals going at the same time. Each one has a lot of pages filled with mistakes and unsuccessful experiments -  a reminder of what works on certain types of paper, and what to do/not to do in the future. Each one has different types of papers inside - one filled with heavy kraft cardstock pages - one an old book of poetry with pages glued together and gessoed for future use - one with cold press watercolor paper - and the one I'm sharing today, the newest in the collection, filled with mixed media paper.

My newest journal is going to be filled with mixed media pages that are intended to be mini-canvases of experimental play, and I feel a bit more confident about sharing those now and then. They're not masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought maybe there would be pieces of some that might inspire you to try a similar technique on your own projects.

Enough chatter...on with the photos...this is a 5-1/2"w X 8"h spiral-bound journal...turned on its side for these two pages...

The base of each page is a piece of Tim Holtz "Melange" patterned tissue wrap with a coat of clear gesso in spots, and white gesso in others, over the tissue.  Since I was going to be using molding paste (which dries translucent so you can see base colors beneath it), I applied the Lindy's Stamp Gang color sprays next (I've listed the names in the supplies section beneath the last picture). 

Next I used the Bubbles stencil and applied molding paste. After the paste dried, I shadowed the circles with black Stabilo All pencil, and highlighted inside some of the circles with white Gelato...

I've had this "A" stamp for many years...I think nearly 10! When these letter stamps first came out in wood mounted stamps, I started gathering as many as I could afford...and they're among the stamps I haven't been able to part with through several "purges" of the unused supplies in my room. LOL  I added a couple tiny letter stickers next to the stamped "A" for this page.

Using Archival ink, I stamped a few phrases from Unity's "empowered words" set around the two pages, emphasizing them with the dark crystal arrows...

Taking inspiration from the partially-visible butterfly on the tissue paper beneath it, I punched a few butterflies from a solid cardstock and tied them together with long black upholstery threads (it was after this step that I added strips of different washi tapes around the pages as a final accent)...

Supplies:

Tissue wrap:   Tim Holtz Idea-ology - "Melange"

Washi tapes:   Tim Holtz "Nostalgia" (text);  local craft store - damask

Stencil:   Prima "Bubbles" 12x12

Punches:   Martha Stewart Classic Butterfly and 3-in-1 Butterfly

Stamps:   Stampers Anonymous - "A";   Unity Stamp Co. "empowered words" - phrases

Color sprays:   Lindy's Stamp Gang - Pop Rock Purple,  Caribbean Blue,  Pink Ladies Pink,  Summer Lovin' Sun,  

South Shore Sand,  Frenchy's Pink Pouf

Miscellaneous mediums:   Liquitex clear and white gessos,  Golden molding paste,  white Gelato,  

black Stabilo All pencil

Thanks so much for stopping by for a visit today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!

Cardabilities #110...Happy Everything...

TGIF! Don't you just love knowing the weekend is only one day away?

Today's card is an autumn-bright, shabby little number to end your week with a smile...

The larger pieces of background paper were accented this time using Dreamweavers's Studio 490 embossing paste and a damask stencil. This embossing paste used on its own leaves an almost transparent, shiny pattern once dry - as if you had used clear embossing powder over the design. Initially, I was going to leave it just the way it went on, but after applying the Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays on some of the areas of the front, I decided to run a very light coat of Vintage Photo Distress Ink over other parts of the design to emphasize it a bit more...

I found a beautiful and bright little flower stem in my stash, added a couple more individual striped flowers to it, a few light yellow and light brown roses, and finally a couple yellow stamen clusters...

The sentiment came from a couple different sentiment stamp phrases...a little mixing and matching makes for a perfect fit sometimes...

Supplies:

Patterned papers:   Prima Sunrise Sunset collection

Stencil:   The Crafters Workshop Mini Damask

Color sprays:   Lindy's Stamp Gang - Merry Go Round Green,  Bonjour Butter, and Bayou Boogie Gold

Flower stem and striped flowers:   Prima            Stamen clusters:   ChocolateLetters on Etsy

Roses:   Wild Orchid Crafts          Pearls:   Recollections            Lace:   local craft store

Sentiment stamps:   Fiskars ("happy");   Altenew ("everything")

Miscellaneous:   Studio 490 embossing paste,   cheesecloth,   Vintage Photo Distress Ink

My design is inspired by the current Cardabilities sketch, #110 ...

Thank you for popping in for a visit today...have a wonderful weekend!

LLLC - Getting Krafty...

Good morning! Today's card for La-La Land Crafts is for this week's challenge inspiration - "Getting Krafty" - using kraft colored cardstock.

This was a fun challenge...I like to mix kraft cardstock with other colors, and this time, I chose rich purple. Here's the finished product...

I die cut three various sizes of circles using the Stitched Nested Circles Die Set to "anchor" the floral cluster, and set them to the side of the front before layering lots of kraft and purple flowers cut from the Cherry Blossom Flowers Die set...

Cheesecloth dyed with the same Distress Ink colors as those used on the purple Cherry Blossoms, along with lots of loopy threads, give it a shabby feel...

And finally, a touch of Magenta and Purple Stickles on the berries that are part of the Berry Flourish Die add a bit of sparkle...

Supplies:

LLLC Dies:   Berry Flourish,  Cherry Blossom Flowers,  Stitched Nested Circles

Patterned paper:   7Gypsies

Other dies:   Impression Obsession Bare Branch          Gems:   Doodlebug

Miscellaneous:   Magenta & Purple Stickles;   Seedless Preserves & Dusty Concord Distress Inks; 

thread;   cheesecloth

I hope you'll pop on over to the La-La Land Crafts Inspiration Blog to admire the projects my teammates have made to share with you.  :)

Thanks for visiting today...I hope you're having a wonderful week so far!

LOTV - Mixed Media Happy Birthday...

Happy Monday, everyone! Today's card is a mixed media card using Lili of the Valley patterned papers and stamps...a little twist to the usual style you see from me using the same supplies! :)

I'll start out by showing you the finished project, and then back up just a bit to give you an idea of how it all came together...

It's no secret I love the colors of the beautiful papers in LOTV's  Timeless Victorian paper pad - I've used them so often that I only have small bits of the papers left! But I wasn't about to let any bits of them go unused, so today, they became part of a mixed media card.  I started by gluing two pieces of a couple of the pastel, more solid-looking papers to a piece of 140-pound mixed media paper, and applying a coat of clear gesso over the top. The fun part is that the pieces I used had what appeared to be sprays of watercolor in the print already - perfect for what I had planned to come!...

Next, I used Archival Ink to stamp images from Set 21, Grunge Corners and Set 66, Grunge Elements around the edges of the piece, and used translucent molding (modeling) paste and a stencil to add a subtle textured design. If you look closely on the far right, and along the bottom, you can barely see the texture at this point...

Now it was time to start adding my watercolor sprays...I chose shades of aqua and orchid because those are the colors in the paper line that drew me to it in the first place (and so the bits of paper I was planning to add later would blend!). Now the stenciled texture is becoming more evident...

Next came more spraying, deepening the colors, and adding the sepia spray to accent some of the texture lines. If you look at the finished card, you can see that I later added some shading with a black Stabilo All pencil, highlighted the hearts and a couple of the vertical lines with white Gelato, and deepened some of the lilac-sprayed areas with another coat of color. I got so antsy to start adding embellishments and coloring flowers that I forgot to take a final pic of just the canvas itself. :)

The large rose in the center of the flower cluster was first made in white cardstock using Spellbinders' Rose Creations dies.  I colored it with Lindy's Stamp Gang Tilt-a-Wheel Teal and Sweet Violet Purple Teal sprays...

This time, instead of accenting the floral cluster with pearls as I usually do, I pulled out a baggie of multicolored beads, and glued them in clusters around the edges of the flowers...

I used a few more bits and pieces of the Timeless Victorian papers for small blocks around the sentiment, which is stamped using LOTV's  Set 25, Handwritten Phrases. The sentiment blocks are accented with more of the multicolored mini beads...

The little butterflies are part of Set 66, Grunge Elements - I first stamped them lightly with the black ink, then stamped again with VersaMark ink, and embossed them with a transparent powder that has tiny flecks of colored glitter...just a bit of sparkle...

And finally, down in the lower corner, another cluster of tiny beads as accent...

Supplies:

LOTV Patterned Papers:   Timeless Victorian

LOTV Stamps:   Set 21, Grunge Corners;    Set 66, Grunge Elements;   Set 25, Handwritten Phrases

Stencil:  The Crafters Workshop "Mini Confetti"

Dies:    Spellbinders Rose Creations and Foliage Two;   La-La Land Crafts Cherry Blossom Flowers

Teal roses:   LayoutsFromTheHeart on Etsy            Sweetheart blossoms:   Wild Orchid Crafts

Berry stem:   Petaloo            Lace:   local craft store

Color sprays:   Lindy's Stamp Gang - Pop Rock Purple,  Tilt-a-Wheel Teal,   T-Bird Turquoise,

Sweet Violet Purple Teal,   Sandra Dee Sepia

Miscellaneous:   seed beads,  hemp cording

Thanks for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!