happy bird-day

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge EIC85, is BEE Things, an Etsy shop that sells limited edition silk-screen prints. These are wonderful graphics on a number of subjects, but many of them were birds. I was inspired by this Bluejays notebook, although the bluejay sort of morphed into a bluebird in my card.

I used a bird from Inkadindadoo, and used CPS sketch 164 for the card. It's a 6 1/2 by 3 1/4 inch card, for a "regular letter" envy. Sentiment is from Endless Creations. I used a variety of markers to color the flowers (including the darker silk flower, which I colored with an SU marker).

Travel Off the Wall

There's a new challenge being held at the blog called Off the Wall Craftiness. The challenge for this week, OTWC3, is to create something with a travel theme. This took some craftiness on my part, as I don't really own any travel related stamps, such as planes or cars. I do, however, have a lot of postal/passport cancellation stamps, so I created a page stamped with several of those, kind of like a really well-used passport page. That's layered on top of a strip from a highway map (bonus points if you can figure out where that snip of map is from).

I found a cute little charm of a train that fit the theme, and this sentiment is somewhat travel-related.

I used CPS sketch 163 to create this card.

Postal/passport stamps are from Third Coast, sentiment is from All Night Media. I used several different color inks for the passport stamps and SU Forest Foliage for the main sentiment.

Fresh and Etsy

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge EIC84 is Cose Dolci, a shop that sells items made or embellished with felt. I was inspired by the plate embellished with felt pears.

The card is also for this month's SmART Words Challenge. The word is "fresh," and "fresh fruit" is really my favorite food in the entire world.

The pear is stamped in acrylic paint -- painted with a spong brush in a very light layer on the solid stamp, then stamped on paper. I used several different colors to capture all the wonderful colors that pears turn. The chipboard pieces were sanded and sponged with ink. I didn't have any way to do felting, so I added rafia and ribbon to add some texture, even if it's not felt texture.

Mini sweets and yummy stuff, EIC83

This week's shop for Etsy Inspired Challenge EIC83 is called the Mouse Market, and it sells miniature food items, mostly for dollhouses, I think, but also jewelry such as earrings. Talk about cute stuff!

My card was inspired by the rainbow bright ice cream cones, which are really tiny little ice-cream-cone earrings. I used the SCS sketch for today.

Stamps are from Studio G, colored with pencils and OMS. The ice cream cone paper came in a goodie-pack from a friend in a Yahoo group -- that was the only piece in the entire stack of 1/4-page sheets (a stack about 1/2 inch tall). It was only a partial piece and just fit into the sketch, talk about luck.

Those ice cream treats look yummy, wish I had one to eat about now (LOL).

CPS162

Do you have images you love, but can't figure out a good way to use? That's how I feel about this collage cat image from Third Coast. I think it's the large, squarish shape that's hard to work with., especially for an A2 card.

By modifying CPS sketch 162 a little, I was able to make it work. The image is stamped on a piece of polished stone (found stashed in a drawer). It's popped up over the three strips of metallic gold paper. The typewriter keys are from a piece of printed paper (also found stashed in a drawer), cut out and covered with several coats of diamond glaze.


What do you think -- Does it work?

EIC82

Etsy Inspired Challenge for this week, EIC82, is Until It Ends Studios, which makes cute jewelry and other assorted items out of beads. My inspiration was this ladybug necklace.

I went super CAS on this one, calling on my favorite ladybug stamp and favorite technique -- paper piecing. I chose red and white gingham print for the ladybug's wings to go with the ribbon. The ladybug is embossed with black detail EP. Add a scalloped circle and a simple sentiment and you've got this card.

Sentiment is from Purple Onion Designs, ladybug is an old StampCraft stamp.