When life gives you lemons

I made this card for Off The Wall Craftiness Challenge 8. The inspiration piece was a variety of shower (as in bridal or baby shower) related pictures. One of the photos was of a nice closeup of lemonade with lemon slices in it -- hence this card.

I used card positioning system sketch CPS168 for it. The stamps are by Flourishes, colored with pencils and OMS. The only embellishment is a few snips of grosgrain ribbon, but I wanted to keep it sunny and light, just like the inspiring lemonade.

Vintage look

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge EIC88 is Creation Designs, an interesting shop that sells a variety of vintage-inspired designs, including windchimes made from spoons and other old items.

I was inspired by this vintage-looking crocheted flower. Creation Designs's flowers are made out of acrylic wool, but several months ago, I crocheted some myself, using linen embroidery thread I scooped up on clearance at Hobby Lobby.

Since the CAS challenge at SCS was to create a shabby chic card, I combined the two challenges. I used an Anna Griffin floral background stamp with Memories Soft Rose ink to create the top panel; the bottom is a piece of printed paper that looks like eyelet lace fabric. The ribbon is a piece of vintage ribbon I got at a yard sale, and I colored with by sponging more soft rose ink on it. For the "shabby" part I sponged the edges with still more Soft Rose ink.

Owl post

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness Challenge #7 was simple and direct -- use a bird on your card. I decided to pair this cute owl (a digi freebie from Pollycraft) with this week's Card Positioning System sketch (CPS167). The sketch called for little do-dads in all the corners, so I added some leaf-shaped brads. Sentiment is from Purple Onion Designs.

The owl is colored with pencils and OMS. (Don't know what it is about owls, but there sure are some cute owl images out there, don't you think?)

(Harry Potter fans out there will recognize the title.)

Poppies

When I saw the "word" for this month's SmART-Words challenge was "flowers" I was already mentally going through my huge array of flower images. I'm going to bet I'm not alone in owning dozens of floral stamps. And I keep looking at more.

I spent part of the weekend playing with the techniques from the newest Technique Junkies Newsletter. They all looked so easy on paper, but I didn't have much success with several. I tried the one called Metallic Parchment a few times, as I've seen lots of cards done with it, and it looks stunning. I was reasonably happy with my second attempt, and decided to use it for this card. To complement it, I turned to this recently acquired poppy digistamp, which I got from Bird's Blog (she does freebies quite frequently). I colored it to match the Metallic Parchment colors (poppy doesn't grow around here, and I've only ever seen red poppies in pictures) so the colors may not be botanically correct. I picked up the gold metallic from the "parchment" with gold ribbon and cording and a very thin border from a gold pen around the main image panel. The button dropped out of the box when I was cleaning up the stamping area and it matched -- it seemed like I just had to incorporate it somehow.

Etsy-inspired summer dress

This week's Etsy Inspired shop, EIC87 , is Lindsay Brackeen, who does absolutely adorable, whimsical prints for children's rooms. She has prints for each letter of the alphabet, and I was inspired by her pieced dress for the letter D. So I paperpieced this dress (for a slightly more mature figure than Lindsay's dress). The stamp is by Endless Creations, and it's highlighted by small gemstones at the neck and along the right side.

I used this week's SCS sketch challenge. The papers are from My Mind's Eye -- funnily enough, the name of the blue-flowered print (used on the horizontal strip) is "summer dress."

I finished it off with some paper piercing, although I've lost the plastic needlework grid (high-tech, high-class equipment!) I use for spacing and the guide I was using was harder to work with. It's metal and you can't see thru it, so the lines kind of ended up wonky.

Hummingbird

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness challenge OTWC6 is to use the colors turquoise and lime green. The inspiration piece was pictures of a peacock. I don't have any peacock stamps, so I used a hummingbird from Impression-Obsession.

The colors might be a little dark -- the ink is Stream by Ranger, and it's as close to turquoise as I could find. The ribbon, however, is perfect. It's lime green on one side and turquoise on the other. (My son is on the school robotics team, and we were at a competition -- some other team had used the ribbon on their handouts, and I scooped up a couple extra that were left after the event, because I like the ribbon. I consider it recycling.

The sketch is from this week's CAS challenge at SCS. Blue layer is embossed with the Swiss Dot folder, green layer has an edge cut with a decorative scissors.

Bear with me...

I do a couple of COTMs with various Yahoo groups, and the theme for one this month is "bears". You can use either wild bears or the teddy kind. I basically own one bear stamp -- of this cute koala. It's from the very first grab bag of unmounteds I ever purchased, the day I discovered UMs and realized how much I'd save if I started using them. I think it's by Impression Obsession.

I used this week's Card Positioning System sketch, CPS 165. The paper is also from long ago, and I don't know who makes it, either. Image is colored, very lightly, with pencils and OMS.

The card came out reasonably, cute, I think, even if I wouldn't have used the bear except I had to. As always the CPS sketch is a good one to keep in mind for the future.

Good Day Sunshine

This week's Etsy Inspired challenge EIC 86, takes us to an Etsy shop called Isabell's Umbrella -- I'm not really sure where the name came from, as Isabell sells notecards and other graphic items that are adorned with the cutest images. My inspiration was the "Send a Smile Note Card."

I used this cute sun by Michelle Perkett from a Faerie Song plate of her designs. The center is paper-pieced with a a piece from the Making Memories stack called Eliza (the blue gingham is from it, too.) The rest of the image is colored with pencils and OMS. Sentiment is computer generated. I got those big brads at a consigment sale last week and they seemed a good finishing touch.

I'd rather fall in chocolate

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness challenge #5 is to use dark brown ("chocolate") and red. I used chocolate images as well. This is from a Club Stamp set, and I love that sentiment -- yes, let me fall in chocolate!

It's pretty self explanatory. I love those itty, bitty pearls and I'm almost out of them.

The ink is Chestnut Roan chalk ink from Colorbox.