Only One Week Left

Hi all.

You've only got until April 30th to order the justjohanna special deal of the month. You get the happy birthday sentiment, the pop top present (not pictured), Flo (the bird), soft serve cap and long bracket frame all for less than $25! Check out the special deal here. Treat yourself. You deserve it.

Wonder Years paper

On my last post, I introduced you to a little bit of the Wonder Years paper created by Stephanie DosReis for Daisy D's. Let me say that that paper is bright and funky and fun to work with. There are so many different fun areas to each piece of 12x12 paper. This first card was made with 4 or 5 different papers. One of the papers has these squares of fish and I thought they would look cool on a card just as they are. The big zig zag cut from the paper. Cool, huh? This second card was made with a piece of the pink and purple paper for the card base. I then stamped Frosting Only on another sheet of the paper and cut it out. On yet another piece of paper, there is a hand-drawn birthday cake with a bunch of candles on it, so I cut out a candle and put it on the cupcake. The sentiment was stamped and then cut apart. I like doing that. Ok, so then there is this other piece of paper with all these big birds on it. I had a really hard time cutting into this paper because I wanted to keep all the birds, but this one just spoke to me. After piecing the background with two different papers (blue and green) I cut out the big bird. Then I cut out the banner from another piece of paper. I thought the bird needed something, so I dug into the button bin. I didn't think too hard about it, I just got out a bunch of buttons and adhered them with glue dots. The eye is made up of two stacked buttons. I stamped Candace on yellow paper and cut her out. I used the flames/grass for the bottom. This last card is pretty simple. I used two pieces of the Wonder Years paper and then used a piece of lace (from my Special Edition kit) and a piece of baby rickrack I got from the Cupboard. Then I stamped, colored and cut out the birdie cake and ahered it with pop dots. I stamped the sentiment and done. This Wonder Years paper is fun a versatile to use. There are papers that are bright and some are subdued, like the ones on the last card. Oh, and the papers are two-sided, so that's fun, too. Click on over to the Daisy D's site to buy some paper and then go to Stephanie's site and say hello.

April Sketch

Every month, justjohanna has a newsletter sketch. You can see the sketch here. These two cards are my take on the sketch.

On the first card, I used some of my embellishments that were left over from my special edition kit . I used some ribbon, rick rack and the seam binding paper. The buttons are from my button bin. The paper is called "Wonder Years" from Daisy D's paper and is designed by Stephanie DosReis.

The second card is from the same sketch. I used some of the same Wonder Years paper. The square is a 2x2 piece of Stampbord. I inked it up with my Versamark chalk inks to match the paper and then stamped the jj image on it with my Versafine ink. After it dried, I used my scratch knife to scratch the "sing" part so it would be white and stand out.

WE HAVE A WINNER!

The winner of my GO GREEN challenge for Earth Day is Sarah Schwerin from Australia! You can see her dandy green card here. Sarah wins one of the limited edition justjohanna earth day stamps and will be entered into the grand prize drawing for $250 to spend in the justjohanna store! Good luck, Sarah! Did you have fun participating in all the challenges? I know I did. I only got 12 of the 20+ challenges done, but I had a great time using up scraps and bits of nature to make my cards. I can't wait til next year! If you want to see all the cards made for Earth Day, click HERE. There are 13 pages of cards there. Wowee! Hope you join us next year.

Go Green!

Hello, everyone! Here is my challenge for the justjohanna Earth Day Challenge: GO GREEN! All you have to do for this challenge is to make a card and make it GREEN! If you have justjohanna stamps, use them. If you don't, then use something else. Just have fun with the greens. My first card was made using a handmade background (thank you, Julie) and the justjohanna eiffel tower and grass stamp. This second card was done using the flora hugabundus and the Big Rosie (butterfly) stamps. I even used some recycled green stamps for the flower stems. Now you go and make something GREEN, post a link in the comments section of this post and tell me where you have your card posted. You can link back to your blog or you can post your card in the justjohanna Earth Day Gallery. If you post in the jj gallery, make sure you put a post here and let me know it's there. The Earth Day festivities end at midnight, Sunday, April 20th, so you have lots of time to participate in my challenge and the other challenges as well. Check the jj forum for the other challenges and have fun! I will be drawing one winner for my GO GREEN challenge after midnight tomorrow and that person will win the limited jj stamp pictured below. Then ALL the participants from ALL the challenges will be entered into one big drawing for the prizes listed below. Have fun and go make something GREEN!

Spend Earth Day with us!!

Join the justjohanna team as we celebrate Earth Day on Saturday, April 19th! The DT members will be posting challenges on each of their blogs. Participate and you can win! A random winner will be drawn for each blog challenge to win an exclusive justjohanna Earth Day stamp like the one pictured here and here. In addition, the names of all the people who participate in the challenges will be pooled for another drawing.

• One winner will receive $250 in justjohanna stamps
• One winner will receive $50 in justjohanna stamps
• Five winners will receive a 25% discount coupon when they place ajustjohanna order

All you have to do is create a card for the challenge and leave a comment with a link to your creation. You can enter any or all of the challenges as many times as you like until the cut off at midnight (PDT time) on 4/20.

The challenges will also be posted on the justjohanna forum. You will have to check the justjohanna forum for times and places of each challenge. There will be a separate gallery for all Earth Day challenge projects! Sign up on the forum now so that you can participate fully and be kept up-t0-date on all the day's goings on. You won't want to miss a thing!

April Full Tart

I made the mistake of taking my second Claritin-D around 6pm tonight and so here I am at quarter to four in the morning still ready to make more cards. I guess I won't be doing that again. This is my first month subscribing to the Lime Tart monthly kits and I LOVE IT! I got the April kit a week ago but hadn't had time to make anything with it until tonight. I guess taking that Claritin helped out tonight because I got a bunch of cards done. I had a slow start, but I opened up my recent copies of Cards magazines and lifted a couple of layouts and I was on my way. Let me tell you that these papers in this kit are so freakin' cool! Some of the papers are reflective and shiny and I love that. The first card up there was fun and easy to make. Isn't the background paper cool? Just a bunch of leaves and branches. That paper is two-sided, too. I just stamped the short house on a couple of different colors of cardstock from the kit, paper-pieced it and that's it. The sign was made from the bunch of alphabet rub-ons in the kit and the pink flowers were cut out from a piece of the scalloped-edge paper in the next card. The sign looks crooked, but it's not. It's my dumb scanner. The second card was fast and easy, too. The paper is 12x12 and is scalloped. I cut a 4.25" strip from the edge and adhered it to the A2-sized card base. I love these colors. The heart was cut using a QuicKutz die and paper from the kit. The paper is embossed and feels so neato. I backed the heart with a bit of cardstock and adhered it to the bg paper. I stamped Al with white pigment ink on brown cardstock and embossed with glacier white embossing powder. I cut him out and adhered him to the card. The sentiment was stamped and embossed the same way. The FABULOUS card was the easiest card to make. The background paper is lovely, but I thought it needed something extra, so I added some irridescent Stickles to the dots on the bg paper. The FABULOUS image was stamped using Brilliance ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I used one of the round clips and put the bird on the clip and that's it! You really should see the bg paper in this next card. The green leaves are shiny. Kind of foil-like. It's gorgeous. I didn't want to cover up a lot of this paper, so I just put a piece of that fantastic ribbon across the front, stamped my sentiment with VersaMagic ink and added a thin strip of the card base cs underneath. I added the dragonfly from the kit and some gems from the kit and that's it. This background paper is fantastic, too. I just can't say enough about the paper in this kit. I probably sound like a commercial for Lime Tart (you're welcome, Philippa!), but I really mean what I'm saying. This paper is great quality and it's two-sided, too. The wide green strip and the green strip next to the brown strip on the right are shiny green. So cool! I copied this LO from Cards, but added my own twist to it. I didn't have a circle for the center, so I got into my chipboard bin and got out the outer circle of the flowers and painted it to match the pink in the paper. What you can't really see is that there is a piece of clear plastic on the back (under the bird) of the pink ring. The 12x12 white grid sheet is included in the kit. I added some gems, the lovely brown ribbon and a sentiment and I was done. This last card was the most fun to make. Again, another LO from Cards magazine, with slight modifications. See how I used another one of the chipboard circles again? I believe in using scraps whenever I can. The "HI" is from letters included in the kit. The card behind the "HI" circle is one of about 6 journaling cards in the kit. I'm hoarding the rest of them. lol I added the bird and a little gem for an eye and voila. Oh, I meant to tell you about the ribbon. It is a beautiful brown grosgrain ribbon with an embossed almost puffy-paint-feeling design on top. There's about a yard of it in the kit, so I even have some left over for more cards. All of the stamps used on these cards are by justjohanna and you can find them in the justjohanna store. If you haven't already, go check out Lime Tart. You gotta order the kits early, though, they sell out fast! Give it a go at least once. If you're a paper lover like me, you will not be disappointed. This commercial brought to you by me, 1of2shoes, and no one else. No one paid me to say anything nice about stuff that wasn't really fantastic in the first place.

Coloring Crazy

I started catching up on my recorded tv shows last night and I like to keep my hands busy doing something while I watch, so I got out some images and I colored. This first one is a stamp by The Stamp Barn in Ottawa, Canada. My friend, Jennifer, surprised me with it awhile back and I haven't posted anything I've done with it yet, so here it is. When I see this image, I always think of California poppies, so that's what I colored. I forgot to keep out the pencils I used, so I couldn't tell you what colors I used. Oops. This is a large image, almost A2 size, so it makes for a nice card front. I thought it needed a little something, so I pop-dotted a sentiment (from Michael's $1 bin) to the front. My scanner hates 3D objects, so the scan is blurred around the sentiment. I keep saying I'm going to get another scanner, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe when I finally throw this one out the window.... This next card is an old PSX image. I love their botanicals. I wish they hadn't gone out of business and wish I could afford to buy more of the old images. I only own four PSX botanical images. Amazing, isn't it? I usually go crazy with the stamps, but these stamps go for a pretty penny on the 'bay. Anywho, back to the card. I colored this image with my Prismas and again, forgot to keep out the colors so I could blog them. I never decide which exact colors I'm going to use ahead of time. I start out with a base color and a general idea of my colors, and then just grab pencils and go for it. Sometimes the colors work and sometimes they don't. The beauty of Prismas is that you can blend in the bad colors and no one will ever know. This image reminds me of Hawaii. The leis over there are made with plumerias and they smell sooooo good! I have a few posts to catch up on. I was tagged by Philippa over on The Twisted Lime, and then I was given a cool award by Becky, over on the Domestic Briefcase.

Pucker Up!

I don't venture over to Split Coast Stampers very often, but a few days ago I did. I happened across a card there that I fell in love with - the pocket card. Check out the gallery here. You can make the cards in this A2 size either landscape or portrait, or you can do the pockets in other shapes, too. Here's a tutorial, but I'm going to tell you how I made mine. I just got these new stamps from justjohanna and wanted to make something with them and this pocket card seemed just the thing. Here are the stamps I used: Pitcher, lime-ade , lime slice small, lime slice medium, lemonade sign and sentiment, Pucker Up. I knew I wanted to use the lime slices as the background. I took my sunny yellow dye ink pad from CTMH and inked up a 4.25x11" piece of cardstock. I did the front and back. Then I stamped the slices all over the front and back with the grass green CTMH inkpad. After the ink dried, I folded the cardstock in half, so that I now had an A2 sized card. With the fold on the bottom, fold down the front piece of cardstock to make a flap. Make it whatever size you want. Whatever looks good to you. It's not rocket science. My flap is 1.5". Don't adhere the flap down just yet. I hit my ribbon stash and got a coordinating ribbon and tied it around the flap only. Now adhere the flap to the card base. I cut a piece of white cardstock to 3.75x4.75". I inked the edges and stamped "Pucker Up" near the top left center. I stamped the pitcher glasses and sign onto white cardstock and colored these images with my Prismacolor pencils. On the glasses and the pitcher, I used my Sakura glitter pen and immediately put some Crystal 3D lacquer on top of the sparkly parts and let that dry. After those things dried, I cut them all out and adhered them to the white card. I cut out the lemonade sign and backed it with some coordinating orangy cardstock and mounted it to the flap over the ribbon. Slide the card into the pocket and voila! You're done. If I hadn't stamped my own background paper, I could've done this card in a lot less time, but then I am not known for doing things the simple way. I did make a second card with the other piece of 4.25x11" stamped cardstock, but you don't get to see it. It's sad. So sad. As always, thanks for stopping by and checking out my stuff.