Something new for 2010

See that button up there? At the top of the posts and below the header. Yes, that button. It's a brand new website my friend, Nicole, made. It's all about going through the alphabet, a fortnight at a time, throughout 2010. We're starting with A and going all the way through Z, baby!

Check out Nicole's blog. She tells you all about A-Z in 2010. Click HERE first, then HERE.

Then click the button up there. There are some amazing ideas there. Go to the Groups and see what categories you can plan with. There's even a template to help you plan out your letters. Sound fun? Confusing? Tempting? Click the button!

Get your butt, and your family's butts, off the couch. Go have an Adventure. Bottle your own wine. Catch a fish. Deliver meals to seniors. Elevate your feet. Fly a kite! Get the idea? There are lots of things you can do to enrich your lives over the next year by going through the alphabet. Leave me a comment if you decide to do this. I'm really interested to see how many people join me in this endeavor. Rock on! 2010 is going to be awesome!!!!!

Winter Box

Hi everyone! I'm really getting into this winter season. I'm so so happy that it is raining here. Southern California is always in a drought-state, so any rain we can get is welcomed. We really do live in a desert, so it doesn't rain much ever. But enough about the rain already.

These stamps are from the Winter Wonderland collection over at the Paper Garden Projects store. Aren't they just the cutest? I got these cute little boxes from the Dollar Tree store. This was a super easy project. I measured the box. Each side was 2-3/4" square. I cut a strip of the striped paper from the Frosted Winter paper kit and used a dark red piece of paper from the same kit for the lid. I'm sure there must be an easier way to make the lid from one piece of cardstock, but I couldn't figure it out. Just one of those days.

I stamped the images on white cardstock as well as on colored cardstock. I paper-pieced the images on the white cardstock and then cut out the whole image and adhered it to the box with tacky glue. I accented the snow and colored the faces with Copics. I added some dimension to the box lid with some Liquid Pearls. See? Wasn't that easy? Oh and I tied it off with a simple bow. Ta da! Try one for yourself. This would be a great way to wrap a box in a unique way for that special gift for someone.

Oh and the secret word is CRUNCHY!

Have fun at the blog hop!!

It's Winter

It's winter and what better way to celebrate than to make a card. Hey, any excuse for me to make a card is good in my book. This card uses the Frosted Winter paper kit from Paper Garden Projects. I love, love, LOVE the papers and embellishments in this kit. I especially love the colors. The stamp I used is one from Eat Cake Graphics in a set called Winter Wonderland at PGP. There are three stamps in the set and this is just one of them. Images were colored with Copics. The snow was done with white opal Liquid Pearls with glitter sprinkled on while the liquid pearls was still wet. Card is 5x7. Cuttlebug swiss dots embossing folder used for the blue background piece. Come back tomorrow to see the next cute project I made with the other two stamps from this adorable set. See you then!

The Knitted Purse

I've been on a hat kick lately. Ever since I took the knitted hat class at Yarning for You in San Marcos, I've been making hats like crazy. This is one I started and about two-thirds of the way through, it became a purse. Why? Well look at that sucker! How many people do you know who have a melon big enough to fit in this hat?! It was a huge calculation error on my part. I cast on 99 stitches (!) for a size large hat. Well, let me tell you something sister, that is one LARGE hat! So as I'm about to frog it, (rip it out - RIBBIT), Cindy says I should make a purse out of it. So instead of wasting all that time and effort that I had already put into it, I made a purse.

When it is closed up, you can definitely tell it used to be a hat. It's just shaped that way. Instead of going through the rest of the decreasing rows to make the top of the hat, I continued knitting even and added the second color for the top of the purse. The darker color yarn is what was left over from making Tony's beanie that I didn't take pictures of, darn it.

I made the I-cord with the same yarn as the hat. There are two I-cords that I wove opposite in the gusset. The gusset was made by doing a pattern my niece, Danielle, showed me. You knit the row, but you do a yarn over with each stitch. That means there are double the amount of stitches on the needles. Then the next row, as you knit it, you drop off the yarned over stitch. That makes a big opening in the row. That is what I used to thread the I-cord through. I'm sure there are better ways, but I am a beginning knitter and that is what I thought to do. Here is what the purse looks like all opened up. You can see that I threaded the I-cords opposite in this picture. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with the ends of the I-cords, so instead of just tying them together, I stacked some buttons and tied it off. It gives it a little weight and interest, I think.

I do have to line the purse. Since it didn't start out as a purse pattern, the bottom of the purse here is a ribbed pattern meant for the bottom of hats/beanies and is stretchy. I'll sew a nice fabric liner and put it inside so the purse doesn't stretch out.

I'm going to be making baby hats and booties for my next projects. Two people I know are having babies, so I'm thrilled to be able to knit something for them.

PGP blog hop today!!

Take a stroll through the blogs of all the Paper Gardeners and enjoy some wonderful Holiday inspiration. While you visit, subscribe to each Gardener's blog and take note of each designer's name and their special treat listed in their blog post. once you finish your garden tour, send an email to custserv@papergardenprojects.com with the list of designers and their special Holiday treat. Everyone who sends the correct list of designers and treats will be entered in a random drawing to win one of 3 prizes. You need to send an email to the address above; please don't leave your list as a comment. You have until midnight (EST) on Nov. 24th to make your list and check it twice... The first prize is a festive collection of Holiday paper crafting goodies. The prize includes:

• The Classic Christmas Prism Cardstock Collection
• A Penny Black Jolly Follies clear stamp set
• Green self-adhesive rhinestones
• May Arts red grosgrain ribbon
• May Arts tan twill ribbon
• May Arts white rickrack ribbon
• A collection of coordinating dew droplets and buttons

The second prize is a $7 gift certificate to the Paper Garden Projects store.

The third prize is a $5 gift certificate to the Paper Garden Projects store.

So put on your walking shoes and go for a garden tour (or just stay in your jammies - we won't tell). Here is the garden tour guide list:

Mellissa (Mel)

Tracy

Debbie (you are here)

Amber

Lorelie

Tangii

Tricia

Cathy

So here is my project. I love House Mouse and I love making cards with those cute little mousies. I decided to make a Christmas card and the thought of a window card just popped into my head.

I stamped the image onto a laser transparency sheet with black StazOn ink. I believe StazOn is the only ink that stamps clearly on transparencies. You can use Versafine but you will have to emboss it because it will take FOREVER to dry, if it dries at all. Water-based inks don't give me a clear enough image, so I use StazOn.

Since I was going to use my Copics to color this image, I had to color on the back of the stamped image. If I colored on the front where I stamped the image, the alcohol from the image and the alcohol from the Copics would've just blurred and combined and made a mess of my pens. Besides, if you color on the back of a stamped image, you can color without worrying about covering up any of the fine lines of the image. Nice!

I used my Nestabilities to cut out the green scallop for the front. Then I adhered the front cardstock and then temporarily adhered a piece of cardstock for the back of the front of the card. Using the next size down of the Nesties, I cut a hole in the front of the card. Remove the center hole and use it for another project. Remove the inside cardstock that has been temporarily adhered to the inside front of the card. Adhere the transparency to the card front, centering the image in the window. Now completely adhere the inside front of the card. This makes a transparency "sandwich" and makes the inside of the card clean. Then I adhered my green scallop to the front around the opening window.

I then stamped the sentiment to the front using some rickrack and some pearls. I also used some Copic Spica pens to the sentiment to make it a little sparkly. I think every card needs a little sparkle, don't you? Oh, I almost forgot - I also stamped the little candies and the other sentiment from the stamp set on the right front inside of the card.

I hope you liked my project and I'll leave you with my "Name" and "Treat" for the blog hop prize:

Debbie - Shiny Ornaments

Collect all the participants info and email it to Cathy, the owner of Paper Garden Projects - custserv@papergardenprojects.com . She'll enter you into the drawings. :)

Supplies: Stamps - House Mouse Christmas clear stamp set Paper - Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses Pearls - Lush Green Velvet Ribbon - Sage Green Copic Spica Glitter pens - Red, Green, Black (from the A set) Copic Markers - R14, R29, E21, E33, E47 and Colorless Blender (for fixing mistakes)

Thanks for stopping by. I hope your enjoy your Walk through the Paper Gardeners' websites. See you later!

Brick Wall Technique

I decided to try this Brick Wall technique after I saw Nicole's gorgeous card. She used the technique from SplitCoastStampers. It looked easy enough so I thought I'd give it a go.

Sure thing, the technique was easy enough, I just had to find an image I was happy with. Whenever I need a tall-ish image, I go for this one. It's about 5" tall and works well to fill up the front of a card. The stamp is from Ink Blocks. I don't even know if they are in business anymore. The finished size of this card is 5x7.

The image was stamped on printed paper and then colored with prismacolor pencils. I drew the brick pattern on the back of the image, cut it out, ran it through the Xyron and then mounted it on the brown cardstock and finished it off.

That makes it sound so simple and fast, but it really took me a couple of hours to make this card. It's hard to make a fast card. At least it is for me.

Thanks for stopping by today!

CPS Sketch #141

Whenever I lose my crafting mojo, I head over to a sketch site and do a sketch challenge. Today, I headed over to the Card Positioning Systems Blog to participate in their current sketch. I'm so happy it was a simple one! I just needed to get a card done, not have angst over how I'm going to interpret a sketch.

I used two of the images from the House Mouse clear set: cute little mousie and the candy stamp. I stamped the mouse first, then masked it and placed the candy along side the mouse on the right and left. Simple. I need simple.

Then I colored the image with Prismacolor pencils and when I finished I added some glitter to the candy. I wanted the hat to have some dimension, so I used some liquid applique with glitter on top. I heat set it so it would puff up. I used my QuicKutz Revolution to cut out some flourishes out of sparkly white cardstock. I ran the flourishes through my Xyron sticker maker. Simple! I added a few ribbons and was done. Whew! Oh, the paper I used was from the Basic Grey "Eskimo Kisses" 6x6 pad.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Fourth Friday Fun Challenge

There is a new challenge over at the Paper Garden Projects blog: the Fourth Friday Fun Challenge. Each fourth Friday, there will be a new challenge. This one is all about the bling! You can use glitter, rhinestones or pearls. Anything to make your card blingy. If you've been on my blog long enough, you KNOW I love bling. I love anything that sparkles. The first card here was done with a stamp from the PGP store that is, unfortunately, sold out. I stamped with Memento black ink because I decided to color it with Copics. Memento ink is water-based and Copics are alcohol-based, so that's why I chose the ink I did. If I used Versafine, which is an alcohol-based ink, the Copics would've made the ink bleed and the ink would've gotten all over the tip of my Copic pen. Choosing ink is very important when you stamp. I colored the whole image with Copics and then patterned the background. I learned this in the Copic Certification Class: bunch up a napkin and then put some blender solution on the bunched-up end and blot onto the area you want patterned. The more blender solution you use, the more pattern you see and the more color it (the napkin) "lifts" from the area. This is a great way to add texture to animals for fur, for grass, sky, whatever. For bling, I put Stickles on all the green stars. I also used the Copic Spica (speeka) pens on the rest of the image. That part is hard to see, but it really is there. This card was fun to make. I love this witch. She looks like a lot of fun, doesn't she? When I first saw her, I knew she had to have green hair! This image was colored with Prismacolor pencils. Can you tell I popped-out the hat and sleeves? I wanted to make it really pop, but it looked weird when I popped it out further than it is. For the bling, I used rhinestones. I didn't have the orange ones I wanted, so I colored the clear ones. did you know you could use your Copics to color rhinestones? Yep! You can color pearls, too. I color them while they are still attached to the glue strip on the manufacturer's packaging that way I don't get the ink on my project. Here I used two different orange pens to color the rhinestones. Now that I look at it, it may be a bit over-bling'ed. Is that a word? It is now. Over-bling'ed. haha! So, back to the Fourth Friday Fun Challenge... There is a prize! Here is what you get for this challenge: Just look at all this BLING! Woo hoo! So make up your blingy card and follow the directions HERE on the blog post. Good luck and I hope you win some bling! As always, thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate it.

Trick or Treat

Halloween is almost here and I'm not done with my cards yet. Yikes!

I love, love, LOVE this set of stamps that I got from Paper Garden Projects. The stamps in this set are so darn cute. I wanted to make a card without using all the stamps in the set. I only used two of the stamps here: the door frame with light and the hands holding the candy bowl.

I also wanted to stamp on non-white cardstock. I used a light brown cardstock and stamped with Versafine black ink. All stamps were colored with Prismacolor pencils. I used the stamp-a-ma-jig to position the hands in the doorway.

I added some crystal lacquer on top of the light to make it look like glass. For the sentiment, yes, I have stamps that say "trick or treat" but I wanted something different, so I dug into my alphabet box and came up with these cute little stickers. I'm not really a sticker person, but in some cases, I think they look cute.

I'll be posting other cards soon, including one for the Fourth Friday Fun Challenge over at the Paper Garden Projects site.

And now it involves knitting!

I have been so out of the crafting loop lately, it's not funny. Since I had surgery in June, I haven't crafted much. Have had no desire. That's bad because I have so much crap, er craft supplies, that I can't afford to let them sit. For long. Since I've been back to work (end of Aug.) I've been taking knitting lessons from a coworker, Cindy. She's awesome. Very patient and supportive. No, I didn't start out with a scarf. My first project was a vest made from Noro yarn (from Japan) and at $20 a skein, not a cheap first project. More pics on that in a little while. I have completed all but the one front panel of the vest. I've also completed two scarves. This first pic is me sitting outside on the not-so-warm concrete bench outside at work. I'm working on a beanie for Tony. This is my first project using five needles. It really is a pain to use that many needles, but I do like that the beanie will have no seams. The pattern is very simple using a seed stitch, K1, P1 over and over and over for 10"! I'm up to about 6" now, so not long before I can change stitch patterns and start decreasing for the top of the beanie. I'm thinking of making some knitted "dreads" for the top of the beanie. That might be cute, but maybe Tony doesn't want cute. This is Cindy. She's got some homespun yarn here and she is winding it into a ball so she can knit with it. She got a very cool scarf pattern and it calls for bulky yarn, and boy howdy, this is bulky. It's some kind of wool with alpaca mixed in. Turns out after she knit a bit, this yarn is too bulky and hard to really tell what the pattern is, so she opted for another homespun yarn for the body of the scarf and will probably use this for the fringe. Pics later. So that's what I've been up to these past weeks to a month. Knitting. Oh, I do have a card to post, but will post it a bit later today. Just wanted to get the blog moving again. Thanks for stopping by today!

World Cardmaking Day is coming!

World Cardmaking Day is right around the corner on Saturday, October 3rd! What is World Cardmaking Day, you ask? Oh my! It's where all the cardmakers in the whole world get together and make cards. Not only do we make cards, but we follow a schedule of fun challenges. You can even win prizes. Way cool prizes! The challenges are put on by various stamp companies and suppliers. Each hour, there will be a post telling you where to go and that post will tell you what the challenge is. That post will tell you how long you have to complete the challenge and where to post your entry. It's going to be great fun. Check out the prize package offered by the Paper Garden Projects Store. Yowza! All the groups will be updating their links closer to the date and time of the challenge. Each challenge will tell you how long you have to complete the challenge and when the prizes will be awarded.

Bombshell Day

I've been cleaning the craft room today. All day. And I'm still not done, but I decided to take a break and put a few cards together. I made a pile of already colored images and am making cards from those images today. This is an image from Bombshell Stamps. I love this image and I don't usually like western-type stamps. Not only is this image fun to color, but it's easy to cut out, too. I used other Bombshell images for the corners of the card. I stamped the images on black cardstock and stamped with Versamark ink. Then I embossed with Cherry red and cherry scented embossing powder. Sexy, eh? I colored this image with Copics, but I colored it so long ago that I don't know which pens I used. I love Copics almost as much as Prismacolor pencils.

Talk Like a Pirate Day today!

You know what they say about best intentions? Well, there you go. I didn't get around to making a new card, so here are a couple of old cards I made with pirate themes for today's big day.

Thursday cards

Howdy. Can you believe it, I made some cards! My sister sent me some images of some new stamps she bought so I decided to sit down and color some earlier this week. This little fairy girl is so cute. She is a lot of fun to color, too. I can see her in Halloween colors, too. I colored this image with Prismas and a blending pencil. I used lots of Stickles on the wand and swoosh as well as her crown, wings and doodads on her skirt. I had forgotten how much I love Stickles.

These chickens are so darn cute. I thought about making this a happy birthday card, but changed my mind and used the Odd Bird Planet sentiment, You Rock, instead, that way it could be used as congrats or yahoo or whatever. Image was colored with Prismacolor pencils.

The cutest cupcake catepillar I've ever seen. How cute are those cupcakes? I used plenty of Stickles on this image as well. I used clear rhinestones colored with a black marker for his eyes. Image colored with Prismacolor pencils.

Thanks, Donna, for all the images. I love them and will be coloring those cute kitties soon.

OBP Blog Hop

Today is the day for the Odd Bird Planet Halloween Blog Hop!! Say that three times fast. We thought we'd share some fun Halloween images and cards with you today. You can start here or you can start at the beginning of the hop with Karrie's Blog,or just hop around any of the participants blog's here: Karrie Me Diane Godelieve Kathi Laura Marnie Teresa Tiffany Tracy Hop around and check out some cool Halloween fun. It's right around the corner, you know. Yay!

Happy Birthday, Tony!

So today is my son's 29th birthday. I can't believe he is 29 already. Why is it that he gets older and I don't? Of course, he expects to have one of Mom's handmade cards, so I made him one with a cool cat on it because he is a cool cat himself. When I make cards, I stamp the image on a piece of white cardstock intending to cut it out and mat it to the front of a card. While coloring this image, I decided it was going to be a peek-a-boo card. I don't know if that's the technical term (probably not) or just my term, but it means that the image on the inside of the card peeks through the hole in the front of the card. I had a bit of a problem cutting out the hole. If I had pre-planned this card (yeah right), I would've positioned the image so that I could've used one of my big punches, but I didn't do that. I tried to use my Martha Stewart circle cutter, but seeing that I put cardstock on the front and inside of the card, it didn't cut through all three layers for the whole circle so I kind of faked it. In order to make the hole look ok, I used my scalloped nesties to make a border for the hole. I cut the scalloped border twice so the inside and the outside of the hole matched. This is the view of the inside of the card sans the personal birthday greeting to Tony. Probably too mushy for you to read. lol This first picture is with the card sitting on the table in the tented position. Here you can see the whole image through the hole. I got the order of my photos mixed up so the first and last ones are switched. I didn't feel like moving them, I'd rather go make more cards. :) I colored this image with Prismacolor pencils. I'm loving getting back into making cards again and also coloring with my Prismas. It's so relaxing for me, even if I have to sit in the craft room mess. I still have a small area on the craft table for coloring. Thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate it.

Copic Color Challenge #20

This week's color challenge over on the Copic Colour Challenge blog is using these colors: I love these colors together. Once I saw these colors, I knew I was going to use one of my Frida Kahlo images. Plus, I had just gotten some new Lasting Impressions paper at Stamping Details in Poway, so it was a project made to happen. The CCC says that you should use the colors listed if you have them, but if not, then use a color close to what you have that works. You can also add colors to the image, too. I did not have YR68, so I used YR16 Apricot. The other colors I used were:

E51 Milky White

E31 Brick Beige

YG67 Moss

G85 Verdigris

R14 Light Rouge

C7 Cool Gray No. 7

• The leaves were another stamp I used. I used my chalk inks to ink the paper then stamp the image in a darker chalk ink color, and then I used clear embossing powder over the images and cut them out. The green leaves don't match the cardstock very well in this photograph, but they do match in real life. I hate it when that happens.

It was fun doing this challenge. If you participate in the Copic Colour Challenge, drop me a line so I can go check out your card. Have fun!

House Mouse Challenge #43

I had so much fun coloring this image. Granted, I colored it almost precisely as the image on the stamp block, but still... I chose this image because of the weight I am losing every day. This is how I feel when I get on the doctor's scale and the number is lower than the last visit. Yippee!! When I decide to color an image, I usually choose the printed paper first and then match my pencils with the colors on the paper. I didn't do that this time since I kinda copied the colors on the stamp block. I got lucky when I started digging through my paper and found this paper called "Tres Jolie" from My Minds Eye. I love this paper and I was probably hoarding it for some reason that I've forgotten now. Here's a little close-up of the colored image. I used my Prismacolor pencils to color this. I've been using my Copics so much lately, that I've missed my pencils. Coloring House Mouse images makes me feel like I'm coloring an image in a coloring book. I used to LOVE to color and I loved my coloring books. My favorite gifts when I was little were coloring books (no duh) and a brand new box of Crayola 64's. Oh man, I loved the smell of those new crayons. So that's it for today. See you soon with another challenge: The Odd Bird Sketch Challenge. Try it yourself! That blog post will tell you where to post your cards for the challenge. Have fun!

Craft tonight? I think not!

And this is why:

I love him to bits, but when Cheeto gets it in his head that he needs to keep me company in the craft room and lay on my project table, there isn't much I can do. I take him off, he jumps right back up there. He just needs his mommy sometimes, I guess. Whatever. There's always tomorrow.

Monkey Birthday

A little monkeying around. Is this not the cutest stamp? I love it! It's called Birthday Monkeys by Stampavie. So many cute stamps in the Paper Garden Store. The paper used for this card is from Daisy D's and it's called Bambino. Lots of sock monkey printed papers in this 8x8 pad. Lots of polka dots, stripes, solids and lots and lots of sock monkeys. Perfect paper for this stamp, I think.

I colored the image with Copic markers. I didn't keep track of the colors. Sorry. I used my colorless blender to lighten some areas. I outlined the image with C1 cool grey.

I gotta go. I'm craving bananas.

Sisters

This stamp by Leere' Aldrich is called Sisters. Such a fun image to color. I colored it with many color combos before I came up with one I really liked. Image is colored with Copics. The paper is Basic Grey's Porcelain. I love this paper pad! So many great colors and patterns. The brads, ribbon and twine tie are from the Paper Garden Store, too. The twine is from the I Want it White embellishment collection. I colored it with my Copic marker. Heart embellishment is from Michael's.

Father's Day Card

Next Sunday is Father's Day, and Odd Bird Planet is having a big sale on stamps that make excellent guy cards. You can see the list of stamps here. You can buy the stamps mounted or unmounted. The sale runs through June 22nd. For this card I used YOU ROCK and TOOLBELT PLUMBER BIRD. I colored the images with my Copics.

Check it out!

Paper Garden Projects is having a

June Special!

Free US shipping for all orders over $35.00* 20% off Copic Markers 30% off all Clearance Items

*Canadian orders, $7.00 shipping for orders over $35.00

Did you know that the Paper Garden Projects store carries those adorable Anya and Ian stamps?

Also Eat Cake Graphics, Crafty Secrets (my fave), Penny Black and the new Lily and Milo stamps, too!

Take advantage of the free shipping all during June.

Thinking of you

Before I go clean up that horrible crafty mess, I must share a card with you. I made this one yesterday, but never posted it. sigh. Stamps are Thinking of You and Lovely Skull n Bones by Odd Bird Planet.

I stamped the sentiment first and then used my Nestabilities die to cut that out. Then stamped the skull n bones and cut that out. Colored that with my Prismas. Edged that cut-out with my Tuxedo Black ink. Pop dotted that off the front of the sentiment. Cut the black glossy cardstock with the next largest Nestie. Popped that off the front of the card. The ribbon is a gathered ribbon that I got at Michael's awhile back. The sparkly heart brad is from Basic Grey, but it didn't come sparkly. I put Stickles on the front and let it dry.

Besides working with my booty from the Paper Garden Projects store, I'm working on Kathi's red, white and blue challenge for Bombshell stamps over at Paper Craft Planet. She gives all the deets on her blog. Check it out and join the fun!

I can't craft like this!

I have crafted myself into a corner. It's horrible. This is only about 1/4 of the room I craft in. No, you cannot see the rest of it. Actually, the rest of the room is tidy, it's just this section where I sit that's such a mess. I like my supplies handy, but then I use them and then don't put them away. Yikes-a-rooni, I must go clean now or I won't be able to craft tonight.

I got some great stamps and supplies from the Paper Garden Projects store and I can't wait to share them with you, so off I go to clean the mess first. Forget dinner. I have priorities!

Happy Birthday to the Queen of Odd Bird Planet!

Today is Johanna's birthday. Happy birthday, my friend. I hope you have a fantastic day! One Caramelo with a cherry on top is headed your way soon.

Birthday Bag

Hey, have you missed me? I've been in a non-crafting mood, but I feel like I'm coming out of it. Hooray! I think I heard my stamps calling me. Whenever I feel stagnant in the crafting world, I try a challenge, either a sketch or a specific stamps. This project fulfills the Papertake Weekly Challenge for the past week. The challenge was to use dots and stripes in your project. For my entry, I got out my Basic Grey "Cupcake" paper to use with some stamps from Odd Bird Planet. I wanted to do something different than a card, so I went into my "bag stash" and chose a small bag. Ok, so a confession here: I am a gift bag hog. I love the ones you get at the dollar stores. So, do I give many gifts? Well, no. Not a lot of gifts, but I like having lots of choices when I DO give a gift. This bag is 4x7 and I chose it because I could cover the front and the side colors matched the cardstock I chose to use. Check it out below. One side of the bag is green and the other side is orange.

When doing this project, I realized I didn't have the right color of ribbon embellishment to use, so I got out my "I Want It White Embellishment Collection" from the Paper Garden Projects store. This kit is awesome. It comes with all kinds of ribbon and rickrack, prima flowers and dew drops. I used my Copics to color the rickrack in the colors to match my cardstock. One row of rickrack just wasn't enough, so I did three rows. I had some left over, so I used the scraps on my sentiment. I colored the dew drops in the same colors I used coloring the rickrack and the images.

Speaking of coloring the images... Since the BG paper is not a solid print, I wanted my image to match. The colors on the paper are a bit mottled, so using what I learned in the Copics Certification class, I texturized the image. Here's how you do it. Color your image first. Then, using a crumpled tissue and some Colorless Blender Solution, dab it on the image lightly. Put the blender solution on the tissue and then dab the tissue on the image. Let it dry before you dab the image again. The Colorless Blender will lift some of the color and the more you do it, the more color is lifted. Pretty nifty, huh? Check out the image below to see a close-up of my image.

These are all the items I used in this project. Did you know all these items are on sale right now at the Paper Garden Projects store? Oh yeah. From now until May 11th, you can take 15% off everything in the store, including sale items!!

I hope you like my little gift bag. Give it a try, it's fun and easy. Oh, and don't forget to check out the PGP store for some great bargains!

Supplies used:

Copics: Colorless blender, YR21 cream, R14 light YG63 pea green, B16 cyanine blue, C3 cool gray no. 3, C5 cool gray no. 5.

Versamagic ink: Sea Breeze.

Odd Bird Planet Stamps: Happy Birthday and Ellie the Elephant

I Want It White Embellishment Collection

House Mouse Monday Challenge #34

The theme for this week's House Mouse weekly challenge is "Springtime". I thought lots of cardmakers would be making cards with flowers, so I thought this image would be great for spring, too. Whenever the weather gets warm, I always go for the popsicles. My favorite flavor is orange, so that's what I gave these mice. Thanks for the opportunity to enter the challenge. It's always fun.

I used the spotlight technique for this card. It's easy to do. Stamp your image twice. Choose an area on the image that you want to highlight. This would be an area of interest, like the two mice and the popsicle. Color the area on one stamped image. Cut it out with your circle cutter. Since my stamped image is very large, I chose a large circle. If I would've chosen a smaller circle, it would've looked a little silly, I think. So I cut out the circle area and then I used a black marker to edge the circle for a little definition. Adhere the circle to the card. That's it. Try this technique sometime. It's quick and fun.