Looking Back

Hi everyone! I hope you had a happy holidays! It's been a whirlwind for us--Christmas, my daughter's eighth birthday, and my sister-in-law's family and brother-in-law's family visiting. It's been a great break. :)

With New Year's a day away, I decided to look back at my blog cards for this year and make a top 10 of my favorites. I haven't done a top 10 list before, but I enjoyed it...it was good to look back and remember making the card, the reason for the card, etc. I'm not sure what was going on, but I didn't have any cards in my top 10 before May. ha ha

Here's my list (in chronological order):

Congrats (AC Digitals)

Have a Magical Birthday for Gallery Idol Round 1 (Robyn Meierotto)

You Get Me (BasicGrey, American Crafts, Pixels & Co.)

Love Machine (My Mind's Eye, Paper Smooches)

Grateful for You (Hero Arts, Technique Tuesday)

Put You In My Pocket (Glitz Design)

Whitewashed Leaves (Paper Smooches)

Cashmere Dame Card Set (Glitz Design)

Oh, Hello There (Lawn Fawn, Creashens)

Joy to You and Me (Glitz Design)

All of the supplies are linked in the original posts.

Thank you for all of your support and comments this year. Sometimes it's hard to blog--I don't like my photo or the project, or I think my post content sounds lame. But, I'm very grateful for the visits and comments--you are very kind. :)

Have a great New Year's Eve! Happy 2014!!

Just Like Bacon...

Hi everyone! I'm excited (and a pretty nervous) to share my card for the Paper Crafts Magazine's Gallery Idol Round 2. The card from Round 1 can be found HERE. I've seen the other entries for this round, and wowee! I'm humbled to be in the Top 20!

On Friday, when I found out the theme, my head was so scattered about how to make a card for defining dad.  I came up with five or six ideas, made a card for one, and decided it wasn't right. I went back to the proverbial drawing board. After flipping through my files, I ran across a digital journaling card from Echo Park with a sentiment. I used the inspiration to make this card:

When I started this card, I had the sentiment in mind and knew I could use one of the bacon stamps from Sizzle On. After playing around with the elements, I couldn't figure out how to get them to work together. Then it hit me to make a rescue plane--I know my dad has come to the rescue on several occasions. ;)

I stamped and colored the plane from Unity and the bacon stamp. After fussy cutting and Xacto-ing the plane, I pinched the stamped banner lines together to turn the bacon into a banner. The bacon should have been flush with the bar, but since it didn't look quite right, I let it trail behind. Here's a close-up:

Yes, I was holding my breath while cutting out the plane and banner! Ha ha

Once I had the plane done, I created a scene in Photoshop. I started with digital patterned paper from the Seafoam collection, and adjusted the hue and the lightness. For the clouds, I recolored and reshaped them, and then layered them on the digital paper. It was a fun way to make my own background paper.

As part of the Gallery Idol contest, there's a vote for the Top 15. If you like my card, I would really appreciate it if you voted for me! You can click on the link at the top of the sidebar or go HERE, click on the image, and vote. You do have to register, but you won't get spammed or anything. :) Thank you so much!!

Thank you for stopping by and thank you for your support! Have a great week.


Supplies
Cardstock: (white) PTI
Other paper: (Premium Matte Photo Paper) OfficeMax
Rubber stamps: (plane from A Little Destination) Unity Stamp Co.
Clear stamps: (bacon from Sizzle On) Kelly Purkey for Simon Says Stamp
Digital elements: (blue paper from the Seafoam collection) ACDigitals.com
Copic markers
Font: (Champagne and Limousines) Dafont.com 

Like a Peacock

Hi everyone!

Just a quick post for this week's CAS-ual Friday Challenge. This week's challenge is:

Yep, make a CAS card with a congratulatory sentiment...for graduation, wedding, a new home, a new baby--anything you can think of.

For such a broad theme, I had trouble narrowing down my ideas. I remembered a submission reject I made a little while ago, and decided to revise it. I changed the color scheme for a more summery feel, but I kept the design the same:

The card is a digital journaling card from the Kraft Edition collection at AC Digitals. I enlarged the journaling card, recolored the background white, and then played around with the petal colors. Seriously, I bet I spent 45 minutes obsessing over fiddling with the colors (but it was okay because I was watching some cool Weather Channel show at the same time).

The winner of this week's CAS-ual Fridays Challenge wins stamps from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps. There are some cool new designs to choose from. :)

To enter your project, you can link them up HERE.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!


Supplies
Cardstock: (white) PTI
Other paper: (Premium White Photo Paper) OfficeMax
Digital element: (journaling card from the Kraft Edition collection) AC Digitals
Font: (Ostrich Sans)