A Color Challenge Over at SMB!

Hey there! I know my attendance has been pretty sketchy lately, but the upside is that I have been keeping up with my creative time. I am two weeks away from completely finishing a daily journal (this will be my 2nd completed journal ever, 2011 December Daily being the first).

I just wanted to pop in to let concerned readers know that I am still alive, still making art, and that my project is the inspiration piece for the color challenge on the Social [Media] Butterflies blog. Here is a sneak peek:

Until next time!

Social {MEDIA} Butterflies Blog Hop: Halloween Edition

I hope you're all having a wonderful fall, the weather here is gorgeous, and I hope you're all enjoying it as well! This month the girls are going to be bringing you a Carve It Up theme--- using our Silhouettes, Cricuts, fussy-cutting, punching, exact-o knife-- our designs will all have a unique cut up piece to it!

Shay http://sbookinshay29.blogspot.com/

Suz http://livealifeextraordinary.blogspot.com/

Amanda http://www.somethingsorta.blogspot.com/

Trisha http://www.trisha-grace.blogspot.com/

Corinne http://corinnesmilovici.blogspot.com/

Angel http://kindlelover.blogspot.com/

Jenny http://mycreativelife29.blogspot.com/

Monica http://monicalifeasme.blogspot.com/

Patricia http://harmonyhealthandfaith.blogspot.com/

Comment on any of the blogs or link up with a Carve It Up themed layout below to win a $10 Silhouette Studios gift card :] Happy blog hopping, and make sure to come back next month on the 29th for our next hop!

http://socialmediabutterflies-papercrafting.blogspot.com/2012/10/october-blog-hop.html

My project for this month's theme is a holiday art journal spread...

I have a few of these Ology books that the kids have destroyed (ripped pockets, missing pull-outs, etc.) and I have them set aside to alter for art journals. I mean, it will be exciting using the formats included on the pages with flaps, fold-outs, and pockets!

The very first spread in the book included one flap, but first I had to gesso everything. The paper is a little slick to begin with, but I love the patterns and pictures and text and designs of the original pages, so I only put down one layer of gesso. I wanted some of that original page to peek through the layers. After the gesso, I put down orange acrylic paint, then dabbed on some watered-down turquoise. I used my finger to apply a bit of black, and then I used a couple background stencils with some copper shimmer spray. I couldn't resist adding a bit of gold paint, too.

I decided to use this month's Studio Calico kit, Roller Rink, as well as the add-on I purchased, Couple's Skate. I recently decided to not save my SC kits exclusively for scrapbooking, even though I still like to keep them intact until they are mostly used up. I added some doodling with a black permanent marker and stenciled some places for journaling.

I free-cut the two jack-o-lanterns, and I pieced together all those little candy corn embellishments. The envelope is reserved for stashing wrappers from favorite and unique candies that we may come across this year.

Inspired by this PIN I used small scraps to make some leaves. Leaves are my favorite part of Autumn, so of course they would receive mention of a journal spread about my favorite things about Halloween.

I used even smaller scraps to make this collage owl.

I love that this month's kit came with vellum die cuts. I used the little puff stickers to represent a street of houses for trick-or-treating. I love that gold washi tape, too.

I used a hand-cut banner to represent the making of Halloween decorations, and the witch hat is hand-cut to represent handmade costumes, which is a tradition in my household. Sorry about the weird color of the photo!

There's the flap I mentioned. I am reserving this space for photos of our costumes this year.

So, the page is really busy and not like any of my other journal pages at all. But I definitely had fun making all the components, and I look forward to making more pages in these books. I am not sure if I want to reserve this book for Halloween pages, or holiday pages, or just leave it open.

Thanks for hopping with us!

Midweek Throwdown and Sketch # 125

So, other than the World Card Making Day Blog Hop, I have been taking a little break from making cards. My excuse is that I ran out of my favorite adhesive. The adhesive I use actually fuses the papers together, so they will not fall apart. That is an important feature in an adhesive, especially when I use it to make cards for our Heroes who are deployed. They need to be able to write their letters and not worry about things falling off in the mail. Well, I just got 2 bottles of my favorite adhesive, so now there are no excuses!

I made this card using OWH card sketch #125. The Midweek Throwdown challenge is Anniversary and Love. The sentiment on my card is "Heart & Soul" so I think it could work for either.

Stay tuned, there will be more cards soon!

OWH World Card Making Day

Welcome to my stop on the Blog Hop train! We are celebrating World Card Making Day. If you would like to follow along, simply click on that blog hop badge to go to the main site. Click through all the links and leave some love!

The assignment for the blog hop is winter/holiday. I challenged myself to make a Christmas card using non-themed paper. Specifically, I used my Amy Tangerine Sketchbook 6x6 paper pad. I free-cut the presents, ribbons, tree and trunk, and fussy-cut the ornaments and topper. I just had to add adhesive gems to each of the ornaments, too. I love the bright colors, and the background patterns reminded me of snowflakes.

Don't forget to go check out all the other wonderful cards being shown today!

100 Day Hustle

I almost missed out on this. Over on Kelsey Sews, The challenge has been issued to use these last 100 days of 2012 to finish up as many things on our to-do lists as possible so that 2013 can be started with a clean slate. I have decided to play along. Here's my creative to-do list for the rest of 2012:

• make 1000 cards for OWH 700 to go!
• keep a small daily journal up to date
• make a colored-in stamp image catalog
• finish quilting fabric inventory (yardage, fat quarters, squares, strips)
• December Daily art journal (I really enjoyed the one I made last year)
• Turkey Tradition (this will be the second year my little family has a competition to make turkeys out of different materials and present them after Thanksgiving Dinner)
• Halloween Costumes (Cotton Candy, Basket of Laundry, and still one undecided)
• finally play with my embossing plates with my Sizzix
• complete 10 Pinterest-inspired projects
• organize magazine clippings for collage

I am hoping this will help me keep track of my main goals so that other projects do not take over. Do you have anything on your creative to-do list that you'd like to accomplish before the end of the year?

Grand Total: 300

So I finally made it to 300 cards! If you have been following along, you may remember that my goal was 100 cards for Operation Write Home. Then I wanted to make 100 AnyHero cards to send along, and I kept going. Well, now my total is 300, and my new goal is 1000! You may want to stay tuned, because I've got a giveaway planned to celebrate reaching my new goal...

On to the cards:

I enjoyed my version of Stump Sandy so much that I tried it again. I pulled numbers from each of my kids to correspond to a sheet of paper in the 6x6 Amy Tangerine Sketchbook stack I've been using. I don't know, this one really wanted lots of bling. My DS chose two punches for me to use, the MS bird punch and a little music note punch.

Here's another card I made using my version of Stump Sandy. The paper choices were a little more difficult, but I used my go-to technique: fussy-cutting. Sandy and I have that in common, I guess. :)

Using a stamp set I hadn't used yet, my youngest daughter helped me design this Christmas AnyHero card set. The rest of the cards are left uncolored, as we'll be providing markers for coloring and writing the messages. The images are all fussy-cut and adhered onto the stamped night sky. There are 10 of these cards.

This card is for two challenges: Sketch # 138 and the Midweek Throwdown Color Challenge. I made 10 of these cards. The birds are cut from a sheet of patterned paper, and look! I found my corner rounder ;)

I made this set of 10 cards because I was using the same stamp on a set my older daughter helped to design. I saw pastels, and she saw brights.

This set of 10 cards my older daughter helped design because she loves horses. I had to order this stamp special just for her. The rest of the pictures are left blank because these are AnyHero cards, too. And this set is special because inside is a pop-up heart shape that is stamped with "From the Heart".

This one I am very proud of, because I got my hubby to help design it. He liked this stamp set when he saw it in the CTMH catalog, and he is partial to fall colors. I used my corner rounder again. I really missed that thing when it was packed away. The lanterns and the grass are stamped separately and cut out meticulously.

This card set was designed with my son. He chose the stamp, decided on the sentiment, chose the colors, and did a lot of the coloring. That strip of birthday paper is stamped and colored. He also chose to use the Lawn Fawn bonus sketch.

So, now onto the next set of 100 cards. I have 100 white card bases all folded and ready to go. There are a few challenges lined up for me to use for inspiration, so I better get to work!

Single Card + 120 AnyHero Cards!

This week's Midweek Throwdown Challenge over at Operation Write Home is to make an AnyHero card, with or without patriotic colors. I think I went a little overboard, but it's for a good cause, right?

This card I made last night while watching some OWHtv episodes where Sandy runs a little challenge. It's called "Stump Sandy" and it is provided by the audience of the show. They call out 3 random numbers that correspond to envelopes holding scrap pieces of patterned paper. Sandy's challenge is to use all 3 patterned papers to make a card front, right there in the live feed. And she does it very well. I was inspired to do my own version.

I grabbed my 6x6 stack of Sketchbook by Amy Tangerine and randomly opened it 3 times to get my patterned papers. I fussy-cut the frames and popped them up, and then I used some Tangle-inspired designs to doodle little "masterpieces". I stamped the sentiment using alphabet stamps from Studio Calico's Stamp School set.

Now, these cards are all AnyHero cards. I made 20 of each design. Okay, now before you tell people exactly how crazy I am, let me tell you what I do Wednesday evenings...

I am an Assistant Webelos Leader for the LDS chapter of Cub Scouts in my area. The boys in my group are studying for their Citizen badge and Citizenship belt loop. At every Pack meeting, each of the levels of Cubs shows what they have worked on for the month, either with a display or a demonstration. There is also some kind of activity for the families of all the Cubs do participate in during the Pack meeting. Do you see where I am going with this?

After completing my first box of 100 cards last week, I challenged myself to make another 100 cards to ship. With this week's challenge, and my plans for introducing OWH to the Council for our Scouting District, and Pack meeting coming up the first week of October, my brain flipped to "crazy card-making mode" and I designed kits for 120 AnyHero cards. The Webelos will design a display or station where the famiy members and other Cub Scouts can see all of the card designs, choose a card, color in the design, and write their encouraging note inside. I couldn't stop at 5 designs, the last one squeezed itself into my head and wouldn't budge, lol.

Clear stamp set from the dollar bin.

Stamp set from Paper Pretties.

Patriotic heart stamp is from the Dollar Tree, sentiment is from the SC Stamp School set. The envelope is made from real book paper.

Sentiment is from Studio G, I think. I don't really try to keep track of the manufacturers of my stamps, but I tend to remember my favorite sets.

I think the bear is from Inkadinkado, one of the dollar stamp sets. "Hi " is letter stamps from the set mentioned above. I think the speech bubble may be Elsie.

I finally, finally broke down and got this Dear Lizzy stamp set. I already love it so much!

So, my new goal is have all of these assembled quickly so I can get on to making more cards. Then to get them all signed by people in our community. So, get ready, Sandy! They'll start being signed the first week of October, and my hopes are they will go quickly!