Saturday, May 30, 2009

Dry Embossing on Velum

I didn't know if I would get a card made for this week's challenge because it is *finally* warm in Saskatchewan, and I have been spending most evenings outside cleaning up the yard and planting a garden.

Since the tiger lily is the provincial flower of Saskatchewan, I thought this would be a great image to use to welcome in the warm weather.



The technique this week (in months with 5 Saturdays, the last one will be a technique challenge) that Lauren gave us was to dry emboss on velum. I am really pleased with the image, but not really happy with the card. I can tell it was kind of rushed to get finished. I am sure my grandma, or someone in my family will like it, so it won't totally go to waste.

I stamped this lily stained glass in versamark on velum paper and dry embossed the lines of the flower using a small stylus.



The image was coloured using SU markers on a cd, then picking up the colour with a blender pen.

Please check out the rest of the design team and see what they came up with this week.

Lauren
Maria
Kristin
Tracey
Pam
Dana
Alicia
Mackenzie

Monday, May 25, 2009

SOA is LIVE!!

It's finally here! Stamping out Alzheimer's pay to play is live as of today! You can join and be a part of this fabulous community with a chance to win thousands of dollars in prizes and get some free downloads with a minimum $5.00 donation. (see the blinkie under my photo) ------>

Kristin and I are even hosting one of the challenges, and we would love to have you join us.



Here is my sample for the challenge.



Join the forum to see what it's all about, and for your chance to win some free stamp sets, gift certificates and more!!!

Also, see my post below for your chance to win one of Lauren's My Timeless Templates.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Stamp Out Alzheimers

Please Scroll Down for Lauren's Saturday My Time Colour Challenge.


Jen Tapler of Jen Tapler Designs (and also a member of Lauren's Saturday My Time Team) has partnered with Susanna Boyd, owner of Papercraft Planet, to bring you a new and improved version of her annual Stampin' Out Alzheimer's (SOA) event!! What is SOA you might ask?

SOA is an exciting "pay to play" virtual papercrafting event to benefit the Alzheimer's Association. Jen's father, like so many others, suffers from Alzheimer's disease. It's a horrible disease that really takes it's toll on an entire family.

Susanna and Jen, along with a group of generous sponsors and challenge hostesses (I'm one of the hostesses!), have teamed up to create a temporary online community where members can take part in a variety of challenges, contests, classes and workshops, and download several free products (a special digital kit, a printable 3-d template, tutorials, etc) in different papercrafting categories (stamping, cardmaking, paperscrapbooking, digi scrapping, hybrid, etc). All this for a suggested donation of $5.00. 100% of these funds will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association to help with their efforts to provide and enhance care and support for all those affected by this heartbreaking disease.

I am hosting a 3-d challenge where you can win one of Lauren's Amazing templates. Please join me in the forums!

And, because I think this is such a great cause, if you comment on this post letting me know you have made your donation and joined the forum I will enter your name into a special drawing for one of Lauren's templates that I will purchase for the one lucky winner randomly selected from everyone that donates and comments by June 1st.

So far the response from the papercrafting industry has been amazing and hundreds of dollars worth of prizes have been received to be given away throughout the event by our generous sponsors.

Alzheimer's Disease is currently the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S. It is a fatal, progressive disease that slowly robs a person of their precious memories. We are involved in the memory preservation hobbies - what better cause for the papercrafting community to join together to support?

Use the "give" link in the top of my side-bar to make your donation - you can determine the amount you donate using the drop-down menu, but we suggest a minimum $5 donation. Once you've made your donation, go register on the Stampin' Out Alzheimer's site. The challenges and other content won't be visible until May 25, but you can go ahead and join, set up a profile and visit the "Alzheimer's in our Community" group to share your own story about how Alzheimer's has affected your life or that of a loved one. If you are currently providing care for a family member or loved one with the disease, we've also included a Caregiver Resources page full of useful information and links to educational information and support.

I hope you'll join us May 25-31 to Stamp Out Alzheimer's!

Back to Basics

This week we have a super bright, and super fun colour challenge for Lauren's My Time to Create DT.



When I looked at this dress I thought "Summer Fun"!! And I decided to make a fun card for a summer cocktail party. I interpreted these colours to be Purely Pomegranate, Groovy Guava, So Saffron, Cool Caribbean, Certainly Celery, and White.

This is the card I made with these fun, and bright colours.



The backgrounds were all made by stamping using versamark to achieve a tone on tone look. I think it's great to pull out some basic techniques like stamping background paper.

The stamps I used are from the Cocktail Party Set from A Chemistry with Paper.

The sentiment is embossed with clear embossing powder to make it stand out more, because on the Guava paper the versmark ink is not as distinctive.



These colours were so fun, that I am sure the entire DT has great projects in store for you. Just look at the samples below!




Lauren
Dawn
MacKenzie
Maria
Kendra
Kristen
Tracey
Pam
Jennifer
Odette
Lisa
Dana
Alicia

Friday, May 15, 2009

Gift in shades of purple

It's time for another FABULOUS Saturday Challenge with the Amazing Lauren Meader.

This week, to celebrate the newest PTI/Lauren template releases, all of the members of the team were to use one of Lauren's templates to create a birthday gift. We also had to use either butterflies, or the colour purple (or both) as these are two of Lauren's favourite things.

Here are the amazing peeks at everyone's creations.



And here is what I made with the For Keep{sake} template.



I printed the template on to kraft cardstock, and cut the windows on either side with my nestabilities, then I sponged purple ink around the cutouts, and along all of the folded edges of the box.



After the edges were all sponged, I used barely banana ink to stamp my French Script bacgrounder stamp on the panels to add an aged look to the gift. It's hard to tell, but you can kind of see the script in the photo below.



I filled the bottom of the box with purple paper that had been run through my crimper, cut in thin strips, then crumpled up to make some nice filler.



The actual gift is a few packages of flower seeds that are attached to each other, and the ribbon, with glue dots. When you take off the lid, the packages of seeds also get taken out of the box.

The flowers were stamped using PTI's Floral Frenzy and my very brand new Twinlking H2O's from Luminarte. I got sucked in by their going out of business sale, and ordered 4 packages of 24 mini pots. They just arrived a few days ago, and I couldn't wait to use them. I pulled out 5 different purple colours, and painted them right onto the stamps before stamping the images on to the carstock. I don't know if you can really tell in the photos, but they have some great shimmer IRL.



Please join us in using one of Lauren's templates to create a birthday gift. You do not have to purchase a template to play along, you can always use one of the free templates. Stocking Stuffer or Recipe Wrap Up.

Be sure to check out the rest of the amazing design team and see what they have created to inspire you.

Lauren
Dawn
MacKenzie
Maria
Kendra
Kristen
Tracey
Pam
Jennifer
Odette
Lisa
Dana
Alicia

Friday, May 8, 2009

Mom

Today it's inspiration time for Lauren's Saturday My Time to Create team.

This was the inspiration photo.



And here is my project. I used the colours in the dress, and the flowers as my inspiration for this project.



I had a wooden frame that I got at the dollar store. I painted it with watered down white acrylic paint, then added the flowers using the eraser from a wooden pencil.



I used acrylic paints that I have had for many years, and some of them were thicker than others, which added to the dimension.



The letters are cut from the sunset sizzix alphabet, and the only stamp I used is my favourite one from Unity, Wish Sticks. It was stamped on a super thin coaster using brown paint.



The centre panel is a quote I found online, and I printed it on flecked cream cardstock using Becky Higgins font.

I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine
she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights.
Adabella Radici

Please check out the rest of the design team, and join us this week!

Lauren
MacKenzie
Maria
Kendra
Kristen
Tracey
Pam
Jennifer
Odette
Lisa
Dana
Alicia

Saturday, May 2, 2009

New Sketch Team

Hi! Welcome to the first sketch with Lauren's new full team! The peaks look amazing, and I am sure your will be in for a treat as you visit their blogs.



The sketch this week is one that I would love to use as a scrapbook page, but instead, I made a birthday card for Lauren. Her birthday is on May 3rd, and the optional, additional challenge is to make a birthday card using the sketch.





This is the card I made for Lauren's birthday. We all know how much she loves butterflies, so that was the starting point for me. I didn't add a sentiment because I didn't have one that would fit along the side.

The butterflies are stamped on velum paper using the SU retired set Simple Sketches. I stamped the base image on the velum, then the other two layers on a different part of the velum to add a different element to the dimension. I cut out all of the butterflies with paper snips, and layered them with mini glue dots.



You can kind of see the glue dots through the velum, but not too much, and I love the depth it creates.

I used my piercer to make the trails, and my spica glitter pen to add some glitter to the butterflies. I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but IRL there is some glitter there.



I added the green prima flowers to provide some balance to the green paper on the other side of the card.

I never decorate the inside of my cards, but this one is for the fabulous Lauren, so I decided to make the inside pretty too.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the inside when it was light outside, so the colours are somewhat "off".



I had some extra butterflies stamped on velum, and decided to cut them out to continue the theme to the inside. I used the top note die to create the black frame around the kraft cardstock to again mirror the colours and theme from the front of the card.

I hope you will play along this week!

Please check in with everyone else, show them some love and welcome them to the team. I am really excited to be working with such an amazingly talented group of people!

Lauren
Dawn
MacKenzie
Maria
Kendra
Kristen
Tracey
Pam
Jennifer
Odette
Lisa
Dana

When you participate, please come back and lets us know, and use the keyword mytimess32 in any online gallery so that we can find all of your wonderful creations.