Denim paper beads

I had recently teased my friend Joyce, a former Girl Scout leader, about the fact that she had never made paper beads with her troop - it was one of my favorite recycling crafts ever.  So, when she came over this afternoon, I was cutting Seventeen magazine into strips and had glue and toothpicks out, and we rolled and rolled and rolled.  After a few hours, she asked, "Are we going to do anything with these beads?"

I went into my dungeon (my craft supplies are in the basement) and grabbed some wire, beads, and toggles, and we set to making jewelry with our new paper beads.  Joyce found some pink disk beads made from seashells that I had in my stash, and made a necklace, bracelet, earrings, and two sandwiches for our lunch in the time it took me to compose my little necklace here.

The predominant blue color in the beads come from the blue jeans advertisement they were before I cut them.  The antiqued silver spacers and toggle and pale blue crystals will ake this perfect for wearing with jeans, I think.

Challenges:

• Robyn's Fetish - anything but a card
• My Time made Easy - colors
• Paper Crafting Journey - anything goes
• Little Red Wagon - upcycle

Christmas challenges galore

I needed to make another Christmas card, but was lacking for inspiration, so I went to Feline Playful, and clicked Challenges in the word cloud, and then hit CTRL-F to find the word "Christmas" in the challenge list.  It popped up pretty often, considering that it is August, but lots of people want to get a head start like I do.  52 Christmas Throwdown requested a chipboard embellishment, Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas suggested a card for a couple, and Christmas Stampin' All Year Long wanted non-traditional colors.  Yes, these are all challenge blogs dedicated to people who make Christmas cards throughout the year.

I also hit a couple of non-Christmas blogs. I♥2Stamp provided the sketch, Our Creative Corner wanted something recycled and a touch of green, Challenge up your Life just wanted a Christmas card, and Blessings Ink threw out an "anything goes" challenge.

The stamps are from a•muse studio, and the paper is all scraps, including the chipboard waste under the woodgrain paper.  The idea to hang the mittens came from my kids' bathroom - they managed to repeatedly rip the towel bar off the wall, so my husband replaced it with a board with a bunch of hooks on it.  Don't look too hard at the pink patterned paper, or you might realize it is for valentines, but hey, this is a card for a couple, right?
 

Pedestal Pop-up card

I was intrigued by this challenge on the Sweet Stamps blog to make a pedestal pop-up card.  Since I just bought this stamp from them, it was a natural to put the two together:

The sentiment is an old SU stamp, and this butterfly on the inside is an old TAC stamp:

It looks like it's flying over the card!  I left plenty of white space for writing.  The framing lines are drawn with a marker and clear ruler - it's an easy way to add a little color and definition to the inside.

Other challenges:
Kaboodle Doodles - Thank you card
Squigglefly - new technique
Cutie Pie - border/frame
Stampalot - flight

Sketch inspired

If a sketch is very complicated, I generally won't even give it a try, but if it is a simple sketch, it really can get me going.  Case in point - this sketch from Blessings Ink:

I thought this was going to be a very CAS card, until I decided what I wanted to place in those 4 panels - 3 stamps and a postmark:

Once I had that whole envelope idea going, I pretty much lost control and started throwing things on this card like crazy.  I have a weird selection of stuff piled on my desk; I didn't have to dig long to find enough ephemera to finish this card.  All the stamps are from the "come fly with me" set by a•muse studio, the vintage photo is downloaded from The Sum of All Crafts, the tickets are from Staples (I got them during a raffle, but they say Staples on them), the pink petals are off a silk hydrangea branch, and that manila panel is from that folder I've been chopping up all month.  If you don't count the ephemera there is really only two layers!

Challenges:

• Amusing Challenges - sketch
• Hiding in my craft room - two layers
• Paper Play - recycled items
• Digistamps4Joy - portrait of a woman
• Freshly Brewed - use rubber stamps only

Doublestamped

Most of you know that I'm lazy.  One of the manifestations of my laziness is that I will stamp an image on colored cardstock and highlight it rather than completely color it on white cardstock.  I was thinking this way when I decided that a manila folder would give a nice base color to this marigold.  I had enough of the folder left that I figured I could cut a base for the card, too.

I also thought that brown would be a nicer outline ink than black.  I need to buy an archival brown, because this brown started washing away as soon as I hit it with a waterbrush.  I was just trying to soften the yellow and orange marker I was using, but the lines started going, too.  After looking at how fuzzy it was getting, I decided to stamp over it again to sharpen the lines.  It gives a dimensional look, don't you think?

Of course, after doublestamping the flower, my sentiment looked faint, so I stamped over it with Versamark and clear embossed it.  I didn't line that stamp up any better than the flower one, so it has a faint shadow look to it.  Versamark was also used to stamp the background. 

Challenges:

• Chocolate, Coffee, and Cards - emboss
• Crafting for all Seasons - bright colors
• Paperminutes - upcycling
• SweetStamps - stamped background
• Kaboodle Doodles - sisterly love

Origami ornament

I was so impressed by the ornament on Shelly's blog that I wanted to make one of my own.  I had my Christmas stamps and papers out from all the cards I had been making, but I just wanted to do something that wasn't a card.  I found this pattern for making an origami ornament, so I grabbed some Christmas glitter cardstock and gave it a go.

I couldn't get the focus right for anything, but I think you can make out the glitter strips, and I thought that the embossed and popped out sentiment  looked very fun on the bare sides.  I used striped paper mostly because I was curious about how the stripes would end up, but I have some patterns that I think would be really fun used this way.

Challenges:

SweetStamps - Christmas ornament

The Paper Shelter - glitz

Ruby's Rainbow - anything but a card

Clear It Out - Christmas in July

Gift tags for summer

My son, Gordon, turned 24 yesterday, and my husband asked my youngest son, Ben to wrap his presents for him.  Ben did a pretty good job for a 16 year old, and as I was admiring his handiwork, I noticed he used a gift tag from my stash.  That isn't particularly unusual, but I noticed that it was probably one of the most clean and simple things I had made, and also that it was probably the last one of that set that I had.  I decided that I needed more summer gift tags, and whipped up a quick batch.  Here are a few.  

They are stamped in Black Soot distress ink and embossed with clear powder - it's a slightly softer look than using black embossing powder.  I then did a very quick watercolor with twinkling H2Os.  The mat layers are from my scrap stash.  Just a tiny bit of texture and color, and plenty of white space for writing names - that is exactly what my son wanted, and  I'm glad I made some more.  These tags are inspired by the tag challenge at Blessings Ink and I'm entering them in these other challenges:

• Alphabet Challenge - for men
• Dutch Dare - anything but a card
• Just Hanna - summer
• Fab n Funky -  anything but a card
• Waste Not Wednesday - scraps