Picnic Blog Hop

Greetings, hoppers! Welcome to my little part of the Club Scrap blog hop featuring the fun and colorful Picnic collection. If you got here from Janet's blog, you're in the right spot. To see the entire list of participants go to Club Scrap Creates. 

As I said, my part of the hop is quite small this time. As much as I love this new kit, I haven't had time to create anything with it. I bowed out of the May blog hop because of time constraints, but I was determined to have a part this month!  I created this fun card that would be great for a birthday. Speaking of birthdays, today is my youngest daughter's special day, though I dare not give this card to her, as it has PINK on it! Not sure what she has against the color, but she likes every color except that one. 

I absolutely love dies. I recently started getting dies monthly from Hot off the Press, and a month or two ago I received this fun bicycle die set. It allowed me to create this fun, summery card with some Picnic papers. It's pretty straightforward--just the background might need some explanation. I used Memories Mists to create the sky and grass, cutting out clouds from Post-It notes to adhere to the white Picnic cardstock before spraying. Green grass, blue sky, a bike, and some balloons--looks like summer to me!

 

That's it for me this month. The next stop on the hop is Annette's blog, Digital Musings by AnnetteD. Can't wait to see what digital creations she has developed this month. 

Until next time,

Lisa Kay

Inspiration from Inspiration

Inspiration breeds inspiration, right? The second 2014 [inter]National Scrapbook Month challenge at Club Scrap Creates is to be inspired by something posted on the blog to create a new piece of art.

I have to tell you, the wealth of inspiration on that blog is phenomenal!! I did some blog surfing and found a bunch of techniques I hope to try, but one entry just grabbed me. HERE is Karen's entry. She was inspired by a card she found on Splitcoaststampers. (Sources in captions below pics.)

Inspiration source #1 . . . Jennae . . . Splitcoaststampers

Inspiration source #2 . . . Karen . . . Club Scrap Creates

And here are the cards I created. The "I Miss You." cards were created with Club Scrap's Nature's Wonders collection (now extinct). Sentiment stamp from Fire & Ice (November 2013). These cards will be sent to Operation Write Home.

I turned the design sideways to create these cards to send to my mom and mother-in-law. The mother stamps are from Close to My Heart, papers are Club Scrap's English Garden collection, the fiber is CS's Color in Black & White, and paisley stamps are CS's Paisley (all these CS collections are extinct).

What have you been inspired by lately? Check out the challenge at Club Scrap Creates and enter your inspired artwork! Last day to enter is May 30. Can't wait to see what YOU make!

Until next time,

Lisa Kay

Disney Autographs Mini Album

"Best laid plans of mice and men" . . . you know the saying. There is just not enough energy to be creative and blog about it lately. Good news, though, I've been more creative in the last week than I have in the last month!

To celebrate [inter]National Scrapbooking Month, Club Scrap is hosting some challenges. The first one (deadline is tonight!) is to create a Passport to Fun mini album. You can find the challenge and submissions HERE. 

This album is a lot of fun. It's made with envelopes for 5x7 cards, plus some cardstock mattes, two booklets, and some pages tucked into the envelopes.

I pulled out my kit and assembled the mini album, which took less than an hour--my kind of project! As I'm putting it together, I realize that the primary colors will go perfectly with pictures from our trip to Disney World back in '09 (which still haven't made it into an album!)

I decided to focus only on pics of my daughter with the characters we met. It was her first time to WDW, and we went to a lot of character meals. She was all smiles that week--what a blast!!

I had made her an autograph booklet that she carried around. You can see it in the photo of her and Eeyore. For this album, though, I decided to pull the pages out of the autograph book and include them in the mini album with the pictures. I think having the pictures and autographs together make them all more meaningful.

No time/energy right now to complete the book, but I hope to soon. My daughter will enjoy looking through it and reliving memories of our special trip.

Until next time,

Lisa Kay :-)

Hydrangeas Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on Club Scrap's Hydrangeas blog hop! I'm so happy you are here. If you arrived from Tiare's blog, Tiare Smith's Designs, you are on the right track. For the entire list of participants, hop back to our starting point, Club Scrap Creates.

Earlier this month, I was honored to be the Guest Artist for the Hydrangeas Greetings to Go pack. You can check out all my cards here. The element of the G2G pack that caught me off-guard was the 5-pack of paper doilies. I've used doilies to line cake plates, even as stencils to dust powdered sugar on top of desserts, but I've never used them on greeting cards. For inspiration, I turned to the place that holds a wealth of creative ideas--Pinterest. I even created a board focusing on greeting cards that feature paper doilies. Check it out to find ideas on how to use your paper doilies!

There were some wonderful comments made about my greeting cards (thank you!!), but most of them mentioned the doily dress I made on this card.

Want to create this dress yourself? I found the instructions on this site: Inking Idaho. Becky is a successful Stampin' Up! demonstrator with a host of amazing and creative ideas! She shares this pictorial on how to fold the paper doily into a layered skirt. Easy!! For the bodice, I embossed a piece of white Club Scrap cardstock with a swirl embossing folder, then sketched the shape onto the back--no pencil lines to erase after cutting out the shape. You can see various types of bodices on my Pinterest paper doily board. The ribbon hides the junction and adds a pop of color. 

The next time I make a doily dress, I'm going to first color the doily like I did on this card. It was incredibly easy!

I've seen instructions on how to color doilies by dipping them in a bowl of water colored with food coloring. Seriously??! How messy!! Just look at all the supplies needed on this blog. She even includes rubber gloves and a "sense of adventure"--come on, I just want to color a paper doily!

So, what does the seasoned paper crafter use for this otherwise daunting task? A few sprays of Stewart Superior's Memories Mist does a fabulous job. If you want to see the many colors they offer, check out this page--go half way down to the Mists section. I just laid the doily in a CS pizza box and spritzed the Memories Mist enough to cover the doily. It didn't take long to dry and become a part of my "Thinking of you" card. Yes, doily dresses in a variety of colors will be in my future! 

Thanks for stopping by. The next stop on our hop is Marya's blog: A Notebook Novel. I know you will be amazed at her creativity--I always am! 

Until next time,

Lisa Kay

March CS Blog Hop--Trees

Welcome to my stop on the Club Scrap Creates Trees blog hop! If you got here from Tiare's blog, then you are on the right track. If you want to start at the beginning or see a list of all the bloggers contributing this month, click HERE. 

This month all the bloggers are featuring projects using the March 2014 kit, Trees. Here's a pic of some of the kit elements. You can find more kit items HERE.

Ever have a bad case of crafter's block? Well, that's what I had this month. I often have at least a small idea of what I want to create with the new kit when I first open it. This time, though, nothing was coming to me. I'd looked at the kit, seen projects other CS folks have made with the products, even created a mood board in Pinterest featuring trees and the many beautiful colors in the kit. Still, nothing came to mind when the deadline was approaching for this blog post. Absolutely nothing.

So, with the deadline right around the corner, I pulled out the kit elements and spread them out on the floor. Hmmm . . . nothing.

I opened my stamp binder and found two really cute leaf stamps on the Trees Art Nouveau unmounted stamp sheet. I felt a glimmer of hope when I saw those stamps!

They have text on them, which reminded me of some stamps in the Up, Up & Away! collection from February 2013, so I pulled those out and some of the plain Trees papers and CS inks and started stamping.

Using the leaf trio stamp, I created a background panel using Leaf, Moss, and Earth Club Scrap hybrid inks. 

I then used the dictionary page stamp from Up, Up & Away! to create another background on the dark green paper.

Still not knowing just what I was going to do with these stamped papers, I used Sandstone ink and another UU&A stamp and Moss ink with the Trees row of leaves stamp.

Here are the three stamped papers I created. It was getting late, so I went downstairs to read a few pages in my human resources management text book. This serves several purposes: It checks off another thing on my to-do list for the day, and it puts me to sleep (please don't tell my professor!). But most of all, it enables me to take a break from my creative venture, since at this point, I still wasn't sure what my final project was going to be. I had a start, but I what path I was taking was still a mystery.

A new day brings a refreshed mind (isn't that great?!), and I could finally see what I was going to do for this project. The leaves and the light green paper both reminded me of pears--that's right--pears. And I just so happen to have a pear die! (From Spellbinders' Orchard Harvest Tags and Accents die set.) With a new-found direction, I used the dictionary page dark green paper to die cut two pears. (I didn't use the leaf die, though it's pictured.) I also stamped the leaf trio a few time and cut out a couple leaves to add to the pear die cuts.

And here (finally) is my completed card. The sentiment strip was made using the UU&A stamp and Sandstone ink. I made the row of leaves lighter by stamping first onto scratch paper. The "thank you" stamp used on the top and bottom is from the Milestones kit, and the "thank you" in brackets came from Pure & Simple. (These are both extinct wood-mounted stamps.) The sentiment strip and the pear/leaf on the left are raised with foam adhesive. The fiber is from the Trees embellishment pack. 

There you have it. Sometimes when creativity is blocked it helps to just get out some paper, stamps, and ink and stamp away. Then, get a good night's sleep, and in the morning you'll find your mojo has returned. Mine just happened to be in the form of pears!

Thanks for making it to the end of my blog post. Your next stop on the hop is Marya's blog: A Notebook Novel. I can't wait to see what she has in store for us!

Until next time,

Lisa

It's a BIG DEAL!

Welcome to my stop on this month's Club Scrap blog hop featuring the February 2014 kit Big Deal. (See elements of the kit HERE.)

If you got here from Tiare's blog, then you are hopping right along. If you get lost along the way, or you want to start back at the beginning, go to the Club Scrap Creates blog.  There's a list of all of this month's participants there. 

When my kit arrived, I immediately noticed the gorgeous colors and unique textures of the papers. Photos can never do justice to paper textures, but you can see the beautiful colors in this picture.

For the blog hop, I opted to do another canvas art project. You can see the one I made in December for the Gnome for the Holidays blog hop HERE. Below is my Big Deal canvas art--perfect for Valentine's Day or year-round!

I started with a white 6x6 canvas. To distress the parts that would be visible, I first inked with Club Scrap's Sandstone hybrid ink, then I added Earth ink on top. I like the two-tone, aged effect this gives.

For my base paper, I chose the Tan Plain from the kit, cut to 5.5x5.5". It has a raised "Swiss Dot" pattern on it that is ideal for inking! After distressing the edges with my Tonic paper distressing tool, I ran the Earth ink pad over the surface and edges of the paper. 

The focal image was made with two stamps. The card background stamp is from the Borders & Backgrounds sheet. To keep it light, I inked with Sandstone ink.

The verse is found on the Collection sheet of rubber. I inked with Club Scrap's India Black ink and sprinkled Hematite embossing powder (found in the Tribal kit) over the words. I love the look of heat-embossing--and it adds even more texture to my project. :-)

Another stamped and embossed element--the scroll image, also found on the Borders & Backgrounds unmounted rubber sheet.

After cutting out the scrolls, I glued them on with CS Bookbinding Glue.  Ribbon (from the Big Deal embellishment pack) and some brads from my stash layer on even more texture.

To add to the love theme, I stamped hearts from the Collection stamps onto the Red Pearl paper and added red brads from my stash. This canvas makes a festive home decor element for the month of February, though I might just leave it out year-round.

Thank you for stopping by my blog today. I hope you enjoyed seeing my creation and are inspired by the textures in this kit. The next stop on the blog hop is Marya's blog HERE. 

Until next time,

Lisa