Use your Stash

I had to play along with the Play Date Cafe Challenge this week if only because one of the colors they chose is "moldy cheese".  I'm just a little tweaked that way. 

Anyone who has seen my work area will heartily agree that I have a tendency to keep EVERYTHING.  I keep tiny paper scraps, bits of ribbon (my mother-in-law may recogize the green from a Christmas gift a couple of years ago!), containers, packaging cuz you just never know when you're going to need it.  So the Gingersnap Creations Spicy Supply Challenge to use ribbon dovetailed quite nicely with the idea in my head. 

I would love to claim that I came up with the idea to use scraps behind a negative die cut image, but I got this ah-ha! from Julie Ebersole.  Super easy.

•  Cut out the heart. 
•  Find a scrap of cardstock a bit larger than the heart and glue your scraps to it (I ran the cardstock through my Xyron). 
• Outline the heart shape on the card base and glue ribbon piece over it. 
• Attach the front piece to the base with mounting tape.  Voila!

A little bonus is that I was looking for an entirely different sentiment stamp and ran across this set (Autumn Leaves) that I had forgotten all about (even though I had to have it at the time).  I send a card to my mom every week. I think she'll like this one.  Cheers!

He really does make me Smile

Good morning!  Per my usual mode I am supposed to be getting stuff ready to head out for a little scrapbooking today BUT I dinked around elsewhere and decided to work on a challenge.  In this case it's the Gingersnaps Chestnut Theme Challenge.  I initially intended to do something entirely different...a card I think.  But then I noticed they have a bunch of really cool tutorials on there and I happened upon this one using book pages.  I had also been reading earlier about an upcoming art journal class that I'd like to take.  (I know.  My train of thought really does jump all over the place like this!).  So my project morphed into a quasi-art-journaly-type thingy.  Right now it's really just all slapped on cardstock but I'm thinking I may plop it onto canvas or something.

Here's what I did. 

• Ripped out the old book pages and glued them onto cardstock with gel medium.  Impatiently waited for it to dry...kinda. 
• Sponged on Distress Inks (Wild Honey, Worn Lipstick, Fired Brick, Barn Door) and misted with a smidge of water.
• Printed out the picture of my beloved and I (we really do laugh a lot - saves our sanity) on regular paper and glued that down with the gel medium.
• Stamped the jester (this set is from Blockhead Stamps), but decided it didn't work against the text background so sponged some Picket Fence Stain over the top and roughly drew over the stamped image.
• Stamped the hats onto white cardstock and colored them in, cut them out and glued them on our heads.  Added some stickles and the bells. (Too impatient to wait so you can see that the pink stickles on my hat is still a smidge wet)
• 'You' was stamped with black ink and then colored in with my white Sigmo pen.

That's it!   Thanks for stopping by.