New Home

Here's a quick card for you today for the Waltzing Mouse Blog Party with the theme, New Beginnings. I used the Chicken Wire stamps and Cottage Home stamps (links below) to make this New Home card. I love this little Victorian house.

I colored the house with Copics without shading to match the patterned paper.

My card also follows the WMS Sketch Challenge this week. The colors follow The Pink Elephant's color inspiration.

My TCM stamps still haven't arrived, so I'm missing the previews. I hope you will join the rest of the team on the TCM blog and check out what's new!

InLinkz.com

My first Designing Friend and a multi-challenge card

For my challenge card, please scroll below.

I'm so happy to introduce you to one of my designing friends this month.

Lea Lawson

I've been a fan of her great blog since I found it while checking out the CPS challenge blog a few months ago, where she is a DT member. She also designs for...get this...Glitz Designs and Provocraft. Lea's a whiz with her Cricut machine.

Her style is eclectic, that's one reason I love her work. She can whip up a stunning CAS card and go vintage shabby the next. That takes talent, my friends. :-) Just look at this beautiful card she made using Lovely Labels without the Spellbinder Labels 4!

I asked her a few questions just so you all can get to know her better:

1. How long have you been paper crafting and how did you get started?

I have done some form of paper crafting from a very young age, as I have always had a love of photographs, stationary, stickers, and writing. I officially began scrapbooking the summer after my senior year of high school because my aunt gave me a scrapbooking kit as my graduation gift. I got into card making in 2005, and haven't looked back since! I don't scrapbook much anymore, but I love to sit in my craft room utilizing all the fun new paper and stamp products to make cards galore!

2. What are your current favorite:

• Techniques: Lately it has been glittering!
  
• Tools: corner rounder, border punches, and my Cricut Expression!
• Embellishments: Ribbon, buttons, & of course, jewels!
  

3. What makes a "WOW" card, in your opinion?

I think good color combination, complimentary embellishing, and rounded corners make for a crisp & clean card with lots of "WOW!" factor.

4. What inspires you to create? Define your crafting style.

Colors, patterned papers, and new stamp sets inspire me to create!! And I will go on record saying that my craft style has multiple personalities. Most of the time it is clean and simple...but sometimes other personalities take over and you will see cards covered in product, ultra embellished, and a little bit crazy!

5. Tell us something about your family. Where are you from? Other interests besides paper crafting. Or any random fact about you.

My family consists of my husband of almost 8 years, Josh, and our two dogs; a yorkie named Bailey, and a cocker spaniel named Sadie. I am also super close with my parents, and my 19 year old brother, Casey. We often drive the 2.5 hours just to spend the day together, and vice versa. I love high school and college football, so fall is my favorite time of year!! I finished photography school in October of 2009, and am now working on getting my business going. My focus is senior portraiture and fine art wedding photography...but I really do love to photograph football as well!

6. Do you have a favorite quote/verse that you live by?

"Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true." ~Joseph Cardinal Suenens

There you have it, peeps. Now, go drool over her other beautiful projects on HER BLOG and get inspired.
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Multi-Challenge Card

And here's a card I'm entering in Lucy's polka dot challenge, The Pink Elephant #54 to use ribbons, Stamp Something Cute challenge, Spoonful of Sugar springtime challenge. These challenges all speak my language!

Stamps: Oh Baby!
Papers: Creme de Menthe, Swing into Spring digipapers

Some interesting WCMD statistics

I made this card for the GinaK Designs World Cardmaking Day Challenge at Splitcoast. But before I show you the card, let me share some interesting stats according to Cath of Moxie Fab World from the WCMD celebrations last week.

• Moxie Fab World spotlighted 42 different designers in 17 countries (I had the awesome honor to join in this hop).
  
• There were a total of 8,470 comments made–many of them in different languages
• And 347 additional international bloggers joined in on the tour as well via the Mr. Linky widget that Moxie Fab offered at the bottom of each post.

Wow, those are some amazing numbers! I know I had fun touring the different designers from all over the world. I felt connected to the rest of the papercrafting world from my wee little craft corner in Croatia. I can't wait until next year.

Now, about my card...I used a sunflower image from Autumn Beauty, illustrated by the fabulous Theresa Momber. I had so much fun coloring it with Copics. The sentiment is from the new StampTV kit, Holiday Cheer. The cardbase is Pumpkin Spice. For more Autumn Beauty inspiration, click HERE. It's StampTv and GinaK Designs' new Idea Center. It's chockful of inspiration. Go check it out. The theme follows Crazy4Challenges and The Pink Elephant, the use of brown follows Stamp Something, and the color scheme follows Color Throwdown and fall colors follow Secret Crafter challenge.

Join me and the GinaK DT starting at 10pm CST tonight for a blog hop featuring Melanie Muenchinger's new set, Hip to Be Square. We have blog hops in the next two weeks. I hope you will join us.

Birthday Vase

Here's another card with a bit of shabbiness to it :-). The sketch follows Flourishes' The Feel of Fall Challenge. I love the sketch and I think I will use it over and over again. The colors follow The Pink Elephant's challenge to use red, yellow, black and white. I used Summer Sun, Bravo Burgundy and Copic markers. And it's a birthday card for Pile It On's challenge this week. The sentiment is from GinaK Designs' Eclectic Summer Sayings Set.

And speaking of GinaK Designs, Gina is leading a blog hop of the latest mid-month release of a cute halloween set, Feel the Magic, illustrated by her very talented daughter.

Snippets and Birthday Birdie

Have you seen Gina's (of GinaK Designs) snippets on her blog? It's pretty exciting over there. Can you guess which one is my new stamp set to be released on the 30th of July? Stay tuned early next week when I give it away as blog candy. I'll be celebrating 4 months and 26,000 hits on my blog. Woohoo!

I played with my Copics again on this card. I followed CPS sketch #125 and The Pink Elephant's #25 challenge to use animals on your card.

Stamps: Live Simply (HeroArts), Branch and cloud (Unity), Greeting (TSG)
Ink: Memento Black, Really Red, Copic markers
Paper: Really Red, GinaK White CS
Other: Scallop edge punch by SU

Flourish meets the Pink Elephant meets Moxie Fab

Here's my card for Flourishes' Timeless Tuesday challenge to use frames and The Pink Elephant's color challenge to use pink, brown and white (in my case, it's off-white). Since I also used vintage lace and buttons, I'm entering this to Moxie Fab's value of vintage challenge.

Stamps: Happy Mail, Tweeterpated by TSG. Ink: White craft, Pink passion by SU Others: Love and Happiness rubons

I'm glad I got to play some more today. We're headed to the US in a few days and I seriously have to pack. I am trying to figure out how much of my craft room I will take with me ;-). If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Monogram note cards

I just recently discovered The Pink Elephant challenge blog. I love their challenge this week to make monogram cards, so I played along. Here is my card:


When I first saw this stamp set by SU, I fell in love with it. But now that I have it, I don't know how to use it, except as background. I still love the images, just need inspiration to ink it up more. I printed the monograms, hoping it would match the Baja Breeze papers. It's not exact, but it's close.