Today is a Gift

I really love this quote. Each day truly is a gift from God and sometimes we need to be reminded to be in the moment and truly enjoy the day. It's a beautiful day in Miami, Florida. Its bright and sunny, started out cool, but will go to a glorious 75 degrees later in the day. I'll be heading out shortly to pick up a truckload of donated food from our local Feeding America foodbank to be distibuted later today to more than 100 struggling families via my church food pantry. I pray that God will help each one of us to see the simple human dignity in each one of our brothers and sisters as we distribute bags of food so their family can eat tonight.

But you probably came here to see what I had made for today's Creative Inspirations Wednesday challenge, right? I love what I have to share with you today. The papers are from a digital paper pack called Flour Sack from Raspberry Road. I love these retro prints that were used in dishtowels and tablecloths in the 50's and 60's. I thought they matched up perfectly with the apron that looks pretty retro too! The apron is a digital image from Sugar Creek Hollow and the sentiment is from Verve. Real Red and Whisper White CS are combined with this year's SU In-Colors Crushed Curry and Bermuda Bay. The punch is the Sale-a-Bration punch and just for fun I added a whisp of yellow paper ribbon. I think the card is as bright and sunny as our day today.

Thanks so much for dropping by today. I do so enjoy your comments. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them. I am always happy to share.

I hope you'll take time to see what the other designers have made for your inspiration today over at Creative Inspirations.

Blessings,

Challenges entered:

Fab 'n' Funky - It's all in the technique - favorite technique digital paper piecing

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - Fake it - my paper piecing was done digitally

The Corrosive Challenge - Paper piecing

One Stitch at a Time - Vintage challenge

Paper Sundaes - Paper piecing

Raise the Bar - Fruits of labor

D is for Dog

This week the challenge at Pile it On is Furry Friends. I'm not big on animal stamps although I do have a couple. But if you are a frequent visitor here, you know I am working my way through the alphabet with these vintage alphabet flash cards. It just so happened that the next one featured a dog so I guess it was meant to be. For the D card, I immediately felt it had to be a masculine themed card and I got out my DPs from SU's Outlaw pack. It's another paper pack that has been retired for several years and I use it sparingly because I love it so much. I matched it up with Really Rust and Mellow Moss card stock, with a little bit of Chocolate chip thrown in for the "sign" I made andthe border strip. The edges are scissor distressed and were sponged first with Creamy Caramel and then Vintage Photo right on the edges. The sign holder "Man's Best Friend" was printed on my printer and silver cardstock. I immediately poured clear EP on it. The paper is sort of shiny and the ink wasn't immediately absorbed so it stayed wet enough to hold the embossing powder.

I don't know what I would use some of these alphabet cards for, but I really like the artsy effect and find them a lot of fun to make. I'm sure that some occasion will arise that I can use this one for.

Be sure to stop by the Pile it On blog and then visit the blogs of all the team members to see their wonderful creations this week. Our sponsor this week is Simon Says Stamp and they are giving a $20 gift certificate, so you will want to be sure to enter.

Here are the challenges I was able to pile on for this week's Furry Friends challenge.
Pile it On - Furry Friends
Stamp and Scrap Saturday - Heat embossing or masking
Stamp, Scrap & Doodle - Tearing
Totally Gorjuss - Ribbon
Stamp Something - Distressed

Your Next Stamp - Distressing

Hope you all enjoy your Sunday!

Blessings,

C is for Cat, of course

Hello and welcome again to Fabulous Friday with Sugar Creek Hollow. Friday is the day that the design team all posts their challenge cards PLUS you can go to the website and pick up your Fabulous Friday Freebie. I am having SO much fun with these vintage flash cards that have recently been released. You can buy them on the Sugar Creek Hollow site. A-D are just $5. So now I am up through C and this one I just fell in love with. I think it is something about the color combo - the rose and green are so pleasing to my eye. This sheet of DP is called Baby's Breath by Fancy Pants Designs. I have only one sheet of it and I used about a quarter of it on this card. I wish I had bought a couple of sheets so I had some in reserve.

To make the flash card, I started with the digital vintage cat image that I got free from the Graphic Fairy's website. I reduced the opacity then digitally paper pieced it onto the flashcard, printed it, trimmed it out and sponged it liberally with Creamy Caramel (my favorite distress ink color). Then I roughed up the edges with my scissors and sponged it some more, this time with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The vanilla panel was embossed with the Victoria Cuttlebug embossing folder and sponged with Creamy Caramel, then die cut with a Spellbinders die. It was layered over a Mellow Moss panel that I had stamped with the Script BG stamp inked with Vintage Photo and likewise distressed with the same ink. A bit more scissor/Vintage Photo distressing around the edges of the other panels, a little stitching, ribbon, lace, linen thread and a button topped off the tag. Then I added some Prima flowers and a pretty silver colored bead cap and the card was finished and ready to photograph.

Now it's time to check out the rest of the design team's offerings. Hope you will take time to stop by their blogs:

♥Donna♥Stephanie♥Loretta♥Cheri♥
♥Sarah♥Dani♥Tracy-Owner♥Kelly♥
♥Marsha♥Joan♥Nancy♥
♥Joseline-DT Coordinator♥
♥Kristina♥Cassie♥

And don't forget to stop by Sugar Creek Hollow. Tracy has some brand new releases available now. And, of course, the Fabulous Friday Freebie is just waiting for you to pick it up!

Blessings,

Challenges Entered:

The Shabby Tea Room #1 - Elegant Shabby - colors pink, cream, red, brown & green

Frosted Designs - Think Spring, use a flower on your card

Stamp Something - Distressing

Vintage/Distressed Tutorial

I thought you might be interested to know that I have recently written a vintage/distressed tutorial for Sugar Creek Hollow. I joined the design team about a month ago as the tutorial facilitator and this is the first tutorial I have done for them. I know making distressed/shabby chic cards is something of a mystery to many card makers so I tried to break down the process that I use step by step. So if you are interested in how I make my cards, please stop by and check out the tutorial here. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment on the tutorial page of Sugar Creek Hollow or here on my blog.

B is for Blessings

Hello and welcome to Fabulous Friday with Sugar Creek Hollow. Be sure to drop by and pick up this week's Friday Freebie. This week I have another vintage letter flash card and more fun with digital images and papers. But before I tell you what went into making this card, let me just mention blessings. You probably would have expected my post to be entitled B is for Bicycle. But in my life, B is definitely for blessings. I am keenly aware of how blessed I am and of all the many blessings in my life. I thank God every day for sending Jesus to redeem me and lead me to Him. I thank Him for things as simple as having a clean, dry bed to sleep in and enough food to eat. And I try to give back, to share what I have and to call others to be mindful of their blessings and the need to share with our brothers and sisters who are struggling to have enough food and to have shelter. I believe that those who have been given much are called to give back just as much. Just something to reflect in this season of Lent.

But I guess you came here to find out about my card. Everything you see here, with the exception of the SU Basic Black and Creamy Caramel CS, started out as a digital image and was printed on my home printer. The DP is from Designer Digitals. I changed the brown hue a bit to better match up with the Creamy Caramel CS. The vintage word studies sheet is from The Graphics Fairy's free vintage images. I digitally imposed it into the background of the digital flash card. I made it more transparent so it wouldn't overpower the flash card. I printed it, trimmed it out and distressed it a bit. The edges of the DP were scissor distressed and sponged with Close to Cocoa ink. The DP was stamped in Basic Black with the A B & C from SU's Collage Alphabet. The embossing folder used here is from Stampin' Up and the border punch is Martha Stewart. Buttons from my stash and a little embroidery floss topped off this creation.

Hope you will take time to stop by Sugar Creek Hollow to pick up the Friday Freebie and then swing by the blogs of the rest of the design team to see their Fabulous Friday creations.

♥Donna♥Stephanie♥Loretta♥Cheri♥

♥Sarah♥Dani♥Tracy-Owner♥Kelly♥

♥Marsha♥Joan♥Nancy♥

♥Joseline-DT Coordinator♥

♥Kristina♥Cassie♥

Thanks for stopping by and for the lovely comments left. I so appreciate hearing from my visitors. Hope you've had a great week and are ready to enjoy the weekend.

Blessings,

Challenges Entered:

Lots to Do - Distressing

Vintage Flashcard - A is for Apple

Happy Saturday. Hope your weekend is off to a great start! Thanks so much for stopping by to see what I have made for Our Creative Corner this week. We have a sketch challenge cooked up by the uber talented Silke Ledlow. I sort of pushed the boundries of the sketch by elongating the main image to accommodate the flash card and then using the buttons rather than scallops. I figured they have the same outline and worked.

I just love this vintage flashcard from Sugar Creek Hollow. It's actually one of the Fabulous Friday Freebies over there this week so if you like it, go grab it before it's gone. I digitally paper pieced the DP on the card from Designer Digitals and then printed the flashcard on my printer. The apple was colored with Copics. Then I cropped the apple out of the digi and resized it, printed it several times and turned it into buttons a la the technique I tried here a few weeks ago. Oh, and the red DP is also a digital paper from Designer Digitals. I'm becoming quite the digital chick, huh?

I'm very happy with the way this card came out except for one glaring error (at least to my eyes) that I made. I was really hustling to get four cards done this week by from Sunday to Wednesday night because I was leaving on Thursday to go away for the weekend. So when I made the "buttons" and applied the extra thick embossing powder on it, after they were done, I realized that I forgot to ink distress the edges before putting on the embossing powder. Too late - I didn't have time to reprint, recut, recolor and reemboss four buttons so I went with the bright white. Now I am sorry. I think when I get time, I am going to redo all four buttons because the bright, undistressed white is grating on me - LOL!!!

Well, that's it for my Our Creative Corner DT card for this week. I hope you'll stop by the challenge blog and see what the rest of the designers have for your inspiration this week. It's a wonderful sketch and fun to work with so I hope to see your submission over there!

Hope you have a fun weekend!

Blessings,


Challenges entered:

Crazy4Challenges - Paper Piecing (mine was done digitally - hope that counts)
KL Stampin N Scrappin - Use Buttons (mine are faux)

A Yummy Strawberry

Hello and happy Fabulous Friday to you. Fabulous Friday is the day that the Friday Freebie comes out on the Sugar Creek Hollow website. It's also the day that the designers from Sugar Creek Hollow all get together and do a DT challenge. This week our challenge is to use the following colors from SU: Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze, Pretty in Pink and Chocolate Chip. For this card, I used the SCH strawberry digital image and digitally paper pieced it. I printed it off in several sizes, used Crystal Effects on the chocolate and stickles on the green hull. I made up the sentiment seal on computer and then inserted a smaller version of the paper pieced strawberry. The more I work with digital images, the more I see advantages to using them. For example, I digitally paper pieced the strawberry. Not only could I print it off in several sizes, but I didn't have to fiddle with cutting and piecing 5 strawberry images, one of which was very tiny, manually. Very cool, huh?

Be sure to stop by Sugar Creek Hollow today to pick up your Friday Freebie. Here's the rest of the design team. Hope you'll stop by to say hi and see all their beautiful samples created with Sugar Creek Hollow digital images.

♥Donna♥Stephanie♥Loretta♥Cheri♥
♥Sarah♥Dani♥Tracy-Owner♥Kelly♥
♥Marsha♥Joan♥Nancy♥
♥Joseline-DT Coordinator♥
♥Kristina♥Cassie♥

Thanks for stopping by today and blessings,

Challenges:

ABC Challenge - P is for Paper Piecing

Monochromatic Butterfly

It's Wednesday again - Happy Hump Day, everybody!! Here's my DT card for this week's Creative Inspirations challenge. This week's challenge is monochromatic. For some reason, monochromatic cards always scare me. Don't know why - maybe I think I won't be able to stick to just one color. This one was easy peasy once I decided on the color.

This cute little primitive butterfly is a creation of Tracy over at Sugar Creek Hollow, a brand new digital stamp company specializing in vintage and primitive stamps. I decided to use Bashful Blue and Very Vanilla. The DP is digital and I matched up the colors by scanning a piece of Bashful blue and changing the colors in the DP to match. Nothing too complex on this card - a bunch of layers and a mess of Spellbinder dies and you've got yourself a card. If you have any questions, leave it in the comments or email me. I'm always happy to share.

Wishing you a beautiful rest of the week!

Blessings,

You Light Up My Life - A Sepia Challenge

This week, the challenge at the Creative Inspirations Wednesday Challenge Blog is to make a sepia card. I was a little nervous about this assignment too, since I am pretty new to the design team I wanted to make a seriously nice card. Then I saw this Tiffany lamp, a Friday Freebie from Sugar Creek Hollow and everything just clicked. I was off and running.

The designer paper is from K&Co., and the brown textured CS is from the DCWV Heritage Pack. It came textured and then I ran it through the CB Textile embossing folder. Once embossed, I used a sanding block on it to reveal the white core. Then I scissor distressed the edges and sponged the entire panel with Tim Holtz Vintage Photo distress ink. The edges of the main DP panel were cut with a Spellbinders die and sponged with Vintage Photo ink. The frame around the lamp is also a digital image from Sugar Creek Hollow. I don't think it's for sale yet. I have it because I am on the Grand Opening design team. That panel was also sponged with Vintage Photo distress ink. I made up the sentiment and printed it on my home computer. It was cut with a Spellbinders tag die.

Now here's the part I'm not sure about. See how the lamp shade is sort of cloudy looking? Well I tried watercoloring it with my Vintage Photo ink, but that smeared the printer ink, even though I had heat set it. I covered it over with gold Distress Stickles and I like how it looks. But then I was thinking it was too cloudy, so I makde another lamp shade and colored it with Copics. Then I glazed it with Crystal Effects. The updated photo is below. My dilema - I can't decide which I like better. I think its the first version. Even though it the lampshade looks cloudy, it think it looks weathered and attractive. Which one do you prefer? Leave me a comment and let me know!




Once you solve my dilema, I hope you will hop over to Creative Inspirations and see the awesome sepia creations the rest of the team designed. This week our prize is a 10% discount at Happy Hippo and the chance to be our guest designer for the month of March! So what are you waiting for? Let's see those sepia creations!!

Hope you're having a great week!

Blessings,

Challenges entered:

Little Paper Shop - Distressing

Tuesday Throwdown - Distressing

Handful of Stamps - Open Challenge

Get Well Wishes - A CCC Challenge

This week the challenge at Creative Card Crew is to make a get well card. It's always good to have a few get well cards tucked away so I happily got down to the business of designing my DT card for this week. This card features an image from the new vintage/primitive digital stamp company Sugar Creek Hollow plus a sentiment I made up and printed on my home printer. The digital image of the pretty spring bonnet was colored with Copics and popped up with craft foam. The lovely mellow yellow paper is from SU's Parisian Summer pack.

The frame and border are both Spellbinders dies and the corner pieces are a Cuttlebug die. All edges are distressed with Creamy Caramel and the main image panel has also been sponged with Scattered Straw distress ink. The flower was also made using the Flower Petals Spellbinder dies. The leaf is a Sizzix die purchased through SU.

I think that's about it for the details. Let me know if you have any questions. I was really happy with the way this card turned out. I really like the gentle feminity of it. Be sure to stop by the Creative Card Crew blog and check out the lovely work of the rest of the design team ladies. Our sponsor this week is Truly Scrumptious Crafts and the prize is some lovely ribbon and charms.

Thanks for stopping by. Wishing you blessings on your week.

Challenges entered:

Corrosive - Sew it Up

One Stitch at a Time (a brand new challenge blog) - Stitching

Stamp Something - Something Cute (I think this card is very cute)

C.R.A.F.T. Challenge - Digi coloring

Fun 'N' Funky - Shabby Chic

Digital Tuesday - All Things Girly

Pile it On - Let's See Flowers

Cute Daisy May - Bright and Cheerful

Handful of Stamps - Open Challenge

Sugar Creek Hollow Design Team Preview

It's Preview Week at Sugar Creek Hollow and each day on the website several design team members are being introduced. Friday is my introduction. For preview week, Tracy, the owner of Sugar Creek Hollow gave each of the team a set of three quilting images and turned us lose to do as we wanted. It's been such fun showing and sharing our wonderful creations with this set on the team blog. At first I was very nervous about what to do with the quilt image. As you know, I'm not very experienced in working with digital images, although I am always game to learn something new. The team members have been so fabulous about sharing their knowledge as each of us added to our body of knowledge about digi's. Two main things I learned this week that I am very excited about using in the future are layering in a photo editing program and digital paper piecing - a very cool technique.

So here's my quilt card. Considering that I went from being at a total loss as to what to do with the image to creating this card, I was pretty happy with the outcome. I tried to channel "country" with this card and the image of a stamped tin ceiling came to me. So I dragged out the alunium foil - you can read more about that adventure in the You Make My Heart Sing post below. The quilt blocks were not digitally pieced here, but rather paper pieced by hand (that's what convinced me that I HAD to learn to do it digitally).

The paper is mostly SU - Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla sponged with Creamy Caramel and Chocolate Chip, Rose Romance DSP and the quilt blocks are digital paper that I printed on my home computer. The beautiful country-ish brads are from Michael's.

I hope you will stop by Sugar Creek Hollow and get acquainted with the other design team members and see their take on this very cool digital set. While you are there, be sure to check out the Friday freebies and the details about the grand opening March 1st.

Exciting News and a Card to Share

I am so excited to be able to share this news with you today! Earlier this week I received an invitation to be a guest designer for the grand opening of a brand new digital stamp company Sugar Creek Hollow which will be specializing in vintage and primitive images. Humm...does that sound like a fit for my style? I think so and apparently so did the folks at Sugar Creek Hollow!!

Today I am sharing the first card I have made with one of their digis. The Sugar Creek Hollow Design Team has been working hard behind the scene creating cards to share with you for the Grand Opening. We couldn't resist holding back!! We want to share with you just a preview of what is to come.

Isn't this the most beautiful vintage floral image you have ever seen? I fell in love with it immediately and I'm sure it will become a favorite go to image for many occasions. I paired it up with SU's (retired) Afternoon Tea designer paper Wild Wasabi CS and picked up the colors from there. Gingham ribbon just seemed like a must for this card and I was lucky to find some in my stash that matched. Buttons and brads along with some linen thread added the finishing touch. I plan on finishing off the inside and including a sentiment there, but wanted to get this posted along with all this exciting information.

Want to earn this digi for FREE? Become a Sugar Creek Hollow Follower. Be the 150th or 200th follower and you will receive a FREE digi of your choice!!! Deadline is February 7th at 10pm eastern time. The winner will be announced on February 8th Preview Week!

Please visit the rest of our lovely team by clicking on their links listed here:

Design Team Coordinator: Joseline
Kristina
Cheri
Cassandra
Cassie
Joan
Stephanie
Marsha
Dani
Suzi
Loretta
Donna
Sarah
Tracy

Guest Designers
Kelly
and me Linda, the funkie junkie!

Hope you will visit all these wonderful designers to see what they have created and be sure to stop by Sugar Creek Hallow to check out the images that have been early released.

I am also entering this card into the following challenges:

Stamp, Scrap & Doodle - Open challenge - enter any gorgeous creation

Cute Card Thursday - Bloomin' Gorgeous (flowers)

Artful Inkables: Think Ink Challenge #12 - Think Spring

Update: I had a question from a reader about the paper piercing tool used here. It is a Spellbinders Boarderabilities die called Ric Rac Scalloped. This die is a cutting, stenciling and piercing tool.

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.