Paper and Such - New Release!

Good Morning Paper and Such Fans and Friends!!  How are you?  I'm great and thrilled that today is a new release day at Paper and Such!!  We are mixing it up a bit and have one new set to show you and we are re-releasing an older set just in time to start making those fabulous masculine cards for Father's Day!

I hope you have come here via my friend Kim's blog!  If not, make sure you start at the beginning of this fun hop so that you don't miss one fabulous creation!! 

My creation today uses the new and so pretty Strawberry set!

Here is the set in it's entirety:

 I started by inking the main strawberry plant image onto Xpress blending cardstock and coloring it in with these Copics:  (and you'll notice a couple of very OLD Pantone markers in the mix)

I then cut it out using my Spellbinders circles.  I matted it with bright yellow cardstock and stitched a portion of the edge.  If you've been reading my blog you know that I am very consciously trying to adopt the "use what I have" mentality.  (go ahead...laugh...I do every time I write those words!)  But I try and try and try.   So the papers used in this creation came out of my scrap bin and if memory serves they are from Bazzill, SU! and MME.  I did a bunch of fun stitching, added brads to the top corners and added a distressed, manila tag to the background.  

I used some delicious May Arts chevron ribbon to finish the front off and you'll notice an actual Bingo sheet layered in there as well!

My interior uses more of my scraps and a sweet sentiment and single stamp from the above set. 

Paper and Such's Deer Dad set is being re-released today and would be absolutely perfect for any woodsy man in your life!!  I love it because the sentiment words are all separate allowing you to customize your creation for your needs! 

That's all for me today!!  Off you scoot to see what wonderful creation Mindy has in store for you today!!

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith

Paper and Such Challenge Time!

Hi All and Happy Tuesday!!  Yep!  It's that time!!  Another fabulous challenge over at the Paper and Such Challenge Blog!  Today's new challenge is "flowers".  Easy, right?  Great!!  We can't wait to see what you come up with!  And don't forget, simply by playing along you have the chance to win a stamp set of your choice from Paper and Such! 

Here's what I created to inspire you!

It's a trio of mini cards for my daughter to hand out to the wonderful teachers at her school.  I made three identical cards using the Wild Rose set.  As you can see, I used the smallest image in the set inking it onto shrink plastic.  I wanted there to be lots of textures in these 2.5"x3.5" mini creations.  I first sanded my shrink plastic.  I then stamped the image using Momento ink and colored the image with my Copics.  In hindsight, I should have used my Prisma pencils to get better coverage but no matter. 

After coloring, I trimmed out each flower.

I held each one with a pair of craft tweezers and using my heat tool shrunk each one down.

Above is a picture of before and after. I then assembled my card using some delicious Basic Grey Kissing Booth paper.  I created the rosettes by hand.  I added some stitching and gingham ribbon to bring it all together.

Behind the rosettes, I've placed two of the smallest MFT STAX Fishtail Flags cut from kraft and designer paper and edge distressed with Hero Hues Latte Chalk Ink.

I do hope you come and join us for this fun challenge and a chance to win a fun prize!!

Crafty Hugs!

Simple and Quiet

Greetings Friends!!  I hope you are having a lovely start to your week!  We spent the weekend mostly indoors due to a sick kiddo and I'm hanging with him again today as he's not *quite* better but well on the mend.  We ended up heading out on a beautiful walk this morning after my oldest headed off to school.  It's just gorgeous here in the Northeast!  With all of my indoor time this weekend I was able to continue playing with my new spring palette of Distress Inks, this time focusing on my absolute favorite - Peacock Feathers.  (talk about swoon!?!)

I needed a (sigh) sympathy card and they are always just so hard to make.  I kept it very simple, clean and quiet.

I've been trying really hard lately to adapt the "use what I have" mentality, which I don't know about you but I find extremely difficult especially when new, fun and fabulous products come out just about every day!  So with that in mind, I pulled out an old SU! bird stamp and my SU! Shimmering White paper.  I first inked the bird onto watercolor paper using white craft ink.  I heat set it with white embossing powder and then used my Peacock Feathers ink and an ink blending tool to coat the bird.  I then fussy cut the bird out and adhered it to my card front.  I used this set from Paper and Such for the sentiment which is inked in SU! Basic Black Ink. 

I added a white button with neutral twine threaded through and tied in back.  I rounded each corner and lined the interior with ledger style paper from Crate Paper. 

Hope you have a great rest of the day!!  See you tomorrow!!

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith

Shimmer, Shine, Embossing, OH MY!

Greetings Paper Canteen friends!!  Happy Weekend!!  I hope you are having fun whatever you are doing!  I recently received the new Tim Holtz Spring Distress inks and I've been playing with them ever since!  The colors are SO fabulous but I must say that I am totally partial to Peacock Feathers.  {swoon}

I started with this Hero Arts/Basic Grey cling stamp and good quality watercolor paper.  I coated my stamp in white craft ink and then heat embossed the image with white embossing powder.  I sponged the top of the panel with Shaded Lilac and the bottom with Peacock Feathers blending them heavily in the middle.  I took a baby wipe and gently rubbed the embossed areas clear of any leftover ink.  Using my pearlized water I gave two light sprays to the entire panel then zapped it dry with my heat gun giving the entire piece a beautiful but delicate shimmery shine. (almost impossible to see in the photo) I added some very lush light blue velvet ribbon where the two colors meet. 

My friend Abby has an amazing line of sentiment stamps that are all in Spanish.  Truly wonderful, truly fabulous and oh so fun to play with!!  You can check out her wonderful shop right HERE.  I used this set here for the tab sentiment.  The sentiment tab was cut with the File Tab Die-namic from MFT.  I purposefully placed the tab a bit off center to keep things interesting. (wink!)

I hope you have enjoyed and been inspired!  Will be back tomorrow with another creation!!

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith

It's Distress Time!!

Look at what just arrived in my mailbox from SSS!?!?

I'm SO excited!!  Off to stamp!!

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith

My Favorite Things Weekly Stamp Club!

Greetings MFT Fans!  It's that time again for this week's sketch challenge and it's another fabulous layout!!  I've vowed to myself to start using stamps that have never been inked before so today I pulled out my Pure Innocence - Carnation.  I know, wicked...crazy...sweet!  She's just too cute!  Here's the sketch:

And here's my interpretation of it:

I stamped her on heavy watercolor paper as I was in the mood for a more...texturized paper and the watercolor paper really absorbs the Copic color in such a wonderfully rich way.  Once she was colored I focused on the carnation.  I wanted to use sort of a spotlighting technique to make the flower really pop.  So I inked it again, colored it, cut it out using the second to smallest of my circle nesties and then adhered it with some Jody Boosters.  My sentiment panel is cut using the Fishtail Flag STAX Die-namics and the Finishing Flourishes stamp set. 

I then cut two Rolled Daisy Die-namics - one from kraft cardstock and the other from ouchless cardboard.  I layered them together and rolled them into one fluffy flower.  I added a light pink button tied with a natural twine bow in the center to complete it.

I used lots of fun papers from Recollections, cardstock from Bazzill and stitching to finish off my panels.  I used itty bitty baby brads on two of my layers and as you can see I sponged distressed most of my layers.

I used my scraps and the Finishing Flourishes stamp set to complete my interior.

I am also entering this into the most recent Birthday Challenge at Simon Says Stamps! 

Thanks for popping in!!

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith

Some Odd Girl Feature

Good Morning Oddies!!  So glad to be here with you today posting the latest and greatest Stamp Feature from Some Odd Girl!  Today we're featuring Sweet Tiny Tia!  Seriously, isn't she adorable?! 

I printer her out onto Xpress blending cardstock and colored her with my Copics.  I also printed her out onto the green polka-dotted and the pink flowery papers from Jillibean Soup - Sweet & Sour Soup.  Here are the colors I used for her skin and hair and shoes:

I used a white gel pen to doodle in her freckles!  I then paper pieced her dress.  I also pieced her arms to make it look like she was wearing fancy gloves!

Lastly, I pieced the hair ties holding her fluffy side buns in.  I used a sketch in my collection as a jumping off point adding my own elements here and there.  I grabbed lots of my scraps and using some of my favorite MFT Die-namics, I created the flowery and pearl clusters.  Everything is adhered down using hot glue.

I finished everything off with some stitching and beautiful taupe, satin ribbon tied into a bow.

I hope you have enjoyed my creation today!!  Thanks for coming by!!

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith

Hi Oddies!!  It's the first of the month and you know what that means?!!  A brandie new challenge over at the Some Odd Girls Challenge blog! This month's challenge is one of my favorites...a sketch challenge!  I have been asked in the past if I think that using a sketch somehow takes the creativity away from making a card/layout/project.  Honestly, when I first started crafting years ago, I sort of gave thought to that.  But as the years have gone on I have started to rely on a sketch every time I create as my jumping off point and I let my creativity go from there.  Sometimes I interpret the sketch literally and sometimes you can see the basic elements of the sketch layered throughout the other elements of my project.  So no, I think sketches are an amazingly helpful tool...especially on those days when the creativity is on the low side.  (wink!)

So without further ado...here is this month's sketch challenge:

I have used the crazy adorable Smell The Flowers - Tia clear set for my project today.  I inked her with Momento ink and colored her in with my Copics.

I paper pieced her dress but colored the trim using my markers.  

 After coloring, I used my circle Nesties to cut her out and to create a matte from chocolate brown, textured Bazzill cardstock.  My patterned papers are all from MME - Fine and Dandy and my cardstock is from Bazzill.  I used my MFT Die-namics to embellish this card along with some stitching, jute twine, baker's twine, mini clothes pin and some self-adhesive pearls. 

I finished off the interior keeping it bright and simple:

I do hope you come over to the SOG Challenge Blog and play along with us and this super fabulous sketch!  Thanks for popping by today!

Crafty Hugs!

Meredith

My Favorite Things - May Guest Designer Challenge

Greetings friends!!  I'm posting today to bring you my entry into this month's MFT Guest Designer Challenge!  The theme?  Be A Teacher's Pet!  So fun!!  It's hard to believe that it's almost THAT time of year again but indeed we are almost at the end of the school year and that means thoughtful gifts for those most important and fabulous teachers in our children's lives.  I've made a very special chalkboard frame for a teacher in our lives that is extremely special.  Our children were very lucky to be able to attend the most amazing pre-school ever.  It's warm, nurturing, loving, and extremely special.  It's hard to even put it into words but my son only has a few days left and at the end of his three years there he has grown into a wonderfully confident, loving, artistic, bright and kind boy.  Large in part due to the amazing lessons that he has learned from his teachers at FCF Preschool.  And I don't mean pen to paper lessons...I mean life lessons.  Sharing, caring, nurturing, friendship, love and support.  It's just the best school...ever.  So...with all of that said, I have made this chalkboard frame for his amazing teacher, Lois.

I started with a raw, 12x12", MDF frame purchased at Michaels.  I sanded the frame down and painted it with black acrylic paint.  I then painted four coats of chalkboard paint.  It's a bit laborious as you paint in one direction and then let it set for 24 hours.  Then you paint in the opposite direction the next time you paint, and so on and so forth.  The painting itself took four days to complete.  I then sanded it very lightly to get the surface chalk ready and then I started doodling on it with chalk to condition it further.

 The thought behind the chalkboard paint as opposed to regular paint is that each year, Lois can swap out the class photo for that current year's picture and doodle in chalk (her handwriting, as opposed to mine, is BEAUTIFUL!!) the year and any other information she feels like writing.  And, I've created a small, soft chalk holder that you see in the upper left hand side of the frame.

(I told you my handwriting is terrible!)  The chalk holder is made from yellow felt that I cut with MFT's Layered Heart Die-namics.  I used the larger of the two hearts, cut it out and zig zag stitched the edges together.  I tied a bow using my recent favorite May Arts chevron striped ribbon and snuggled the end of the heart holder into the tied bow.  It holds two pieces of chalk nicely so that it's always on hand when needed.  I also added one box of white and one box of colored chalk.  Both boxes are decorated to coordinate with this fun gift pack.

I used both ALM set "You Rule" and PI set "You Make The Grade" to embellish the boxes of chalk.  I used my fabulous Oval STAX Set 1 and Set 2 to create the focal point in order to house the sentiments.  I have to say that I really love the colors and design of the Crayola boxes so for the white chalk box, I left a tiny bit of the box peeking out on the bottom while on the box of color chalk, I used the Solid Bracket Border Die-namics to embellish.  Just keeping things interesting and fun! I added a few rhinestones to bling up the front in order to coordinate with the bling on the card.  I used awesome Jody Boosters to attach the sentiment panels to the front of the chalk boxes. 

I had SUCH a great time creating the decorative grouping that you see on the lower left hand side of the 12"x12" frame.  All of the pieces were done by hand.  I only have a small die in order to make rosettes from so for this, knowing I wanted a large version, I cut and scored everything by hand.  I started with my red cardstock, cutting it at 2" wide by 24" long (made by adhereing two 12" pieces together).  I scored at every inch, folded, adhered the two 12" strips together, and hot glued into a jumbo rosette.

I did the same with the notebook paper which is from Recollections (Michaels) but trimmed the paper to 1.5' wide so it would fit within the borders of the large red rosette leaving room for me to add more details in between the two.  I added loops of the red chevron ribbon along with natural twill, twisting each one and hot gluing it into place.  I had a huge chipboard star that was begging to be used!  I covered it with the same alphabet paper used on my card, ink distressed the edges and layered it on top of the ribbon.  After sponging the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, I then added the notebook rosette on top of the star.  My next layers include a chipboard circle which I coated in Brilliance Aqua ink and then coated with UTEE (hard to see the shine in the pic) and the Swiss Dot yellow paper, also from Bazzill.

Layered on top of the entire grouping, I used the adorable ALM Talk Nerdy To Me sweetie.  I inked her with Momento ink onto Xpress cardstock and I colored her with my Copics.  I used silver Sakura pen to coat the metal top of the pencil as well as the graphite.  I coated the pencil wood with Versamark pen then in clear embossing powder and heat set.  It has a super fabulous shine!  I trimmed her out intentionally leaving a 1/8" border of white as I really, really love this look with certain images.  I adhered her down and then as a final touch added the smallest Hearts A Plenty Die-namics cut in red felt to the top. 

 I must say, I LOVE the wonderful dimension this jumbo element adds to this creation.

I wanted to do something impactful but didn't want to cover the entire frame so instead of covering the frame in design elements, I decided go to with a more three dimensional effect.  To the right of the huge rosette, I have added a large chipboard bracket that I coated with white craft ink and heat set with white embossing powder to sort of anchor the grouping and divide the space between the embellishments and the doodling area.  I also added two Royal Roses cut from yellow and aqua felt. 

I used my newest addiction, ahem, I mean my new favorite Fishtail Flags STAX Die-namics to add the PERFECT sentiment for a picture frame gift from the WTG set - Teacher's Pet. 

I also created a coordinating card using this week's MFT sketch as my muse.

 All of my papers are Bazzill and Recollections (Michaels).  The small black and white alphabet script is digital paper that I was sent a long time ago that I simply print out as needed.

I stamped my image once onto Xpress cardstock (for the hands and books) then again on the blue dotted paper(body), tan cardstock (pants), red cardstock (apple) and for the body, I only inked the main image not the surrounding frame.

 I then paper pieced in this order:  pants, shirt, books, hands, and apple.  I trimmed out my apple from the red cardstock and coated it with Glossy Accents and set it aside overnight to dry. 

Once dry, I added the apple to the image and then trimmed it out with my circle nesties.  I used one of the sentiments from the Teacher's Pet set, stamped, trimmed apart, matted and layered in between the WTG main layer and it's red matting.  I stitched the edges to keep everything together and to add more texture then I added a fun blingy circle.  Once this main piece was done I set it aside to complete the rest of my card.  I used the fun chevron ribbon, baby brads and a fun teeny, tiny paper clip to the top right.  As you can see I used my Vertical Greetings Die-namics layered on top of the Fishtail STAX to hold the digital paper. 

I finished off the interior keeping it bright and sweet with some Crate Paper ledger paper as the main focal  point. 

I have to, once again, thank Jody and Joanne for the wonderful challenge as well as the wonderful Design Team at MFT for the constant inspiration through weekly challenges and each and every spectacular release!  

If you are interested in seeing all of the amazing entries this month please pop by the gallery HERE at SCS!

Thanks so much for popping by to see my entry!

Crafty Hugs!

Meredith

Fabulous MFT products used in this project: