Sunday, April 22, 2012

Mojo Monday Challenge #237

Up for the next challenge was Mojo Monday, and thier latest sketch. A cute little sketch and everyone one loved it there are lots of entries. I was having a challenge figuring out what to do with 4, not 3, jumpy circles? I could do flowers, but most of the ladies did those, I could do the actual circle, too cliche, or I could do butterflies? To many ideas, I ended up thinking about it for a day and realized that what hangs not at the same level are lanterns, the are never just in a straight line, so with some asian inspiration I dug out my Pagoda cricut cartridge.
There are awesome lanterns, dolls, fish lanterns, pandas, anything with an asian theme you can think of on this cartridge and other than this card I have used it once. It was a great layout that I will probably post another day but hopefully soon we will visit China or Japan and that cartridge will be smoking that day! :)
It is also full of Kanji characters, each page has a different word, and even though there is no birthday...celebrate is a great way to say happy birthday anyway, or anything else for that matter.
It was looking pretty plain with just the paper so I decided to add some jewels, maybe it kinda looks like fireworks, too much Kung Fu Panda for me, and sprinkled them around.
Last but not least, I looked at the sketch again and saw that it needed a label or ribbon down near the bottom, but I wasn't going to put any words on the front, so I was thinking I needed a fan, but where would I find that? So next idea, I had some wider red grosgrain ribbon and ended up folding that across the card for an awesome pop of color.
All in all I thought it turned out pretty nice, even with all the thinking going on. Want to play the next card challenge? On Mondays of course, see the next sketch -->HERE

Friday, April 20, 2012

Clean & Simple Challenge #185

I ended up joining some challenge sites lately to get some extra inspiration. One of them was Clean & Simple, no prizes but fun layouts, all cards so that should get me back up to my old stock level of cards as our Happy Hobby craft show wiped me out. This is the sketch:
A simple sketch but with endless possibilities, if you want to see what others have made with this sketch you can go HERE!
This is my version I put my self under the wire to make this card so with a little help from my cricut and Graphically Speaking cartridge I think it came together. I also have limited ribbon here and had to choose colors that went with my ribbon.
And of course the inside of the card can not be naked so with the leftover papers I put the rest of the sentiment on the inside!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Floral Tapestry Class

Finally ready to get back in the swing of things, after the great Happy Hobby Craft Fair, many ladies here in Yuzhno have signed up for my email list promoting classes in one craft or another, first class is from my favorite, scrapbooking,
What a great way to display pictures of your vacation, wedding, baby or life in general. This layout is about one of the most monumental days a kid can have, first day of school. Seeing as how the Yuzhno scrap booking stores are less than impressive and more expensive than my first born, I am providing all basic materials for this class, yes I still have a bunch of paper from when I was a Close to my Heart Consultant so as long as a dedicated few ladies want to learn, I have the materials. I have chosen a discontinued paper pack called Floral Tapestry, mostly because I want spring to be here, it is mid-April and there is still lots of snow on the ground but the temperatures are rising, we had to dig out the bikes this last weekend. The Layout was chosen with great care to incorporate different size pictures and/or use pictures printed with all the same size, I steered to my Magic book by Jeanette Lynton, which has awesome scrapbook recipes in it. I decided to pre-cut all the paper for this layout with minimal variations between the kits. Each person will get a 'kit' with the paper, cardstock, and any other extra pieces that are needed for this project.
We will also use Close to my Heart's Bohemian Alphabet for our titles, and all ink, blocks and stamps are shared. The other fun thing with this particular paper pack is that it originally came with multiple sheets of 'My Stickease' that coordinate with the paper pack, you can see some sticker photo turns at the top, near the title and in the next close up are some fun circles.
Lately, after I complete a layout I have been making a card or two with the leftover scraps, none is made as of yet BUT soon I will have a great little card for a birthday or something. Also the current embellishments on this page aren't quite what I like to put on my page, but they are the perfect simple accents for begginners which is what most of the class will be, so I plan on pumping up the embellishments to my satifaction, I am thinking of posting a before and after shot to see the difference. What do you think?