A Picture Perfect Paper Smooches Sparks Challenge & DCWV Thank You Card

Welcome to today's post!  I have made here a lovely Thank You card using some of the FREE Digi stamps available at the Paper Smooches Blog site.  This will be my entry for the Picture Perfect Sparks Challenge.  

The background paper is from "The Once Upon a Time Stack" from DCWV.  I love the reds and browns in the print as well as the woodsy feel it has.  

I also used some glitter glue to highlight some of the flowers in the background.

Inside the card is the follow through caption "You're a Hoot from the free Paper Smooches Digi Stamps. I stamped an owl from another stamp set inside the card because I liked the owl waving and I wanted a different pose on the inside.  I colored my owls in with gel pens and alcohol markers.

Thank you Paper Smooches for having some free digi stamps available to make some simple and easy cards!

Thank you for dropping by! I love to hear from my fans. Please leave me a comment! I appreciate and read them all!!

Cheers! 
Barbara

Paper Smooches: June DT Blog Hop

Paper Smooches: June DT Blog Hop: It's Pep Rally week and we are here today to share a sampling of the Paper Smooches July stamp release with you!  FOUR new stamps and ...

Contest! Contest! The Elements of Abundance Giveaway!!!

This contest is now over.  Thank you to all who followed the link over.  The winner was Lisa Wick.
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A colleague of mine, Mary Malinski, a Life Coach, is having a fantastic contest/giveaway at her facebook site "Walks Within"!  Look for her post for "The Elements of Abundance". It's a 5 week teleclass on empowering yourself to reach for more abundance and prosperity in your life!  

I highly recommend that you take a look and enter her giveaway! I know I certainly could use more abundance in my life... in whatever form that takes. :)

Click on the links above to enter the contest and to read more about "The Elements of Abundance" at her website. 

Good Luck Everyone!!!

I'm in the Top 10 Winners at May Arts Ribbon and Easter Cards

Good News ... I made it into the Top 10 projects from the May Arts Summer Nautical Challenge!!! Yay!  As a new blogger and new at entering crafting contests this is really exciting for me!  There was a Grand prize winner there and her project was fantastic! You can find the links to May Arts in my previous posting or just click the May Arts ribbon linky to the right >>>.

Since I love to celebrate I thought that I would sneak in a couple of Easter Cards I made this year.  I'm really playing "catch up" here so please excuse me if it seems out of context for this time of year.  They were from some of my earliest cards and they look pretty rough around the edges. But I love experimenting with making new things and the best way we learn is from trial and error!

EASTER CARDS..........................

This card above was something I was experimenting with. I tried to get in a little mixed media in it by using the feather, the moss and the free hand inking of the grass.  I used a wide variety of prints from scraps, cut eggs out using the Cricut Expression, and embossed some of those eggs with the a manual embossing machine.  The biggest thing I learned from this one was to ink my background first! I think that would give it a much better look.  The second thing I learned is that i'm not as good at stylized handwriting as I would like so I will stick to using stamps to ink in my sentiments.  It's still a cute card.  I think I will try this again next year and make a few improvements! :)

The second card here was also a mixed media experiment for Easter.  It's mainly made from Graphic 45 paper (Ye Old Curiosity Shop I think). I was going for a vintage card but was unhappy with the tiny red butterflies on the right.  I do however adore the large butterfly. I used black Coats cotton thread for the antennae!  I love the feel of the feathers and should have used them on the other side as well.  The key is out of place I think so I would eliminate that as well. And I think I would use a real ribbon bow instead of a chipboard bow. Otherwize.. I love this card. I embossed the outer corners with my Fiskars embossing corner punch and ink distressed the surface of the card in pine cone brown.  

I hope you liked them and can find something in them that speaks to you. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Cheers!

Barbara

Make an easy & fun Father's Day Card!

This Father's Day came so fast for me because the month of June is so busy for me with graduation, prom, ceremonies and outdoor BBQ's!  So this year my post is late but I think this card would make a great Birthday Card for anyone at any time! Especially for those who love gambling and lottery tickets! I know my Dad always loves getting scratch tickets so that's what was part of his gift card this year.  I also gave him that amazing Lighthouse I crafted in my previous post. He loved it!

This card was pretty simple and easy to make. Right now there are stickers available in my local dollar stores by American Crafts that are the Monopoly game symbols. I was quick to pick up a few packages as I love the game!  It occurred to me that my card could be focused on the "Chance" card from the game. So I fashioned it more towards that.

Inside I wrote my special sentiments to my father but hid them under the fan of lottery scratch tickets I stuck inside using double sided sticky tape from American Crafts!  It was pretty easy for him to remove the tickets as long as you just stick the backs of the tickets to a small corner so they don't tare off when removed.  Once the tickets were taken off then he got to see his special message!

In this second photo you can see that I used some washi tape on the bottom to just be sure they stayed on and it was easy to lift it off again to get to the tickets! A really handy use for washi tape!!!  I also used a thin line of glitter paper and a line of washi tape on the right front edge of the card... it made it look upscale, rich and classy!  It turned out to be a great gift card and Dad won a prize too!

So always be on the lookout for great craft and card ideas at your local dollar store.  You never know what kind of neat projects you can make and save a few dollars while you're at it too! This card was a Win/Win project!

Please leave a comment below! I'd love to hear what you think!!!

xx/oo Barbara

May Arts Ribbon Nautical Summer Craft Challenge!

Thank you for coming over to visit with me today!  Back in May, May Arts Ribbon put out a call for people who were interested in participating in a Nautical Summer Craft Challenge and I was pleased to be one of the people chosen to participate.  The summer challenge was a Nautical theme and I was sent 2 different types of ribbon and 1 type of cording to use in my project.  I had already wanted to make a lighthouse and this challenge was perfect for my project!!! 

I really had a lot of fun with this challenge and it really turned out great! The Canadian Flag does swivel in the wind as it is attached to one of the ropes (threads) that was used to make the flag pole.  It made taking pictures a challenge as the flag was always changing it's orientation! I took quite a few pictures of my lighthouse down at the beach front in Qualicum Beach, BC on June 12th and it was so hard to choose just one so I'm posting only a few of the best!

This lighthouse was originally made to be a birdhouse and it had two holes in the front panel but I covered them up.  I would think that one could convert this into a money bank by sawing a slot in the back prior to painting etc. because it's hollow and put a hole in the bottom covered with something so that one could get their money out one day!  I loved making this so much I plan to make quite a few more!  It was super fun!  I had so many compliments from passers by walking along the promenade at the beach!!!

May Arts is also taking fan votes for best project and they are having a giveaway too! Head on over to their Blog to vote and get in on your chance to win! http://www.mayarts.com/blog/nautical-craft-challenge-entries-and-a-giveaway/

Description/Directions:

1. I found a dollar store wooden lighthouse. 
2. Sanded it with very fine wet/dry sandpaper (dry).
3. Painted it with Craft Smart Acrylic Paint. (several coats)
4. Used adhesive glitter sticker paper (gold) found at the dollar store for the light Pylons at the top. (two levels)
5. Began wrapping ONE ply of the 3 ply burlap cord around the roof top and glued down to surface with Aleene's Original Tacky Glue only as needed (sparingly) and held down end bits myself by hand until dry.. didn't take too long. Shaved any unruly threads of burlap material to look neat.
6. Wrapped cord around the railing pylons. Upper no pattern because that's a light post only... lower level is viewing deck likely so I made a crisscross pattern for more security. (logical) Same glue used to secure hidden knots and wrappings.
7. Pre-measured appropriate lengths of Solid w/D.Stripes ribbon before cutting, then adhered to building using thin line of glue and pressing down at finished points until stuck down. precision of level lines corrected while glue still setting.
8. Pre-measured lengths of Solid Stripes ribbon used on main body of the lighthouse I used American Crafts double sided sticky tape as the liquid glue would bleed through the thin ribbon. At the back of the lighthouse the tacky glue was used to make sure it did not come undone and dried opaque... not too unsightly but the AC 2x tape just wasn't a strong enough hold. Then the blue diagonal ribbon was over layered on top of that at each outer edge using only tacky glue.
9. I glued on very small river stones from Michael's Crafts to the base.
10. I placed dollar store Canada and BC Flag stickers on the main front walls.
11. Made a Flag Pole with a small bamboo BBQ skewer, stuck on a bead at the top with glue, used Jewelry findings for flag pole rigging, thick black thread from Coats (cotton) for roping, printed off a paper Canadian Flag and used my 2.5" Xyron Create-a-Sticker to put the flag on the thread using two prints so it's double sided. (Flag can freely flutter in the wind!) Rigging does not move though..lol  That was way too complicated for me.
12. Finished off with Embellishments stickers from Jolee's boutique... Dimensional Stickers (Bon Voyage 50-50085) and (Sunglasses 50-40051) where oddly I found the starfish!
13. Fish netting was used from river rock bag!!!
14. coiled rope  I used the burlap cord single ply.
15. Front door cut from scrap of scrappy paper and glued on.

May Arts Ribbon Used: 

Solid Stripes 365-2-14; Burlap Cord SP10; Solid with Diagonal Stripes 424-18-03; 

Other Supplies Used:

• dollar store wooden lighthouse
• very fine wet/dry sandpaper
• Craft Smart Acrylic Paint (white, holiday red, peacock blue and grass green)
• adhesive glitter sticker paper (gold)
• Aleene's Original Tacky Glue
• American Crafts double sided sticky tape
• small river stones (pea size)
• dollar store Canada and BC Flag stickers 
• a small bamboo BBQ skewer
• scissors, ruler, gold gel pen, black sharpie marker
• a bead
• Jewelry findings
• pliers for jewelry, rounded and flat edge.
• thick black thread from Coats 
• 2.5" Xyron Create-a-Sticker
• Jolee's boutique Dimensional Stickers (Bon Voyage 50-50085) and (Sunglasses 50-40051)
• Fish netting was used from river rock bag
• scrappy paper and flat edge paint brushes (medium weight)

Finally, I'd like to thank May Arts Ribbons for giving me this opportunity to showcase my project. Please visit them at their Facebook Page and tell them I said hello! ~~~Barbara Wagar

Facebook Link to May Arts: www.facebook.com/mayarts 
Link to the May Arts Craft Challenge Posting: http://www.mayarts.com/blog/a-nautical-craft-challenge/
Link to Main Blog page at May Arts: http://www.mayarts.com/blog/
May Arts on Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/TheRibbonLady/
May Arts at Youtube:  www.youtube.com/mayartsribbon

I Made it to "May Stack-a-holic DCWV Card Challenge Top 10 !"

Today I am very excited to announce that I made it into the Top 10 list for the DCWV May Stack-a-holic Card Challenge!!

This was the May DCWV Challenge Sketch

This is the card I made using the 6x12 Summer Garden Stack by DCWV 

I used 2 white (3 holed) buttons from Buttons Galore for the pink flower centers, used a Fiskars punch for the white paper trim and layered it over generic pearlescent 1" wide lace I purchased from a fabric store. The flags were inked in pink on the edges to highlight and match the pinks in the print. I used a generic "Thanks" stamp I found at Michael's Crafts.  The outside edges of the card were ink distressed in chocolate brown.

http://dcwvinc.blogspot.ca/2013/05/may-stack-holic-challenge-top-10.html?showComment=1370015015366#c3272721400543557842

http://www.buttonsgaloreandmore.com/

I am so thrilled to make it to the Top 10 List!  It's been so busy lately as the month of May tends to be. This year is busier than ever! I have one child graduating from High School with Prom set for tomorrow and I'm registering both kids for College and University at the same time for this coming fall! This week I was set back by several days with an awful cold but Mom's job is never done. So after a few days of forced bed rest I'm just about better and fervently getting the last of the celebration preparations completed.  The most critical is completing the alteration of my daughter's red satin prom dress!!!  

This card was quite simple to make and fun to embellish any way you like or put any sentiment you like. With so many Grad presents coming along I will surely need to make quite a few!  I really appreciate your comments and look forward to hearing from you!  

Thanks for visiting my Blog today!

Barbara