Category Archives: Challenges

Washi Wednesday Challenge: Cover Letter

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I could not resist this weeks Washi Wednesday challenge on the Freckled Fawn blog (I am Doe). You get a $5 Freckled Fawn gift certificate just for playing along!

Doe posted an adorable wooden letter covered in washi tape, and posed the challenge for her followers to cover a letter too. Here is my take on the challenge:

I made this “E” shaped shelf in ninth grade woodworking class. When I drew up the plan, my teacher said that this shelf couldn’t work. I wouldn’t accept that, so I made it anyway – now 18 years later I still have a sturdy little shelf. And lookie there – the edges are all the perfect size for washi tape! I used the Aqua Airmail tape from Freckled Fawn all around to dress it up. I was tempted to wrap the entire shelf in washi tape… but… I’m still at the hoarding stage. Miiine. My precious.

My kitty milo popped in during the photoshoot to sniff around. He loves to play with washi tape, so I keep it safely stowed in a clear cracker container.

Do you like my silver ampersand? I have a green one too… I was going to keep one at work and one on my desk at work, but Sara suggested that I start collecting them. Oooh! I must buy a wooden one and cover it in Washi Tape!

I have the weekend off, and am planning to hit up some more antique stores. I’m on a quest for old aqua Ball Mason jars. What are your plans for the weekend?

Tuesday Trigger: A is for Apricot

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I loved the colour scheme in this week’s Tuesday Trigger over on Moxie Fab World, so I finally pulled out the supplies I had collected this week without a minute to spare. Posting this quickly to make the deadline, I apologize for the photo quality – the lighting at 11:45pm isn’t favourable.

Here’s the Moxie Fab inspiration photo:

Moxie Fab World Blog

And here’s my card:

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The combination of apricot and robins egg blue was what drew me to the inspiration photo, so I used the same colour scheme for my card. I love that Hero Arts flower, which I coloured on the back with my Copic Markers. I’ve been looking at all of the other entries and am even more inspired now. I will definitely try this colour scheme again in the future.

Cure for the Winter Blues

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Just popping in quickly to share a card that I made two weeks ago for the Winter Blues Challenge over in the Moxie Fab World. Life has been pretty busy lately, between working at The Paperie and helping my co-worker design her business website. I really wanted to play along with this week’s Tuesday Trigger as well, but time escaped me.

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I found this gorgeous SEI paper in my stash, it has to be at least three years old. The image and lines are all a dark teal foil, and it’s stunning in real life. I simply cut a square of the patterned paper, coloured one of the flowers with my Copic markers. This was one of the easiest cards I’ve ever made, the sentiment is the only stamped part.

Perhaps I’ll sit down at my desk and see if I can come up with anything for the Tuesday Trigger challenge, I just loved the inspiration photo this week.

My aim is to play along with more challenges in 2012, we’ll see how that goes 😉

Tuesday Trigger: Winter Blossoms

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It’s been a long time since I played along with a Tuesday Trigger, but when I saw this image it conjured up all kinds of ideas.

Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger

I pictured white embossing on kraft, florals and lace, etc. Of course I could not find my white embossing powder, so I went in a different direction tonight when I saw that the deadline had been extended. The soft colours of kraft, pink and yellow inspired my card…

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Although this isn’t the idea I originally had in my mind, I like how it turned out. Here’s a close-up of that wooden button which was not easy to part with, I’m not going to lie. Love those KaiserCrafts wooden flowers too (both were parts of the December Paperie Club Kit). The shimmery Seashell paper is from Envelopments and it is my all-time favourite cardstock.

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Tuesday Trigger – Lovely as a Lullaby

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Tuesday Trigger Inspiration:

Click to link to Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger

Result:

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I was inspired by the colour scheme to make this cute set in the soft blue, yellow and black colours. After I had my project completed, I went to look at the full quilted piece on Etsy and discovered it was a baby boy quilt with elephants and other little animals on it. Not a huge coincidence I suppose, since the colours screamed “baby boy” at me.
 
Be sure to click on the Tuesday Trigger picture and follow all the great links to see tons of wonderful inspiration!

I’m a Wiener! err… WINNER! :)

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I was pleasantly surprised this week to wake up on Thursday morning and check Flickr only to discover a slew of congratulatory comments in my newsfeed. I clicked over to the Hero Arts blog and discovered that they picked one of my cards for the second round of winners for the May contest! This is the third time I’ve won a $50 shopping spree from Hero Arts – the first two projects can be seen HERE and HERE. I highly encourage everyone to enter – if I can win, anyone can. Seriously.

Here’s the winning card again… I’ll take a photo of my goodies when they arrive! 😀

Click picture to go to Hero Arts Blog Post

Glenda’s 100th Random Amusing Challenge!

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This week Glenda is celebrating her 100th Amusing Challenge and she has asked a bunch of her buddies (including lots of us from the old A Muse team) to play along in a blog hop of sorts. There’s lots of great cards to see, so scroll down below my card to see everyone’s creations!

Glenda’s 100th Challenge is: Use red on your card or project.  Use as much or as little as you like. Incorporate it by using paper, ink, ribbon, embellishments, whatever you like! It’s that simple!  You must play along with the challenge to be eligible to win the blog candy.  If you play along, please leave a comment on Glenda’s blog and link back to her post from your post.  If you upload to an online gallery, please use the keyword GRAC100.  You have until midnight Pacific Time on January 23rd to play along and you can play along as many times as you like.  The winner will be randomly chosen and announced on January 24th. Have fun!

 

I’m trying to make 10 Christmas cards per month this year so that I don’t feel too overwhelmed when November rolls around. Here’s my design for January, which was super easy because the music notes, cardinal and sentiment are all ONE stamp! I stamped it once in black and once in red so I could cut out the red cardinal and layer over the existing black one with pop dots.

 

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Here’s a list of other bloggers playing along with the challenge!
Allison Fillo http://stampinwhenican.blogspot.com/
Allison Miles http://allistamps.blogspot.com/
Beate Johns http://beate.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/
Belinda Chang Langner http://cadnileb.blogspot.com
Carly Robertson http://carlyrobertson.typepad.com/
Cheiron Brandon http://www.cheironbrandon.typepad.com/
Chris Sather http://cattsscratchingpost.blogspot.com/
Dawn Stein http://www.lavendergiraffe.blogspot.com/
Donna Hitz http://www.frozenstamper.blogspot.com/
Elena Shacochis http://thestampingshac.blogspot.com/
Geeta Suggs http://www.craftyengineer.typepad.com/
Jenn Shurkus http://jennshurkus.typepad.com/creative_chick/
Jennie Moczan http://www.simplycaffeinated.typepad.com/
Jill Grace (& family) http://creativegrace.typepad.com/
Joan Jeffery http://www.j-jcreations.blogspot.com/
June Gibbons http://perfectlikeacurl.blogspot.com/
Kamila Younkman http://littlescrapsofheaven.typepad.com/
Krystie Lee Hersch http://www.cupcakemartini.com/
Michelle Clark http://www.sparkledesigns.typepad.com/
Michelle Mathey http://msmathey.blogspot.com/
Michelle Woerner http://stopandstamptheroses.blogspot.com
Nance Lempinen-Leedy http://nanceleedy.blogspot.com/
Sherry Czarnecki http://littlestampsbiglife.blogspot.com/
Silke Ledlow http://silkeledlow.blogspot.com/
Teresa Kline http://www.enjoythevasunshine.blogspot.com

Pajama Party – Challenge #4

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It’s 12:43am and I’m finally headed to bed after a late night of stamping and chatting with my fellow A muse addicts. For Geeta’s challenge (Make a card for a mom you know), I made a quick card for my mama – she’s had a hard week so I treated her to breakfast.

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Mom’s favourite colours are navy blue and red and she sure does love coffee, so I made this card to have on hand. The inside says “let’s get together for coffee”, and there’s a little pocket to stash a Starbucks gift card. My mom is such an amazing woman, she deserves to be treated more often.

Pajama Party – Challenge #3

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I always seem to use my Zinnia stamps and they just weren’t going to work for my favourite flower (Lilacs) so I had to improvise. I used the two little flower stamps from the Cupcake Builder stamp set to create this pretty little branch of lilacs, and I used the Leaf frond stamp for the leaves.

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Thanks to my mother I have always shared her love of lilacs – they are her favourite flower and every spring we used to go to graveyards to pick lilacs. Shocking, I know – we are practically grave robbers. Don’t tell!

Pajama Party – Challenge #1

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I couldn’t resist playing along with Jennie’s inspiration challenge – create a card inspired by these cupcakes. You know me and cupcakes 😉

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Don’t recognize that cupcake stamp? Look closer… I used a cupcake top and a bottom from the Cupcake Builder stamp set and inked up the back of them. To quote Julie Ebersole, I am hugging myself right now.  🙂

Inspired by HRR

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I have been inspired by Julie Ebersole for a couple of years now. I won’t lie, meeting Julie in Seattle in October was the highlight of my entire trip and I have the fan-girl picture to prove it… 

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 The Monthly A Muse Challenge over in the A Muse Lounge is to create a card inspired by Julie Ebersole. Sounds pretty easy, but it was actually hard for me to choose my inspiration for the card I’m about to show you. I could’ve easily drawn inspiration from any and every card that Julie has made but I thought it fitting to use a stamp that Julie herself designed. I chose THIS card (click) as my inspiration because I loved the colours, here’s what I came up with… 

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I didn’t have room to fit the whole greeting, so I omitted the word “sincere” and just stamped “thanks” on the card, accenting the word with a few gemstones I coloured with a Copic marker. This is actually the solid Chrysanthemum stamp but I used a ultra fine tip black pen to draw the outline. I broke out my old favourite tool for this card – my paper Crimper! I love that thing and I don’t know if I’ll ever tire of it – do you think it’ll ever make a comeback? Let’s have a Crimper revival – but no hair crimping please. 🙂

Scrapbooking

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I scrapbooked for myself… for the first time in maybe two years. I have made layouts for the store, calendars for family, but not once have I made a layout for myself since 2008. I started an album when I was 27 called “27 things that make me happy at 27″… it was a very happy period in my life. Then the bottom fell out and suddenly I was not happy anymore… then my dad got really sick and I haven’t really scrapbooked since, except for the odd Class I was teaching. 

I participated in an online crop last night and made THREE layouts and two cards! One of the challenges was:  “Create a LO about a struggle that you have survived…how did that challenge/situation help shape you into the woman you are today?” Now I’m going to spare you the sentimental journaling, but here is the 8×8 layout I created…

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I typically only use one picture so I feel more comfortable working with 8×8 – I always put too much pressure on myself to fill up the negative space on a 12×12 layout. Lazy me, I didn’t use spellcheck before writing “independence” right on there, which is funny considering I am sort of anal about spelling and grammar.

Here’s one of the cards I made using ONLY items on my desktop – luckily I keep that pretty cluttered 😉 The challenge was to create a card or layout using only items that were within arms reach.

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I used my corner rounder to create the scalloped border and paper pieced the little dresses with scraps of A Muse gingham paper.

Interactive Cards

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I’ve updated my Class schedule for March and am finalizing the details for my April card class – the theme in April is going to be babies, since spring is all about new beginnings and joy.

This week’s challenge over on The Paperie Blog is to create an interactive Scrapbook layout or card, so I posted one of the cards we made in my recent Cupcake Card Making Class at The Paperie this past Monday.

I have a few followers here who don’t check out my store’s blog so I thought I would post the card here as well – if you follow both blogs, you are likely to see some overlap since I’m the one updating both 🙂

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A Muse Stamps: Cupcake, Cupcake Builder set (sentiment). A Muse Papers: Pink Shimmer Couture, Kitchen Black Notecard, Ocean Blue Solid cardstock.

I love shaker cards – even better when you can use REAL sprinkles in them.

Take 4

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Cupcake, Take 4

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I stamped the bottom half of this cupcake on Doodlebug flocked brown paper so it would have a fuzzy, spongy feel. This is a cute technique for teddy bears and other critters – the white flocked paper can be coloured, which is good fun. The top portion of my cupcake was stamped on white paper and then I applied Liquid Applique which I allowed to dry before heat setting it. I thought it would be cool to try and colour the liquid applique before I heat it up, but that plan did NOT work out with the colour I chose… so I covered up the ugliness with some Cinnamon stickles and voila… another sparkly chocolate cupcake.

Check back tomorrow evening for my last cupcake card featuring this particular cupcake. I know I cheated by switching out the bottom of the cupcake, but at least I kept the same frosting for each one.

Speaking of cupcakes, if you haven’t been to Bistro Sophia yet, head downtown immediately and ogle their desserts. I hear their cupcakes are to die for. Yesterday I sampled their Opera Cake – chocolate and peanut butter, a little slice of heaven for just $4.75. They have extremely reasonable prices considering everything is made fresh daily on site with premium ingredients. They are located on Water Street in St. John’s in the old Coffee Matters location (near Celctic Hearth).

Take 3

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Cupcake, take three!
 

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For this card I went pretty simple once again, as I have to make a LOT of these. I switched out the bottom of the cupcake since you can mix and match all the cupcakes tops and bottoms in the Cupcake Builder set. The top of the cupcake was coloured in with Zig Glue and I added Doodlebug glitter to make my cupcake sparkle. I totally forgot to stamp an oval beneath the cupcake as a shadow, I’ll have to do that later tonight. I love this particular sentiment from A Muse because it’s great for so many occasions – halloween, birthdays, valentine’s, easter, etc.

I wish I could get the 4.5″ square envelopes because I think this card would’ve been cute as a square but alas, those envelopes are impossible to find. If you know where I can get some, please let me know!