Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

Hello everyone,

                                                                        

                                            

I've had a great time away with my daughter, but before I went, I made a card for this months PTI Blog Hop. The challenge this time was to use scallops in a design and I wanted to try a card with contrasting texture. This is what I came up with:-

I used my Cricut to cut a heart shape out of Enchanted Evening card stock and cut scallops from a Stampin Up punch, a Martha Steward punch and from Plantin Schoolbook, which I then passed through the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder for some texture. I layered these up with some bobbly white trim from my stash, and then used a sentiment from Signature Greetings, embossed in white on the left corner of the heart. I used another piece of card for the Anniversary tag and scalloped and inked the edges, before sticking it to the right side of the heart. I then rounded the edges of the base card and inked the edges to soften things a little, and put some ruffled white ribbon across the centre. The heart was then raised on pop dots and adhered to the card with a little white button to finish it off. This is the first time I have used three different trims on  one card but I think it works!

There were so many entries in the last blog hop that I didn't manage to see them all, so I better get hopping to see all the wonderful inspiration everyone gives. Happy hopping! I'm also going to enter this card into CCEE Stampers challenge to use blues to make a monochromatic card.

Hugs

Carol x

Birthday card for February Use Old Stash Challenge

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a good week and managing to get some inky time even if it is half term. I'm going away with my daughter now until Friday, but I just wanted to pop on and share a card I made out of my old stash materials. If you stopped by in January, you will know that one of my new year resolutions was to challenge myself (and anyone else who would like to join in) to make a card each month entirely from old stash.

For this card I used backing papers from an old Hot off the Press book of  papers and some red and white card from Paper Box. The stamp is from Stampavie and is a Penny Johnson design called Looking Chic, and I had great fun colouring it in with Copic markers. I also used the following dies:- Nestabilities Fancy Tags, Scalloped Circle and Circle. PTI Border die.

If you fancy trying my challenge, do leave a comment so I can pop onto your blog and see. I'd love to visit!

Hugs

Carol x

Papertrey Ink Graduation card.

Hello everyone,

Its Friday afternoon and I have a great weekend to look forward to because my lovely daughter is home for the weekend! She is a teacher and works really hard, as they all seem to do, so is in great need of her half term break this coming week. So before I get busy, I'd like to share a graduation card I made with my current favourite Papertrey Ink colour combination of enchanted evening and Hawaiian shores, for another monochromatic look. I'm going to enter this card into the Stampin for the Weekend challenge.

I used For the Graduate stamps set and Mat stack 1 die along with Hawaiian shores ribbon. All the stamping was embossed in white and I cut out the hat and raised it on pop dots for some dimension. I didn't put a bow on this card so it will go through the post with the normal charges.

Have a great weekend and thanks for looking in.

Hugs

Carol x

Valentine cards

Hello everyone and Happy Valentine's Day. I have been spoiled rotten all weekend by my lovely husband and he cooked a wonderful romantic meal for us on Saturday night. I would like to share some of the Valentine cards I have made this year, some to send and some for daughters' school to sell.

First up is a non traditional Valentine card with what I hope is a masculine feel in spite of the flowers:-

I used my Cricut Wild Card cartridge for this one which has a funky wonky card shape. I used some stamps from my stash and stamped and embossed them in black, and finished it off with a splash of red for the sentiment and little red heart gems.

The next one also used the Cricut for cutting out the heart shapes:-

This is a variation of a card I showed you in a previous post using up Christmas paper, but this time I put the heart shape onto a traditional card shape and used a lovely vintage collage stamp on the little hearts. The pattern was stamped with the PTI set Background basics Hearts.

The next one is a simple card

I used up some of my background paper and used the lovely collage stamp in Versamark ink on the little hearts and then tied one up in ribbon.

The last card used a Cuttlebug folder

I like this quick and simple design and have used it several times for different occasions. This time I used a PTI mat stack die and a stamp from the Round and Round set along with one of the free tag stamps from the anniversary celebrations. I used a sentiment from a Hero Arts Happy Everything set and attached it with a brad.

Wow that ended up being a longer post than I anticipated so thanks for stopping by. Wishing you cards, or flowers, or chocolate, or wine, or a romantic dinner, or all of them if you have THE ULTIMATE perfect partner!

Hugs

Carol x

My first blog award!

Hello everyone,

I hope you've been having a great weekend and have been able to do something that brings you joy. I was out scrapbooking at my favourite craft store yesterday and when I got home tired but happy, I had a lovely surprise waiting for me. Lynn from Crafty Linby had passed on an award to me. My first award! I was so pleased that she had thought of me, I did a little happy dance.



There are some conditions attached. Firstly I have to inform her by way of this post that I have accepted - consider that done Lynn, and thank you very much. I then have to TAG another 3 to 5 bloggers and invite them to participate. I have chosen:-


 Ann at Love Making things

Margaret C  at Thread Ink and Me

Karin aka Peppermint Patty

Beverley at Little Shop of Crafts

These are all talented and friendly crafters and it is a pleasure to visit their blogs. So ladies, I hope you will accept this award and follow the above conditions, or let me know if your are not going to participate.
Have a great week.
Hugs
Carol x

PTI Anniversary tag

Hello everyone,

Just a quick post because it has been a very busy day. Over at the PTI anniversary celebrations the challenge today was to make a tag using a frame. I didn't have much time so I made a very simple tag using the layered circle dies to make a frame and came up with this:-

I used My Punny Valentine stamp set and a Nestabilities die along with the PTI layered circle dies, some ribbon and a gem. I tried to make the pie base look like one of those vintage le creuset pie dishes and I think it worked?

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs Carol x

Papertrey Ink anniversary celebration - favourite colours

Hello everyone,

The celebrations over at the PTI blog continue today with an amazing prize being offered. The winner will receive every new PTI set of stamps that is released in the coming year and guess who would be doing the happy dance if she was lucky enough to win that one? Yup.

There is also another contest to win lots of colourful goodies and to be in with a chance for that one, we were asked to make a project using some of the Design Teams favourite colours, and I chose to try this one from Melissa Phillips



This is quite a departure for me because if you come here very often you will have noticed that I'm a bit of a monochrome kind of girl. I would love to be able to use colour more effectively though so here is my attempt at mixing four colours:-



click to enlarge



I took the photo this evening and the colours are not quite true but I made the card itself from hibiscus burst and used a Cuttlebug folder for the background embossing, and scored 3 straight lines at the end. I then used ripe avocado ribbon and looped it across the centre of the card. Next, I cut sweet blush card with the mat stack 1 die and stamped an image from Round and Round in ripe avocado ink. I used Heather Nichols' lovely tag design from the free download this week to go in the centre, and this has spring moss on it. I finished it off with a couple of hibiscus burst buttons with a little twine through them.

Good luck everyone and thanks for all the lovely comments you have been leaving this week, I really appreciate hearing from you.

Hugs
Carol x

PTI Anniversary Graduation card

Hello everyone,

I'm still playing along with the Papertrey Ink anniversary celebrations, and today we were challenged to make a card using sentiments as the focal point. I decided to make a graduation card for a man because I always think I stink at masculine cards and I need to get better at it.




For some reason this looks a little blurry on my screen but if you click on it the larger picture is a bit better.

I used several sentiments from the For the Graduate stamp set and also stamped and cut out the graduation cap which I raised to give some dimension. I added sentiments from other sets and also made a scroll and tied it with twine. I inked around and over the white panel to soften the starkness of the white and used black gingham ribbon and put some star brads on either side of the focal panel. Phew, that took me out of my comfort zone!

Thanks for stopping by.
Hugs
Carol x

PTI Anniversary celebration

Hello everyone,

The celebrations over at the Papertrey Ink blog continue and today Nichole gave us all a sheet of images designed by their stamp designers. She has challenged us all to make something using one of the images and this is what I came up with:-

I chose to use a sketch from the Get Sketchy challenge and used a lovely image from Melissa Beckford, which I cut out with a punch and coloured with Copic Markers. I layered this onto enchanted evening cardstock cut out with one of the limitless layers dies. I cut another couple of 1 inch circles and stamped and embossed a little flower in white from Boxes Bags and Tags. I placed these onto Hawaiian shores cardstock and stamped and embossed a get well soon sentiment, again in white, before matting it onto enchanted evening card. I then added ribbon and attached the whole thing onto a white card blank and rounded the bottom two corners.

Card recipe

PTI cardstock in Enchanted evening and Hawaiian shores

Stamps PTI Boxes Bags and Tags

Ink Versamark and white embossing powder

Ribbon Hawaiian shores satin dot.

Copic markers

I was quite pleased with the result and will make it my first entry into the Get Sketchy challenge. Thanks for looking in.

Hugs
Carol x

PTI Anniversary

Hello everyone,

It's Papertrey Inks fourth anniversary and Nichole has asked everyone to post a picture of their favourite PTI creation of the past year. So I started looking through some of my posts, and I have had a hard time choosing, even though I have not been at this for a full year yet. I've enjoyed making each of these cards because I love PTI products, but I have got the most satisfaction from mixing product lines or being taken out of  my comfort zone by entering a challenge.

After a lot of  changes of mind, I think this one is my favourite because it challenged me to use leftover Christmas gift wrap and think of something creative to do with it. I also used a new (to me) technique of threading the ribbon through the heart, and I love the bright, cheeriness of it in the middle of winter.

I was selecting from the following items and I enjoyed looking back over them because I was reminded of stamps or techniques I would like to use again, and I could see how my taste and style has changed over the year.



 This was a close second because it shows my gorgeous son on his memorable day. 





 





         

    

 

          

    

Well enough of wandering down memory lane, I need to go out in the pouring rain and do the shopping or there will be nothing in for dinner tonight. I'm sorry about the spacing on these pictures but I've wrestled with them for ages and cannot get them right!

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs

Carol x

Fair Trade

Hello everyone,

Fair Trade fortnight is coming up and I've been a bit busy lately, making up some hot chocolate packages for the school my daughter teaches in. They are in the process of becoming an accredited Fair Trade School and during Fair Trade fortnight, my daughter runs a cafe after school serving Fair Trade drinks, cakes, chocolate etc, and provides literature to show what we can do to encourage Fair Trade. I found some bright mugs in the sales after Christmas and filled them with Fair Trade Hot Chocolate and a Fair Trade Kit Kat, along with some mini marshmallows (we couldn't find Fair Trade marshmallows but it wouldn't be right to leave them out would it?)

I just popped it all in a cello bag and made a label using a stamp I got free some time with a magazine and coloured with Le Plume markers. I then cut it out with a circle punch and layered it onto a lacy circle cut with a  PTI die. I made 40 of the bags up and below is a picture of a few of them looking bright and cheerful massed together

The children are taking part in a competition to draw a poster to advertise Fair Trade and the two winners will receive one of the mugs and a bookmark I made for them:-

For the bookmarks I used a PTI die and a gorgeous stamp showing a child reading under a tree from the All Booked Up stamp set. I made the bag topper with white card stamped with Polka Dot Basics, and layered on a Fair Trade logo and a sentiment from the stamp set saying  'There is nothing like a good book.'

I hope you are having a good week and thank you for looking in.

Hugs

Carol x