Flourished Thanks

I needed a thank you card so I thought this new special edition thank you set from PTI was perfect to use. I also played around with making my own pattern paper using Rosie Posie and broke out the big daisy image which I hadn't stamped yet. I love how easy it is to make gorgeous paper with this set. Over the top of all the stamping I added some small polka dots in Antique Linen distress ink and added a strip of the Filagree border. I kept it flat as it needed to be mail friendly.

Last week was a very hard week with our oldest dog dying and then dog sitting for my mom and her dog getting terribly sick all of a sudden and also passing :( I stayed up all night with my mom's dog trying everything I could to help her and she honestly seemed to be pulling through at about 6:00am and then was gone by 8:00. My parents come home today and though they aren't at all upset with me it will be a little hard as they go home with one less doggie. I am hoping for a calmer week. Hope yours is off to a good start!

First Pages of Project Life

Well, these pics are not great, but it gives you an idea of my first couple Project Life pages. I cut all the journalling tags and mats myself to see if this was a project I could feel inspired and motivated to keep doing and it is! I am not being very specific in how my timeline is, sometimes it's daily, sometimes it will be weekly but the twist I am doing for myself is that it is a journal of thankfulness through pictures and the written tags. I have been keeping a gratitude journal but being able to have pictures to go with my recordings as well as funny things the kids say, do and just life in general is so much more full to me. I had a dear fellow PTI lady rak me a pack of the grid journaling cards which I love and will use a ton, but I think I am going to order one of the core kits as I want to keep up with this but don't want it to take time away from the other crafting I still love and want to do. My hubby gave it a big thumbs up and he said he likes this type of memory keeping even better than the traditional LO's. I'll still do those, but this is a brilliant way to capture so much more since time is an issue. Are you doing PL? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts and come see your pages as well. Thanks for visiting:)

Light of the world....

Another Wplus9 set called Guiding Light, used to create this little scene. I love making scene cards, something so relaxing and magical that happens as it begins to unfold and come to life. I love stamping on kraft to color with my pencils and it really made the water colors pop.

I want to do a weekly post of one set 3 ways, but haven't gotten to it this week yet. I have been busy creating lots of tags and journalling cards for the Project Life album I want to start. The way I plan to do my album is to make it a reflection on everyday life and to document the things I'm thankful for...good, hard, small, big. Everything. I have some journalling tags out in my kitchen today so I can jot down things in the moment and am snapping a few pics to go along with it too. My album will be a eclectic style as I am trying to save money and not buy a core kit. But I love the Amber kit and I may give in ;)  For now though, I just want to get started and not worry about doing it "right", because really there is no right way. Anyway...I'll post about it when a few pages are done. Any of you doing Project Life? Thanks for visiting me:)

Gardiena Birthday

I love this floral set from Wplus9 called Everafter. (plus, I love the name of the set as that is one of my very favorite movies!)  I wanted to color it like a gardiena as they are one of my favorite flowers and we had a huge bush of them growing up in Hawaii. Oh how I loved to go out to it and bury my nose in all the amazing blossoms. I also used a sentiment from the Botanical Silhouettes set. I'm trying to stock pile some birthday cards for this year. The background was stamped with the border that comes in the Wplus9 Mehindi Medallions set. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment, they have sure been brightening my crafty heart!

Celebrate

I really love this MIM ghost masking technique, so I tried it again using some very out of my norm colors. For the flowers I used a Wplus9 set called Everafter. I realized I have a lot of the Lemon Tart color cardstock which is my favorite yellow, but I need to start using it more! I hope you are having a relaxing weekend! Thanks for dropping by :)

MIM #49- Ghost Masking

This weeks MIM was a really easy, but super neat effect technique called ghost masking. I had to resist using Rosie Posie for my first try on this and tried to use another unloved set. So I pulled out PTI's Life set and am really happy I did! I have a huge weakness for silhouette floral images and I really love how this turned out. I kept it compeltely one layer and pulled out my sewing machine to add a bit of texture. I don't have the label basics set so this frame was the closest thing I had that would work. I did have to trim down my positive die cut a bit so that there wouldn't be a line between the full strength ink and the second generation stamping.  Now I think I want Label Basics! Hope you like my take on this challenge, I really love how it adds so much depth to a one layer card. Thanks for stopping by!

One Set, 3 Ways

So, Meredith from the PTI board set a challenge for herself to randomly choose one set each week to stamp with and make three cards with only that set. (unless you just *have* to add something to pull it off)  I have many, many loved, but neglected stamp sets and decided to give it a go.

Unlike Meredith I took a very unscientific approach to my random choosing. While she numbered all her sets and uses random.org, I chose to take my stamp index binder, set it on my lap, close my eyes, ruffle through the pages, open it and point to a spot on the page. Whatever set my finger it closest to wins :)

The set that got some inky love tonight was Flourishes, Herbs. Honestly I think I only used this set once and that's only a vauge feeling. So here are my three cards with one set and only supplementing 2 single stamps from 2 other sets.

 Since the set is silhouettes of herbs I started with a go-to design that I love for these types of stamps. I even stamped on the die cut button! On this card I used every single silhouette image and the biggest sentiment.

 Next up, I spotted the sentiment for the geranium and thought it would work for a birthday card. I pulled out some die cuts sent to me from someone off the PTI board when I purchased a used set from them and it's their fault I now own the picket fence die and the Tag Sale 3 die is on it's way to me! I supplemented a woodgrain background stamp for my fence, otherwise it's all from the original set.

For my last card I took my cue from Meredith to try to come up with a Christmas card. I was stumped at first and then lo and behold there was this tiny branch stamp with the ever so slight curve in it and as I was playing around with it I realized it would make the perfect wreath!  So away I went stamping it on my Doily Details die. To add some berries/flowers, I selectively inked with a Tombow pen one of the tiny geranium flowers. The sentiment is from PIT's Tag it's #9.

My experience with this challenge was pretty amazing. I actually felt MORE creative being limited to one set and it made me really think outside the box. I also felt free in not having to think of what other stamps to add...the ones I did add were obvious choices and not hard to decide on. So a big thank you, Meredith! I hope to do this challenge once a week and ink up lots more of those sets just waiting to be discovered. I'd love to hear what you think about my 3 takes on one set. hugs....

Banner Fun

 The card uses PTI Banner Builder and Wplus9 set for the little birds and sentiment.

I held off buying the banner stamps when PTI came out them not sure I'd use them much. But after months of seeing projects and still really liking them I bought a set with the dies off the PTI buy/sell board...and I'm so happy I did! I love the cute little banners and all the different patterns you can stamp them in. I also love that the rounded banner stamp, the one I used on my LO, covers the Buttoned Up dies perfectly! So I can make cute little patterned buttons to my hearts content. I also used the heart frame Tag it's which I think is my new fav. The butterflies and title were cut with my Cricut and I also used a couple of Tiny Tags, a Love Lives Here house and a bird from Little Bitty Bird. Thanks for dropping by!

Decorating the Tree~pages with pti challenge

Well, the picture quality is terrible, so I apologize! It's SO hard taking good pictures of LO's at night in my craft closet. (My craft space is in my master bedroom closet:)  Any tips on how to get a better pic?

Anyway...Leigh over on the PTI board issued another challenge, this time it was a sketch. I usually love to have more than one picture on my LO's, but I just went with this one since it was already printed and ready to go. I cut the title and frame with my Cricut using Art Philosophy. The Fillagree border die was used again and I tried a bit of heat embossing with clear powder for a subtle effect on my background using the big flourish from Silent Night. I like how linear this sketch was...right up my alley :) Thanks for coming to visit me!

The Punches Challenge in the Moxie Fab World

I decided to play along for the first time over at the Moxie Fab blog where their current challenge is to use punches in an innovative way. I love punches, especially border punches so my "innovative" way of using one was to create a paper bow :)  I used an apron lace punch and punched 3 strips to create my bow. I trimmed the strips down to being very thin and then glued all the pieces together making sure to round the bow part out. I added a flower and button to middle to hide the messy part of it ;)

 To create my flower stems I used a plain scallop punch and punched the paper on either side so that it created a wavy, almost rickrack type stem.

 I also used a large scallop punch to create the edge of my card. I did for the base as well as the pp that I adhered on top. To tie in the apron lace bow I edged the card with thin strips of the same punch and even added one to the inside so that the card looks balanced open or closed.

 Finally, I punched some bitty MS butterflies and added some pearls. The tiny hearts are die cuts from the middle of the PTI tiny tag I used for my sentiment.

I hope you like all the punchy goodness! I sure did enjoy creating this card and I think I could do without any other floral set now that Rosie Posie is with me:) Thanks for stopping by!

Pretty Birthday

This card fits this weeks MIM at PTI. I really love how this card came out and it was one of those rare cards that was clear in my head before I sat down to make it. I cut 4 of the fillagree borders to make the background and then in between stamped one of the images from Stitches and Swirls. This little flower and leaves is one of my very favorites from the set. I then colored them in with Copics. The banner is the longest double ended banner and I folded in the ends, secured with Scor tape and added little green rhinestones to finish it off. I hope you like it too :) Hugs...

Gingerbread LO

My mom and I bake gingerbread cookies every year with kids before Christmas. This was our 3rd year and I love seeing the changes in the kids, though it makes my mommy heart just a bit sad too as they are growing up so fast. Sorry for the poor picture quality, it's so hard to photograph LO's and I always craft at night so no natural lighting for me. Used a bit of PTI goodies, Simple Circles border, Mat Stack 5 and a Love Lives Here die and a bit of felt. The rest was Cricut and CTMH. Thanks for dropping by!

Love hopes

Wanted to make a very quick and easy to mail card to send some encouragement to my MIL and pulled out some very neglected stamps and dies. The big brackett die is a Cuttlebug combo die and the stamps have been in my stash so long and are stored in plastic binder pages that I don't even remember the company they are from. But, they got inked and that makes me happy :)  I hope you have a day filled with love! Thanks for stopping by.

PTI Princess challenge and MIM

Amazingly this card fits 2 challenges, the current PTI Princesses challenge and the PTI MIM challenge of make your own stamped background. For my card I used Rosie Posie and Polka Dot Basics 1. The rest of the card is PTI die cuts and a happy birthday stamp from a set I have no idea to which it belongs. Quite awhile back I had moved my PTI stamps to a binder storage system, but in the last few months went back to the CD case system and I had pulled all the birthday sentiments from my older sets and grouped them together. I still like that a lot of them are all in one spot, but the set it originated from is a mystery to me now :)  I hope you like it! I think I need to pry myself away from Rosie Posie...I just *heart* it so! Thanks for visiting me:) 

Mini Album~Papertrey Princess challenge

It took me some time to settle on what mini album I wanted to create for the blogging group I'm a part of, the Papertrey Princesses. I finally decided on one of my sweet boy Makaio. Many of you followed and read my story of the long journey it was to get him home and I thought a little album of some of my favorite pictures of him while we were seperated was just the thing. So, here is my mini album of my son, Waiting for you.

 The journaling reads:

You were an unexpected miracle, a gift from God. We prayed and hoped and cried while working and waiting to get you home. Twenty long and blessed months later you are in our arms...you were worth the wait.  Dec.2009-Aug.2011

I'd love it if you dropped me a comment:) Thanks so much for visiting!

Pages with Papertrey Challenge

On the PTI forum there is a challenge hosted by forum member Leigh and I decided to join in :) I love using my stamps on LO's and had a lot of fun with this one. The challenge was to use the colors, white, black and harvest gold. I had to cheat a bit as I don't have any harvest gold cardstock, but I figured lemon tart was close enough. My ink is CTMH, but very similar to harvest gold. It was a bit of an extra challenge to use a holiday photo and this one just fit the bill. It's a photo taken of my family 4 Christmases ago and I wanted to journal a bit about how much has changed in 4 years, so the very unlikely color scheme worked. I used the new PTI fillagree border, Stiches and Swirls for the background (boy do I love the pp it makes!) and Vintage labels. The alpha is a CTMH set called Field Alphabet.

Lots has changed in 4 years. We've moved twice, the final time being into our own home we love, we've gained many true and supportive friendships and we've grown by 2 family members! God has certianly been good:) Thanks for stopping by...I so appreicate your visit!