A Little Monster!

Hello Blogosphere,

Boy, has it been a while. Susan and I have been swamped with stuff in our personal lives, and unfortunately the health and wellbeing of our daily lives and families comes before blogging! But here I am, reporting on some cute cards we made LAST weekend, but have yet had a chance to share. These little babies are SOOO much fun and super cute!! Susan and I found a pack of these adorable monsters in the clearance bin at the local craft store, and we both agreed that they would make great kid birthday cards. We have yet to come up with a line of cards for the young at young at heart, and this was the perfect fit. We chose some adorable patterned papers we had in our stash, and TADA! We added some stickles and googly eyes to pack some punch and they turned out mighty cute if I do say so myself!! We had too much fun with these little guys. Thanks for stopping by! We are ready for the weekend, that's for sure. Too bad it's only Monday!

Ducks In A Row

Hello Lovely Ladies,

Happy President's Day to you all. Susan and I are enjoying our day off by working feverishly on cards here in the craft room. We had a slumber party last night and got TONS done. We have some really cute projects we will be posting sometime in the future. Speaking of cute, after a run to the nearby craft store yesterday, we came up with this sweet baby card using some supplies we found in the bargain bins! When we saw these cute little baby theme cut outs, we had to get them! The ducks are especially cute! Once we had the paper picked out, we headed to the blogosphere to find a great sketch, and boy were we lucky! We found this one over at Verve under Week 3 Sketch!! It adapted perfectly for our "ducks in a row" card.

Well ladies, thank so much for stopping by! See you tomorrow with some more cute stuff!!

Hello, Dear!

Happy weekend, everybody! Have you enjoyed yours? We had some lovely weather here in N. Texas so I took advantage and got lots accomplished outside. And now that the weekend is winding down AND I have a bonus holiday tomorrow, Whitney and I are enjoying a card-making marathon.

Don't you sometimes feel the need to drop a cheery note to a friend? For no particular reason at all (well, other than to say hello, of course!)? So do we and that's the *lightbulb* moment behind this new line of cards. Today, I'd like to show you the second card in a new pack called Hello, Dear. (The first one is here.)

We picked up this super-cute sentiment stamp at Michael's in the $1 bin! (I *heart* the dollar bin!) We knew it would be perfect for the new pack. The layout for this card is this week's Mojo Monday sketch, which lends itself perfectly to the large sentiment as the focal point. We opted for cheery papers to enforce the chipper sentiment.

Do you like it? You know we love it when you drop us a note and tell us what you think! We appreciate every single comment - big or small. It's nice to know that people are interested in what we do and are so kind and encouraging. Thanks!

We have a big custom order in the works, so it's time to get back to coloring. Have a great evening!

Thinking of You

Okay, we're back in action over here in the craft room, and whipping cards out is what we were meant to do! It must be that we have two brains working instead of just one! It also helps to have the brains of all the fabulous ladies who give great sketches and color schemes to focus our often times overwhelmed minds!

So, as we begin to think of new card designs for a sequel to our Simply Sympathy pack, we have found that subtle and subdued tones work well, and the challenge at 365 Cards for subtle and muted color themes was perfect for this. A few of the ladies at our church have mentioned that masculine sympathy cards are often times to come by, and I know we have posted about that once before on a previous post, I thought we should share this card with you today. The color scheme was inspired by Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger (Decadently Yours) which again caters to a more masculine feel. Although our Simply Sympathy pack is of Sympathy cards (go figure!), we thought throwing in the Thinking of You card allowed the sender to give it to someone who needs a little encouragement or support, not only for the unfortunate loss of a loved one. We found a great sketch for Mojo Monday 177 that was a great way to incorporate a new sentiment technique that we pulled from Papertrey Ink Make It Monday. The sketch allowed for the sentiment panel to take precedent over the rest of the card, but it did not limit us. We were able to add some more elements to the card, such as the buttons, that were all similar in color so that it gave a pop but was not overwhelming.

I really am loving this card and I have completely fallen in love with this layout! I will definitely be using this one again!!!

The King of Cool

Hi All!

I hope everyone is having as beautiful a weekend as we are here in North Texas!!! It is great outside, but, due to the wintery weather last week, Susan and I did not get as much accomplished as we would have liked to, so while others are outside grilling and enjoying their Sunday afternoon, we are cooped up here in the craft room working tediously to get some new cards made. An idea we had over the weekend was successfully put into action when we whipped out these little babies (no pun intended..heehee).

We have recently noticed the number of people in our circles of friends who are in need of baby cards, be it for new grand-babies, nieces and nephews, and so on. So, inspired to make a pack of baby cards, we decided we could make some cute cards that were not too elaborate, but are pretty and sweet and get across the congratulations that they are meant to convey.

We began with The King of Cool card, inspired by the "oh so trendy" color scheme of blue (or pink) and brown. The challenge over at TCP Tuesday 145 was the color inspiration and when I realized how much I saw this color combo at baby showers and on strollers and baby carriers that came into where I work, I realized PINK and brown would make a great counterpart to our first card, and The Queen of Cute was born (no pun intended...again. lol.).

So, with the colors picked out, we went for a sketch, and this one over at 365 Cards was a nice clean layout that would work for both cards. We decided to keep them similar in all ways aside from the accent color and sentiment so they could work as a pair if necessary.

What's great is that the inside sentiment is a baby quote, but it could easily be for a birthday, and we can just choose a different sentiment, or leave it blank. In the card making business, versatility is a great thing to have.

Well, TTFN ladies, you shall see me back here in a bit!

For My Valentine

Our Wednesday snow-in was quite productive as Whitney and I Skyped about a bunch of different design ideas. Aside from the fact that we like to come up with new product on a regular basis, we've also come to really enjoy the weekly challenges that are hosted by a number of different companies and bloggers out there. In fact, as I've said before, they've really become our go-to places for design inspiration. It's nice to have at least half of the guesswork out of the way, YKWIM?

It's now become a challenge to us to see just how many birds we can kill with one stone. *snicker* Today, we're knocking out not one, not two, not three, but FOUR challenges with ONE card! Can you say KA-CHING?!

You may find this surprising, but until this week, I had not made my hubby's Valentine. *gasp* I know! So given that we would be incorporating love into the card (in order to meet a challenge), it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get his card knocked out!

Actually, two challenges lent themselves to a Valentine:  Papercrafts Simple Sentiments Challenge and the Lawnscaping All About Love Challenge. Having the overall theme and some elements in mind, we began the card design by selecting a layout, which is based on this week's sketch over at My Favorite Things. Now we needed a color scheme. Knowing that this Valentine is going to my husband, I needed the color scheme to be a bit more on the masculine side. After much searching through this week's myriad of color challenges, we settled on the Embellish Color Trends Challenge with Hearts. How fitting - not only does the color scheme fit the bill, it includes hearts as well!

Now it's time to get started on construction. I started with an artichoke base, leaving a narrow border of the white card base exposed. And I had the perfect pink polka dot in the stash for the vertical panel. I opted for ribbon rather than paper for the horizontal strip across the middle. For extra color dimension, I went with a shade of artichoke that was a tad darker than my cardstock, but that wasn't quite enough. It still needed something. Plus, it still left me without the minty greenish color. So I dug through the ribbon stash again and found this lovely scalloped jewel that was perfect. We were thrilled to discover that one of the simple sentiments downloaded from Papercrafts was a good fit for the shaped panel in the sketch. Since the original sentiment was completely in grayscale, I pulled it into PS Elements & added some color to a few of the elements. This helped pull in one of the tough colors (for me anyway): the red. I opted to print the image on photo paper for a little extra pop and then cut it out & popped it up. To meet the hearts requirement for the Embellish challenge, I dug through our button stash and found several hearts. And whaddya know ... they were the perfect shade of PINK to boot! I also found the perfect color red, though I didn't want it to be a predominant color so I stuck to just one round red button. I threaded all of the buttons b/c they just didn't look right nekked (to borrow from Julie Ebersole). With all of the buttons in place, it just didn't feel right. So I opted to break up the threesome in opposing corners and fill in with some smaller elements - pearls!

When it was all said and done, I was quite pleased with this little card. Not only did it meet the challenges, it also met my own personal goal - the perfect masculine Valentine for the hubby.

Thanks for stopping in today! I'm off to enjoy some quality time with my sweetie.

More Snowday Fun

Well, after being snowed in again yesterday, I made good use of my day home by playing in the craft room on some new product designs. Once again, Whitney and I had to resort to Skype to talk through some ideas since the road conditions didn't permit her to come across town & enjoy the snowday with me.

We started with two challenges in order to solidify the layout and color scheme for this card. The Sweet Stop Blog had an excellent sketch up this week that lent itself very well to a birthday card. With the layout chosen, it wasn't difficult to select the perfect color scheme from Papertrey Ink's Anniversary Color Challenge. I am a HUGE fan of Dawn McVey and always look forward to her posts. She's such an amazingly talented stamper AND designer. And one of my favorite things about Dawn is her fantastic eye for color!! So it was no surprise when my eye gravitated to her color palette.

After choosing Dawn's fun color scheme for my birthday card, I went through my stamps in search of the perfect image. And that's when I came across this chickie. I'm a huge animal lover, which is one reason why I love Whipper Snapper stamps. And I'm most especially fond of sets designed by Anna Wight. Talk about another crazy-talented stamper!! This is her Gift Chicken stamp and the sentiment is from her Crazy for Chickens set.

For a change of pace, I paper pieced the chicken image rather than watercoloring as I usually do. This took a bit more time since I'm cutting out little pieces of the image, but it made it much easier to get the colors for the challenge just right. I did watercolor chickie's beak and combs b/c I thought that would look more natural than paper pieces. To make the hay nest a bit more lifelike, I glued some DNC floss under the lil' gal w/ my two-way glue pen and then, once the glue was dry, spread and "fluffed" it a bit for even more realism. I used a Sizzix die to cut the sentiment panel and then dressed it up w/ some pearls & gems. To give the entire card a bit more *oomph*, I popped up the image and sentiment panels.

I hope you've enjoyed your stop in today - we certainly appreciate all of you who are kind enough to comment on our creations! It's still freezing cold here today, but at least we can get & around and go places. Right now, I'm off to warm my hands by the fire!

I'll Take Two!

We're going on FIVE days of being snowed in here in N. Texas. Can you say stir crazy??! LOL! So what's a crafter to do when her partner in crime lives across town? Well, you Skype, of course! Whitney had a great idea for a card, but I just wasn't "getting it" through email or text. So we hopped on Skype and talked it out. Technology ... what would we do without it?! *heehee*

Today's card was inspired by the white space challenge over at 365 cards. We talked through all kinds of approaches to this challenge before settling on one - from buttons to ribbon to glitter. We were finally able to settle on a simple yet ingenious design that really fits the bill!

As you've heard quite a bit this last week, we are currently in the process of designing new product. One potential client has asked us for girly cards that sparkle b/c that's what appeals to her boutique customers. And that's how Glitzy Glam was born. This is the first card in that line, and we're simply smitten with it! I mean, what girl doesn't love glam that involves shoes, right?! I'll take two! *snicker*

I started with a super-sparkly pink base layer cut from a piece of DCWV glitter cardstock. Next, to meet the white space challenge, I cut a 3.5" circle from the cardstock, leaving the white base layer of my card exposed. Then it was time to build the focal point.

On one of my many forays to Michaels, I picked up some gem images for $1/pc. I knew they would be perfect for our boutique packs, and as you can see, I was right! In order to make the focal image pop, I mounted it on some SU! eggplant cardstock and cut it out. I affixed it to a small scalloped circle cut from my pink glitter cardstock and popped it up on two layers of dimensionals to really draw the eye to the center to the image. Next, I built some lovely Primas from the Calypso collection, drawing in our two primary colors - pink and purple. To add even more sparkle to the card, I covered the brads I used as flower centers with Crystal Effects and then coated them with some Martha Stewart tourmaline glitter. I slid these beauties underneath the oh-so-fab shoe and *voila*! Aren't you just in love? Makes me think of Cinderella at the ball!

Well, ladies, with some good crafting work under the belt and out of the way, I'm off to check on the cinnamon rolls that are warming in the oven. Yum! Have a good one!

Feeling Fishy??

Howdy from snowy North Texas! My, oh my, have we had some snow, my friends. That big winter weather system dumped more than 6 inches of snow on us in the early morning hours this morning. And I'm now on Day 4 of being housebound. *sarcastic slow clap*

Soooooooo, I've made lemonade out of lemons and have done a little crafting. We're working on some new product packs, and today you're getting a sneak peak one of the Get Well cards that might appear in our new Assortment Pack.

This cute card was inspired by two challenges: a CR84FN Color Challenge calling for turquoise, brown, and red and the 365 Cards challenge calling for a combination of techniques - masking, ribbon, and stickers. A look through our supply of stamps and stickers quickly spawned the theme for this card - under the sea.

I began by tearing a piece of paper, masking the bottom of the card, and spraying the exposed portion with Caribbean Blue Glimmer Mist. I dried the sprayed portion a bit with my heat tool and then took the negative portion of my torn paper, covering the blue portion I just sprayed, and then spritzed the bottom portion of the card with a combination of more Glimmer Mists, starting with Wheatfields, adding Tattered Leather, and then finishing with a light mist of Graphite. I really loved how it turned out - lots of depth and realism to this scene! I shot the card again with my heat tool so I could begin layering the other elements of my card.

We had a perfect supply of stickers to meet the color challenge and to create the underwater scene, and the cute crab came from a stamp set we picked up at Michaels. I popped up the fish and the crab to give some dimension to the scene. I dressed up the crab with a little bowtie to meet the ribbon requirement and gave him some googly eyes to punch up the fun. And I loved the idea of the crab being surrounded by so many fish to really solidify the "Feeling Fishy" sentiment.

With all of this icky weather, let's hope that none of US start "feeling fishy!" *grin*

Stay warm, chickies!!!

RING RING

Hello ladies!

I hope if you are caught in a winter storm like we are, that you are staying cozy and drinking plenty of coffee or cocoa. I know I sure am! I love snow days, I feel like I can get so much accomplished, and with Susan's help, I am off to a good start!! I wanted to share a cute card with you today, because sometimess you just need a little pick-me-up, and what better way to send one of those, than with a sweet card! I absolutely LOVE black and white color schemes, and the addition of purple for the challenge over at The Play Date Cafe is just perfect! We used the sketch for this week over at Mojo Monday which worked out swell also! We had tons of fun with this, and I love stamping white on black. It is just so pleasing to me! Well, I hope you all enjoyed this little hello card of ours. As I say in every post, I am obsessed with Lawn Fawn, and this Just My Type stamp set is ADORABLE and perfect for so many occasions!

Thanks for stopping in!
Bundle up and stay warm out there!