Lawn Fawn CHA Opportunity!

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It's a long shot, but I thought I'd try make a couple cards to enter for Lawn Fawn's newest contest. The contest is for an opportunity to be published in their latest catalog and to have your project displayed at their booth at winter CHA! So I decided to do a twist on an old favorite of one of my very first Lawn Fawn cards I ever made.

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I first stamped the clouds from their Bon Voyage stamp set in Versa Mark ink and sprinkled sea foam embossing powder over them. After I heated it with my heat gun and let it cool for a bit, I went over the entire piece of paper with Tim Holtz's distress stain in Tumbled Glass. Before it had a chance to dry I used a finger foam tool to blend in some of the distress ink (not stain) in Tumbled Glass to the sky around the clouds. Then I spritzed it with an October Afternoon opaque white sprinkler spray. I dabbed off as much as I could, then went over the sky parts around the clouds again with the distress ink and finger foam tool.

I stamped the Ferris Wheel then cut the insides out with an exacto knife. It's always best to cut before you spend time and waste ink coloring when using an exacto knife, just in case you mess up with the exacto knife. Trust, I've learned this the hard way before! I just colored it pretty simple with Copics and adhered mini gems to the tops of the Ferris Wheel cabins and one larger one in the center. I always see real life Ferris Wheels with lights on them, so adding the bling kind of reminded me of the fancy lights of the Midway. Once everything was ready I adhered it with foam adhesives to the cloud paper background.

For the tickets I did pretty much the same, except I distressed the side edges a bit with my distress tool so that they'd look like they were freshly torn from a giant spool of tickets. I adhered the center ticket first with a slightly thicker foam adhesive and then the other two were added with the thinner foam adhesives. I also wrapped some green baker's twine under the Ferris Wheel to kind of ground the wheel so it didn't look like it was floating in the sky. Grass I guess.

The last thing I did was cut my, "You make my world go round" stamp into two separate stamps so that I could curve it a tad and stamp it horizontally. Lawn Fawn stamps are super easy to cut because they're so well made! I can easily piece them together on my acrylic block if I want to go back to using the stamp as it was intended. I stamped out a banner from Lawn Fawn's Bannerific stamp set and stamped the sentiment on it. Then I added some Copic coloring and cut it out. I layered it on a couple pieces of plain cardstock to give it a lil height, but not too much.

Thanks so much for stopping by! And thank you so so much to my new followers! You're all awesome! When I reach 30 followers I'll post a contest for a random draw for a huge stash of blog candy to give away as a thank you!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Lawnscaping Challenge #24, Texture.

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Well girls and boys, it's the last Lawnscaping Challenge of the year and it's all about texture! I love texture on cards and scrapbook pages. Nothing else can quite make a paper project pop more than a touch of texture.

This image from Pintrest was my inspiration for this card. After seeing this, I really wanted to make a Valentine/Love card with embroidered hearts! :) The thing I love about Valentine items is that you can use them year round. This card could easily be a Valentine, but also works for a, "Hey, I love you!" card as well. Just as long as you don't stamp Valentine anywhere on it, but use excessive amounts of hearts.

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For my texture I decided to use embroidery, Grunge Paper, and foam adhesive. I also stamped hearts with Lawn Fawn's Teeny Tiny Backdrops in red ink over Fancy Pant's One Heart Love Story Paper. I think it added a wee bit of texture while still keeping the paper flat. For the Grunge Paper all I did was stamp the dog, fox and shakers on it and cut it out. Then I adhered it to the back of the regular card stock that I stamped and Copic colored for a bit of a dimension. After the glue dried I adhered the dog and fox with foam adhesives to the paper I stamped. Then glued the shakers on with regular glue to the animals. This way the shakers are still propped up a bit because of the Grunge Paper, but not with the foam adhesive because they were too small. The last thing I did was add a heart sticker that is sewn up the middle and set on a piece of foam adhesive.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope your holidays were/are merry and bright! It's amazing how time flies by so fast! I can't believe in a week's time it will be a new year already!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

This card was featured on Lawn Fawn's Fawny Flickr Friday blog post on January 9, 2012!

Halloween at Home, 4x6 Photo Love

This is a sketch by Shimelle Laine that uses 11 4x6 photos on one layout. I changed the layout a tad because I had mostly portrait photos. All the photos on this layout that were portrait were taken with my iPhone. When I use my iPhone for pictures I tend to take more portrait photos than landscape, mainly because it can be a little awkward to hold the phone in the landscape position. However, if I use my regular camera they almost always end up landscape, funny yea? It was a little difficult to photograph this layout for the blog simply because it was interactive with that center half page that held six 4x6 photos. I felt I needed to photograph them in my album to get the full effect.

I used some different fall papers and Tim Holtz's autumn distress inks. I also got the chance to finally use the American Crafts' Nightfall chalk board stickers. Basically they're just black cardstock stickers, but they look a lot like chalkboards. I used a white gel ink pen on them and I love the way they turned out! I also used a Tim Holtz "31" Plaquette that I had been hoarding for a Halloween page. The scalloped edge at the bottom is from Martha Stewart, it's her Scallop Dot edge punch. The patches are from American Crafts and the stickers are from Echo Park. I basically hoard anything that has a black cat on it because I love them so much. So I put as much black cat goodness on this layout as I could! I'll put some more close up pictures below .....

Thanks so much for stopping by! If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Three 4x6 Photos

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This is a layout I did with three 4x6 photos. I like to do new and fresh designs, but I almost always keep it "old school" with 4x6 photos. I love this layout because one would think you'd need to stick with patriotic colors when doing a page about Washington, DC. You never have to stick to any specific color scheme, you can do whatever your heart desires, but still keep it pretty!

For this page I used Bo Bunny papers, Acrylic paint spatters, ribbon, and SRM stickers. By putting stars, gold paint splatters and the Washington DC stickers from SRM I feel even though the colors are not the norm, you can still see the patriotic feel.

Thanks so much for dropping by!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Lawnscaping Challenge #23, Tags or Treat Bags

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Another fun Lawnscaping challenge! This week's was all about tags and treat bags. Since it's the holidays I chose to make a gift tag. I'm infatuated with Lawn Fawn's Making Frosty Friends stamp set. Maybe it's the Hawaiian/Southern girl in me longing for a white Christmas, but snowmen and snow flakes around the holidays make me happy.

I saw this picture on Pinterest and it just looked so pretty! So I decided to encase the snowman and penguin in an icy snow sheath.

I started off cutting out a tag on my Cricut with white cardstock. I stamped snow flakes from two different Lawn Fawn stamp sets (Making Frosty Friends and Critters in the Snow) with Versa Mark and then sprinkled with white embossing powder. After tapping off the excess embossing powder I heated the snowflakes with my heat tool. Once it cooled I blended two blue distress (broken china and stormy sky) inks with a distress stain in tumbled glass and sponged off any excess ink with a paper towel. Then I free handed some snow hills and out lined them in Copic markers and stickles and adhered them to the bottom of the tag. Because the plastic (just some excess packaging from a cheap-o digital camera) I ran through the Cuttlebug and embossed with a snowflake pattern was pretty thick, I decided to back the animals and tree with some thin chip board so that they stood out more by adding dimension. I had a snow making pen and decided to add some puffy snow on the snowman's hat poof and to the tree. I also added some mini bling and pearls to some of the snowflake centers and three black gems for the snowman's coal buttons. Tied a bow at the top of the tag with some doodlebug Christmas twine. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment or send me an e-mail and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

I hope you like my tag and thanks so much for stopping by!

Inky & glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

This project was chosen as Top Mow It All at Lawnscaping!

Baby Sister.

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I took a wee break from making a gazillion and one Christmas cards to do a page for my 2011 album. I didn't really have a plan going into this page, but I liked how it turned out in the end.

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I have been dying to use the baby girl tickets from Jenni Bowlin and I finally found a good spot for them with this page. I Copic colored in the hair bows and added some cheek circles with a light pink Copic marker. I had a left over die cut woodgrain embossed heart I made for another page, but made it the wrong size. I kept it and thought I'd finally use it to add a touch of "boy" to this girly layout for my nephew, Keegan. I layered everything on top of a Jenni Bowlin bingo card for May. I also painted with Jenni Bowlin's malted milk paint with a dry brush and misted over the paint in blue to make the frame pop a smidge more.

OK, back to making more Christmas cards! It's scary when Thanksgiving has passed and you've only made a small dent into your Christmas cards! I'm such a procrastinator!!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Shimelle Laine Sketch featuring my niece, Savannah.

What really intrigued me about this sketch was the circle element. I had hoards of pink buttons just waiting to be used on pages for Savannah. I also love to buy die cut cardstock that has boarders ...of course I never know what to do with them. I really liked Shimelle's idea of breaking them up and making boxes. So here's what I came up with.

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I sewed each. and. every. one. of those buttons! Worth it I think. I love how it frame's Savannah's new born picture.

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There's a small boarder sticker from Studio Calico on the bottom. Layered on top is a tag I cut down that I got from a Studio Calico kit that's by Amy Tangerine. I stamped Savannah's birth date on a Jenni Bowin Ticket with a Smash date stamp. Everything's edges are inked in Tim Holtz's new winter ink stamp pad release in the color of Iced Spruce. I love it so much that I've been cheating on Vintage Photo with it lately. Shhh! Don't tell!

Thanks so much for having a looksie at my blog.

Inky and glitter fingers for all!
-Gaby

Cards that Care

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Jennifer McGuire and Vera Yates are running a card drive to donate holiday cards to an elderly home. If you have an extra card or two, please think about sending them to this great cause! Click the Cards that Care logo right above to get more details about this great cause!

This card was stamped with Inspired Stamp's Winter Ruth set. It's an adorable set that has interchangeable hands that are holding different winter items. I chose to use the present for this card. I got a chance to try out this snow pen that I've seen out and about in the blog world. It's pretty cool, even better with a lil layer of stickles on it. ;) The snowflake background was made with Lawn Fawn's Making Frosty Friends, Versa Mark ink, clear embossing powder, and numerous distress inks in blue hues. The sentiment was stamped in white acrylic paint on a strip of velum and attached with Tim Holtz's tiny brads. The final touches were some Doodlebug Christmas twine as the bow on the present, stitching lines, and a few Doodlebug jewels on a couple of the snowflakes.

Thanks so much for dropping by! Please do think about sending in a couple cards to the Cards that Care program!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Just for funsies ...I know some how my cat is going to repay me dearly for this, but I picked this up at Target today for our Christmas card photo. My darling husband was totes brave for holding him for me! Haha.

Lawnscaping Challenge 21, Thank you Card ...

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This week's challenge from Lawnscaping is to make a thank you project. I just got the Making Frosty Friends stamp set on Friday and I've been dying to use it! I was inspired by Lawnscaping's guest designer Jen McGuire's thank you card using Making Frosty Friends. So I figured combining Frosty Friends with the Hello Friend stamp set would make a super frosty themed thank you card!

I put a smidge of Copic BG000 Pale Aqua and B00 Frost Blue on some of the snowman's body edges and blended it like crazy with the blending marker to give it an every so slight icey look. The nose and hats were also Copic colored. I also got a spool of Doodlebug Christmas baker's twine from Simon Says Stamp's Ebay store last week and I've been trying to use it as much as I can before the holidays pass us by. I fashioned a scarf for the bigger snowman and a poof for the smaller snowman's hat. While I could of used the button stamp included in the stamp set, I chose to use tiny sticky backed pearls as the buttons for more dimension. For the snow I just freehand cut some hills, edged them with Tim Holtz's tumbled glass distress stain, and added some diamond stickles. ETA: I totally forgot I also used Hats Off to You for the large snowman's hat because I wanted it to be taller than the top hat that came with the Making Frosty Friends set.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I hope you like it too! I'm also super happy that it worked well for another challenge at Jay Gee's Nook! Jay Gee's challenge was to use holiday stamps to make a non-holiday themed card. Thanks so much for having a looksie!

Inky and glittery fingers (for real, I still have glitter stuck to my fingers as I type this) for all!
-Gaby


Yay, this card was chosen as an Honorable Gnome for Lawnscaping's challenge.

Favorite Christmas Layout

Shimelle Laine asked her blog followers to post our favorite Christmas project that wasn't new. This is an older page that I made to scrap our Christmas card. I've only been scrapping for two years so I didn't have much to choose from, but this is definitely my favorite.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

4x6 Photo Love, October

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This month for Shimelle's 4x6 Photo Love class she had us use page protectors that were divided. I used one that came with my Doodlebug album that has three divided 4x6 landscape slots and one large slot that is 6x6 inches. Since I print my pictures as digital prints my photos are a smidge smaller than 4x6. Therefor I matted the landscape photos before placing them in the slots. For the four portrait photos I placed them on a 6x6 piece of woodgrain cardstock and highlighted it with a strip of forest creature cardstock I bought ages ago because the fox on it reminded me of my dog. I'm glad I finally got to use it!

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All the little critters on the landscape photos are from three sets of Lawn Fawn stamps. I stamped them in momento ink, Copic colored them, cut and paper pieced here and there. The three Lawn Fawn sets I used were Critters in the Forest, Critters in the Burbs, and Bannerific.

Thanks so much for stopping by and thank you everyone who leaves comments, you're all so sweet!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Interactive Christmas Card

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Well we all know how much I love Lawn Fawn stamps ...so when I saw the new challenge at Two Peas for Lawn Fawn Christmas cards, I couldn't resist! I made an interactive Christmas card with four of their stamp sets. The "door" with the wreath is the top layer of my card and for that I used Lawn Fawn's Bows and Holly stamp set. Inside the door I used their Critters in the Forrest for the tree, the raccoon, and the fox. The Santa hat is from their Hats Off to You set. The snowflake background I stamped in Versa Mark on the Kraft paper is from one of their newer sets, Making Frosty Friends.

I cut the card on my Silhouette, but made a couple modifications so that the door was different from the frame on the front and that the inside would be kraft so that it would be easy to write on. Everything was colored in with Copics and paper pieced. Heaps of Stickles were used and plenty of bling and pearl bits were also used.

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This last picture is just to show you that you can have an interactive card and still have the same amount of room to write a note inside as you would a regular card. You can also substitute the Christmas tree with the animals inside and instead adhere your family photo for holiday cards. The possibilities are endless with this type of card! :)

Thanks so much for stopping by and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Featured on Fawny Flickr Friday's Blog on 11/18/2011. :)

T is for Tim Holtz

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The second part of the "T is for" challenge at Two Peas includes Tim Holtz. I first embossed some snowflakes on the Tim Holtz blue paper in silver, gold, and blue embossing powders.

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I made the snowman from Tim Holtz's Bigz die out of grunge board and grunge paper. I painted his body white with the snow cap paint dauber, his top hat black with the black paint dauber, and his nose orange with the orange paint dauber. Then I sanded the hat a smidge and added Vintage Photo distress ink to some of the bits I sanded off. For the charcoal eye I took one of Tim's long brads and held it with a tweezer, dipped it in Versamark, then sprinkled with black embossing powder and heat embossed it. Please make sure you use tweezers for this step, the brad gets extremely hot! I bore a hole through where I wanted the eye with Tim'z poker tool and placed the brad. I glued all the bits together with glossy accents and adhered it to my page. Lastly I ran a sheet of plastic through Tim's snow embossing folder and set it over the snowman with Tim's brads and washers.

I painted the die cut snowflakes with paint daubers and let them dry. Then I went over the edges with different blue distress inks. Adhered them with glassy accents to the page. All the white snowflakes are Jolee's stickers. I edged the adage ticket with Vintage Photo and stuck it down with Tim's Charm Clips. This was a very simple page, well except for the snowman. I actually didn't want to make it too complicated so that the snowman could shine a bit more.

Thanks for stopping by and if you'd like any more info, please let me know!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

T is For ...

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My entry to Two Pea's, "T is for Tone on Tone" challenge. I used two Lawn Fawn stamp sets: Bannerific and Sophie's Sentiments. The butterfly and flower stamps are from Close to My Heart. The banner has thick foam adhesives behind it and the butterfly has a slightly thinner foam adhesive behind it. I colored everything in with Copic Markers and paper pieced them down. The butterfly and and the daises have Doodlebug gems in the centers. Once everything was in place I took a piece of green vinyl ribbon from BoBunny and cut it up haphazardly with plain ole scissors. However, if anyone has a spare set of the Martha Stewart fringe scissors I will gladly accept them! After I got it just right I drew lines with four different green Copic markers to make faux blades. Since the Copics are alcohol based, they work perfectly on the vinyl. Lastly I drew in a swirl from one of the flowers to the butterfly by making dots with a Sakura Gelly roll black pen and did the faux stitching with a opaque white gel pen.

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Here's the side view, because everyone needs a side view!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

World Card Making Day Entry to Paper Crafts Magazine.

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I totally forgot to share my entry to the World card making day contest from Paper Craft's magazine on my blog. I almost forgot that I mailed this card in till I saw Paper Craft Magazine's post a few days ago on Facebook. Looks like they have all their winners chosen, which means I'm able to post my project. I didn't win, but I am super proud of my Tim Holtz inspired card I made for the "thinking of You" category. I bought this large Tim Holtz Stamper's Anonymous stamp when my first nephew Keegan was born. Thought I might do a scrapbook page with him and incorporate the stamp, but never got around to it. Always had something else in mind. Glad I finally got around to using it!

As you can see just about everything is Tim Holtz except for a couple Copic markers I used and the plaid paper. This was my first attempt to go "grunge" and I quite liked how it turned out.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Please follow my blog, I will definitely return the favor!

Inky and glittery (err grungy?) fingers for all!
-Gaby

Entire project made with goodies from:

Mixing different letter stickers/thickers on a layout.

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Two Peas is having an event called, 14 Days of Tricks and Treats. Each day they come up with a different "trick" to use in paper crafting and award a treat to one of the Peas who comment on the daily posts. For day 11 they asked you to mix up your title by using different stickers and thickers rather than just using one type. On this layout I used some Amy Tangerine thickers, October afternoon rocket age letter stickers, and some Sassafras letter stickers from a past Studio Calico kit. This is a great technique to use when you're running low on letters from different sets.
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For the overall layout, I just cut a bunch of random papers, journaled and stamped on two tags, and attached some Studio Calico chipboard butterflies. The super cute orange heart and camera sticker by the title is from Amy Tangerine for American Crafts. After everything was adhered I masked off the pictures and misted the whole page with Perfect Pearls mist.

Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out my blog post!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby