Welcome to the Malt Shoppe Hop!

Welcome to the Malt Shoppe Hop, brought to you by the fabulous design teams of Made Especially For You and Ginger Snap Scraps!

Thank you for joining us for this sweet blog hop full of tasty, crafty projects! Along the way you'll see a variety of projects and have the chance to enter for a chance to win some delicious treats! If you just came across the hop and would like to start from the beginning, please visit Made Especially For You.

This is my malt shoppe card featuring Lawn Fawn and  Sweet Stamp Shop stamps.  I scored the cream cardstock with my scoring board and colored everything in with Copics.  Hope you like it and it gets you in the mood for summer's sweet treats!

Made Especially For You: Color Challenge!

Above is the color pallet for this week's challenge at Made Especially For You's weekly challenge. Pretty, yea? I love this color pallet so much and have a lot of papers in my stash with them!

Here's what I came up with. I'm a Facebook a-holic and I found theses Like stamps at Thing Geek, it also came with a dislike stamp. It was pretty much the only thing I used that wasn't in the pallet scheme, but I felt that it made it stand out more. :) I used stickers for most of the card's embellishments, which I hardly ever do. Was fun and fast! The girl raised sticker is from Amy Tangerine and the letter stickers are from Doodlebug. I stamped the News Print Hero Art's stamp in brown Memento ink on the pale blue paper and love how it looks. Chocolate and light blues together make me happy! I also wrapped a linen thread bow around the green cardstock to even out the dimension from the Amy Tangerine sticker. All the papers were edged in my trusty and always faithful, Tim Holtz Vintage Photo.

This week's sponsor is Di's Digi Downloads. The randomly selected winner will receive a $10 gift card to use at her store!


Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. I also wanted to thank Ashley from Made Especially For You for the amazing opportunity she gave me by choosing me for the design team! I also want to thank the other amazing DT members for all the good times we had. The past three months have been so inspiring and I've had so much fun! This will be my last project with the Design Team as I am stepping down from my spot on the team. I will definitely be checking in as time permits to enter some of their awesome challenges.

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Made Especially For You: Earth Day Challenge

This week at Made Especially For You we're celebrating Earth Day by making cards with recycled materials.  My recycled (or as I like to call it, up-cycled) material was some packaging from a Nestabilities die cutting template.  I cut it with my paper trimmer (I have a cheap-o $14 one, I think pretty much any one would work) and then ran it through my cuttle bug with the Swiss Dots embossing folder.  I added a little bit of Frost Blue Copic marker re-inking ink on the back of the sheet to give the little dot grooves a hint of blue.  Since it's alcohol based it will cling to the plastic pretty well. For the stamping I used one of the Sweet Stamp Shop's sets called Happy Bugs, isn't that lady bug adorable? It comes with a separate stamp for the wings that I stamped on velum with Stazon silver ink and paper pieced onto the ladybug. I put a little gem in the center to hide the glue. I added washi tape to the edges of the plastic to also hide the glue and I really like how it looks! When working with clear or see through papers you have to become a little creative to hide the adhesives. Though I did hear there's a new tape runner specifically made to use with vellum, but I like a challenge! :)

Here's the official deets for the challenge:
Challenge runs from now till April 29th

Create a card using a recycled material (for Earth Day! :) You could use old book pages, bottle caps, newspaper, basically anything that has been used before and is now being re-used on your card)

Sponsor: Jessica's Craft Shaque

Prize: Winner will receive a set of decorative corsage pins




I'm also entering this into Sweet Stamp Shop's current challenge on their blog.
The details for this challenge is to use one of their new releases from either their March or April releases. The project must be new and you also have to attach their logo to your blog post as seen above. :) Be sure to check it out, lots of cute stamps from those two releases!

And also into Simon Says Stamp and Show use your favorite word challenge. My favorite word is Cute. :) I also like to use Kawaii at times too, which is Japanese for cute.

Thank you so much for stopping by and I really hope you'll enter this contest! I can't wait to see all the innovative ways to use recycled materials!!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Made Especially For You: Three Flowers Challenge!

This week's challenge at Made Especially For You is to use three flowers on a card. I used the paper I made a little over a week ago for my Made Especially For You Craft and Chat post. I finished up the white wash on the cardstock I had previously stamped with a combo of mists and let it dry. Then I adhered it to the craft base and layered on a piece of Crate Paper cardstock with rounded edges on top of my handmade patterned paper. For the stamp on this card I used the Kiyomi stamp from Sister Stamps and colored her and her butterfly with Copic markers.

Make sure to head over to the Made Especially For You blog and enter this week's challenge! The sponsor for this challenge is Three Girl Jam and the randomly chosen winner wins a two-piece bundle of crinkle ribbon!

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Rockin' Robin Combined Design Team Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Monthly Combined DT Hop hosted by Made Especially 4 You!!!

The outstanding talent of the Creative Cutter Room and Made Especially 4 You have joined together to bring you projects with a Rockin' Robin Theme.

The spotlight goes first to our Grand-Prize Sponsors...

A $25 Gift Certificate to Paper Piecings by Nikki online store.

A $10 Gift Certificate to the NEW Ginger Snap Scraps online store.

3 Birds on Parade Cartridge

 Rules for Grand-Prizes 

1. You MUST comment on every stop of the hop.

2. You will have until Sunday, April 15th to hop & comment.

3. Check Made Especially 4 You on Tuesday, April 17th to see who Mr. Random Number Generator chooses as winners.
4. Not required, but I would love for you to follow my blog!  Once I reach 200 followers I'll be having a huge giveaway that you won't want to miss! 

Now that all the details are out of the way, here's my hop project ....

This is a tent card with a Kraft base.  I took a digi from The Cuting Cafe and printed it using my Silhouette software.  Using your Silhouette software for printing digis you're going to use with die cuts helps a lot when it comes to sizing.  Copic colored the two robins and the tree branch and cut it out.  I cut out a large flag in the Crate Paper floral cardstock on my paper trimmer and adhered it to the Kraft base.  I then cut out a tree on my Silhouette on white cardstock.  Let me tell you, each and every leaf was hand colored.  Tedious yes, but I love the dimension it gave them!  I took the tree trunk and stamped Hero Arts' Designer Woodgrain rubber stamp on it in brown Memento Ink.  Then went over it with various brown Copics.   I then cut a strip of the same cardstock I used for the floral flag, but used the other side of it and stamped the sentiment from the new Lawn stamp set called Grand Greetings .  All the cardstock was edged in Hero Arts Wet Cement for continuity.

Copics used: B00, BG000, E31, E55, E25, E27, E55, YR02, YR07, C2, G14, G17, G000, G29, G99

It's time to get hopping. Remember the Grand-Prize rules! :)

Ashley – http://especiallymade.blogspot.com

Elaine – http://expressionsbyelaine.blogspot.com

Jessica – http://www.craftinandstampin.blogspot.com

Gaby –  http://www.gabyspapery.blogspot.com

Next Stop------>Tracy –  http://www.owlbecraftin.blogspot.com

Pam –  http://scrappinfabpam.blogspot.com

Tonya – http://ittybittyladybugs.blogspot.com

Georgiana – http://carsonscricutcreations.blogspot.com

Beckie – http://justbcreativecrazy.blogspot.com
Cathie - http://www.creativecutterroom.com

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today and for hopping along!!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Made Especially for you: Sketch Challenge

Above is the sketch for this week's challenge at Made Especially For You!

The design team was asked to use Digi's from this week's sponsor: The Cutting Cafe!! The Winner will get their choice of three sets of their stamps!



Be sure to go to the Made Especially For You blog and enter your card creation for the challenge!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby

Made Especially For You: Craft 'n Chat!

The design team was asked to share a technique with Made Especially For You's blog readers. For my Craft 'n Chat post I'll be showing three different ways to use mists.

For my first technique I'm going to use four different mists to ink up a large background stamp. It's important that the mists not be opaque as that can muck up your stamps and they also dry a lot faster than clear mists. Studio Calico Mr. Huey's Mists work really well for this technique. I also used a glimmer mist which worked well too, but if I had another that didn't have glitter I would have preferred to use that instead.

Mist up the stamp really well trying not to mix the colors up too much. Dab off any that pooled heavily (like the green bit you can see in the middle right edge) with a paper towel lightly, trying not to remove too much of the ink. You really just want to remove enough that it won't drip when you turn it over to stamp.

Sadly the pink and the orange are a little too close in color to really show up in a photo, but I promise it was pretty in person.

Next I'm going to paint a woodgrain stamped image with these three colors using a water paint brush.

You only need to use the water feature of the water paint brush if you're going to use an opaque mist. So if you're not using one, a regular dry brush would work just fine! If you are you'll notice it'll cover too much of the stamped image when you paint it on, so just thin it out with a little bit of water till you're happy with the result. I shook the gold mist up and unscrewed the top off. I dipped my clean paint brush directly into the bottle and saturated the brush completely. Then I painted the stamped woodgrain image I had previously stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink. It's important to stamp your stamp in an ink that won't run and will stay put! Another fun thing to do is heat emboss the stamped image before beginning to paint it for a resist technique. Just keep running the paint over the stamped image till you're happy and then repeat with the other mists, making sure you rinse the brush as you go along so that you don't contaminate your mists. To dry faster you can use your heat tool. I then ran some Vintage Photo Distress ink along the edges and smudged a little in the center.

The last technique I'll be showing you is a white wash. For this you'll need an opaque white mist or a cream. I used October Afternoon's White Doily. You'll also need a dry brush. I used an old makeup brush.

You can see that I started white washing from the bottom and stopped about half way up to let you see the before and after. I usually white wash from left to right, but you could to it from top to bottom, too! Really, it's all about what makes you happy!

I hope you enjoyed my mini tutorial! Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll be sure to get back to you with an answer as soon as I can!

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and reading my technique post! Be sure to come back Monday April 16th for ME4U's design team card post featuring three flowers. I'll be using the white washed mist stamped paper on my card with a Sister Stamp image. I think it came out really cute and I can't wait to show you!

Inky, glittery, and misty fingers for all!
-Gaby

ETA: You can find the card that I used the white washed paper on by clicking here. Thanks so much!

Made Especially For You, Easter Card!

This week's challenge at Made Especially For You is to make an Easter card. The design team was given these super cute digi stamps from Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More. I printed the digi and then cut a circle around the image on my Silhouette and Copic colored it in. I used a smidge of Tumbled Glass Distress ink with a foam finger tool to smudge in some sky. Then I die cut a scalloped edge circle in Kraft and adhered the image to it. Cut some cardstock with my paper trimmer and edged it with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and punched out a scalloped boarder strip. Adhered everything down and tied some hemp into a bow. When I was finished I felt it needed a little sparkle, so I added gems into the flower's centers and a wee bit of Diamond Stickles to the eggs.

I hope you'll join us this week at Made Especially For You for the challenge! Can't wait to see all the beautiful Easter cards! You all have been knocking it out of the park with your creations!!! It's such a joy to get to go to all your blogs and comment on your work!

This week one winner will win five digi stamps from Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More!!

 

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today!!

Inky and glittery fingers for all!
-Gaby