New Card and Pages In Time Design Team Call

At our Prairie Stampers Club meeting Monday night, we tried the latest technique:  painting with powder using  Stampendous embossing powders overlaid with an embossed stamped image. Mine was a simple version of free form swatches, and perhaps it's a little heavy on the purple.  But I brought home my creation and made it into a card using Basic Grey's Green At Heart seedling patterned paper (from the Pages In Time store) and DCWV peach cardstock.  I now have a thank you card to send to friends who gave us a bottle of wine.  If you're interested in this technique that uses several different colors of embossing powder, you can find several Stampendous videos on You Tube. 

The club members also gave me six hand crafted cards for little Lennon who is fighting brain cancer.  I'm sending the cards to his grandma Karen at her Pages In Time store.

Karen just posted a Design Team call.  She's looking for some new Design Team members for her Pages In Time website.  For details, click here on her Pages In Time blog.

ALICE ATC SWAP WITH DEB

 I can't tell you how excited I was to swap an Alice in Wonderland ATC with my friend, Deb Famularo!  Her blog badge for Sparkling Scrapbooks is on my sidebar.  She's one talented artist!  Her incredible work is all pink and glittery and fun!  It's no wonder she's coordinating the Paris Hilton Creativity Collection Design Team!  
I, on the other hand, am most comfortable using vintage photos and papers which is why I enjoy being on the Pages In Time Design Team. 
However, we both are lovin' everything artsy that has to do with Alice in Wonderland.

Just look above at Deb's ATC and how she accented Princess Alice with some glittery modge podge, millinery flowers, shiny garland, bumpy accented mushrooms, pink rhinestones and a sparKly crown!
And this is the ATC I sent to Deb:

 I used the Crafty Secrets stamp set, Copic markers, and flowers cut from a vintage post card offered on Suzee Q's Flickr group.  I made a background using the swipe and spritz technique with TH Ranger Distress Ink in Spun Sugar and then edged the card with Adirondack Gold Dabber Paint.   In honor of Deb, I called this ATC Alice, the Armenian Princess and added pink highlights to Alice's hair!

To Deb, I will always treasure this special gift from you.  And thanks for letting me use your amazing photos for our  post.

Leave Room In Your Garden for Fairies

Earth Day is prominent on the web as an art  challenge for this month.
As a Design Team Member at Pages In Time, I decided to challenge crop participants with a Colors of the Earth theme for our Beat the Rush Crop going on this weekend.  (see the crop link top right--it will be up until the crop is over late Sunday night)
I created this layout on April 24 (and then today redid the parts I wasn't satisfied with--I'm never really finished with anything I create) as an example for my PIT challenge and also to submit to: 
Gingersnap Creations for their Chestnut Theme Challenge: GC49 The Good Earth
So Artful Challenge for Jeanette's Carefree Challenge (fairies are very carefree in my opinion!) 
The Sunday Stamper for Hels' Free theme (again, I think fairies are very free--as a bird!)

I chose green for my earth color and did a layout of dd back in the mid-80's wearing her fave pretend play costume (she's holding her baby sister's cup and told me not to cover it up).  I've been collecting items for about a year in order to do this layout.  I love the quote, Leave Room in Your Garden for Fairies. The photo on the left was taken in our garden.

This photo on the left was poor quality and didn't look right enlarged so I altered it in Photoshop Elements. DD likes how whimsical it looks on the left side of the layout.  This program is something I learn on an as needed basis which means I just play around with it, hitting different tabs, until something magically transforms my image into what I want it to look like.  Did my best photographing the layout on a stormy day.

Materials:
Petaloo florals; Webster Pages alphas; Heartwarming Vintage fairy stickers; 3 metal fairies from Red Lead; Great Impressions F411 fairy stamp; Crafty Individuals Fairyland ticket stamp; Prima flower cardboard as photo mat; Colorbox green fluid chalk ink; Archival sepia ink; and from the PIT store: Harlee Quinnz Garden Light patterned paper

BEAT THE RUSH CROP STARTS NOW AT PAGES IN TIME

Karen and the Design Team at Pages In Time would love to have you participate in the Beat the Rush on-line Crop.  It's starting now. See my sidebar for the link.  I've posted a card/tag challenge there.  I hope you'll join us.
This is another card for Lennon. 
Pink Persimmon stamp set; Copic markers; DCWV red cardstock; Melissa Frances Jayden patterned paper

Moving Along....

I have some wonderful news to share with you about my crafting.  But first, a little about this layout.  I found this amazing photo of my mom walking on the sidewalks of Milwaukee.  I don't know if she's power shopping or heading to/from work.  I love the items in the shop window.  This isn't the best quality photo but it spoke volumes to me about my mom's life as a single working gal in the city.  On the journaling tag, I wrote what was printed on the back of the photo: Order by number on photograph 3 photos 25 cents 9 photos 50 cents. 
I used the Pages In Time April 15 Thursday Sketch. I've listed the materials below.

And speaking of PAGES IN TIME,  my gig as guest Design Team  Member is over and I've been asked to stay on the Design Team!!! I'm very excited about this opportunity to work a little longer with some amazingly talented women.  Right now we're preparing for the on-line crop coming up this weekend. So you'll see some changes in my sidebar, including a list of blogs belonging to the other Design Team Members.  I'll continue to moderate three groups at PIT:  Fashionistas, Hybrid and Altered Art, and All Things Vintage.


While we're talking about All Things Vintage--including me, my ginger and copper hangie thingie I created for a Gingersnap Creations Challenge was chosen as one of the Ginger Gems today!  You can take a peek at it below in my previous post.

A very good day, indeed!

Materials used for this layout:
Papers:
Jenni Bowlin Black Label
Graphic 45 Fashionista collection: both sides of En Vogue; Haute Couture; Communique collection: Photogenic
Inks:
Tim Holtz for Ranger Distress: Black Soot, Vintage Photo
Embellies: 
Idea-ology Film Strip Ribbon
3L Scrapbook Adhesives Photo Corners
Making Memories: Color Staples: black
Jenni Bowlin Journaling Stars
Maya Road felt flowers 
Prima Felt Stem

Genuine Ginger and Copper

This is my entry for Gingersnap Creations Challenge #47 Copper, Ginger or Rust.
I'm using the Grunge Board/Paper album, each page being one of my Creative Groups.
This page is for my participation in Gingersnaps Creations.I'm so happy to have come upon this site.  I love the challenges here and the fact I can use any materials in my creative endeavors.  I truly am a genuine gingersnapper. 
I chose ginger and copper for my theme. Using the I Was A Ginger Gem badge (which I was thrilled to have been given), I put it on a metal frame that has a plastic bubble cover. Tim Hotz Ranger Distress Ink in Spiced Marmalade is the inky background on the grunge board. There are some gingery gems on the crown.
I used Archival Ink in Sepia for the background spatter stamp from Just For Fun and for the ATC Hampton Art Stamp.
Everything else pretty much is copper. I spritzed the ATC with Copper Perfect Pearls. The copper disk, brad and spinner point to 2am on the clock.  More details below the ATC.

I worked very hard to turn that screen to rust but finally gave up and used some copper stuff on it. The photo is of me in my famous bonnet, 2am style. I mounted on the screen (with the TH fastener) some copper thingies that are important in my life (more stories for another day and time): our family's lucky number 13, a crown since it's good to be Queen (now there's a story to be told), H for my name, wings for taking flight and pursuing dreams, the artful disk.  I finished with Maya Road alphas done up in copper Colorbox Ink (Genuine for being a Genuine Gingersnapper), some copper foil scrap, copper Kaiser Craft pearls, and it's all hanging from a copper chain.  This album page will be a nice souvenir for me of GC and the wonderful artists I met at this site.

April Birthday Cards

Here are a couple of cards I made today for the April birthdays at the Everything Wendy Vecchi Yahoo! Group.  Of course, Wendy's Studio 490 stamps were used to create the cards.  Also her technique to swipe and spritz Tim's Distress Ink to create backgrounds.  Since I'm using the new color Spun Sugar, I had to go with white card stock so that the pale pink would show up.  My second color is Fired Brick. 

In the first card, I continued using Fired Brick to stamp the corners, swirls, and the dots on the pale pink flower. I used patterned paper to stamp the leaves and the larger flower with Coffee Archival Ink.  The smaller flower stamp is on grunge board.  I'm having trouble with Spun Sugar on gray grunge board as well as manila tags.  It's only working for me on white.  So I ended up using pink acrylic paint, then Fired Brick, then Forever Red Perfect Pearls.  Argh!  But I think the finished product is acceptable.

The second card is green covered with Basic Grey green at heart (kelly) patterned paper that I got from Pages In Time.  Basic Grey used FSC-certified papers and soy-based inks.  Had to use it, with Earth Day being this week and all!!!!!  Each stamp is on grunge board , cut out and positioned on the card in typical 3-D fashion--gotta love grunge board for that feature!  I threw in some Distress Inks in Dusty Concord, Shabby Shutters, and Broken China for contrast against the pinks.  The butterfly is sporting Rock Candy Stickles.  I blinged up the blossoms too with some plastic flowers and pink pearls.  Much to my surprise I had some pink twine for my little bouquet.  I added dots with Sakura's black Glaze pen to ground the whole thing.

Now for the fun part of adding some birthday crafting goodies in the envelopes.

Pages In TIme Thursday Sketch Challenge April 1: ROSE

 Here's my layout for the Pages In Time Thursday Sketch that was posted a week ago.

I loved this sketch with the birdcage and bird because they symbolize my mom's free spirit. I used my mom's confirmation photo.  She took the Saint's name, Rose.  I used a lot of lace on this layout because of the beautiful lace on the table in the photo.


I used both sides of the patterned papers in the PIT March kit--even cutting out the birdcage from one of the sheets. Supplies: TPC Studio: Ancestral Remember Moments Quote patterned paper; 7 Gypsies: Savannah Collection: Warren, Kaisercraft: Pennyroyale Collection: Evelyn.  I love the look of the tattered fabric leaves and the gems, also from the PIT kit.  Another PIT member, Angela Holt, sent me one her hand-crafted fabric flowers which I used for the bird's nest.

The Wendy Vecchi influence is on the layout as well.  In the last workshop I took from her, she introduced me to the Maya Road mini alphas and taught me how to make a grunge paper rose with her Studio 490 rose stamp.  I used lots of Ranger Distress inks.  I inked up a Maya Road chipboard bird and used one of Wendy's stamps on the wing.  The rose also has a coating of Perfect Pearls for some shine.

Woo Hoo!  I was chosen as a Ginger Gem for the cupcake ATC  that I made for the Gingersnap Creations Supply Challenge: Frosting.  They felt my ATC exemplified that challenge's objective.

Last Week I was the Home Page Diva on the Yahoo! group Red Lead Swap Sisters.  They showcased one of the ATCs I made for the spring swap. Today I got in the mail the swapped out ATCs-- all of them treasures. I also got some great goodies from Red Lead. 

Thanks to both groups for finding my work worthy of the special honors.

Cards for Lennon

Putting this blog post back on top.  Here are the cards I put in today's mail.  The Hope card goes to Karen.  The Pooh card is for Lennon.  Pages In Time DT member Alda is asking for us to decorate our envelope for Lennon as this week's Tuesday Technique.  I used the Inkadinkadoo butterfly stamp.

The Pooh card:  Studio 490 butterfly stamp on grungeboard; Spots and Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder, Disney Pooh Phrase paper by Sandylion.

Previous posting:
My blog readers know that I'm currently the guest Design Team Member at Pages In Time.  This is a very special group and I'm honored that the owner, Karen, has asked me to be a part of it.

It was very difficult to read yesterday that Karen's 3-1/2 year old grandson Lennon's cancer no longer is in remission.  His MRI indicated three brain tumors.  His doctor has given him a 20% survival rate.  It's taking me a long time to process and accept this information.  I can't imagine what Karen and her family are going through. I'm hanging my hope and prayers on Lennon being in the 20%.  I want my little blog birthday girl to be celebrating something positive for Lennon.

The Pages In Time Design Team is requesting Cards for Lennon.  Please join us in this project by making or buying a cheery card for this little boy.  If you need his address, please email me at 2amscrapper@gmail.com

My Birthday Party Look

How do you like my new look?  I love this little party girl having a great time in her teacup.  She's the perfect friend to help me celebrate my birthday this month.  I found her as a blog background on Penny Duncan Creations.  Penny was kind enough to create a matching header for me.  She has some amazing things on her blog. Don't take my word for it, go take a looksie for yourself! Thanks, Penny, for helping to make my blog the most awesome one in cyberspace!

Happy Easter!

An ATC made for the Red Lead Sisters Swap, using a Red Lead digital image of a girl showing off her new spring outfit, as well as the bunny and sentiment from a Red Lead stamp set.  I intensified the colors of the outfit with Copics.

A little Make It Take It that I came home with today from Prairie Art Stamps in Springfield.  I spent much of Saturday in class working on an altered book.  It needs quite a bit more work before I can post it.

Have a wonderful weekend.  If you celebrate Easter, then I hope you have a joyous holiday!