Kristen's Birthday

We celebrated Kristen's birthday last week, and I almost forgot to put up the gift I put together for her.

I found this great little insulated lunch bag at Sample House, and since Kristen is a nurse and a runner, I thought it would be something she'd be able to use a lot.


I took inspiration for the cards from the colors in the lunchbag, and made her a little set of monogrammed cards with my JustRite stamper. I used the scraps from that and a Stampin' Up! stamp that a friend gave me recently to fancy up a kraft gift bag. Casey got a better picture of the bag - mine didn't turn out very well.



It was a very fun evening!

Inspiration Board

I've been wanting to put up an inspiration board for a while; someplace where I can put cards I receive, or magazine pages, or inspiring photos.

When I saw a pack of 4 square corkboards at Target (4 for $6!), I decided I'd try to make my inspiration board into an inspiration piece all by itself.



This is what came of it! The top-left corner is covered in fabric (I wish I'd used a different adhesive - this was supposed to dry clear, but you can see it through the fabric. The rest of the boards, I originally stamped on the natural corkboard, but the ink/paint colors didn't show up very well once they'd dried. So I painted over them with a thin layer of white acrylic paint (thin so that the texture of the cork would show through) and tried it again. All of the images are from Fancy Pants, and the blue and green are Apple Barrel acrylic paints - the pink is Hibiscus pigment ink from Papertrey.

I'm excited to fill it up with inspiration - the green corner is my favorite!

The Aforementioned Bookmark

And, here's the bookmark I mentioned making yesterday. Still working with the same set of pink/green/vintage-y scraps & palette I've been using all week, with the newsprint flowers I used on another bookmark recently.



I picked this sentiment stamp for the back, because I say it so often... "As soon as I finish this chapter!"

Romantic Valentine

Just a fun little Valentine on a cold day... I actually started with a coffee set, thinking of a "keeping warm" theme, but somehow it evolved into this card, with the only stamp from the coffee set being the heart. Which isn't really coffee/warmth themed at all. Oh well.



All papers are from my favorite go-to lately, Basic Grey's Bittersweet line. And the word stamp is from a random little book-themed stamp set that I bought... at a convention, maybe? (Here we go... found it. "Book Lovers" by Clear Art Stamps. And now that I'm looking at the site to find that, I'm finding so many others that I want... check out this awesome Alice set or this adorable Fairy/nature set - their vintage-y style is right up my alley.)

Getting out this set is inspiring me to make more bookmarks... I think that'll be next in line.

Overdone?

So I think I might have gone a little overboard on this one. I was working off of a layout someone else did, and just kept adding elements...



I like the colors, and I like the individual elements, but with the layers, and ribbon, and button, and twine, and flowers, and tickets... maybe a little much? (Click the photo to see it in more detail.)

Valentine and Bookmark

I got excited about making bookmarks yesterday and made another one, this time with a coordinating Valentine.



I used my little 6x6 deck of Basic Grey "Bittersweet" papers, along with the same rub-on sheet I used for the owls last week. The bigger birds were perfect for the card, and the smaller ones fit just right on the chipboard flower I used for the bookmark.



Here's a close-up detail of the birds on the bookmark - I used two layers of Maya Road chipboard flowers and covered them with more of the Bittersweet paper, then inked the edges and put the birds on - one set for each side of the bookmark. The ribbon is all from Papertrey.



It ends up being a cute little set!

Bookmark

Just a quick little project today - I found these fun flowers while I was cleaning up my craft room, and thought they'd make a good bookmark. I covered two matching chipboard flowers for the bookmark topper, and then added the vintage-style flower. Since the vintage-y flower has advertising/newsprint on it, I pulled out some cute office-themed patterned paper I got from (of course) Papertrey - behind the flower is a paper-clip pattern. As always, you can click the photo to see it larger and in more detail.



And the back (phone memo notes):