Shabby Chic Card - Look Who Just Arrived

Oh what a lovely day...the sun is shining, I got some weeding done, played with my boys, and had time to make a card!  Hooray for a good day!   :)

I was inspired this week by the new Fusion Card Challenge (sketch only) and Cath's beautiful Tuesday Trigger (shown above) over in the Moxie Fab World.  When I saw the trigger a few thoughts came to mind...Spring, pretty, soft and sweet, floral, pink, and white.  So, I started digging through my stash and when I came across this gorgeous floral paper from Echo Park's Love Story collection I knew it was the perfect starting point for my card.

The paper inspired me to stray a bit from my normal style and go more shabby chic...

I based the layout of my card off of the Fusion #4 sketch (shown below).  I began by distressing my Core'dinations cardstock just to soften the look a bit.  After adhering my patterned paper I layered some pink ribbon and crocheted lace (Hero Arts) across the card.  Then I added some tulle behind my pink flower (Maya Road) and pleated some pink ribbon across the bottom of the slide frame (from Crate Paper's new collection 'The Pier' {insert puffy heart here!}) and adhered both to the card.  Finally, I distressed a small piece of the cardstock so that a lot of white was showing and stamped my sentiment in Antique Pewter (just a touch of metallic like the Tuesday trigger), trimmed it, bent it a bit to give it more dimension/interest, and adhered it with the button to the corner of the frame. 

Here is a close up so you can get a better look at the distressed sentiment flag, slide frame, and lovely ribbon layers. 

I hope you've enjoyed my project today because I will be back tomorrow with a coordinating gift/décor project!  :)

To play along in the Fusion challenge click HERE or the Tuesday Trigger challenge click HERE.

Hope you are enjoying some sunshine where you are today too!

Watercolor - Old School Style

The sun has been shining here for the past three days so I haven't been crafting much...just enjoying time outside with my boys and doing some spring cleaning!  However, I did take a little time the other night to play around with some watercolors.  I am not much of a mixed media crafter (although I did love all kinds of art growing up) but I have been seeing so many AMAZING mixed media projects around the web lately.  So, when I saw Cath's challenge - The Wonder of Watercolor Challenge in the Moxie Fab World, I decided to see what I could come up with.  I went back to my preschool roots and started playing around with the crayon resist technique.

For those of you who (like me) may not have all the fancy art supplies, I simply used a white crayon and some Crayola watercolors to create this...

First I drew a heart in the middle of my card front and wrote the word love inside with white crayon.  Then I used washi tape to make a border around my card.  In order to get some richer areas of color and to see a little texture from the brush strokes, I first used just enough water to get some color on my brush.  Then I lightly swept the brush in a diagonal stroke back and forth across my card from top to bottom leaving some space between strokes to add my second color.  I repeated this technique with my second color and then added more water to my brush and lightly brushed it over my card to blend the colors and soften the color in places.  Finally, I removed the washi tape and voila! a beautifully framed watercolor/sentiment!

 

I am really happy with how this turned out and I think it was the least expensive card I have ever made! :)  I hope I have inspired you to try your hand at something new.  It is fun to experiment and you never know when it might result in something fabulous! 

 

If you want to participate in this challenge or see how others are creating with watercolor, click HERE.

 

Birthday Party Decor & I'm a Cover Girl!

Well, I have been busy crafting for some submission calls but I wanted to stop in to share one project that I decided to make just for fun!  I am getting ready to celebrate my little guy's first birthday so I have been looking around the blogosphere for all kinds of inspiration and trying to decide on a theme and decorations.  So, last night I was playing around with my supplies and came up with this project...perfect to add a little fun to your food/dessert table or even to place at the birthday boy's place setting.

 

Fun, right?!  For this project I wrapped a little juice can with washi tape (4 layers to hide the images on the can).  Then I had fun decorating the can with Echo Park's Scoot stickers.  To create the flags I used a wooden dowel (although wooden skewers work well too).  I made a larger pennant style flag and decorated it with more stickers then accented it with the two smaller flags.  I love the candle and confetti paper...if you are in a hurry, simply creating a few of these would add a little whimsy to your party table decor!

 

Still not sure what I'm going to do for my little guy's party but I'm sure I'll have more party decor items to share soon!  And in July, Paper Crafts' new Birthday Creations magazine will be coming out and guess who has a project on the cover?!  Me! :)  Sooooo excited!  

Finally, in my search for great birthday party ideas I discovered a fabulous blog that I'm sure many of you would love as well...The Hostess With the Mostess.  There are truly some AMAZING birthday themes/parties that people have come up with and photographed beautifully. 

Have a lovely day!  I am hoping to get a few more projects started...