Cheery Cherry Snowman

My sister got me a little pot in cheerful red for Christmas, so for her I made a thank-you card in cheerful red. Hey, you gotta find inspiration where you can.

So I stamped a snowman and a sentiment on it, and it looked pretty much finished. But it also looked very plain, so I stuck some strips of patterned paper on the inside and the outside. One Christmas-y thank-you card, complete.

I'm entering this simple card in the following challenges:

• CAS-ual Fridays 84: Create a Clean and Simple Thank You Card (check!)
• Allsorts 188: CAS
• Simon Says Stamp Challenge: New Something (the snowman is new)
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: The Totally Mad (No Rules) Tea Party (anything goes)
• Loves Rubberstamps 32: Anything Goes (Loves doesn't stock these stamps -- the 'thank you' is by Lawn Fawn, but since it's not actually sold separately it doesn't seem fair to count it.)

I'm also linking up with DL.ART's Thankful Thursday January Linky Party.

Supplies: (the 'thank you' stamp was a gift with an order from Lawn Fawn)

Scarfy Sledding

Wheee! When I was looking for wintery images for my Christmas thank-you cards, this little Lawn Fawn bunny was an obvious choice -- especially since I hadn't used it yet! Then I went looking for something wintery to back it on, which didn't go well until I remembered that Anya had bought a whole darn pack of snowy paper only a few weeks ago. My memory, it's not always so great.

Well, I not only found a nice snowy background, but one that looked like snowy hills -- perfect for the sledding bunny. Hurrah for Anya's paper!

Then I found some plaid paper and paper pieced the bunny's scarf. Hey, it looked great the seventy-five times I saw other people do it with this stamp... and it looks pretty great here too, I think. I cut the front side of the card down so that the scarf could fly free but would still be protected in the envelope, an idea which I picked up from the card Jennifer McGuire created recently showing off one of the 2013 Hero Arts stamps.

I definitely picked a matching color to stamp my "thank you" in, but maybe I should have gone for something a bit darker and more visible! Well, they're the only words on there, so I don't think they're going to be missed.

I'm entering this wintery card in the following challenges:

• CAS-ual Fridays 84: Create a Clean and Simple Thank You Card (check!)
• Allsorts 188: CAS (clean and simple meets cute)
• Simon Says Stamp Challenge: New Something (both the bunny and the sentiment are new)
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: The Totally Mad (No Rules) Tea Party (anything goes... this rabbit is not stressed out enough to come from Wonderland!)
• Fashionable Stamping #38: Surprise Us
• Loves Rubberstamps 32: Anything Goes (Loves stocks Lawn Fawn stamps, although this bunny isn't currently in stock)

I'm also linking up with DL.ART's Thankful Thursday January Linky Party -- it's anything goes, but (again) a thank-you card seems quite appropriate!

Supplies: (the "thank you" stamp is a freebie from Lawn Fawn)

Bookmarks XXIX: Monarch Migration

In the later weeks of September, if you are very lucky, you may see a Monarch elephant on its lonely migration, south to Mexico for the winter.

Another day, another color challenge involving orange. But this time it was in a nice easy fall-ish combination: Flamingo, Honey, and Coffee.

And another color challenge means another color test! I settled on Terra Cotta, Ochre, and Chestnut, although in the final project I only really used them for edging. It's better than not using them at all!

Every time I looked at this color prompt, my eye was drawn to the little flying elephant/pig thing in the lower right. I know it's only there for the background color, but... flying elephant! I have an elephant stamp. I have plenty of butterfly stamps to steal from wings from. I had to make a flying elephant, and with these lovely fall colors, I decided it was a Monarch elephant, migrating south for the winter like Monarch butterflies do. It's so big, though, that I think it must migrate in a solitary fashion.

If I'd thought of the monarch thing before stamping and embossing the wings, I probably would have tried to make them look a bit like a monarch butterfly's wings. Considering I stamped and embossed just the elephant about five times until I was happy with it, it is probably a good thing that I was only aiming for white wings and not something more complicated.

I put my elephant on this nice simple sketch from this week's challenge at Skipping Stones Design:

I hand-cut the central element without doing a lot of calculation or drawing out first, so it is either whimsical or wince-inducing depending on your preferences. Since I don't have any sort of die-cutting machine, it wasn't going to be perfect anyway -- therefore it might as well be imperfect enough that you can tell the imperfection was probably on purpose!

Here's my migrating elephant:

I allowed myself a little bit of dimensionality with the wings. Now, a bookmark still must be flat to be functional, so I didn't pop the near wing up on dimensional adhesive or anything. But it isn't glued on all the way, either, just attached at the base with a little tab -- that way it squishes flat inside a book but you can flap it about outside a book.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• The Play Date Cafe Challenge 150: Flamingo ... Honey ... Coffee
• Skipping Stones Design Sketch Challenge 146 (sorry, I haven't got any SSD stamps)
• CAS-ual Fridays Challenge 71: Fall Fun (colors and made-up migration)
• Simon Says Stamp: Emboss It! (with white Stampendous embossing powder)

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party and Unique Crafters' Big Chance Giveaway.

Supplies: (light orange paper with little acorns is from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack, which I cannot find online to link to)

Bookmarks XXV: Wish Dragon

Last weekend a friend of mine came over to do some crafting. As she was looking through my stack of bookmarks, she saw that I had been using Lawn Fawn's Critters Ever After pretty heavily: dragons, dragons & unicorns, griffins, even the frog. She told me I couldn't use that set any more. And she loves dragons!

To be fair, she may have also found the rest of the background paper I made with the dragon and unicorn (for Backgrounds Ever After), and that's a lot of dragon and unicorn to come across as you're rummaging through the paper box.

So when I saw this week's challenge at Totally Papercrafts was to "use your favorite stamp", I figured that the dragon was a pretty good choice. I'm not really sure what stamp is my favorite, but the evidence suggests this one ranks pretty high!

A few other challenges in my stack suggested elegance: Cupcake Craft's Script and Gold challenge and, of course, this week's CAS-ual Friday challenge, Black and White Plus One. Black and white and gold with some script sounds pretty elegant, right?

Well, I think the design of the bookmark did okay at elegant, but I'm afraid the implementation did not live up to it. "Look at all my stray embossing powder" is not elegant. Oh well, at least the dragon is looking good.

I have got to stop giving in to the urge to cut around stamped images. My poor shoulder needs a break.

I'm entering this bookmarks in these challenges:

• CAS-ual Fridays 70: Black & White Plus One (my "plus one" is gold)
• Totally Papercrafts Challenge #134: Use Your Favorite Stamp (I can't resist this Lawn Fawn dragon)
• Cupcake Craft Challenge 210: Script and Gold
• Loves Rubberstamps Challenge 18: Make Your Own Background (both the background sentiment and the focal dragon are from Lawn Fawn's Critters Ever After set, which is carried by Loves Rubberstamps)

Supplies: (white 110lb. cardstock is from Staples, which has no picture that the linky widget will accept)

Bookmarks XVIII: For Telling Tales

I have got to get some detail embossing powder.

Click here to skip the rambling and jump straight to the project and challenge listing.

Sorting through my stamps in search of some inspiration for a group of black & white challenges, I settled on the ravens from an Inkadinkado mini-set. For a moment or two I couldn't decide which one to use, and then I realized, hey, here's an awesome inspiration for a pair of bookmarks! It's probably only been a week since I made a pair instead of a single bookmark, but it feels much longer.

With a pair, I can make one white bookmark with black accents, and one black bookmark with white accents. I also thought this was an excellent set to give another shot at the clean and simple style, which seems particularly appropriate for black and white.

Did I mention at least one of those black & white challenges was black & white & something else? I kept the amount of color small; I hope the crew at That Craft Place will forgive me -- theirs was a pure black & white challenge. I'll certainly understand if they'd rather disqualify me, though; no hard feelings, there's no question I've stretched the challenge a bit. (Just a bit, though: please don't be confused by the pink background in the picture, which is not part of the bookmarks. Maybe I should not have used that background.)

I'd like to point out that I cut the strips of pink, black, and white by hand. The craft knife, ruler, and I were in harmony tonight.

I'm so much happier with this attempt at clean & simple than the last one. Yay!

The name for this pair of bookmarks is a little out there: it's from a poem, Ode to a Corbie. I've reproduced the first two stanzas here:

My hero is the raven,
The raven and the jay,
The magpie and the jackdaw and the crow:
Trickster-god or world's creator,
Ravn, koras, corvus, corbie,
Stealing sun to light the world below.

Post-flood, the first to fly
(The dove gets all the credit),
For telling tales, Apollo turned you black:
Unhappy bird! or lucky bird —
Too smart, with human qualities,
And speech, one of the few birds with the knack.

(Ode to a Corbie, Bess L. Walker)

Unfortunately naming is a step that usually comes between making and blogging. So my bookmarks look more like a black raven has turned into a white one! If I'd thought of the name first, the colors would have gone the other way: first the white bookmark, with the flying raven in white, then the black bookmark. Oh well, I still really like them. I suppose if it bothers me that much, it would not be at all hard to make another pair!

I'm entering this pair of bookmarks in the following challenges:

• The Ribbon Reel Challenge #36: Black, White, & Pop of Pink
• That Craft Place Challenge: Black and White
• CAS-ual Fridays Challenge 69: Embossing (the ravens are heat embossed)
• Craft Your Passion Challenge 127: Blast From the Past (This fits #125 Emboss It, #120 Black & White + One, and, though I didn't realize until just now, #116 Things with Wings.)
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: Hero (first line of poem)

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party.

Supplies: (The white cardstock is 110lb. from Staples, and the ravens are from a mini-clear set by Inkadinkado, but I can't find good references to get them into the widget.)

Bookmarks XIV: Clean and Simple Birthday

Orange is more complicated than I thought.

Click here to skip the rambling and go directly to the project and challenge listing.

This week's challenge at the Annabelle Blog was Say It In... Lime, Mango, and Orange:

And I had a lot of colors like those, but none that made a very good set of nice bright colors like in the prompt. I tried a lot of them:

"Citrine" is obviously the best choice for Lime. I could find only one acceptable yellow orange for Mango, the "banana custard" from the Color Box Swell queue. As it's more a "soft yellow" than "yellow-orange", the the bright oranges didn't look very good at all with it. So even though "mango tango" would have matched better, I went with the softer "sweet melon" for my Orange. Also from the Swell queue.

I have used that queue in the last billion three or so projects. It's been really useful but I think I need to get away from it for a project or two. There are only so many pastel rainbows a girl can stand, you know?

Anyway... there are a couple of birthday challenges going around, so I incorporated those. And after the seventy-five different tries at "the right green" I went through for the last set of bookmarks, I wasn't in the mood for fuss, so CAS-ual Friday's challenge sounded great: clean, simple, use embossing. I mean, hey, I've got this sparkly new embossing powder that I decided not to use on the last project, and I was a little sad about that... and birthdays need sparkle, right?

It's definitely simple, and pretty clean, although I guess color gradation and sparkles are little fancy. I like it, though. (And I really like the time it took to make!)

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Annabelle Challenge 085: Say it in... Lime, Mango, Orange, & White
• CAS-ual Fridays Challenge 69: Use Embossing (the images are heat embossed with sparkle-y, a.k.a. clear + glitter, embossing powder)
• Top Tip Tuesday Challenge 84: Birthday Gifts
• Do You Stack Up? Challenge #88: Birthdays

Supplies: