Feeling Fallish...

I know it's been months since I've posted anything... I've been busy with so many other things, and quite frankly just hadn't been feeling particularly crafty. In the past week or two, though, I'd been missing the East Coast autumn, and decided I really wanted to make something "leafy." Anyway, last Sunday when I was watching the Eagles game I grabbed a pair of scissors and a mostly untouched Boxer pad and started cutting leaves - double thicknesses so I had 2 (mostly) matching shapes. I used some old brown variegated fiber (which I know has been around for at least 5 years) and then glued the leaves together with PVA bookbinding glue (chosen since it dries clear and remains flexible). I gave it about 10 minutes to dry - yes, I'm impatient - and then hung it around the kitchen entry. Thankfully I'd planned ahead and left the nails up from the Christmas garland ;) I love how it turned out, and I even used the scraps to make something else... will post about that later this week!

Fall Creations

As I'd previously mentioned, I'm really missing the fall colors down here in TX, so I ended up whipping up a whole batch of fall cards to console myself :) The first card was this "Thinking of You" number - the leaves are from Revel, and the sentiment is from Thinking Trio. On this one, I used a kraft rame that I'd die cut but never used, layered it up with a few more colors of cardstock, and accented the corners with some gems.

For the remaining cards, I took a "One Sheet Wonder" approach. It's been a long time since I've done that, and I'd forgotten how much fun it could be. I limited myself to a couple colors of cardstock and a box of metal embellishments from We R Memory Keepers just to keep things simple.

I used a variety of sentiments - the "Happy Fall" is from Little Say, the memories quote is from Faux Van Gogh #1, and "Blessings to You" is from Opportunity Trio.

So there you have it - my little ode to autum despite the 90 degree temperatures! :) And finally, one last reminder that you still have until tomorrow night to post a fall card of your own for the smART-word challenge.

New Challenge - Fall

You may have noticed that the smARTworks Design Team hasn't had a "Tea Party" in awhile... well, we've changed things up and have launched a new challenge! You can find all the details over at the smART word blog - but the basic gist is to create a card inspired by the word fall. Pretty easy, right?!
Now that we're in South TX, I'm missing the beautiful fall colors, so decided to recreate them here. I randomly inked up the leaf image from Revel with a variety of Brilliance inks (love those little Dew Drop pads!) to create the background, and the sentiment is from Wave Good-Bye. The spine of the card was scored, glued, punched, and laced up, so the part that opens is 4 1/4" square. And you see that lovely leaf embellishment? Well, that was liberated from my kids' craft stash (leaf craft kits from Oriental Trading). The hazards of having a craft crazed mother - nothing is safe! :)

Everything Beautiful

There was another great sketch at the Mojo Blog this week, and once again I made a "scrappy" card. The verse is from Unity Stamps and the paper is all from the BasicGrey Lemonade line. I did add a few pearls (Kaisercraft) just to give the main panel a bit of dimension, but aside from that, all I did was stamp, cut, and paste.








I really loved this sketch, and I decided to make a second card, but took it in a very different direction: no printed papers, and a fall palette. I pulled out the Botanicals "Cookie" Plate from smARTworks and stamped the leafy image repeatedly with sepia Versafine and champagne Versamark Dazzle inks (which frankly isn't all that "dazzling" but the subtle shimmer works well here). I stamped the small sprig image onto the dark green panel along the bottom also using the champagne ink. For the three strips, I rounded the upper edges and then laid them flush with the lower panel. The brown strip looked a bit too stark, but a Martha Stewart edge punch took care of that.

So there you have it - 1 sketch, 2 completely different cards! :)

Another Tea Party!

So here we are again with another smART Cookie Tea Party! As mentioned in my last post, Giovana provided this lovely inspiration piece. Somehow in my mind, these bright flowers translated to a fallish card (I'm blaming it all on the orange!)

So here's my little creation, made with smARTworks' Wave Good-bye and the flourish from Stella. I started by misting some white cardstock with a couple colors of glimmer mist, then I stamped the sentiment. I trimmed that down, then took the excess cardstock and layered on a few more colors; I then stamped the leaves onto that and trimmed them. For the orange panel, I stamped the flourish along the side and bottom of the orange panel, then added the sentiment and placed the three leaves. I love it when a card goes together this quickly!

Susan, Dina and Giovana will be posting their creations throughout the day, and we'd love to have you play along as well. Just leave a comment so we can check it out! And if you upload to SCS, please use keyword SCPT2.

Eureka! It's autumn...

Yes, I am fully aware that the first day of spring is just days away, but several of us from the Eureka Stamps board decided to create some fall cards to submit to Stampington's Take Ten magazine: fall themed with traditional colors, including burgundy. I don't know whether they'll be chosen, but I did enjoy making them. This was my first card: I simply stamped the cornstalk image onto a Fabriano notecard, then colored it in with an aquapainter and some ink pads. I did brush over the stalks with Twinkling H2Os just to add a bit of shimmer. Tied on a ribbon and that's all, folks!

These next two cards featuring the "Tree Losing Leaves" took a bit more time and I love the results. (Side note: these also use the stamps that were created from my handwriting!) On the "greetings" card, I very carefully inked the tree, as I didn't want the entire image. I then finished it off with BasicGrey paper, fibers, and a metal button from K&Co. The transition card, though, is my favorite; it's 5x7, which is larger than I generally make, but I had to accommodate the immense tree. I colored it in with a variety of Twinkling H2Os to capture the rich tones of the season, then accented it with some Chatterbox paper, a hardware frame and a bit of ribbon and copper cord, and we're all done! They took quite a bit longer than ten minutes, but the guidelines for the publication are that the card could be recreated in that time frame, so hopefully I'm good...