Anniversaries, Birthdays means Cardmaking Galore!

The other night we were discussing how there were so many kids birthdays this week which lead to the insight that these were probably to do with holiday celebrations leading up to New Year’s Eve. In glancing at my calendar I saw how far behind I am on cardmaking. My fastest solution? Use some ready made digitals or pull out some digi brushes to create fast, beautiful backgrounds in the colors of my choosing. With cooler temps promised this weekend in Florida, I chose a fall theme palette and my Au Naturale digital brushes as the basis for these designs. I also incorporated a fairly recent frame set called Frilly Frames that is so wonderful to add text and photos to. One of the birthday cards also incorporates svg diecuts from my Swirly QZs set.Here are some examples of my card creations...

Belated Anniversary Wishes

Frilly Framed Photo Anniversary Card

Masculine 40th Birthday Card

inside view of Masculine Birthday Card

70th Birthday Natural Swirls Card

inside view of 70th Birthday Card

Project 365 - Days 125 to 135 Creativity meets life

When you live your life creatively, it is hard to keep the artistic side out of normal life. Don’t get me wrong, I am no Martha Stewart handmaking cookies and creating decorated lunch bags (well, LOL maybe I am guilty of creating a few of those ;] ) however it is difficult not to bring that side of me into everything I do. This leads me to the first, kinda boring yet possibly inspiring project of the day...finishing painting our combined family room/kitchen. Let me back up a little.


Dilema: Our ceilings our 10 ft. high, all corners of the room are soft rounded edges that blend basically from room to room. So when I redid our living room area in a bright golden yellow to give it a tropical feel, I had to decide how to transition into the kitchen/family room area without the bright color overwhelming the room. I chose a toned down version of the yellow and followed all the rules before painting of observing the color chip at different times of the day.

Bigger Dilema: The one thing I didn’t factor in was my faux tropical green wall. I loved the solid paint color most of the day but hated how the green reflected on the yellow in one corner of the room at night time. So we have had a half painted space for more than a year. Today I decided to get over that one corner and paint the rest of the room to match!

I swear that I have creative dyslexia! I had to use some Kilz to touch up a few dark marks on the wall fist, as you will see in the photo below, however this lead to me spending most of the day moving from one room to the next touching up all the trim and smudge marks throughout the house. The downside of this creative inspiration is that I didn’t actually get to start painting this wall until about 9 pm and finished clean up around 1 am. Not to mention how many squats I did! For a girl who spends a lot of time sitting at the computer, I know that I will be feeling it tomorrow!

Warning: Painting is a full body workout. Proceed with caution!!!

Day 125 - Finishing the Painting of the Family Room & Kitchen Walls

The touch up...

Here is a photo taken of the area on Kylie’s Birthday. My dear husband had to finish painting over top of the cabinets since I am vertically challenged even standing on the countertops. He is 6'3"!

Day 126 - Sketches for my Beaverettes set/ Happy 16th Birthday, Kylie!

Sometimes in the design process there are customer requests for sets. This was one of those fun challenges...girly beavers going camping & swimming. These were some of the preliminary sketches.

And here is a picture of my birthday girl on the morning of her sweet 16th birthday...

Day 127 - Kai’s Sweet 16 Birthday Invitations plus a photo flashback of the new driver

Today we got up early to go to the DMV so Kylie could get her driver’s license on her 16th birthday...think she was a little anxious about becoming a new driver?!!! She passed! Couldn’t resist sharing this scanned photo flashback of her when she was little sitting in her Cozy Coupe.

The rest of the day included designing her birthday invitation. I went to my own digi design collections to jumpstart the creativity...

Swirly QZ’s

ML Fruity Florals

Here is the invite with personal info changed up...

Day 128 - A Yard Sign for the Party

Had this printed onto coroplast to put outside our friend’s house by the beach. She has a huge backyard for us to do the huge slide. We did this 2 years ago for her sister’s 16th birthday and it was so much fun.

Day 129 - Now we need a banner!

So I am starting to like the look of these designs and I think I am on track to design a party pack set with maybe thank you notes added to the set...hmmm. You see how one moment of creativity snowballs into another. And so is goes when you live life creatively :D

Here is an actual photo of it from her giant slide, wet and wonderful, sweet 16 party!

Day 130 - Vivid Mod Linear Florals for future designs

These are the same flowers as the Fruity Florals collection with some colors changed up!

Let me know what you think of these colors and what you think I should create with them!

Day 131 - Princess Grad Collection

On the last day of my last project 365 update, you got a peek at some of the set elements. 

Here is the finished digital collection.

Day 132 - Shabby Chic Thanks

I haven’t had time to create many cards lately, but I got inspired by these paper and embossing scraps to make up this paper crafted card...no stamping involved on this one. I used Glue Arts’ U-cut-It adhesive foam to pop up the Thanks so much paper element for dimension. The gorgeous patterned papers are from The Girls Paperie. The verse and mini flower are from Studio 112 from JoAnn’s.

Day 133 - Beaverettes Collection

You saw the earlier sketches. Now you get to see how that evolved into a digi collection! Think of the fun you could have cardmaking or scrapbooking with this. You can layer and overlap the png files since the backgrounds are transparent, but the designs come with a white under layer, as shown below.

Day 134 - Best Friends Photo Shoot (The Seniors)

Our daughter, Ashley has the nicest group of close friends...the fab 5. All the parents have enjoyed watching them go to homecoming dances and prom together as well as enjoying many fun boating and beach days spent during summer break. Three are headed to the University of Florida while Ashley and Courtney will be roommates at Florida Atlantic University. We can’t wait until Labor Day weekend when the two schools face off in football. We are thinking we will make it a road trip to Gainesville so all the parents can reunite and the kids can have some fun taunting one another. We love the Gators, too, so it should be a fun time if we can score tickets to the game. 

These are some low res versions of a few of the favorite photos taken on a super windy day at the beach of Ashley with her soon-to-graduate best friends. (I am late posting these so they are all grads now!)

Out of the stash pile

Have you ever started punching a border or die cutting a design and ended up changing your mind on a color or layout? What about those times when you find the right combination of inks and stamps and decide to make a whole bunch for later....thus the creation of the infinite stash pile[zzzzz]! Some times I just can't help it when I have a certain die out, I just feel compelled to punch the design from a variety of papers to use for later. Well, I just had to prove to ya’ll that I really do use these stashed items. Hmmm, or is it that I am trying to convince myself that I really do! You figure it out! For this fast, adorable birthday card for my cousin’s daughter, I went to the stash for the patterned flower diecuts and the textured scallop heart. It is always nice to grab and go, and knock out a card in a hurry, especially when it is already late! LOL. You may recognize the paper set, a retired SU designer series set. The heart is a current Embosslits die from Stampin’ Up!® And the verse is also an SU stamp.

This next card was a belated Birthday card for a friend's special birthday, sent a wee bit late. I used some more of the stashed diecut patterned papers along with a crinkled paper border strip and a punched border to match. The verses are from the current SU set called On Your Birthday.

So if you don't already have a stash pile, get building one today and save time. Go to it for immediate inspiration on your next project and be sure to report back on your creation!

Weekend Sale at MyGrafico - 25% off EVERYTHING!

All Day Saturday and Sunday, save big at MyGrafico.com.
Everything is 25% off including my latest set, Hip & Happy Frames,
which is available as clip art or as brushes! Click on graphics to see in shop.

    

These sets contain 6 frames plus 6 bonus phrase/verses ready for you to colorize or use as overlays! Photoshop Brushes are so versatile because you can colorize, add effects, styles, add in paper backgrounds, reverse out of photos and more...the possibilities are limitless.

A FREEBIE in honor of all Moms

I created this digi stamp as a thank you to all the mom's out there for all the little things you do for your families that often goes unnoticed. This is a great little verse to add to a card for any mom, aunt, grandmom! Perfect for Mother’s Day, Birthday or simply to say thanks for being there. You can edit the art in Illustrator to use the border by itself, delete text, add your own, color the background with pastels or markers. Great for scrapbook page layouts, too! I included some ideas in the set preview. To download this, go to this Freebie link on MyGrafico.com.

This is a peek at the preview...

So you may be wondering, how do I use a digi stamp? It is simple. You can place the file into a word processing program, scale and print out. If you own a photo editing or graphics editing program such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro, Corel Draw, etc., you can colorize, edit, then print or use digitally on projects.

I will be taking photos of Mother's Day cards using this stamp today. Hope to post them by tomorrow to help inspire you with your cardmaking.

Win Birthday “Blog Candy”

Get ready to win some fun scrap and stamp goodies  in my first ever "Blog Candy" giveaway!!! In honor of my birthday, I want to give my blog followers a gift, too!

Here is what you need to do to win:

Post a comment under this blog candy post to be entered in the drawing and tell me how you are telling your friends about my blog. Don't forget to sign up as a follower to my blog and check out my project galleries! (All in the right hand column).

If you have a blog, post a link on your blog to this post & share the news about the giveaway!

What do you win? The Darling Dots set from Stampin’ Up!® Ribbon Adhesive and Adhesive Squares from Glue Arts (you're going to love these!), Flower Chipboard from Around the Block (so adorable!), a 3 pk. of Gelly Roll Pens (in my favorite summer colors of purple, fuschia and aqua) from Sakura and an assortment of my favorite colored ribbons (all from Stampin’ Up!)

I will do the drawing on Friday at 6 pm EST so that gives you a chance to spread the word. Be sure to post by 5 pm so you don't miss out. You will need to check back on Friday to see if you are the winner so I can get your information to ship the products to you. Good Luck and have a happy, happy day...like me!

Sweet 16, oh, WOW!

When a momentous birthday rolls around, a special card is in order. For my DD's 16th birthday, it needed to be hip, fun with an added surprise. Some new In Colors from Stampin’ Up!® combined with fun diecuts, punches, and the cool new Circle Circus stamp set did the trick! Add in some pop-up floral elements on the inside, and I achieved the right mix to make Ashley feel special on her 16th birthday. I played off the dots in the ribbon to create the numeral 6 from the floral circle stamp, and I used the overlapping circles stamp to create the patterned background. This set rocks, especially when used with florals, but I will also post other ideas for using these great patterned circles. Order it now from the new SU 2009-2010 catalog. Go to my Stampin' Up website, click on the shop button to browse and order all your new favorites!