Project 365/ Days 58 to 67 -Nine Days of Creativity

When I started this challenge, I knew that being creative daily would not be the biggest part of the challenge. Photographing, formatting and posting the results is far more time consuming. So pardon me for not sharing these past 10 days of creativity sooner. Catching you up on inspiration...

Day 58 - Heart Sketch

Many digi stamps and art start out as a pen or pencil sketch that leads to something more. Who knows where this idea will go. Possibly a digi stamp or a paper design. You will have to check back to see!

Day 59- Family Tree Layout

Here is a digital layout created using some of my digi designs: The Loving Tree and Swirly QZ’s sets. Now I just have to round up my crew...along with the dog & hamster to take photos for the photo frames! With everyone’s schedules on the go, go, go, this is a task easier said than done. I may have to search through some candid photos to use them instead of posed ones. Oh, and then I will add the journaling.

Day 60 - Treasured Friend Card

Sometimes inspiration comes from a stashed stamped verse or a paper scrap. For this card, it was a little of both. I love the colors and designs in this scrap of cardstock from Crate Paper’s Restorations collection. I pulled from other paper and supply scraps to create this friendship card. To add a fun border to the top edge, I used a pencil eraser dipped into River Rock ink to make the dots, then added white dots in the center using a gel pen. For texture, I used floss in the buttons and to add blue to the top bow.

Day 61 - Cinnamon Twist Floral Card

For my Mother-in-law’s birthday, I combined embossing, a metallic colored ribbon, a collage of my Mod Twist Garden digi stamps with a strip of Bo Bunny Olivia Stripe cardstock mounted on burgandy cardstock to make her card. The colors in the stripes were incorporated in the hand coloring of the flowers to tie everything together. Try this idea on the next card you make using a digi stamp image.

Day 62 - Border Wow Collection

Some days I spend creating tangible projects like home crafts, scrapbook pages or cards. Other days, like this, are spent finalizing new sets for my shop at www.mygrafico.com. If you love using borders on projects, you are gonna love playing with the brush & svg files in this collection.

                               

Day 63 - Belated Birthday Card

When it comes to being behind on cards, what image is more perfect than a cute little turtle?

This clear digi stamp and verse are from Inkadinkado. The striped border strip is from Cosmo Crickets DeLovely collection. Stamp a belated birthday card this week...it is a great thing to have in your card stash for that birthday that just got away from you!

Day 64 - A Mother’s Love Card

When it is the end of the day and I haven’t finished my project for the day, I love it when I can create something lovely in minutes. That was the case for this card creation. I paired a cut out from Bo Bunny’s Olivia collection with a coordinating sticker, some U-Cut-It foam adhesive from Glue arts and a pretty brown ribbon recycled from a gift I received. Design Tip: Store ribbon scraps in a decorative glass jar to add a splash of color to your space and have instant accents available to dress up craft projects!

Another fun technique used on this card is using the scoring blade on your paper trimmer to add lines to your card front. This adds texture and interest without being a visual distraction.

Day 65 - Lovin’ Da Shamrocks Collection

This girl is anything but Irish (all Polish, in fact!), but who doesn’t like a cute shamrock? This set of clip art shamrocks comes in 4 different colors, 144 files in all: jpeg, png and scaleable eps files that will have you “lovin’ da shamrocks!” Perfect for your St. Patrick’s Day Creations...

Day 66 - Girly Fluffy Bunny Sketch

I am really getting into the spring state of mind so why not sketch a fun, fluffy girl bunny?

If you recall, I did some other bunny sketches earlier. Could this be a new set in the making?!!!

Day 67 - Flower Sketches

And what else says spring, but flowers! I am really into the sketch mode, can you tell?

I would love to hear what you think of all these new illustrations.

2-2-2!

Do you know that my favorite number is 2. It is my birth date and I have just always loved that number. When I logged on to do a new post for today, I saw that I had 222 posts as of August 2nd. Pretty amazing, isn’t it!?? So I am now looking forward to hitting post 2,222...have some work cut out for me!

I am going to catch you up on some hybrid card inspirations using some of my digi desgins sold on MyGrafico.com. One of my favorite illustrative sets is the Hip & Happy set. I use this cross all the time. Most crosses have a rigid, stiffness to them, which reminds me nothing of the Jesus I know and love —
a compassionate and loving God that gave his own life for me. He surrounds me with his love and guidance so I tried to achieve that in my artistic interpretation of the cross. On this first example, I used it to create a sympathy card for our friends who just lost their father/grandfather just a few days after my aunt passed away. I typeset the verse and printed out the cross in b&w. I added a touch of soft pink on the swirls and heart as a soft accent. For the background, I used a flower and design element in black to create the hand stamped background. It is from one of my favorite new stamp sets called Que Sera Sera by K&Company. It is an eclectic mix of designs and verses. I used the same stamp to handcut a lavender floral accent that I raised up with a rhinestone accent.

Working with the same color combination of pink and black I also created this hybrid card for my cousin’s daughter’s Baptism. I just love digital brushes & Photoshop. I used my Mod Twist Garden brushes to create the background, which nicely complimented the lines in the cross illustration. This card was 90% digi, cut out and mounted onto card stock layers. Pretty easy. See below for another modified version of this same card art. That is the cool thing with using digital stamps, art and brushes, you can set up the art, print & experiment with lots of variations of the same design so no cards have to be the same!

I called this version Hip & Girly Baptism Card. The gold, pink and black made it just a bit fancier, yet it still has that girly style to it. You can also dress up hybrid cards by adding brads, ribbons, diecut borders, etc. For this, I kept it simple and classic.

Hybrid Cards & 25% off sale!

Today marks my one month anniversary at MyGraficO, so I am celebrating with a sale, starting today and running through the end of Sunday...save 25% on all the products in my shop. Click on the ticket above to go to my digi store. I just uploaded a new mini scrapbook set! Be sure to take advantage of my freebie set by signing up as one of my groupies in the community!

Here are my two latest sets...

Here are a couple card inspirations created with my Elegant Frames set. These were some quick and easy sympathy cards made before leaving for my grandfather’s funeral.

And here are a couple of Get Well Cards made for family.

This Twist of Pink card uses flower digi stamps from my Mod Twist Garden set.

On this card, I hand-colored one of Judy Sangunetti’s digi stamps, called Birthday Kitty.

Easter Pocket Garden

I promised to post on Monday a spring card using the pocket from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff Patriotic Set, however life interrupted. So, finally I get to share this card with you today! It features my digi stamp collection, ModTwist Garden. I used brushes in color to create the flowers inside the pocket, which I colorized first then printed directly onto Core’dinations cardstock. The embossed, diecut butterflies (Beautiful Wings Sizzlits) and Easter verse (A Good Egg set) are both products from Stampin’ Up!®. The patterned papers used on this are from Doodlebug Designs, Inc. and the solid CS is also from SU. I hope to post a tutorial later this week to show you how I did it. The sheer ribbon is a retired Wide Organdy from SU and the fibers are from Basic Grey. I used Glue Arts adhesives to assemble the card with small strips of their ribbon adhesive to adhere the 3-D butterflies. I used double sided foam adhesive to pop up the flowers. To purchase the digi stamps to create this card, go to www.mygrafico.com. You can order the SU products from my friend, Ree!