The Flight Continues

I really find it interesting knowing the story behind projects. Inspiration comes from many sources: our surroundings, personal experiences, favorite colors, images or designs, and even favorite products. These are but a few of the many things that can inspire a project. This card creation was designed to thank so many people who thoughtfully and generously reached out to our family during the loss of my mother-in-law, Jackie.

Mom’s favorite color was cobalt blue, but she just loved blue in general, so that is what I made it the main color used on this thank you note. I wanted to include some symbolism of her transition from her life here to a life in heaven. I believe this montage of butterflies does just that.

Supplies: (Stampin’ Up!®) Asstd. Blue Cardstock; Sizzlits Beautiful Wings Die; Thanks So Much verse; Finial Press Texture Embossing Plate; (Offray) Blue Satin ribbon; (Glue Arts) Extreme Adhesive Squares and Glue Glider™ Pro with high tac adhesive cartridge.

Butterflies also are a visual symbol for me of the life/death/after life transition since my uncle’s death in 2000. I would often get butterfly visits on my walks and have many other tales of this connection, too. Using a monochromatic color palette (different shades of the same color) creates a very elegant look that you can use in all your card designs. The cascading size of the butterflies adds movement and interest. This also serves to remind us that even though a loved one’s presence fades, the memories remain even though their flight continues.

I wanted to share another butterfly card created by fellow card designer, Diane Bove. She created these 3-D butterflies using a brush from my Stylish Butterflies set combined with patterned background.

Here is a preview of that set art which contains, editable eps, jpeg, png and abr (brush files).

The set contains 3 butterflies: one solid, one with transparent swirls to use over color or patterned backgrounds digitally and one butterfly with white swirls. If you use the photoshop brush file you can change the black to a color or patterned background. I will be creating some tutorials to show you how you can use digital brushes and png art in Photoshop. So check back to my blog for updates!

Let your creativity take flight with using a butterfly on your next card creation.

New year, New Inspiration!

A touch of old, a set that’s new, and a homemade gift for the Gator Fan in you! Today I am sharing with you a traditionally crafted, holiday theme thank you card made with beautifully printed CS and diecuts paired with brown inks, a stamped and punched tag and some recycled ribbon. I love these colors...so rich. And the brown ribbon makes me want to grab a milk chocolate candy...yum! This card proves that you can grab nearby papers and embellishments to create a card without a whole lot of effort. I hope it provides some inspiration for your cardmaking endeavors! Here are some photos of the inside and outside of this card creation...

Close up view of the front of the Pine Tag Thank You Card

Another view of Pine Tag Thank You Card with tag stamped and hand colored, punched and layered on gorgeous CS with brown ink added to edges to give a warm vintage feel.

This is the inside view of the Pine Tag Thank You card with Christmas theme. All of the craftiness doesn't have to end on the outside of the card. You can used your papers and borders to compliment and enhance the inside, too!

This year in Digital Design, I started off with a set geared towards a different market: embroiderers, quilters and those who love stitchery and sewing. Quilting Patterns 1 has a variety of patterns that will add beauty and style to your crafting projects. It is available for purchase at MyGrafico. com in my shop.

And my last bit of inspiration for the day is to share this handcrafted gift I made for friends of our family who are big Florida Gator Fans. They suggested I start making these to sell. What do you think?

View 1

View 2

Has an easel back so can be put on table display!

View 3

Shown hanging as artwork on a wall

I hope this kick starts your crafting for the New Year. Happy New Year! May the year ahead be filed with many blessings and hours of fruitful crafting! Remember to always live life creatively!

If you haven't checked out mygrafico.com, make it a point to do so this year. You can click here so they know I referred you! To visit my shop, you can locate me in the pull down menu in the left column under designers. Be sure to check out all the fabulous talent there!

A Mod Style for Christmas

Wanna bring some mod style to your Christmas projects? Check out this fun and unconventional set I designed featuring holly, a vine, some mod, swirly ornaments in untraditional colors. The clip art designs from this Mod Trimmings set are so fun and funky. And they are sure to get noticed! Just check out some of the inspirations, below, for making digital or hybrid cards & invites in a snap!

Get started on your Christmas cards and party invites...so easy when you can jumpstart the process using elements from this clip art set from Cheri Wenger Digital Designs sold exclusively at MyGrafico.com.

For more details, view these photos in my Christmas Card Picasa Web album gallery.

Project 365 Challenge - Days 147 - 154 Seven days of Inspiration

Day 147 - Selecting, Printing & Sorting Photos
I understand that a photo of boxes of photos may not seem very creative, however, it can be a very time-consuming task going through all your digital photos and making prints for future projects and gifts. Today, I am inspiring you to make prints of your favorite pictures. Print some for yourself and others to give as gifts.

I wanted to give Ashley’s best friends, all seniors who were graduating, prints of favorite photos from their best friends photo shoot I did along with their graduation cards and other gifts. The kids all really appreciated the prints. In this day of digital where most of their images are stored in facebook albums, they liked having tangible photos that they can take with them to college and hang up in their room.

I also printed photos to make an album for Dan for Father’s Day of the girls along with sets of prints taken when family came to visit for Ashley’s graduation and Kylie’s 16 Birthday party. I was lucky enough to take advantage of 10 cent prints at Walgreens...lots of sorting, yet a creative use of time! Look for specials at Walgreens, Walmart, Shutterfly or Snapfish to save on printing your favorite digi photos.

Day 148 - Red White & Blue Graduation Card

Traditionally stamped card in red, white & blue featuring silver embossing which always add elegance to any card creation. I used silver ribbons for texture and to compliment the silver on the card.

Day 149 - Mulberry Floral Birthday Card

Digi stamps don’t always have to be printed in b&w! I colorized my Gardenia digi stamp in photoshop to match the paper, then add touches of color. I will be sharing a tutorial of how to do this soon.

The art is from my Gardenia Digi Stamp set:

Day 150 - Pastel Gardenia Birthday Card

Using the digi stamp from the same set featured yesterday, I created this hybrid card layering the b&w stamp on top of a digital paper with lace frame. The lace frame, I created using a lace strip from my Gettin’ Grungey collection. Since my mom loves lavender, I used that as my color palette and paired with the patterned paper from Basic Grey. A traditionally stamped birthday verse was added with some punched border strips and a ribbon. To achieve the soft coloring on the flower, I used chalk pastels.

Day 151- A Good Luck Grad Card Made in Minutes

What do you get when you pair a cool foil stamped piece of card stock with some DCWV cardstock, ribbon and a stamp? The answer is a card you can make in only a few minutes. Every card doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. This one proves, simple and elegant can be just as nice!

Day 152- Pulling from the Stashes to create a vintage card

This Vintage Hybrid Sympathy Card was created from elements in my digi & svg print and cut stash, a folder I keep with misc. printouts of digi art and svg cutouts for use on future cards and projects. I paired the digi stamp from my Elegant Frames set with a Swirly QZ’s dicut, some ribbon, old patterned paper, flowers, pearls and a paper butterfly diecut element to create this sympathy card for a family member.

Day 153 - New Party Pack Set & samples

I designed this Fruity Floral Summer Swirls Party Pack collection, which was inspired by my ML Fruity Florals collection plus the need to design an invitation for my daughter’s 16th birthday. It evolved from that into a banner, sign (featured on days 127 - 129) and now, a thank you,  so why not put it in a collection to make someone else’s life a whole lot easier?!!!!

Day 154 - 25th Anniversary Card

Next month is mine and Dan’s 25th anniversary and knowing how time flies, I made the card back in June using more of my Swirly QZs svg diecuts and some other items from my favorite stash piles. I love this paper from the Girls Paperie...so pretty and it paired well with my polka dot silk flowers and swirl flourish. I used a brown digi printout of art from my Special Numbers collection to matt and layer on top. The oval was a saved diecut that added a matted effect when layered over the patterned paper. When embossing card stock with folders and end up with mini scraps, try layering under a stamped verse as I did in this card sample. Another tip to try is tying sheer ribbon around your background layer before mounting, then layering elements on top for a multi-dimensional card creation.

Here is a preview of the Special Numbers Collection, one of my earliest releases, an oldie but goodie!

Hope you found lots of cardmaking inspiration from this week’s flashback to my Project 365 challenge.

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!)