Crafty Secrets Design Team Technique Challenge!

Well, today marks my first official challenge as a new member of the Crafty Secrets Design Team. Our esteemed leader Vicki and our Crafty Secrets boss-lady and owner Sandy have challenged us to create a project incorporating a tutorial...what fun!! It was really difficult to choose images and papers to work with because there are so MANY fabulous papers and vintage images and stamps and things, and Sandy has been so very generous sharing her delightful product. So, instead of doing just ONE project, some friends and I got together and did SIX! (lol)

We decided to create little treasure boxes, and spent the day happily crafting together, so you'll see several different results here. You might want to scroll down and look at the finished product so the steps will make sense to you.

This project meets the following challenges:

Wee Memories Challenge # 11 (let's get sticky)

Pile it On Challenge # 24 (use stickers)

Zoe's Challenge # 1 (nice and girlie)

Charisma Cards (all about the bling)

Fun with Shapes and More (flowery)

Aly's Sunday Challenge (flower power)

It Takes Two (create a card and something else to match)

Practical Scrappers (flowers)

First step, we used square chipboard coasters (mine came from the "Old Fish Factory," a great little restaurant in Lunenburg Nova Scotia). I painted mine pink, although it's not essential to paint them, as you'll be covering them with paper anyway. I just didn't want the dark colours showing through the pretty papers.

Next, we made little "drawers." You can either use a matchbox as a template, or, if you're lucky enough to have an electronic cutter, you can cut them with that. Using the matchbox template, choose complementary colours cardstock, and cut four of each piece.

Score and fold each piece, along the outlines of your templates, and begin gluing them together, using clamps to ensure good adhesion.

The little drawers will look just like the drawer of your matchbox, of course.

Next, punch a hole in the centre of each for a drawer handle.

We used Tim Holtz Hitch Fasteners as our handles.

Next, we glued the finished boxes on top of one of the coasters like this (sorry for the rotten image here, but at least it gives you the idea)

Next, we covered the top coaster with lovely Crafty Secrets patterned papers, and glued the coaster on top of the drawers like this:

We all chose images from Crafty Secrets Creative Scraps, and glued them inside the drawers, just as another little surprise for the recipients. Then we created a small easel card with complementary papers and images, and glued that to the top of the completed treasure boxes.

Here are some smiling faces of new Crafty Secrets fans! (I'm behind the camera) We had a WONDERFUL day together. I thought it was hilarious that we all chose the same image for the outside of our easel card!

Please DO stop by to visit the blogs of all the other designers for some beautiful eye candy and fabulous tutorials! Here are the links to their projects:

Heidi Blankenship

Julie Campbell

Vicki Chrisman

Linda Duke

Marisa Grosson

Pam Hooten

Michele Kovack

Melissa Phillips

And here are links to the delightful vintage images and stamps from Crafty Secrets!

Heartwarming Vintage

Crafty Secrets

There are so MANY great new Crafty Secrets releases. One of my very favourites is the Domestic Goddess Creative Scraps set. Here's a link to a previous post where I used these on a set of *ahem* irreverent greeting cards. I just LOVE these images and sayings, and I know I'll be using them often!

Ooohhh, one last thing, DO stop by the Crafty Secrets blog too...some fun stuff happening there...trust me, you will NOT want to miss it!

THANKS for stopping by today, hope you have a great one!

I love BIRDS!

Today, Impression Obsession designers are challenged to create a RED card; the theme for Wednesday Stamper is "I love;"
the Charisma Cards theme is BLING (can you see all my glitter?); the Creatilicious challenge is a layout and stitching (real or faux). Here's my card, with one of my favourite Impression Obsession bird stamps and some hand stitching (there are several other GORGEOUS bird stamps similar to this one: here and here and here and here ).

YOU can enter the challenge too! Head on over to the IO blog for details...and how to win a $25 gift certificate for those luscious IO stamps!

Take a few minutes to see what the other designers have created...pure eye candy!

• Daniela Dobson
• Dina Kowal
• Jeanne Streiff
• Jenny Gropp
• Julie Koerber
• Kathy Menzies
• Laura Fulcher
• Rosemary Marino

Wishing you a WONDERFUL day! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Paint and foil

Quick post today, as I'm spending the day volunteering at our local sick kids' hospital...always such a highlight of my week!

Today's Cuttlebug Challenge is to use paint; Three Muses and Cas-tastic want to see buttons; over at Sisterhood Challenges, we're celebrating children; at Wednesday Stamper, the challenge is "I love" (this stamp!), and for the Pick Three Challenge, I used green, an image with a hat, and tin foil. I used a favourite Art Journey stamp for this card, created two rolled paper frames from an old book page, sprayed them with glimmer mist and stamped the image on a distress inked background. I Cuttlebug-embossed a foil background, painted over that with acrylic paint, then sanded it lightly. The sentiment stamp is from Hero Arts.

Thanks for visiting today! I wish you a day of contentment, doing whatever you love to do.

LOVE these little birds!

This bird image is one of my favourite new images available at Crafty Secrets; it's a Creative Scraps sheet titled "Birds and Blossoms." The corner swirl stamp is from Clear Art Stamps. The sentiment stamp and music stamp are both from Quietfire Design. I created this card to meet several challenges, as usual:

Play Date Cafe: use pale peach, peach and yellow

Cas-tastic: use a sentiment as a focus

Charisma: use flowers

One Powerful Hour: use a favourite colour that you don't use much in paper crafting(mine is yellow!)

Tag Tuesday: create a tag with music

Pick Three challenge: I used an image with a hat, stamped a swirl, and used yellow

Sew Many Challenges: use any three embellishments and a charm ( black corner charm at the top left)

Over at Tuesday Taggers, they want us to use texture. They have a nice little prize on offer too, from Tanda Stamps. I used Dreamweaver stencils with embossing paste and metallic gold leaf for this Asian card of love and happiness. The Creatilicious challenge is Asian.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. I wish you a lovely weekend, doing whatever makes you happy!

Happy Room Bliss!

The challenge over at Created by Hand today is"circles and connections," and over at Sew Many Challenges, anything goes! I found some funky papers to use for this one! ;) Over at Stamp Something, the challenge is to use some designer paper, some ribbon, a bow and a tag. The C.R.A.F.T challenge is to use blue and green. The Charisma Cardz challenge is going around in circles, and at Pixie Dust, it's"going round and round."

I started playing in my Happy Room today, and I'm having SO MUCH FUN working with these new Crafty Secrets images and stamps. I'd planned to do a card or two, but once I scanned all the challenges, I decided to keep going.

The fifties retro images are fabulous, and the sentiments just crack me up! So here's what I've done today. Some of the sentiments are Crafty Secrets paper scraps, and I supplemented those with others I typed myself.

Over at the Cuttlebug Challenge blog, these colours are being used along with Cuttlebug dies and embossing folders, which I used for each card. Over at City Crafter, the challenge is to do something with buttons and bows.

Over at Crazy Amigo, the challenge is "friends," and at Sunday Stamper, the challenge is "wings." Here's a card I did for a friend's birthday, glittering my goddesses wings and stamping some butterflies.

Over at Alphabet Challenge, they want to see eyelets. It's been a long time since I used those! ;) The little flowers are handmade from polymer clay. I thought they were a nice retro touch.

Over at Pile it On, challenge # 21 is "eat your veggies!" I used some designer paper from the Crafty Secrets Pastels paper pad for this one. LOVE those papers! There are quilting papers, striped and dotted papers, papers that look like old wallpaper, and the COOLEST papers that look just like a chenille bedspread my parents had on their bed!

Over at One Stop, the challenge is pearls and swirls.

Okay, that's it for today. THANKS for visiting!

FUN stuff today!

It's been a rough week at our house, with a miserable summertime virus making the rounds, so crafting and blogging have taken a back seat to sleeping and recovering. But we're all fine now, and getting back to our lives!

LOTS to share this week, so let's get started. Today is a sneak peek of the wonderful Crafty Secrets new releases. Ooohhhh, if you love vintage and Victorian, you should SEE the fabulous goodies coming up! Here are some things I've created.

I did this card with paper from the "Pastel Paper Pad" collection, matched with stamps from the quirky "Wonderland" stamp set. I paper pieced Miss Alice's dress, to meet the "Wee Memories" challenge) and used a little gold mirri cardstock to create the corner embellishments with Nesties. Hmmm, Alice looks a bit like she has an Alien "glow" around her...the crown? My photography? (lol)

For this birthday card, I used the same paper background, paired with one of my very favourite images from the new "Birds and Blossoms" paper scraps set, and a June calendar image from the double sided "Seasonal Calendar" set. Don't you just LOVE those wee birdie hats!? (lol) The current Theme Thursday challenge is to use something beautiful...I think these little hats qualify! I used a multi-coloured, multi layered organza grunge rose with a button as an embellishment (to meet the current Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge...buttons and blooms) . If you like the rose, read further down, you'll see how to create these little beauties.


Now this next card is a tremendous feat of accomplishment for me! I am spatially challenged, and experience great difficulty doing anything even remotely 3-d. But my online stamping friend Kerry has a challenge on her blog, so I decided this would make a lovely birthday card and gift for a dear friend of mine, and would allow me to combine a fun project with my new Crafty Secrets goodies. Kerry's challenge is to create a card with a box attached. She provided a great little template, but that didn't quite work for me, because I needed to use measurements to fit the "Birthday Wishes" panel at the bottom of the card. It was really easy to amend the dimensions of Kerry's template, and even though this little project took me ages to finish (lol), I'm tickled pink with how it turned out. I'm posting card views of the outside, the inside, and a side view so you can see the dimension. I love the sentiment on the image. It's tiny print, it says "Let us grow old like beautiful lace, cherished and treasured and cared for with grace." I used the new "Sew Nice" double sided creative scraps sheet, and stamps from the Flourishes and "Garden Girls" sets, with lots of gold and glitter and crystals. Now Kerry created her box template to fit tea light candles...great idea 'eh...and she has it posted on her blog, so if you'd like to do one, it's all there for you. I'm using my little box to hold a handmade necklace and earrings set. THANKS Kerry, this was a FUN challenge to do! I'm entering this card (with its square central image) in the current Wednesday Stamper challenge...it's hip to be square.





All the Crafty Secrets designers have fabulous new release eye candy for you today...I hope you can take the time to stop by to see all their crafty beauties!

· Vicki Chrisman
· Pam Hooten
· Heidi Blankenship
· Marisa Grosson
· Linda Duke
Michele Kovak
· Melissa Phillips
· Flo from France

Okay, on to more artsy fun! It's my turn to do a tutorial for the Cuttlebug Challenge Blog, and I've taken a spin about ruffles this weekend! Organza grunge ruffled flowers, to be precise.

I know these are all over the web now; this is just my version.

To get started, I picked out three delightful colours of organza...aren't these delicious!?

Then I cut a wee scrap of cardstock with one of the old Cuttlebug flowers dies, scanned it, enlarged it, and printed it to 4" square to use as a template to cut my floral shapes.

Folding your fabric in four layers, one colour at a time, pin and cut. You don't need to be precise at all, because the next steps will fix any errors in cutting...or at least make it look like the errors really don't matter at all (lol)

Cut till you have a nice stack, as you'll need four to five layers per flower.

Now here's the fun part! Light a candle, and start gently waving your organza over the flame. Be careful! Don't go too close!

The fabric melts quickly, and will reward you with the most delightful grungy edges!

Now all you need to do is to stack the layers one atop the other, stitch them together, add a brad or a button or a ribbon, and voila! Grunge flowers!

Now all you need to do is decide how you'll use them! There are all sorts of possibilities...here are two, just to get you started...a very simple card, and a gift wrapped box.

If you decide to play a little, we'd love to see what you create over at the Cuttlebug Challenge Blog!

Scraps and Friendship...

Today, Impression Obsession designers are featuring cards on the theme of friendship...one of my very favourite cards to create. The challenge is actually to create a card for our best friend...and send it! Well, I have several "bests," and can't just choose one, so I've created several cards like these, and am sending them out this weekend. For these "scrap cards," I've used some of the fabulous new Cover-a-Card background stamps: Greenery, Flourishes and Music. These stamps are HUGE, measuring 5.75" square. They make designing stamped backgrounds SO much FUN! I've also incorporated several challenges when I created my cards: over at Charisma Cards, they want to see "3-d" (see my little Martha Stewart popped-up butterflies), the Practical Scrappers gals want to see patterned papers, Creative Inspirations want to see punches or diecuts, Play Date Cafe has a photo inspiration challenge using these colours, the Wee Memories designers are looking for the colour pink with a sprinkling of embellishments, and challenge # 19 over at "Pile it On" also has a photo inspirational piece, using pinks and creams, and Moxie Fab World has another grid card for inspiration.. Have to say, I LOVE participating in challenges, and over at Pile it On, they encourage us to incorporate as many challenges as we can on one piece...one of my favourite things to do!

I stamped and gold embossed on different papers: patterned digital rose/script composites created by Kathy, available at her Etsy antique images shop here, some old K & Co scraps, and papers I'd previously prepared with Adirondack Cranberry and Lettuce distress inks. I also used several Impression Obsession sentiment stamps: "Smile"and "Thinking of You" are from the CL 43 Anytime Sentiments set, "Sing" is masked from one of the stamps from the Birds of a Feather set, "Wishing You a Day" is from the CL 39 Birthday Wishes set. These are all bits from previous projects...such a fun way to use scraps!

Please do take a few minutes to look at the other designers' creations today; you're guaranteed to find the most delightful inspiration on their blogs! You can find them all listed in my right sidebar. Don't forget that you can enter these challenges too, using your Impression Obsession stamps. Just visit the IO blog for the details; there's a $25 gift certificate for yummy Impression Impression stamps for the winner!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. I'm so grateful when you leave a few words.

I'm looking forward to an afternoon filled with paper crafting and nibbling goodies with a group of friends today. I wish YOU you a creative day, filled with things that make you happy.

OH! Also, do come back some time this weekend for a wee surprise!