Paint chip bookmarks

I am in love with paint chip craft projects. I love them so much I created a board on Pinterest, that you can see here. Paint chips appeal to me because of their beautiful color combinations and their clean crisp lines. So when I saw this idea and this one and also this one, I could go on and on,  had to try my hand at recreating some. These are my take on all the inspiration I found. 

Here is a close up of my favorites. I had MANY failures before I figured out what I was doing. I got the best impressions from fine lined stamps, more solid designs smeared or just didn't look as nice. I also got the best impressions using StazOn Ink pad. I tried CTMH Archival Black Ink pad and Momento Tuxedo Ink pad but they were not bold enough on the slick finish of the paint chips.

I glued black cardstock to the back side to cover up the actual paint company information, rounded the corners, set a coordinating eyelet and ran some coordinating ribbons through it for finishing touches. These bright springy designs will be nice Easter basket stuffers to go along with my paint chip note pads.


Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Egg shaped cards with pieced bunnies

This cute little bunny card was inspired by this pin here. I originally created a large bunny here, last year. This year I took that same bunny .cut file and shrunk it down 50% to add it to the front of an egg shaped card. I really like the finished product. All the patterned paper come from a DCWV paper stack and the inking and stamped sentiments were done using chalk inks.  The finished size of these cards is 4.25 x 5.5 inches, so it fits nicely in standard envelopes.

I made a little boy bunny in blues, his little hand drawn face is a little different, but I think it makes it apparent he is all boy. The little girl is in purple with her flower at her ear and eye lashes and rosy cheeks on her face.

I made this .cut file for my Cricut using Design Studio software and George Basic Shapes cartridge. If you would like to have this .cut file to make some Easter bunny cards of your own, I am happy to share. Leave a comment on this post, including your email address, and I will send it out to you.


Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Mother's day banner card

I'm still in a banner mood. This card was inspired by this pin. I am still using my Hobby Lobby paper pack that I just love. Sometimes a bright and beautiful monochromatic card with just a punch of color is just what is needed. I used some V E R Y old alphabet stickers, they are Susan Branch stickers and have to be at least a decade old. I have been hoarding them, but decided this was a perfect chance to showcase them. I did do just a tiny bit of stamping using a discontinued CTMH alphabet stamp set that also had these cute shwoopies, so I used CTMH Ruby ink pad to add a little shwoopy goodness to the Mom pennant and the center of each of the punched flowers. 

As with the last banner, this one also used a punch in a new a different way to create the edge detail. I used my tweezers to help me pull the banner paper through the shape before punching the edge. 

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy! 

Banner b-day card

This card was inspired by this pin. I had just bought these beautiful paper pads at Hobby Lobby and thought it would work beautifully for this banner card. I decided to make this card a 5 x 7 inch card so that I could make nice 1.25 inch wide banners and use my Thickers alphabet stickers for part of the sentiment. Where the letters extend past the banner paper, I took a q-tip and some baby powder and rubbed the exposed sticky part. No more sticky. :)  The happy part of the sentiment is stamped using SU! Daffodil pen and CTMH Mad About You stamp onto a scrap piece that I trimmed to be a pennant shape and wrapped with bakers twine before popping it up on the card base. The card base is embossed using the new SU! Clouds embossing folder. So sweet! I added a touch of SU! pom pom ribbon and a button tied with more bakers twine and the card front is all done.

These shots are just to show you how I achieved each of the different banner bottoms.

I used a variety of punches and carefully placing the paper so that only part is punched allows for different details on the banners.

Using the scallop photo corners and the 1.75 inch scallop circle punches in a new way makes them more versatile and gives me more variety and bang for my buck. It's a good thing. As is carefully snipping apart clear polymer stamps to use a portion of the sentiment. Yep, that's what I did to get the "happy" all by itself.  

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Cards made with SU! Butterfly Prints & Friendly Phrases

This is a SU! stamp set that I needed to ink up, so I went on a Pinterest search. These are the two card ideas that I found and just had to try to recreate first. I am really happy with the results. I like to stamp the image on the card base before I pop the same image up from the page. I like the shadow effect it gives. Plus with these butterflies it gave me the opportunity to still have the antennae while using the coordinating SU! punch. The antennae are part of the card base stamped image. 

This card was stamped using CTMH Orange, Pear, Gypsy, Bubblegum and Basic Black ink pads. I used the CTMH pens in the same colors to doodle on some dash lines for each butterfly. I then used a glue pen and followed the doodle lines and added some Prisma glitter for a little bling. The butterfly bodies also got a little Stickles in black for some more glitz. 

This card was created using CTMH Pear and Basic Black ink pads. The butterfly body once again has a touch of Stickles in black.

Both of these are going to be Mother's Day cards, I will add sentiments on the inside. But really they would be great for anything. A thank you, birthday or just a cheery card to send to a friend. I really like this SU! sentiment, it is pretty and very versatile. 

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Chocolate pocket book

This little book that holds two chocolate surprises in cute little pockets inside, was inspired by this pin which lead me to an awesome photo tutorial that I pinned here. The tutorial for cutting all the pieces by hand was simple enough but I decided to create a Cricut .cut file in Design Studio just to be able to quickly and easily recreate this project.

Here is a shot of the outside of the book when the ribbon is untied and it is open flat. The top hat's and clover's are also cut on the Cricut using A Child's Year cartridge. I used Stickles in Firefly color to decorate the clover. All of the pattern paper is from Hobby Lobby. The 8 x 8 inch stack is called The Basics. I am loving it for my spring crafting, it has such gorgeous primary colors and nice coordinating patterns.

Here is the inside of the book. The clovers are on the fronts of the pockets and I pulled one Ghirardelli Chocolate Square out just a bit so you could get an idea of the pocket size. This also would hold single wrapped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I test fit it. I think that will be cute for Halloween, because of the orange wrapping. I think it should also fit the small wrapped York Peppermint Patties, but apparently I have no more of those in my craft candy stash. My youngest likes those, and knows where my hiding place is.

This is an over head shot to give you another perspective of the book like binding of the whole little gift package.

For all of the base pieces, the outside cover and the two candy pockets, I used SU! cardstock. It is cut easily with the Cricut but it is so sturdy and great for 3D projects like this.

As always with my Cricut .cut files, I am happy to share. You have to be able to open Cricut Design Studio files (because that's how I create them, and I don't know any other software) and have the George Basic Shapes cartridge for the basic box and decorative layers and A Child's Year cartridge for the embellishments on this particular book. If you want to recreate this St. Patrick's Day candy gift.

Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Birthday card using SU! Patterned Party

I have new stamp sets from SU! that I haven't inked up yet. *Gasp!* So I started using Pinterest to query the stamp set name and come up with some inspiration. And boy howdy! did I find Pinsperations. ;)  You can see my Pinterest board just for SU! sets here. And specifically for this card here.

Here is a close up of the presents. I inked them with CTMH pens in Orange, Lagoon and Hollyhock. Then I added some dots Chrystal Stickles. I also added Chrystal Stickles to the banner, unfortunately it does not dry clear enough to read the Happy Birthday To You sentiment in the banner stamp. Oops. But I decided to give the card anyways. I had also spritzed just the raised card front piece with Glimmer Mist in Pearl, my all time favorite was to glam up card. I also made an outline using the score board to just a touch bigger than my card front piece, to add a little framing and dimension.


Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!

Paint chip note pads

So sorry I have been away from my blog for so long. Really sorry. Because for the third time in less than 12 months I had bronchitis again. Sheesh! It's really getting old. Oh or maybe it's me that is really getting old. I don't know, but this being sick repeatedly is rotten. But I am back. Thankfully.

These little cuties were started quite a long while ago. I had slowly gathered up a collection on paint chips after I saw this pin on Pinterest that I eagerly wanted to replicate. I trimmed the paint chips down to 3 x 5 inches and then using a glue stick stuck a coordinating solid paint chip to the inside. I trimmed up cheap printer type paper to 3 x 5 inches also and included about 25 sheets per notepad. I used my Bind-It-All to make them into notebooks and decorated them with a coordinating ribbon and stamped "Notes" on the front of each pad.    

This pin on Pinterest inspired me to decorate the bottom of several pages of each note pad with coordinating Washi tape. I love the added decoration, it's a cute surprise.

I personally plan on putting these in Easter baskets as an extra treat beside all the candy. Gorgeous bright spring colors, I think they will be a perfect compliment to Easter surprises.


Find inspiration everywhere! Go... Create something fun & fabulous. Enjoy!