February Blog Hop at Papertrey Ink

Here's this month's challenge:

Easter and other spring celebrations will be here before you know it! And besides, there's nothing better to beat the winter doldrums than to turn our minds towards those first spring flowers bursting through the ground and the birds returning with their sweet songs. Your challenge this month is to put a little "spring" into your step, by incorporating the flowers, familiar sights and colors of spring into a project. Think birds nests containing newly laid eggs, flowers in pretty pastels, new green leaves, baby chicks and anything else that speaks to your creative soul! We look forward to seeing all of your interpretations of this fun challenge!


I used my favorite Papertrey color - Aqua Mist. It's actually one of the first colors that Papertrey ever came out with in cardstock, ribbon, and ink. And I still use it more than any other in my papercrafting. I paired it with three stamp sets from Papertrey Ink - Birds of a Feather, Out on a Limb, and one of the new sets, Beyond Basic Borders.

It seems that lately, my friends are popping up pregnant all the time! So now I have this card all made and ready to send off the next time I know someone who makes that special announcement!

Caardvarks "kraft" challenge

The newest challenge over at Caardvarks is to create a card using kraft paper. Here's my card! It's all krafty!

This was definitely not a stretch for me, as I use kraft paper on many of my projects. The stamps here are from a new set by Papertrey Ink - Beyond Basic Borders. The paper, ribbon, buttons, and ink are from Papertrey, too!

Card Positioning Systems Sketch 104

Two posts in one day! Phew! Here's my take on sketch 104 on the Card Positioning Systems blog! It's a really pretty sketch - go check it out!

K Werner Color Inspiration #42

So... it's been a whole week since I've updated my blog! It's been a BUSY week - mostly busy with Conference stuff. I'm putting the finishing touches on the registration booklets so I can get them to the printer. My goal is to have them out at the very beginning of March. (My original goal was the end of February - so much for that!)

So the color inspiration challenge uses colors that I am not all that familiar with and don't use very often. It was good in that it was somewhat of a stretch for me. And I love the simple card that came of it.

My card this week is HEAVILY influenced (that is, practically copied!) from this card by Heather Nichols, one of my very favorite crafters. She is on the design team and is also a stamp designer for Papertrey Ink and this card uses one of her new stamp sets. I only allow myself to purchase one Papertrey set per month from their new releases - and whenever Heather designs a set, I know that's the one I'll be buying. I just love her style!

This card is all ready to send out to my friend, Kia, who REALLY deserves more than just a card from me. I feel like I should be taking her dinner for a week or throwing her a party or something. You see, my little five-year old, Jack, ate too much junk during Sunday School and threw up on the floor of the church sanctuary after church today. It was a horrible, disgusting mess. And my hero and new best friend, Kia, took charge and helped me clean it all up. She has four kids, so she's no stranger to vomit. She told Jack that's how he can tell how much she loves him. I don't know if I love anyone else's kids that much. (I'm sure I would manage, though!) ;)

Dawn's Favorites Color Challenge

*sigh* It's the last day of anniversary festivities at Papertrey Ink. And the card above is my interpretation of the last challenge! We were to create a card using a color scheme from one of the recent cards on Dawn McVey's blog. Dawn is AWESOME with putting together fabulous color combinations.

I decided to go with the yellow, turquoise, and brown color scheme. As you can see, I'm still big on the hearts. Even though Valentine's Day is almost over, I think I'm going to continue to make heart cards to my heart's content. :) First of all, because I love the Heart Prints stamp set. And secondly because I just love hearts. And thirdly, because if I keep making heart cards, I won't need to make any next Valentine's Day! See? I'm thinking ahead! :)

We went to one of our favorite pizza places tonight for a romantic dinner - just Me, my hubby, our five-year old Jack, and Jack's friend, Joey. Needless to say, we were the noisiest table in the place. And the messiest. Maybe NOT the most romantic dinner, but as I type this, John is in the process of putting Jack to bed. Now THAT'S chivalry! (I can hear Jack jumping up and down - and John saying, "Not my stomach! Not my stomach!")

Well, whatever you did and whoever you did it with, I hope everyone had a lovely day!

K Werner Color Inspiration #41

I wasn't able to do last week's color inspiration challenge because I was just overwhelmed with other things around here that needed to be done. So this week I was sure to do it!

The card I created is super simple, using the leaf image from Papertrey Ink's Beautiful Blooms set and a sentiment from Simple Little Things.

Finally caught up!

As I've said on here before, I participate in a monthly card swap with my aunt, cousin, and my mom. We do cards based on the sketches in The Joy of Cardmaking. This is December's sketch, number 21. So now that I have December's card out of the way, I am officially caught up with this swap! Yay! Now I have three cards to mail to my cousin in California and deliver to my mom and aunt out here. And I vow to never fall behind again! (we'll see how that goes)

Papertrey Ink - Friends 'til the End Challenge

Not only did Nichole Heady reveal another product that they will be carrying at Papertrey Ink this year, but she also issued a challenge to create a card for your best friend!

I made this card with the Simple Little Things stamp set (last year's anniversary set) and some Papertrey cardstock. Very simple, but I love it. I'll be sending it off to my very best girlfriend tomorrow. :)

Papertrey Ink Bitty Dot Sketch Challenge

Another day - another challenge on Nichole Heady's blog. I'm telling you, if not for this challenge, the kids would be receiving pretty pathetic valentines at our family Valentine's party tomorrow afternoon! Jack stayed with my mom today and John and I took a bus trip to Atlantic City for the day. We had SO much fun! We went down with some friends and just had a really great day on the boardwalk and in the casino (ate at a great buffet!).

So the challenge today was to connect the dots to form a sketch and then create a card based on the sketch. FUN! I still had the kids' cards to make and VERY little time (it's already way past my bedtime!) So this is what I came up with - I must say, it's not my favorite card of all time. I definitely could have done a thing or two to make it more fancy and polished, but I know that the kids will love them. Especially my Jack, who sort of has a thing for bees. *buzz, buzz*
All of the supplies are Papertrey Ink, including the stamp sets, which are Honey Bees and Polka Dot Basics.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Papertrey Ink Over the Rainbow Challenge

Another fun challenge on Nichole Heady's blog today! I love that she's had us doing projects the past few days. Today's challenge was kind of difficult for me, but I love the results! I have seen a lot of crafters doing cards and scrapbook layouts lately with a "rainbow" color scheme. I never thought I could pull it off, so I never even tried! I'm so glad I finally gave it a shot because I really love this card. It's so bright and cheerful!

I used another sketch from The Joy of Cardmaking for this card. I'm trying to get caught up on a swap that I participate in with my aunt, cousin, and mom. This is the sketch that was chosen for January's card. So... uhmm... I'm a little late here, obviously. *blush*

Here are the colors for the challenge:

And here's my card:

The stamps are from the Simple Little Things set, which was the anniversary set at Papertrey Ink last year.
Everything here is from Papertrey Ink. The cardstock, stamps, ink, and ribbon.

Jack and I are off to Sam's Club to pick up some dog food and a few other things. Poor Rocky had his last scoop of food this morning for breakfast! So I have to get more before dinnertime.

Have a great day!

It's in the Bag Challenge

Papertrey Ink is celebrating their second anniversary with 15 days of announcements, contests, and sneak peeks. It's pretty exciting to see what they have in store for their customers in 2009!

For today's contest, Nichole required us to actually DO something other than simply replying to a blog post! It was definitely the kick in the pants that I needed to do something creative!

I made this little purse card based on sketch #50 in The Joy of Cardmaking. I changed it up just a tiny bit in order to make it more "purse-ish".

Supplies:

Stamp, ink, cardstock, patterned paper, ribbon - Papertrey Ink

Sheer flower and velvet flower - Maya Road

Polka Dot Brad - Making Memories

Simple & Inexpensive Valentines

Jack's teacher sent home a list of all the kids in their class with their first names spelled out to make it easier for the kids to make out valentine cards for their party, which is next week. She also gave the instructions that the children should write out each child's name on their cards.

I was thinking that this would take FOR-EVER and I would have to stay on top of Jack the whole time, but I was so impressed with how well he did! I don't know how, but I didn't notice (or maybe it just never hit me) until now how much he has improved in his writing skills since he's been in pre-K.

He picked out Kung Fu Panda valentines with little temporary tattoos that must be cut apart and placed on the cards in these little notches. That was my job. Then Jack wrote his friends' names on the cards and signed them.

And I placed them in these clear pillow boxes with some candy - either a fun size bag of M&Ms or a fun size kit kat. I DID write the kids' names on the outside of the clear box with a Sharpie. There is no way I'm letting Jack use a Sharpie in this house. Maybe in my mom's house, but not MY house. ;)

So the valentines are all put together and just waiting for the party next week. I am SHOCKED that I'm so on top of this. Typically, this is something that I would be working on the morning of the party. Here's to being on time, for once!

This post brought to you by the letter Q.

It's hard for me to believe that Jack has been in school for so many weeks that they are already onto the letter Q! They study a new letter each week in Jack's pre-K class and each week one of the kids signs up to bring in the letter box. Jack did the letter D many weeks ago and I also signed him up for the letter Q. WHY I did such a thing, I do not know. I guess it's better than X, though. Or Z.

Inside Jack's Q Box:
Quilt
Queen (of Spades)
Q-tip
Quarter
Question mark (on the Riddler's outfit, from Jack's favorite movie, Batman)

Alright, so I have finally finished the rest of the Thank You cards in lots of different color schemes. I have fifty cards now to be used after Conference in June. How good it is to know that they are all done and just waiting for me!

In addition to that project, Jack and I made up his valentines for his classmates the other day. It was a lot of work for Jack to handwrite all of their names on his Kung Fu Panda cards, but he did it all by himself and I'm so proud of him! I'll post some pictures of that tomorrow, as well as pictures of the finished product. We turned regular, inexpensive, store-bought child's valentines into cute candy treats for his classmates! Until tomorrow!