... Papertreyink Make it Monday 257

Hello everyone,

I know it has been quite a long while since I posted. Sadly we lost our beautiful big, sweet dog Teally to cancer in early May and I just did not have it in me to bother with "happy" pursuits.

I have spent my time working in our vegetable garden and fighting the horrible drought that my part of Ontario is experiencing. The weather here, in addition to being bone dry, has been lethally hot.

I thought yesterday that perhaps it was time to spend a bit of time in my studio and get back to card making.

The card I have today is for the Papertrey Ink Make it Monday #257 challenge which is "Sentiment Strip Grounding".

I have used a basic white card base over which I added a piece of pattern paper from my stash. 

I added a white strip along the bottom section for the requisite sentiment strip. I have stamped it with a sentiment from Tulip Time in Memento Tuxedo Black and cut the bottom edge with a Spellbinders die.

I cut out the tulip shape with the coordinating die and stamped the images using Memento inks: New Sprout, Pear Tart, Angel Pink, Lulu Lavender and Lilac Posies. I popped up the tulips with dimensional squares.

Well that is all from me for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. Cheers.

 ~ Melanie ~

... very sick indeed

Hello everyone,

I am sorry that I will be away from blogging for the immediate future. 

My male dog, Teally, is very sick. We are hoping for a good outcome but we do not yet know for certain exactly what is wrong with him.

In the meantime, I want to spend all my free time with him, just in case things turn out badly. I am sure you can all understand. I can make cards anytime.

Thanks for your understanding.

... sick, sick, sick

Greetings to you all,

Just wanted to pop in to let you all know that I have not, in fact, fallen off the face of the earth. I have simply been unable to get time to do anything creative.

Alas, ALL of US have been sick. It started with our female dog Amber. We have found out that she has stomach acid issues, the poor little munchkin. She is now taking Pepcid AC twice daily and finally it seems to be working. We have had far too many late night vomiting sessions from her, thank you very much.

For myself, I merely ate something I should not have done and reaped the benefits of my own stupidity. That only lasted for two days.

Our big male dog has had some tummy issues of his own that fortunately resolved themselves in just a day.

And that brings me to my DH who is presently at home with a very nasty head and chest cold. Chicken soup being made in quantity.

I am hoping to get back into my craft room after I have disinfected the entire house. I am sleeping in our spare room in an attempt to remain as germ free as I can. He has been sick for about 4 days now and I am still OK at the moment. Fingers crossed.  :)

Have a great day, see you all soon. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... mojobella #5

Hello again.

I recently "rediscovered" a stamp company that I knew about some time ago.... Stampingbella. Emily at one time had a store at the north end of Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and that was my first introduction to "bella" when some friends took me there. 

Just lately I stumbled upon the Stampingbella website and rediscovered Emily's bellabeautiful stamps. I have just received my first Stampingbella stamp and had to use it immediately. It is utterly adorable. I encourage you to check out her website... www.stampingbella.com to have a look. All her stamps are stunners but my heart went out to the "stuffies". This is what I purchased, they are simply too cute for words.

Now that I have blathered on long enough, I have made a card for my first ever bella challenge which is based on a sketch which you can see here.

I started with a white card base over which I have layered some adorable pink gingham pattern paper. 

I stamped my bella beautiful beasties from the Stampingbella set Ellie loves Phant Stuffies with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and I watercoloured them. I simply cannot get over that sweet expression on their wee little faces.  :)

I trimmed out the image and then used a My Favorite Things Basic Stitch Lines die to add some detail around the edges.

The wee banner at the bottom was cut with Spellbinders Baby Buntings die from paper from my stash bucket and topped up with three pale pink pearls.

I cut the circle at the top with Spellbinders Picot Edge Circles die from a basic pink cardstock. I have used the sentiment from the same stamp set and added one of the tiny hearts from the main image.

A soft green polka dot ribbon finishes things off.

Thank you so much coming back to visit again today and I love it when you leave me your comments. Have a wonderful Sunday. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... PapertreyInk Make it Monday #239

Hello again,

I am back with a card for the PapertreyInk Make it Monday #239. The idea was to decorate pattern paper using stamps and then, of course, make a card.

I found this to be extremely difficult. It looked so easy in the video. Well, I do not have any lovely big dot paper. I hunted around through all of my stuff and finally settled on this tealish lined paper. Not happy.

I chose the Ruby Reprise stamp set and scattered the two smallest blossoms around the paper using Memento Teal Zeal and Love Letter inks.

Wanting to keep this as simple as possible I decided to die cut out the word Birthday from the PapertreyInk Birthday Trio die set in black cardstock and then added the word Hugs cut from Lawn Fawn Hugs die. I chose to use the same colour blending idea on the word hugs as was shown in the video.

So there you have it. Very simple card. 

Thanks so much for stopping by again. I love to read your comments so please do leave them for me. Cheers.

 ~ Melanie ~

... MFT Sketch Challenge #268

Hello everybody,

I have a card today, well, actually a few cards today that I made for the My Favorite Things Wednesday Sketch Challenge #268 which you can see here.

This was an incredibly simple card to make.

I began with an ivory card base on which I added two different pattern papers from my stash. A simple piece of ribbon was added across the card. 

I then cut out the My Favorite Things Baby's Bib and the zebra from the Sweet Safari die set. I ran the zebra through a Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing folder. Both were added with foam tape for dimension.

The sentiment at the top is actually from the Papertrey Ink set Think Big Favorites #16. I stamped it with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and also Teal Zeal ink.

This shows that with such wonderful dies that My Favorite Things has to offer it is easy to create a cute card without actually stamping the focal image. 

Here are the other two cards that I made. The same, but just a different colour scheme. One for a little girl, the other for a little boy.

Thanks so much for visiting with me today. I appreciate you leaving me your comments and I read all of them. Cheers.

  ~ Melanie ~

... Taylored Expressions Challenge #23 Take Two

Hello again,

I am back with another card for the Taylored Expressions Challenge #23 which you can see here. I decided to base my card loosely upon the sketch but to also use the Tic-Tac-Toe straight up the middle - Ribbon, Flowers and Embossing. 

If you follow my blog it will certainly come as no surprise that I love floral images. My second card uses the beautiful Calla Lily stamp set from Taylored Expressions. 

I began by stamping out the Taylored Expressions Apothecary Shelf and the Calla Lily images using Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I then cut them out with the coordinating dies.

After contemplating various different ways to colour the images I settled on watercolour as I like the fluid look and I find it is a much "freer" way to colour.
I used a Pilot gold pen on the drawer pulls on the shelf.

My card starts with a white 5 x 7 base over which I have added another layer of white run through the Anna Griffin Circular Grid embossing folder. I have added a strip of embossed card from the coordinating border folder that comes with it. Beside that is a strip of ribbon. I adhered this panel to the base with foam tape. I love that look of giving the card some extra dimension.

I used the same foam tape to attach both the Apothecary Shelf and the vase of Calla Lilies which appears to be sitting upon it.

I used a Papertrey Ink Tiny Tags die to cut out the wee tag and used a sentiment from the Calla Lily set, again stamped in Tuxedo Black ink. To soften the edges a bit I sponged on a wee bit of Memento Angel Pink ink and then tied it to the vase of flowers using some pink and white twine.

I must say that I do love the floral stamps from Taylored Expressions. I have a couple more of them ordered and cannot wait until they arrive so I can start to use them.

Thanks for stopping by again. I cannot wait to see the comments you will all leave this time.  Cheers.

   ~  Melanie  ~