Paper Pile Kitten's Blog

Birthday Girl Card

I'm in May Flaum's new class the Curious Scrapbooker's Field Guide at BigPictureClasses. The assignment for this week was to use an ink pad or a stamp that you've rarely or never used before. I have some ink pads that I have won in challenges and one of those is this bright neon pink InkXpressions ink pad. I had no idea how to use it. Recentely, I've heard that neon colors are really popular with kids. So, making a birthday card for my niece in law who's going to be 11 years old in August (yes, I like to prepare the cards in good time LOL!) I realized that using some neon colors would probably be perfect! So, for the first time, I opened the lid to the neon pink ink pad. Oh, my eyes, my eyes! It was BRIGHT! LOL!

I grabbed the Unity Itty Bitty Stamp called Live Laugh Love Girl, that I bought with my nieces in mind but never got around to use until now. The ink pad was a little bit dry (I suppose that's why they gave it away as a prize. Ha! ;), but using all my strength I got it to work good enough. I also used the brand new Inkadinkado mini clear stamp set Positive Pop for stamping the Shine circle in the lower right corner, and then I edged it with some pink glitter glue from Studio G/Hampton Arts. I bought a load of those new mini stamp sets. They are perfect for journaling, smashbooking, cardmaking... More about those stamp sets later.

For the background, I used some specialty paper scraps in neon colors. I love those papers with the crocodile skin embossed pattern! I found them in a craft store some time ago and they are not acid free so they're all right to use for cards. I cut out a couple of shapes from the Cha Cha paper from American Crafts' Margarita collection. It's from last summer, and I have used pieces from that collection for so many cards. I love it! I put a pink glittery brad in the center of one of those pieces and adhered the stamped and stickled Shine circle on top of the other one.

I also added some accents from House of 3/Pink Paislee's Soiree collection to the card. Those die cuts are from the Mini Notes & Labels pack. Soiree is a collection that I am hoarding because I love it so much and I use it all the time. My Project Life album will be made from all kinds of House of 3/Rhonna Farrer/Heidi Swapp collections and designs! I adore those girls' designs!!

I put it all together with foam tabs for dimension and finally I added some bling with some clear rhinestone stickers. I was very pleased with the result and, now that I've started to use those bright and neon colors, I am hooked! Expect to see more bright and happy colored projects from me! :)

Finally, a note on those new Inkadinkado mini stamp sets. As I said, I've picked up almost all of the different sets because their fun and inexpensive and perfect for my smash book, inspiration notes, project life and cards. Scrapbook.com have all of the sets for only $1.99 per stamp set, and they are really good quality for clear stamps. They feel almost as good as the ones from Technique Tuesday. Here are some of my favorite sets:

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made the digital card above with elements from Rhonna Designs. And, because I seem to have loads of crafty energy this particular Valentine's, I dressed a heart shaped wreath with Baby's Breath for our kitchen cabinet. Now, I'm off to prep the romantic evening! :)

Valentine Twigs

I saw a flower shop selling bunch of white painted twigs with hearts on them, for Valentine's Day. Since I already have some white painted twigs left from Christmas, I figured I could make it myself. 

I punched hearts from pink and red cardstock, but I wanted to add some white glitter to make the hearts a bit frosted. I experimented with different kinds of glitter and glue.

I noticed that a glue pen and Martha Stewart's Carrara Marble Glitter was the prettiest combination, and with the glue pen the glitter really stuck to the hearts and didn't come off after drying. A regular glue stick was not enough to make the glitter stay in place, and glossy accents made the glitter into a gluey blob.

To finish it up, I just placed a glue dot on the back on each heart and adhered it to the twigs. Super easy, and so pretty for Valentine's Day. 

 

Valentine's Heart Garland

This garland (above) is made out of hundreds of small jingling bells. I found it in a store before Christmas, and I put it in the kitchen window with winter and holiday ornaments. Christmas is over and I found a new use for the garland as a home decor for Valentine's. I dressed the garland with sprigs of Baby's Breath and decorated seven wooden heart shapes that I found at a local craft store (below). For the decoration, I used colors and products in my scrapbooking stash. Scroll down for more detailed pics and instructions.

Below are more detailed pics of those wooden hearts and instructions for how to decorate them.

First, I colored the wooden heart shapes with Glimmer Mist. I also tried coloring a couple of the hearts with Distress Stains (Spun Sugar, Fired Brick) and they turned out fine and weren't as shimmering as the misted ones, so I guess it's a matter of taste which type of color you want to use.

I colored the edges with a Distress ink pad (Fired Brick) and I also used Distress ink (Fired Brick, Walnut Stain and Worn Lipstick) for stamping on the hearts when the color had dried. All the stamped images are from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Shabby French stamp set (image below).

On some of the hearts, I added some tissue tape and Glimmer Glaze (Flirty and Pink Lady) or Glimmer Glam (Big Apple) to get extra effects. I also added some white paint with the Picket Fence Distress Stain.

To finish, I blinged some of the hearts with pearl and rhinestone stickers (Doodlebug and Kaisercraft), and put a string a silver colored yarn through them to make hangers. Below are some of the produts I used for this project.

 

Merry Christmas!

I hope that you have the merriest of Christmases! I have been incredibly busy in December, preparing for the Christmas celebrations in my home with my parents and a couple of my siblings. For the first time that I have had the family responsibility for this holiday, and I have had so much fun baking and cooking and learning all the traditional family recipes from my mom. We are having a wonderful Christmas! 

I'll be back with more blog posts soon! Here are a couple of Christmas cards that I made this year. The one above is made with Tim Holtz dies. They are my favorites! Red and grey are traditional Nordic Christmas colors and I love that color combo! The card below is a very fast "massproduced" holiday card that I made in several copies. It's really quick to assemble, using a pre-embossed card. I just added a vintage image on the front and stamped the inside of the card and added a jewel to the Christmas tree. 

Organize Your Stash Week 7 - Ideas

This week's organization challenge is a fun one! Where should I keep all my ideas and inspiration for scrapbooking? Here's the background to the challenge on Wookiemouse's blog.

I keep my digital ideas on Evernote, which is a great place to keep everything from journaling to sketches!), but my inspiration is all on Pinterest. Oh, I could pin pin pin gorgeous pics all day long. :)

Ideas and inspiration in print come mainly from magazines. I keep those in a couple of  magazine holders and I try to purge sometimes. If there's a layout or a sketch that I want to keep, I ter it out and put it in a binder. I won't part from Scrapbook Etc. or from Craft Stamper magazine from the UK. The Craft Stamper magazine is shock full of stamping techniques so that's the reason why I keep those. Scrapbook Etc. is my favorite scrapbooking magazine but these days I only buy it in my Zinio iPad app so the new issues won't take up shelf space in my scrap area. I love that!

I usually sort my ideas by category and/or project. Except for in my Inspiration Book where I scrap my ideas chronologically.

Organize Your Stash Week 5 - Scraps

I got a little behind in the organizational challenge, but this week I've been catching up, so today you'll get two updates.

Week 5 is all about scraps! I love scraps! I save the tiniest little scrap of every paper. That's a consequence of my love for patterned paper. I won't let anything go to waste. A small strip or a tiny circle could be used on a card.

My problem is that I haven't kept my scraps organized at all - I've thrown everything in a big happy pile. So this week, it was time to finally organize my scraps. I had thought about it long and hard. Should I sort them by color or by manufacturer/collection just like my paper?

I read about people that don't organize their scraps, but keep them all together and then are able to find great mixes and matches of paper. Brilliant! I'm going with that. But I'll keep the cardstock separately and my stamped images in one separate box AND working with the Christmas projects I've come to realize that the Christmas paper scraps should be in a separate box. Otherwise, I'll go crazy come next Christmas trying to find those holiday patterns in the big pile. LOL! Then I have a box for die cuts and one for prints from digital collections.

 

Reindeer Christmas Card

Here's another of my Christmas cards. I used Hero Arts stamp Winking Reindeer which I stamped twice and cut out and colored it with Copics. I blinged the antlers with Doodlebug jewels, cut a branch at the edge of the card with Martha Stewart's punch Woodland Branch and made it frosty with Frosted Lace Stickles. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving! :)

 

Christmas Tree Card

This week (and the next) I'm making Christmas cards. I'll try to make individual designs for every card this year, but I'm not sure that I'll have the time so there may be some massproduction when the time's running out. Here's one of the cards I've made so far. The background is from Webster's Pages' Botanical Christmas. One of my favorite Christmas lines this year! The jewel stickers and the twine is from Doodlebug.