Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #13

Here we are with another challenge. I really liked the colors for this challenge because a stream of ideas came into my head the minute I saw the colors. There is so much you can do with this color palette that the possibilities are pretty much endless.

I have been in the mood for simplicity lately. And what is more simpler than this card I made using Stampin Up! stamps. I just had to break out this stamp set I just got and the awesome butterfly punch. That is by far my new favorite punch by Stampin Up! You gotta love their products and I always get so giddy when the new catalogs come and this one did not disappoint.

Thanks for stopping by. I always love it when fellow crafters visit.

Thank You, Hero Arts!!! Blog Hop

Hi Everyone. Thanks for visiting my site for the blog hop that Ashley created to thank Hero Arts for being such a great company. I couldn't agree with her more and I appreciate the thought and time she put into this to make this happen. Thanks to you too, Ashley!! And if you want to follow along on the blog hop, visit HERE and have fun!!

So, without further ado, here is the Thank You card I created for Hero Arts to show them that I appreciate all they do and the wonderful products they create. You couldn't find a more creative, kind, generous, eco friendlier company than Hero Arts. And for all those who run, design and work for the company they are great as well. We all so much love and appreciate everyone who has a hand in making Hero Arts a successful company. Kudos to you!!!


For this card I used my favorite stamps, the heart winged butterfly and the raindrop background, and my new favorite stamp, dots and flowers. Here are the numbers for them in case you want some enabling.
F5158 - Heart Winged Butterfly
S5213 - Dots and Flowers
S5101 - Raindrop Background
and I also used CL142 - Clear Design Thank You Messages

To go along with this blog hop Ashley came up with a couple of questions for all of us to answer, so here we go:

1. How did you get started using Hero Arts products? While visiting Jennifer McGuire's blog one day she mentioned about a new blog going up called the Hero Arts blog. And I had never heard of Hero Arts before and so I thought I would visit there and see what it was. Come to find out it was this wonderful stamp company who decided to start a blog to showcase their products and to give us all inspiration for creating. Right then and there I was hooked and I made my first order shortly after that. And my ordering hasn't stopped since. I am now a proud owner of many Hero Art stamps and I love everyone of them.

2. Tell us why you are thankful for Hero Arts. I am most thankful for Hero Arts for bringing out the stamping side of me. Their daily inspiration and great products were enough to really bring out all my creativity. Also, I am thankful for their generousity. They are such a kind, stamping family and are always giving. It is amazing the prizes they give away all for just being a part of the Hero Arts club. How wonderful is that? And one other thing I am thankful for is the great Hero Arts flickr family. Those girls are the best and I look forward to creating with them and talking with them. You couldn't find a nicer group of people, they are a family to me.

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #12

Yippee, I was so happy to see that I didn't miss a color challenge while I was gone on vacation. I am so bound and determined to do every one of these just because I love them so much. It is funny because when I saw this color challenge I was thinking the same thing about my coleus a few weeks back about how great the colors were and what they would look like on paper. I guess now I get to put my creativity to work on that.

I was looking through all my stamps trying to find something that I haven't used in a while and this great stamp set from Papertrey Ink just popped right out at me. It is such a great stamp set and so many uses for it. Not to mention the sentiments are great with a great font.

And do you see my latest purchase? I got a new border punch from Martha Stewart. It is this one HERE. I love it and it can look great on feminine and masculine cards. Border punches are my addiction for the moment until I find a new one. :)

As always, thanks for looking and I am so happy to be back home with all my crafty stuff.

Last Post Before Our Vacation

Hi all. I just wanted to get one last post on my crafting blog before we go on vacation. We are going to Maine this year and with the whole Batta Family. It should be so much fun and we are anticipating some beautiful scenery and wonderful hiking adventures. Not to mention the ocean and lighthouses. I am so excited to see the lighthouses, don't know why, but I am. I just think of it as a beautiful work of solitary architecture along the shoreline. A beacon of hope for many ships who once passed. A lot of history in some of those lighthouses. I plan on taking many pictures and posting them on my family blog so watch for that in my sidebar under Family Blog.



This first LO I did was for a Hero Arts challenge. We had to create something with the theme vacation in mind. And speaking of vacation, these pictures are from 7 years ago when we all went to Montana. I don't know why I haven't scrapped them yet, I am thinking it is because I did a 12x12 album which takes so much long than an 8x8 album (which I have done for all our vacations since). No better time than the present, right?

Here is my second LO for you. This was also created for the Hero Arts Challenge. And I am still using the same vacation pictures from Montana. These little paper flowers I made are so simple to do. I just tore out three large circles from cardstock and three smaller circles. I then crumpled them up and curled the edges a little and then put a solid black circle in the center with a light blue brad. If you would like to create these but with a little more flare and more colors, visit this post HERE on Dawn McVey's blog. She is the master and creator of these beautiful flowers.

I hope you all have a wonderful upcoming week. Be thinking of me when I fly out Saturday morning at 5am on a 44 seat plane. I am a little freaked out about riding on that stinkin, small plane. But it is only to Minneapolis. I can do this. Or maybe I can do this with a little tranquillizer. :)

Supplies River Rafting:

cardstock - Bazzill Basics Paper

patterned paper - October Afternoon

stamps - Hero Arts

gems - Hero Arts

letter stickers - American Crafts

journaling sheet - Making Memories

butterfly punch - Martha Stewart

ink - Memento (black), Colorbox (blue)

Supplies Going to the Sun Road:

cardstock - Bazzill Basics Paper

patterned paper - October Afternoon

stamps - Hero Arts

letter stickers - Adornit (black), American Crafts (white and blue)

ink - Memento

brads - BasicGrey

One Wild Party

Here is a LO I did for my son's birthday. I got the color inspiration from the string of triangles across the bottom of the photos. I cut those out of some American Craft patterned paper. Big bold colors should be used for birthdays anyway.

I couldn't resist using THESE cute little animals stamps from Hero Arts. It was a chore cutting them all out, but I didn't mind it too much. I tend to like the art of cutting sometimes. I just thought the stamps go great with my title, One Wild Party.

Supplies:

cardstock - Bazzill Basics Paper

stamps - Hero Arts

patterned paper - American Crafts

letter stickers - American Crafts

ink - Memento

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge #11

I have to be the first to admit, these were a little challenging for colors, well challenging that I wanted to stay away from flowers since I do a lot of flower cards sometimes. But, last night while I was lying in bed, this idea came to me to use my one birdhouse stamp set from Papertrey Ink. I had it all invisioned in my head how I would use it and how I wanted my whole card to lay out. I only changed one thing about my vision. I was going to use the birdhouses that went vertical but instead I used the group of three birdhouses that line up horizontally.

Here is how my card turned out. I am pretty happy with the end result. Only I wasn't so happy with how hard it was to stamp on this light gray paper. It is almost like it had a little bit of a sheen to it and it made it difficult to get a good solid stamp. But, I tried my best to darken a few areas with black marker to make it more bold like on the birdhouse posts and the roof on the middle birdhouse.

As for the grass, that was the easy part. I just took a strip of paper about .75 inches wide and started snipping to give the look of individual pieces of grass. Once I was done with that, I just crinkled the ends a bit. Easy peasy!!

Supplies:

cardstock - Papertrey Ink (pink, black, red), Bazzill (green), American Crafts (light gray)

stamps - Papertrey Ink

gems - Hero Arts

ink - Colorbox

Birthday Wishes

HI!!! Here is a card I did for a challenge at the Hero Arts Blog. The challenge was to create a card inspired by one of the winaday on the blog contest winners. As I was looking through all the beautiful cards by the lovely winners, I instantly fell in love with THIS card by Linda. What I loved the most was the weaving and the big, beautiful flower.

So, to create my card I started with some awesome October Afternoon patterned paper called Ducks in a Row. I cut those papers into .5 X 5.25 inches and weaved them onto my cardstock. This got a little tricky trying to adhere those strips down because I have a tendency to be a perfectionist and I wanted them all to line up perfectly. Lo and behold, I did it. Next I created my flower by cutting three different sized circles and cutting notches out of them to make petals. I then stamped them with Hero Arts background stamps and distressed the edges. To finish off my card I sewed some buttons on for the leaves of the flower. Really, pretty simple but a little time consuming. All worth it though.

Supplies:

cardstock - Stampin Up!

patterned paper - October Afternoon

stamps - Hero Arts

floss - DMC

buttons - ?

ink - Colorbox (blue), Memento (brown)

brad - BasicGrey