Hoppy Birthday!

This week House Mouse and Friends is celebrating their 3rd birthday! Hooray!  To celebrate, they are having a birthday blog hop featuring all of the members on their design team old and new.  Their creations are truly spectacular!  And the DT member are giving away loads of delicious candy!! If you haven't seen it you should check it out. House mouse stamps were some of my first rubber stamps when I started crafting a few years ago and they are still some of my favorite stamps, so I am happy to join in the celebration. I decided to use "Party Hoppers" for my card--after all, what's a birthday celebration without party hats? (when I first showed the stamp to my husband he said it should be called "Party Poopers" because the bunny on the left looks annoyed about being forced to wear a hat. I think my husband is bit of a party pooper--now I can't look at the stamp the same way! Oh well, there's one at every party, isn't there?)

The papers and ribbon are all from my stash.  I went with really bright colors--I may have over done it a bit, but birthdays are a time of indulgence, right?  I used stickles and dollar store glitter glue on the hats and the sentiment.  The picture doesn't quite capture how sparkly they are.

This one doesn't either.  But it does give you a little peek at the inside.  (And perhaps the rabbit on the left looks a little more cheerful from this angle?)

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:
House Mouse and Friends--"Birthday Celebration"
Papertake Weekly--"Creature Comforts"
Truly Scrumptious--"Clean and Simple" (The colors are a bit bright, but the layout is simple and uncomplicated.)

If life gives you lemons...make lemon zest

The Challenge at Penny Black Saturday (which I am too late to enter, oops!) is "Delicious."  I don't know about you, but lemonade doesn't immediately come to mind when I think of the word "delicious." Unfortunately, I don't have any Penny Black stamps with cake or cookies so I had to go in a slightly different direction.  Luckily, it gave me an opportunity to ink up these adorable stamps. 

The green paper is from a Sam's Club jumbo paper pack.  I don't know the actual brand of the paper, but I've been hoarding it because I love how cheerful the polka dots are.  I added the lemons, which I cut out of two different shades of yellow paper.  The overall effect is a bit bright, but I thought that was appropriate for an encouragement card. 

I also decided to decorate the inside.  Usually, I just add a strip or two of coordinating paper, but since the challenge at Paper Sundaes and Truly Scrumptious this week is to decorate the inside of your card, I decided to do a little extra.  Here's a peek...

And here's the inside.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:
Truly Scrumptious---"Decorate the inside of your card"
Paper Sundaes---"Finishing Touches"
Card Positioning Systems---Sketch #235

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Truly Scrumptious #15: End of Summer and a Sketch

 This week at Truly Scrumptious the theme is End of Summer and there's a beautiful sketch by the very talented Michele.  I loved working with this sketch and I know that I will be using this one again.  AND... Guess What? The very talented design team is looking for a guest designer to join them for  October and November.  Sounds like a lot of fun, so I'm going to throw my hat into the ring with this card as my entry. 

For me nothing says summer quite like an ice cream cone.  And I know that Tilda agrees!  Heehee.  This image is from the Magnolia Summer Kit.  It was sent to me by my friend Susan, who is always sending me something great--stamped images, links to good sales, helpful hints.  I keep telling her she should get her own blog so everyone will be able to benefit from her crafting expertise. 

 Here is a closeup of Tilda. She's colored with my Prismacolor markers and Bic Markits.  I love the cute way that her head is tilted.  Oh and look...Tilda chose Mint Chocolate Chip icecream.  She has great taste!  Hee hee. 

 

 I made little icecream cones out of polymer clay to go on the card.  I think they're so sweet, if I do say so myself! 

 

Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments!  I love comments! :)

Truly Scrumptious #14: Anything but a Card

Recently I picked up a couple of notebooks at Michael's for $0.66 (not too shabby, eh?). I thought that they would be good to alter for the challenge at Truly Scrumptious. For this challenge we can make anything...as long as it's not a card. LOL. Altered notebooks seemed like a fun alterantive, so away I went. I had never altered a notebook before, but I figured that even if it was a total disaster, I'd only be out $0.66 and an afternoon. I used really different color schemes for the two notebooks. On the first one, I went with soft pastels, and on the second one I used the colors of the notebook itself.


This image is from a stamp line at Sugar Nellie drawn by Elisabeth Bell. These are some of my favorite stamps. I think they're so sweet. If you want some for yourself, they're available over at Funky Kits. I wanted to keep the overall look soft, so I set aside my prismacolor markers and I used my prismacolor pencils. The papers are from from DCVW Nana's nursery stack. I've been hoarding this paper because I like it so much, but I finally talked myself into cutting them...*gasp.* I kept every little scrap. LOL :)


I decorated the inside using the same papers.


And the back, since I had to hide the original cover for the notebook.

For the second notebook, I used a deeper color palette of purple and green. Since I used the same colors that are on the notebook, I didn't have to be as careful about hiding the original cover. YAY! The images are from Whiff of Joy, another stamp company that carries a line of stamps designed by Elisabeth Bell. I just love her images. I tend to get hooked on certain artists--have you noticed?! LOL. I used my Prismacolor pencils for the coloring on this one too.

If you noticed the giant amphersand on the front of notebook, you probably guessed that I decorated the back of this notebook too. LOL. hee, hee. My sister is always complaining that illustrators give girls blond hair while their beaus are brunettes. As a brunette dating a blonde, she finds this particularly annoying. I reversed this trend on this notebook as a little shout-out to her. Hi Lola! ;)

Thanks for looking!