Cute way to use scraps

Heather Nichols from Papertrey Ink has these cute litte cards posted on her blog HERE. What a great way to use up scraps and help your craft budget! Dig out your punches and see what creations you can come up with. This design would be great using wedding papers or florals for a bridal shower. Don't have two sizes of the same shape? Use coordinating shapes, such as a large flower with smaller leaves, or a larger cake with smaller candles. How about a larger butterfly with smaller flowers? Snowflakes would make cute smas cards, too. The stitching gives these cards a nice finished look-and did you see that the stitching isn't perfect? It just adds to the charm of the card. Now that's my kind of sewing!

Stamp Kissing, Pumpkin Scones and Prom

First I want to share a simple little "hello" card I made for my husband's Aunt Lois. I saw her last weekend-such a sweet lady and an incredible cook. She made yummy Lemon Biscotti. I told her about an easy and yummy Pumpkin Scone recipe. She asked for it, so I am sending it out to her in this card. (The recipe is listed further down in this post, if you want to try it, too. I believe it was originally in Quick Cooking magazine.)

For my card, I wanted to try playing around with background stamps again. (It is this week's challenge over on the Hero Arts blog.) I first inked my Meadow Petals stamp with Ice Blue chalk ink. Then I "kissed" an uninked stamp (a flourish from the Artistic Windows set) to the image before stamping it onto white cardstock. This removed some of the ink, creating a swirled flourish pattern on the stamped image. Then I just stamped the coordinating flower (A Real Violet) over the background image using Blue Iris and Olive Green chalk inks. I distressed the edges of both the white cardstock and the blue mat with my fingernail, creating kind of a watercolor paper look. I thought this was a nice touch, since the "kissing" technique created a watercolor effect as well.

On another note, there is excitment in our house today: my dd is going to her first prom! Her eighth-grade prom (how crazy is that?) is tonight. I'll be taking tons of pictures to share!

Pumpkin Scones: In a large bowl, combine 2 cups flour, 7 Tbsp. sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. ginger, and 1/4 tsp. baking soda. Cut in 4 Tbsp. cold butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In a small bowl, combine 1 egg, lightly beaten, 1/4 cup canned pumpkin, and 1/4 cup sour cream; stir into crumb mixture just until moistened. Turn onto a floured surface; knead 10 times. Pat into an 8-inch circle. cut into eight wedges. Separate wedges and place on a greased baking sheet. Melt 1 Tbsp. butter; brush over dough. Sprinkle with 1 Tbsp. sugar. Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Serve warm.

Enjoy!

You're a Dear Friend

I've just been playing this morning, trying out different background stamps for the HA challenge. This card uses the flourish from the Artistic Windows set. I've stamped it with brown ink onto plaid paper from the Basic Grey Recess paper pad (which I got for a song on Peachy Cheap.)

Even though I usually consider flourishes a feminine touch, I really liked the way it turned out on the plaid and think it would be a great addition to a masculine card.

I added an orangey-colored floral from SEI that had red dots-perfect for pulling the red out of the plaid paper. Red stitching, a red epoxy chipboard deer accent from Colorbok's Friendly Forest collection and red matting for my sentiment pull it all together.

I'm excited to try this stamp with other patterned papers now! Thanks for looking!

Budget-Friendly Embellishments by Lisa Johnson

After my budget-conscious post , I visited a few blogs that I love. I was thrilled to see that the girls from Papertrey Ink had a budget-friendly challenge this month! Their challenge was to create their own embellishments-all of which were very budget friendly! Each also had a very different idea with step-by-step instructions. My favorite was this card from Lisa Johnson: create your own wood-look frames. Could it be my favorite because it features an owl? Possibly-but this technique is great for cards for men. With Father's Day coming up, I'm sure many of us will be stumped for men's cards. Enjoy!

Hello Birdies

I made this card for the background stamping challenge over on the Hero Arts blog this week. I was inspired by THIS card by quilterlin. I used the Designblock Tree stamp over patterned paper by SEI. The little birdies are from the Holiday Birds set (just trim off the ornaments) and the Ink 'n Stamp-Birds and Branches set. I used a daisy punch for the flowers, but they were just too big, so I trimmed off the point of each petal and loved the results. Kind of whimsical, don't you think? I used a scalloped circle punch to create the window in the front of the card, then adhered the negative to the inside of the card. You can see just the inside of my card HERE. Thanks, Lin, for the great idea!

Cute Teacher Gift

Aren't these just the cutest things? The large apple is a magnet made from an empty ribbon spool. These card and magnet sets were created by Jen Biederman, one of the Hero Hostesses. I just had to share them. I've been saving the ribbon spools from American Crafts-this is the perfect little project for them. You can get the instructions on Jen's blog HERE. There's also a link to her blog over on the right.

Cards on the Cheap

Everyone's trying to cut back on expenses these days-I'm no exception. I made these two cards after seeing a baby card by Kim Kesti. Love the way she combined chipboard (one of my favorite products) with vellum (a product that scares me a little.) Not only are these little cards cost-effective, they're also adorable.

I'm going to share a couple of cost-cutting strategies for making cards. They're all painless and give you super-cute results.

The first is to make your cards smaller. Mini cards are adorable and easy. These cards I'm sharing are 4" square, so you can get four cards from a 12X12 sheet of cardstock. Cover the from with a scrap of patterned paper-I used 4" square pieces, but you could also use a smaller size square and leave a margin around the entire card.

The second way to stretch you buck is to use papers that you already have. Not a new idea, but this one has a twist. I punched a scalloped circle from a piece of ugly patterned paper (you know you have some!) and adhered it to the center of the card, ugly-side-down. It will look like you used white cardstock. Layer a square piece of vellum over the top and attach with brads or eyelets in each corner.

The third way to stretch your card budget is to use minimal embellishments. You don't need ten layers on your card front to make it look spectacular. Adhere a chipboard shape (these are Miss Elizabeth's from Dollar Tree-there were 15-20 different shapes for $1) over the vellum on your card. You could also use a button, a flower, or any other slightly dimensional accent.

Finally, use stamps. They are a little more expensive than embellishments sometimes, but can be used over and over again. Sentiment stamps are my favorite because you can mix and match them with any embellishments, not just other stamps.