In the Garden of Life

EDITED: Here is the link to a tutorial that Allison Fillo shared that demonstrates the thread/bead webbing on the card she sent me. (see photos below) She also shares: the main image and the flower that is popped up is from the Little Paper Shop. Cheers!

Thank you, Allison! (I told you she is very helpful!)

In this garden of life, paths cross and the people we meet bless our lives in ways we could never imagine. In the past three months I have met the most incredible friends throughout the stamping and paper crafting community. Today I wanted to share with you a couple of those individuals who recently sent me one of their cards and let me tell ya...it blessed me beyond words!

Niki Estes sent me this wonderful card! I love Niki's work, it is so clean and all the elements are perfectly placed in her designs. She has been honored and selected as a Papertreyink Guest star Stamper too! Check out her blog here, she is one talented lady. The ribbon follows through on the inside and adds a splash of color when the card is opened! I love the flower centers, Niki added shine to each. Thanks so much Niki! This gorgeous card was sent by Allison Fillo. I have never seen anything like this! It looks like all the elements are from designer paper. (chime in Allison to correct if not) Do you see what she did in the lower right hand corner? She paper pierced and then added thread to create this design on top of the paper. How creative is this? And there are 8 tiny beads randomly place so they float a little and are held in place by the neighboring threads of the design. Here are two close up pictures of the lower right hand corner. Hopefully this will allow you to get a better glimpse of this terrific idea. Look for some items soon on my blog that I will be creating with this idea! Thanks so much, Allison, for being so kind and helpful in the stamping community. I know I appreciate her and am grateful for the help she has blessed me with. Check out her blog here. So, in my Garden of Life, I am blessed. I thank each and everyone for coming here today and hope you visit often and pray your Garden of Life is Blooming, full of blessings today and always! Have a great day! HUGS,

DAD

Kindred Spirits for Him Check out GinaK Designs new stamps, perfect for Father's Day! I love all the four design choices and decided to incorporate all of them in this template card. When I first get a stamp set...I ink it and "play stamp" which is just randomly stamping them out on scrap paper. I then turn the images this way and that...and most of the time I start to see different options, different perspectives, different ideas. The stamps always look different to me stamped. I guess I have a hard time thinking of ideas until I see it inked! This time was no exception. After I randomly stamped the images, I liked how they looked together. I knew I wanted to create a card that could handle spots of definition for all the images, and decided to see if this DAD template would work. It did! I did cut out a couple of trees and grass to fill in where needed. I drew a larger kite, cut it out, added string with ribbon for the tail because the stamped kite on this card was too small and looked lost! My chalks have not been out in a while, they were actually dusty! I like the effect they produce. It is a soft way to add color, especially when you have all these images on one card! Kindred Spirits for Him are among other new releases from GinaK designs. Check it out, you will be glad you did! I will post tomorrow a graduation gift I made using the same set I used for this creation. Until then,

HUGS,

"Woo-Hoo" GinaK Day 2 Preview

WOO-HOO RED, WHITE & BLUE

You're invited to celebrate this Tuesday, May 20 from 7-10pm central over on GinaK Designs member SCS forum here. New bling, fantastic new stamp releases, chit chat, challenges, free give aways, and a whole lot of celebrating going on!

I used Gina's new set "Woo-Hoo" for this unique invitation. When I previewed this set, I saw red, white, and blue. With Memorial Day, and Fourth of July around the corner, I wanted to work on our family gathering items and simple decor. Click on pic for a better view.

For the firecracker, I colored the lower part with my SU Real Red marker, and tapped the top onto my Brilliance Graphite black ink pad. With a H2O pen and SU brilliant blue marker I colored in the red inked areas. A quickie glue pen outlining the blast, sprinkled with SU Iridescent Ice adds a bit of spark! The ability to add your fireworks sparks individually makes the stamping easy! The sparkler box is a perfect invitation to personally hand your potential party guests, but not advised to place in the mail. Pretty sure it's not allowed! Now what to do for those who I need to mail an invite to? A celebration flag card invite! I love this flag idea and knew immediately I wanted to give it a try with Gina's new Woo-Hoo! stamps. Easy and simple, gotta love that! A stripe stencil is placed on red cardstock and rubbed with a dauber of white ink. This particular stencil is not clean straight line stripes. That is what appeals to me for this card. I pressed the dauber more firm in some areas to get that uneven look! A party is not complete without some table decor! Take a look at the plastic ware! I wrapped the utensils with a napkin and added a band of cardstock. Two star cutouts on each end, embellished with red buttons does the trick. And a perfect spot to get another Woo-Hoo in there! The Solo brand plate is a great color and compliments all the party creations!

I love how this turned out! And it was easy too, ahem, I mean Woo-Hoo, it was easy! A slit cut in the cardstock halfway up on one band end and halfway down on the other end enables sliding the ends in place! Hopefully you can see what I mean in this next picture. My final decor item is a set of three star candles I discovered at the dollar store. I have been fortunate with many good finds this week! I wanted these candles to be lit and burned, so I opted not to place a band and ribbon around them. Instead the star on the top can be pulled right off. It is not adhered and the punched center with a handheld 1/8 circle punch allows the wick to fit perfectly through the opening. The cording is loosely tied and also can be pulled up and off. No worries of any thing catching on fire. The package did not say drip less candles either, another reason I altered my plan for them! But for a dollar, I think they will compliment the table pretty well. Extra stars with the tiny buttons sprinkled around the candles! Can't let any of those pieces go to waste. Celebration tags were cut with Nestabilities tag trios, and Woo-hoo is SU Word Window punched. Note: The invite "for, date, time, place, etc words are from a new release set too! Yep, Melanie Muenchinger's new "Jumping for Joy", you're going to love it! Phew! I apologize for the long post! But as the day progressed so did this Woo-Hoo celebration project that resulted in alot of red, white, and blue! At the release party I will have a totally different Woo-Hoo creation to show you! Not a speck of red, white, and blue on it! Be sure to check out GinaK' blog for all the details and more sneak peeks. Check out these fantastic design team member's blogs to see what they have been up to for more peeks as well, they have been busy! Woo-Hoo, it is a celebration indeed!

Melanie Muenchinger, Joanne Basile, Carolyn King, Michelle Giraud, Emily Giovanni

Thank you for stopping by and celebrating Preview Day 2 of GinaK Designs May 20 releases! Until tomorrow, Woo-Hoo & Hugs,

"You're A Stitch" GinaK Day 1 Preview

YOU'RE A STITCH

Last week our daughter was over and she commented how she needed a needle & thread! She has recently moved into her own place and does not have ready access to Mom's sewing basket! I casually commented I would be happy to fill a sewing basket for her...but the "look" I observed made me think again! So, this idea was born! After seeing the new set stamp set, "Many Happy Re-Turns" by Rupa Shevde for GinaK Designs, I instantly fell in love with the sewing machine image! So, I set out to create a nice little sewing kit for my daughter "wink"! For a packet for needles. I used my handheld 1/16 circle punch for the needle holes; you can see the top holes, the bottom ones are not visible...the SU Round Tab punch makes a perfect added tab, secured with a brad to hold the bottom flap in place. This allows the top flap to remain in place when closed.

The SU Round tab punch for thread spools? Works like a charm! I picked out 6 color threads from my sewing basket and wound them around several times, pulled through the tiny cut to hold in place. There is decorative stitching on many of the kit pieces, I just got a Janome Sew mini machine and thought this would be the perfect project to start out with!

I love the detail sewing brings to this entire creation...and being a sewing kit how fitting, wouldn't you say? Most tin contents are from my sewing basket and the dollar store. The cute little folding scissors, pink measuring tape, needle threader, and thimble from the local dollar store. The clear top hinged tin can be found at GinaK Designs, and the mini slide top tin from Southern Goose that holds a needle threader, 12 straight pins, safety pins, and buttons can be found here. Check out the feet on the bottom of the tin! They are from SU pretties kit and are adhered with glue dots. This view also shows how the band is adhered to the bottom of the tin, coming up and left free to wrap around the top. The band has Velcro closures to hold band when tin is closed. Decorative Dill buttons, with ribbon from Flourishes adds detail to the overall design. All designer paper is "Sultry" from Basic Grey, Chocolate Chip cardstock is SU. I wanted you to see the inside of the gift card, it says it all when I think of my daughter, so appropriate! The decorative button is secured with Martha Stewart bakers string. The little metallic adhesive dot on the front of the sewing machine (and on the card scallop) is from GinaK Designs new bling that will be available on:

Tuesday, May 20, Release Party is from 7-10pm, central time. Check out Gina's blog for details and all the sneak peeks until then! Hoping you have enjoyed the peek! (sorry for the long post, a sewing kit has lots of detail!) Check out these super GinaK designer's blogs for more sneak peeks: you'll be sew glad you did! Melanie Muenchinger, Linsey Rickett, Julie Koerber, and Michelle Zindorf. Oh, and another picture to show you the stitching around the sewing machine on the hinged tin band. I am lovin' that Janome Sew Mini!

THANKS SEW MUCH FOR STOPPING BY! UNTIL TOMORROW, HUGS,

Mr. Fix-it

Mr. Fix-it Nail Apron

One Of GinaK Designs newest stamp releases is a set called "King of the Grill" by Rupa Shevde. It has the greatest images! I especially love the hammer and nails! I knew I wanted to make some sort of tool belt to hold the hammer and nails, but after seeing Julie Buehler's grill apron, it gave me inspiration to make a nail apron! Check it out! Thanks Julie! Pretty simple assembly...once I cut the main piece for the apron itself! I built the apron as I went along. The pockets and hammer strap are pieces of scrap more mustard cardstock cut to fit the need! Black journaling marker for the faux stitching, embossing Mr. Fix-it add great detail to the overall card design. The "other" tools sticking out of the right pocket are the grill accessories from the set! The tools brads (now available at GinaK Designs) are just the finishing touch to the tool time look! See the rule in the left pocket? A piece of scrap ribbon from my local material store! Do you have a tool time man in your life? Check out this fabulous set, what a great way to express Thank-you, Happy Birthday or Happy Father's Day! I'll have more tonight! Stay tuned...until then,

HUGS,

Drive, Chip, Putt

DRIVE, CHIP, PUTT

Over on SCStoday, the challenge was to use chipboard in your creation. This little golf frame started out as a chipboard coaster from The Olive Garden. I used a scallop punch on the coaster and Basic Grey DP. I thought this pattern was perfect for golfing!

The DP was run through the xyron for laminating and adhesive. The laminating provides a bit more stability and the total adhesive side is much easier to adhere to the chipboard! A rectangle punch was used for the easel...same process as the frame piece: punched, dp punched and run through xyron. I adhered the easel to the back with redline tape. See picture below.

The top of the layers are not adhered down to enable a photo or sentiment to slide easily in the frame. I had to add a little gift card with this frame...the outside of the card is simple with the circle (all about golf! lol) with Dad sentiment. (see first picture) The card flap can be opened and flipped over to reveal the card inside with the golf bag and sentiment. The sentiment was computer generated...Very fitting for a "chip"board challenge, don't you think? The golf bag is paper pieced with some white pen accents.

This creation uses an incredible new stamp set, "King of the Grill" designed by Rupa Shevde for GinaK Designs. Perfect for the men in your life! For that matter, it works perfectly for women too! Check it out along with all the other fabulous GinaK Designs!

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to leave a comment on the previous post to be entered in the blog candy "Hits" celebration.

HUGS,