Make your own washi tape!

I found this cool tutorial blog, 52 Play Dates while surfing around on You Tube.  Check out weeks 15 & 16 for tutorials on making your own custom washi tape and more!
Jan Fox is doing one tutorial per week on art journaling and mixed media art.  She also offers certain "freebies" pertaining to her weekly lessons.  Check out some free washi tape patterns at the puglypixel.com and find Jan's video below:

Balzer Designs

I love Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog.   She is so generous with sharing her talents and her posts are always chock full of tips.  I ALWAYS learn something from her. She covers a variety of subjects like art journaling, scrapbooking, mixed media, and she even hosts a book club focusing on her favorite artsy-crafty books! Today, she shares some of her favorite blogs and tutorials.   I promise you, it's a wealth of information, techniques and inspiration.  Enjoy!

365 Cards & SUO

When I saw today's challenge at 365 Cards I knew I had the perfect card! The colors from the Play Date Cafe challenge were my inspiration.  I'm also showing the card at Stampin' Up Only because the sentiment stamp is from Stampin' Up circa 1998!

I used papers from a company called ATD (a division of Momenta), a Big Lots purchase.  The stripe came from a pad of basic patterns I found at Hobby Lobby.  The white on white polka dot is K & Company and the orange base card is from Basic Grey.  Have I mentioned that I'm a thrifty gal?  Thanks for looking.

Welcome to CAS-ual Friday!

At CAS-ual Friday this week the challenge is to mix black with pastels.

I'm finding that keeping my cards clean and simple is a GOOD challenge for me.  I need to SIMPLIFY!

Thanks for visiting and here is my card below:

Paper from Recollections & K & Company; stamps from Hero Arts; I honestly can't remember where I got the shaped 'billboard'...

Play Date Cafe!

 The Play Date Cafe Thursday Challenge



I wanted to make a cheerful card for this challenge.  I also love to mix those patterns!! Sometimes I think I go overboard!  Here's my card:

The flowers are from Prima, stamps are Hero Arts, inks: Staz On & Distress Linen, some papers are from Stamping Up &  Recollections; pearls are from Recollections; ribbon & pin from Dollar Tree.  I used my Cricut to make the bird and flourish. Thanks for visiting!

Play Date Cafe!

 This is my card entry for this week's Play Date Cafe Card Challenge.  I needed a card for my young nephew and thought these colors would be perfect for a "boy" card... Although I worked on it for quite a while, it's still not what I had envisioned. I might make another one...

I'm getting my feet wet at the Play Date Cafe and CAS-ual Fridays and entering a card in their weekly challenges.  I've never participated in any challenge before, but I LOVE the color palette from the Play Date Cafe this week of charcoal, ash & butter. Plus, "Hope" took center stage which is perfect for the CAS-ual Fridays challenge of making the sentiment the focus of a card. Thanks for looking.

I know I have a long way to go, but it was fun anyway!

I made this for the card challenge at CAS-ual Friday, but I'm afraid it isn't good enough for the competition.  All that creativitiy is daunting and humbling.