Taylored Expressions Birthday Bash

Hey everyone!  It's great news for our community/industry when companies are surviving and thriving, so I'm really happy to be one of almost 50 designers helping Taylored Expressions celebrate 10 years in the business today.

I've been a fan of TE for many years and guest designed for them in the past, so it was lots of fun to be invited to be part of the celebration.  TE just released some new products last night which you can see here.  

At the heart of Taylored Expressions is a mission to share joy through the gift of handmade cards. As part of their 10th birthday TE is continuing that mission with the launch of a special Share Joy campaign focused on providing birthday cards to those in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities across the U.S. To make as deep an impact as possible TE is inviting card makers everywhere to join the campaign. Will you join us? Find out how to participate by viewing their Share Joy page here: https://www.tayloredexpressions.com/share-joy-birthday-2018

For my card today, I'm using a previously released birthday set called Give Me a Sign stamp set as well as the Rise and Shine stencil.

I started by inking up a panel with some distress inks - Picked Raspberry, Salty Ocean, and Dusty Concord. Once that was done, I placed the stencil over top and then used a wipe to remove some of the inking.

Then I stamped and colored the critters with Copics, stamped the sentiments in their signs, and fussy cut the images.

I wanted the focus to be on the stenciled piece and the critters, so I went with a plain black panel for the bottom of the card embossing the secondary sentiment in white.

I'm keeping this pretty short since it's a long hop and there is a lot more to see.  For the full blog hop list, head over to the Taylored Expressions blog.  Happy hopping!

Guest Designing for Taylored Expressions - Week 3

Hey everyone!  It's my last week guest designing for Taylored Expressions.  Here's a little sneak of my card.

My last post is up over on the blog.  This is just a little sneak.  Head over to the TE blog to see the whole thing.

Thanks so much to the folks at TE for having me this month, I had a great time!

Guest Designing for Taylored Expressions - Week 2

Hey everyone!  My second post for the month is up over at the Taylored Expressions blog.  Today I'm focusing on a die that is usually a supporting character and making it the star, and I've got not one, but two cards to share.

Please head over and take a look.

Guest Designing for Taylored Expressions - Giveaway

I'm excited to be designing for Taylored Expressions this month.  They sent me a wonderful package of stamps ands dies, and it was really hard to decide what to use first!

Today I'm sharing my first project over on the TE blog.  It's my take on popular stamping technique, but I'm using dies instead of stamps.

I'm sharing a little sneak here, but would love it if you would head over to the TE blog to check it out.  You won't regret it, rumor has it there's a giveaway over there ;)

Plane Awesome!

It's been a happy crafty weekend!  I was able to get together with my GI buddies JJ and Tessa again last night for some crafting and chatting.

While I was there, I made this card for the Taylored Expressions birthday Sketch Selfie Share challenge.

These papers (with the exception of the woodgrain) are ChicTags.  I've never used ChicTags papers before, but they are really thick, almost like cardstock, and some great patterns.  Unfortunately in my haze of crafting I forgot to write down which collection the papers are from, but I'm definitely thinking I need some ore ChicTags paper in my life!

The woodgrain is Studio Calico and I actually used the Paper Smooches polaroid die to cut it, but then trimmed a little off the bottom to make it more of a frame and less of a polaroid.

The little plane and sentiment are from TE's Plane Awesome set, so cute!  It was colored with Copics and then I softened the color a bit with a blending tool.



The clouds in the top of the frame were made using TE's cloud border die.

I will also report that I have finally tried using a stampamajig....now I might actually need one....

Thanks for coming by!  Hope you are having a great weekend!

Supplies Used:  Paper/Cardstock:  Studio Calico - Woodgrain Paper; ChicTags - Polkadot and Striped paper; PTI - Hawaiian Shores cardstock
Stamps:  Taylored Expressions - Plane Awesome
Ink:  Memento - Tuxedo Black
Other:  Taylored Expressions - Plane Awesome dies; Copics; Tombow - Mono Adhesive; Scotch - Foam Tape

Thanks! Playing with other people's stuff

This weekend I had the pleasure of getting together with a couple of my Gallery Idol buddies Tessa and JJ.  It's always so much fun to see one another and try out everyone's goodies.  I managed to get a bunch of cards done and I'll be sharing them over the course of the week.

This first card is the one I probably spent the most time on.  I used the Taylored Expressions Shade Tree cutting plate, and the background was created with a Copic Air Brush.  This was my first experiment with air brushing. It's pretty fun and slightly addicting.  I really enjoyed it, although I'm unlikely to go buy one owing to my cheapness, but still so fun to try it out.

The die cut was cut from white cardstock and colored with Copics and the sentiment is the Lawn Fawn scripty thanks die.

Since most of what I used this weekend was borrowed stuff, and much of the papers were scraps I won't have my official 'supplies used' list at the end of these posts, but I'll try and note the main items in the body of the post.

I'm going to link this up over at Simon Says Stamp for Anything Goes week.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Birthday cards for Taylored Expressions (and Andrew)

Happy Sunday all!  Popping in to share a couple birthday cards I created for Taylored Expessions birthday Tic Tac Toe challenge.

As many of you know my husband Andrew is a teacher.  This year he asked if I would be willing to make birthday cards that he can give to his students.  It's a tall order.  He has six rather than the normal five classes this year, and that means at least 150 students.....even if some of them have their birthdays over the summer, that's still a lot of cards.  Andrew is pretty darn supportive of my crafty habit and doesn't often make special crafting requests, so I'm going to see if I can keep up with all the birthdays....as a result you're likely to see a lot of birthday cards here this year.

Anyway, this was the perfect opportunity to make a couple cards for the stash since the middle of the Tic Tac Toe board is 'make a birthday card'. 

This first one was super simple and easy.  I used the Fruity Friends set.  Colored the watermelon with a Spectrum Noir and a Faber Castell marker, added some ribbon and gems, and done.  I could definitely make a set of these too since there are all sorts of different fruits I could substitute out for the watermelon.  This was for the rhinestones/birthday card/ribbon row of the tic tac toe board.

The next card was a little harder - I fussed with it a while.  This one is for the buttons/birthday card/patterned paper row of the board.

I used an old embossing folder I have and I confess I'm not really sure what folder it is, but it's from Sizzix.  The paper was made using TE's notepaper stamp.  The alphas are TE's skinny alpha and number dies and the owl is from the July 2013 Stamp of the Month.  I wanted to add a little definition to him, so I added some simple outlining/shading with a precision point pen and used some Liquid Glass on his glasses.

Some twine and buttons finished that one off.  We've had a fun weekend, got some things done around the house and some relaxing too.  I'm taking the girls for the three and six year old photos this afternoon,  hopefully they will cooperate....

Have a great end to your weekend!

Supplies Used
Card 1
Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - White Daisy
Stamps:  TE - Fruity Friends; WMS - Half Pint Heroes
Ink:  Memento - Tuxedo Black
Other:  Recollections - Ribbon; MME - All is Bright Gems; Spectrum Noir Markers - CR11; Faber Castell - Pitt markers, Green
Card 2
Paper/Cardstock:  CTMH - White Daisy and Outdoor Denim; Bazzill Card Shoppe - Candy Hearts cardstock
Stamps:  TE - Notepaper and July 2013 Stamp of the Month
Ink:  CTMH - Dutch Blue; HA - Wet Cemeent
Other:  AC - Precision Point Pen 01; Twinery - Caribbean; Pebbles - Aqua Self Adhesive Backed Buttons; CTMH - Dimensional Foam Tape, Liquid Glass; Tombow - Mono Adhesive