Mint Card

"The sun is up, I'm so happy I could scream, and there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be than here with you." I know that The Cure is known for depressing music, but some of my favorite music of theirs is really upbeat and ridiculously happy (this song included). So I honestly can't say that this song inspired my card. In all reality I just like this image from A Day from Daisies, and I really just wanted to color it and make her hair mint green (because I would love to have such fabulously colored hair myself...but I have a respectable job, and will have to wait until I'm much, much older before I will ever be able to pull that off...as I like to say, when I go gray, i will play (and more specifically I will play with hair color like mint green and more!))

So that just about sums up this card, I really wanted the main character to have mint green hair. This card was designed for Dutch Paper Crafts and features an embossing folder by Lifestyle Crafts called Tile. I think this embossing folder is a really nice one, and works well for a basic "wallpaper" background. I used some plaid paper to balance and offset the background (because one color backgrounds are really boring to me, and I need more out of life than just one color). I still thought it needed something and so then I added the silver embellishments, and with that thought the card looked complete.

Thanks for visiting me on my blog, and don't forget to check out Dutch Paper Crafts as they have a variety of items to choose from!

Piggies

Okay...so I am using another song by the Beatles (because frankly they're a good band, and were influential early on in my life). And I LOVE this song, because it's a LOT of fun. "Everywhere there's lots of piggies, living piggy lives. You can see them out for dinner with their piggy wives."

This card was designed for Dutch Paper Crafts, I'm a part of their design team. This group of cards was definitely challenging for me, and this is one of the cards that I contemplated what to do with it for far longer than I should admit to. Featured in this card is the embossing folders from Lifestyle Crafts called 'Tile'.

You can see in the background of the card that I used one of the embossing folders from this package to create this card. To me this embossing folder reminds me of wedding quilts...but it was still a tough concept for me to tie together with a clever theme. So instead i eventually decided to use the cute little female piggy in her cute dress and bloomers, and hoping that it would look okay together. I think it does (let me know if you feel differently!) I felt the embossing folders didn't stand out enough without embellishing them (likely due to the paper I used). Again, you can see that I used the embossing folders to make a concave design as opposed to convex, so to help this pop, I colored in the concave shapes with silver on the pink, and orange on the yellow to make it a bit more noticeable.

The pig is from A Day for Daisies and was colored by copic markers...at this point i think it's pretty clear that I'm a big fan of A Day for Daisies images. I think that they're a lot of fun and since it takes me time to come up with my own drawings I often use her images as they are whimsical and fun!

Mermaid Avenue and Ingrid Bergman

So the blog title probably is confusing...Mermaid Avenue is an album by Billy Bragg and Wilco in which they sang the lyrics of Woody Guthrie's songs that had yet to be published. So Ingrid Bergman is the title of one of those songs (and also an actress). Anyhow, the mermaid in this reminds me of some of the lyrics from the song and the fact that the album is called Mermaid Avenue.

So the concept again is incredibly simple. I like to use my scrap paper, and the swirls were from some letters that I had cut out for a friend (so they were the negative pieces and were left over). I thought the swirls matched well with the embossing folder that I used. This is an embossing folder by Lifestyle Crafts and is in the Lattice Package. As discussed in another blog, these particular embossing folders remind me of vintage swimmers, etc. So it was natural to combine the swirl negative image, the mermaid, and the embossing folder to create this type of design. I wanted the card to have that vintage feel, so I used some silver paper for the embossing folder that has the feel of old glitter that has aged to get to that vintage looking color to it. Then the rest was just combining everything to work out together just right and of course some embellishments were used to simulate silver bubbles from the mermaid swimming.

The embossing folders are from Dutch Paper Crafts, which I am a design team member of. The image was from A Day for Daisies, and was colored with copic markers.

Lake Michigan

My inspiration for this card was the song "Lake Michigan" by Rogue Wave. As far as music groups go, I pretty much like all of their songs and since my family is from Michigan and I spent many summers camping in Holland and going to Lake Michigan this seemed like a good way to relate to the work that I'm creating and make it more personal and meaningful (in that it brings back pleasant memories that nobody would ever be able to see in the card itself).

This card concept is incredibly simple. My main goal was to create a scene of a girl at the lake. The paper was pieced together and the bottom piece was supposed to simulate sand, then water, then sky. So the blues were supposed to be a gradient from light to dark. The embossing folder was from Lifestyle Crafts and is from the Lattice group. I am on the design team for Dutch Paper Crafts, where you can purchase these embossing folders. I'm not sure why, but the lattice embossing folders reminded me of vintage designs that remind me of swimming (and I'm thinking specifically of the movie "How To Make An American Quilt" and some of the images from there that made me think of that). So it seemed natural to tie them back to a card based off a water theme.

The girl image is from A Day for Daisies and was colored using copic markers...I felt this image also went along with the theme of vintage swimmers, and really helped tie the card together, and the concept reminded me of the days I used to spend at Lake Michigan playing at the beach (although jumping in the waves was always much more fun than being on land).

Teeny Tiny Gnome

So in this group of cards that I designed I went back and forth between woodland themes...why, because I like this image of the gnome, and I really did struggle with ideas to use with these embossing folders (note to self...try not to pick out embossing folders again, apparently it really challenged my inner creativity to come up with design concepts).

So with that in mind, I actually picked out the image I wanted to use for this card, and from there set forth on the rest of the design. Some of you may or may not be familiar with the song by The Monkees called "Teeny Tiny Gnome," if you're not familiar with it, I'm not necessarily going to recommend that you become familiar with it (unless you're an incredibly cheesy person who likes to listen to and sing cheesy songs...in which case, knock yourself out!) What you need to know is that at the end of the song the gnome says that "the party is over, please come back in a thousand years." Apparently gnome parties aren't what we thought they were cracked up to be as he was playing solitare and then basically tells us to get lost...despite the fact that this song seems to be contrary to popular concepts of gnomes being friendly (or at least that's my concept of gnomes)...anyhow it still worked for my inspiration.

I am on the design team for Dutch Paper Crafts and with this card I used the Lifestyle Crafts embossing folders in the Chain package. This one reminds me more of a basket weave...and basket weaves tend to remind me of country simplicity (and I tried really hard to come up with a concept that would fit this theme better, but this was the closest I could come up with due to my own personal preferences...another reason why you know I'm not a real designer because I refuse to give up on my ideas of what is acceptable, and I just don't care that much for traditional country things). So I used another image from A Day for Daisies and set up a simple background to tell a story of a Gnome working hard to collect mushrooms and bring them to and from where he's working to his home. The paper was scrap from holiday books that I made for my nieces and nephews a few years ago, but i thought it worked with the concept. The image was of course colored with copic markers.

Have fun getting creative and coming up with new concepts!

Jefrey with One 'F', One 'F 'Jefrey!

So, the title is lyrics from a song that i really enjoy by the Pixies called "Space (I Believe In)." So naturally whenever I think of Giraffes, I think of Geoffrey from Toy's R' Us (because that's the kid in me)...and I also think of work...but that's a longer story that doesn't actually relate to this card. I decided that for this embossing folder that I was going to use the giraffe image by A Day for Daisies, because it's cute and to be honest I really needed to come up with a design, and this seemed easy to me. So because it's a Giraffe, and Giraffes remind me of Geoffrey, I had this song stuck in my head the entire time (which really it is a fun song, you should listen to it).

So the concept, as mentioned earlier, was really that simple. I'm on the design team for Dutch Paper Crafts and this was created with an embossing folder from Lifestyle Crafts Chain package. You can see in the background is an embossed design made to look like a chain link fence. The brown paper was sanded down to help see the design better (and it looks better sanded in my opinion). The rest of the card was paper pieced together, and the image was colored with copic markers.

I Love Rock and Roll

"I love rock and roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby"...thank you Joan Jett for being the inspiration behind this next card. I really wanted to draw a rocker chick...don't ask me why. It's just what I wanted to do (my mom had her reservations that maybe this was a bit too edgy for the design team...but I beg to differ.) I mean honestly, who wouldn't want to rock some star glasses along with a shirt that has a star on it...and the spikey blue hair...right on!

Rock chic apparel and accessories aside, this card was designed for Dutch Paper Crafts. I'm on their design team, and the embossing folders are really what I used to create this card and the entire concept. The embossing folders are by Lifestyle Crafts and are called Twinkle and they have two different cards in the pack, both which have stars...the copper paper shows the one version of a typical 5 pointed star, and the blue paper shows the other folder which is a 7 pointed star. So you can see that really this entire card is based off of the concept of a rock star.

Just a reminder that embossing folders can be versatile, you can use either side (so they can be convex or concave, I decided to use the 5 pointed star in a convex manner and the 7 pointed star is concave which I thought helped give more depth and interest to the card).

The image of the rock star was drawn by me using a few different photos as my inspiration. Have fun using this concept for any of your designs!

A Sorta Fairytale

This Embossing folder was one of two included in the package from Lifestyle Crafts called Woodland. These pertain to my senses in that I really do love the concept of woodland animals (and let's be honest, as a theme that's actually pretty popular right now as well).

So my inspiration for this particular card was Tori Amos's song "Sorta Fairytale." I used a digital image by A Day for Daisies that I felt really encompassed how I envisioned this card turning out. I colored the image with copic markers and used some paper that I had leftover from other projects. The background wood image is the embossing folder that I received from Dutch Paper Crafts, as I'm lucky enough to be on their design team. I then created the foliage from cutting some paper that I already had and strategically placing the circles that i hand cut from the paper itself.

I LOVE the way that this card turned out, and I hope that inspires you to create something beautiful with these embossing folders and what you already have laying around leftover from previous projects.

Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn

"Well, the hills are pretty and rollin' but the thorn is sharp and swollen. And the man plays a beautiful whistle but he wears a prickly thistle"...thank you to the White Stripes for inspiration for my latest card. I really struggled with how to use the embossing folders that I received from Dutch Paper Crafts and as many of you are aware, music is often my inspiration for creating things (because on my own, I'm not all that creative...thanks to the left side of my brain being slightly more dominant!) Anyhow, I actually chose this grouping of items based off of this particular embossing folder (however, this certainly isn't the strongest piece that I created for this group of cards).

So for this card, I pondered over what to do for a LOOOOONNNNGGGG time before I finally came up with this concept of two fancily dressed hedgehogs who rather like each other. So the hedgehogs are drawn by me, and the paper used in the background is really just scrap paper that I had laying around that I pieced together to create a patchwork background. The greenish yellow heart is actually from paper that I used during my wedding (which was many, many years ago...yes, i still had that hanging around). I used the Lifestyle Crafts Woodland embossing folder (thanks to Dutch Paper Crafts for Supplying me with this folder). It is utilized on the greenish yellow heart as well as the brown in the background (which was sanded to show off the embossing design more). Lastly I used a Mushroom Border Die by C.C. Designs along the bottom of the card to help create an eclectic woodland card.