Stories are gifts....

with thanks to my Starbucks sleeve, I couldn't resist using it as the focal for my card today.  Thank you, graphic designer!  I've had this idea percolating in my brain since DH treated me to a gingerbread latte last Sunday.  And it all came together nicely for the 365 Card Blog Day 275 A Novel Idea, SplitcoastStampers CC 299, and Card Patterns Sketch 92.



 The Day 275 Challenge was a picture of the novel, The Secret Garden with the girl dressed in red  stopped to pass a note through the garden wall.  Perhaps a story about her life. 


 The Color Challenge on SCS this week was Real Red, Old Olive and River Rock.

  Neutral of your choice and for the Dessert Option, Christmas theme.






                                                                                    And  last, but certainly not least as this is the foundation of my card,
the Sketch from Card Patterns 92.  I did reverse the layout to make it work for my graphic paper and the cup sleeve.  I used the back side for the vertical panels...corrugated cardboard.






Being a homeschooling family, we read all the classics, including The Secret Garden.  And our rule is no movie version if the book hasn't been read.  I can remember taking my oldest son to see The Indian in the Cupboard when he was 5.  During the show, he kept saying. "Mom, they are leaving this or that out...it's not as good as the book!"  And even today, with them up and grown...we still read the book before the movie...


Thanks so much for stopping over to visit today, I'd love it if you would leave the gift of a story before you go.


Be blessed

Paris...meet me

tonight at the Opera house...

I am just getting to the 365 Card Day 272 Card Recipe challenge.  After a week of luscious vintage goodness, it's time to combine all the elements for one I'll have the  'works' creation.  With the blog visits and reading each DT members blog through the week, I gathered a list of elements that would need to be part of my design.  10 things...

Pam:       Piercing
Amy:      Stitching real or faux
Sophia:   Favorite vintage thing to use.  For me, vintage buttons or snippets of vintage trim
Tesa:      Die Cuts
Rose:      5x5 size
Gloria:    Stickpin
Audrey:  What type of stamp tickles your fancy?   For me elegant women
Kim:       Distressing
Hannah:  Dimensional Sticker
Heidi:     Lace

My stamp of choice had to be this fantastic B Line Designs 'Dressing Table'.  I stamped it with VersaColor Black and embossed with Super Fine Detail.  I did the embossing for make it a bit sturdier for cutting (using it also for Tesa's die cut element).  For the drawer pulls, I used tiny black gemstones.  You can see in much better detail if you click on the photo.   The beauty's dress is paper pieced with a bit of Basic Grey aqua paper.  I beaded the shoes with Martha's Feldspar color microbeads.   Around her shoulders is a real vintage lace 'shawl' (did I mention I like to use SNIPPETS of trim????).  The stickpin has tiny pearl vintage buttons from my Grandmothers' button box, along with a bit of hand dyed silk trim. And I suppose I could use the memo note as a die cut also.  I stamped the message with Making Memories Magnetic Alphabet letters in VersaFine Olympic Green.  The dimensional sticker is the U~nique wall art.  I put the word embrace along side. I distressed the edges of the lovely Basic Grey Curio damask 'wall'paper.   And last but certainly not least is the REAL stitchin' per Amy in black along two sides of my 5x5 card.

I have not made a vintage card in quite a long time, I'd love to know how you think I did using the Day272 recipe! Thanks to all the gals on the 365 Card Blog for your inspiration and creativity this week. Thank you so much for stopping over...

Be blessed in all that comes your way today,


I am editing to add, I read Pams' challenge wrong and thought it was paper piecing...so I am posting a closeup pic of my card after paper PIERCING!  There is the Stampin Up piercer template as evidence!

falalala Latte...

Eggnog lattes, peppermint mochas, gingerbread lattes, just take your pick!  I'll get the milk steaming.

My card today celebrates the best of the wintery season.  And the town where I learned to be a coffee snob. Over on The City Crafter Challenge Blog  this week is the city SEATTLE.  When we moved to Seattle in the early 1990's, Starbucks was just getting started and in their store you could go to 'Coffee College', a 3 night long get together where you learned the history of coffee, how it is grown, aged, produced, what is the best way to get a perfect 'shot' of espresso, the types of machines, well you get my drift, right???  After learning the ends and outs, I was on my way to being a coffee affectionné .


The very hip mug of holiday cheer is a stamp from I Brake for Stamps.  I used Liquid Applique for the foam on the top.  The sentiment  was masked and inked so I could place it along the bottom to fit the Sketch Challenge on SCS today. 

Thanks for the great city challenge, City Crafter.  I have just discovered your blog through my new, livin' in my city (actually less than 3 miles from my house) blogging friend, Jan, your guest designer this week!  It's my first time entering the challenge, but it most definitely won't be the last...I love traveling to new places or revisiting old favorites!

I hope everyone is mightily this Thanksgiving, reuniting with family and friends.  Stay warm.


Card Recipe:  Stamp: I Brake for Stamps
                             Paper:  Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses, Wassail, Figgy Pudding, Brazzill Brown Linen cs
                             Trim:    Vintage seam binding 
                             Misc:    Liquid Applique, Cuttlebug and Snowflake Embossing Folder, Spellbinders small rectangle
                                           UTEE and Tim Holtz Super Fine Embossing Powder

Chasing Fashion

Okay, I'll admit it, I lived through Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance! But I never had the BIG hair, thank goodness! I was a slave to fashion. I'll blame my Mother and Grandmother at whose knees, I learned my lessons well. Everything had to match, from my patent leather shoes to pocketbook to gloves and bonus points if my sis, who was 7 years younger than me, and I got matching dresses for Christmas and Easter.

After graduating from University and obtaining my first well paying job, I chased hard. I found designers that I loved, would go to trunk shows at local department stores, meeting them and of course, purchasing the latest must have. I was a bit late for hats, but with a revival in the '80's, acquired quite a collection of beautiful fashion forward hats. The Tuesday Trigger over at Moxie Fab World reminded me of a beautiful black polished one I still have! The model's clothes certainly take me back to my threads of the '80's.

So my card for the challenge is just a bit tongue in cheek...to pay homage to all the fashion memories I have, most good, but some DREADFUL! My fashion diva does have the big hair in praise of that lovely hat. The leg warmers, so '80's stand in for the runched felted jacket. My gal has the pink belt...though it's slipped down to her hips. But even more important is that fabulous quote from the elegant Sophia Loren: Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you had a chuckle and thought of a fashion story you can relate. I'd love to hear what came to mind!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving. A time to count your blessings and draw loved ones close. The Tuesday Trigger over on Moxie Fab World this week had the most wonderful inspiration photo

from Martha (who else???). It reminded me of a Norman Rockwell painting if he had done still life. The glow from the light in window, those amazing flowers, and the pumpkins. I can almost smell the turkey that must be cooking in the oven. And that got me to thinking about homecomings and family walking in the back door right into the kitchen.

So I made the door the focal of my design. It is from B Line Designs stamped onto PTI vintage cream cs. I stamped it again on acetate to minic glass panels. I wanted to use Martha's glass beads for the pumpkins for texture. The pumpkins are from Impression Obsession inked with Tim Holtz DI Walnut Stain. Painstakingly, I cut terrifically tacky tape to fill the pumpkins, leaving some gaps for depth. Those gaps were colored with Copics. The sentiment is Rubber Soul, again inked with the Walnut Stain, embossed with TH distress embossing powder. The wonderful leaves in the upper left corner and the stripes in the door panels are the last of a sheet of Memory Paper...I don't know the group. sorry.

Thanks very kindly for stopping by and having a look. I'd love to hear about some of your family food traditions at Thanksgiving. In our family we have mumble pie (so good all you can do is mumble)! It is a scrumptious recipe of apples, cranberries, walnuts, brown sugar, oats, butter...Yum!

a damask, zippered corset...

I am still digging the damask from the recent Moxie Fab World challenge. The latest call, All Zipped Up was issued to use zippers in your paper crafting. Did you know that the hookless fastener was patented in 1913, to a Swede named Gideon Sundback? Aren't you glad he did? I went scrounging for a recycled zipper in a pair of jeans my son had outgrown. Just a reminder to click on the picture to see the details.

It's been a long time since I have created a corset. Sara Sandberg has a fabulous template available here. I decided that I would 'modernize' this one and insert a zipper instead of eyelets. I used some fabulous felted damask paper that was a gift. And the other side is the purple paper from Basic Grey's Kioshi group. I stamped CHF's netting over the top. PASSION was stamped on the top right and a snippet of vintage lace dyed on the purple hues. The flowers on the lower bottom are from the CHF lace backgrounder. The brass heart and silk ribbons are attached to the zipper pull. The lovely Victorian lady is a tag that slides in and out. I stamped Emerson's quote at the top which says, "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not". The Rouge bottle cap celebrates the Moxie in all of us.

This also qualifies for Gingersnap Creations GC78 Spicy Supply Challenge to use sewing notions on your work.

Thanks for stopping by.

Blessings,

Susan

Ornaments of home

Happy Day all, we are slipping into the weekend and that certainly is a good thing. I can't believe how fast this week has gone! Tomorrow is a whole family yard work day, so I thought I better get my card posted for PaperCraft Star's Challenge #21 before I am off to work. This is a newer blog that does things just a bit differently. The readers determine the winner of the challenges with each one getting two votes. This will be my first time playing in the challenge, which speaking of 'good things' was a Martha Stewart photo inspiration. Some of my readers know I just love to recreate rooms on cards. And so it goes with this one!

I love the ethereal colors used in the retreat room. I can almost smell the ocean air and feel the sand around my feet. The colors are just what one would expect to see while you were strolling down the beach. I used Stamp Francisco's table image, stamping it onto a putty colored linen textured paper and embossing with SeaFoam White ep. It was cut and popped on dimensionals. My floorboards were created with the Tim Holtz ledger folder that I embossed in both directions to get the squares of the original. For the amazing day bed, I punched a strip from the Fiskars Eyelet lace punch and then used a Martha tag punch to make the pillows (paper is Mistletoe and Pear paper group Basic Grey snowflake pattern)...in creating those pillows with the tag, I just punched the rounded bit, not the whole tag...if that makes sense. The very cool cabinets under the bookshelves are small rectangles from Spellbinders that I dry embossed to look like raised panels. I cut 4 'door's. I used two vintage buttons for the door pulls. The 'walls' are papers from Memory Box 'Dewdrop' collection. The right side is tiny snowflakes and the left, a sponged pattern. I added the 'window' to minic the light you can see in the original. In place of the shelves which has those wonderful shells, I chose to use a Rubber Soul quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson "The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." And those ornaments in the bowl on the table are cut from the overview sheet of the Basic Grey Mistletoe and Pear cover (never know when something might be useful!). I cased the 'shelves' in with white cs, used the Cuttlebug Textile embossing folder under the quote and a tiny bit of white lace at the top of my card.

I would love to hear what you think about "MY" room. And have a marvelous Autumn weekend.

Blessings,

Susan