HELLO LOVELY Rose Blossoms Blog Hop

Welcome to our Hello Lovely Blog Hop. If you've hopped over from Marg's Blog you're on the right track. Make sure you see everyone's beautiful creations by clicking the link to the next blogger at the end of this post. I also have a guest at the end. I'm so excited to show you her card.

I'm excited to announce that - WOO HOO - I was able to do something I've always wanted to take the time to do. I have used up an entire Workshop Your Way (paper AND embellishments) with only this many scraps left ...

That whole tiny pile went in the garbage, which is another big accomplishment for me.

First I made five layouts. This one shows Hello Lovely playing with neutrals so I'm highlighting it. 

If you'd like two see the rest of the layouts you can click HERE.

The paper that was left after five layouts was turned into 16 cards.

There's not a single Gold Glitter Gem, Hello Lovely Complement, or scrap of Blush Shimmer Ribbon left. AND I love these cards. I will use them all as I write notes throughout this year. A few of these are duplicated designs with different sentiments. But most are unique. The Hello Lovely Thin Cut Bundle was used along with a wide variety of other stamps that I have on hand. 

Here are my top five picks from the pile. 

AND now I have a special guest, my friend and downline Anne Rukke. 

She made this beautiful card using Hello Lovely and the January SOTM. 

Don't you just love how she rolled those tiny flowers?

 I love my CTMH team, the Pretty Pieces. In February you can get 3 SOTM stamp sets FREE when you sign up. After you've hopped through come back and click HERE to learn more.

Now it's time to see the wonderfulness on Kim Hill's blog. Thank You for hopping with us.

Blog Hop With Hearts

I'm so excited to take part in the wonderful blog hop because ... hearts. I love hearts. They're my favorite shape. Some people have a favorite ice cream. I have a favorite shape. 

If you came here from  Wendy Coffman's Blog then you're on the right track. If you just stumbled on you're in for a lot of inspiration as you hop through these heart projects.

Do you have scraps that all seem to wind up being strips? I've been working with the Sugar Rush Paper Packet and wound up with a big stack.  So, I did this. It's hard to throw even the smallest piece away sometimes. It doesn't look like much but here's how it all starts ...

Turn it over and it's all adhered to a 4 x 5.25 inch piece of white cardstock. Once that's finished take out a scissors or trimmer and cut off everything that falls off the white page. When I do this I cover as much of the base piece with adhesive as possible and then adhere the pieces to that. You'll notice that the overlapping pieces are clean. That's because some of them are still possibly great scraps! LOL! ALSO, I do very little planning here. Take a pile of strips and start adding to the paper. I try not to put the exact same ones next to each other but that's about it.

I ran this piece through my Cuttlebug using a Heart Thin Cut. 

It's important to center it as best possible (you'll see).

This is what you wind up with in pieces.

Do the same thing with a coordinating, less busy piece of paper the same size.

Now you're ready to make TWO cards. I really love it when I can make two cards at once. These are adhered to a basic white card base.

The fun really begins when you add various stamps and embellishments. 

Here you have my two finished cards.

I spent less than a half hour going through the rest of the scraps and wound up with 8 more cards that are ready to decorate. Even without bling these make me very happy. Look at all those hearts!

Of course you don't have to wait for scraps to do something like this, but if you have some ...

Thank you for hopping over. Now go to Amie Kiger's Blog to see more inspiration. She has a list of all the participants plus something that I'm sure will make your heart full!

Challenge Accepted

Happy Monday ... I'm so excited that I was able to make a layout that fulfills TWO challenge blogs. The two sites are Color My Heart and The Memory Nest. I used the color combo and sketch to create this page. It makes me happy on so many levels.

Color Dare

Sketch

As you might expect ... I didn't let that one page stand alone. It's hard to scrap just one picture of almost anything for me. I only had three photos of my son's birthday so I easily could've fit them on one page. I made a companion page though because that's how I roll right now.

BUT WAIT ... There's more because I asked my friends to join me in the Color Dare. Here are three amazing cards made with the colors shown by some very talented ladies that I have the fortune of creating with on a regular basis. So. Much. To. Love.

Created by Bonnie Seeman

Created by Kerri Lorig

Created by Anne Rukke

Aren't these fantastic? I love that they all let me share them with you. I think they showed this color challenge who the boss is!!

Thank you for stopping in today. Please leave some love for my friends and I'll pass it along.

Sweatshirt Inspiration

Inspiration for creating with paper is everywhere. It's just not possible to act on the inspiration every time it pops up. There would be some serious trouble in my life if I did that. I'd be playing with paper all of the time. People would be hungry. This morning I looked down at my clothes and thought, "that's a fun color combo"! (for the most part I picked this outfit based on what I could reach fastest ... I'm no fashionista)

This time I dropped everything and searched out some paper. In a few minutes I had a fun card and used up some scraps of this and that. Woo! Hoo!

Retro Sketches #110

There are so many GREAT challenge blogs out there. Last week I played along with Operation Write Home. This week I'm trying out Retro Sketches. It felt like a good time to do something crooked!! I rarely use triangles or angles in general because truthfully ... it's not easy. BUT that's what these blogs are all about sometimes, a challenge. 

I love having a colorful card that's not really for any specific occasion. AND of course I love using up scraps. When this was first finished it was a little blech, even with the bright colors. Once I added the shimmer trim ... TA DA!!!

(For all of my perfectionist friends ... yes, that little uneven thing happening on the left bothers me a touch. BUT I'm taking the advice of this card. It's NOT worth sweating all of the little things in life. AND you know there are a lot of little things. So, maybe it's a flaw OR maybe it's creativity. I'm going with FUN!! This card is fun so it doesn't have to be perfect!!)

The Sketch

P - Pieces

Welcome to the Everything ABC's Blog Hop! For this hop we will be featuring the letter P. This may be the name of a paper, a stamp set or an embellishment. Whatever the crafter has chosen as her P element will be featured in their post.

 

If you came from Scrappin' with Shalana  then you're on the right track!

On this blog you'll find P stands for Pieces. Technically the pieces being referred to are called scraps ... but since it doesn't start with P... well, I found a great substitute word. The good news is that letter S is just around the corner!!

Thank you to Atlantic Hearts for the sketch and Color My Heart for the color selection. You may not believe it when I say this little card came together quickly, but challenges really can make all of the difference!!

FIRST let's look at what made me call this post "pieces". It all started with a scrap pile, a scissors and a cup of coffee.

Do you notice how there's a pile of lagoon paper? These are scraps pieces from a variety of different Close To My Heart paper packs. They ALL go together because any CTMH color stays the same in every pack it shows up in. It give me a lot of confidence to mix and match papers.

It put the scissors to good use and cut up some of my "pieces" into even smaller pieces because I wanted squares!! When you hand cut it's less than perfect, which is my favorite kind of thing to work with because ...  no one is perfect. You can see the actually scraps created in the process to the right ... these things actually go in the garbage.

A piece of white cardstock is covered in adhesive and then the squares are just stuck on. There's not method to that sort of madness. Just pick one up and stick it on. Then put the next one you pick up by the first one and so on. Pretty soon you have something like this ...

SO ... with a little trimming that piece winds up on a card looking like this. If you're checking this out from the Color Dare ... well today my neutral is pink! As if there wasn't enough going on here it just seemed to be asking for a tiny bit of pink! So, yes I broke the Color Dare rules. The good news is that when you're being creative there really aren't any rules!!

Thank you for looking. Now hop on to Janna Gray - The Creative Princess

J - Juniper

  

Welcome to the Everything ABC's Blog Hop! For this hop we will be featuring the letter J. This may be the name of a paper, a stamp set or an embellishment. Whatever the crafter has chosen as her J element will be featured in her post.

If you have just hopped onto my blog, please start at the beginning at Amber's blog ~ Scrapper's Therapy

If you came from Shalana's blog then you're on the right track!

SO ... Awhile ago there was a challenge blog that used just ONE color ... JUNIPER. It doesn't sound like a challenge, but it was trickier than three colors. You can see it right here ... One Color Color Dare. I saved photos of the process for this ABC adventure.

First of all ... I made 25 cards at one time with Juniper.  Overall I loved the result even though it seemed really difficult at first. Some of my favorite cards are at the end of this post (don't worry, I won't make you look at all 25!!!).

FIRST ... I took out all of the Juniper paper scraps I had on hand. All of pieces were sorted by size. From there everything was matched up with the largest pieces being used first to come up with a wide variety of card bases ... which were also sorted once they were finished. You'll see a few "cheaters" according to the Color Dare rules, but I just couldn't leave some of the pretty pieces turned over.

Once I was finished there were this many scraps left over. AND I threw them all away. Here's the evidence!!! Since I'm not well known for throwing things away I'm putting it here for everyone to see. If I didn't think you'd believe me I'd put a picture of them in the even larger garbage!!

 

OK ... back to the fun part. Once I had all of the finished card bases I took out a bunch of leftover embellishements and a couple of stamp sets.

AND ta da ..... 25 finished cards. You'll see a few of my favorites below. You'll notice that I really couldn't stick to just one color most of the time!! 

Your next stop on our Everything ABC'S blog Hop is Linda Norman.
Here is the complete lineup in case you get lost along the way:)

1. Amber La Mons ~ Scrapper's Therapy
2. Lucy Kelleher ~ Love 2 Create
3. Shalana Glass ~ Scrappin with Shalana
4. Shelly Nemitz ~ Just One Piece
5. Linda Norman ~ Scrappy Therapy
6. Theodora ~ Celebrate Crafts