Rare Oddities

My mom gifted me with some sheets of Graphic45's funky & lovely "Rare Oddities" collection, and I've been planning on making a gatefold card with it. I was finally inspired to do so by this week's free Cricut Craftroom cartridge, Chemistry Icons, and ended up adding a shaker to the card.

If you're familiar with this paper collection, you'll notice the little elements I paper-pieced and the color I added to the front text with gel pens. I also added some Candi to the corners.

Here's the card closed:

...right side opened:

...and fully open. I used gold & teal microbeads to fill the shaker portion behind the chemistry set.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Artistic Inspirations: Anything Goes with Twist of Magic
Come and Get It: More than 1 Fold
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper September Challenge: Anything Goes with Patterned Paper (2nd entry)


Thank you for visiting & for inspiring my crafting,

Pilin' on the Seaside

The theme this week at Pile It On is Water / By the Water, and we're sponsored by Craftin' Desert Divas. I used cut files from their Cute Fish Tank collection along with Graphic45 papers to create this card for a friend:

Challenges/Inspiration:
Crafty Gals Corner: Under The Sea
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper: Anything goes with Patterned Paper
DoubleClick Skittles: From The Ocean
Fairy Tale #121: Under The Sea
Fussy and Fancy #143: Beach Fun
Jo's Scrap Shack #96: Nautical Seascapes
Mojo Monday: Sketch #405 (2nd entry)
Paper Sweeties Challenge #33: Red, White & Blue
The Stamping Boutique: Red, White and/or Blue

Thank you for visiting & inspiring my crafting! Hope you'll join us at Pile It On,,

Over the Moon - Non-traditional Baby Projects with the UnstampaBelles

I really enjoyed making my fur-baby card for the UnstampaBelles' April Challenge, but I also made this Accordion card using papers from Graphic45's Mother Goose collection.

The UnstampaBelle's challenge is to make a Baby project with non-traditional elements. I went with a Vintage style, and used lots of brown distress ink...I have a rule about not using brown on baby cards, guess why! But I think this make would make a fun card to give at a Baby Shower.

I used dies from SweetStamps for the flowers & flourishes on the outside.

I traced the chipboard stars onto a matching cardstock which I covered with glow-in-the-dark glitter. I heat-embossed the chipboard stars with different powders, distressed them a bit, and edged the pieces with a gold leaf pen. I used a die from the Accordion card set to cut out two of the pieces, and strung the stars with ribbon.

I used a clear plastic Popeze PopBlock to adhere the little Spoon & Dish in one of the interior corners (I cut the image from the same Graphic45 paper I used for this whole project).

Be sure to check out the fabulous projects by my teamies and hope you'll join us this month at UnstampaBelles! You can link up your projects until the end of the month today!, but remember that you can't use ANY STAMPS (digi or otherwise.)

Inspiration/Challenges:
Ooh La La Creations #179: Nursery Times
Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper: Anything goes with Patterned Paper (4th entry)
Mema's Challenge: Use a Punch or Die

Update: This was chosen as a Top Pick for Ooh La La Creations #179!

Thank you for visiting,

"A Ladies' Diary" box & tiny journals

My mom has a fantastic papercrafting store that she hangs out at a lot, Scraps of Love. Since it's over 2000 miles away from where I live, she generously sends me wonderful papers & embellishments that she finds there (thank you, USPS flat-rate shipping!).

One thing in particular that she can purchase there that I can't find here are Graphic 45 papers. Scraps of Love has insanely talented instructors who do things with these papers that would make you cry, and Mom takes many of their classes and sends me the trimmings and any extra papers.

I decided to use the papers from their A Ladies' Diary Collection to make this box containing small journals, as I also wanted to practice my book-making. One fun thing about Graphic 45 papers is that each double-sided design comes in 3 sizes: 12x12, 6x6, and 8x8, so having different sizes gives you lots of options. The box is roughly 2 x 3.25 inches, based on the size of this cute fashion-card paper from the 8x8 pack.

click photos to enlarge

I couldn't help but use the Stampin' Up! Beautiful Wings Embosslit die to add some 3D embellishment. I used Glossy Accents to adhere the butterflies.

The box contains a tier of tiny boxes; I used the tutorial (well, sorta) by Bastel-Oase.

Here's the back of the box, without the lid:

Each 2x2 box contains a small book.

Three of the books are designed around the different sized "vintage stamps" from the paper collection. For the blank books, I used regular printer paper. Everything is inked with Antique Linen distress ink and/or edged with my E04 Copic marker (Lipstick Natural).

This is the smallest piano-hinge book I've ever made, at just under 3/4 inches wide:

I learned this technique from a book, but I used the tutorial at Making Mini Scrapbooks to refresh my memory.

For the second book, I used my awl to puncture a hole in the middle of the pages/cover, and ran some twine around and through the tiny spools, knotting it in the middle.

The next one is basically an accordion book with a wrap-around cover:

Mom had also sent me several pieces of this particular part of one of the collections' 12x12 sheets. It's a column of three of the vintage stamps, so I glued 3 of those together to make the book. I glued the spine, so the pages naturally created pockets for little journal tags.

Finally, I used Prima wood pieces to make a funky little accordion book:

The metal clock hands are actually from Tim Holtz's Game Spinner collection, but hey they work!

I decided to decorate the back of the pages, so I stamped it with a large background stamp (Flourishes llc), heat-embossed it with clear embossing powder, and inked it with pink chalk ink. I had used printer paper, so much to my surprise the heat-embossed portion became almost translucent. It created a vintage look that I'll definitely have to use again.

Many thanks to my wonderful husband for taking these photos, and for giving me some pointers on how to get better photos from now on. We had a real family photo session for this!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Charisma Cardz #33: More than one fold
Love to Create: Fancy Folds
Opus Gluei Challenge #163: The Start of Something BIG! (This project was inspired by my wanting to start book-making again, and to do more 3D projects)
Stamps & Fun = Creativity: Box
The Pink Elephant Monday Card Challenge: Anything but a Card

Update: This was a prize winner at Love to Create. Thank you!

Thank you for visiting, and if you're ever in Peora, Arizona, be sure to visit Scraps of Love!