Bloomin' Spring Fever with Catered Crop

I was thrilled and, frankly, quite shocked when my On the Road card was chosen as one of the "Winning Recipes" for Catered Crop's Safe Travels Challenge. Totally made my day month! Aside from the honor, I was also invited to be a Guest Designer for the current Catered Crop, with the theme of "Spring Fever".

My mom makes the most beautiful Flowerpot Cards, and she gave me a template for it several years ago but I think this is only the second time I've used it.

The closed card is lovely in itself, and people have a wonderful reaction to pulling out the inside card.

I used the back of the pull-out card as the message section.

click images to enlarge

This project is a mix of hand- & die-cut elements. The flowerpot and card are hand-cut, but I cut the flowers and bugs with a Hero Arts/Sizzix stamp-and-die set and the lattice pieces with QuicKutz/Lifestyle Crafts border dies. This is my first time using these border dies, and I'm smitten...the metal bends with the paper to give a great cut without harming the die.

The flowerpot, pull-out card, and sentiment piece are from a printed/glittered Kraft paper pack (Recollections). Using makeup sponges, I inked the green/message parts with Wild Wasabi classic ink (Stampin' Up!) and the "terracotta" parts with Red Brick chalk ink (VersaMagic).

The stamps are rubber, so I used stamp markers (American Crafts and Marvy) to ink each section with different colors. The images were then colored with Copic markers. I stamped onto a coated Hammermill cardstock, so I got both great stamp quality and smooth marker shading.

The leafy ribbon is a printed felt, so it stands up really well. I wasn't so easy threading & tying it, but it was worth it. Many thanks to Linda & everyone at Catered Crop for inspiring me to have so much fun!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Catered Crop: Spring Fever
City Crafter Challenge #203: Spring In The Garden
Divas by Design: Flowers
Hobbycutz #39: Shaped Card

Thank you for visiting, and hope you'll join the fun at Catered Crop,

Krafty lunch

I know I shouldn't be buying paper until I make a sizeable dent in the paper I have, but when I saw the garden-themed, glittered-embossed, patterned Kraft cardstock pack from Recollections on 50% clearance at Michaels I decided that the Universe really wanted me to have it! I don't have anything like it, so you'll be seeing a lot of this pack in my Kraft projects!

For this card, I used a piece of the patterned paper as the card base (see the yellow pattern on the inside), and printed the Soup Border by Phindy's Place directly onto the Kraft side. I colored the veggies with colored pencils; practice practice practice!

Have you seen the April sketch at CropStop? The sketch is a Pagemap by Becky Fleck -- love those -- and the prize is one of the groovy Pagemap coordinating dies. I had originally passed it over because it seemed like a scrapbook LO, but Dalis from their DT (and the brains behind Pile It On) invited us to give it another look and I'm so glad I did! I'm so happy with this funky creation:

This is one of my all-time favorite sentiment freebies from Create with TLC. Thank you Paulette! I gave it a little color with colored pencils.

I made the Frilled Toothpicks myself, using tissue paper, yellow toothpicks, and the tutorial at Daydream in Color. This was so easy; definitely something I'll do again. The ric-rac, borders, circles, and that cute little "placemat" were cut with my Big Shot using Spellbinders & Sizzix dies.

So I admit it: this was all an excuse to make this tiny paper sandwich! I was inspired to make a tiny piece of bread after seeing this teensy chocolate bread slice by Susan (be sure to check out her post, complete with literary background & recipes!). I adhered a scrap of textured white card to a piece of foam tape, and then cut out the bread shape. I edged it with a Copic (I can't remember which brown! Sepia?) and colored it with Milky White and Egg Shell. The "lettuce" is embossed/cut with a frilly-oval Spellbinder die; I folded it down and trimmed the edges to fit. The tiny napkin was made from a regular paper napkin!

You may remember my paper enchiladas from last year...pretty soon I'll have a whole party spread!

CropStop / Pagemap by Becky Fleck

Inspiration/Challenges:

Catered Crop Recipe Swap: Kraft Paper

Creative Card Crew Challenge #8: Kraft

CropStop April Spellbinder/Becky Fleck Challenge: Sketch (right)

Phindy's Place Challenge #101: What's Cooking

That's Kraft Thursday #60: Use Kraft

Thank you for visiting!