Lawnscaping celebrates 100 challenges! {guest designing}

Ah, I'm so happy to be back in my old stomping grounds over at Lawnscaping! I am helping them celebrate their 100th challenge, as Yainea's special "plus one" guest.

For the occasion, I made a critter-filled birthday card:

The scene is a one-layer deal. You might think that I did an insane amount of masking to achieve the look, but you would be mistaken. ha.

The only thing that I masked was the long, swirly, happy birthday sentiment (from the new Scripty Sayings.) The rest involved me wiping ink off of key areas (like the top of the Gleeful Gardens bird's head, or the top of the sunflower) before stamping down. I filled in lines that were missing with a copic pen after the fact.

so. much. easier.

Check out the Lawnscaping blog today, and my good friend Yainea's blog. I am so excited to have been invited to celebrate with them today!

There are prizes to be won, so click on those links for more details!

♥.

sky's the limit

Hi there! Happy Monday morning - it's time for a new lawnscaping challenge:

If you approach card-making the way I do, trying a new technique can be a little daunting. Apart from masking and paper-piecing, I tend to keep my stuff "technique-free." Mostly because techniques make such a mess, hee hee.  That being said, I tried Jennifer Mcguire's iron-off embossing technique.  

Oof. Sorry for the weird photo - I could not, for all the pictures in the world, get the colors to look right.  Even so, I do love this card! The iron-off technique allowed me to emboss the background and then stamp the sentiment on top.

I added a yellow "haze" behind the sun and gave him a smiley face. Just because that's what I need to see on a Monday morning.



I hope you play along! You could win a gift certificate to Simon Says Stamp.

This will be my last posting with lawnscaping.  I am so sad to be moving on, but needed to trim down my teams a little to make more time for myself.  A huge thank you to Laurel and the rest of the girls for being so supportive and kind to me for the last (how long have I been with lawnscaping? ha. it feels like forever!)

♥.

hey there, gnomie.

this is my second post today! check out my lawn fawn inspiration week post *here*

It's time for another lawnscaping challenge! Show us your best CAS (clean-and-simple) style:

I was inspired by the gnome in the inspiration photo and these buttons that I found at my local scrapbook store (I think they've been around for awhile, but they're new to me!):

I love that the button fits pretty well on the lawn fawn gnome's face!

I popped the gnome behind some aqua grass and onto a polka dot notecard.  

I layered a red hello onto a few layers of white die-cuts. It's as chunky as the little button I put on his face.

I hope you like it!  Play along, and you can win a prize from Lawn Fawn!

♥.

Bling it!

It's time for a new lawnscaping challenge!

I was pinterest-inspired for this card, and put my new lawn fawn dies to use:

This card came together in half a snap.  I masked off sections of the clouds and sponged pink and blue inks. I sprinkled gold glitter on one segment of each cloud, and made it rain gold drops. The sentiment (from Studio Calico) is perfect, and gold-heat-embossed.



I mounted everything onto a journaling card die, and then onto a polka dot notecard.  I love those new lawn fawn notecards!

But here's the question: does it bother anyone else (or just me) that the golds are all a bit different in their tones? bah. I always notice these little things, mostly when I'm done editing the photos, and it bothers me. They have a word for that, my husband says... ha.

I really love everything else about this card.

If you think you can do better (and you probably can) join us for this lawnscaping challenge! You could win a prize from Simon Says Stamp!

♥.

you are my entire world.

It's time for another lawnscaping challenge:

Use dots! Use hearts! Use both! hahaha. I love it.  

I decided to go the 1 dot, 1 heart route:

This card features all new lawn fawn (except the yellow-striped paper, which is new Studio Calico): wish you were here stamps, let's polka paper, and sky hemp twine. In just a few more weeks, they will all be available for order - you will love them!

I cut apart the sentiment that reads "you mean the world to me" so that I could curl the first part above the globe, omit the "world" in favor of the globe and stamp the rest beneath it.

The world was cut up and popped up - my 1 dot - and I added a tiny, sparkly heart to nowhere in particular.

I hope you decide to play along! The challenge is such a great creative jump-off and you could win a prize from Simon Says Stamp:

ps, today is a 2-post kind of day.  I'll be back in just a few minutes with a Simon Says Stamp & Mama Elephant valentine's hop.  I hope you'll come back!

♥.

you're my double rainbow.

Monday morning, and time for another lawnscaping challenge!  This one's fun: pick a lawnscaping design team member and create something inspired by that gal.

It was tough to narrow things down - these girls inspire me all the time!  I chose my good friend Audrey, with this rainbow-colored party set (click!)

Her set had me reaching for the new lawn fawn set, starry backdrops.  It goes on sale later on in February, but I couldn't resist playing around with it n-o-w.  It has the same sentiment that Audrey featured on her project ("you color my world") but when I started created, my project organically went a different way.

I stamped two mini rainbows, paired it with lawn fawn's new rainbow-striped paper, and used Milo's abcs to spell out the top half of my custom sentiment.  I used a white gel pen to chicken scratch the rest.



I felt like the card needed some purple.  Rainbows with no purple? sad stuff.  A quick wash of color onto a wood veneer heart righted everything.

I hope you like it, and I can't wait to see who inspires you!

Play along and you could win a prize by lawn fawn! With all of the new sets and papers going on sale in about a month, this prize is extra special.

♥.

Season's Givings winner + a new lawnscaping challenge!

I just want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all of your sweet comments, and to the new blog followers.  I have loved reading all 244 comments (gah!) but there can only be one winner (as chosen by random.org):

Ngan, congrats! Please email your address to: mom2sofia(at)gmail(dot)com to claim your prize.

Now. There's a new lawnscaping challenge out today, the first of the year. I'm trying to replenish my kid birthday card stash so I'm not scrambling at the last minute:



I found the acetate-starry paper at our local scrapbook store and new it would look awesome over some leftover Christmas stripes.

I spelled out "super" using quinn's capitals, and borrowed the fireworks from happy 4th.  The costumed owl isn't just for halloween.  Even though I masked the big letters to stamp the fireworks in behind, I fussy-cut the owl and popped him on top.  All masked and no texture equals no fun <--- my new motto.



I hope you decide to join us for this challenge! Anything birthday-related is fair game: cards, tags, cupcake toppers - go nuts.

The sponsor and prize-giver this time will be Simon Says Stamp:

Until next time,

♥.

let's be merry {lawnscaping challenge}

It's time for another lawnscaping challenge!  We're giving you an arctic color palette to work with:

I won't lie, this one was difficult to craft and photograph.  gah.

I cut the "merry" banner with my silhouette (it's an original creation) and used lawn fawn alphas to spell out "let's be".  A pair of wintery buddies and some snowy white spray was all I needed to reflect the challenge colors.  There, I made it sound breezy. Let's pretend that this card came together that easily, that it wasn't an uphill battle all the way.  You always practise full disclosure around the holidays...

I hope you like it!  And join us in crafting - you could win a prize from lawn fawn.

♥.

happy holidays.

Now that December is finally here, are you scrambling to create tags and pretty gift packaging?  The new lawnscaping challenge is perfect:

Before I move into tags and all of that, I still need a few more Christmas cards, so I cheated a bit (with Laurel's ok, I feel to add) and stuck a tag on a card:

I made this card for my last card class, and the girls loved that cute bird.  The red stickles on his earmuffs and the white gel-pen dots on his belly made an otherwise simple card more special.

I hope you like it!  Play along with us - you could win a prize from Simon Says Stamp.

♥.

ridiculously simple packaging.

I have taken to packaging the card kits for my Friday classes a little differently every week.  I always want them to look nice and festive - it's the first thing my students see when they sit down to craft - but I don't want to spend hours creating something that will be ripped into within 30 seconds.

This packaging is ridiculously simple, and so classic:

A belly band of polka dot paper, some cozy red yarn for texture, and embossed chalkboard tags.

I'm thinking this style would be awesome for Christmas gifts,if I cut strips of a coordinating wrapping paper and created "belly bands" long enough to wrap around the big boxes... what do you think?



The tags came together so quickly with just a bit of white embossing for the tag outline and sentiment, and a punch of green embossing for the one of the two trees.  I smudged on a healthy amount of white ink at the end, to play up the chalkboard style.  (full disclosure: wow makes my favorite embossing powder, but I only have it in white.  I settled on zing for my green.  The coverage is just okay for me, and I obviously put the best tree at the front of the pack.  I also used zing for my gold embossing *here* and while I love the card, the uneven coverage bothers me.)

This is my offering for the current lawnscaping challenge, which begins today.  I hope you'll play along!

And no, I didn't mean to coordinate my polka dots with the ones in the inspiration photo. ha.

We're being sponsored by lawn fawn:

♥.

candy-striped noel {lawnscaping challenge}

Ready? Set? Go - for another lawnscaping challenge!  For a change, make the sentiment the focus of your card.



This design would be great for making 50 times over.  Change the scrapbook paper in the background for some variation, and voila! all of your Christmas cards created in one afternoon...

I hope you join us this week:

We're being sponsored by Simon Says Stamp:

♥.

warmest wishes.

It's time for another lawnscaping challenge!  The lawnscaping team is challenging you to be inspired by something on the web (it doesn't have to be pinterest) and then show off your inspiration photo as well as your own creation.

With my Christmas card classes happening every friday night, (click!) I am in a holly jolly cardmaking mood almost all the time.

My favorite online place for holiday card inspiration is "Minted."  A few of my recent christmas cards were borne out of a little browsing through their selection of non-photo holiday cards.  Like, this:

I wish lawn fawn had a little sweater image! But, I made do:

I used the socks from "my silly valentine," the scarf and mittens from "making frosty friends," and the little snowflake from "let it snow."  The sentiment is from papertrey ink, the twine is from lawn fawn, and I added a stripe of grey copic coloring at the top and the bottom of the white mat.



I hope you like it!  Play along with us, you could win a fawnie prize!

♥.

lawnscaping challenge #66 - pumpkin smiles.

Happy monday, and welcome to another lawnscaping challenge!

I won't lie - even though I don't use bright colors, or even very many colors on my cards, monochromatic was hard for me this time.  I picked a fall-appropriate orange:



Mixing it with neutral white and kraft still gave me the pop that I craved.  White grass, anyone?  Thank goodness for creative license. I used a mix of sets to create this card: critters in costume, into the woods, so thankful and the grassy strip from gnome sweet gnome.

I hope you join in the fun! This week's challenge is sponsored by lawn fawn!

Thanks for popping by!