CASE study, 4th anniversary blog hop

I am so pleased to be part of the CASE study 4th anniversary festivities!  As they celebrate their 4th birthday, the CASE study team is bringing you special blog hops each week of this month, comprised of past muses and the design team (past and current.)

Each blog hop will be open until the next midnight of the following Tuesday (so, August 12th in this CASE!) and there are sponsors and prizes set up for playing along!  You must comment on all blog posts along the way to be eligible for prizes from

Waffle Flower ♥ Serendipity Stamps ♥ Penny Black

The winners will be announced on the CASE study blog the following Wednesday.

My inspiration came from this artwork I spied on pinterest:

I love the girl, holding her cake, with stuffies at her feet, the blue doily frame around her and the bunting in the background.  I pulled out a dear lizzy stamp that my friend Wida sent me and got busy:

 

Do you see the art-print elements pulled into this card?  I combined stamp sets from a few different companies: the bunting from lawn fawn, the scribbled circle background from PTI, the fox and sentiment from avery elle.  They all work together so perfectly. 

I think the trick to combining stamps from different companies is to pay attention to the width of their stroke - the dear lizzy stamp has a heavier outline, so I chose to pair it with the avery elle stamps, which also have a bit of uneven whimsy to them, so they work especially great together. The thinner-lined circle scribbles are in the background and in a lighter color, so they don't compete with the main stamps.

There's more to see on these blogs today, and a special thanks to Chupa for having me along with this amazing list of card-makers:

Joni Nina Andaya

Teri Anderson

Laura Bassen

JJ Bolton

Nina Brackett

Clare Buswell

Keisha Campbell

Andrea Ewen

Pamela Ho

Jeanne Jachna

Anna Kossakovskaya

Elena Roussakis (that's me!)

Lisa Spangler

I hope you decide to play along this week! CASE any of the projects you see along the hop!

♥.

April showers, may flowers.

I missed the deadline for last week's Cas-ual Fridays challenge (what with all the birthday parties happening around here), but I was determined to participate this week.

So, with only a few hours left, I whipped up this sweet card:

How fun to have an excuse to play with my newest purchases: PTI's "trendy treetops" dies, and hero arts' "plano" stamp.  (And I'm still working my way through my Dear Lizzy "neopolitan" paper pack - it screams summer... le sigh.)

This card is a bit unusual for me in that there isn't a lot of stamping!  I stamped the "plano" background onto my kraft base, and also stamped a woodgrain pattern (by Clear&Simple stamps) onto my homemade washi-tape.  Apart from that, it was all patterned paper and dies.

Thanks for peeking!

stitched notecard.

A sweet little notecard to brighten your day:

Just me, my camera, and my cup of coffee at 5am this morning.  

If you have a moment alone with your own cuppa, will you please send a prayer up for my brother-in-law's sister, who just gave birth to a less-than-2-pound baby at 29 weeks gestation.  Sweet Olivia is hanging on for dear life, and her mama is beside herself.  We are looking for a miracle.

Thanks for passing by.

lawnscaping challenge: inspiration

For the latest lawnscaping challenge, we're to take inspiration from a fellow crafter.  I had this invite in my etsy favorites and used it as inspiration to create my own barnyard card.

I might have changed the colors around a bit... and paper-pieced the entire thing... and changed the animals to chicks... but the inspiration is definitely there.

 I used patterned papers from the Dear Lizzy Neapolitan collection - I am in love with the patterns and the bright summer colors... I stamped images from lawn fawn's "critters on the farm" to create the barnyard scene, and a hero arts background stamp to get the sun-rayed effect.

Oh, and the little basket I created behind the card?  You're getting a sneak peek, my friends!  Sofia's "sew seven" birthday party is in a month and I've started creating little decorations, favor baskets, and invites - I'm so excited to share it all... very soon!

And now, time for another installment of "things my kids said thursdays": this one comes to you in visual form... and sorry for the fuzzy pic, but there was alot of running around and screaming of "en garde, monsieur!" going on (from both Thomas and Maia...)  For the record, dress-up is a way of life in our home... we regularly feed breakfast to Wolverine, and dinner to Zorro... Maia is just starting to get into it all, but she puts together her own outfits.  Here, an upside down tiara and a superhero cape, and a princess wand.  In a word: awesome.

Thanks for peeking!