Challenge Submission: {two little birds}

So, this {Embellish Magazine} color challenge is just another example of colors I normally wouldn't use together but look absolutely FAB! This card is way CAS but I think it is still really cute. The challenge was the palette above plus birds...I used my favorite little {Maya Road} chipboard birds with the olive green and some sand paper distressing around the edges. Here's my submission:

Click {here} to visit the always delicious Embellish Magazine Blog!

Hope you are having an {inspired & crafty} day!

Craft Night Bonanza: {Challenge Submissions}

I have literally been crafting for nine and a half hours straight! Love the summer! {I work at a school so I have summers off!} I have been working on a couple of challenges tonight. The first is 2 Sketches 4 You Laura's #58. Click Here to check it out! Here is the sketch and my interpretation. I am also entering this into the MyGrafico Distressed challenge {Click here to see their awesome challenge blog.} I used my sanding block and my Heidi Swapp paper edge chewer to distress it.

Here is the sketch and {my interpretation:}

I am also entering the current CPS #179 with this card. Click here to check out the challenge and below is the sketch and my interpretation. These two sketches were so similar I saw a lot of people using the same card for both but I thought each deserved it's own pretty little card!

I would {love to hear what you think} of tonights two challenge cards

Homespun Craft Fair: {A Review}

So, on my birthday this year was the first Annual Winter Park Homespun Chic Marketplace. Since I know most of you do not live where you would have been able to attend I am posting a review. The setup was nice and the booths were great! The only real complaint I have was that the show was limited to twenty booths and seven of those twenty booths were baby/kid only booths {clothes, diaper bags, etc} and with no kids currently or on the horizon it limited my shopping ability. I thought there could have been better diversity. Having said that my review will be of the booths that were applicable to me and all will be linked to their super cute ETSY shops. I have also included some photos of my fun purchases.

The first booth we bought from was Hammerman which is a shop featuring homemade garden markers stamped into vintage teaspoons. Since the husband got us going on our little window garden as my anniversary present I couldn't help myself at their booth. Here is a pic of our purchase with the first pictures of our new little plant children.

Here is the link to this excellent little store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Hammermann

Another booth we visited was a screenprinting booth {Autumn and Everything After} that featured cute little bags and pillows that were delicious in their simplicity {Black screenprint on cream canvas} Here is the pic of my pillow purchase. I zoomed out a bit so you could see how excellently it works in the room.

Here is the shop link www.etsy.com/shop/kbainsley

The Tracy B. Designs booth was super cute also! I bought one of her fabric pom-poms for my bedroom: Mine is plain white because that's how I am but there were a million different pretty designs! Check out her cute cute store here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/tracybdesigns

Some other great shops that we visited:

{Sew Lola} http://www.etsy.com/shop/sewlola Handmade couture purses and accessories

My mom bought one of these! And it was adorable!

{Image is the property of SewLola!}

My favorite booth of the day was Indo bay inc. I didn't buy anything here because the thing I wanted the most wasn't for sale- {Her handmade stamps} I will be buying from her though in the very near future. I spent most of my time there trying to plead with her to please carve her stamps and sell them to us paper crafters. Check out her store here http://www.etsy.com/shop/indobaytextiles and then after you see all the pics of the stuff she makes with her beautiful stamps, buy something, then convo her on how she should sell those darn stamps too. The one she had out at the show was so delicious it broke my heart!

This is {thee stamp} Can you even believe it's fabness? ugh!

So, that's my review: Do these folks a favor, stop by and shop your little handmade hearts out!

Happy {Crafting and Shopping}

Moxie Fab World Tuesday Trigger Challenge {She Sells Seashells}

So, first off {Happy Birthday} to me! I am officially 27! Boy that Big 3-0 is sneaking up on me fast! I had an excellent birthday. I spent the day with my family at a craft fair, shopping, and eating dinner! Got lots of excellent presents and had a relaxing day overall! {Will post later with my craft fair finds!}

My card for today is the Moxie Fab Tuesday Trigger {She Sells Seashells} I absolutely {LOVED} this trigger photo {Click here to see for yourself}. I used some Navy blue striped PP {to pull in those delicious nautical cuff links} and Pink Cardstock as a base. Both were a little too heavily saturated with color to reflect how soft and delicate the colors in the picture were so I covered both with a sheet of {The paper company Translucent Vellum} to soften them up a bit. I used that ornate white at the top to bring in the elegant ornate edge of the white tray in the photo. After looking through the submissions already posted I found out I was not the only one who was very inspired by the gold and pearl seashell charm bracelet- So, { I made my own} I built the whole thing and then spray painted it all gold some cheap brass chain, with little brass seashells some larger craft shells and some round shell beads. I held the whole thing in place by putting gold spray painted brads through each end of the {charm bracelet} I added a lot to this one because I loved how thick the bracelet was. I noticed in the trigger photo that there were little Chinese fortune cookie slips on the tray so I chose a sentiment that would read like a fortune cookie fortune saying. Another favorite part of mine was the extra little bit of chain with the shell dangling from the corner bow. Not sure if it can compete in the tough paper crafts market but I think it is pretty damn {Moxie FAB!}

Here is a close up of the {Charm Bracelet}

Challenge Submission: (Happy Blingy Birthday}

Well after the last post I thought I was done for the day and began cleaning up. I had my sketch book of challenges out and could see the 2 Sketches 4 You sketch and it wasn't just calling to me... {it was YELLING at me!} So, I sat back down and went to town. This card was fun. I don't think it is epic or one of my best, but I {really enjoyed} making it and that is the point, right? I am not sure why but the color is showing up funny in this picture. The polka dotted pp is lime green with blue dots and the happy birthdays at the bottom are lime green as well. {weird} So, the sketch is below and here if you want to check it out. I needed a color scheme so I went with the Whoopsi Daisy Color challenge of Blue and Green- {so bright and fun!} Click here to check out there fun challenge blog!

So, I really am done now...and I have twice as much to clean. See you all soon!

{Friends Cherish Dreams} Challenge Submission

So, my favorite thing about challenges is that you often end up using stuff you haven't touched in ages or that you normally wouldn't use. For instance, the play date cafe had a color combo featuring this peachy color and I just normally wouldn't use it. I had this sheet with the swirls in an Anna Griffin pad that I have had for {a little less than forever.} But I think it is just absolutely stunning. With the peachy color, PDCC had us using a brick red with white. Before I got started I scoured the challenge blogs for a sketch and decided to go with the CPS Sketch #178 for this one. Here is the sketch and the PDCC color scheme and inspiration:

Click {Here} for the PDCC Color Challenge.

Click {Here} for the CPS Sketch #178 Challenge.

and here is a close-up of the bead embellishment at the top:

Materials:

PP: {Anna Griffin}

Brick Red Burlap Ribbon

Hemp Twine {Cream}

Leaf Embellishment: {Cricut Cartridge- Storybook}

Copper Eyelets: {Making Memories}

My {shabby chic} challenge submission

So, this one is a double doozy challenge submission! I wanted to enter {The Shabby Tea Room's} challenge which was to use soft blues, creams, whites, and browns to create a delicious shabby chic card. After searching for some sketches to get me started I found this one on the {Mojo Monday} blog which just screamed shabby chic to me with all that inspiring layering. Here is the sketch from Mojo Monday and the color inspiration from The Shabby Tea Room:

{Click here to checkout the Mojo Monday Challenge}

{Click here to checkout The Shabby Tea Room Challenge}

And here is {my interpretation} of both with a close up of some of the embellishments:

See you all {very} soon!

What a crazy {wonderful} weekend

Phew...Where to start? Well I last blogged to you all on Thursday and even then it was a blog posting for Thursday that I did Wednesday. Thursday and this weekend have been crazy. Let's start with {Thursday} which I am now dubbing the best day EVER! So, Thursday was my teaching day at Valencia {the college I work for} and because I am an education major teaching days are already my favorite days. I dropped the hubby off at work, got some coffee and came home to check all the blog updates. The first blog I went to was Charisma Cards where I found out that I had been chosen as their {August Guest Designer} SQUEEE!!! My first design team! The day got better after that. Thursday was my beautiful mother's birthday and I had decided to get her some Copic's as a gift. When I was checking out at the store the manager started talking to me and long story short, their Copic workshop gal is leaving and the store offered to have me Copic certified to teach their workshops! {Free Copic certification and their paying me in Copic's Double SQUEEE!!} So, next I went to work and my teaching seminar had such an unprecedentedly high turn out that my boss decided to give me a raise and a promotion!! Finally because it was my mother's birthday I got to have a wonderful dinner out with my family! Can you believe it? {and that was just thursday!}

Then, Saturday, was me and my husbands FIRST wedding {anniversary} The husband decided to interpret the paper anniversary this way:

So, as you can see he used {a few dollars worth of} my orange and yellow cardstock. My gifts are in the window. I wanted to start a little window garden so he found this beautiful window box for me and filled it with soil and seeds and some decorations from my wedding shower. He also got me a cute little yellow plant mister (on the left) and to add to the paper anniversary he wrote me a beautiful love letter {printed it out on a pretty sheet of my scrapbook paper} and framed it for me to keep! How cute is he? Some of my paper crafting skills rubbed off on him!

We took some beautiful one year anniversary pictures that day too which I am sure you will see in a future {scrapbook} page blog post!

So, phew....now lets get back to crafting!

Thrifty {Thursday}: Vintage Ruler Project

Last thursday when I was out antique shopping downtown with my {mom} she found these excellent old beat up rulers {only .10 a pop} to paper craft with. We brought them home and got right to work. These would be excellent gifts for teachers, students, and fellow paper crafters! For starters here's what you will need:

1. Wooden rulers {old or new}
2. Sandpaper of some sort
3. Glue and brush {Aleenes; School Glue; Mod Podge will all work}
4. Decorative paper
5. Embellishments
6. A smile on your face!

Step 1: Sand the part of the ruler that you want to decorate. This should not include the ruler markings. You don't need to sand too much {you are just trying to remove the glossy top coat}

Step 2: Measure and cut a strip of decorative paper. Use the brush to apply a thin layer of glue and attach your strip of paper.

The last step: Embellish your little heart out. Rhinestones, pearls, flowers, rubons, stamps, you name it. And then you're done! {How simple and cute was that?}

Happy {thursday} to all!

{Tutorial} Tuesday: Straight pin accents and {giveaway!}

So as I said the other day when I posted the play date cafe challenge card with the little stick pin I would be showing you some delicious {variations} on stick pin decorating. First off my favorite pins to work with are the vintage ones that I have found at antique stores and thrift stores. The heart and glass bead top stick pins in these photos were bought at an antiques store and I adore them! {there are some in the giveaway!}

Buttons buttons who's got the button! Buttons are the most common pin adornment that I have seen. My favorite way to use them is like this: with several similar button shapes and colors. You can mix and match of course or just use one. This is an excellent way to pull a little more of an accent color into the piece.

Next is beads! Beads can be done a lot of ways. If you jewelry making is part of your craft repertoire you can make a multi-layer dangly bead like you would for an earring with jewelry pins and your plier sets {picture on the left}. Or if you have some charms and are not good with the jewelry making do what I did on the right {and in the play date cafe card} put the top circle part of the charm in between a pair of pliers and bend it down so the charm and the charm hole at the top make a 90 degree angle. This will make your charm lay flat in front of the pin rather than stick straight out {and you wont have to put it on a jump ring!}

When using more than one bead you have a couple of options too. Use different shapes and colors to make an eye catching look or design a pretty shape from multiple beads.

If you liked this tutorial and you are a follower leave a comment below telling me your favorite part of adding decorative stick pins to your work. I will select a random winner during next weeks {tutorial} tuesday to win all the pins, beads, buttons, and charms used in today's tutorial, plus a few extras! {good luck}

The blog {candy}:

Challenge Submission: {Eight little presents!}

So today's card is for a sketch that I think just has so many possibilities! Thoughts To Paper's Challenge was to make a card or scrapbook page using this sketch {click here to try the challenge or check out their great blog!)

I turned the sketch on it's side and used the ornate shape from my last card as the bracketing. {which I love} Here's mine: {I have been in the mood to do my Christmas cards with all the Christmas in July sales, blogs, and blog hops going on right now!}

I loved making all the tiny presents and their little tiny bows! I glittered the presents, their bows, the ric rac and the sentiment to jazz it up a bit. I think this card has so many possibilities. I think it would be great as a Chanukah card with 8 little presents and the bracket on the side as an 8 or a birthday card with little girly packages for girls or bright bold colors for boys!

I also wanted to share with you this little fun idea I use. I had this cork that I loved with a super cute little fox on it and it had no real home so I put it on top of my paper piercer to protect it. So there you have it: {an excellent reason to go buy some wine!}

Stop by tomorrow for {tutorial tuesday} it's a cute one with a giveaway!

Challenge Submissions of the {romantic} variety

Tonight's submission is pulling double duty again! I love combining challenges because the entries all become much more original. The color palette came from our wonderful friends over at The Play Date Cafe The colors for this challenge were {Black, Grey, White, and Cream} and once again I was inspired by the {story} behind the challenge. This go round the challenge palette came from a hotel that the host visited with her husband twenty years ago. {sweet, right?} so I couldn't help myself and made a romantic sweet card. I also pulled in a challenge from Charisma Cardz which was {anything but square} I pulled this in {obviously} in the ornate shape of the card.

The last thing I added was a sneak peak for you all at next weeks tutorial tuesday... On tuesday we will be looking at all the different ways to decorate those beautiful little stick pins we are all loving right now. I will be showing many different variations and giving away some blog candy. The candy will have some vintage {and not} stick pins plus charms, buttons, and all the other embellishments we will be showing that day. So make sure you are here for that!

{Materials Used:}

1. Storybook Cricut Cartridge for shape
2. Anna Griffin 1149 for the black damask print
3. The paper company translucent classic stripe for the creamy stripe overlay on the damask
4. Heidi Swapp mini overlays {clocks}
5. Vintage pin and beads
6. Tiny Swallow charm from Etsy {Smiling Frogs}

Winner {Winner} Chicken Dinner

Winners of the first five followers competition are ready! Two of you have already been contacted and sent me your addresses- Here are the remaining three:

1. Valerie G.
2. Jamie
3. Brenda Burfiend

Congrats Ladies! Send me your home addresses @ JenniferOsteen@ymail.com to claim your prizes and thanks so so so very much for being my first followers. You all mean so much to me as I start this journey!

Also, while I have you here let me remind you there is a giveaway going on that only one person has taken a shot at. There are two thrifty thursday posts I will be pulling a random comment from them to win the thrifty thursday {prize pack} located in the first thrifty thursday post. Two posts + a comment on each = two chances to win!

Good luck and see you later tonight with another {post}!

{Contest Entries} with old world charm!

So, the Embellish Magazine contest for this week was very inspiring! The challenge was to use Kraft, Turquoise, Brown and Orange and also to incorporate some ric rac. They used some beautiful old world travel pictures to convey the color scheme and I was as inspired by those as I was the palette. Here is my submission:

I just loved the old world details I chose for the top left including this {beautiful old key} I got at a thrift store. Here is a close up of the corner embellishments:

If you would like to craft along with this challenge just click the Embellish Magazine Link in the first paragraph. I also thought this would be an excellent card for a man so I chose to make it a birthday card and enter it into Caardvarks Birthday Challenge! Click here to check it out.

Hope you were inspired... See you next {post}

Friday Organization Tip: {stampers index} and giveaway!

So, one of the biggest problems I have as a crafter is knowing & {remembering} what supplies I have. This happens the most with ribbon, stamps, and embellishments. I will be showing you in the next couple of weeks different ways I have found to give myself {sample guides} of what I have. This weeks is {stamps!} I have a bunch of stamps and they are scattered amongst a couple of bins and baskets I have for them. They are pretty organized but I still would have to take all the bins down and look through them to place my eyeballs on each one.

Now I know it is not thrifty thursday anymore but this organizational tip is cheap and thrifty nonetheless. While I was out thrifting wednesday with my mom she was telling me all the alternative uses for these once adored flipper photo frames. I thought this one was so amazing I had to get it right to you all! So I bought one {there are a million of these everywhere at thrift stores} to make a stamp guide.

I got all my stamps out and started stamping 4x6 {the size of photos for the frame} sheets in themes. Like this Halloween page:

I also made notes on the pages before sliding them into the protectors about which bin the stamps were located in. You can see that above and in one of my Christmas {sheets} below:

The last step was to use my binder tab punch to make some tabs. I picked a nuetral paper because my craft area is in the public part of the apartment and stamped an image or saying from that theme's section on the tab. The tabs look like this:

Here is another page all devoted to {thank yous}:

Some variations:

1. For those of you have more stamps than one or two of these could ever contain: Make one for each theme. A whole picture frame flipper of christmas, or sentiments.
2. Those of you who stamp or create for design teams create these in themes of the company or designer who made them.
3. Use a different ink color on each theme or sheet so you also end up with a stamping rolodex of your ink colors.
4. If you have too many stamps to do this all in one day {which was a pain I admit} get the frame{s} and then add to them as you have your different stamp sets out until eventually they are all done.

Now for today's {giveaway} comment on how you would use this rolodex to organize your own stamp collection and I will draw a random comment for a {Stampology} set of extra large decorative tag stamps! Contest ends when next friday's Organizational tip post goes up.

Happy {stamping!}

Upcoming Events: {Orlando, FL}

I am very excited about a new homemade crafty bazaar in Orlando, FL this year! The 1st annual Homespun Chic Marketplace will take place on August 8th {My birthday} at the Winter Park farmers market in Downtown Winter Park, FL. The vendors are full but I have put my self on the waiting list and I will surely be there booth or not reporting on all the excellent things I find and posting them here! There is a clickable widget on the side of my page for the event: {check it out}

Also don't forget to comment on the two thrifty thursday posts for a chance to win the little mini blog candy. Two posts+ a comment on each = two chances to win!

See you in a bit for a new post!

{Thrifty} Thursday: Christmas in July, tutorials, Inspiration, and Giveaways----{continued!}

Let the thrifty crafting continue! This little guy just broke my heart today. He was supposed to be a whole snowman stuck to a piece of foam tape in there with snow to shake around but he dropped his hat and {his nose fell off} he even lost his grip to the tape....very {sad} Soooo I rescued him! I cut a hole in the back and stole everything out of it. Rebuilt him on a a card with some of that white mulberry paper. I couldn't let him get too hot {I live in Florida after all} so I let him take his snow with him.... on his hat and his "feet". {but I saved you some in the prize pack!}

Don't forget to comment on both thrifty thursday posts for two chances to win the goody {bag} Contest ends monday at 3:00p.m. We have some cards and a great organization post for you tomorrow! See you later {alligators!}