Good morning! I hope you've had your coffee because I have lots of pictures for you today! First up is this baby mobile I was honored to make recently. It was requested to match
THESE things I made a while back for a good friend's new baby. It is entirely made of Stampin' Up! papers, old and new, Stampin' Up! felt ribbon and a piece of plumbing pipe insulation that I bought and cut then wrapped with the dotted ribbon (not SU).
The long pieces of felt that the circles are attached to were wrapped around the circle and held in place by either a button (which is hand sewn on for safety!) or a knot of tempting turqhoise ribbon. They all very in length and the circles are different too. I think I used at least 20 different patterns of paper.
EDITED TO ADD: I completely forgot to mention that the circles (all punched with SU's punches) were done like this... I punched two circles in matching paper and glued one of them to a punched chipboard circle (thin enough chipboard that it would punch). The one with the chipboard backing was the outward facing circle. The other was glued to the back of that with the ribbon sandwiched in between. Some of them had chipboard behind both sides, but that was a mistake. They didn't stayed glued nearly as well and I had to clip them with small binder clips for hours while they dried completely. The glue I used was Tombo Mono. Hope that helps!
I didn't take pictures of the entire process because I was under a time crunch. But I have a few tips on using the pipe insulation. It is much cheaper than using one of those wooden rings ($4) for needlepoint and doesn't have that clamp part to figure out what to do with. I bought a piece about 5 feet long at the hardware store ($1.75) then cut off the length I needed (you could probably make 2 out of one piece). In order to make sure your circle doesn't end up oblong here is what you should try: hold the tube in a loop then slightly overlap the two ends. Eyeball the angle at which they overlap then try to cut that angle off one end. (Don't panic with my vague instructions, it isn't an exact science). Then the two ends will meet flush and your tube will stay more circular. Tape the connection with duct tape then cover with whatever material you want. I used ribbon!
On to project two:
This project doesn't involve Stampin' Up! products at all (even though it could), but since I gather you are somewhat crafty or you wouldn't be here, and since I need a place to brag to a captive audience, you get to enjoy this one as well.
So I found this frame in my barn. No idea what it was for- square is an odd shape for a frame.
Decided to cover the cardboard backing for the frame with an old map (I've got tons- you'll see that in the future). Chose my favorite saying of all time and cut it out with my daughter's Cricut in two different fonts. Then used temporary adhesive (I used removable Dotto) to apply the letters just where I wanted them. I also wanted a faux matt around the final project so I used painters tape on the edges. Here's another TIP: Be sure to destickify (yep, made it up) the tape by sticking it to your shirt or pants or couch over and over before applying it or else your map might tear (mine still did a little).
Then spray the entire thing.
We used black spray paint. I was a tad worried that the paper map wouldn't hold up to the wet paint and let my daughter make an executive decision to not go solid black, but just enough to see the letters. I like that you can not only see the map through the font, but also behind the paint a bit.
Here is how it looks on the wall. We barely let it dry before we got it up there! Just couldn't wait!
If you're curious about where on earth we hung this... you probably don't recall but in 2010 we bought a
12x16 foot playhouse for our kids. It has taken us two years, but it is now livable. We've painted the entire outside, stained the deck, wired it (with a little help from an electrician), insulated, boxed in plywood walls and painted the crap out of it. It has kept us crazy busy for many many hours! I'll do another post on it if anyone is interested, but this is one shot of the inside. The table, chairs and ladder were all paint projects I've worked on all this week and last. Hopefully I am DONE painting for awhile. Thanks to Pinterest we have many more ideas to come!
I am going to link a few of the ideas that inspired these projects:
mobile:
paint over letters:
Thanks for stopping by! If either of these projects inspires you to do something I'd love to see it! Leave me a link to your online photos or blog post!
Have a great day!
~Kristin
Here is the card I made. It turned out so nice compared to my first idea! Let's just say it got scrapped before I even got very far. Don't you just love these colors together?! Thought the embossed dots would soften it all up and add a tiny bit of whimsy. Hope you like it! Up tomorrow is my most favorite part of all! And hopefully I can add my picture of the entire group (fingers crossed). Thanks for visiting,
This time we decided to do this week's sketch challenge on Splitcoast shown below. We were also supposed to add flowers for today's Ways to Use it challenge and complete it in 30 minutes or less. Well, I got the sketch part but failed miserably on the rest! I thought the flower part would be easy until I ended up doing a baby card. The 30 minutes or less I might have gotten but I searched high and low for my dotted emobossing folder and never found it. 
If you'd like to play along we'd LOVE to have you join us for our 3rd challenge that neither of us has started yet... it is: use the sketch from Card Patterns and make your card in under 30 minutes. If you'd like an extra credit option try this (Lisa doesn't even know about this): use something metallic. Can't wait to see who joins us! When you're done stop back here and link your card in a comment and I'll come check it out! Be sure to go visit Lisa to see what she did too!
Good morning! I've got a card for ya today, believe it or not. This sweet stamp set, Build-a-Roo just arrived on Friday and I had to get it inky right away! I've always thought it is cute and fairly versatile. This sketch is from the Pals Paper Arts (PPA61) challenge and the color combo is for the Color Throwdown (CTD111). 
I colored the kangaroo with my blender pens and some River Rock ink then some touches of Soft Suede for some shading. Yes, I know, my coloring skills aren't up to par with the masters! 
As you have probably noticed since my last post was up for over a week, I have a new niece. I really wanted to go all out on the perfect baby card to send my sister and brother-in-law... but this card took me several days to pull together. I can't believe how my creativity declines when I've taken some time off from stamping! Well I finally got it done and I'm pretty happy with it. The sketch I used is the FTL97 from the Clean & Simple blog that I enjoy checking out periodically.
Here's the inside shot. Fine Flourish with Pretty in Pink craft ink and sentiment punched out with the wide oval punch. You'll probably notice my imperfect white scallops behind the sentiment. I tried using the oval scallop punch (in three pieces) to layer and was only somewhat successful.
Hello, and TGIF! Today I'm using the soft and springy color combination from the
Color Throwdown (CTD87) to use pink, gray and soft olive. I think this counts! I've used two shades of pink, two shades of gray and I never pass up the opportunity to use Kiwi Kiss! 
place, another piece of scrap paper over the house and sponged on some Kiwi grass. What do you think? It is supposed have a welcoming feel for the arrival of a new baby.
For Monday's CAS06 challenge I made two cards! Both were inspired by this website. The first one I made for a baby girl so of course I had to make a second one for a boy (I'm a mom- things must be fair!). I'm posting the baby girl card today and will post the other one tomorrow (just a teaser!).
