Handstitched Cards

What's with all of my married friends being born in pairs?! Kim and Eric are born in June. Susie and Gus (and now Lauren) have August birthdays. So it's more coordinating cards from me! (See K&E's travel birthday cards here)

Lately, I'm loving a neutral background with pops of color, mixed alongside a bold graphic design. So I custom made a boy and a girl version using paint, mist, black and white washi and stamps.

For Susie's card, I was inspired by the Mama Elephant Photo Challenge again. I love the white with the pops of pink and black. And instead of the yellow as in the inspiration photo, I used gold.

Tim Holtz Distress Paint is pretty awesome. The dauber makes it so easy to smear across a stencil. This pink is Picked Raspberry. It's so vibrant IRL (and in this photo thanks to RadLab). 

To back the sentiment, I used a few date stamps and gold brilliance ink to create a text block. I wrote the word "happy" on a scratch piece of vellum and poked holes where I wanted them over the text. Then I stitched through with black thread.

For Gus' card, I knew immediately that I wanted to create an argyle pattern. He's a sock guy and so that pattern just seems him to me. I used my Silhouette to cut a diamond out of scratch paper and then used it as a mask for the blue blocks (that's Distress Paint in Salty Ocean).

I traced more diamonds with a pencil and poked another round of holes. This time I stitched them in teal and finished the card off with tape and a die cut that was misted with Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Bronzer.

The "Happy Birthday" stamp is by Papertrey Ink, a set I had totally forgotten about but still completely love! Might need to place another order with them sometime soon, they have the best stamps!

Happy belated birthday Gus! And happy early birthday Susie! The month of the Cruz celebrations is almost complete =)

cheers & besos,

Best Great Wall Memory

Hiya! Sharing a Shimelle sketch page today. I got to use an enlarged print with this one. It was my first time using my large format at home printer. Over Christmas, I got a Pixma iX6520 for super cheap. I like it so far, but learned that I need to print on glossy paper vs matte.

I also made this page for Simon Says Stamps "what are you known for" challenge. 

Here's how it's my style:

I love to mix pattern paper.

And also different size prints. 

Almost all of my pages have some kind of mist. 

For this one I used a mask and a mix of brown & gold ink. 

Lately, I've been using a ton of metallic. Love these as neutrals.

And speaking of neutrals, gray is undoubtedly my favorite neutral these days.

I also print my journaling on vellum a ton.

But I think the biggest component of my "style" is that I use color in my pages. Lots of color! And I pick my color choices based on my photos.

I love this page and it's story. It was an amazing experience in and of itself to visit the Great Wall. But for it to then start snowing! That just made it magical.

Here's a video I took when it started. I heard that a high school classmate used it in her middle school classroom. And that the kids thought it was very cool. =) Maybe I inspired one of them to travel the world!

cheers & besos,

Buddha

We went to visit Kamakura's Big Buddha, us and a whole lot of school children. There's not much to say other than that he's there and he's big. You can walk into him but we opted to not spend the 30 cents to stand in a crowded dark room with the aforementioned children.

But I got to see how verdant and lush is the foliage in Japan. It was lovely to just walk around outside, albeit hot and mega humid. It explains all of the green!!

This page, about our token visit to Buddha (peace signs thrown and all) was fairly simple to make. I used a Prima feltie as a mask and sprayed Dark Calico Mister Huey. Then it was just a matter of layering papers and stickers in a pleasing askance way.

I went. I saw. I recorded.

cheers & besos,

Mr & Mrs Card

Konichiwa! And greetings from Japan :) I'm having a wonderful time, taking plenty of photos to scrapbook and am excited to be visiting Tokyo today.

But before I go, I wanted to extend a heartfelt congratulations the new Mr. & Mrs Bestic! They were married yesterday in Ohio. MT's in the wedding and since I'm in Japan, I didn't get to go. But I made them a card instead.

I went to town with Washi for this. First using the Ampersand mask from Studio Calico as a template, then tracing it and cutting it out. I placed washi on a diagonal and kept with a gold, silver, black theme. If you haven't purchased washi in gold and silver, you're missing it out. It's divine!

Couldn't neglect the inside of course, I printed my message out on vellum and washi taped it to the inside.

I love how it turned out! It's modern but elegant too I think. Perfect for this lovely couple.

Best wishes you two, for a lifetime of love & happiness!

cheers & besos,

Temple

Celine Navarro you are a design genius! There, I said it. I love this lady's style & the funky graphic edge she adds to every page. Plus she travels! A ton. And goes EVERYWHERE! Like seriously, I want her life. But enough of my gushing. Go check out her work, it more than speaks for its' self.

This was one of my inspired by pages that I talked about yesterday. I based my layout off of her India 2012: My top 5 layout. I figured that little flipbook would work perfectly for all of the photos I took at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

I did my best to make the most of those tiny pages, but small canvases are just not my jam. Each "layout" had it's one challenges and I tried to make them cohesive but also random and varied at the same time. Here's where having the same color scheme and one that works well with your photos really helps!! 

cheers & besos,

CKC: You Make me Giggle

And now the final page from my classes at CKC. This was Studio Calico's Terrific Trends class. We played with some mists and wood veneer, did some border punching and some masking.

The original class page was called "You make me Laugh" and featured Lisa T's son (I think). When I think of laughing or giggling, the first thing I think of is Mama.

She has the absolute best giggle.

I laugh louder and longer with her than with anyone else. She's my bestest friend!

Don't forget to comment on the Misting and More post for a chance to win some Mister Huey's and the extra sheet of wood veneer starts as featured above!

xxbesos