Awesome Motivation to use my Echo Park Stash!!!

I know that you have gone into your LSS and just fallen in love with a line of paper, gotten the paper, had a million ideas, but then....the paper never gets used because you are waiting for just the right project for this perfect paper. For me, that is what happened with Echo Park!! So now, in an effort to use my awesome Echo Park papers on some great projects, I am submitting some projects for their Fresh Faces monthly design call!

First, I created an 8.5 x 11 layout from their Sweet Summertime Collection. I had this great pic of my agility dogs, Foster & Lexi, that was just screaming for the happy colors of this collection!

So I cut down a piece of Flower Garden, using the gorgeous orange side. Next, I matted the photo on the blue side of Pinwheels, leaving 1/4" border around the photo. This collection has a great page of pinwheels, and I wanted to incorporate those on my page, so I cut a few out. I had laid the picture out on the page, and decided to add a pop of white and color by creating a banner out of Flower Garden and Whimsy Stripe, and color twine. I freehand cut some triangles out of both sheets. Lay the triangles down in a row, points down, on your non-stick craft sheet. Apply your adhesive in a thin line along the top of the triangle, and lay the twine on top, and press to adhere. Then, I added some Ranger Rock Candy stickles to the pinwheels (very hard to see in the photos)

and added them to the banner.

I really love the letter stickers from the Alpha Sticker sheet too. Cute, bright, and so easy to use and create a great title. I just eyeballed the layout of the stickers, starting with the border stickers. I lined those up with the edge of the page, and adhered one on top of the other. For the letters, I cut each one out of the sheet with the backing still on & arranged them above the borders with the pin wheel. Then I went back and adhered each one. The last bit was the great journaling card from the Journal Card Paper. I added an extra pinwheel with a pop up glue dot, added a cute heart sticker on top of that, and adhered it to the page with craft glue dots.

Next, I altered a wood picture frame with papers from the Walk in the Park Collection.

I painted the frame off white, so that the back and sides would be finished. Then, as orange is one of my go to colors of the moments, I covered the front of whole frame with Playground. I grabbed these 2 great patterned papers, the other side of Playground & the blue side of Blissful Days Border, trimmed and layered them over the top. I believe that they were scraps from some previous cuts I had done, so at the time they looked good, so I didn't measure them and just cut them the length of the frame. (I went back and they are 3.5" and 1 3/4" wide respectively, and cut the length of the frame.)Use an exacto knife to cut out the hole for the picture. I inked all of the edges with Ranger Vintage Photo Distress Ink. On the Blissful Days Border sheet, there were these great little flags. I decided to cut them out and make a banner with them using twine (same method as I described above on the layout), and adhered that in the corner. Last, but not least, I used Tim Holtz Large Rosette die and Mother Nature paper to make the Rosette flower. I adhered one of the great cutouts from the Element Card paper to it.

I had all of these scraps from the above projects, these cute little green cards, and these next 2 cards just came together.

For the Happy Birthday card, I just layered the 2 scraps from Playground (Walk in the Park), adhered the balloon sticker from a Walk in the Park Element Stickers, and cut out and adhered the sentiment from Element Card Paper with pop up glue dots. Simple and just too cute!! (I did no measuring or cutting on this one...so lucky! But the dimensions of the card are : 5.5" x 4.25", and the scraps: 3.5" x 5.5" & 1.75" x 5.5")

The same process for the Thank you card, except that I added the extra Rosette (Mother Nature paper) that I made for the picture frame, and didn't use. (Card dimensions: 5.5" x 4.25" and the paper ( Walk in the Park Blissful Days Border) is 2.25" x 5.5")

I think I may make a couple more and give the set as a gift :)

Thanks so much for stopping by!!! Please go check out Echo Park's brand new collections!!!

Supplies: All papers, stickers, or embellishments on these projects is either from Sweet Summertime or Walk in the Park Collections from Echo Park. Honeydew Twine from The Twinery. Tim Holtz Rosette Die, Ranger Vintage photo Distress Ink, Glossy Accents, Glue Dots - Craft and Pop Up, Antique White Acrylic Paint

So I Decided 1 Card Wasn't Enough....

1 card just wasn't going to cut it for the Moxie Fab Challenge, so here is my 2nd entry. Just a little Thank You card.

I used Hero Arts Thank You Cling Stamp to create this card. First I stamped it 3 times on to cream card stock. I also stamped it once on a piece of Memory Box paper. On the first image, I just cut out the center of the frame, and then colored the rest using Copic markers. On the second image I just colored the flowers as I did on the first image and cut them out. On the 3rd image, I colored the flowers but just cut out the center most part of each flower. On the image on the patterned paper I just cut out the center with the sentiment and colored the stem and leaves on that center piece with Copics.

Lastly, I adhered the 1st image to the cream card, then the center of the image, and lastly adhered the flowers with 3-D foam squares to give the card some depth.

Thanks for looking...again!!

Creating a Moxie Fab card for the Stamp It! Challenge

I haven't posted anything crafty in a long time, so here is a birthday card that I created for my Aunt's birthday this month!! It also fit the challenge theme on Moxie Fab World's Stamp It! Challenge which closes today:) For the challenge, stamping needs to be the predominant feature of the card.

I started with a Kraft card and stamped the background with embossing ink, and covered that in clear embossing powder. Heating that up created the background in the darker brown on the kraft.

Then I stamped the Hero Arts birthday stamp on 3 different Memory Box papers and cut them out. I mixed and matched and adhered them to the card using Glue Dots.

Lastly I finished the edge of the card with some navy blue ribbon.

Thanks for looking :)

Supplies: Kraft card, Hero Arts Birthday Gift & Flower Burst Card stamps, Ranger Embossing Ink & Clear Embossing Powder, Patterned Paper from Memory Box, Memento Tuxedo Black Ink, Glue Dots Craft Dots

June Vacation Part 2: Washington, DC Day 1

Last Sunday we left Roanoke and took the Skyline Drive up to DC!! So beautiful!!! We stopped a bunch of times at different overlooks. It made for a relaxing drive up to DC.

Monday was a crazy, non stop day! We started out in the Air & Space Museum for the morning. We flew a F-18 Simulator, looked at so many amazing exhibits, and saw the IMAX movie To Fly!

Next we headed over to the National Archives to see the original Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence. It was really surprising to see how much all of the documents have faded!! Mike, Aunt Barbara, & I all went down to the research area, and got signed up to research in the archives. We didn't have a whole lot of time to look though....we will definitely be heading back there on our next trip to DC!

Then we all met up at the White House! I guess I always thought it would look bigger in person. Maybe if we weren't so far away! lol I think we will plan ahead next time and get the signed up to take an actual tour. ( You have to do it 4-6 months in advance) Apparently, the Obamas were entertaining, so you see the snipers on the roof, and this officer with the big gun cleverly hidden in a black bag. There is no way you could guess what was in the bag...no way at all!! (lol)

From there we headed over to the WWII memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. I really liked the Lincoln Memorial. I hated that they were renovating the Reflecting Pool:( Ugly!!! Then we all went and had dinner at Miewah's Chinese Restaurant, all 14 or so of us!

DC is just amazing! I can't believe I never made the trip before:)