PBD Challenge: Sketch

I know I've said it before, but sketches are not for me.  Haha, I get so nervous with them trying to get them to work for me.  But I just have to keep reminding myself that it's okay that I don't follow the sketch exactly. This was the sketch for PBD's latest challenge.

I just quickly put a card together just now because I had busy week of work.  It was the week of parent teacher conferences!  Thankfully, they went well.  I keep in contact with many of the parents throughout the school year via email (so grateful that I don't have to spend time calling parents like I did my first year before I asked if I could email instead!), so it's never a surprise when I speak to parents.  It was tiring nonetheless!  Staying at school all day on Thursday is rather draining.  

I thought I'd put this card together yesterday, but Howard and I were preparing for the bake sale at my church and putting those together.  I'll probably write a separate post about that soon, but the cards made $224 for the mission funds!  Yay!  Since I'm on a crafty high, I figured I'd try out this sketch challenge especially with the encouragement and reminder from Melisa.

I simplified the sketch by only using one piece of patterned paper.  I just had to make a mushy card since a few people mentioned anniversary cards and "I love you" cards at the bake sale today (things I didn't make this year since last year I made too many and people wanted birthday cards instead!).  I especially wanted to make this card because I haven't yet used the "To The Moon" set I purchased a while ago.  It is definitely a great set for me to make cards for my hubs, Mr. LoveandSushi!  I have to say I love the mixing of the fonts in the sentiment.  Lastly, the pink and green were chosen because they're our colors, of course!  If you've been following my blog for a while, that fact is pretty well known!

I'm curious to see what next week's challenge is too!  I just enjoy the PBD challenges so much because normally I craft to mass produce.  These give me a reason to just craft for the sake of crafting!

PBD Challenge: Favorite Pattern

Oh boy, the last time I posted was for the Pink by Design Challenge, and it was after dealing with an illness that landed me a trip to the hospital along with Hurricane Sandy.  Now that I'm posting again for the next challenge, I have another story to tell about a car accident that my whole family was in due to an 18-year old girl smashing into us while we were on our way out to celebrate my mom's birthday.  I don't really want to get into it right now because I'm still dealing with it physically and emotionally.  Praise God that we all walked out of that car relatively unscathed.  A bunch of us got checked out at the hospital.  We have bad pain in our backs and in our necks.  I also have a big bump on my head and a scalp laceration.  But like I said, we may be hurting, but we're all okay and will recover after some time.

Moving on to more positive things!  The current challenge was to create a project using a favorite pattern.  Strangely, my favorite pattern to use when crafting is plaid!  Haha.  The reason for that is because even though I like polka dots, it doesn't always work with all cuts or images because it depends on the size of the dots.  Then I thought about stripes, but they really bother me when it doesn't line up properly with the base of my card.  It's very easy to see what's crooked on paper that's striped!  Then I realized I use plaid often because it's easier to work with AND because it reminds me of my dad and my husband!  Haha, my dad used to (and still does, if I think about it) wear plaid collared shirts all the time when I was a kid.  It was like, the thing to do.  My husband has a few plaid shirts that he wears too.  Any shirt I see though always brings me back to my dad!

I used Create a Critter for the cute apple.  The sentiment "Smile" comes from Pink by Design's set called "Scripted Year" that I use rather often because I just love the font.  I had to pop up the apple a little, of course.

I really like how the green plaid paper looks even though the leaves on the apple are green too.  I am really trying to use more of my patterned paper because I think it really does make a card stand out.  I don't have much else to write about this card since I'm utterly EXHAUSTED.  I like that I was able to craft a bit today though just so that I could distract myself from the millions of thoughts going on in my mind.  I am grateful that we only have 2.5 days of school this week before Thanksgiving break.  We all need some rest!

PBD Challenge: Shades of Autumn

Yes, I have been rather absent from my blog!  It doesn't mean I'm not crafting though.  I have been making cards for my church's bake sale that was postponed to the first Sunday in December due to Hurricane Sandy.  The storms we've had lately and the sickness I've dealt with is a whole other story, but right now, I want to focus on the really quick card I made for Pink by Design's recent challenge, which was a color theme based on this palette.

As pretty as autumnal cards can be, I didn't really think I could make a card with these colors since I don't have paper that matches it.  Just an hour or so ago, however, I decided to take a look because I needed a quick break from my school responsibilities and apartment chores since I'm home today for Veteran's Day.  I ended up finding a floral pattern with colors that definitely reminded me of this fall season (even though it seems like winter what with the Nor'easter we just had!).

I'm trying to go back to the CAS (clean and simple) style that I really like that showcase the pattern paper itself.  I end up pinning a lot of these types of projects on my Pinterest board, but I don't make them often.  I figured this was the perfect opportunity since I didn't want anything competing with those colors.

The PBD sentiment is from the set called "Friends to the End."  I added the rhinestones just to add another element of 3 to the card.  As simple as it is, I like that I was actually able to find a use for the paper!

Master Crafter Challenge

Married life and teaching life don't leave me much time to have a crafting life.  However, back at the end of August, Sarah Hamer of Pink by Design announced a fun challenge to determine who would be a Master Crafter!  The morning of the announcement 99 people and I ordered a Master Crafter box filled with mystery items.  Once we received our boxes, we had a good amount of time to make a project that would be linked up on October 4th for voting until October 11.

I was a little bit nervous to receive the box because I'm not necessarily the most creative when it comes to challenges.  However, I was also extremely excited because challenges force me to do different things that I normally wouldn't do.  I thought back on Pink by Design's 2-year anniversary celebration with the entire day full of challenges that I absolutely enjoyed as it stretched my crafting skills.  I knew this would be another opportunity to think outside of the box (or think ... IN the box?  OF a box?  Haha ...)

These were the items inside the boxes:
- Scissor Mouse sponsored by Westcott
- DCWV Rockstar mat stack sponsored by DCWV Deals
- Cotton Bag Sponsored by State line Bag Co.
- 1/2 sheet of Rhinestones sponsored by Queen & Co.
- Sentiment stamp sponsored by Pink by Design
- 2 assorted buttons

I struggled with what to make because I was actually thrown off by the Rockstar mat stack.  The patterns and colors in the stack are not the typical colors I use.  But, of course, that made it so much fun because it was definitely something I never would have bought and used on my own!  It had to be a challenge, right?  With only about 10 hours until the linking time, I still hadn't figured out what I was going to do.  I did know that I wanted to do a 3-D project since I don't do those often.  I was going to do a card set in a box, but I didn't know how to incorporate all the elements.  Finally I decided on trying something I had never done before - an exploding box (thanks to Anso at Glitter Adventure for the directions and sizes)!

As with many of my challenge projects, I made it with my husband in mind.  I kept the outside simple with the kraft cardstock because I wanted a neutral base so that the patterned paper could be seen.  I also chose it because Howard says it's interesting that I actually have kraft cardstock.  It's one of my favorite things to work with!

The little cotton bag actually fit inside the box, so it was a perfect way to incorporate all the items together.  Before this idea came to my mind, I had no idea what I was going to do with the little bag.  But before I get into the bag, I'll explain the exploding box.

I figured it was the perfect thing to do because I could use many different patterns from the stack.  I admit I avoided the ones with the skulls on them.  Haha, I did not know how to deal with that challenge.  I used 10 different papers, and I purposely chose the ones that had a pinkish and greenish tone to it since those were my wedding colors.  Since my sentiment was "remember," I wanted it to be an exploding box of memories that Howard and I have already made since we got married.  You can see that in the center of the box, I wrote the following: "Just a few small reminders of all the memories we have made so far!  I love you!"

 

You can see a few of the memories and the stamped images that go along with them (the car is from Sandy Lion, and the rest are from Inkadinkado sets).  What I like about these memories is that they all happened within the past 4-5 months since our wedding so they're very recent.

In the picture above and below, you can see some more of the patterns from the stack.  I have plenty more pages to fill with the memories that we will continue to make!

Okay, so that's the box part of it.  Now what's in the bag?  Well, the outside of the bag is pretty cool too, I think.  Sarah recently posted on her blog what she did with the bags, and apparently, you can stamp on them!  I was excited to try it, and it was super easy.  I used Stazon ink for the hearts, and I did some masking so that one heart was behind the other.  I used Copics to color it in, which bled a little bit, but because of the sketchy design of the hearts, I actually don't mind at all!  Haha, normally I would've freaked out about it.  I also added the sentiment "remember" once again and added some of the bling.

The last 2 pieces of the puzzle were the buttons.  I had no idea what to do with them, so I took a break and went to brush my teeth and dry my hair.  Then suddenly I thought of how I could use it to secure the ends of a long piece of embroidery floss where I would tape the actual memorable items that I had initially planned on just putting in the bag.  As you can see, the pink button is hanging out of the bag so that Howard will know to pull the embroidery floss out to see the string of memories.

The tea bag for green tea is from Costco, and it's what we drink when we get sushi delivered to our apartment as a treat!  It isn't sushi if you don't have super hot green tea!  The card for Sum of All Thrills is from Epcot.  We designed our own mild rollercoaster when we were on our honeymoon and rode it (and I didn't even have to push the emergency stop button!).  The Band-Aid is a reminder of when I got a deep cut in my finger from opening a plastic bleu cheese container.  It scared me so much because it wouldn't stop bleeding, so I was crying and being hysterical while Howard took care of me.  The ketchup packet is to remember the long wait we had for Heinz ketchup to go on sale (yay for Labor Day sales!).  I don't know how to eat burgers and such without it (or when I made cheeseburger pie, YUM).  Lastly, the CVS prescription bottle cap is a wonderful memory of how I was finally able to switch to Howard's insurance in September, which meant I could fill my 2 prescriptions and pay a LOT less for them!

Phew, what a fun challenge!  I'll be waking up tomorrow morning (well, technically it's today already) and posting this on PinkCricut.com.  Please head on over there (blog post here) to take a look at the projects made by my fellow crafters and to VOTE (edited: voting will begin on October 7th so that others can have some time to link up their projects first)!  I'm so excited to see what everyone else has done with the goodies.  Plus, I'm eager to see who will be the Master Crafter!

Ink It Pink: For the Birds ... (PbD12)

The current Ink It Pink challenge at Pink by Design to use birds on a card ended up coming at the perfect time!  Last Saturday my husband's sister had us over for a barbecue at her fiance's house.  It was the first time that the immediate family was able to get together to sit and have a meal since Howard and I got married.  It was just the 6 of us (Howard's parents, his sister Sharon, her fiance Keith, Howard, and me), yet there was food for an entire army!  There was a TON to eat, and I had intentions of recording it all through Instagram, but once I got my hands on that shrimp, there was no way I was going to stop and wash my hands to use my phone (H took the pics on his phone).  It was all SO GOOD!

The shrimp had a nice kick to it, and so I asked what marinade they used.  They found some recipe online that included hot sauce in it!  Haha, that was the kick!  I typically stay away from spicy foods because of my esophagus issues and reflux.  Plus, I don't really like hot sauce.  But in that marinade?  I totally changed my mind!  I think I ate practically 2 skewers of shrimp by myself.

Their dad also made these little fish in the smoker.  They're not quite anchovies, but I guess they're somewhat similar?  I had a bite and wasn't that big of a fan ... at least not with all that shrimp there!

The picture of the chicken was the last thing Howard took because we were just so intent on eating.  Sharon and Keith also made ribs, sausage, Chinese style beef short ribs, red/yellow peppers and onions (I LOVE grilled peppers; they just taste extra sweet!), corn on the cob, and salad.  It was seriously such a feast!

I admit I was a little worried about the day because there's a slight language barrier between his parents and me.  I can usually understand the basics of what's going on in a conversation, but for some reason, I find it difficult to understand Chinese when I'm with them!  I think I get too nervous.  My mom said that I should have Howard speak Chinese to me more often.  I do know more than I used to since there were days I'd have him do that while we were dating, but it's not enough to get through an entire conversation.  Thankfully, Howard was a great translator when necessary!  I really enjoyed the entire night!  I think it was a nice cozy group to have just the 6 of us there.

Once we left, I immediately thought about the image on the 3 Birds on Parade cartridge.  It just seemed so appropriate to have the little birdie making food on the grill!

It's not really a complex card in terms of the layout, but I think it lets the little bird shine!  And gosh darn it, I had trouble cutting and putting that bird together because my Cricut mat isn't as sticky, so the paper kept moving and tearing, then I cut things in the wrong size, and then I couldn't get things lined up to assemble!  Haha, I think the cartridge is so cute, but it's a tad difficult to work with when you cut it out small.  That's why I'm excited about the Teddy Bear Parade cartridge, which looks much easier to assemble!  But I digress ... as always ...

The sentiment is from Pink by Design's set called "Big Thoughts."  I love the set because sometimes you just don't need a cutesy sentiment or something with a lot of word.  Sometimes you just want a bold word to stand out, and in this case, it was exactly what I wanted.

I'm happy with how the card turned out just because it's so specific to the occasion.  I think it's such a benefit to be able to make your own cards for a certain person or certain event.  That's a good reason to have a ton of cartridges, right?  Right.

Oh, and the fun barbecue night was extended into the next night as we took home a ton of leftovers and had a feast on Sunday as well!  Yay for not having to cook dinner AND for getting to have more of that SHRIMP!