Patterned Papered Dreams

Paper Crafts magazine Presents: 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop

 

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la… What? Can't you hear it? It's Christmas time! Forget about the Rockefeller Center Tree… what gets started the Season in craftyland is the arrival of this gorgeous special issue from Paper Crafts Magazine! Find your copy here and join us for a lot of Christmas fun :)

I am lucky enough to have 7 projects in this issue. I loved working for it last April because it's just like celebrating Christmas twice a year *wink*. Ok, so this Blog Hop is all about quick and easy Holiday cards and that's exactly what I have for you, plus a couple tips that I've found useful. I can't deny I love stamping, and this is what I created with stamps, ink and a bit of twine (you'll find detailed instructions and supplies at the end of this post):

 

Hey! But what if you'd rather not get inky for mass production? Well, I've got that covered too. Paper and letter stickers will do the job.


And together:

My quick and easy tips:
- Tie little knots instead of bows. It's super quick and adds a cute whimsical feel to the card.
- If you choose to die cut the circles, trim your paper in squares and die cut a bunch at the same time. Paper is not as thick as cardstock, so the die will pass through a few layers without problems.
- If you'd rather make the stamped card, position the 3 stamps in a bigger block and stamp the three images at the same time.

And now it's time to keep on hopping!!! But first leave me a comment here before Sunday at midnight telling me about your favorite Christmas food for a chance to win a copy of this gorgeous issue. And don't forget to drop by the Paper Crafts Connection, because there's a fab prize you can win there too!
Here's the list of talented designers you can visit today for lots of eye candy (and prizes too!)

* Julia Stainton
* Chan Vuong
 * Teri Anderson
 * Kelley Eubanks
 * Maile Belles
* Vanessa Menhorn
 * Amber Daigre
* Lorena Canto ----} you're here
 * AJ Otto
 * Windy Robinson
 * Betsy Veldman
* Dawn Petrick

Instructions for stamped card:

1. Make card from cardstock.
2. Pierce 2 straight lines.
3. Stamp circles and sentiment.
4. Tie bakers twine.
Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: (circles from Many Dots set, sentiment from Holiday Sayings set) Hero Arts; Ink: Versamagic Turquoise Gem, Distress Ink Barn Door, Versafine Black Onyx; Twine: The Twinery.

Instructions for non stamped card:
1. Make card from cardstock.
2. Draw lines with red and turquoise pens.
3. Die cut or punch patterned paper circles and adhere.
4. Spell "Celebrate" with stickers.
5. Tie bakers twine.
Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Patterned Paper: (red polka dot from The Modern Homemaker pad) October Afternoon, (blue poinsettias from Everybody Loves Christmas collection) Echo Park Paper; Stickers: red "C" from Echo Park, turquoise alphas from Cosmo Cricket;  Twine: The Twinery; Gel pens (red, turquoise) Muji.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Paint

Good morning everyone! Wow, what an amazing experience the PTI Blog Hop was! I'll sure be joining every month for now on. Not only I discovered the blogs of super talented stampers, but also was left such nice comments here! Thank you so much :) And now to today's card: I made it for the Embellish Challenge. Look at the inspiration pic, it's lovely!

 
And my card

I used a Nestabilitie Square die to mask the space and used a Ranger Paint Dabber (Pool) to add color inside the die. I love turkoise + kraft! The dove from this PTI set was stamped with grey pigment ink and heat embossed with clear powder. The sentiment is from Unity and I stamped it with white pigment ink and then heat set it to prevent smudging. And that's it :)

Thanks so much for visiting and have a fantastic day!

Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: PTI, Unity; Ink: Colorbox (grey), PTI (white); Other: Square nestie, Ranger Paint Dabber (Pool).

September PTI Blog Hop

Hello! I can't believe it, after almost two years being a huge PTI fan I finally join their Blog Hop! All details here.

This month's challenge was finding inspiration in this photo:

And it sure inspired me! Quite literally, actually ;)

I used Distressed Stripes to stamp the lines. For the sentiment I struggled as usuall. I was going to use one of the bold sentiments in Modern Wood Mats, but then I saw the 2010 Anniversary Set on my desk and there was this "just a note" with a "j" that was perfect for the corner! So here you go!

Thanks so much for hopping! I hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: Papertrey Ink (Distressed Stripes, Botanical Silhouettes); Ink: Versamagic (Jumbo Java, Aquatic Splash, Mango Madness, Red Magic), Distress (Barn Door).

An Autumn card

Good morning! Autumn officially started yesterday but at least in Madrid we still have summery weather, which I love! However, I had to jump straight into fall mood for this card.

I stamped a masked background with this cute Hero Arts flower and then restamped the flower on patterned paper, fussy cut the smaller layer and adhered it loosely. The bigger layer underneath was colored with white ink. And the sentiment (it's a masked one from this set)...  I gave it a thousand thoughts until I realized that it needed a bold one to stand out in that busy background. I first stamped it and heat embossed in brown, but it looked horrible! So I carefully restamped with Versamark over the embossing and used white instead. This time worked, phewww!I also added some white Enamel Accents for good measure ;)

The jute center was made by covering a circle with scor-tape and rolling the jute on it. This is my entry for this month's HA challenge, details here.

Thanks for visiting and happy Fall!

Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: All Hero Arts; Ink: Versafine (brown), Versamark, PTI (white); Paper: Pink Paislee; Other: White Enamel Accents, jute string.

A mini card

Well, hello there! With the last stretch of the holidays, a submissions call and all this back to school madness It's been a little while since I last played at the lovely CAS-ual Fridays. Which I'm about to fix right now. The deet for this week was making a mini card. And... tada!

It's a 3 1/2 by 3 3/4 card. Stamp, stamp and then stamp some more and you're good to go.  The polka dot lines are from a veeeeery old Hero Arts set and the rest of the card is Papertrey Ink. I'm loving that kind of sentiments lately, the fonts are fantastic and so bold! I think the saying is fantastic too, something different to the classic hello, hi or thinking of you :)

Thanks so much for visiting and have a great day!

Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: PTI, Hero Arts; Ink: Versafine (black), Jenni Bowlin (red); Bling: Zva.

The Reject Blog Hop is back!!!

Hey there! Fabby Dr. Amber is hosting her famous Reject Blog Hop and I'm jumping straight in! Last thursday Paper Crafts Magazine sent the acceptance emails for projects accepted for their March/April 2012 issue. There were 100 spots for 1.300 cards submitted!! That's a record!! I was lucky enough to have a card accepted, but still there are a lot of them that were not, and here's one of them. 

I'm keeping the rest for upcoming calls (yeah, it's ok to resubmit a card at least a couple more times because you never know...). This one was made for the Rainbow/Gradient cathegory of this call and it features Hero Arts stamps. The sentiment typekeys are covered in glossy accents, which looks super yummy in real life, but I don't think the pic has captured it :/

Thanks for stopping by and remember that the most important part of crafting is having fun ;)

Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: Hero Arts; Ink: Memento (yellow, orange, green, blue), Versafine (black); Other: Glossy Accents.

Long time...

no see! Sorry for being a bad blogger lately, we just came back from the last part of our Summer holidays and last monday it was back to work for us and back to school for my son. So with all this crazy adjusting (and a fantastic Paper Crafts Magazine submissions call too!) I haven't had a lot of time left. But I'm here now :) Look what a beautiful image Cath brings us for the current Tuesday Trigger:

When I saw the image I just thought: - "I want to sit there and read a novel". So here's my card:

Back to domestic stuff now! Thanks for visiting :)

Supplies: Cardstock: Canson; Stamps: PTI, Crafty Secrets; Ink: Brilliance (green), Versafine (brown).