Recycling Greeting Cards

Earth Day , Every Day

                            Reduce,  Reuse,  Recycle

There are lots of great ways to implement the three "R's" that can be found all over the internet.
Here is a new to me idea:

http://www.stjudesranch.org/contribute/recycled-card-program/



I know, I know: not even contributing to the flood of wasteful products to make cards, etc in the first place would be even more "green", but I won't give up my crafty things to put my creativity to use !

I should start writing notes on a separate piece of paper rather than writing directly on the inside of cards more often, then the recipient could resend the card to someone else if they wanted.

Easter Egg Double Embossed Card

Happy Easter !

Another rubber stamp image from the little box of stamps 

I stumbled across at a fundraiser basement sale for a church.

I heat embossed it with black embossing powder and Versamark ink

on water color paper. 

I water colored it with inks from my dye ink pads. 

It is mounted with dimensionals on top of a piece of card stock

that I ran through a Cuttlebug embossing folder. 

A scalloped edge square die was used to cut the purple card base.

Thanks for looking.

Have a wonderful day !

Prima Flower Easter Egg Card

Putting some old Prima flowers to use on a card for Easter,

inspired by the current challenge at 

Use Your Stuff: #259 Flowers.

I'm also submitting it to the Anything Goes challenge at

Through The Craft Room Door 

and

Girls or Flowers at

Crafting By Designs.

How many of you have these in your stash still ?!

The white "egg"is the portion cut out from another project.

I knew I'd find a use for it someday.

I used a scoring board and stylus to create the striped

embossed lines on the oval.

The lines are coated in glitter nail polish I bought to wear

to a Mardi Gras ball this past February!

Sentiment, ink, card stock, paper punches, embossing folder

for the edges of the yellow card stock, yellow organdy ribbon

 were all bought from Stampin!  Up! years ago.

Yellow rhinestones were actually sold as "tattoos" at a dollar store

many years ago (before rhinestones were popular for use on paper crafts).

 They were assembled into Halloween designs. 

I cut them apart as needed to use on craft projects. 

 I think I may add some tiny white paper punch flowers....... 

 Thanks for looking =) 

Photo Banner Frame

Today I'm sharing with you my project for the 

March Anything Goes crafty project for the

Love To Craft Challenge Blog.

I repurposed an old wooden frame

by using a banner kit to create a 

fun way to display photos of my cat!

Timely project, too, since April 11th

was National Pet Day in the USA :)

Cute enough as wall art without photos!

Once I decided the order I wanted the pieces in,

I strung them with the linen thread. 

There are any number of ways you can attach

the threaded pieces to the frame:

I chose to use hot glue. 

My photos are 4x6 so they overwhelm the fun

elements of the banners. I need to resize and reprint them.

Packaging photo of completed kit as suggested.

I did not use the "pom poms".

I'm entering my project in the current

Anything Goes challenge at 

Through The Craft Room Door.

Thanks for looking !

Be sure to visit the rest of the design team members blogs

for more inspiring ideas.

Amy
Ann
Carol
Hazel
Heather - you are here
Irena
Jean
Leslie
Lori
Pen
Pippa
Sherry
Tina

Surprise Easter Card

Mom and I stopped at a church fundraising sale recently. It was the end of the sale and we weren't even sure they were still open, but since it was on our way home we pulled in to see what may be left.
At first we didn't see much, everything had really been picked over. There wasn't a lot aside from clothing. On the next to the last table, I spied a small box of assorted rubber stamps ! Since everything was half price or $5 for a bag of goodies, we decided to take a bag. I snagged  the small box of stamps (mostly the cheap children's craft kit type images like I bought my own kids many years ago), a new in package picture frame and of all things, two remnants of paper crepe paper streamer to craft something with ;) Mom found a couple of things for herself as well.

Of course I couldn't help but wonder how many rubber stamps or other crafty supplies may have been there at the start of the sale.......

I've had fun water coloring a couple of the stamp images the past week. This card is made with one of them. It is a large image, so the finished card is 5"x 7".

Because this card has a chick on it, I am going to enter it into the current challenge at Retro Rubber (a challenge blog I recently discovered, perfect for me since all of my stamps are oldies!): Challenge #60 Baby, baby - use baby critters on your card.

One of the rules of the challenge is to include the age of the stamp in the blog post. Unfortunately there is no date on the stamp, so I did a google search. From what I have found, it is discontinued and was likely produced in 2013, making it 4 years old.

Stamps Happen #90245 Surprise by Carolyn Shores Wright
http://www.janlynn.com/docs/seasons_celebrations_2013.pdf

The image was stamped on water color paper. I water colored it with inks from my old classic Stampin' Up! ink pads and then layered it on Tangerine Tango and Pacific Point card stocks.

Thanks for looking !


Edited To Add: 4/24/2017
My card was a top pick at Retro Rubber !

Happy Spring Card

A quick card made from more scraps from a previous project.
It was given to my husbands long time friends along with a freshly picked batch of morel mushrooms.

Scraps-N-Pieces Store Has Closed

 
For any of you that has followed my digital work for JMC Designs who sold at Scraps-n-Pieces.com, the site has crashed. I just found out today (4/7/2017) that the store is gone. All of the links to kits and other content at SNP I've posted here on my blog over the past few years no longer work.  I will try to update them if JMC Designs sells the kits again elsewhere, otherwise I will disable the links. In the meantime, sorry for any inconvenience it may cause if you were interested in any of the kits. 

Email I received from SNP on 4/7/2017:

"As some of you may have noticed, the store has been down for the last couple of days.  After two days of hard work, it looks like the information for product downloads has been lost.  The cost and time to reconstruct, re-upload, and continue to maintain that section is not going to be possible at this time.  We are so sad to say that the store will not re-open.  If you have made purchases in the last couple of weeks that you have not downloaded, please let us know by emailing admin@scraps-n-pieces.com and we will work at getting those products to you.  The forum will remain open for a week or two in case there is any information you would like to gather from there.  We, as well as most of our designers will continue to sell at the other stores that we are currently selling at and some will be adding new stores.  Please follow along and continue to support them.  Their information will be available in their newsletters, on their blogs and Facebook pages.  We have love
d being part of this community with you over the past 6 years.  We have made so many friendships and hope that those will continue to last.  Never fear, we aren't disappearing altogether, we will just be available at a different place.  Thank you all so much for your continued support of Scraps N Pieces.  We love you and will miss you.  Our Scraps N Pieces Chatter page will remain open so we can keep in touch."

Making Memories April Challenge

The April Anything Crafty Goes challenge at

Making Memories Crafting is now live !

This month we have an inspiration photo for you:

Our sponsor this month is

Scrap 'N' Dipity - prize $5 Gift Voucher

I did not use anything from the Scrap n' Dipity store.

I instead used the Act of Kindness digital kit by JMC Designs,

and a brush quote by randomolive.com for my project. 
I recolored the brush quote white.

It is an all digital printable

created with My Memories Suite V8 software.

Thanks for looking =) 

Springtime Wishes digi kit

Springtime Wishes 

is the newest digital kit by

JMC Designs

It is a Bits N' Pieces set of kits,

meaning you buy each portion separately.

Each portion of the Bits N' Pieces kits:

Elements include - banner, bee, bench, bird, birdhouse, 3 bows, Wooden Brad, Brick Fence, Bushes, Butterfly, 4 buttons, 2 clips, Dragonfly, 11 Flowers, 3 Frames, grass, 2 grunge, heart, ladybig, 3 leaves, 3 mushrooms, pond, 6 Ribbon, 2 ric rac, staple, stitching, 4 strings, 2 swirls, 2 tags, tree, wooden fence, 2 word bits

Accents include - Flowers, Grunge, Labels, Leaves, Metal Button, Star, Tags, Wooden Hearts - one in each color of the palette

24 Patterned Papers - 12X12 - 300dpi

7 Cardstock - 12X12 - 300dpi

6 borders

5 unique Word Arts

House of Cards April Challenge

The challenge at 

House of Cards this month

is to use feathers 

and/or the colors in the photo below.

I used both on my card.

All supplies used were from from Stampin' Up!, most are no longer available:

Soft As A Feather stamp set

Canvas background stamp

Birthday Greetings stamp set

Sahara Sand, Soft Suede and Crumb Cake card stocks

Chocolate Chip mulberry paper

Soft Suede and Basic Brown ink

paper piercer

Baja Breeze striped grosgrain ribbon and corduroy button

I stamped a row of feathers then carefully trimmed around them.

The bottom edge of this piece of card stock was distressed.

The Suede card stock was stamped with the Canvas background.

 I then used the paper piercer along the top and bottom edges. 

It is trimmed a bit shorter in height than the Crumb card base.

A damp paint brush is a great tool to use to help tear mulberry paper:

just paint it where you want to tear the paper, it makes it so much easier ! 

After tearing the mulberry paper, I curled the edges a bit before layering

it behind the feather stamped Sahara Sand piece.

Stamped and hand cut banner that I inked the edges of is attached with

a corduroy button that matches the striped grosgrain ribbon.

I probably should have taken photographs against a white background

rather than burlap. The card was mailed the day after I made it, so

no chance to retake the photos - sorry.

Thanks for looking =) 

Be sure to visit the rest of the design team

members blogs for more inspiring ideas. 

Chanya13 | Christi | Cohenna | Donna | Em | Heather | Jane | Judy 

Karen | Katarina | Leslie | Maria | Merethe

Michele | Mynn | Nancy |  Paula | Rocky | Rosi 

Shawna | Shirley | Sue N. | Susan