Pink Persimmon

Shabby Tea Room Challenge

We are sponsoring this weeks challenge over at The Shabby Tea Room!  The Challenge this week is to use your Birthstone color in a project.  Head on over to their blog and read about the challenge, then submit your card for a chance to win a Gift Certificate to the Pink Persimmon online store! 

A few of our team members made some samples, you can read more about each one on their blogs.

By Melisa Waldorf.  Her birthday is in December, so her birthstone is blue zircon.
Visit Melisa's Blog

By Denise January, with an October Birthday, she is lucky to have Rose as her birthstone color.
Visit Denise's Blog. 

By Lindsay Weirich, who has a July Birthday with Ruby as her color. 
Visit Lindsay's Blog.

By Kristii Lockart.  Another October Birthday with the rose colored birthstone. 
Visit Kristii's Blog.

Sending Love in the Mail.

My friend's daughter just left for college this year.  I can see how hard this is for her, missing her little girl.   They keep in touch via texting quite often, something that I didn't have when I went to school.  Back in the day of the dinosaurs when cell phones were just still a luxury (and huge!), I would look forward to cards and care packages in the mail. Anyone on the dorm floor that got a care package from their parents became "the room" where snacks and goodies were being served, usually something delicious and homemade was included in those packages.  This card by Nancy Grant made me think of the perfect card to send to a child at college.  Quick and easy to make with our Love Dove stamp set.  Even if you keep in touch via text and email, send something to your college student in the mail.  And don't forget the chocolate chip cookies. 

A sweet, simple card (well, it started out that way)

By Melisa Waldorf

It's been great this year to see more and more companies coming out with 6x6 and 8x8 paper pads. The 6x6 paper pads work perfectly for card makers. The patterns are smaller and I can get a variety for a lower price. My Mind's Eye is one of my favorites! I have been using there papers for years to scrapbook and I'm loving them even more now that they have the smaller paper pads. What about you?? Do you love the smaller paper pads and who are some of your favorites??

The stamp set used for this card is appropriately named "Flower Garden". It's all about the flowers in this set. You get lots of different layering options, so you can create your own little unique garden. And the cute little sentiment was created using their "Soda Pop Alpha" set.

I started out with the idea to just stamp directly onto the lined notebook paper. I used Eclipse Masking tape to layer the images. When using masking tape, you always want to stamp the image in the foreground first, mask it, and then stamp the background image. So I stamped flower #1 (on the left), stamped it again on masking tape, cut out the mask and covered flower #1. Then I stamped flower #2 (center) over the side of flower #1. The original plan was to color the outside of the flowers and paper piece the insides. But I couldn't get the aqua blue the correct shade, and decided to paper piece 2 of the outer parts of the flowers as well. TMI !!

Why am I sharing this?? Well because I think I made it more complicated than it needed to be ... who me??? If I had just decided to paper piece from the beginning, I would not have needed to mask. I guess my point is .... YOU can create this one a lot easier than I did. But my designs often change midstream, as I work them. It's fun when you can just stamp an image on a piece of patterned paper and use your Copics to color. Which is exactly what I did for the stems/leaves and butterfly. So if you have never tried it, I challenge you. Leave that white cardstock behind and shake things up a little bit!
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have time to get crafty today!

Scotty Dog Greetings

Nancy Grant used some fun techniques on her background for this card.  She stamped the patterned paper with the Carnival Alpha letters, then added some glimmer mist and inks to give it a distressed look.  A great background for the Scotty Dog. 

CARD DETAILS:
STAMPS: Pink Persimmon "Scotty Dogs" & "Carnival Alphabet Set"
INK: Palette Ink Noir Black & Lemon Tart, VersaMagic Pixie Dust, Midnight Black, Tim Holtz Distress Ink Old Paper & Aged Mahogany
PAPER: 5x7 Blank Cream Notecard, Doily, Me & My Big Ideas Black and White Free Spirit and Pearlescent, Black File Folder Polka Dot
COPIC MARKERS: B00, B02
GLIMMER MIST: Vintage Pink, Black Magic, Crushed Shells
EMBELLISHMENTS: Bazzill Wings Bitty Blossom, Prima Got Flowers, Kaiser Craft Copper Pearls, Paper Trey Ink Lemon Tart Stitched Ribbon, Spellbinders Shapeabilities Ribbon Banners

Using the Banner Stamp in new ways

The banner shape can be used for more than just making banners.  Laura Achilles made these two layouts and found new ways to incorporate the banner stamps.  With her first layout, she used the large banner triangle to create the rays of the sun. 

Supplies used:  Banner Set Large, Ric Rac Circle
Fancy Pants papers and embellishments, My Little Shoebox small alphas

Notice how the banner triangles are not completely flat, but have a bit of a curl to them, making it look even more like sun rays. 

Laura's next layout uses the small banner in a traditional way across the page, but also look in the lower left corner. 

Supplies used:  Banner Set small and large
October Afternoon, Scenic Route, Basic Grey, Jenni Bowlin papers
American Crafts and October Afternoon Alphabet stickers

The banner stamp can make a little flag when turned on it's side.  Attach to a toothpick and it makes a great golf flag!  Laura also used the gingham pattern from the banner stamp, but cut the shapes into clouds for this Mini Golf layout.

It's fun to find new ways to use your stamp shapes. Especially ones with traditional shapes, like circles, triangles, square frames, etc. can often be modified and used in a way that was not originally intended by the designer.  If you've done something different with a stamp shape, be sure to share a link in the comments.  We'd love to see it! 

Women are Like Buttons

I love this saying that Lindsay Weirich put on her cards:  "Women are like buttons, they hold things together".  Lindsay used our Hello Vintage Girl and Cute as a Buttons stamp sets to make this card & tag set. 

Look closely at the background of the card and tags.  Lindsay made her own background stamp by using a piece of craft foam, heating it up and pressing it onto a bunch of real buttons.  When it cooled, she was able to ink it up with a pink color to create the subtle background. 

A great idea to have these on hand for gift giving.  They would work for most any occassion, but I love the idea of using this for Mother's Day, or for a special friend's birthday. 

Back to School Week - Day 5

Everyone loves a card of encouragment, especially teachers.  Be sure to let your child's teacher know how much you appreciate them. 

Andrea Budjack created this card with Ric Rac Circle and Carnival Alpha Large.  Notice the words "bloom" on the background paper in the light pink ink. 

That's all for our Back To School Week.  Our house is full of new school supplies, new shoes, and new backpacks.  School starts on Wednesday and I'll be helping with the "boo hoo" breakfast for the new kindergarten parents (while I am secretly doing a little happy dance inside!).  Are you excited for school to start, or are you sad that Summer is almost over? 

Back to School Week - Day 4

Every teacher needs a notebook and this one is a perfect gift for your favorite teacher:

Laura used a composition book for the base and added patterned paper to the cover along with a red & white banner and cute card with the teacher's name.  Make sure everything is adhered to the cover really well so it will stay looking good with lots of use. 

Supplies:  Banner Set Small, Soda Pop Alpha small, Hello Vintage Girl (ruler), Crate Paper paper and embellishments

Back to School Week - Day 3

Cindy Coutts created this card with an oversized paperclipped attached to the card. Cindy made a youtube video tutorial on how to get a clean paper piecing image for the cupcake base that you can view here.

 

 

Back to School Week - Day 2

By Melisa Waldorf:

Good Morning Paper Crafters!  Today I'm sharing a 9 x 9 layout designed using my sweet husbands 1st grade class photo.   I don't even remember 1st grade, do you???  And I don't have a photo, so I would love to tell you that I just loved my teacher, if I could only remember her, HA!  What about you??  Can you remember any of the Elementary years??   But ...  I'm sure I was a little angel, enthusiastic about learning and very obedient ...  every teachers dream, teehee.

The "Little Red Wagon" stamp set was just perfect for this layout.   You can use the boy or girl image and there are so many cute items to load the wagon up with.  There is a birthday cake, valentine hearts, pumpkins and more!  A fun sentiment for a friend when creating a card using this image would be "When you wagon is full, I'll help you pull".  You can check out this set HERE. 

 
"Little Red Wagon" looks great combined  with Kaiser Crafts "Class of '87" 12 x 12 paper collection for this layout.   I used "Timeless Tables", "Show and Tale", and "Sports Day" from the patterned paper collection, along with the matching rub-ons.  The line comes with some other great embellishments and a 6 x 6 paper pad as well, HERE.

Project Details
Stamps : Pink Persimmon Little Red Wagon
Patterned Paper / Rub-ons : Kaiser Crafts
Border Punch : Fiskars
 
Trim red patterned paper 9 x 9".  I used only certain horizontal strips from the "Sports Day" sheet and combined them to create the bottom part of the background.  Trim background patterned paper slightly smaller than 9 x 9 and adhere to red cardstock base.  Doodle around edges.  Ink edges of photo with red ink.  Use scalloped border punch to create a border from red cardstock.  Adhere to bottom backside of photo.  Adhere green ribbon.  Adhere photo to page.  Stamp Little Red Wagon's boy, stack of books, and wagon on white cardstock.  Color with markers.  I paper pieced the shorts because I didn't have the correct shade of blue to match.  Adhere to layout.  Trim just the "A" and "B" sections of the "Show and Tell" patterned paper sheet and adhere to layout.  Doodle around edges.  Embellish rest of page with rub-ons and buttons.