My Pink Stamper Blog Hop!

Welcome to the first stop on the My Pink Stamper Blog Hop. I am delighted to introduce myself and to get to know you better.

My name is CarrieAnne, and I am a wife, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. A paper crafting veteran of over 15 years I've stayed up late snipping and gluing in my craft room, edited a magazine, taught tons of classes, and designed CHA booths. An avid scrapbooker and card maker, I also love creating 3D and altered art. From purses to pastries, I love recreating the world around me in paper. My "style" of art is characterized by strong color combinations, crisp clean lines, and lots of paper piecing and piercing. My Cricut helps me meet my eclectic crafting cravings and I am excited to share my projects with you.

For today's blog hop your challenge is to guess what our challenge was as designers. You will get a key word at each stop along the way so be sure to stay with me to the end of this post for your first clue and your next destination.

Birds and bird cages are super trendy right now and I have seen a number of variations on the web. I wanted to make a bird and cage just using my Cricut and I was able to do so with just one cartridge - Cindy Loo!

The Cage:

The base of the cage is made from the cupcake wrapper on page 74. I thought it was perfect because of the bird theme it showcases. In order that the inside and the outside of the cage bottom match, I cut two cupcake liners on "fit to page" on a 12x12 mat. They were then glued to together with Beacon Adhesive's Zip Dry.

The sides of the cage are four 1/4 x 12" strips of patterned paper. If you want the interior and exterior to match you will need to cut double the number of strips and glue them together as I did above. The four strips are held together by a brad at their midpoint. They are attached to the cupcake liner with small pieces of double sided red sticky tape.

The base of the bird cage is a spool of ribbon which I covered in dry embossed brown cardstock. The spool is necessary to stabilize the cage and makes it more durable. Red line tape was used to attach the spool to the cage and I tossed in some pretty pink buttons for fun.

The Bird

The bird is the sparrow from page 65. Two of them were cut out at 2" from white cardstock. I snipped off her wings and the little tuft at the top of her head. Each bird was then dry embossed with the Victorian Cuttlebug embossing folder. A 12" piece of fishing line was then placed between the two birds and they were glued together.

I added wings made from a heart cut in half, pink glitter and the pearl half back for the eye.

Caging the Bird

The fishing line goes through the hold in the bottom of the spool and is secured to the underside with tape. The other end of the line is threaded around the brad securing the strips of the cage's side. I added the glitter to the cage bottom by dipping a thin liner paint brush in white glue and dabbing the cage bottom in the glitter.

This little cage is fairly easy to assemble and would be cute on a wedding table as a decoration or hung up as Valentine's Day decor

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne
KEY WORD: DO
Next blog on the hop: Court's Crafts

The Gargoyles of Notre Dame

When I was in Paris a few years ago I fell in the love with the architecture, the sculpture and the beauty of the city's many classically designed buildings. Notre Dame was no exception. I found the gargoyles of the cathedral especially inspiring as they managed to be stunningly beautiful and almost scarily ugly at the same time. I based this layout on the Sketchy Thursday sketch challenge for this week. I wanted to mimic the "pretty ugly" of the statues so I combined flowers with a strong yellow and black color combination - not one I would normally use. I think it came out pretty neat though.


The patterned paper is a mix of Pink Paislee, Making Memories, and October Afternoon. I made the lollipop flowers using a variety of circle punches from Marvy Uchida and Stampin' UP! The title is done with Thickers from American Crafts and stickers from Making Memories. The bling and pearls are Prima.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Parlez Vous Francais

So, I finally get to share some great news that I have had to keep under my hat for a bit. Robyn over at My Pink Stamper asked me to serve on her 2011 My Pink Designer Team and I am super thrilled about it!

I encourage you to head over to her site and check out her amazing Cricut tutorials, rubber stamps and videos. Whether you are a new or veteran Cricut user you will find lots of inspiration and a friendly community of fellow Cricut addicts for enabling and support!

Also this Friday, My Pink Stamper is hosting a Blog Hop to introduce you to all the great new designers so be sure to stop by and meet this great group of talented crafters.

Today I am sharing with you the second mini Eiffel Tower I made for a trade show.

The tower is about three feet tall and was really fun to make.

The cross hatch pattern is hand embossed with a stylus and Sizzix texture plate. Individual half back pearls were than glued on at every point where the embossed lines intersected.

Pearls use to be my absolute favorite type of jewelery, but 500+ mini pearls later I am somewhat cured of wearing Audrey Hepburn's favorite gem for awhile.

The tower looks a bit off-kelter as it was adhered to a large stabilizing board in the booth that was removed to ship it back to me.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Love to You

I love the look of dry embossing on metallic cardstock. This floral background Cuttlebug embossing folder really pops on the 110lb metallic shimmer cardstock. In truth I love dry embossing on everything these days, and all of the new folders available on the market make it all too easy for me to emboss anything that is not bolted down. It's hard to remember that only a few years ago we were shackled to a stylus and brass template to get similar results.

This is just a quick card, I plan on sending to my grandparents as a note that I am thinking of them. The stamped image is Stampin' UP! colored in with Copics.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Best Friends

I received almost the entire "Whitewash" line from We R Memory Keepers quite some time ago, but hot pink, electric blue, and lime green are colors I rarely reach for in scrapbooking so I had to wait for the right opportunity to use these products. This picture of my 8 year old daughter and her best friend was perfect and I used the sketch from Sketchy Thursdays secret sketch challenge for inspiration. To get in on the Sketchy Thursdays challenge you will need to visit their Facebook page as they are shaking things up a bit this week by not posting the sketch on their blog and asking challenge participants to not post the sketch on our blogs.

I cut tons of the flowers out of patterned paper and layered, creased, and added dimensionals to get the look I wanted. Most of the flowers have centers made from bling, pearls, buttons, glue, or stickers.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Inked up Fingers ...

Though I spent three years as a Medical Officer in the US Army, I am not a huge fan of dirty hands.

Most of my artwork has clean simple lines and you would be hard pressed to find gobs of paint on a layout, and I may not even currently own a bottle of gesso. So for me using watermarking on this card was a step outside my comfort zone. I first stamped the background image (from Stampin' UP!) in Versamark's Clear ink and then I went back over the stamped images with red ink and a sponge. I cut a similarly stamped and inked butterfly out a few times and layered them for dimension. I then distressed the edges of the white cardstock. I used my paper piercer on the green cardstock mat and one of my favorite punches for the flourish. The patterned paper is Jenni Bowlin and the buttons are from my stash.

I plan on sending the card to my brother (hopefully he doesn't read my blog). He is going through a bit of a rough patch and I thought a little love note in the good ole snail mail might cheer him up.

I am off to wash the red ink of off my hands!

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne

Hats off ...

I went through a bit of a weaving fascination this year. This was a bare hatbox when I found it and I covered the front with quarter inch strips of green cardstock that I wove together. The ends of the strips were adhered to the sides of the purse front and then the entire side was covered with patterned paper. The weaving took HOURS and HOURS, but I love the effect and it's very durable. I handmade the flowers using a scalloped punch and metallic cardstock layered with patterned paper. I simply adhered each scallop layer together with a few glue dots and then began scrunching them all together. I added the gem center for a bit of bling. I also found that adding the gem center first gave you something centered to "scrunch" the layers around. The large solid pink flower was made in the same way, but without the patterned paper layers or bling. This cardstock was 110 lbs (quite heavy) so I wet it first to make it more scrunchable.

The "Paris," Flourishes and Eiffel Tower are Quickutz dies and the black bling swirls are Prima. Because I love poking holes in things I outlined the Eiffel Tower with holes made by my paper piercer for a bit of added interest. Hemp borders both the front and the back of the purse to hide the edges of the patterned paper and give it a more finished look.

As the structure of the purse is an actual hatbox it easily carries a wallet, keys, cellphone and is sturdy if I am cautious of the embellishments. Everything was secured with gobs of Beacon Adhesive so I am confident it is not going anywhere I don't want it to.

Thanks for looking,

CarrieAnne