Nesting Layout

8x8 for the baby book =)


Products used: Fancy pants paper, don juan cricut cartridge, corrugated cardboard, raffia, fiber, lace, vintage paper measuring tape, distress ink, ball point pen, martha stewart butterfly punch, old book, cosmo cricket rubon, nest image and swallow chipboard piece.

SketchMania...

is on hold for a week - sorry everyone.. I've been busy with holidays and puppies and babies in the womb... I promise SM will be back next week with a set of new sketches, a new prize.. and the winner of December's prize!!

Gifts for crafty friends!

I love to give gifts to crafty friends because they like crafty stuff! I saw these (following in photos) done in all kinds of christmas colors for ornaments.. and thought they would be MUCH cooler as a regular home decor piece for my friends and their crafty spaces! (I've liked how much these three turned out I've made a couple others to send to some other girls... but you have to wait to see those until they're delivered!)

here is Michelle's:



Products used: EP Wintertime Paper, MyMind'sEye paper, Heritage and Don Juan cricut cartridges, martha stewart butterfly pump, random beads and head pin, distress ink, Diamond glaze and hot glue.


here is Purnima's:(Which I'm entering into the SimonSaysStampandShow challenge for a yesteryear project)


Products used: Corrugated cardboard, scrabble tile, MM Metal die stamp set, random beads, old book pages, random jewelry accessories, dymo label maker, EK Success rubon, Martha Stewart punch, distress ink, stazon ink, random papers/cardboards, diamond glaze and hot glue.

and here is Heather's:


Products used: EP Be Mine collection, distress ink, heritage and don juan cartridges, random beads and jewelry findings, hot pink wire, lost and found silver key charm, diamond glaze and hot glue.

SketchMania #25

Short n Sweet... here's the sketch and our ONE example so far this week.. I promise to get a couple more up! It's not been a so hot week for me.. so here's to hoping we feel better in these last few weeks!

RachelMay:

Submit, as always, below in the Mr. Linky - you have until the 31st of Dec for this one! Please link directly to your blog entry (CropChocolate, facebook, flikr, photobucket are ok too!) and make sure your name is the title of the piece, we'll need to be able to notify our winner!

Baby Shower Layout =)

I've of course been needing to do a layout on our Baby Shower... so here it is. It's based off of the sketch @ SketchyThursdays - I tilted it to the side and instead of pasting down photos made a pocket for TONS of photos to slide into behind the main one.



The colors didn't come out exactly as planned... but there are tons of stuff I love about this layout....

The pocket of photos

My brand new punch that makes edges look torn out of a notebook.

The punchinella stencil and the doodling

The journaling.. first time I've tried this sort and I think I like it!

Products used: FancyPants paper, EP sticker, Distress ink, random satin ribbon I dyed myself, sewing machine/thread, black pen, bingo card, 7gypsies punch, Art blanche chipboard, dymo label maker.

One more Christmas Card

Here's a closeup of my SketchMania for this week. I wanted to point out some details.


The challenge over at SimonSaysStamp is to use a Lord Tim Technique.. lol. and I feel like I always use Tim's techniques anyways.. so it was pretty easy to make this one fit.. Tons of layers, distressing, using found objects and making my own embellishments!!


I used a kraft base from JilliBean, paper from KaiserCraft and a piece of music sheet paper from an old book I have laying around. There's tons of vintage photo distress ink going on, as well as black soot distress powder.. the two combined make for a great dark brown. The corrugated cardboard is a found piece of recycled packaging that my husband always nabs me from his work ♥. That IS a small strip of Tim's photo reel ribbon. I made the flower out of KaiserCraft paper and clear glitter, there's a pearl in the middle with black curled zebra wire. I found some gorgeous trim sold by the spool at walmart for about $2.. nabbed that up and used it behind the flower. I used the same pearls as the center for the "pin" with a dark brown bead that I glued onto a copper head pin. OH! and the stamp is a gorgeous collage piece by Inkadinkadoo that I got from Miss Purnima G!!

SketchMania #24

Good morning folks! lots of snow on the ground here today.. makes for gorgeous trees but lame trips outside with the dog lol.

Hope you're all ready for Christmas and the good feelings it will bring! Don't forget about the fantastic prize AJ is offering for this month's prize! - Papers, ribbons, thickers, do it yourself ornaments, brads, sticker tags... click the word prize to see the closeup!

Here's this week's sketch and the examples:

AJ:


DeeDee:


RachelMay:

Submit, as always, below in the Mr. Linky - you have until the 31st of Dec for this one! Please link directly to your blog entry (CropChocolate, facebook, flikr, photobucket are ok too!) and make sure your name is the title of the piece, we'll need to be able to notify our winner!

TH Inspired Tags..

.. Ok I know you've been waiting for MY Version of Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas...

and as much as I love his tags, I am not a duplication kind of person. I love his products. I love his creativeness. I love his innovativeness... But I also love all of mine =)

so here are a couple tags essentially INSPIRED by Dear Mr. Holtz(I'm working on a few others.. waiting for some to dry.. waiting for some goodies to come in the mail.. etc. etc):

Lots n Lots of stuff used: Kraft tag bases, satin ribbon, raffia, scrabble tiles, staz on ink, distress ink, distress powder, faceted beads, rusty stars, lace ribbon, Inkadinkadoo stamps, 7Gypsies stamps, tim holtz reel ribbon, echo park letter stickers, art blanche chipboard, ranger embossing ink, old music book, random brads.

SketchMania #23!

Sorry for such a late post.. I was working on my SM this morning, and just decided to trash it! WoooHoooo! it's kind of a relief.. lol. But no worries we have a couple REALLY great examples this week!

Without further ado:

Purnima:


RachelMay:

Submit, as always, below in the Mr. Linky - you have until the 31st of Dec for this one! Please link directly to your blog entry (CropChocolate, facebook, flikr, photobucket are ok too!) and make sure your name is the title of the piece, we'll need to be able to notify our winner!

Handmade Snowglobe - Echo Park based

Alright Folks! Here's the dealio - Echo Park has decided they'd like to share some of the fan's work that showcases their product line! They asked for emails to be sent in of your favorite projects using their paper and embellishments. Well I saw this gorgeous handmade snow globe a week ago and decided I'd like to take a stab at it! Here's what I did with a few of the details thrown in:

I started with my favorite EP products; Wintertime, Merry Christmas and A Walk in the Park:

To make my presents I knew they needed to have some sturdiness to them, so I made small boxes out of cardboard, wrapped them in paper and made sure to add bows!

Then for the tree! I picked four of my favorite papers, coordinating colors, and cut them into rectangles.. 1x2, 1x1.5, 1x1, and 1x.5 each. Then I cut those squares into LONG skinny triangles, getting FOUR out of each rectangle (this might seem small.. but for snow globe size the smaller the better.. easier to glue and looks a bit more realistic and proportional!) I then inked the edges, and rolled a white piece of cardstock into a cone, covering it ink to give a nice green base to work with.

I then curled the ends of the triangles and glued them onto the cone, starting at the base with the longest pieces. I found an appropriate topper and covered the edges of the "pine needles" in white paint to look like snow!

I assembled a snowman, glued everything down to my base and put moss around the base, which I then dusted with acrylic to bring more snow into the picture. I picked some of my favorite paper from the Wintertime pack to cover up the base, wrapped around some lace and attached a rusted snowflake. The wintertime sticker is included in the collection pack, as well as the red winter banner at the top!

Products used: EP: Wintertime, Merry Christmas, and A Walk in the Park, cardboard, lace, cork, acrylic paint, distress ink, random sized berries, brads, moss, glue, twigs, curling ribbon, a small round vase, and tissue paper.

Help me win an Expression!

Hello!


Echo Park is having a referral contest and the four prizes are an Expression, Yudu, a Gypsy and their whole collection!

if you are not currently a fan of Echo Park Paper on facebook, head on over there and like them, then leave a note saying I (DeeDee Catron) sent you! I'd appreciate any and all help! if you shop @ CropChocolate.com let me know you posted on EP's page and I'll enter you for a random $10 crop credit! (even if you don't shop there, you can still be entered and start a new account!)

I would REALLY appreciate this!

ChipBoard - Etsy - Let's talk $

(Looking for SketchMania?? Click Here)


I wanna show off how the chipboard pieces are going - and I'm going to list prices that I have in mind, taking into consideration the cost of the pieces to me, and the time it took me to design them.

I want to know what YOU think about the prices - too high, too low? etc etc.

3 Birds on a line - $4.75
(8" from line end to line end):




Dandelion - $5.00
(4" from stem tip to top of CONNECTED fluffs):




Dress Form - Front Profile - $3.75
(5" from stand bottom to neck line):




Dress Form - Side Profile - $3.75
(5" from stand bottom to neck line):




Swallow - $4.25
(4" from wing top wing tip to beak tip):




Right now I'm outsourcing a cutter - but I'm working on doing it myself... I want these to be as cheap for me AND you as possible!