A Few Days to Play...

This is a long post and it's picture heavy so sit back and browse through what I came up with over the past couple days.  I had Monday off for Presidents Day so I took Tuesday off as well to stretch out my weekend, believe me it was much needed.   It was so enjoyable to get to spend some time playing my craft room working on my new found love of paper crafting. 
OK, here goes... I made this card for my son, he was so sweet to send me something special so I had to make him this "Thank-you" card.  My son live in Los Angeles, CA so most of our contact is by phone or email.  He is so excited for me in discovering my new hobby so he'll love this card, it's always fun to make a card for him.  He's my heart!

Ok, so next I made this card for a sister-in-law that lives in NJ.  Just wanted to send her a thinking of you card...

I've been practicing making paper flowers so I had this scrap piece of paper and I decided to cut out the little blossoms and flourishes to use on this card.  I glued in a few clear beads and sprayed them with some "Perfect Pearls Mist".  The other elements are my Spellbinders "Labels #10", the white piece is from the SB "Fancy Tags Two" and the little flourishes on the bottom are from the SB "Twisted Metal Tags & Accents" set.  I chalked around the letters on the tag, my greens didn't really go together too well, but I used what I had & I think it turned out OK.
Next up are the flowers I made... 

I'm most proud of this rose, I think it turned out great.  I used a combination of methods to make the others.  The green one with the glittered edges is just a 2" scalloped circle punch, I then cut almost to the center of every-other scallop,  I colored it with my Copics and added the Stickles on the edge and beads in the middle.  For the pink flower I traced the flower from a plastic template from "Paperwishes.com"  The template itself is from "Hot Off the Press"   The pale rose & the little yellow rose & flower were from the Spellbinders "Rose Creations" dies set. I also sprayed these with the Perfect Pearl Mist.  Now to use them on a project!  These were really fun to make.  Then I decided to play with a few of the I have to see what I could come up with. Here are a few results.  I used these "Martha Stewart" corner punches going around circles with this result.  It took a lot of trial & error so come up with the right size circle to use so I made note right on the cut out and I'll save these for future reference.  I think these would be a nice alternative to use behind something stamped on a circle.  If you remember in my last post I mentioned the wonderful "Veronica" who turned me on to this technique on YouTube.  So for more information on this technique refer back to this post "Back In Action.

I used this EK Success punch, which I love,  I think it's so pretty.  Of course it makes a beautiful border but  I cut them apart the see what else I could come up with

 

and this is what I did, but I not all that happy with this so I'll play with it some more later.

  

Finally...I needed a temporary storage solution for my Copic & Spectrum Noir markers.  My collection is swiftly growing (as is all my crafting supplies).   What's a girl to do when she falls in love?  Anyway back to my final projects during my play time.  I decided to make my own marker storage solution for now and here it is...

This is just a sturdy little cardboard box and this is how I made it...

I cut off the box top flaps and covered them with black paper,  I also covered the box with paper from my stash, I think this comes from my sewing obsession to make things look good inside as well as outside.

The box flaps became the shelves using glue & what else but "duck tape".  I used to hate some of the ways I've seen duck tape used in the past, just to find out it does come in handy, LOL!

And last but not least here are the images that I colored with my markers.  I have a long way to go in learning the coloring techniques but it was fun practicing. I hope to take the Copic classes soon.   BTW I got these images from the blog of a very talented artist/crafter Becky's Place she actually has many, many images on her blog that she offers to anyone free to download and she have finally started a line of Digi images for sale that are so cute so check her out.  I thanked her for being so generous with her talent and I look forward to purchasing some of her new ones.  She also has some awesome tutorials on her blog.

I had a ball during my time off, it was relaxing and energizing.  With a little more practice I hope to jump into some challenges soon.  I've been following several sites that have some fun challenges but I really had to get to a certain place and have a little time to jump in.  So, I hope you've enjoyed checking out my play time results.  Stay tuned for more later...

Happy Crafting!