Tape + Felt.

Two of my favorite things to make cards with are washi tape (aka Japanese masking tape) and felt.

They add so much texture to a card, don’t you think?

I especially love all the things you can do with tape: make borders, adhere messages, hey — even make some grass for a cute little felt worm to hang out in!

And! The tape is transparent, so you can see the layers beneath. And you can even sew on it.

What’s not to love?

Resources: The felt snail and worm are from Sassafras Lass. I’ve had them for a while now, not sure if they’re still available. The tapes are from my ever-growing collection. In the snail scene, I first inked a piece of ordinary white paper with Peeled Paint and Shabby Shutters Distress Inks from Ranger using an foam ink applicator. Then I stamped it with the Hero Arts Friend Definition stamp, and finally punched out the grass with a Martha Stewart punch. The notecards are old ones from Hero Arts – I’ve been saving them for a special occasion and thought they went perfectly with the tape! Yay! Last but not least, the circles that I added to the photos are from Katrina’s Dot Your Dots Collection over at Pugly Pixel.

And yeah, I’m a little slow getting cards out sometimes. Too many things going on I guess. But hope a cute card with lotsa tape makes up for it! :)

Hope you have a great weekend,

Friday Fun and TWO giveaways!

Wow, has this week flown by! I had so much fun with the Lawn Fawn/Hero Arts blog switcheroo — wish it wasn’t ending. And! It was so great getting to know Kelly from Lawn Fawn better — it turns out we have soooo much in common! We really had a blast! So I wanted to make her a little card using some of the patterned paper that I’d been hoarding because I bet she’d love it — here it is!

As soon as I saw this set I thought it would be perfect for stamping the dress on felt! Wouldn’t it make a super fun winter dress? I can just imagine wearing it on a romantic date with J!

And! Today is Kelly’s birthday, yay!  I asked her to pick out some of her favorite Hero Arts stamps for a giveaway — and it turns out that they are some of my favorites too!  To enter the giveaway, just click on over to the Hero Arts blog and help me wish Kelly a happy birthday!

And that’s not all!  Kelly is giving away my favorite stamp Lawn Fawn set over on the Lawn Fawn blog — so be sure to click on over there, too!

Thanks again Kelly for a great week — you really and truly are “sew lovely”!  Hugs!

Here’s to friendships, and crafting and Friday’s!  Yay!

Happy happy,

Felt pumpkins!

I have been wanting to make a little patch of pumpkins out of felt forever, and yesterday I finally had the chance as part of the Hero Arts & Lawn Fawn blog switcheroo!!  Yay!

I put together a little video to show how I made them — check it out and let me know if you have any q’s!

And! Guess what?  You can win the sneak peek, not-yet-released stamp that I used on the pumpkins over on the Lawn Fawn Blog! Kelly is just so sweet and generous, isn’t she? I just love this set, it’s one of my new all-time favorites!

Then I had to take a few minutes to make a spooky card to go with the pumpkins!

It has been raining like crazy here from tropical storm Hermine — I don’t think it stopped all day yesterday, and it’s still raining this morning!  So I had to break out the lights to take these photos.  Then it hit me — why not make it look spooky?

Wha ha ha!

Stay dry and make pumpkins,

little birds

Have you ever been browsing at a bookstore and found a book that you just had to have? And then you were so inspired that you went straight home and made something right away? Well that’s what happened to me with the book Little Birds.

I want to make everything! But I started with this sweet birdhouse by Abigail Brown. I just love her style and am lucky enough to own a piece by her (a little fox — better not let him get to close to the birds, eh?) and I also have a framed series of her postcards hanging up in my sewing area.

Next I plan on making making Mildred the Dove by Samantha Cotterill — can’t wait!  Mildred is hilarious — wait until you see. And then I have to make the birdie on the cover by Margaret Oomen. (sidenote: she is also the one who makes beautiful crochet sea urchin rocks. I want to make those too!) And THEN…!

Oh and!  This book has a trailer!  Who knew that books have trailers?  I sure didn’t.  But now you can browse it with me.  Just don’t yell at me if you want to run right out and buy it and then start sewing, ha ha!

And!  Can’t wait to show you photos of my new little sewing area.  It’s really coming along!

Where I’ve “bean”.

Hi there!  Did you miss me?   I’ve was off traveling again — this time to San Francisco for a strategy meeting for work — check out what we did for our team building exercise, it was the best one that I ever did.

I flew in a day early so that I could hang out with my friend Mon and play!  We had so much fun eating — and eating again — and again — and talking and laughing!

Here we are outside of Dynamo Donut in San Francsico — it’s gotta be one of the best donut places in the whole world!  I just had to bring along my choco Fuji Instax camera to mark the occasion.

That’s Mon on the left holding a Chocolate Rose donut — I’m holding a Chocolate Anise donut.  Not shown is a Chocolate Spice donut — can you tell we like chocolate?  Ha ha ha.

We gave other flavors some love too — check out this yummy apricot + cardamom donut

And then there was this little pistachio number — with crystals of salt, mmmm

And no, we didn’t eat these all on the same day…!  We had to have coffee with our donuts, and Mon took me to Bluebottle — they have some seriously good coffee.  It was so smooth it was almost like chocolate!  Double yum.

Just so you know — we ate other things besides donuts — super tasty Vietnamese food and Indian — triple yum!

We had to do some shopping to work off those donuts — we went to a bunch of cute shops on Valencia street, to Union Square,  and to a fun fabric shop called Peapod with LOTS of super cute Japanese fabrics.  Can’t wait to make some owls with the linens and cottons

And I also snapped up this handmade rose brooch at another shop

I think it’s made out of old sweaters, can’t wait to try and make one myself.

And!  We stayed up late one night making — are you ready for it?  Felt edamame!  You see, there’s this Japanese family of characters called Mameshiba — they are highly evolved legumes that talk!  They always say something strange like “Did you know…a hippo’s sweat is pink?” and then the person who *was* going to eat them changes their mind.  Here’s a video to see what I mean:

And, here are our beans!

We were giggling + giggling while we made them!  Here’s mine in a shot ala the video

Too funny.  So glad I got to hang out with you Mon — and so glad we’re friends!  Can’t wait until our next adventure.

So, now you know where I’ve “bean”!