Irene is gone!!! And I'm late with my post!!!

Today I am so thankful that Hurricane Irene turned out to be much less intense than forecast. My home and family came through with flying colors - just some debris cleanup outside. But my heart and prayers go out to everyone who have had their property damaged, or worse yet are injured or killed. Having been through this before, I know the recovery is going to be long and tough, so please remember those affected.

Saturday's Paper a la Mode Challenge over at The Outlawz started yesterday, but I was so focused on the storm that I completely forgot to post my creation - my quick creation. This entire week was full of work and home storm preparations, but I found a little time on Friday to try to put my thoughts about the inspiration photo that is the focus of the challenge onto paper. The colors and lines are just so bold and beautiful, and I had to make a couple of tries to get something pulled together that I was happy with, but this is my "inspired creation":

I used some Pink Paislee papers that I had in my stash, along with a little chipboard tree and a variety of little gems and pearls that are supposed to look like leaves in the fall, although I'm not sure how successful that turned out.

But thanks for stopping by, and thanks to everyone for all the prayers and positive thoughts as Hurricane Irene approached and passed us by. Hugs to all!

Banners - Saturday Paper a la Mode Challenge

Okay, it's time to talk about one of my favorite things in paper crafting - BANNERS! I love making banners, and I have made quite a few over the last couple of years to celebrate different seasons, holidays, as gifts, and now have made a tiny one to put on an Artist Trading Card (ATC) for this week's Paper a la Mode Challenge over at The Outlawz.

I made the banner pieces, which are quite small - maybe 1/2 inch for each piece - using Power Point. PP has a lot of different shapes built into it, so I used a triangle and sized it to what I wanted. Then I typed a letter into each piece - in this case I was spelling out "joy" because my ATC is for the Christmas season. I made the border of each triangle red, and the letters black. Then I printed it out on plain white cardstock and cut out the pieces - easy peezy! (If you would like to use the same idea, let me know and I will send you the file to use) I love the little digi bunny - I colored that with Copics and added a little Stickles to the fur on the hat for some bling.

My last post had the ATCs for the other 3 seasons, and this is the final one. These are for a swap over at CDAC where we had to use digi images to make ATCs, and we could pick one or more seasons - I am doing all 6. I've got to get these in the mail to the swap organizer this week, and I am so looking forward to getting back the ATCs that everyone else in the swap has created. This will be my 3rd swap with CDAC - if you haven't tried it, it's a lot of fun. They do different ones for stickpins, cards, ATCs, mini albums - just about anything.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by! Big hugs to all!

Paper a la Mode Challenge at The Outlawz

Ooh, I have been soooo remiss with my blog lately!!! And with my paper crafting too for that matter!

So now for this week's challenge, and hopefully a little inspiration for you! Over at The Outlawz, we do a weekly challenge called Paper a la Mode. There is usually a twist, and you can use the twist to make pretty much anything involving that twist. This week's challenge is to make anything but a card (so a layout, banner, mini-album, wall decoration, etc.).

So I decided to try my hand at some ATCs (or artist trading cards), which are tiny in size ( 3 1/2 inches by 2 1/2 inches ).
I am making these for a swap, in addition to this challenge, and they are seasonal. The swap requirement is that they each have to have a digital image of some sort on them. I struggled and struggled with this, because I am just not accustomed to trying to work with something so small - my typical card size is 6 inches by 6 inches!!!

So this first one is for Summer - it's the first one I did. I thought the canning jar with the flowers was just so "summery", and I tried to put it with some colors and patterns that reminded me of summer - I guess mostly because they reminded me of summers at my grandmothers house a million years ago, but my best memories ever!

This second one is for Spring, and might just be my favorite. I used an adorable image from Arielle at the Wax Fruit Company - I actually won this in a sneak peek contest, but just had not taken the time to use it yet. I think it's just too cute!

And then the third one is for autumn, and in this case I made it Halloween-y with one of my all-time favorite digis from A Day for Daisies! I love cats!

There is a fourth one that I am doing for winter, or in my case Christmas, but I am saving it for later. So stay tuned for that one coming along in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, and I hope you join us over at The Outlawz for some fun! Big hugs!