Mojo Monday 159 and SCS Sketch 300

This week's Mojo Monday sketch looked like a fun one, and it was a contest week, so I decided to play along to make a birthday card for my nephew, who is also a dog lover.  I ended up rotating and flipping the sketch to make it work.

I'm trying to be less of a hoarder and more footloose and fancy free with my patterned paper, so I pulled out some of my favorite patterned paper of all time-SU's Sweet Slumber.  I stamped and colored Rowley from Eat Cake Graphics, then masked and stamped the party hat from The Cat's Pajamas. The sentiment is from The Cat's Pajamas, too, and I handcut the border to match the wonkiness.  The cake stamp is from Rubber Soul, which brings me to my newest Stamping Issue:

RED

All I want is a nice red colored pencil, copic, and ink.  Not too orangey.  Not too purple.  Not too pink.  Not something that looks like blood stains.  The red on the party hat I got by layering C3 copic under R29, which turned out ok.  I tried to use Colorbox Warm Red for the cake, but ended up having to go over it with R29.  Please let me know if you've solved the Red Issue!

Last week was also the 300th SCS Sketch Challenge, so I played along to make a thank you note.  We recently got tile in our wing of classrooms and it just so happens the parents of one of our students make desk feet, and they were so generous in donating enough for all of us.  What a perfect excuse to play with my new Crate Paper School Spirit 6x6 paper pad!

This card just made me giddy as it all came together!  I paper pieced the PTI Vintage Picnic basket & apples, adding some highlights and green to the apples with colored pencils.  I couldn't find a blue, brown, or green to match the patterned paper, so I ended up using the polka dot paper as a mat for the report card.  Look at me being all funky!

Hope y'all are having a fun and funky weekend as well!

CAS DT Search

The Fall CAS Design Team search has begun, and the first challenge is to create a card for the theme "Teacher's Pet" using at least one punch.  Right up my alley!

I was going to do a book theme with a gift card holder, and when I went to get my Barnes & Noble teacher discount card out to use as a size template, it had a "heart apple," which inspired me to make this card instead.  I used my Marvy Uchida heart punch to punch the three hearts out of Gina K Pure Luxury cardstock, then colored them using R24, R27, and R29 copic markers.  I swiped the blender pen a couple times for the soft highlighting and used a white gel pen for the top highlighting.  The leaves were cut from Old Olive and the stems from Soft Suede (these two tasks were the most challenging of the entire card--my desk is covered in too big leaves, too small leaves, too long stems, too thick stems...).  I used my Xyron to adhere them to a white rectangle bordered with black, which is foam mounted onto the Old Olive background.

 The sentiment is from PTI's Vintage Picnik.  I wrapped some wonderful red burlap twine that Emily (aka "stamping out") sent me around the card, then gathered it using a separate piece of twine that I pulled through the button and tied.  I think we find out Tuesday night if we've made the first round--fingers crossed!

Speaking of fingers crossed and winning, the voting is up for PaperWorks Company's Ultimate Summer Challenge. There is some stiff competition, so any love you'd like to leave for our Creative Critters team would be much appreciated!