CAS-ual Fridays, man it's casual

Hello blog friends! I hope you are having a fabulous week thus far and have been able to stop by CAS-ual Fridays and check out the aweome creations by the Girl Fridays. Don't forget about the Girl Fridays Facebook Inspiration Team. Our challenge this week it to create a clean and simple masculine card using designer paper.



 

Our faboulous sponsor this week is Gina K. Designs. She has created a fabulous pack of patterned paper called Casual Friday. It is an aweome collection of papers, just perfect for your masculine card making.

My cardbase is Kraft, but the rest of the papers came from the Casual Fridays paper pack. I die cut "Dad" using PTI's alpha dies and the stamped sentiment is from Boy Basics: Grunge Me. I finished it off with a button and twine. Thanks for stopping by and don't forget, you have 12 more hours to get your craft on!

PTI May blog hop

It's that time of the month again! It's Papertrey Ink's monthly blog hop. Ever since starting my blog and following along with this hop, I have never been disappointed. It is always so much fun! Here is our inspiration photo.

These are some of my favorite colors to work with. They are so versatile for boy or girl. Well, the recepient(s) of this card will be delighted to receive it in just about 24 hours *hint, hint*. I usually want to incorporate the patterns I see in the ispiration photo, but this time around, I simply went with color inspiration. I used a sketch from retro sketches, although the challenge is over. I just can't pass up an awesome sketch. Here is my card:

For those of you who know me, I have been challenging myself to steer away from just white card bases. Yahoo!! I did it!! I used my score pal to create the diagonal lines on the black cardstock. It is a little hard to see in the photo, but it really packs a punch. I did use my Linen/canvas IP on the card base, but the photo just didn't pick that up either. sigh. The stamped image is from Botanical Silhouettes. I love that set!! I used Spring Moss and Simply Chartreuse for the flowers and popped up some of them with foam adhesive. And I finished it off with a bow. This is pretty daring of me since I have a fear of bows. Enjoy the hop!

CAS-ual Fridays- punchy

Hi friends! I hope your week is treating you well. Just a few more days and our long Memorial weekend will be here for us living in the states. I hope you have some fun plans with family and friends.

As part of the CAS-ual Fridays Facebook Inspiration team, today is my day to do just that: leave you with a bit of inspiration.  I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen thus far. The Girl Fridays are pretty amazing! This week's challenge is to dust off some of your old punches, or use dies to create a clean and simple card. Remember that the challenge ends on Thursday at noon.

Our fabulous sponsor is Lawn Fawn.

Their stamps are so adorable and their papers are pretty fabulous, too. The winner this week will win a $25 gift certificate.

For my card, I desparately wanted to use one of the fabulous images from plus one. But no matter what I came up with, I just wasn't completely satisfied. So I chose to use just a sentiment from this set. I dusted off my old Creative Memories star punch to create the focal point. The inside star was punched from Lawn Fawn's Bright side paper pack. What a fun collection of papers! This is one of my most CAS cards yet. I love it!

Thank you, sis!

Happy Sunday, friends! I hope you are having a fabulous weekend. I am. Just so you know, this is not my typical post.

This weekend, my twin sister and her family came to visit. On Friday, we had a belated birthday celebration. We had a lovely dinner together with our hubbies, as my in-laws graciously watched our two kiddos and their two kiddos. At dinner, she gave me my birthday present. She blessed me with her NikonD90 and a 35mm 1.8D lens. Yes, I am truly blessed by my sister and brother-in-law! My sister has been blessed to buy an even better camera, so I am thrilled to inherit this baby. You will have to be patient with me as I try to improve my photography. There is so much to learn. sigh.

On Saturday evening, after they left, I tried practicing with my new camera. My precious daughter cooperated a teensy bit and I manage to get this photo.

I also snapped a photo of Leah and Joshua laughing at my hubby as he tried to whistle on a blade of grass.

I am truly thankful to my sister and brother-in-law for their generous gift. They are simply amazing!!!

I am also linking this up to simple as that.



CAS-ual Fridays, feathered friends

Happy Wednesday to everybody! Today is my day to share my CAS-ual Fridays inspired card. This week's casual fridays challenge is to create a card or project inspired by our feathered friends.

I hope you  have been able to stop by the  CAS-ual Fridays blog as well as the facebook page. There is a lot of fabulous inspiration. Don't forget that you now have 12 more hours of playing time with the challenge ending at noon on Thursday. This week's challenge is sponsored by anabelle stamps.

 The winner will receive a twenty dollar gift voucher.

 Believe it or not, I only had three different bird stamps in my crafting arsenal, so I had to be creative. I decided to stamp the bird image from PTIs Tag-its 2 several times in different colors. The sentiment is from Fillable Frames #5.

On a personal note, I know my blog has been quiet over the last week. I have been working on some things for my kiddos bedrooms. Most of these projects I had started when my son was only 2 months old. *throat cleared* He just turned 10 months old on Mother's Day. So I decided it was about time to finish those projects. I hope to have those to share on the blog soon.

CAS-ual Fridays birthday

Today's post is my first post for CAS-ual Fridays as a part of the Girl Friday Facebook Inspiration Team. Join me in celebrating CAS-ual Fridays first blog birthday!!!!! Woot, woot!! This week's challenge is also our guest designer challenge.

Want to know another little secret? Today also happens to be my actual birthday! Crazy, I know! I have to give a shout out to my sweet twin sister, Eva!! Love ya girl!!!

Our fabulous sponsor for this week's birthday celebration is SimonSaysStamp. They are giving away some prizes worth over $100!!! Yes, that's right! There are many ways to be amongst the winners this week. You can submit an entry for this week's challenge, leave a comment on the blog or leave a comment on the CAS-ual Fridays facebook page. Don't forget that you have an extra 12 hours to play along until noon on Thursday.

Here is my card to celebrate this awesome occasion!

 

I created my own little party hat by stamping one of my Studio Calico flag images. I used a circle punch for the topper and hand cut the pom pom and fringe. I attached it using foam adhesive. The sentiment, patterned paper and ink are from Papertrey Ink. Thanks for celebrating!

Pages with Papertrey #9

I hope you are having a fabulous weekend!! Today I have a layout to share with you. It is the second part of a two-page layout. You can see the first page here. I had begun this page before Leigh issued this month's Pages with Papertrey challenge #9. Our challenge is to stamp on patterned paper. It is a bonus if we use a picture of ourselves. Well, I had already included a picture of me holding my son in the carrier, so I thought this might apply. I decided that I would stamp some grunge circles and stars over my patterned paper I had already chosen. I used a sketch from Got Sketch? blog.

All of the elements are from Becky Higgins Sweet Baby kit except the cardstock for the title and the stamping which is Papertrey Ink. The title was die cut using my alpha die. I realize that National Scrapbooking Day was yesterday, but better late than never *wink*.

© Valerie Salmon. Valerie's sketches are exclusively created for the Got Sketch? blog. They are for personal use only. Please do notuse them as reference for any publication submissions, contest entries, design team projects, class projects, design templates, or other similar purposes.

Permission is required before taking sketches and other images from the Got Sketch?blog to post elsewhere. Do not reproduce or distribute. Proper credit for their use in galleries, forums, and & blogs is appreciated.

 

Celebrate

Yippee!!!! It's Friday! It's been another long week at work, and my craftroom has been lonely. But today, alas, I got off from work early and spent a little time getting crafty. I whipped up this little birthday card for this week's  ColourQ challenge. I was inpired by Kasia's card.

I did some masking for the first time ever! Can you believe it?! Please do not look too closely at the details. Masking takes away my usual tricks to stamp straight lines. Oh well. I am still pleased with the way it turned out. 

My weekend will be just as busy as this past week, but I hope to post a scrapbook layout I have been trying to work on very soon. Thanks for stopping by!