Favorite felt ornament yet

This little snowflake combines two different dies from Poshta Designs- the spring garden and fancy flakes dies. I like how this one came out.

Stitching on felt

In January 2025 I placed my first order with Poshta design for dies and felt. My first purchase was a kit which (made sense because I had nothing to begin with)- however, it was for Christmas bells. As the year progressed, I got less and less interested in the bells. I never really did much with the felt and dies that I had- but I didn't lose interest. I kept watching social media occasionally buying felt, etc. I researched a lot because I love to research. I bought a few used stitching dies. Now, after getting off to a slow start. I am back to actually using some of that felt!

Craft club!

This year I have been so lucky to teach craft club on Tuesdays after school. I have three regular girls who come, and it is a joy to plan projects that they can achieve and watch them create! Here are a couple of their creations.

Cards by year

I am in the Splitcoast Stampers Dirty Dozen!

This is so exciting and such an honor!

I have loved splitcoast's website for so many years! However, this means that I cannot show my cards until after my six months is over. luckily I have a couple of cards I made for Craft Roulette which I can post.

Something different

I really should stop watching YouTube because I find out about new crafts that I just need to try. And for new crafts, you're going to need some new supplies! When I heard about die cutting felt, I just had to try it. I already had a die cutter so I only needed to buy felt and the stitching dies. Anyway, this is a nice little craft that you can do on the couch or take on the go. The owl is from a Nicole Spohr spellbinders die. The bell is from Poshta Design. The bear is not a stitching die, but a papercrafting die. It is by Trinity Stamps. I tried to stitch it to paper in order to make a gift tag, but it didn't work real. The felt and paper seemed to be off size wise.

Old faithful template

For Craft Roulette this week the parameters were: thank you card, 1950s colors, toast or bread and brown paper. Toast or bread was the difficult parameter. I have one small stamp of toasting glasses, but I do not have anything for toast or bread. So, I thought of money being "bread" and I used my old faithful plastic money holder template. Years ago I used that template to make Christmas cash envelopes for my neighbor to give to her grandkids. When I heard that it has to include Brown, my mind went to pink for 1950s colors. My aunt used to have a 1950s pink kitchen.

Double Z fold, updated room pic

Of course, I made a Z fold card for Craft Roulette.

On the show, Mary showed us how to make a double Z fold. I had never done that before. I had also never used these little Mandela stamps from spellbinders so to first I thought was good. It's not a typical card for me. Also posting a quick update on my room. I cleaned my room and I actually added a second desk, which is really helpful. It's not shown in the picture though. Why didn't I think of that before?

Rhymes with Ogg???

The parameters this week for Craft Roulette were: bookbinding card, candy colors, rhymes with ogg, lettering. I am not a big fan of the bookbinding fold, but I really had fun with the rhyming parameter. I made a cat and I learned that in Australia mog is a term for a cat. my cat is on a log with a frog. I hand drew the frog and cut him out. I made so many changes over the course of this card with layout, colors, sentiment. I colored first with alcohol markers and I did not like the result at all. Me and alcohol markers do not mix. for the final image,I used my Tim Holtz watercolor, pencils and got a much better result. The stamps were a bargain from the used craft store 2.50 for those cute cats!

Not another Zoyfold!

On the Craft Roulette challenge this weekend, the wheel made us do a card with three folds! I am not good with these fancy fold type cards. The only thing I could think was to re-create another Zoyfold card, which was required a few weeks ago by Mr. Wheel. A zoyfold is a combination of a Z food and a Joy fold card. I must admit, they are kind of fun. I liked the way this turned out and I probably should use Reid more often. The parameters were: a card with three folds, sweater colors, footwear, and a Post-it note. I colored with Prismacolor pencils and gamsol.

More Craft Roulette cards!

For some reason these parameters really did inspire me! They were: project: slimline colors: lumberjack ( this was the hardest one I thought) element: hat or cap random: lace people used all kinds of things for caps. Even bottle caps! I never would've thought of that. Love the creativity of the Craft Rouletters! here are the cards I submitted. I always like doing mixed media but I feel challenged by it.

2024 was a good year!

I made 56 cards this year. This is the most I've ever made and it's making me happy! 

Some insights- my favorite cards are card I make for people who I really know well and love. Looking them over, some of my favorite cards are the funny ones!

I always want to be artsy & watercolor and collage but I am guilty of making things way too complicated!

Here are my favorites for 2024.

 

For Scs spring gathering

Craft Roulette inspired

Craft Roulette inspired

Craft Roulette inspired

Craft Roulette inspired

Craft Roulette inspired

Craft Roulette inspired made for Joan

This one cracked me up the whole time I was making for Liz

Watercolor

 I’m a watercolor artist wannabe. Truthfully, I don’t think there are enough hours in the day for me to practice enough to get good at it. I did practice a little this week, trying the “no line” watercolor thing. I wasn’t happy with the final result, so I have not made it into a card, but anyway here it is. 

Coloring!

 I have nearly given up on my alcohol markers. It seems to me I always do a better job with the prismacolor pencils and gamsol. Weeks ago, I submitted these cards for Craft Roulette. I was so unhappy after submitting the first one that I made a bonus card. The first one was colored with alcohol markers, the second one with Prismacolor pencil. This past week, “Monday” came up on the parameters and I knew I had to use the grumpy cat from Whimsy Stamps again. This time, I actually googled for ideas and tried to color and some stripes and things on the cat to make him look more realistic. 

Colored with Prismacolor pencils & gamsol

Most recent, Prismacolor & gamsol

Club 52!

 Tonight I am submitting my 52nd card to Craft Roulette! This admits me into Club 52, for which I get nothing except bragging rights. Therefore, I get to make my own congratulations card as other club 52-ers have done before me. I had a lot of fun making this one, even though I smudged it!! Grrr, smudging makes me mad. 

Stamping luck!

 I’m showing this card because it has a four leaf clover. I have been feeling lucky in my stamp room lately. First, I was chosen to be the Splitcoast Stampers Featured Stampers on splitcoaststampers.com. This is a weekly challenge that they host where they choose a featured stamper and people make cards based on the featured gallery. I have loved splitcoast for so many years and consider this  a huge honor, as stampers were looking at my gallery and using the cards for inspiration! Secondly, I won a Craft Roulette prize! The wheel landed on my name and I randomly won $100 to the Maymay made it store. I’m so excited and honored for both.

I love a challenge from Craft Roulette!

 The parameters for episode number 226 seemed a little tougher, they were:  project: see-through, colors: jungle, element: teach or teacher, random: tangle. See through kind of threw me off, as well as teacher. All I could think of for a teacher was either letters or numbers. (There are a lot of cute card examples that use random numbers)  I remembered this word collage stamp that I’ve always loved from Stampin Up, which has uplifting words that a teacher might use! I decided to make a frame around it for the see-through portion. The tangle is a tangle of leaves. I used my matching leave and die set from Reverse Confetti. I was so happy to use this little sword stamp again, I have probably had it for 20 years and I’ve always loved it. Here are some pictures of the process.

I have first I embossed the central image in white, but then I found out I really liked the leaves in gold. In the end I did another one in gold. I really liked the color combination. It was Stampin Up pretty peacock ink with Gina K Cocoa Ink. 

First time making a mini slimline

 As usual, craft roulette stretches me! I had never made a mini slimline before. When mini card came up as the project, people in the “chatterbox” mentioned this format. I had to look up the dimensions. I really like how it came out, but it was a struggle figuring out a layout. I am including some photos of my trial and error layouts.

Since one of the parameters was packaging, I really wanted to make a little envelope out of a paper bag as seen above in the right photo. But in the end, I didn’t like it. After all of the trials and decisions I was happy with my card, but it definitely took a while!

A Cat and a Window in one card!

 I almost never make window cards and I always admire them when other people make them. As usual, it takes Craft Roulette to get me to step out of the box. This was my card for episode 222. The parameters were project: Dutch door, colors: gnomes, element: movie, random: building blocks. You can see I used bricks for the building blocks as well as the cushions the cat is sitting on. I cut away the top part of the card to fulfill the Dutch door requirement, and I used the Aristocats as my movie. The image was colored with Prismacolor pencils and gamsol. This stamp from Picket Fence Studios was perfect for it!

Finally using these birdhouse stamps, thanks Craft Roulette!

 I have had these cute birdhouse stamps from Papertrey ink for a while and they have been uninked! Yikes! I don’t know why, they were really fun to play with. For the parameter, larger and smaller I needed a small bird house, so I hand drew one. I get excited when I hand draw on a card because I feel it’s being so brave. I am such a stamper! The thing I always start with is my main stamp or stamp set and then I build the card around