FFF and a Very Special Birthday

Happy Friday guys! To think I almost missed the chance to tell our talented and creative Marie, creator of The Greeting Farm stamps, Happy Birthday! To celebrate her special day our Farm Fresh Friday challenge theme is Birthdays and I have a card made especially for Marie using none other than Birthday Anya I

Birthday Anya I

I used one of my very first stamps I ever purchased by Marie, I thought this cheerful cutie would be perfect for the occasion. I colored her up using my copic markers on a piece on a sample of heavenly white cardstock sent by the paper temptress with my order of cryogen white cardstock. I loved the heavenly white so much I wish I could return the cryogen white for a pack of it instead! The texture was super smooth and the color was extremely white so my copic colors showed up really vibrant and bright. The papers I used are from doodlebug designs sugar shoppe collection (one of my favorites). I only wanted a little embellishment to let the image take center stage so I used a bit of baker's twine and a few enamel dots. I drew a banner with a copic multiliner and used a lawn fawn happy birthday sentiment inside it, fussy cut it out and mounted it to my card with foam dots. Be sure to stop by The Greeting Farm and link up your creations for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to the TGF store. Leave Marie a birthday shout out and one lucky commenter has an extra chance to win a $15 gift certificate so hurry over and give her some love!

See you soon,

-Krys

Farm Fresh Friday: Boys Only!

TGIF fellow farmers! The last week has been really stressful on me and I'm glad its coming to a close. Between getting over a cold while nursing two sick babies back to health, coping with a death in my family, and preparing my hubby for a mini deployment cycle, I've been super preoccupied leaving almost no time for crafting! I did however manage to squeeze in a cute little card for this week's Farm Fresh Friday challenge, Boys Only, over at The Greeting Farm.

Roll Call Kit (Dylan)

Both this little cutie and the sentiment was part of one of the large 8x10 rubber sets released by The Greeting Farm called the Roll Call Kit, which features 10 adorable full size stamps of the Wild Sprouts line. I colored Dylan using my copic markers on Xpress it blending card. The papers I used are from the Hip Hop Hooray 6x6 doodlebug designs 6x6 pad layered on top of bazzill heavy weight card shoppe cardstock in the color whirlypop. I heat embossed the sentiment in white EP and added a few enamel dots and a piece of orange and white bakers twine. The sketch I used for the layout was from the Retrosketches challenge blog. Since the challenge was Boys Only, I contained my urge to add stickles and wink of stella to every inch of this card, believe me, it drove me NUTS! Now it's your turn, pop over to The Greeting Farm and check out the rest of my D.Teamies' projects and link up for your chance to win an awesome prize!

Lots-o-Love,

-Krys

Practice Makes Perfect

Happy Thursday Farmer friends, Farmer Krys here! If you tuned in on Monday, Marie shared a few of her new year's resolutions with you guys and I thought it was a wonderful idea. So in keeping with her theme, I thought I'd share some of my crafty resolutions with you guys too! Now I don't know about you but I just couldn't get enough of those adorable New Releases from The Greeting Farm so I whipped up something quickly to share with you guys using the comfy chic Day Off Anya

Day off Anya

This year, one of my new years resolutions was to get outside my comfort zone more often as well as practice techniques I struggle with. You can't really tell from the picture (but boy did I try!) that this image was paper pieced using the technique I've been practicing, adding dimension to a normally flat image by use of 3d glue and embossing. I've also been practicing my CAS cards because I am horrible at scaling back my embellishing and layering to the point of one card taking hours to complete! Sometimes, a quick card is a stress reliever, especially when you are already taking so much time to create a 3d paper pieced image. This card was all around practice for me, CAS, 3D paper piecing, and hair coloring. Do you guys have any techniques you try out that could use a little practice? We'd love to hear. Don't forget to join us tomorrow at The Greeting Farm for a new Farm Fresh Friday Challenge where we'll announce the winner from the last Farm Fresh Friday and show off some awesome inspiring projects from the DT!

Lots-O-Love,

-Krys

De-stress with Distress

Hi there bloggers, still dealing with chilly weather and to be honest the snow is kind of growing on me. We got about 2 feet in one day and my girls are loving it! My oldest has had snow days back to back and today is a half day so I'm preparing for more fun in the snow. Rather than shoveling snow from my driveway, I sneaked away to my craft room and made one more quick card for this week's FFF challenge Holiday Cards over at The Greeting Farm, using Miko from the Roll Call Kit

Miko (Roll Call Kit)

Once again I used my Tim Holtz distress markers to watercolor the image (LOVE those things!) because practice makes perfect, right? I tend to focus so hard on getting my watercoloring so much that my stress seems to melt away, or at least fade them into the background. It truly is my newest form of stress relief and The Greeting Farm's images are perfect for practice because they are beautiful without adding too many tiny details and they have large faces and lots of hair. I stamped Miko in Timber Brown Stayzon ink on canson cold press watercolor paper. All the papers used for this card are from my stash. I confess to being a bit of a pack rat and a hoarder when it comes to my scrapbook supplies. When I have small scrap pieces left over I tend to store them in a ziplock baggie by color or them, that way when I need to layer or add accent, I can reach for one of the left over scraps rather than cut up another full piece. I paired together these three different papers (all originally from my LCS' open stock) and layered them onto a piece of Bazzill heavy weight card shoppe cardstock. The sentiment from The Greeting Farm's OA Lovey Dovey 4x6 set was stamped in Memento Rich Cocoa. The image took up quite a bit of room so I kept the embellishment simple, adding only a few enamel dots and a little ribbon. I adore Valentine's day so I absolutely could not pass up an opportunity to pull out my V day papers for a card challenge! Its actually super late here and I have a busy day today so I'll call it a night after I head over to sneak one more card in for the Farm Fresh Friday, See you guys tomorrow!

-Krys

Tropical Twinsies

Try and say that 5 times fast, and record it, and send it to me, I love a good laugh :D I kid, but today's post is definitely a double take on a tropical treat. I loved coloring the two toned dress worn by SOG's Tropical Mae, that I thought I'd print her out and color her up again using a different pallet.

I loved figuring out what shades would fade green into soft blue seamlessly. It took a little thought but I absolutely love the results. Another thing I love about the SOG stamps is that, like TGF stamps that I love so much, these don't have anything limiting them to a particular race or nationality. The stamps are very versatile because of this ambiguity I'm free to color them any way I choose without it looking like something is "off".

I thought this would be the perfect stamp to use since her 'twin' just won a spotlight this week in the June linky party over on the Some Odd Girl Blog so maybe she's luck ^.^ I used my copics to color Ms Mae and added stickles to her dress to make it sparkle. I wanted to keep the layout the same and just swap colors so I used the same DP pads from Bo Bunny and Echo park and finished it off with jute twine, a matching button from my stash and my new favorite embellishment next to glitter, enamel dots! This linky party isn't over, you still have a chance to link up and make your projects shine, get craftin', I know I'm about to!
-Krys

Cupcakes and Comfort Zones

Hi guys just a quick post from me since I feel like this card is nothing to write home about :( I know it seems strange to post a card that I don't feel is my best work but I thought I'd take it in stride share it with you guys and explain why. I love card challenges, especially at The Greeting Farm so I do my best to create at least one project especially for their challenges, even if I don't enter any other challenges TGF is my mandatory every week. This week's FFF Challenge was a sketch...I'll be honest, sketches scare the crap outta me for the most part, which is pretty odd considering I usually have trouble coming up with a layout for my cards (ironic huh?). Well for whatever reason, sketches give me the blues and the one for FFF looked especially complicated so I wasn't even gonna try. It ate away at me all week long so I finally decided to step out of my comfort zone and came up with an entry.

Double Cupcake Anya

Hair: E49, E47, E44

Skin: YR00, YR000, E50

Clothes: R83, R81, RV10, RV00, N1, N0, R27, R24, R22

 It came together pretty well and while I don't feel like this was one of my best projects I am still pretty proud of my attempt so yay me! The icecream and sprinkles DP is Carta Bella Cool Summer the blue with white swirls was something I doodled on a scrap of blue cardstock. A few enamel dots with a little baker's twine and I called it a day. This just goes to show that even when we feel like we can't do something, we'll never know for sure till we give it a try. So, step out of your comfort zone and craft your little heart out!

-Krys

Sweet Summertime

Well I guess not EVERY day can be beautiful, warm, and sunny here but I suppose I can live with that lol. Today I woke up to cloudy skies and cooler weather but still its so beautiful here I can over look the chill, besides, it gives me an actual excuse to stay huddled up in my craft room all day, how exciting is that? Speaking of my craft room I've been meaning to post pictures of my new space and here it is:

Not much to look at right now but I'm brainstorming a few projects to add some 'Me-ness' to my space and as I decorate I'll keep you guys updated on how it goes. I'm super excited about it because I've never had my own crafting space, its always been limited to the kitchen table but now I have my own desk my own chair, my own ROOM...and no idea how to decorate it ^.^ I have a few ideas though and i hope you guys love them, I'll post them as I find/buy/create them! Meanwhile I'll be working on cards and things in MY ROOM !!!  ahhh that never gets old lol! Today I actually made a card, the first card in my new ROOM (^.^) and its sooo cute! I love head swapping with TGF stamps and took their Summer Lovin' Challenge as a perfect opportunity to do so:

Head: Magical Bean/ Body: Frappi Anya

Colors used:

Skin: E13, E11, E00

Hair: E29, E27, E23

Clothes: RV21, RV10, RV00, Y11, Y01, Y00, B95, B91

Drink: BG32, BG10, G000, E40, RV83, RV81

Ok so this adorable cutie is actually a mix up of Magical bean from the Magical Kit and the exclusive Frappi Anya with a little altering of her outfit to make it more summerish. I thought one of the original beans in the kit would be my favorite, but this gorgeous little lady stole my heart with her sassy sweet bob that just sings summer to me. She's been the highlight of many projects since my kit first arrived. She seriously stole the show, and with a showstopper like her I wanted to keep the card simple and fresh. I layered some circles cut from crate paper's 'The Pier' 6x6 pad paired with a few sentiments cut from Carta Bella 'Cool Summer' 6x6 pad to follow the layout for the Retro Sketches Challenge. I added a few random DIY enamel dots and my signature stickles to give this my card some sparkle. With a mint chocolate chip frappe to keep cool, this gal is ready for summer, are you?

-Krys

Room to Grow

Wow guys it truly seems like forever since the last time I was able to blog but as promised, I'm back!!! A lot has been going on and it's taken a while to get settled in but my family and I have finally completed our move and have unpacked everything! We got rid of the last box in the living room, the corner looked so empty I wanted to put the box back just for decoration lol! As promised, my DH came through for me and I now have my very own craft room, complete with a new craft desk, just right for me. Of course I had to break open my newest TGF haul, the Magical kit I preordered! I've seriously been crafting like crazy and making a mess that I am excited to be able to just close the door on and walk away because I can, it's a mess in my own room!!! This week's FFF, Summer Lovin' seemed like a perfect comeback challenge! Hope I haven't lost my touch

Magical Bean

Hair: e40,42,43, 

Skin: e21,00,000

Clothes: y19,11,02

For this tag I decided to pull out my twinkling h2o water colors and create a background that sings of summer! I used the flowers that came with TGF's winky bean acrylic stamp set and a few DIY enamel dots with some ribbon from my stash. I LOVE enamel dots but they are a bit overpriced to me so this DIY trick is a big money saver! The sentiment is a wood mounted stamp from Walmart. I'm seriously in love with this kit and can't wait till June 1st to pre order the next TGF kit! Happy early Memorial Day guys and gals, see you again soon

-Krys