Kidspiration #10

Maybe a better name for my blog would be "A Day Late, and a Dollar Short," because I can't seem to post things in a timely manner...I still have things from October that I haven't posted yet...

Anyways, last week was Chinese New Year, so my girls decided to make some cards for the occasion. I had purchased some cute, gold dragon stickers at a huge discount in November when our LSS was going out of business (sniff)...these stickers really made it easy for my girls to make nice looking cards.

After the cards were made, Anastasia got inspired and decided to make a few twinches (2- inch Inchies) using a new doggie stamp she got for Christmas (from moi!)...


Nice job, ladies!

Kidspiration #9

My kids used to get so upset if they were doing a craft and things didn't turn out as expected, or if they messed up on a drawing...really upset. So I made up an "art motto" to ease the tension:

In art there are no mistakes...there are Embellishment Opportunities

We had such a fun Embellishment Opportunity a few weeks ago...

I was showing my daughters how to cut and emboss a scalloped circle with the Wizard. Anastasia cut a circle, but when she went to emboss it, the paper got misaligned in the die, and embossed in a weird spot. She was a little annoyed, so I said that it looked kind of "like a granny face."

I had to go and fix dinner, so I left the girls to practice. Just a note here: we do most of our crafting on the floor, so that's where the Wizard is when we cut/emboss. The plates have a tendency to come out powerfully, but the carpet catches them softens the force of their ejection.

Anyways, I was fixing dinner, and I could hear the girls talking excitedly about something, and the Wizard was ratcheting away. This went on for almost an hour. I kind of forgot about all this until after bedtime, when I went in the craft area to straighten up. I found this on the craft table:GRANNY HEADS!!! I think Anastasia was in charge of cutting/embossing, and Sophia did the art work. They even used Glossy Accents for lipstick...and some have their hair in a bun!


Definitely a successful Embellishment Opportunity. Okay, what do you do with them? Well, I was thinking magnets or something. But they decided to send them out as "prizes" to people who commented on their homeschool blog! Is that fun, or what?

Here's my art crew, sitting in our little art area...


Cheers!

Kidspiration #8

Looks like it's time for another Kidspiration entry! I think this was actually done 2 weeks ago, but since I was sick last week, it just didn't get posted (a lot of stuff didn't get done last week).

First up will be Sophia, and her card inspired by her obsession with monkeys and chimps:
SUPPLIES: Stamps...Curious George (All Night Media), Simple Alphabet (PTI); Ink...Noir (Palette); Paper...stash; Misc...brads (Making Memories), brown grosgrain (Joanns)


Next, is Anastasia's card. inspired by her LOVE of yellow (or is it an obsession?) :
SUPPLIES: Stamps...Garden Flower (Inkadinkado); Paper...Yellow #3 (DCWV), White (Georgia Pacific); Ink...black (Marcella); Misc...button, yellow satin ribbon (Joanns)

And I just had to put in a photo of my yellow guys...they are just now looking like they are getting ready to go away for the winter, so I thought I'd preserve them with a photo. They live in front of the house and always greet me when I drive up; their color is so striking, it just makes me smile when I see them...

Kidspiration #7

Seems like my girls have been more inspired than me lately. Sophia got up one morning, and started making a card ("No reason, just felt like it"). Of course, this inspired Anastasia to be inspired...so, here are the latest from my Ladies:

Sophia's card began by cutting the green paper into blades of grass, then she found the ladybug stamp and voila!

Anastasia noticed that our new clock stamp matched some printed paper bags that someone gave us. She stamped and cut out the clock and put it on the clock image (with dimensionals) on the background paper:

Thank you, Ladies! Maybe I'll get inspired soon, too....

Kidspiration #6

The other day, Anastasia said that she just felt like she needed to make a card. A few days after she made the card, she informed me that I needed to post another Kidspiration entry. The next day, she displayed her cards on my desk, with the inks that she used, next to each card...guess I'd better post her cards:


First one has sentiment embossed (she likes doing that):SUPPLIES: Stamps...Green Thumb (PTI); Ink...Aloe Vera (VersaMagic chalk); Paper...Stamper's Select, Lemon Tart (PTI); Misc...ribbon (Joann's generic), EP

This next one she combined Out on a Limb with a bird I found at Michael's...The stamp shows the bird colored as a robin, but she colored it to be a finch (our state bird):

SUPPLIES: Stamps...Out on a Limb (PTI), robin (All Night Media); Ink...Spanish Olive, Jumbo Java (VersaMagic chalk); Paper...Spring Moss (PTI), leftover braille paper; Misc...Prismacolors, rub-on


Hey, Anastasia: I posted your cards!

A Card for Daddy

Okay, short post, since Steve is out of town, school's out, and Ziggy has no one to talk to...Here is the card we made Steve for Father's Day...He's not really outdoorsy and doesn't do sports or grill or fish, so I decided to do something office-y (which he does do).

I got the idea for our card from this card on Kristina Werner's blog. I didn't have the "Hello my name is" stamp, so I printed the tag using this cool website (you can print the name tags in any color you want). The website makes sheet of 6 tags for you to print. After I printed out a sheet, I made a mini tag for our "logo" on the back of the card by color-copying and size-reducing the original (and to have some cool name tags for my daughters' dolls).


Anastasia was in charge of layout and stamping on the cover:Sophia did the stamping on the card interior:
Of course, we had to have our logo, with Scooby on it:


SUPPLIES: Paper...kraft (unknown), SK Woodcut Collage Flat (don't know cuz I accidentally cut of the brand name, which is annoying because I like this paper), old business cards of DH; Stamps...Mixed Messages (PTI), small variety alphabet (Hero Arts), date stamp (Walmart), Basic Font Clear (Fiskars); Ink...Noir (Palette), Espresso (Adirondack); Misc...corner rounder punch,Sakura stardust pen, mini file folder (JoAnn),paper piercer.

Kidspiration (sort of)

So usually, if I do a card challenge, my girls get inspired to make a card, too. But I haven't had time to do any challenges the past couple of weeks, and my girls were complaining to me that they wanted me to do SOMETHING, so that they could get inspired. I said, "What if I give us a sketch challenge?" They said, "Yay!" Sooo, here is the sketch challenge (I think it's an old one that I found on someone's blog), and our interpretations...
Here's the messy sketch I gave them...












Here is Sophia's card, made for Peter. It used a cool Curious George stamp that I found at a thrift store. Stamped in black, and colored with Prismacolor pencils.





Anastasia is still loving the Birds Galore set from Inkadinkado. Here, it is paired with Aerial paper by Memory Box. Letters are Small Variety Alphabet by Hero Arts, stamped in Versamark and clear-embossed (Anastasia is all about embossing).





Here's mine. I just bought this Lockhart cherries stamp and was dying to use it. This stamp is so good that it practically colors itself! I don't have any copics yet, so I colored it with some Prismacolor markers (I have a few that the kids used for an art class 4 years ago. I really only have 10 markers, and it just so happened that I had lt and dk green, and lt and dk red! Just what I need for cherries, yay! I didn't have any marker for the colander, so I used prismacolor pencil and gamsol for that.). Paper is Gramercy Park by American Crafts.

I had to laugh, because I wanted to put the image more to the left, but my girls said that would break the rules of the challenge! There are rules? Anyways, sketch challenges are fun because it really takes the stress off of "what is the best placement" for the image and patterned paper (since I'm new at this, sometimes I'll spend forever trying to decide the best placement, when really there are a lot of options and maybe none are best, but all are appealing?)

Kidspiration #4

These are posted later than usual because my girls didn't get inspired until Saturday (Friday is too busy for cardmaking at our house).

Anastasia is having fun with butterflies. She also extended the patterned paper so that it is on the back of the card; looks really cute. She colored the flower and small butterflies using chalk inks and an aquapainter.





Sophia made this specifically for Peter, and even asked him what sentiment he wanted on it...

Kidspiration #3

Yep, it happened again...after I made my card for Kristina Werner's Color Inspiration, my daughter got inspired, pulled out some cardstock, and made a card. Actually, both my girls were inspired this week...is this happening to anyone else?

Anyways, I had some leftover stamped images and keyhole mats, so Anastasia used them in combination with the woven ribbon technique to make this:




















Sophia used Olivia and a K&Company flower for this cute card.















Don't laugh at this one: They wanted a "Sketch Challenge", so here's my sketch, and their cards (I helped with cutting on the orange card, because Sophia likes things "just so"; Anastasia did her own cutting on the brown one, and she used this week's challenge colors)...


























Lastly is this tiny card, made by Sophia...a lovely bouquet for a cloudy day.











That's it for today; I promised the kids that if they finished their schoolwork early, we could do Sculpey!!! That stuff is so much fun. I think they are going to make a bunch of food for their dolls (should be interesting).

Kidspiration #2

Don't know if this happens to anyone else, but it seems my daughter gets inspired by seeing me get inspired by Kristina Werner's weekly Color Inspirations. This is the second week that Anastasia has been inspired, so here we go. This week, she made a small daffodil card with the sentiment "It's the little moments that make life big"

SUPPLIES: Marvy star punch, EK flower punches, stem & leaf stamp, versamark ink, stem stamp (studio G), leaf stamp (Fiskars "thank you" set), vellum sentiments (Colorbok)

Inspiration in Action

I'm very new to papercrafting, but have been enjoying learning about new techniques and gadgets these past few months. Sometimes I look at someone else's blog and get inspired, or there is a sketch or color challenge which pushes me to think of new ideas...and that is neat.

But I found something equally, if not more, satisfying than making my own "creation," and that is seeing inspiration spark in someone else and watching her create. Awesome.

My 12 year-old daughter was peeking over my shoulder while I was reading a couple of blogs: Dawn's and Stamp Happy. Something about those blogs inspired her, and she went off and made these two cards. No sketch challenge or pressure, just pure inspired creativity. I just had to post her cards, because (in my unbiased Mommy opinion) they are so cute.

Here's the one inspired by Dawn McVey's blog:

And I think this one was inspired by Stamp Happy (if I was a better photographer, you could see the layers better)

Anyways, I had to post them for posterity, because it was a cool moment and I got to see it happen...

Awesome!