Maggie Card Swap

I belong to a sweet little group on Yahoo Groups that likes to exchange kits to make cards and pre-made cards. This month's card swap theme is "Wouldn't It Be Loverly", a Valentine theme I suppose. Here's a photo of the card I made my partner, Beth...

This was a lot of fun! Little did I know when I was using my yummy bag of printed kraft pieces that these were actually scraps from a new line of card stock by Canvas Corp. I'm seeing it around now and at sneak peeks from CHA this week! Also used a number of Cricut cartridges for the hearts and my ever-growing supply of Copics for coloring, then tossed in some red Stickles and slathered things with Ranger Glossy Accents. There was also a generous amount of antiquing going on with various Colorbox stamp pads. Oh, and the most fun item is the little paper piecing I used on Edwin's overalls...that's more from the scrap pack by Canvas Corp I purchased at A.C. Moore. The ivory rose was snipped from trim purchased on eBay long ago. The trinket pin is by Maya Road with a little addition of a red glass crystal I glued in place with a small dab of Glossy Accents (that stuff is amazing and love it's "multipurpose-ness"!) I used Spellbinder's lacy square for the interior. The awesome black & ivory check ribbon is from a spool I won at May Arts...lucky me! Here are a few more close-ups for you to see:

Guess what? It's an easel card!

Tilda Valentine Challenge

Magnolia-licious is having a Valentine challenge. Be sure to check it out. Here's a look at my entry...

Notice I split the easel card base so the top of my heart shows! Be sure to check out the details below about my Tilda and Edwin image.

I used distressing & antiquing on the card and pop dots to lift the large heart off the base for some fun dimension.

I came across a tiny heart print cardstock in one of those scrap packs at my local craft store and knew I had to do a paperpiecing on my Edwin overalls. I also used the same print on Tilda's pocket. Edwins patches and pockets were colored with a Copic marker. I love the result...those hearts are the perfect size for this technique. By the way, all I did was stamp the image on the red heart cardstock and fussy cut and glued over my image used here. Easy peasy!

I made all the heart embellies on the card with my Cricut using hearts from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. The red heart window was a double cut of the same hearts, created using Cricut's Design Studio and my laptop. I pop-dotted the red frame over a black and kraft heart base, which I cut using the larger outer heart so they would match up perfectly. "I & U" were cut using "All Mixed Up". To give them more zing I highlighted the heart edges with Colorbox Frosted White stamp pad, added a layer of red Stickles, and slathered with Ranger's Glossy Accents. A heart-shaped faux crystal was added from my stash.

Here are the ingredients for my little recipe. (Oops - am showing the negative of the letters I used.)

I also plan to enter this card in the following challenges:
Just Magnolia and Hanglar Stanglar "Window" challenge. Hurry...this one ends Jan. 25th!

Mojo Back at Last!!

I have been in a recovery period since Christmas and finally have some mojo back and have been spending time in my studio making Valentine cards.

I LOVED this Valentine card so much last year that I thought I'd see how many I could make to sell in my Etsy.com store. It has been ages since I listed anything there also but am at up for a test to see how the economy is doing for handmade papercrafts. I even sat down and remade my logo to finally match my name.

The buttons are from a huge tin my mother gifted me of many years ago. My sister always got mom's heirloom jewelry, etc. and I got a tin of buttons, tarnished silverplate, and the like. Gotta love those two, they always took such good care of me! Anyway, I have always marveled at how bottomless that tin has been and how metaphoric is was for my life so when I sat down to create my blog it came to mind, hence my blog name..."Musings from the Button Box".

I hope you've enjoyed my little bit of family history and will check out my listings on Esty.com and stop back soon.

I have a number of Magnolia Valentines to post and enter in challenges this week.

A Fun, Funny Cupcake Tutorial

I found this a while back and LOVE this zany gal and her family.  Check it out,  Someday, I'm going to make one of these yummy paper cupcakes!

LOTV Blog Candy

Woohoo...this is blogging worthy! LOTV is giving away 12, yes twelve, images in their candy that ends tomorrow.  So...hurry over NOW and enter your name.  I did!

New Year's resolution:  get some LOTV this year!!