Punchy Party Planning

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful summer weekend with the kids fresh out of school! Let the fun begin...

For us, we celebrated Canada Day (July 1st) with outdoor festivities, fireworks and of course outdoor food.  

I love outdoor parties and I enjoyed the last watermelon craft (treat holder) in the previous post soooo much....that I had to make more.  Lots more...

Card number one, in Melon Mambo and Garden Green.... 

The seeds are made from a scallop square punch, each scallop I cut at an angle like a teardrop and removed from the square.  You can also use a scallop circle (or any scalloped shape) to make tear drop shapes for seeds, eyes etc.

Next...CHOMP...nom nom....a watermelon card (or invitation) with a wee bite taken out (thanks to my circle punches)

A closer look at this one and you can see it is done with Riding Hood Red (a more masculine watermelon?)  and the seeds are arranged in a row across the melon. 

The seeds are highlighted with white gel pen.

The watermelon rinds are sponged with green ink to give it a more true to life effect.

Decorate your drinks!  Punch a little watermelon with your circle punches and sassy up those straws!  Bendy straws would have been better...but I have none...so we improvise.

Punch up those paper plates with some watermelon funfetti!  Okay so they are really only half circles of watermelon coloured circle punches...but they work very well! Cute!

Make a napkin ring/name card with your small circle punches and a ring of matching cardstock.  Leave out the seeds and you have room to write a name!

I hope you've enjoyed our little watermelon punch party!

xo.
D.

PS.  How did I get those round bottom cards to stand straight?  On the back of the card, the bottom edge is trimmed flat so that it doesn't tip and roll.  Have fun!

Barbecue Punch Art (with faux cloud technique)

What do you do when you need a card for a dude or a dad and you've already used your masculine stamp sets to death?  They've seen them already! You're out of aces! 

You make punch art.  Yes you do! 

Punch art....because it's easy, it's WOW and you can create anything, really you can!

To create a BBQ or (grill) you'll need a large 1 3/4" circle punch, word window punch and a 1/2" circle punch.  That is it! 

Faux clouds in the background were done with the scalloped oval punch.

The grass was made by punching the scalloped border and then going back over it (offset) to make the ends 'spikey' and more grass like.  Voila. Man card.  Fast. Easy.  Me likey.

Shout out and thanks to all of the ladies who share their punched art with me through organized swaps and blogging we've received and given a lot of inspiration...and this BBQ saved my bacon....

speaking of bacon...

Doesn't that ribbon look like bacon?  Perfect :)

Inspiration - A CREATIVE Challenge

Earlier today I threw down a CREATIVE challenge on the Prairie Paperie Facebook page to my readers and I want my blog readers to get in on the fun too!

The challenge springs forth from yesterday's blog post where I shared a card that I made.  You can read the blog post here (right after you finish reading this one!).

Here's the challenge:

1. Find something in your environment that inspires you, that pleases your eyes.

Good examples of places to look are:

• signs
• packaging
• clothing
• magazine ads
• patterns in textiles
• decorating

2. Figure out what you like about it?  The colour? The shape?....take note of these things...jot it down.

3. Translate the things that you like from your inspiration piece into a scrapbook page, a scrapbook layout or a card.

4. Go to the Prairie Paperie Facebook page and share you creative challenge piece!  Please leave us a photo and a comment....if there is a story, please share your story as well as your pictures! 

5. Not a Facebook user? No problem! Leave us a link to your creation here (using the Mr. Linky widget) so that we can go to your blog or online posting and leave you a comment!  (please ensure that you leave the direct link to the posting of your project, as we don't want to have to hunt for it!)

This was my inspiration piece...a portfolio from on of the schools in my city.  Here I just want you to notice the funky, retro look to the art, the modern and fresh colours, the cute bird....

Here is a close - up of the finished card

• I did my best to colour match (in real life it is VERY close). 
• I kept with the same layout, put my sentiment where they used a slogan or logo....
• I 'cartoonized' my edges by distressing them/swiping them over my black ink pad...

I'm all kinds of happy about this!

So, what do you think?  Are you ready to play, want to take the CREATIVE CHALLENGE? 

Don't forget to visit the Prairie Paperie facebook page and become a fan....something fun happens when we reach 500. 

Itty bitty bit of groovy...there is a new widget near the bottom by the comments. It's a little tiny toolbar that enables you to instantly 'share'  my blog posts with others in your favourite social networks! It's itty bitty and down near the comments...please let me know if you use it, and if you like it.  Your feedback is important to me!

Roundup - I Want Candy

Here it is!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the "I Want Candy" colour challenge in March. We had the deadline open for almost the entire month and we received a GREAT VARIETY of projects to share.

You all created beautiful samples and I wanted to do something fun and pretty to showcase your creations...

I used flowers and soft colours from the Candy challenge inspiration piece we saw back in March and turned your submissions into a bouquet of pretty spring posies! Have a look...



In randomly selected order from 1-8...I present to you the lovely creations of:

1. Lori-Anne
2. Sharon
3. Hanway Ink
4. Lori-Anne
5. Leslie (CrookedStamper)
6. Paper Batty
7. Kerri
8. Leslie (CrookedStamper)

Please click on the linked names and go view the projects large and beautiful! While you're visiting..share some love and leave a comment. We like comments.

Thanks for visiting, and thanks for participating!

Dreena

Wanted

Rewind to last Saturday..... my good friend DG had arranged and booked a Stampin' Up! workshop and a few of his close and wonderful friends were coming, which was exciting and fantastic....

So how do you balance a workshop for one dude, a few lovely ladies, all mixed interests and levels...and none I've previously met. Would feminine projects offend? Should we scrapbook? Make cards? BigShot? Small things, big things? Oh dear...

Stop thinking and start doing...just do what Stampin' Up! says to do...share what we love!

WELLLLLL, I loved the faux wood technique that I featured in a previous post...and what stamp set and colours would go with that 'look'? The stamp set...WANTED....check it out...

This starts off with an 8.5x11" piece of Kraft cardstock for the base scrapbook page. The supplies used are Kraft cardstock stamped with elements from Wanted in Ruby Red, Bordering Blue and Night of Navy. Then....sponged with Close to Cocoa, and Whisper White to give it 'grit' baby...I'm feelin' OLD WEST!

Here I've added a Very Vanilla strip along the bottom, and layered it on to a 12x12" piece of textured Chocolate Chip cardstock. A very special thanks goes out to my husband for playing a 'villainous' model so that I could have pictures for my western themed scrap page!

This would be an idea of what everything would look like with extra 'outtakes' and pictures or journalling and memorabilia added to the page. The embellished vanilla block at the top can be used for another photo or a nice journalling block!

I hope you enjoyed this other take on 'faux wood' technique and to see how easy it is to progress from small scrap page to large!

Here's the Wanted stamp set which you can order online (and all other inks and accessories as well*), even in your jammies right now, my store is always open (Canadian orders) here!





*husband not for sale, I'm keeping him as he is very WANTED