I love to CASE!

The beautiful thing about handmade cards lies in their uniquenes. As opposed to mass-produced store-bought cards, each handmade card is different. In addition, unless the creator of the card has an Etsy shop (or is your neighbor), you cannot easily run out and buy them if you see one you like. So what do you do if you are drifting through blogland and find the perfect handmade birthday card for your mother? Well, if you are a crafter like me, you CASE it! The following cards are copies from cards I simply loved from other blogs.

The first one is copied from an award-winning card in the Hero Arts Blog. Once I saw it, I knew it would be the perfect birthday card for my mom. I remember she used to doodle little snails besides her name while she was talking on the phone or during a boring meeting. Since I didn't have that particular Hero Arts stamp (or any snail stamp), I drew a similar snail, scanned it on my computer and printed nine images of the drawing. I then proceeded to color my little snails with Copic markers and cut them out. I added gold Stickles to the tip of the antennae for added bling. The patterned paper is Basic Grey.

The next CASEd card comes from a blog I frequently visit: A bit of this, A bit of that. I saw this card the other day and decided it would be my little brother's birthday card. I didn't have the particular circle die-cuts she used, so I drew a similar design with my Versamarker, embossed it with SU! white embossing powder and punched the circles with SU! 1 3/8 and 1 3/4 circle punches. I dry embossed the circles at the top with a bone folder and a SU! paper piercing guide. The sentiment is from the CTMH Happy Birthday stamp set. The woodgrain background stamp is from Hero Arts. The cardstock is SU!: Chocolate Chip, Close to Cocoa, So saffron, Pumpkin Pie and Whisper White.

In the process, I learned one lesson: you don't need the exact materials/stamps to reproduce someone else's card. I am also thankful for all those talented ladies who take the time to share their creations with the rest of us.

Inspired by Clouds

Rene Magritte is my favorite painter. A couple of days ago, as I was looking at his paintings in this book , I felt a sudden surge of inspiration. I wanted to do something with clouds. I stamped the Hero Arts clouds background stamp on SU! Whisper White and then found myself staring blankly at the image. Now what? Butterflies? Birds? A couple of trees? I put it away for later consideration.

Yesterday, while I was blog hopping, I read Cathy Zielske's post about the movie Up. I totally agree with her: the movie is beautiful. I spent most of the movie either laughing or crying. Remembering it gave me the idea for my clouds card: balloons!

So here it is:

Recipe:

Stamps: SU! Crazy for Cupcakes, Hero Arts Clouds Background, CTMH Say it in Style

Paper: SU! Whisper White, Hero Arts Blue Notecard, Creative Memories Gazebo Power Pallette

Ink: SU! Bashful Blue, Stazon Black

Other: Stampin' Dimensionals

I Welcome Myself to Blogland

After a lot of consideration, I decided to start a blog. I guess it is sort of a "everyone is doing it" thing, like opening a facebook account earlier this week. It took me a couple of years to jump in the wagon, but here I am! Ready to blog!

Yesterday, I participated for the first time in a papercraft challenge: the Etsy Inspired Challenge at Papercraft Planet. The inspiration was the Tony Carlisle's Photo Gallery. Beautiful photos! I particularly liked the ones with butterflies. (I simply love butterflies!) This is my card:

This is the recipe:

Stamps: CTMH Happy Birthday, CTMH Butterfly Kisses, Hero Arts Woodgrain Background

Paper: SU! Close to Cocoa, SU! So Saffron, Hero Arts Green Notecard

Ink: (All SU!) Chocolate Chip, Whisper white; Summer Sun, More Mustard and Really Rust markers

Other: Certainly Celery ribbon, Uniball Signo white gel pen, dimensionals