Welcome faithful followers and newbies alike! If you are here from Bory’s blog, I sincerely thank you for clicking through to the next stop! The busy holiday season is behind us, and the Squirrel Sisters were feeling a desire to freshen things up with our previous Squirrels Gone Nutz collaborative hop. We all still wanted to make sure we were inspiring ourselves and others to use crafty stash products that we had “squirreled” away, but we thought it would be fun to switch up the types of monthly prompts used to do it. And to give it a fresh feel we updated the name, and sweet Anna made us a great new graphic! So, you ask, what is this month’s prompt? We’re using a sketch for the *first* time as part of the hop!!! This one is from a retired Paper Play Sketches and it is #21, an oldie but goodie. And to further challenge ourselves, we are making all of the cards Friendship or Love themed! Here is a quick look at the sketch we used:
Before I share my projects, let me share the hop list with you:
- Anna Mahtani
- Boryana Yankova
- Karen Page – YOU ARE HERE
- Lounon Riviere – NEXT UP!!!
- Marie Bingaman
- Virginia Fairchild
As per the usual, I had no mojo until practically the *last* minute, then once I started stamping, I had more ideas than I did time. Here’s what I was able to put together in a frazzled all-nighter of crafting:
Yeah, I know… I did it again, and I swear I didn’t mean to! But since I only craft about once or twice a month, I needed to just let the mojo flow!!! I’m not gonna bore you with too many details, but let’s take a closer look, shall we? This first card is my fav, made with Clearly Besotted Puppy Love, a set I’ve had for more than a year and this is the first time its getting inked up:
I used a paw print from the set as the embellishment on the sketch, which I rotated for this card, and the strip behind the 3 adorable puppies is a scrap that is from my scrap bin. I rounded the corners of the rectangular elements to coordinate with the scrap of patterned paper. All the stamps and the sentiment are from the same set, and this card was very quick to design but long to color with pencils! But I *love* how it came out… especially since we just got a new puppy this week! And while he doesn’t look quite like these puppies, it still pleased me to color these while he snuggled next to me!!! Well, until Oliver (the new pup) tried to eat my colored pencils. LOL! I trimmed the panel for a little white to show on the top and bottom of the panel to tie in with the white focal images and sentiment. This card just makes me happy! Next up, a crafty friendship card:
This one uses an older than dirt Pink and Main set aptly named Crafty. Same idea and orientation as the last one, but I used a tiny sequin stamp in the set with a pale pink ink to make a tone on tone pattern in the background. And of course since I used the sequin stamp, I had to use sequins for the embellishments too. The scrap used on this card was from a masculine valentine’s card from probably 8 years ago and I love that chevron! Because it was so busy though, I inked the edges of the focal image panels to finish it off. And because this stamp set has so many fun images, I decided to whip up another quick card with it:
This last friendship card uses a printed paper from an old (and now defunct) Inkspired monthly kit. I knew I wanted to use the paint tubes and paintbrush in the set, and I immediately remembered this paper which looked like paint strokes to me. In no time I had the images colored up, and to add some contrast to the rainbow colors I matted all the elements and the panel in black and used black epoxy dots for the embellishments. I liked the idea of placing the sentiment in one of the rectangular elements for something different! And you’ll notice I didn’t rotate the sketch this time; this one was the literal translation of the sketch.
I would have loved to make a 4th card, using die cuts for the rectangular elements of the sketch. Or do a squirrel card and use acorn images as the embellishment element!!! I think there is so much room for interpretation of the sketch. I’m sure my crafty friends are going to show you a bunch of those ways and awe you with their crafty talents! Be sure to hop on to the uber talented Lounon of Craft Me, Craft Moi.
Thanks for taking the time to visit and comment! I hope you all like the new hop format as much as we do!!!
Misplaced Mojo 
Once again Karen, it’s a pleasure to discover your cards, you always have so many ideas for this hop ! They are so pretty and cute ! Now your challenge will be to train Oliver to do the same poses :p
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Thanks, Lounon! And I am laughing because the only time Oliver stands still for more than 1 second is when he is asleep. I think I am a year or two away from getting any decent posed shots of him!
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[…] Karen Page […]
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Those pups are too darn cute! The 2 cards you made with the Crafty set are great too: my favorite being the one with the rainbow paper. Rainbow always looks great with black! I’m glad Mr. Oliver didn’t get away with eating your colored pencils! 🙂
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Thanks sweetie! And no, not the pencils but Mr. Oliver *did* manage to sneak off with a bra and eat a 2″ piece of the strap though! Grrr! A pencil would have been far cheaper!
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You did it again my sweet friend! For last minute cards, these came out great!! And you did more than one! Congratulations on your new pup!!
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Aw, Anna you are to gracious! I wish my brain didn’t work so much better when I am under pressure… I know my cards aren’t as good as they could be, but I don’t give myself enough time to build up to the better ideas. I only give myself time to throw together the first things that come to mind and then I get amazing ideas as I’m typing up my post just hours before we go live. 😣 And as for more than 1 card… that always happens when I am afraid that if I only do 1 card it will suck and I won’t have time for something else. I’m just hedging my bets!
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You might only be crafting once a month, but if these are the sorts of cards you’re making, it might be worth it! I love the puppy one and using the paw prints as the embellishment! I never would have thought of that! And then I see you and I were on the same “crafty friend” wavelength! I love them both (tone on tone and pink chevron!), but I might love the rainbow card most! The “paint stroke” paper is perfect!!!
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Thanks, V! I’m just so thankful that I have an “excuse” to craft because while I feel so overwhelmed much of the time, crafting really does let me clear my head of worry long enough to focus on something else for a change. I cannot overemphasize how grateful I am that everyone unanimously wanted to continue on this year!!! 🥰
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Karen, I don’t know how you do it but you always manage to create so many and so wonderful cards in such a short time!! The pups are adorable, love the pink crafty card and of course, the rainbow one is so pretty too! Hopefully Oliver will play only with his own toys and won’t demolish anything at your home 🙂
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Thanks sweetie!!! I’m not sure how I do it either, Bory! But I’ve realized my cards would probably be nicer if I could just focus on 1 instead of working on multiple ideas at once. I think I do that so if 1 of them turns out badly I at least have something else in the works and hopefully 1 will turn out good! And Oliver has already managed to eat part of my hubby’s shoe, chew on the corner of the bottom step to our stairs, and shred/de-fluff a bunch of dog toys/stuffies. You’ll be looking at him and he looks all chill and sleepy 1 minute and another minute later he’s up to no good! But he’s learning… and so are we. We no longer keep shoes where he can reach them! Oy, and we found out that he will drink from the toilet too. I am having to basically baby proof the whole house. Since we got Willow at an age where she was beyond all the puppy mischievousness, I realized its been 13 years since I have had a real puppy and I’ve been slow to remember all the tricks we used to use to train a puppy. He’s coming along though, and I know he’ll be a great addition to the family… when I can trust him around my shoes! Haha!
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