Promises of Spring

Even though the groundhog saw his shadow, we know Spring is coming. Despite the cold days right now, I look forward to the flowers and birds of Spring.

I really think that Dee Dee captured the feeling of Spring in this banner. She started with the Maya Road flower album, the Maya Road Canvas banner (brand new this month). She painted the flowers a soft green then sanded the edges. Applied a lot of beautiful layers of flowers, brads, stickers, made little pinwheels of paper, painted and glittered the chipboard alphabet. Strung on lovely ribbons with soft bows, it pulls together perfectly.



Clicking on the picture will enlarge it if you want to see it in more detail.

Continual Inspiration

A yearly event is the Ranger Challenge Wall at CHA. This year, the challenge was to use the melting pot with UTEE and the ticket. This is a picture of the wall. WOnderful results and all so different. Although two of the appear to have popcorn on them, it is UTEE, not real food.

Suze Weinberg is the genius behind the melting pot art. Check out her blog for close ups and more info.

On the store blog, there is a contest/challenge going on. Be sure to take a look and leave comments for a chance to win a prize.

Non-Scrapbook Inspiration

Another piece of inspiration. An effective ad for this craft. Not sure about you, but it makes ME want to learn to knit and/or crochet.





This is a display for Lion Yarns... It takes up a size of about 15 x 15 feet. I only wish I could have gotten a better picture for you.

Keeping an Eye Out for Inspiration

I appreciate so many decorative endeavors. You can imagine that there are a lot of creative people here at CHA. I am always amazed when someone takes a skill and does something unexpected with it.

I hope to share more of these with you, but had to post this one for you today. Check out these balloon flowers. So bright and cheerful. I thought they were quite cute. They are being used as a divider between an aisle and a crafting area. Practical and yet provide a diversion for the eye.

Design Challenges

As we start this new year, I'm curious. What sort of things challenge you? Color matching, titles, perfect embellishments....etc.

Maybe challenge is too strong of a word, but I think you know what I mean. What part of the page or project do you focus on, and fixate on until it is "right"?

Anxiously awaiting your responses. Later!

12 Tags Continued....

well, it has been more than a few days, but here they are...



Instead of using the crying child, this picture is of Carolyn's son as a child. Since she did not have access to the metal numbers, she used chipboard, metal tape and the cuttlebug to make the numbers. Worked fine!

Here are the roses made for the last tag. Did you do them too? We used a diecut approximately the same in size as the one he used on the flower. We made our flowers green and red vs. the aqua-blue color he used. Tricky to make, but pretty overall.



11 of the 12 are on display at the store. We'd love to know if you did any of them and to see them if you did. Enjoy!

12 Tags of T!m - In Review

We thought we would share some of our tags and other information regarding the 12 tags of Christmas done by Tim Holtz this year. We found that we didn't have all the supplies and imagine that is how it was for most people.

Day 1:
We thought we'd try doing similar techniques on a non-tag surface.



FUN!

Day 3:
Making plaids was a lot of FUN too. We made both cards he showed on his blog. We also did blue and other color backgrounds.



Day 4:
We didn't have the German scrap, so took glittered cardstock and a border punch to make an edge for the tags.



Day 5:
Slight adjustments on this tag included the Snow Marker on the tree and stamping on a scrabble tile. One of our favorite tags. Carolyn is going to put it on the front of her December daily book.


Day 7:
Carolyn was home with sick child, and no keys at home, so she adapted and used the letter "R" with her family name hanging from it. Very cute huh?

Well, I don't want to get too far ahead of you....I will post more in a day or so. In the meantime, all of them are on display at the store.