Fun With Felt and Fabric

Instead of purging like I had planned to, I played instead today. It sure felt good! I made three fairly simple cards and put together a Hex Box by Kelleigh Ratzlaff. Wanna see? LOL

This is the first card I worked on. I brazenly copied the design I saw here made by Joanne of Just a Little Something blog. I wanted to do a little sewing and this seemed like a great card design, so I went with it. The paper is from Martha Stewart. I got it at Michaels last year. I used my Fiskars Apron Lace border punch and I finally got to try out my Bow Easy tool to make the bow (with dollar store ribbon and unfortunately, you can tell it's cheap ribbon). I didn't know what sentiment I wanted to use on it, so I haven't stamped one yet.

My second card today involves felt and sewing! I've seen more and more cardmakers using felt in their cards and I thought I'd try it and see how it worked. I used my Nestabilities to cut the hearts out of felt, which is glittery felt. It feels a little firmer than regular felt. I then got the bright idea to sew the main heart onto cardstock. Please disregard my not so great sewing prowess on this one. Again, not sure of what sentiment I wanted to use, so I left it blank. The paper is from DCWV Spring matstack. Pretty simple, but I like it.

I had cut out a bunch of those little hearts and wanted to use them, which led to my third card today. Still no sentiment but I kind of liked the punch of red with the black and cream on Making Memories Wedding paper. The brads are little buttons (probably hard to tell) from the old Sabrina line. I flipped over two of the hearts so they alternate the look of glittered and plain.





Finally, I actually got to use one of Kelleigh Ratzlaff's templates!! I "met" Kelleigh while in one of Jessica Sprague's classes and when she started her blog I added it to my reading list. I've watched her grow in her design skills and over the summer as a Garage Sale Wonder and, more recently, Crazy (her word) Coupon Lady. Man does she land the bargains! In December she challenged herself to showcase an ornament a day and it was fabulous. You MUST check out her blog! Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs and then her store at Digi Chick. Kelleigh is very real and very funny. Her enthusiasm just oozes from her blog. I can't imagine you would be disappointed when you check her blog out. She has an incredible design team that showcase her templates wonderfully, too. I just {heart} Kelleigh! LOL

I decided to use her Hex Box template today. It was very easy to use. What's neat is you can print out the template and use it on your own paper or you can add your own digital paper if you use a photo editing program like Photoshop Elements. She has a tutorial on how to use the templates included with your file. Anyway, I chose to print it out on plain paper, cut it and score it onto white cardstock. I put the box together and then remembered I wanted to stamp on the cardstock! Dopey me. I was too excited to see what the small box would look like (you get the large AND the small size). I stamped the top no problem, but I was too lazy to take it apart to stamp the sides, so I cut a strip of cardstock and attached it. I used Papertrey Ink's Polka Dot Basics stamp set and CTMH's Cranberry ink. I really wanted to use one of the fabric flowers I made and showed previously on my blog and that dictated the colors I used on the box. I wanted to dress up the sides just a tad, so I grabbed some Bazzil Ribbon (from Archiver's a lonnnng time ago and then added some rhinestones. I think this would make a cute little giftie for a teacher, especially if it was filled with chocolate...LOL

And there you have my efforts for today. It felt really good to play once again. Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed your visit and will be back again soon.