DeNami Design Product Spotlight November Spotlight

It's the last Wednesday of the month and that means it is time to show off another awesome DeNami Design stamp with a blog hop! This month we are featuring the ultra versatile Leafy Squares Set.

Here's what I made:

I went very clean and simple with my design for this card. Quick to create and flat to mail is always my goal at this time of year when I've got a high volume of cards to send out! I needed only three stamps, two inks, and my scoring board to complete this in under 10 minutes. In addition to the Leafy Squares set, I used the Starry Burst stamp, Whimsical Merry Christmas stamp, Satin Red Versafine ink, and Olympia Green Versafine ink from the DeNami store. Unfortunately that pretty pine-green ink looks more black in my photo. Sorry about that! I really did go for a traditional red & green Christmas color palette here ;).

My very first thought about how to use this set was for a Christmas design, which I definitely ran with here, and I figured the entire rest of the team would go that route, too. Was I surprised to see the variety of ways and occasions that they used these stamps! You should definitely go and take a peek at the cool things they did with these leafy squares. And what better way than with a blog hop! If you hop along with us today, I'll have a chance to win your very own Leafy Squares stamp set, so be sure to leave comments along the way.


DeNami blog 
Lisa Petrella
Deb Wabbe
Wendy Elliot
Emily Keaton  <==== you are here!
Lisa Elton
Pattie Goldman
Dana Seymour
Tammy Hobbs

One commenter will be selected at random to win this month's prize! Just check out the DeNami blog for all the details.


Thanks for stopping by!
Emily

August Pinspired at DeNami

Hello, friends! Today I'm bringing you another Pinspired post along with a few of my other DeNami Design teammates. This month we were inspired by this photo:

I was inspired by all those Popsicle sticks and immediately reached for the DeNami Popsicle stamp! I was also careful to pick up all those bright summer colors, too.

I used a variety of DeNami cardstocks (red, golden tangerine, desert orange, and white), Tuxedo Black Memento ink, and the "you're sweet" sentiment from DeNami's Love Sentiments stamp set.

Be sure to check out what the other designers did with this inspiration photo on the DeNami blog today!

Thank you so much for dropping by!
Emily

Sweet Apples

Welcome to the first DeNami Product Spotlight of August! Today the DeNami Design team is sharing design ideas for the utterly delightful Apples & Pears stamp set.

I paired this sweet little set with the equally sweet Apple Basket stamp to make a clean and simple card that would be perfect for thanking someone who's been super sweet to you!

To make this card, I also used these products from the DeNami Design store: You Are Sweet cling stamp, brown kraft cardstock, Tuxedo Black Memento ink, Satin Red Versafine ink, and Red/White Dot Line washi tape.

Be sure to check out the rest of the team's lovely creations today on the DeNami blog. Like what you see? Then you can score a great deal on the Apples & Pears stamp set--as our Spotlight Product, it's on sale at 10% off for the next week!!

Thanks for stopping by today!
Emily

Thinking of You + a WINNER!

Hello, hello, and a huge hello! I'm here on this bright and sunny and--dare I say spring-like?--Thursday to share a card and the winner of my washi tape and baker's twine giveaway from my April Ways With Washi!

First, I'd like to introduce you to today's card:

Diecuts are by K & Co. (thanks to my sweet friend Jessi!), and the stamps (Decorative Butterflies stamp set and Thinking of You Script cling stamp), brown/white dots washi tape, and baker's twine are all from DeNami Design

It's been a strange and emotional couple of weeks around the Boston area with the Marathon bombings and aftermath, followed by the tense manhunt at the end of the week. Many thanks to my sweet blogging friends who emailed me directly to check up on our status. Your concern touched me deeply! We quite thankfully were safe throughout. And aside from being glued to various media outlets for developments (which sucks up sooooooooooooo much of one's time and energy), we were largely unaffected, except for the day of Friday's manhunt. My husband, who works in one of the communities that was told to "shelter in place," headed out for work completely unaware of the overnight developments. He ended up turning around to come home again (all before sunrise!) once he heard the news on the radio. He wound up working remotely from home that day. Luckily, the kids were already home with me because of their spring break last week. It was good to be all together as events unfolded.

Anyway, now that things are starting to get back to normal, I'm just now hearing the stories of how some of our friends and acquaintances were affected. It's time to mail out cards! Having not nearly enough "thinking of you" cards in my arsenal, that has been my task this week. I made this particular card for a friend whom I've just learned had a harrowing Marathon Monday. I just want to let her know that she and her family are on my heart. More such cards are being added to my stash daily.

OK, now let's move on to finding a winner!

I used Random.org to draw a winner from all the comments left on my giveaway post and came up with lucky number . . .

. . . 42--and that was SHartl!!

Congratulations! I'm off to email you next so I can get your new goodies mailed out to you. :)

A huge thanks to everyone who played along in my giveaway! I always love reading your comments. You warm my heart!!!!

I hope you'll plan to tune in for another Ways With Washi feature in May--I'll be posting on Memorial Day. :) We'll definitely have another giveaway then!!!

Thanks so much for stopping by today!
Emily

Just Because

Happy Friday! I am so excited today. My dear friend who moved far away a year and a half ago is going to be back in town today–and we are planning to spend some time together here at my house this afternoon. Yay! I also got word yesterday that career day at my daughter's middle school–the one that was cancelled because of the snowstorm last week (read about that here), bumming us both out completely--has been rescheduled for the first week in May. Yay, again! So happiness is bustin' out all over around here today. :D

I have one more card–I promise that this is the last!!!!–to share for the Colorful Creations challenge over at Flourishes (a color challenge to use shades of blue and yellow together). I have been totally obsessed with this awesome color combo! It's always been a favorite of mine. And it has been a great excuse to play with my Flourishes stamps, which is always welcome :).

Now before I get to my card, I need to explain a little something. I've had several projects published in various Northridge Publishing publications in recent months. (You can see my publication list here.) They "pay" their designers in papercrafting product, and my most recent product shipment contained a bunch of Maya Road chipboard pieces. Cool, but I've never really used them before and wasn't sure what to do with it. I also rec'd a couple of Faber-Castell Gelatos, which I've heard lots about but had never tried. I was excited to learn what I could do with them! Along the way, I discovered that Gelatos are awesome for--wait for it--coloring chipboard! Score! I couldn't wait to try that out, and as it turns out the two Gelatos I rec'd are yellow and blue. See? I was destined to play in the Flourishes challenge one more time :).

OK, thanks for bearing with me. Here's my card:

As you can see, I took a rather clean and simple approach, and used the very versatile Flourishes Inside & Out Just Because set for the sentiment. Love these!

I'm also playing along with the CAS-ual Fridays challenge (CFC94) to use chipboard.

I have a new tutorial posting over on the DeNami blog later today, so this wraps things up for now.  I'll be back in a few hours. I hope you have a super weekend! Thanks for dropping by,
Emily

Keen on Neon

Hello! It's been super busy here since Thanksgiving, and I've been away from my blog much more than I've wanted to be. One of the reasons for my busy-ness is that my son celebrated his 10th birthday over the weekend. We had a bunch of celebrating to do!! (And oh my goodness, where has the last 10 years gone? It seems like he was born just last week!) I'm also still struggling with some carpal tunnel issues, which become aggravated by all that pointing and clicking with the mouse. So many of you have been so sweet to come visit me here on my blog and it kills me not to be able to return the favor for right now. But I've got to get healed up first!! So please, bear with me. I'll try to get around to visit soon!!

Well, now that my son's birthday is over, he needs thank you cards to write notes for his birthday gifts. He has early-release days for parent-teacher conferences the rest of the week, so it's the perfect time for him to tackle his note-writing list! I wanted to make up a stack of fun note cards for him to use, so that was at the top of my list yesterday.

I haven't been able to play along with any of the challenges over at the Moxie Fab World in a very looooooooooooong time, but I was so very intrigued by Cath's latest challenge, Keen on Neon. I've seen a whole lotta neon out there in the world recently, and I thought it might be fun to see how to incorporate some in a card design. When I think of neon, the very first thing that comes to mind is highlighters!! Neon is always "in" where highlighters are concerned, and that's one of the very few neon items, crafting or otherwise, that we have in the house. I tried to think of how to keep the neons from overpowering a card design and decided that the best way to do that is to balance them out with a bunch of white space. Here's what I came up with.

Yes, I used a neon yellow highlighter to color in the chickie on this card! I also thought it would be fun to use the same neon yellow to highlight the punny part of the card ;). I used two rubber stamps from DeNami Design, Race Car Chickie and You're "Wheel" Nice, along with some markers and scored lines to make a simple flat design that will be super simple to mail.

My son loves how it turned out, and so do I! I ended up making a set of four duplicates. I'm also linking up to the Playing In Paradise challenge which has the theme of Mr. Masculine this week. I think these "wheel nice" cards I made for my son to use should qualify ;)!!

Well, I've gotta keep moving here or I'm not going to finish my to-do list for today. Thanks so much for stopping by to check out my little slice of bliss!!
Emily

It doesn't suck to be Friday

(This is my second post for today.

Be sure to scroll down to check out my 

Bazzill Basics Paper GIVEAWAY in this post.)

Hello, friends, and Happy Friday! I needed to make a few birthday cards and got stuck on what direction to take. What's a gal to do? Dive into some challenges for direction, of course! This is what I ended up with, making two copies of this same design.

I used the {ippity} Itty Bitty Sucks to Get Old and a rick-rack stamp from Unity's Homemade 6-Bean Soup kit. I stamped and heat embossed the lollipop head on watercolor paper so I could paint the image in just the right colors. Then I paper-pieced that portion, as well as the bow.

These are the challenges that helped my card take shape:

• I took my layout from one of the two sketches featured over at Chick Challenges with Ippity this week, taking a CAS tack with it by doing all the layers in white.
  
• I took my color scheme from this week's ColourQ challenge: Basic Black, Tangerine Tango, Daffodil Delight, So Saffron, and White.
  
• I took the theme of my creation from this week's CASology challenge cue.
  

And finally, because it's FRIDAY and I'm showing off my {ippity}/Unity stamps, I'm linking up with Friends With Flair over on the Unity blog.

Well, it's been a busy morning, but it's time to take stock and move on. Can't wait to be inspired when I make my rounds on the Friends With Flair lineup. I hope that all of you have a fabulous weekend!!
Emily

A CAS Anniversary Card

After weeks (and weeks!) of nonexistent mojo, I've suddenly had the urge to create again. Yay! I was afraid my creativity had left me forever--but no, it was only hibernating, I think ;) . I'm dipping my toe in the creative pool with this clean and simple anniversary card:

I pulled out some pretty DeNami stamps (Decorative Flourish, Fancy Flutters Set, and Happy Anniversary Cling) and petal pink DeNami cardstock and went to work. Because of the dainty hearts on this sweet butterfly, I'm entering it in the current CAS-ual Fridays CFC74 Challenge: to create a clean and simple project with a heart. Check!

I hope your Wednesday is treating you well. After two days without internet and phone service (our Comcast cable was out. Again.), I'm finally catching up on all I've missed. You just don't realize how much you rely on internet access for everyday living until you can't access it!!

Thanks for dropping by!
Emily

A Stretch Your Stamps Project

Just a quick post here to share a card I made for Day 3 of my Stretch Your Stamps class--alphabet stamps. Jennifer McGuire shared a masking technique, which I adapted for this card.

Can you see the scored frame on the white card base that I made to surround the stamped panel?

I'm entering this in Unity's June Challenge: Summertime.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Emily

Stamps: Alphabetically Adorable, Now & Always from {ippity} by Unity

Paper: PTI CS

Ink: SU pumpkin pie, pretty in pink, melon mambo

Accessories: scoring board, paper flower, pearl, Post-It notes

Techniques: scoring, masking

One-layer Sympathy

It's been a jam-packed week, so to get in any crafty time at all, I've been keeping it simple with 10-minute and one-layer cards. Today I'm adding this one-layer sympathy card to my stash:

I won the Calla Lilies set from Flourishes when it was released earlier this year. Now, calla lilies are far from my favorite flowers. I have always associated them with funerals (for which I think they are fine!) and was mortified when, in the 80s, they became a popular decorating motif. Back then, I was appalled when the high school prom decorating committee adopted the calla lily as the "official prom flower" my junior year! But I do love this stamp set from Flourishes, which is filled with much-needed sentiments of sympathy and this beautiful (and large!) floral image. The image itself is shaded perfectly, so it was easy to do a 10-minute colored pencil coloring job on this card without it looking horrible (although I readily admit it's also not prize-winning!). One note: I learned the hard way that if you plan to use white colored pencil on solid colored cardstock, don't try to blend it with odorless mineral spirits. That takes away all of the white pigment and you're left back where you started!

This card is one last entry for Flourishes' Gimme Ten challenge.

Thanks for swinging by!

Emily

Stamps: Calla Lilies by Flourishes
Paper: Spring Moss CS by Papertrey Ink
Ink: Palette Noir Black
Accessories: scoring board, colored pencils

10-Minute Nurture Yourself

So, I mentioned on Sunday that I was waiting to pick up my daughter from her Girl Scout camping trip. Well, she returned safely and had a great time, but came home with a few hitchhikers. Three to be exact:  deer ticks. You know, the tiny kind that can carry Lyme disease, and we live in--you guessed it--prime Lyme territory. We removed them successfully (with tweezers, the best method according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are a lot of folklore removal methods out there, but some can actually increase the likelihood of disease transmission {something to do with increased salivation; I know, ewwwwwwwww!}. Our motto: when in doubt, yank it out!). Anyway, I consulted with our pediatrician yesterday, and because we have no way of knowing if the ticks were attached for less than 24 hours, we'll have her tested for Lyme disease in four to six weeks. (Yeah, it takes that long for it to show up in tests!) In the meantime, we'll keep our eyes peeled for that telltale bullseye rash, which apparently presents in only 60% of Lyme disease cases, so testing will be crucial. Our pediatrician mentioned that the practice has been seeing a lot of Lyme disease recently, most likely due to our very mild winter. Darn, and I was kind of liking that! I guess I'd better hope for lots of cold, snow, and ice next year!

Enough of the yucky stuff, let's get on with a card!

Today I am sharing, appropriately enough, a get well card! I realized last week that my supply of such cards has been depleted, so it was time to re-stock. Because I've been so time-crunched, I decided to play along with Flourishes' Gimme Ten challenge again, to make a 10-minute card.

I used three sets from Flourishes to put together this card: Sunflowers, Tiny Flowers and Tags, and From the Garden. I made a super-quick background by scoring a 3.75" x 3.75" piece of cardstock in a grid and stamping a tiny daisy in each square. I already had that handmade spiral fabric flower in my stash, and all that was left to do was quickly stamp and trim a few leaves. Done! I'm linking this up as my final entry in Julie Koerber's Celebrate Five challenge.

I also used some more Bazzill Card Shoppe cardstock to make this card. Today's colors are Peanut Cluster (for the card base), Gumball (for the blue scored panel), and Easter Grass (for the leaves). I am so impressed with how will this cardstock scores: nice crisp lines and no danger of accidentally perforating the paper. And even though this is nice heavyweight cardstock (100 lb.), I had no trouble fussy-cutting those leaves, although I admit I wasn't going for precision here. It is, after all, a 10-minute card!

Well, I already have dinner in the crockpot, and the kids are off to school,  so it's time to get cranking on my freelance work for the day. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Emily

Stamps:  Sunflowers, Tiny Flowers and Tags, and From the Garden by Flourishes

Paper: Peanut Cluster, Gumball, and Easter Grass from the Bazzill Card Shoppe collection; white from Papertrey Ink

Ink: Versafine Spanish Moss, SU Bashful Blue

Accessories: handmade rolled fabric flower, pearl, SU label punch, scoring board, baker's twine from the DeNami Design Spring Twine 3-pack, Corner Chomper

Techniques: scoring, rolled ribbon flower

With Sympathy

Just a quick post to share a sympathy card I made this evening. I had many cards to send out this past week, and I completely depleted my sympathy card supply. Time to replenish!

This is definitely a straightforward, clean and simple card, as I always think sympathy cards should be. I used the new sketch from Chick Challenges {with Ippity}, rotated on its side:

I'm also entering this in the {ippity} challenge to stamp on designer paper and the Unity Challenge to use stripes.

Both of my patterned papers are digital papers. The floral digital paper is from the free Echoes of Asia digital collection by Jessica Sprague, and the striped digital paper is from the Brown Damask digital paper pack by Shery K. Designs (I recolored the pattern to match the floral paper). And I used only {ippity}/Unity stamps, as required by all of these challenges.

Thanks so much for dropping by!

Emily

Stamps: Regal Greetings by {ippity}, All About Today by Unity

Cardstock:  Ripe Avocado, white by PTI

Patterned paper:  Echoes of Asia digital collection by Jessica Sprague, Brown Damask digital paper pack by Shery K. Designs

Ink: Spanish Moss Versafine, Deep Lagoon Versafine

Accessories: scoring board, sewing machine, border punch, foam tape

You're Special (and a photo tutorial)

A very happy Friday to all of you! Thanks so much for dropping by.

As some of you may know, I tend to take a budget-minded approach to my papercrafting. Rather than invest in pricey alcohol-based markers for coloring stamped images, I've had a lot of fun exploring cheaper options for coloring, including watercolor painting with dye inks (you can find my photo tutorial here) and coloring with colored pencils. When I first started using colored pencils, I was disappointed by how you could see pencil lines in the colored areas, often with white areas showing through. It wasn't long, though, before I discovered "Gamsol magic," a method of blending colored pencil coloring with odorless mineral spirits (OMS) and paper blending stumps. ("Gamsol" is an OMS brand name, just like "Band-Aid" is an adhesive bandage brand name.) OMS is a painting solvent that evaporates completely and leaves behind no residues. It dissolves the wax in colored pencil lines so that the pigment may be lifted and spread. OMS blending of colored pencil coloring allows nearly effortless shading and results in a beautiful, smooth finish.

For the sake of comparison, the chickie on the left (below) was colored with colored pencils only, but the chickie on the right was colored similarly then blended using OMS and a paper stump. See how much smoother and more even the coloring is? The colors even seem more vivid!

The new cling-style Computer Chickie stamp from DeNami

Anyway, the reason I'm sharing all of this information about colored pencils and the OMS blending technique is because I have a new photo tutorial on this technique debuting over on the DeNami Design blog today. In it I show how I did the coloring to make this card:

Isn't that DeNami Armchair Chickie the cutest? I thought this would make a cute card for Father's Day! I stamped the "You're special" sentiment from the Thoughtful Greetings stamp set on the outside and the new cling-style Happy Father's Day stamp on the inside. The patterned paper is from the new Handmade collection by Lily Bee Designs.

Now before I go, I wanted to share a few more tips on materials for this technique that I wasn't able to include in my tutorial on the DeNami blog.

• Look for odorless mineral spirits in the oil painting supply section of your favorite craft and hobby store. You can look for Gamsol or any odorless paint thinner containing 100% odorless mineral spirits. I was able to get Mona Lisa brand for an awesome price at my local A.C. Moore store.                  
• Rather than juggle a huge container of OMS in my crafting space, I pour a more manageable ounce or two into a small lidded glass moisturizer container to keep handy on my work table. OMS is flammable, so be sure to keep it covered tightly.
• You can find paper blending stumps in most arts/crafts stores; look in the fine arts supplies with the graphite pencils, charcoal, and pastels. They look something like this:
  
• The paper stumps are pretty cheap, and the double-ended stumps give me even more bang for my buck. So I dedicate one stump tip per color to avoid unintended color mixing. What happens if the tip wears down? You can sharpen it again quite simply with a sanding block or emery board.

I hope that I've been able to take some of the mystery out of the so-called "Gamsol magic" technique in today's post and that you'll take a peek at my tutorial on the DeNami blog.

Thanks for taking a look. Have a great weekend!

Emily

DeNami Cute Chickies Blog Hop

Welcome to the DeNami Design Cute Chickies Blog Hop! Today the DeNami Design DT and customers alike are sharing creations made with cute DeNami chickie stamps.

I am the first stop on today's hop! I'll give you directions on where to go next at the end of this post. If you get lost at any point along the hop, you can always head over to the DeNami blog to get pointed in the right direction. Remember, there are DeNami prizes to be won! Two luckies will be drawn at random from among the comments left along the blog hop to win a $20 DeNami Design gift certificate! You have until Monday, February 13, 2012, 11:59 pm PST, to leave comments on all the blogs to be eligible for a prize.

OK, let's get down to business and talk Cute Chickies!!

For my card, I decided to use my very first DeNami Chickie to stamp a totem pole of chickies partying down (or maybe partying up??) to celebrate a birthday! I sketched a party hat on my top chickie, giving it a chickie-like fluffy pom-pom on top :). The chickies were so easy to stack up with my Stamp-A-Majig. I colored each one with my Prismacolor pencils and did some blending with Gamsol and a paper blending stump.

I inked up my brand-new DeNami Polka Dot Background with an old spectrum ink pad to stamp some multi-colored confetti for the birthday celebration. A quartet of scored lines at the bottom grounds the whole design. Done!!

Here's a run-down on all the products from the DeNami Design store that I used for my creation:

Chickie stamp
Polka Dot Background
Solid Scallop Dot Rectangle
All Occasion Sentiments stamp set
Aloe Vera Versamagic ink
Onyx Black Versafine ink

OK, be sure to leave a comment and then skedaddle on over to the next stop on the hop: Tina Milbourn's blog, A Timeless Treasure.

I always have a great time creating with my DeNami stamps. Thanks so much for dropping in to share my little slice of happy!
Emily

Masculine Valentine

I've had Moxie Fab World's The Map to Your Heart Challenge in the back of my mind ever since it was issued on January 4. I do indeed love maps, and I think that re-using them in fun ways is rather satisfying. I've been mulling over the best way(s) to approach this challenge, which is to incorporate maps with a papercrafted project in an innovative way, and today was the day to tackle it.

Behold, my entry for The Map to Your Heart Challenge:


(To give you a sense of scale, this circle card measures 4 1/8" in diameter.)

Every couple of months I get a solicitation mailing from Doctors Without Borders that contains a scaled-down fold-up world map. I keep every single one! For this card, I trimmed a section of the map between latitude 60N and 75N, from the Bering Strait to Finland, and turned it into a pleated paper medallion. I turned the resulting card into a clean & simple and nicely masculine Valentine for my husband by adding heart brads, a non-Valentine-colored heart, and the "You make my world go round" sentiment from Lawn Fawn's Admit One stamp set, stamped and embossed on a vellum banner. Why vellum? I didn't want to hide too much of the map!! Anyway, we took a fabulous camping trip of nearly 9000 miles last summer and used maps every day, so I know my hubby will "get" the connection and is sure to love it!

This card was a lot of fun! But I have a couple more map ideas kicking around in my head, so don't be surprised if this isn't the last Map to Your Heart entry you see from me ;).

Do a little something that makes you happy today--I'm glad I did!
Emily

DeNami Product Spotlight

I'm so excited to share my first DeNami Design Product Spotlight with the DeNami Design Team! Today we are featuring the Small Heart Outline stamp:
Such a versatile stamp! Be sure to check out today's DeNami blog post for all of the other ideas the design team came up with for this sweetheart of a stamp.

So when I first laid eyes on the Small Heart Outline, what immediately came to mind were conversation hearts.
Since I couldn't shake it, I just had to go with it!

I stamped the Small Heart Outline on conversation-heart-appropriate cardstock hues in Satin Red Versafine ink, then used my Stamp-A-Majig to stamp fun sayings from DeNami's Love Sentiments stamp set. There wasn't much left to do on this super CAS card after that! I just scored some lines in a DeNami white card, popped up my cut-out hearts on foam tape, rounded two corners with my new Corner Chomper, and I was d-o-n-e. Perfect for Valentine's Day!

I'm entering this in Young Crafters Unite Challenge #5: Clean and Simple.

Thanks for dropping by today; I'm always happy to see you here. :)
Have a great one!
Emily

Some veggies and a jar of hearts . . .

Here's a peek at a couple of things I was working on today.

First, some adorable veggies:

I've had my eye on this Vegtastic stamp set from Paper Smooches from the day it first came out! Today was my day to get inky with it, and I certainly had a blast :D. I went clean and simple for the card design, and paper-pieced the veggies. (Sponging on some charcoal gray ink gave them some dimension.) I was inspired by this inspiration photo from the Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge :

I'll admit that I took some liberties with the coloring on that eggplant! I couldn't keep this silly rhyme from running through my head while working on my card:

(with apologies to Ogden Nash)
Have you ever seen a blue eggplant?
I think that I just made one.
But I will say--don't think I can't!
I'd rather see than eat one!

Goofy, I know; but it came unbidden!! Anyway, I'm also linking this up to the Clear It Out Challenge to make a thank you and Young Crafters Unite Challenge #5: Clean and Simple.

Now, on to card #2:

I love that jar of hearts! So perfect for a Valentine. It comes from {ippity}'s Quotes a'la Happy kit. My sketch is from Chick Challenges {with Ippity} #12:

and I took my colors from the {ippity} Challenge to use this card for color inspiration:

And it just so happens that these colors (brown, kraft, pink, and red) are my favorites right now--especially for Valentines! That, along with all that kraft cardstock I used, qualifies this for the new Make It Monday with Kraft Outlet challenge to use your favorite colors. :)

I hope you've been able to squeeze a little fun into your day, too! Thanks for stopping by to check out today's installment of My Little Slice of Bliss!!
Emily