Magical Monday - Sweet Trouble

Aloha and Welcome to another TMITA Magical Monday post!! This one is even more MAGICAL for me as the image was inspired by something NEAR and DEAR to me, my SWEET puppy Malie!! (see here for the original post)

Fortunately, Nina made her look a bit happier and even cuter in the image!


I'm wanting to use this image for my Christmas cards this year, hence your challenge to make this a CLEAN AND SIMPLE (CAS) CARD with no embellies that would make it challenging to mail (e.g., no bow, brads, etc.) and use the color PINK somewhere on the card. Can't wait to see what you all come up with using the image of SWEET TROUBLE!!! I'm sure I'll get LOTS of great ideas that'll make my card even BETTER (wink, wink!).  In the meantime, here's my offering:

I ended up keeping this an almost one layer card as I wanted to keep it pretty simple and quick to mass produce. (Check out here for a toot on how to emboss a Cuttlebug folder and leave an unembossed spot on the card.) I added the scallops and pink cardstock as a backing for the front as it was a bit flimsy after embossing it. The cardstock is a pearlized white and I colored the base on the image in Paint, printed off on the cs and embellished as follows:

• Used a prismacolor pencil to color over the light brown of Malie and smoothed a bit with OMS.
• Colored over the pink coat with a white Prismacolor pencil
• Covered the candy canes with glassy accents
• Colored over the candy cane holder with a Sakura clear star gel pen
• Added Frosted Lace stickles to the hood, ball, edge and button of coat
• Added white Fun Flock and glitter at the bottom of the image for the snow
• Stamped "Santa's Little Helper" sentiment

Okay so that's the technical stuff. Here's a little bit more about my little puppy...

• "Malie" [mah - lee - ay] is Hawaiian and means "calm, peaceful, serene" -- I choose this name as she was the most reserved of her litter and I hoped she would live up to it. :) Usually she does, but if she hasn't seen you in awhile (like you go to the store and come back!) she is SUPER excited to see you!
• She is a Lhasa Apso, Miniature Pinscher, and English Toy Terrier mix
• She weighs about 8.5 pounds
• She HATES wearing clothes!! Well, she hates wearing tight clothes...she wore a dress at her birthday party all day with no problems but it was very loose. So why do I keep dressing her up? Well, she gets clothes passed down to her and I just have to try them on her! Actually I usually put them on long enough to take a picture and then she never sees them again :) And in the process I usually get a great laugh as she looks so disgruntled while getting her pic taken :)
• Yes, we had a birthday party with her siblings (my boss has her sister, her neighbor has her sister and brother and a friend of the neighbor has the other sister). See here for deets on the party! (you know you wanna look!) ;) Here's the gifts and cards I made to give to the siblings :)
• The name of the image "Sweet Trouble" was a collaboration between Nina and I. She came up with "Sweet Malie" and I offered "Sweet Trouble" as my nickname for her is "Trouble" :) She actually responds almost better to that than to her name! My mom warns me that calling her that will encourage her to live up to it, but I say she already does...I've got the gnawed on stuff to prove it (and that's with an abundance of appropriate toys she can play with!)
• Here are some pictures that I took of her today with a "Mrs. Claus" hat and collar from Target (she did not like wearing this either!)

This is last year's Christmas pic - she was only about 6 months old

And to just to prove that she doesn't always look so unhappy:

And here she is during play date with her sister. Malie is on the left, on the right is her sister, Pomai :)

TFL and have a WONDERFUL week! Aloha and see you back here Wednesday-Sunday for the Recipe Blog Hop and an extra special "candy" surprise from me!

Magical Monday - Cozy and Bright

Aloha and E Komo Mai to this week's Magical Monday Challenge at There's Magic in the Air!! If you haven't already, please check out TMITA to snag the super cute FREE image!!! I just fell in love with this cute moose and the mice all snuggled down for a long winter's nap! The challenge this week is to use something "fuzzy" on the project.

This card end up taking a great deal of time to complete as I was figuring out elements as I went (which rarely is time efficient!). Anyway, I would've loved to make it so you can see the complete image by lifting the window but didn't have the time on this one. I wanted to try the Recessed Window tutorial at SCS. Then it was a hop, skip and jump to creating the scene with a window! Hope you like it :) Deets are below...

Image: Colored with Prismacolor pencils and OMS. I removed the string of lights from the image (by pasting the image into Paint and using the eraser function to wiped out the lights, then pasted it back into a word doc to print). I did this so I could use fun flock on the moose to make it look like he's covered in a blanket. Also used fun flock on the hat the mouse is sleeping in. The present image was colored, cut out, stickled, and popped up. The background of the image was sponged with Marigold Versacolor ink


Papers: (all SU! on this one) Image printed on Whisper White, window cut out of Whisper White (distressed with brown ink), card front is Chocolate Chip (embossed with Distressed Stripes folder), "bushes" are Handsome Hunter cut out with scalloped circle punch and trimmed to fit, card base is Real Red

Techniques: Window was cut out using my Cricut. See toot on SCS for how to make the recessed window card. I modified mine a bit to fit what I needed.

Layout: Mine! :) Size is 5"x7"
Embellies/Other: White Fun Flock was also used on the "bushes" to look like snow. The string of lights was created by punching small ovals (with a Fiskars hand punch) out of glitter card stock and gluing a small rectangle of black paper to the bottom of the oval. A piece of paper cord was colored black and the "lights" were glued directly to it on the image. [I tried using the smallest plastic Christmas tree light I could find at Ben Franklin but they were still too big...in hindsight, should've made a bigger card, but oh well!]

Here's close of up the window a bit more from the side.

TFL looking and can't wait to see what wonderful creations you all come up with for this image! Aloha, Kim

Beginning of a New Adventure!

Aloha and E Komo Mai (Hello and Welcome)!
If you made it to my blog via There's Magic in the Air, thanks for coming by! I'm so honored to be a new member of the Design Team through the end of the year! YEAH! I hope I can live up to the challenge and I can't wait to create my projects using Nina's digis! Aren't they the best ever?!? So without further ado here's this week's digi on a card.

And here are the deets:

Image: TMITA (of course!); colored with prismacolor pencils and odorless mineral spirits (aka magic pencil technique); cut out and framed with Nesties, edge distressed with brown ink

Papers: (all papers are Stampin Up! unless otherwise noted) Kraft (K), More Mustard (MM), Chocolate Chip (CC), Old Olive (OO), Very Vanilla (VV)

Techniques: OO panel was scored at 1/4" all around using my scor-pal, MM strip was edged using my SU! scallop punch, CC strip was embossed with Cuttlebug edge embossing folder (sorry I don't recall the name)

Other: buttons are from a mixed package I got some time ago and are tied with hemp twine

Layout: I'm still developing my mojo in regards to layouts so for now I get inspiration from others. This layout was based on one from Tuesday Morning Sketches (#14).

Okay, I think that about covers it. Please, if you have any questions, please leave a comment and I'll either post the information and/or send it to you directly. Can't wait to see what you all come up with! Aloha (Bye)!