Die Cuts, Doilies, Twine, and Buttons, Oh My!

Ohhh has it been a month of ups and downs! We were buying a house, then we weren't, then we were, then they buyers for OUR house fell through...aaarrrrgggghhhhh! So now we're staying put, renovating, and trying again next year. C'est la vie. One day I will have my larger house with a massive craft room and a double wall oven. Ah dreams...

Because of all the chaos (though omg, is my house CLEAN!) I really didn't have time to play in my craft room recently. I did find, however, my failed attempt at the previous 10 Minute Craft Dash. I meant to enter it anyway (despite it taking me 18 minutes, it still could have been a favorite) but, of course, I was busy packing. I'm pleased to share it for Unity's FWF instead!

Washi, doilies, twine, AND buttons?? Yummy!

 I scrap-lifted a beautiful card I found on, shock!, Pinterest, and came up with this beauty. It really does have all of my favorite things on here: kraft paper, twine, buttons, washi tape, Stickles...sigh. I love it. The sentiment is from Unity (of course) and is truly wonderful. It can easily be used as either an 'I care' or a sympathy card.

All right, I'm off to go shopping for my baby's 3rd birthday party tomorrow! I still cannot believe I'm the proud mama of a three year old. Sigh.

Happy Crafting!

Happy Birthday 10 Minute Craft Dash!

 One year ago, a very creative lady said "I know, let's make a challenge where you have 10 minutes to complete a card!" One year later the challenge is still going strong, so of course there's a party to celebrate.

Yes, I said 10 minutes. From start to finish. You can get your supplies ready ahead of time and may use anything premade in your stash, but that's it. Easy, right?

I'll let you finish laughing.

It IS, however, fun to stretch your crafty boundaries to see if it's possible. So this time, I played along. I got my workspace all set up and set my timer to 10 minutes.

Doesn't it look all neat and organized? Just ignore the box o'ribbons

I took a deep breath and started the timer. Thanks to some technical difficulties including a mis-stamp of my image and my sentiment not coming out dark enough, it took me EXACTLY 10 minutes. Seriously. Like I tossed down my Sharpie when the timer went off in true "pencils down" fashion. PHEW!

Here's the aftermath:

It hurts not tidying up as I go, it really does. I had to find all the stamps again!

So, what was the end result? Oh, you know, just a cute little birthday package...

Who wouldn't' want to open a box and find a cute kitty??

I started with, *gasp*, a pre-cut card base. I know, it's sinful, but it turns out I have three boxes of DCWV ones so I figured I would start using them up. The adorable chevron paper is from one of the 6x6 MME paper pads in my pile that was cut with a cute Sizzix die. The kitty and sentiment are from Simon Says Stamp and are one of my new favorites. I mean, come on; it's a kitty. In a box. CUTE! I colored him in with watercolor pencils and then blended with my water brush. Then the kitty and the patterned paper for the present were fussy-cut (yeah, I was starting to freak by this point) and everything was attached with foam tape.

Meow!

 The 'happy birthday' gave me problems; I could not, for the life of me, get the 'a' in 'happy' to stamp. At the last minute (erm, literally) I grabbed a Sharpie and traced over the whole thing. A tiny bit of bling and this card was done!

Side shot of the layers

I'm linking up to the 10 Minute Craft Dash (of course!) and the Moxie Fab World Birthday Creations challenge.

One last look!

I hope to be back tomorrow with another Friends with Flair Friday with Unity!

Don't forget, the DeNami August blog hop starts Sunday!

Happy Crafting!