Anything But A Card at the 4 Crafty Chicks

Happy Thursday everyone!  I hope you are having a great week wherever you are.  It's finally feeling like winter here in Central Alberta - the snow started falling on Tuesday and I will admit, it *does* look pretty.  :)

This week's challenge at the 4 Crafty Chicks is brought to us by Tamie and she is challenging us all to create "Anything BUT a Card!"  When I first sat down to work on this challenge, I thought I would pop over to Splitcoast and check out their 3-D projects for something I hadn't tried before.  But once I got there I couldn't find anything that got me excited.  I went into my cupboard and found an unaltered paint can, some lunch tins, some ceramic tiles and some glass ornaments - I could use one of those, right?  Well, I *could* but it seemed like too much work at the time!  LOL  But, lo and behold, in my cupboard I also found a bag of Stampin' Up! Decor Elements that I hadn't used yet.  Hmmmm...  Those are pretty quick and easy... it might just work...

I found the Thoughts and Prayers Tree and a quote that I thought would work together and set off to work.  I wanted to use them on a picture frame like I did a couple of years ago but I didn't have any empty frames left.  What to do??  Well, I was kind of getting tired of this picture in this frame soooooo... I recycled it!  LOL

Remember when I said I wanted something that wasn't too much work?  Well, this wasn't it.  It *would* have been but I had a few mishaps along the way; first, I broke the glass on the first frame.  Thankfully I had an identical frame in the kitchen I could snag the glass from.  Then it took FOREVER to get the DE to transfer completely from the non-sticky to sticky side of the paper... those little leaves were being persnickety!  In the end, I absolutely LOVE how it turned out:

Supplies: Thoughts and Prayers Tree (small Chocolate), Direction of Your Dreams (small Chocolate)  Paper: Deck The Halls DSP

A close-up of the tree - I love the shadows and dimension of having the Decor Elements on the outside of the glass:

This project also fits in with this week's challenge over at Creative Inspirations to use trees on our project as well as Penny's Paper-Crafty Challenge to alter something.

I know that the rest of the Crafty Chicks did some pretty amazing 3-D projects so make sure you stop by their blogs and leave them some love!  I can't wait to see what you all come up with - maybe you can get some Christmas presents done??  Have fun!

With Sympathy at the 4 Crafty Chicks

It's a brand new challenge at the 4 Crafty Chicks!  This week's hostess-with-the-mostess is yours truly and this week I am challenging you to make a sympathy card.  I always find that this type of card is one of the hardest to make and I don't make them very often but they are always nice to have on-hand for those unexpected moments.

I immediately knew I wanted to use Basic Black, Very Vanilla and Basic Grey and the SU! set, Thoughts and Prayers, for my card so I went in search of a sketch and found this lovely one at Unscripted Sketches:

I had to rotate the sketch 90 degrees to accomodate my tree image and added some ribbon and paper piercing to create this:

Recipe - Stamps: Thoughts and Prayers (SU!)  Ink: Basic Grey, Versafine Onyx Black  Paper: Basic Black, Very Vanilla, Basic Grey, SU! DSP  Accessories: paper piercer, black satin ribbon, dimensionals, Beautiful Wings embosslit, adhesive pearl, Victoria embossing folder

Take a few minutes to stop and see what the other Crafty Chicks created - they all did a fabulous job with this challenge.  I hope you will play along with us this week ~ I know it's not a really *fun* theme but it's one we will all need a card for sooner or later.  Enjoy your weekend - we are off to visit my mom and dad this afternoon but will be back on Sunday with a new Sentimental Sundays challenge.  See you then!