Frugal Friday

Hey everyone!

It's time for another Frugal Friday tip! Some of what I share may be something you are already doing but I have learned so much from others when they share little tidbits like this. I want to pay it forward, as well.

Today's tip is about buttons! We love them, don't we? When stacked up in little glass jars, separated by color, well it just makes such pretty little eye candy, doesn't it? I remember as a kid running my hands deep down into my grandmother's big tin of buttons. I loved the look of them, the shapes, sometimes the stories behind them! Like any embellishment, sometimes you can't always find the right color button when you want it. You know? I may have 10 shades of pink buttons but none of them will match my cardstock! What do I do? Why, make my own, of course!

Here I am showing you some white cardstock and some designer paper buttons I made using a couple different sized circle punches and my Crop-A-Dile. Just punch two or four holes (depending on what you want) and voila! an instant button! Run some scrapper's floss, ribbon, twine, raffia, cording, whatever you'd like through the holes and you have a fun little accent. For an even more realistic look, sponge the edges, curl the edges slightly under and put a little pop dot under it. I love my faux buttons! They'll never replace my "real" buttons! Don't worry but I love that I can make them any size, any color anytime I want! Hope you will make a few faux buttons and play with your tools today! I love getting as much mileage out of my tools as I can!

Angel Hugs,

CCC03/10

Hey everyone!

The Christmas Card Challenge for March was to create non-traditional Christmas cards. I thought a great way to make my 4 cards for the month would be to change up the colors. It was a lot of fun working with non-traditional colors. I want to show the cards to you that I created for March.
This card features Kraft cardstock and Angelee designer paper from The Angel Company. I added doodle dots and faux stitching with my white gel pen. The scalloped edges are from my Cloud Scissors. The sentiment is from Inspirational Sayings and the images are from Circle Sampler. I used Palette Hybrid Iris and Cognac inks. I added shimmer with my Stardust Clear Glitter Gel Pen. The brads were added with my Crop-A-Dile. I used my Scor-Pal to score all the cards.

This is one of my favorite stamp sets from TAC but sadly it is retired. I paper pieced the clothing of Mary and Joseph with Lilly Anna designer paper and the swaddling clothes on baby Jesus is paper pieced from Juliette. It's purple but you can't really tell it from the photograph. I sponged the "floor" with Cognac and the "walls" with Burnt Umber. The little images are from the Circle Sampler stamp set and inked in Cognac, as well. The shimmer is from the Stardust Clear Glitter Gel Pen. The rest was colored in using Tombow bright markers, Copic markers, and Hazelnut Memory Marker.

The last two cards were super fun to make. They are Pinwheels with a faux button in the center. I used my Crop-A-Dile and some ribbon with a small circle punch to create a fun little button using Lilly Anna designer paper. The sentiment is also from the retired The Only Thing stamp set. I hope you enjoy checking out some very non-traditional cards.

Angel Hugs,