Japanese paper hello

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My friend, Sharyne, went to Japan YEARS ago (possibly decades) and brought me home some beautiful sheets of Japanese paper. I have hoarded them ever since. Occasionally, I bring them out and admire them. Even more occasionally, I will use some on a card. That card must be simple in design, because I don't want to mess with the paper!

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Japanese paper love

 My friend, Sharyne, bought me some beautiful handmade paper from Japan many years ago. During my current craft room clean up and purge, I came across this paper and immediately took the opportunity to interrupt my cleaning efforts and made a few cards. The sentiment stamps I used are both discontinued, sadly.

 

Thanks for visiting :)
 

Fusion - Blue Skies and Smooth Sailing

It's time for another Fusion challenge - I completely ignored the photo this time, and went with the sketch.

 Make sure you drop over to Fusion to check out all the fabulous nautical themed cards using the photo as inspiration.  Which will you use - photo, sketch, or both?

Thanks for visiting ;)

Addicted to CAS - Codeword: Oriental

This week's ATCAS codeword is "Oriental" , so I knew exactly where to start.  A couple of years ago, by bestie, Sharyne, bought me some beautiful handmade Japanese paper when she went to a trip to Japan.  It is just the most beautiful paper, I've been hoarding it!!

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Thanks for visiting :)

Time Out challenge

This week's Time Out challenge is to CASE a card made by Virginia Lu.   I have done a fairly faithful case - watercolour background, patterned paper strip, white embossed sentiment, handmade flower.  My own twists are the colour, the placement of the twine, and the makeup of the flower (I punched a flower, added a folded half-doily behind and a flower shaped bling on top.)

Here's Virginia's card - you can see that I followed her layout fairly faithfully.

 Thanks for visiting - have a great day :)

Retro Sketches time!

It's time for another Retro Sketches card - I'm playing along with Arielle, Kasia and Laurie and as a guest designer during January - here's my card, based on a sketch from a card by Laurie.

I used some absolutely beautiful Japanese paper on this card - I left the rest very simple to let the paper take centre stage. The sentiment is one of my very first stamp purchases - it's VERY old - from Artee Stamps - I thought the calligraphic font went well with the Japanese paper.

Come on over to Retro Sketches to check out what the other design team members came up with, and join in on the fun!
Thanks for visiting :)

Inspired by.....

Hello, blogland!  Haven't seen you in a while - my work has been seriously ridiculous over the past few weeks, and today is the first day in three whole weeks that I have been able to even look at my cardmaking supplies! 

I thought I'd ease myself back into the swing of things with a CASE.   I love the blog of Lisa Haines at The Purple Place - not only is she a fabulous cardmaker, but so generous and kind, too :)   I saw these cards on her blog this morning and knew instantly that I was going to CASE them ;)

Here's my take on her idea:

As I was inspired by Lisa's work, I'm entering this card into this week's Lawnscaping challenge - "Inspired by a fellow crafter". 

I'm also submitting this to Simon Says Stamp Presents a Flower Challenge at Lily Pad Cards.

Thanks for visiting - have a great day :)

Japanese adhesive material

A little while ago (last year), one of my very best friends, Sharyne, and her partner, Andrew, went on a trip to Japan.  When they returned, they had bought me a Japanese good luck charm, as well as some absolutely beautiful Japanese papers and papercrafting goodies! (including a roll of papers in one of those cardboard cylinders that they carried all around Japan with them! I felt very special!).

One of the things in the stash was a roll of beautiful printed material with adhesive on the back, so that all you need to do is cut it to size, remove the backing paper, and stick!  So easy, and so gorgeous.  Here's a card I made on the weekend using this lovely product.

I kept the card simple - to let the material shine :)

I will have to ration the rest - not much left :(  But I still have plenty of the handmade paper Sharyne bought for me - will have to use some more of that soon.  It's one of those things that I think is common amongst papercrafters - you have some product that you love so much that you just don't want to use it, because then it will be gone! (I have a few handmade papers in that category.........)