My Time Made Easy Give Away & March Preview

Hello friends!  I’m posting Preview days 1 & 2 at My Time Made Easy ™ LLC because we are giving away the entire March release collection on March 1st to one lucky winner!  I hope you will take a moment to visit the talented designers, and then leave a comment HERE telling us WHO had your favorite project so far and what you liked about it.  On the 1st we will randomly pick a winner to receive the ENTIRE release collection!  For those of you who have been thinking about getting crafty in the digital world this is your chance to get your feet wet for free.  Best of Luck!

Day 2 Projects:

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Lauren Meader

Lori Hairston

Egg-stra Special

Pattie Goldman

Tangii Crain

Day 1 Projects:

Egg-stra Special

·  Lauren Meader

·  Debbie Marcinkiewicz 

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·  Kimberly Morrow

·  Lisa Kind

 Have a crafty day!!    ~Tracy

Matchbox Makeover and CAS Cards

Hello out there!  It’s almost March and it looks like we are getting some wet, snowy weather to bring it in.  But that’s ok – in like a lion, out like a lamb as the saying goes!  Today I have a couple of things to share.  The first one is my matchbox makeover for the Out of a Hat Challenge this week.I don’t own any matchboxes and I haven’t even seen any around for years.  I’m sure they’re out there but I haven’t had reason to look.  None-the-less, boxes are not that hard to make so I made my own matchbox.  I was inspired by Sandra’s little mouse house and came up with this ‘under the sea’ theme.  I also thought it would be fun to have a window in the box, as if you were looking into an aquarium.The paper is from a K&Company paper stack I bought on sale last summer.  Perfect for my aquarium.  There is no stamping on this project – just a lot of finicky cutting!

My next project consists of a couple of CAS cards I made for the Heart2Heart Challenge Blog.  I have always loved CAS cards.  They say so much in the simplest way.  The first card uses the Pinwheel stamp set which will be available through Close To My Heart in May. Not much to say here other than the ink colours are Twilight, Outdoor Denim, Pear, Blush and black.

My second card uses the CTMH March stamp of the month:  Floral Happiness.  I used pigment inks on this card so that the flowers would be a bit more vibrant against the kraft background.That’s it from me.  I’ll be back tomorrow with details to a My Time Made Easy giveaway so come on back for your chance to win.  Have a lovely day and happy crafting!

~Tracy

My Time Made Easy Pretty Palette Challenge #82

Hello all you folks in blogland.  It’s Thursday and you know what that means – time for the My Time Made Easy Pretty Palette Challenge.  Sadly, this will be the last one, as MTME has decided to stop hosting challenges and put more effort into presenting their fabulous new releases each month.  So I just want to say thanks to Lauren and her awesome team for having me aboard.  It’s been a real pleasure to work with this extremely talented group and I will remain a big fan.  OK, here goes one last time… the challenge colours are saffron, pink, rose and pear.

I started out with paper from the Grammy’s Pretty Patterns digital paper pack and matted it with a rose coloured card stock.  This is such a lovely, classic paper pack and I’ve used it time and again. My focal image flower and butterfly are from the Bold Botanicals digital stamp set.  I printed the flower twice and coloured both copies with Copic markers.  I then cut them out and popped up some of the leaves up to give the flower a bit of dimension.  A pink ribbon and a few rhinestones finish it off.  Hope you are able to join us for our last Pretty Palette challenge.  You don’t have to use MTME products – just the challenge colours on whatever project you like.  Then be sure to upload your picture to the MTME blog post.  Real easy!

Have a fantastic day and I’ll see you real soon.  Thanks for stopping by!

~Tracy

Treat Bag Mini Album

Hello crafty friends!  Happy Family Day to all my Ontario followers.  I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend.  Today I would like to share a mini album I made last week for a craft party I ran Friday night.  Some of you will already know what this looks like because you made one, but I love the way it turned out so I thought I’d post it for those who haven’t see it.  I will be entering this into the Out of a Hat challenge (birds and butterflies) and the Heart2Heart challenge (tags – you’ll see why in a minute!!).I found a package of canvas covered chipboard mini album pages at my local craft store, and used one of them for the cover of the album.  I stamped a few swirly shapes and a postmark onto the canvas with Champagne and Cocoa inks and then started layering different elements on top to get a shabby chic look.After inking the edges of a doily with Cocoa ink, I stamped a really pretty floral image in the middle with Sorbet ink.  This gorgeous stamp is from the CTMH Jardin stamp set.  The ornate picture frame is also from the same set and is used to frame out the little butterfly and the word Love, which I cut out with the Cricut.I layered a few different types ribbons across the front and added another glittery swirl, flower and button combo in the top left corner.  As you can see, the spine of the album is a strip of patterned paper from the CTMH Buzz and Bumble paper pack.  I used a piece of orange washi tape down the side to help hold it in place and to add colour.The pages of the mini album are little paper treat bags, which are available through Close To My Heart.  These hold tags, which can be pulled out and decorated with photos or journaling.  Here you can see I adorned each tag with a piece of ribbon, but I haven’t gotten around to putting anything else on them yet.  I hope that’s ok for the girls over at H2H!

That’s it for today.  Hope you had fun looking.  Have a great day and happy crafting!

~Tracy

Home Is Wherever You Are

Hello there!  This week’s Out of a Hat Creations challenge is to use 3 textures on anything you like.  I immediately thought of wood, metal and glass but don’t have much crafty stuff in the way of those things, so I decided to use what I had in my stash to create the look of those textures.  I’ve been wanting to make a window card for quite some time.  I’ve seen them around in card mags and on the internet and have always admired them, but have never gotten around to it.  Well, here was my chance.  The perfect opportunity to use wood, metal and glass textures!I started off by stamping a wood grain pattern onto a piece of Barn Red cardstock.  This is the outside of my house.  Next, I used my Cricut to cut out the window shape.  Such a pretty window!  I cut another window from brown glitter paper and glued on just the roof portion.  I am going for that metal roof look here, just in case you’re wondering!I used a piece of acetate for the window glass and then added the little yellow curtains tied back with pink ribbon.No window card is complete without the flower box, so I made a whack of rolled flowers and a little 3D box to put them in.  At the last minute I decided to add the little bluebirds.  Here’s the sentiment on the inside.

And voila!  I can now put that in the ‘been there, done that’ pile!  Before I go, I would like to share my ATC’s from last week’s challenge.  I had them all made up but didn’t have time to post them, so here they are.  Better late than never, as the saying goes!

Hope you’re having a terrific week.  Stay happy, healthy and crafty.  See ya real soon!

~Tracy

Chantilly Dresses

Hello friends.  This week the Heart2Heart Challenge is home décor.  While I was roaming around Pinterest yesterday, I found a picture of map dresses – that’s right – dresses made out of maps.  They were absolutely adorable and I just had to try making my own paper dresses.  Now the ones on Pinterest didn’t have any instructions on how to make them, so I went ahead and made it up!  I also decided to frame them so they could be used as home décor.  Here’s the first of four.I used the Chantilly paper pack from Close To My Heart for all the dresses.Each dress bottom consists of a strip of card stock that measures 3 3/4″ by 10 1/2″.  It was scored at every 1/2″ interval and then folded to get a box pleat.  You could do an accordion fold as well, which I’m sure would look equally as cute.Once the pleats were folded, I gathered them together at the top and stapled them to form a waist. For the background mattes I used cardstock in the coordinating colours of the paper pack – Pear, Buttercup, Twilight, and Cotton Candy.For the tops of the dresses, I cut squares and then cut out arm holes and/or collars or straps, depending on the style I was going for.The staples on the skirt part of the dress were covered with a cumberbund or ribbon, depending on where the urge took me!And another little strappy number!I used some IKEA frames I had lying around to frame the dresses up.  The great thing about these frames is they are about an inch deep so they can be used like shadow boxes.  Perfect for my little dresses.  Wouldn’t these be cute in a little girl’s room?

Hope you’re having a great weekend.  Have a crafty day!

~Tracy

You’re A Hoot

Hi everyone! This week’s My Time Made Easy Pretty Palette Challenge features the following colours…

My card uses paper from the Color Infusion digital paper pack.  Aren’t the owls cute?I used Gimp photo editing software to alter the size of the owl and tree images and then printed and cut them out.  I decided to use a doily for the tree leaves and added the flowers with red gems for a bit of bling.For more great inspiration click here to see what the other design team members came up with.  If you want to play along these are the Pretty Palette details:

You can use the palette on ANY type of project!

While participation with products from My Time Made Easy ™ LLC is appreciated, it is not required to participate. You can use products from ANY company.

Every other week we will pick a winner from the palette participants, and announce them the following week, when the next Pretty Palette Challenge is announced.

This month’s contest began Thursday, January 24th. Contest ends Wednesday, March 20th. Winner announced Thursday, March 21st.

PRIZE PACKAGE: Whoever plays along in Palette Challenges #80, 81, 82, and 83, will be entered to win a Pretty Package of THEIR Choice!

So what can you do with these colours? We can’t wait to see!  Happy crafting!

~Tracy