Summertime Summertime, Sum Sum Summertime!

Big, vibrant, bold, hot colors! Yum!  Kiki Art has such beautiful rich colors in their papers.  That's one of the things I like most about these papers.  That, and the fact that Kiki Art will be in the Zutter booth at CHA in Chicago in a couple weeks!  Yeah, what better to be crafting with my Zutter tools, then to do it with Kiki's papers!  Kiki herself will be in the booth too, as well as some of her design team and some of our Zisters too! (Some are on both teams - so it's a perfect match!)  This is what Kiki looks like here on the left - though she looks much cuter in person! LOL!

Anyhoo, a few weeks ago I made a bunch of these accordion folded flower thingies (using my trusty Scor-it-All), and decided that I needed some colorful ones - and boy oh boy, did they turn out super with Kiki's papers!  Perfect for summer decor and brightening my scrap room, and my front living room.  I attached little dowels to the flowers so I could stick them in flower pots.  Franny used them as fans!  The big chipboard hearts are from Kiki's heart-shaped chipboard album set.

The various border punches make these so dang cute!

I had a bunch of orange and yellow flowers I thought I was never going to use until I did this.......looks like a big star-bursty sunflower!  Plus this particular Kiki paper is all sparkly.

Left the chipboard heart in this one plain except for some Smooch Spritz in just the right color!

Each flower takes two sheets of 12X12.  Cut each one into 6X12 and accordion fold in 1" increments.  Glue the ends together and curl into round shapes.  Super easy - but oh so dang awesome.  Don't the rainbow and varigated colors look awesome!?!?!

Try it...and see you at CHA!

Messy Creativity

I finally got some uninterrupted crafty time this weekend.  But I had so much on my mind that I wanted to create that my desk sort of exploded.  I am NOT a messy crafter, so this desk was sort of freaky for me.  You can't see the tossed-up messy floor around the desk - I was pretty upset about that too.  But all good....I got to create, get inky and misty and gooey.
 
Here’s the first thing I made....starting with some amazingly pretty patterned paper from Kiki

Art. I started with a 10X10 piece of Zutter Clipboard Wood that I covered with paper, but I left a itty bitty border so the wood would show, and distressed all the edges with ink and paint.

I punched the top edge and laced the holes with a pretty ribbon.  I did this first because I wasn't sure what I was going to embellish with so I wanted to make sure I was able to punch the edges before adding anything bulky or glittery that wouldn't fit in the BIA.


I glittered some old plastic letters to match the paper, and also used some felt ribbon, front and back (glittered the back adhesive side). I had these acrylic swirls that I sponged with white paint....and then a bunch of fun texture-y odds and ends to go with my favorite family photo. The paper has adorable little ladybugs, which I punched up with some lady bug buttons I had left over from a baby shower I organized last year.  I added the pretty green lace along the bottom edge to soften things up.

I love this, and will hang it proudly this Spring :)