Studio Calico: Bluegrass Farm Card Kit

Today I'm sharing the cards I made using the Studio Calico Bluegrass Farm card kit. I definitely wasn't excited about this kit at all. The colours weren't my favourite, and I struggled to make pretty things with it. I feel like I'm more of a pastel person, but I'm glad that I challenged myself to use this kit.

This card was made towards the end using some of the scraps. I feel like my style is very plain and simple, and this card clearly reflects that.

This card was inspired by one on their site. I fell in love as soon as I saw it. This was the first card I made from this kit, and if I hadn't made something I loved this much, I feel like I wouldn't have used the rest of the kit at all! I love the white on white at the top, and the doily strip under the red. I'm currently obsessed with that punch (It's by Martha Stewart).

This was the very last card I made. I was down to the last little bits and pieces. This card was also inspired by their site. I just love the shape. I see more of these in the future.

This one was a struggle for me, and was inspired by their site. I'll admit that not all of my cards are pretty, this kit has more than just one, but someone out there will love it, even if I don't.

This card didn't turn out how I wanted it to, but I still love it. It was inspired by their site, but with my own flair, as always. The EEK! flair is from the Project Life kit, and the wood veneers I pulled from my stash, I coloured the arrow green.

This card was inspired by their site. I hate this one. Jon thinks it's interesting, but every time I look at it, I want to throw it out. I imagine it will just sit in my box of cards until the end of time. Or someone from my family will be like "hey this is cool, I'll take this one".

I feel like this one isn't complete. I wanted to use the yellow block alpha stickers they sent in the kit, but I'm not necessarily a fan of alpha stickers. I only recently bought my first sets of thickers. I just hate that there will always be those letters that you simply have no use for, unless you get creative with your titles, or find other ways to use all the leftover letters.

I pulled this one from my head. I have mixed feelings about it. My favourite part is the tag. I should have included a close up of it, but you can click on the photo to see it larger. I cut a set of flowers to match the portion on that edge and adhered them with foam squares. I love doing that with patterns that repeat certain elements.

For some reason, every single card I made with this kit has some sort of bunting/banner on it. I don't know why, that just seemed to be a common theme throughout this kit for me. I could have stamped "hooray" but chose to use the alphas instead.

That's the end of this kit. I still have a few pieces left, but they'll probably just be dumped into my scrap box and used for other projects.

Happy 4th of July to all my American readers. Have a great weekend everyone!
-Alexandria

Studio Calico Office Hours Card Kit

I know it's been a while, I've just been busy and any day that its not raining, I've been trying to get things done outside, and I've been spending two days a week with my niece. In my free time though, I've been working on some cards and trying to use up some of my supplies, I also have a few other projects in the works (okay a lot) that I'd like to get through in the next month or so.

Today I'm sharing the cards I've made using the Studio Calico Office Hours card kit. It was the kit released in March. When it was revealed, I wasn't crazy about it, and it took me a while to get into using it, but then I did and now I wish I had more paper leftover to make more!

First up we have this get well card. This was the very first card I made with this kit, and I shared it on my Instagram shortly after I made it. When I opened this kit, I fell in love with the stamps. Especially the clouds. They're so cute!

This card was inspired by one I  found on their site. When I looked at it afterwards, I realized how similar they actually were. My intention was never to make it look so much like the other one, but this is how it turned out. I'm pleased with it. I love the scalloped paper on the left!

This was also inspired by a card on their site. I used different papers and a different sentiment, and love this card! I'm not a huge fan of pink, but this card is so pretty.

Okay so most of these were inspired by their creative team and community. This one I changed a bunch from the original. The little stars added just the right amount of sparkle.

Also inspired by their site. To make it my own I added more layers to the sentiment, and stamped it more than once.. I struggled with the triangles a bit, but the end result was something I could live with.

I made this using scraps from the triangle card. I first cut the triangles bigger than I wanted to, and so I trimmed the bottom off and used the scraps to make this card. The ribbon flower was made by accordion folding the ribbon and tying it in the centre with some twine and stapled the ends together to make it a circle. (Similar to how some make their paper rosettes).

I can see now that pulling ideas out of my head might not always be the best idea. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I loved it at first, but now I'm not so sure. The perfectionist in me is staring at the second ros of clouds like "what was I THINKING?". My favorite part of this card is the ribbon on the bottom. I've seem numerous other people use it on a card, and I wanted to try it (though I have no idea how they do it, I just winged it).

I believe this was also inspired by their site a tiny bit. I love the red backing the floral print. It just makes the flowers pop a little more against the green background. At this point I was running out of ideas and getting low on large pieces of paper to work with.

Here's the final card I made using this kit. In my head, my idea was solid. Once I completed it however, it was horrible. I originally had two strips I wanted to be raised off the rest of the card, but hated it more than I hate this, so I peeled it off. The foam squares took some of the colour off the paper. Rather than try and cover it with something, I stuck them down again on either side of the first line to make it look intentional. That didn't work either. Maybe I'll send this card to my mom, who doesn't see the flaws I see in my work.

Thank you for looking at all my cards. I was in a rut, but felt like I was throwing my money away buying the card kit and then not using it. I have another three to get through, and some Project Life to catch up on, but I'm getting there!

Have a great long weekend! I'll share my next post on Wednesday!
-Alexandria

URL CHANGE

Just a gentle reminder that the URL of the blog has changed. There won't be a crafty post because of the slight facelift the blog is getting. But crafty posts will resume tomorrow until Thursday because I leave on Friday for a week long holiday. Have a wonderful Monday loves!

-Alex