Gingersnap Office Items Challenge

Hello Friends -

I could use some feedback here.  I am a huge fan of the vintage/grunge/shabby style of papercrafting but I'm not very confident about my execution.  To add to my nervousness, the creations over at Gingersnaps are incredible.  I think they are really amazing and over the top gorgeous.  So, I've been checking out the work they do but I have never joined in one of their challenges.  However, I had some ideas for their challenge with office items.  I've been thinking about these paperclips which look a bit like the old typewriter keys. 

From there I searched for a vintage picture of an office.  I really wanted my card to have women in it, as opposed to the offices with all men.  I'm thinking about sending the card to one of my dear friends and an office full of men really wouldn't have been the right thing.

I was having trouble with the pattern paper so I stamped the typewriter image from the Hero Arts stamps I won from Papercraafter's Corner. 

With the ribbon I was going for the look of an old typerwriter ribbon.  Here on the Home Front I received a thumbs down on it looking anything like a typewriter ribbon.  I used rayon seam binding and covered it in Black Soot Distress Ink.  I can tell you my fingers look like I was changing typewriter ribbons.  What do you think?  Does it look like typewriter ribbon or just black ribbon crunched up? 

What would make this card work better, considering the vintage style? 

Valentines for and with children

These are the Valentines the Wonderkid will be taking to his classmates.  They aren't exactly what I would have done if I didn't have a three year old helping me, but I think they came out OK given the challenges and skill levels.

I asked the Wonderkid if he wanted to do elephants, dinosaurs, birds OR bears.  I showed him each of the cuts and let him choose.  His answer was, "Yes".  Yes, he wanted to do bears, yes, he wanted to do birds, yes, he wanted to do dinosaurs AND yes, he wanted to do elephants.  After realizing the futility of arguing with a three year old, I agreed to all four designs. 

I bought these SVGs from Letter Delights.  I must say, I love the look of their cuts and while they cut very nice, the layout isn't intuitive and the paper piecing can be VERY difficult.  I'm starting to get better at understanding how I can make these do-able.  The eyes on all of them are almost impossible and they had these little tiny traingles for a tongue.  Needless to say, it was never cut.  I tried doing the bird with all of the layers and about pulled my hair out (and that was without the Wonderkid).  If you ignore all but the most important pieces, these become cute and doable.  Remember most of them are based on their printables and graphic files.  In the past I would purchase a graphic file and convert it to an SVG.  This is MUCH easier.  And, on the plus side, they are having a very good sale right now.  It is 40% off of all their files. 
 
All of the paper for the valentines is from K and Company.  I must say, I don't buy a lot of K and Company but I love the Valentines stacks because they coordinate so nicely.  I used their stacks last year for valentines gift bags and it was the same way.  When you are trying to make a lot of things that are similar but not necessarily the same these are fantastic.  In addition, I was able to use different papers and know they were likely to compliment.  I let the Wonderkid dig into my stash of gradient gems for the eyes on all of the animals (that made him as happy as a pig in mud).  The "Happy Valentines Stamp" is from Hero Arts.  It has the unique name of "Happy Valentines Day".  The "Super Tweet" and "Dino-mite" stamps come from My Pink Stamper's Punnylicous collection. 

Here are close-ups of the cards (although I shudder at some of the glueing).

The bird with the heart from the bear cut.

The bear is supposed to have wacky eyes (one is bigger than the other), I'm not sure how well that comes through in this rendition.

He does look happy, doesn't he?

And the elephant.  Most of the elephant heads didn't get lined up as well as I might have liked.

Next up, treat bags for the Teacher Appreciation days.