Our first May challenge was the letter M, and I picked monogram. Monograms are big business here in the south–they’re on everything, it seems–and I though it would be fun to create something with my monogram that was both functional and decorative.

Make sure to check out the post (and video!) over on the Imagine blog.

The Vertigo pretty much makes this project–it adds such a cool effect to the background. I will say, though, that cutting the Vertigo, staying on the line I’d drawn, that did make a little dizzy in the moment. But, hey, it’s a small price to pay for a fun little keychain.

That said, if you’re not sure this would hold up to regular use, I think the project could be made with fabric in place of the cardstock and felt in place of the foam. Then pierce and blanket-stitch around the edges to keep everything together? That could totally work. Or even some thin (glove-weight) leather or pleather.

And because I was incredibly neglectful in sharing my projects over the last few months, here’s a handy recap of the March and April goodies from Imagine.

In the earlier days of scrapbooking, paper piecing (handcut or with the aid of punches) was a common decorative element. I have a hunch that it found it’s way to paper crafting from quilting–paper piecing is a technique for more intricate quilt designs–so I reversed it with this llama paper piecing based on a quilting pattern. I still have no idea what all I’m going to do with it, but it was loads of fun to make!

Our color challenge for April was Lapis and you know that made me happy. I adore my small collection of lapis jewelry and decided to use one of the pieces–a bracelet I purchased in Mexico–as the inspiration for this card anytime card.

I finally got another art journal page put together, this one for the theme of “the bigger the better.” There’s a video of the process over on the Imagine blog.

From big to small, the next project stands about 5″ tall and it my most ambitious quilling project to date. The patterned paper gave the coils and interesting look and it was a lot of fun figuring out how I wanted to pair the different pieces together to make the flowers.

What does this embroidery project have to do with Imagine products? First I stamped the rose image onto the linen with VersaFine ink, then I dyed my own embroidery floss using Fireworks! Spray to create variegated green and pink thread that I used to embroider the stamped image. Just another way to use the supplies we already own but in a different context!

My last project to share has something in common with the first: Vertigo. I hadn’t used this material before this year and now I get to play with ways to incorporate it into different uses. For this one, the swirly nature of the Vertigo plus the leaves stamped on top kind of give it a “floating on water” look that I didn’t want to cover up. So all I added was a bit of patterned paper and a hand-written greeting to finish it out. Sometimes simple is best, you know?