from my ink pad to yours

Cherish

Here is another project I did with craft inks that makes a great Valentine, anniversary or wedding card.   I dabbed the handy little craft spots onto chipboard.  This features More Mustard, Regal Rose and Always Artichoke along with the Gold Encore used with the Whirly Twirly wheel.  The cherish image image is from the set Lexicon of Love and the dot over the "i" is just a gold chipboard punchout. 

The colors of the chipboard piece are so intense that I kept the rest of the card quite simple, just a layer of True Thyme over a Gold brushed metallic card. The ribbon helps create a visual connection between the card and the chipboard piece.

Stay tuned...tomorrow I am bringing back a favorite SCS color combo from 2006:  So Saffron,  Rose Red and Orchid Opulence. 

Caribbean Fishy

Better late than never...

This is little fish is from the Sell-A-Bration set, Very Punny.  The circles are dry embossed and some of them are circled with the white gel pen and glittered.  I punched a half circle out of the Loves Me designer paper and Tempting Turquoise section before attaching it to the card so the fish piece fit in there like a glove.

Friendship Flowers

Friendship Flowers (p.187) is the first set I bought and played with when the current Stampin' Up! catalog  came out last July.  It is mostly a set of unique quotes, which I love to collect, along  with a few simple sketchy flowers.   I pulled it out today when I was challenging myself to make a card with Pale Plum,  a color I don't use often enough.  Touches of Perfect Plum, Really Rust, More Mustard and Copper Encore really bring some intrigue to this normally muted color. The techniques here are simple:  stamping, tearing and sponging!

Thanks for visiting!

the joy of craft ink

Another simple card for a Sunday but it does a pretty good job of showing what I love about using craft or pigment inks.  I stamped Stampin' Up!'s Print Pattern in Apricot Appeal craft ink on Bashful Blue  cardstock.  Compare it with the card below. 

This card uses the same color of cardstock and the same color of ink except that it is Classic or dye ink  instead of craft ink.  The dye ink tends to blend more with the color of the cardstock giving greyish or brownish colors.

same card with classic instead of craft

This is the same card except that I used Apricot Appeal classic instead of craft. Can you see how the colors have blended more so that you don't see the true Apricot Appeal color on the blue as you see on the white.

One of my favorite class cards is one that uses Soft Subtle's Pretty in Pink and Certainly Celery on black cardstock.  I posted the card sometime ago on the Splitcoast gallery.  You can see it here.

French Twist

One of Stampin' Up!'s most popular sets from the Winter Mni Catalog is Carte Postale along with its coordinating background stamp French Flair and the jumbo wheel Leaves a la Carte.  Most of the samples I've seen with these stamps are designed in the more subtle color ranges. 

Since the color challenge this week included some very bright colors I thought it would be fun to see what they would look like using a set we are used to seeing in a more subdued palette, like Carte Postale.  Hence, French Twist.

A  couple of things to note:  The 3 Pink Passion dots are made by putting double stick tape onto cardstock, covering with Dazzling Diamonds glitter and punching with a 1/4" hole punch. I applied them to the card with Mini Glue Dots.  Also, I mounted the Gable Green layer flush with the lower left corner of the card instead of the usual centered position. Oh, and did I mention that I love the white gel pen?

This is a bit of a Golden Oldie that I created a couple of years ago.  I was looking for something different from the earthy hues that the Balmy Breezes stamp set normally appeared in.  In this case my color  inspiration came from an art print.  I used a metallic pencil on the black embossed tree. The "beads" are roled from scraps of the Old Olive background paper.  There are more details in my SCS gallery where this was originally posted.

3 Lessons

This week's color challenge  on Splitcoastampers is Gable Green, Lavender Lace and Pink Passion.  I decided to adapt these colors to a card I brought to my upline's shoebox swap the other night. 

Lesson #1  After lots of trial and error with the colors I determined that I needed lots of white to give this the feel of a baby card. So...

Lesson #2  ... I decided to add scallops.  More experimenting and I learned that the corner rounder, minus its guard, makes exactly 2 scallops per 1 1/4" square making it pretty easy to make my scallops evenly spaced around the squares made with my 1 1/4" square punch. I can't wait to show this technique in my classes!

Lesson#3  It still needed more white so I mounted the quilt on a white card.  I learned that taking photos to show white on white is no small trick.  I've taken at least a dozen.  This one uses side lighting with my camera flash turned off.  Obviously my white still doesn't look very white but I hope you get the idea. You can find a list of supplies for this card in my SCS gallery.

WOW! I've blogged a little more than a week without giving up. I so appreciate the kind comments and help I've received about links, feeds and things I knew nothing about a week ago.

Now I'm off to deal with the Christmas tree I've been trying to ignore for the last week...

Quick Froggy

Quicky frog today.  There's just too much on my to do list.  I've been meaning to try this square stamp from Around and About with the little Very Punny sketches.  I used up my black brads for a swap so I had to punch out 1/8" black dots instead. They work!

Happy stamping and happy browsing!

Trimming the Blossom

I had a good question about "perfect" trimming  around the Big Blossom.  First of all I don't think anything done by hand is perfect in the sense that it is perfectly even. Many times I tell stampers in my classes  to ignore  the imperfections they see as they work on a card because once all the elements are put together it looks perfect - or very close to it.  If you look closely - or maybe not so closely -at my work you will see lots of "imperfections".

That said I do want to make a few comments about trimming. 

1. First, I use a good trimmng scissors. Mine is Stampin' Up!'s Paper Snips.
2. Second the larger the border you leave around your image the harder it is to see imperfections. Sometimes it is very charming to purposely cut uneven borders.
3. Practice helps.

Finally, I would like to link a great card I saw in the Splitcoast Gallery yesterday.  It was the first card I've seen where a larger border was used around the Big Blossom.  I think it gave a very fresh look to this large flower.  I hope you enjoy CooCooKatchoo's Blossom!

I had a good question about "perfect" trimming  around the Big Blossom.  First of all I don't think anything done by hand is perfect in the sense that it is perfectly even. Many times I tell stampers in my classes  to ignore  the imperfections they see as they work on a card because once all the elements are put together it looks perfect - or very close to it.  If you look closely - or maybe not so closely -at my work you will see lots of "imperfections".

That said I do want to make a few comments about trimming. 

1. First, I use a good trimmng scissors. Mine is Stampin' Up!'s Paper Snips.
2. Second the larger the border you leave around your image the harder it is to see imperfections. Sometimes it is very charming to purposely cut uneven borders.
3. Practice helps.

Finally, I would like to link a great card I saw in the Splitcoast Gallery yesterday.  It was the first card I've seen where a larger border was used around the Big Blossom.  I think it gave a very fresh look to this large flower.  I hope you enjoy CooCooKatchoo's Blossom!