from my ink pad to yours

chicken in

I really thought this set would be around for a little longer.  Those chickens are so cute and its great fun to make them all sorts of silly colors.   This is a card we did at my stamp club several months ago, featuring Paisley Print and Best of Cluck. My favorite part was making the  the spotted black hen.

I suppose you've figured out that most of my posts lately are cards that I've made a while ago but hadn't posted yet. Partly because it's the last chance to see them while you can still order the sets but it's also because I've been spending my stamping time working on designs for convention swaps.  They will eventually get posted - just not yet.

Speaking of convention swaps, I just heard from the hostess of the  Shoebox Swap I'll be participating in on Friday evening, July 27th  while I'm at the convention.  There is room for a few more participants and she asked if I'd let my blog readers know about it. (you do have to be a Stampin' Up! demonstrator attending Session 1 of the convention) Basically, its set up so that you  prepare the supplies for half the participants to make your swap and you premake it for the other half.  You end up with 42 card finished card fronts at the end of the evening plus there are prizes etc. It sure would be fun if I had a chance to meet some of you there. If you think you might be  interested just leave me a comment or send me an email.  I'll send  you more details along with the hostess' email.

Thanks for checking my blog today!

onesie on weaves

One more A Little Love card before it retires.  Can you tell I've done a few with this  wonderful  weaves sketch?  I orginally came up with this design when I was doing some custom baby shower invitations.  We didn't use the blue mat( well, actually it was a pink version)  but printed off the invitation details on pink paper and attached to the inside with the square steps punch.  That was punched on the right corners of the inside  so the information was just trimmed and slid into the corners.

Convention Session 1, anyone?

I'll be attending session 1 of the Stampin' Up! convention in about a month and am just getting started designing my swaps.  I'm wondering if any of my readers are demos who will also be there? Let me know if you are so I'll know who to keep an eye out for.

I'll miss Mixed Bouquet

Here's just one of the reasons I will be sad to see Mixed Bouquet retire.  It does so many seasons! Since I just purchased it last fall, my first cards were  Thanksgiving and Christmas but, of course, it does so much more.  It's whimsical style allows you to work with any color combination, realistic or not. 

On this card I used the "berries" as mistletoe, but they work just as well as blueberries.  The leaves are even fairly accurate for both. The berries are colored with a white gel pen, leaves are watercolored with Always Artichoke.  And, I'm relieved that Many Merry Messages, the source for Season's Greetings, will be around for a while longer. I have hardly begun to tap the potential with those lovely words.

I've added a few more pictures to my Mixed Bouquet photo album on the sidebar so check them out.

Here are a just a few of the of my favorite Mixed Bouquet cards from Splitcoaststamper's Gallery:

darleenstamps
jbalcer
EllenH
princessink
mytime
Carole Richardson

A Little Love

Here's a quick card made with some retiring sets.  The tag is is stamped with a flower from A Little Love.  The words were omitted from the first inking and later added below the dry embossed area. I love the simple look of the Wonderful Weaves background.  Colors are Very Vanilla and Certainly Celery.

Farewell Ode to Tag Time

I cased myself for this card - just changing the colors to this week's Color Challenge 118. You can find the original card, along with some of my other work with this set in my Tag Time Photo Album.  The colors are Cameo Coral, Certainly Celery, Chocolate Chip and Taken with Turquoise. I thought they'd make good birthday colors. The turquoise swirls are stamped with craft ink.

One of the first things I do when I start working on a color challenge is to stamp some backgrounds in craft ink of one of the colors onto cardstock of another challenge color. When you are stamping on colored cardstock, craft ink gives you a color that is much closer to the true color than you would get if you stamped with classic on colored cardstock. You can see a comparison of this here. This really helps me to bring the colors together and make them look like they really belong to the piece. 

Though this set has been around for almost three years, I really only started seeing its possibilities last summer when I saw Stampin' Up!'s  recently released 2006-2007 Idea Book and Catalog. They had a cute little birthday card using the balloon stamp from this set and I had to case it.  One rainy weekend last August I stamped up  a stack of cards from this versatile set.  Throughout the year this has shown up at lots of workshops and classes while I practically waxed poetic about Tag Time.  I love that this one set gives a new stamper so many styles and occasions in one box.

Flower Clouds with Soft Sky

This card was inspired by the Layered Brayer technique that I saw on Andrea's blog, which is featured in a post I made earlier today. I thought it would be a good way to try out a couple of new inkpads.

I had intended to to actually follow the steps in Andrea's tutorial using All About Occasions with the new In Colors, Soft Sky and Blue Bayou plus rectangle shaped post it notes.   After I brayered the first layer of color with Soft Sky,  I thought the flowers looked like puffy clouds in the sky and didn't want to add rectangle shapes...

...So, I punched circles out of those post it notes to mask the flower centers. (Note: it's easier to punch if you layer three post it notes together with the tacky layers towards the inside.) That way I protected the flower centers from the darker ink,  Blue Bayou, that I brayered on for my second layer.  Basically, it is the same as Andrea's technique.  I just altered the shape of my post it notes.

To finish it off, I inked the jumbo thank you wheel from the set with Bayou Blue and wheeled across the bottom of a Soft Sky card.  I added a scallop made of  Blue Bayou cardstock with the corner rounder and a white gel pen.  Add one white, narrow organdy ribbon and voila, Flower clouds!

Blog links redux

I've checked my blog links and taken out a few that don't seem to be very active or have been discontinued.  I've kept them on my Google Reader so I will see  if they become active again and then I can relist them.

I've added a couple of new links: Andrea's Stampin' Blog: Simple Stamping fo rthe Creatively Challenged

Andrea's blog is a recent addition to my Google Reader list.  Make sure you check out her "about me" section.  I really like her comments about creativity. 

Another blog that has been around for awhile and I've followed through Google Reader is Kristina Werner's blog: kwernerdesignblog: the art + craft of kristina werner.  Her latest post, June 12, features some of the new images and colors from the Stampin' Up! preview.

I'll also remind you to check out a blog's archives anytime you come across a blogger whose work you like.  There are so many great earlier posts that we don't ever see because we often only take a look at the current page.  Also, take time to leave at least a couple comments each time you sit down to blog surf.  We all like to know about our readers!

Color Challenge with New Rubber

Here' s my first card with All About Occasions, a hostess level 3 set from the soon to be released Fall/ Winter catalog from Stampin' Up!.  I used today's color challenge #118 (Cameo Coral, Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery and Cool Caribbean) from Splitcoaststampers.  This is a little different from other hostess sets because it includes 2 jumbo wheels with birthday and thank you wheels, plus a 4 piece set of coordinating stamps.  I made a list of almost 20 different ideas I had for this stamp about a month ago but do you think I can find it???

Looks Like Spring

Oops! My mistake.  I had assumed so many of my favorite sets were retiring that I lumped Looks Like Spring into them.  Thanks to Marie for pointing out my error.  Whew !!! I'm so glad this one will be around to keep playing with.  Next post I'll check out my marked up "Retirement" catalog to check out the retired sets! I've edited most of the text on this post to reflect this.

Today we'll visit about Looks Like Spring. You can see this set on page 112 of the '06-'07 catalog. Initially, for me the appeal of this set was it's matching punch, Spring Bouquet which is shown on page 221.  While many stampers on Splitcoaststampers were showing cards with the large flower cut out I considered myself too lazy for something so putsy and set out to take advantage of the punch without doing any cutting. 

This first card is one I designed for last spring's Stamp a Stack.  The diamond background is stamped in white craft ink twice on the side of the Certainly Celery card. The dots are added with the White Signo Gel Pen.

The large flower is stamped in Certainly Celery on white with a few extra images stamped at the bottom of the white layer without reinking my stamp. Two small white flowers are punched out with the coordinating punch and topped with a 1/4" Certainly Celery circle.I used an Always Artichoke marker to ink just the top of the friend stamp and stamped it over one of the faded flowers. This piece is layered onto a slightly larger piece of Always Artichoke cardstock.

A white organdy ribbon is tied around the card base and the white/artichoke  layer is attached with Stampin' Dimensionals.

Here is the same card done in Apricot Appeal and Pumpkin Pie:

I designed the next card for some swaps I did last spring.  I've always thought of it as my Swedish Daisy card because of the colors.

I apologize for the poor picture quality here.  I took this before I invested in a tripod.  If I can locate the card later I'll try to get a better shot.

The large flowers are stamped with Whisper White craft ink on Ballet Blue cardstock and then embossed with Winter White embossing powder. Then I stamped the stamp with 3 smaller flowers in white craft without embossing.  (I really like this look and have used it since with All Through the Year snowflakes on navy.)  The small flowers stamp is used again to emboss white flowers on Summer Sun cardstock.  These are then punched out  and layered on an unembossed punched flower for the center of the daisy.

The diagonal stitching background stamp was used on the narrow Summer Sun layer between the Ballet Blue layer and the Whisper White card.

The message is from Simple Sayings II which is retiring.  It is stamped in Ballet Blue.

OK, so far I've been able to avoid cutting out the flower.  Until last month when I  was making graduation cards, that is.   I came up with a card that really needed a large flower.  For some I was able to use a silk flower from our local scrapbook store.  But, they didn't have them in true red which was very necessary for some of the cards as our school colors are red and black.  In fact 4 of the 5 schools that I was making cards for had red.

I had to cut out the big flower. 

And not only did I cut out a flower for each of the cards - I cut out two! That way they look much more like my favorite flower, the gerbera, and they are so much more dimensional.  Of course, I've sent off every card that I made with these so the next best thing was to make this card for this week's Splitcoaststampers color challenge (CC117).  So here it is in Ruby Red, Elegant Eggplant and Certainly Celery.  The Celery looks a little washed out in this picture.  It really is a wonderful color combination.

I love being able to make my own gerberas in any color I like .

Supplies for this card - 
Stamps: Looks Like Spring, Doodle This
Paper: Elegant Eggplant, Ruby Red, Certainly Celery
Ink: Ruby Red and Elegant Eggplant Classic, Certainly Celery Craft
Accessories: Spring Bouquet punch, Brads: Ruby Red, Certainly Celery, sponge, 1/16th punch