from my ink pad to yours

Just a little gingham something...

It’s coming up on state fair season in many states around the U.S. and I think that this Gingham Chalk talk look has old time state fair fun written all over it:

• I love the denim blue look you get with Stampin’ Up!’s Midnight Muse In Color.  It has less than 1 year left in the Stampin’ Up! Color line up so try it soon!
• Add a subtle twist to your artwork is by  mixing up the neutrals. In this card I did all my stamping and embossing with Very Vanilla but used the slightly darker Ivory Naturals card stock for my card base.
• There are so many ways to use the tag aspect of the Chalk Talk framelits. For this card I applied a Vintage brad up onto slightly larger Cherry Cobbler circle and popped it up with a dimensional and “hung” the tag from this.

Stamps: Chalk Talk, Gingham wheel
Inks: Cherry Cobbler, Midnight Muse
Papers: Very Vanilla, Ivory Naturals, Midnight Muse
Accessories: Wheel handle, Dots embossing folder, Chalk Talk framelits, Big Shot, Vintage brads, Candy Dots in Cherry Cobbler, circle punch, scissors

If you live in the US and don’t have a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator, I would love to help you with your Stampin’ Up! purchases . You can click Shop at the top of my blog to shop online with me 24/7.  Make sure you check out Loyalty Program to see my frequent shopper benefits. Email me at [email protected] if you have any questions.

Thanks so much for stopping by to visit!

Wildflower Meadow Duo

This is the first card I tried with the new Wildflower Meadow background stamp. I like that it has little polka dots in the background because, well, I just like dots.

I wanted to see how it works to use a less than full sized portion of this image. Both of these images are embossed with white embossing powder on the Pear Pizzazz rough weave  pattern out of the Gingham Garden collection of DSP

For this card I divided the images into strips and put the wider, main strip on the front of the card and the narrower strip on the edge of the inside. This front panel is layered on Pear Pizazz and has doubled piece of Pear Pizazz Seam binding tied around the panel.

To tie the ribbon you lay a folded length of ribbon under your layer. In this case the folded end was on the left. Fold the loose ends over the layer and bring up through the folded end. Keeping the ribbon taut, tie the two loose ends into a bow and trim the ends. The bow will hold it all in place.

The second card is just trimmed down and layered with a White organdy bow. A classic look!

Birthday Basics

I initially ordered the Birthday Basics designer series paper because it was the July featured paper for the Creative Crew July Challenges over at Splitcoaststampers. It is a lovely, warm and versatile group of designs that I just know you'd enjoy incorporating into your own cardmaking.

My first cards with this set of papers weren't birthday cards but rather Christmas cards, since Christmas in July was another theme for the July Creative Crew:

In this one I couldn't resist trying out my new hexagon punch. I rotated the punched image from the non birthday prints to be at an angle to the hexagon from the Honeycomb (embossing folder) pattern in the background layer. The layered hexagons give the whole card a quilted feel so once I applied the Christmas greeting I called it a Christmas quilt card. You can see the other cards I made for these challenges over at the Creative Crew Gallery.

Once I loaded up my design team images which were due on June 30th, I realized I didn't have much time to put together a birthday card to include in a package to one of my daughters who would be celebrating her birthday on July 4th - in New York. This time I included more of the birthday patterns in simple card I whipped up:

I lucked out in that the "24" was in one of the scraps I had. I think you could locate quite a few ages on this paper. The balloon was stamped, colored with markers, and cut out. Stampin' dimensionals, of course, and a greeting from Petite Pairs helped to get the card finished quickly. The little bit of stamping and sponging was done with Basic Gray ink.

So what do you think of Birthday Basics(#130145)? That's just one of the new designer series papers that is included on a buy 3 get one free special with Stampin' Up this month.

Shop with me by clicking shop at the top of my blog. (hint - I've also been using Modern Medley(#126926), Venetian(#130144), and Afternoon Picnic(#131390), along with the Gingham Garden(#129310) and Soho Subway (#130140) paper that I purchased during the demonstrator preorder.

It feels good to be back blogging, now that I've finally had a couple of free days during the week. I have lots to share - instead of attending convention this year, some of my downline spent some or all of the conventions days stamping away at my place. What a lot of fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

Flower Shop Hat etc...

One afternoon last month I decided to try something new and play along with the Virtual Stamp Night over at Splitcoaststampers. Limiting myself to 45 minutes per card is a pretty big challenge for me but I did stay with it for 3 cards.

This was for the Popsicle color challenge. I used Stampin' Up!'s new Six Sided Sampler set along with the Honeycomb embossing folder and Basic Black Cheron ribbon.

I used Stampin' Up!'s new Six Sided Sampler set to stamp by hexagons on Strawberry Slush, Tangerine Tango and Daffodil Delight cards stock. The Honeycomb embossing folder and Basic Black Cheron ribbon finish it off.

This is the last card I made that day. It was for the Bright Star Challenge which was supposed to be a card for a bright star in your life and include a sunrise or sunset.

I made a sunrise with the oval framelits and this awesome oval greeting from Chalk Talk. The Greeting is punched out with the large oval punch. The star is punched with a "vintage" or retired Stampin' Up! punch.

This last card was actually my first (and favorite!) card and I really did make the whole card in 35 minutes, including sketching out the hat pattern. The surprise that I could actually create this in such a short amount of time kept me going through the next few.

If I can figure out how to make a pdf of the pattern to come out the right size I will share the pattern but it really isn't hard to do yourself. Feel free to leave me a link with good instructions for this.

There is a pattern posted in the challenge but when I printed it out it was small and I wanted a bigger brim. That's when I decided to wing it with my own pattern. It almost took longer to write out the directions!

• I scored a 4 1/4 x 5.5 card front in half parallel to the 4 1/4 side and drew half a hat on one side. Just tried to make it almost as big as an A2 card once it was doubled.
• I folded it in half and cut it out to get a hat that was symmetrical.
• I traced this hat on a folded (Baked Brown Sugar =BBS) card and cut it out. Set this aside and make the textured hat:
• I dry embossed two card front sized pieces of BBS with Square Lattice embossing folder that had been brayered with Soft Suede ink to emphasize the texture.
• I traced the hat again on one of the embossed pieces, then trimmed just the brim off my pattern and traced that on the second embossed piece. Then cut out both of these. 
• Sponge (Crumb Cake is what I used)the edges and lower portion of the embossed hat - just above the brim.
• Cut into the brim of each side of the embossed hat so that you can wrap your ribbon around the hat. Tie your ribbon leaving just enough give so that you can adhere the ribbon to the hat so that it is curved and not straight.
• Sponge around the edges of your embossed brim and adhere to the embossed hat using popdots/dimensionals in the center and regular adhesive at the sides. This helps give it the rounded appearance. 
• Attach your embossed had to the folded cut out card and add a flower. You may want to retrim some of your edges and responge as necessary.
• I used one of the flowers from Stampin' Up!s Flower Garden set, along with the coordinatine Pansy punch. Those flowers seem to be just the right size for this hat. My flower was stamped on Strawberry Slush. After I took the picture I decided to round the petals a little with a pencil to give it more dimension.

Seriously, this only took 35 minutes. I was on a roll! Usually there is much more trial and error involved when I make a card. I just lucked out by avoiding the error part.

Check it out

I was recently invited to be on the Paper Crafter's Sampler design team. My first card is in the July issue which is released today!

Here is a peek at my card:

You can learn more about the July issue of Paper Crafters Sampler, Sand and Sea by clicking on the image below.