from my ink pad to yours

Sympathy Rose Watercolor

A few days back I got the stamps out from the Rose Wonder/Rose Garden bundle and tried them out with a last week's Colour Q challenge:

Here is what I came up with:

• I embossed the large rose image on a half sheet of Stampin' Up!'s watercolor paper in white and basically just played with the challenge colors using my aquapainter and the lids of the pads.
• I brushed each area with clear water before applying the color as this seems to help move the color.
• I did the whole flower with Primrose Petal and then went back to add shades with Raspberry Ripple. Same thing with the Crumb Cake leaves.
• If you don't have the retired Raspberry Ripple and Primrose Petals I'm sure you could get a similar look with Rose Red.
• I used some retired Very Vanilla Seam Binding but you could get a similar look if you just lightly tea-dye some white seam binding.
• I like to do sympathy cards larger than A2 so this is mounted on a 5" × 6-7/8 watercolor card.
• The Rose Wonder stamps (#1406970) include a wonderful variety of thoughtful greetings, a couple of which would be appropriate for the inside of this card. Or you can do like I did and just write your own personal message inside.

 

I'm finally done with our 100 Valentine project. Here are some of the designs we did that aren't posted elsewhere:

It was fun to get a little crazy with some polka dots in my retired Valentine stash. The card on the right includes some non Stampin' Up! washi tape along with retired stamps.

I've got a down line swap to work on so I better get back to work...

Going Global for 100 Valentines

I gave a hundred Valentines.
A hundred, did I say?
I gave a thousand Valentines
one cold and wintry day.

I didn't put my name on them
or any other words,
because my Valentines were seeds
for February birds.

by Aileen Fisher

That is a poem I used several years ago to make Valentine bags of bird seed. Now the 100 Valentine Project are Valentines I help to make for nursing home residents. You can see some that we did last year here. Another was in a blog post last year. I don't really want to repeat any from last year so I've been doing a few new designs.

I got a few more designed today thanks to a couple of sketch challenges: Mojo Monday  and Stamplorations:

Here is Mojo Monday sketch 431:

I've had the Mojo Monday's circles floating around in my head for a few days and tonight I got this to come together:

• I used the Going Global stamp set (#140475) on both cards, along with the Going Places DSP stack of paper (#140581). Other colors are Sahara Sand, Cherry Cobbler and Whisper White.
• The background is dry embossed with the World Traveler embossing folder (#138289).
• While I just stamped the globe image in black ink for my "prototype", I decided to emboss it with black powder for the final, glued together version.
• The candy dots are also Cherry Cobbler from the regals group (#130932).
• I used my pinking shears which long ago stopped cutting fabric after embossing the greeting with white powder.

My second card is done with mostly the same supplies but used a great simple sketch from Stamplorations:

Same sentiment from Going Global... I tried to keep it even simpler with just the historic map dsp placed directly onto the white card base but decided in the end that it really needed that skinny  Basic Black strip. The heart is embossed in black and cut with a die from the Mini Treat Bag Thinlets (#137547).

Thanks for coming by today.

 

 

 

 

 

2 challenges 2 cards

I have a couple of cards for you today:

The first card is for  a photo inspiration challenge for "The Challenge" 

I love the colors and couldn't resist doing this challenge.

• My panel is made of Crumb Cake. I applied White craft ink to the raised part of the folder's design, which of course is the recessed portion that appears on the card.  It is subtle but softens the look.
• The lace is Venetian Crochet Trim (#134581).

• All of the floral parts are cut with Botanical Builders framelits (#140625). to start with I cut just about everything except the border and two largest leaves out of Very Vanilla cardstock. I colored the ferns by pressing them lightly into the Crumb Cake inkpad which leave kind of a nice texture that you can see in the close-up. I sponged the flowers and decided to add a couple of flower centers cut from Crumb Cake.  The smallest flower has a center stamped with the photopolymer stamp set Botanical Blooms (P#140757). You can get these in a bundle : (stamp set, the framelits AND the coordinating paper) (#140819).
• The ribbon is white 1/2" seam binding7 (#134573) which I dyed with a few tiny drops of Blushing Bride reinker(#131157) though you could also get ink from your inkpad. I love the wrinkled hand-dyed look you get from this.
• To finish it off I applied some little pearls (#119247).

Here is a close-up:

 

Card #2 was much quicker. I did it for the 576th Sketch challenge over on Splitcoaststampers.

 

Here is my take. It will be one of the designs we do for the 100 Valentines project we do for our local nursing home.

• When I was playing around with the What I Love Sale-A-Bration set (@141276) yesterday I really liked the striped pattern I could make with the leaflet stamp.  So, it's the first thing I thought of when I saw the vertical strip on today's challenge. I didn't even need the Misti on this. It was easy to do with a clear block. The color is Wild Wasabi.
• The Focal point is the greeting from Suite Sayings (W#140709, C#140712). The large heart is punched from Watermelon Wonder with the heart from the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack (#133787). The smaller hearts are punched with the Confetti Hearts Border (#137415)
• I rounded the corners with the Project Life Corner punch (#135346).
• Oh, yes! Stampin' Dimensionals (#104430) What would I do without those?

Thank you so much for your visit today! It is fun to share with you.

 

 

Just What I Love...

Just what I love... Flowers!

I think the ribbon drove this card design. The first thing I did for yesterday's Color Challenge at Splitcoaststampers was to dye some white seam binding with Melon Mambo with a touch of Pumpkin Pie ink. I've done this a few different ways . This time I "smooshed" the inkpads onto my largest acrylic block(#118483), spritzed it with some water (#126185) picked up all the wet ink with a strip of seam binding. Rubber gloves come in handy too. If the ribbon is really wet I dab it off with a tissue and then hang it to dry. The wrinkles end up being part of the charm. I suppose if the ribbon got wet the color would run - but if my card gets wet that's probably the end of the card too!

The challenge also included Pretty in Pink plus a choice of green.  Definitely flower colors!

I "sloppy stamped" the images from What I Love, (#141276) in Melon Mambo, Pumpkin Pie and Wild Wasabi.  The lighter shades of Melon Mambo are a lot like Pretty in Pink so I didn't bother going to get my Pretty in Pink pad. I trimmed my stamping down to my favorite part, tied the dried ribbon around it and mounted it to the top of my card with Stampin' Dimensionals (#104430) and added one of the sweet little messages from the same stamp set.  I think this layout makes those little messages  work really well.

The stamp set What I Love is one of the Sale-A-Bration sets that is free with a $50 purchase through March 31, 2016. Click on the shop link above if you would like to place an order through me.

Thank you for stopping by - have a good day!

Sunburst Sayings

While I've made specialty fold cards pretty often in the past it's been quite awhile so yesterday's Splitcoaststamper's Technique Challenge for a gate fold card piqued my interest. The colors are inspired by the the Ways to Use it Challenge which challenges us to make a card that represents "our little corner of the world".  Well I'm here in Minnesota which is just coming off our coldest weather of the year. 47 hours below 0! Even when the sun shines it is cold and white.

This one uses the Sunburst Sayings bundle (W#140808, C#140807) and is a variation that starts with 8.5 x 12" piece of Sale-A-Bration's Perfectly Artistic Designer Series Paper (#141021) which is free with a $50 (US) purchase just until February 15 . The general instructions for the Double Gate fold card (by Dawn Ollchefske) from Splitcoaststampers are here.  Mine is taller, using a 8.5 instead of 5.5" as the measurement of the shorter side and I cut the diagonal just to the outer folds instead of the inner folds allowing the inside of the card to be completely covered when closed.

I used the Deco Labels (#130102) and Circles (#130921) Collection Framelits and Organza Ribbon (#114319) to complete the front. I used the smaller circle framelit placed carefully inside the larger Basic Gray circle to paint the glitter edge with the Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Brush (#141897). A few rhinestones (#119246) provide just a little more bling.

 

Oops! Here is another sunnier and warmer "prototype". I cut off opposite corners of the gate fold instead of both the upper corners. Isn't this Perfectly Artistic DSP fun!

Maybe next weekend it will be above freezing!!!

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog. I have a few more challenge cards to be posting soon.

 

I love You This Much!

Quick post today. I'm stamping with my downline and am borrowing Bear Hugs (W#139543;C#139546). There are so many possibilities with this set I needed a challenge to focus my efforts so I chose the Pals Paper Arts challenge starting point:

I haven't noticed many bears done in black so I thought this challenge might be fun!

I made a border of the challenge colors, decided that the message should be part of the border and then used dimensionals to add my bear. Don't you love his hat and bow tie? I used the Mint Macaron dot to put a little emphasis on the cute message. The dots come in a pack of 96 with It's My Party Enamel Dots (#140554) which also include Crushed Curry and Melon Mambo.

Version 2:

I just added the Mint Macaron/Black Baker's Twine. It comes with Melon Mambo/Black in a combo pack(#140555).

Since I wasn't sure which direction I was going when I started this project I cut out 5 bears plus a bunch of Melon Mambo and Mint Macaron accessories. So, this probably won't be the last that you see of these guys...and I'm pretty sure these critters will be on my next order!

Back to our little stamping party!

Red or White?

Red or White ribbon that is? I just couldn't decide which I liked better so I took pictures of the card with both.

Once I had wrapped my head around using today's Splitcoaststampers color challenge - Red - Black - White as I tried out my new Misti stamp positioning tool this went pretty fast. I thought this piece would be just for practice but I was able to use my first attempt.

The hummingbird from Picture Perfect (#140520) has 4 parts and they are numbered on the reference sheet that the photopolymer stamps come on. You don't have to use them in order but it does help you to keep them straight in your head. I started by stamping #1 in Smokey Slate, little #2 - the throat - in Real Red, #3 in Basic Gray and finally #4 in Memento Tuxedo Black. I couldn't believe the detail and the way all the colors came together.

I know that you can do this with the acrylic blocks but my old eyes had a hard time focusing through the acrylic block and getting the two step images (starfish) close enough so I didn't even want to try the hummingbird. So, I ordered the Misti that I've noticed other stampers/bloggers raving about for the last year or so.

Being happy with the bird, I decided to try my hand at adding a Flowering Flourish (C#126367). This is a clear mount stamp so it isn't as easy to get the placement you want as it would be with a photopolymer stamp. Using a piece of vellum with the Misti I was able to

• get the flourish where I wanted it - in Smokey Slate with the flower part omitted.
• add the flower in Real Red, and
• add Basic Black shadows on the underside of the flourish.

Ok, I could perfect my marker technique a little bit but I was satisfied! The placement was perfect and it gave the effect I was going for. If or when I do it again I might try the Basic Gray marker.

I added a strip of Everyday Chic paper (#138445) and a greeting from the Picture Perfect stamp set to balance out the piece I'd practiced on and it definitely worked for the Black/White/Red challenge. I of course took a little license with the gray but I could have just stamped off the black to get lighter shades.

Oh, yes. Back to the white or red ribbon:

I originally thought I wanted white because I just wanted a minimal amount of red in the card. But maybe the red makes it a better greeting card...

What do you think?

 

 

Mojo Monday Bloomin' Love

My Valentine stash is a little heavy on the predominant Blushing Bride from Love Blossoms (#140548) so I was interested in last week's  Global Design Project call to use the less dominant colors: Garden Green, Crumb Cake, and Rose Red.  I did this little gem for this week's Mojo Monday challenge:

I started looking at this diagonal lined stripe in a whole new light once I isolated it from the other patterns. The heart piece is leftover from another project with Bloomin' Love and the Garden Green stripes are perfect with the busy-ness of the heart.

Here is it's partner, based on another hexagon card I did a few years back:

I layered white on white tags made with Tags and Labels Framelits(#138282). The hexagons are made with the hexagon punch (#130919) and layered onto a white panel embossed with the Hoenycomb embossing folder (#129378).

Thanks for stopping...

Sidetracked with Picture Perfect

Don't you just love it when you start down one road and end up going somewhere totally unintended. Well that's what happened with the wintry Inspiration Challenge on Splitcoaststampers today.

I saw this Snowlady on a pinterest board with a pretty hat. The flowers reminded me of the extra emboss resist/watercolor piece I had made earlier in the week with a rose image from Picture Perfect (#140520). I started messing around to find greeting/image to layer over it and ended up with the label piece on this card. The thing was, I liked it so much better with less going on in the background so it needed a new card base.

Both the image and the card base are embossed with the Softly Falling embossing folder (#139672) which helps it to stay with the snowy, white out kind of theme. I used the two largest Deco Label framelits (#130102). A simple tied know with Very Vanilla Satin ribbon(#134550) finished it off.

Here is a photo that is a little washed out due to the flash but shows the embossing a little better:

Here is the background piece that will have to wait for another day...

I talked about the watercolor process I used for this a few days ago on this post. The ribbon is some dyed seam binding that I did a few years ago. That and the soft look make seam binding one of my go to trims.

 

Just for You

Quick card today...

One of my downline asked me what my favorite new product is. While I haven't tried everything yet  (and I do like balloons a lot!) I had to say that I was surprised how much I like the Botanical suite and that I could play with it all day if I could. If there are scraps of paper laying about, I just cut them into flower pieces for use at a later time.

There are endless possibilities with the die cuts. Just add sponging... I used it with the Sale-A-Bration set Botanicals for You, partly because it was handy while I was trying to stage a shot of one of my stamping counters, supposedly to update the banner/header on my blog.  I did get a photo but have yet to determine just how or if I want to use it:

I'm busy getting ready for a couple of stamping events next week but I'll try to be back with more cards over the weekend.

Stay warm ... it's going to get cold here in Minnesota.