Sunday, September 27, 2015
Happy Birthday!!
As soon as I saw these Tim Holtz Crazy Bird stamps & dies I had to have them! I'm not even an accomplished colorist/cardmaker to justify the cost but I didn't care...they were way too much fun to look at....those faces....hysterical!! I still need to purchase the Tim Holtz Crazy Things that embellish those Crazy Birds! Anyway...I wanted to make my oldest sister Karen a birthday card. She will be 60 + years in about a week & we joke about the older we get the more our bodies break down (aka fall apart!) I made this birthday card for her...his crazy eyes kind of make him look desperate/shocked/alarmed!! I colored him by mixing some Daler-Rowney? watercolor tubes I bought dirt cheap at Walmart. His wings, beak & eyes are colored & die cut out separately & added with dimensional foam. The Tropical Teal colored card stock, Lemon colored card stock as well as the green button are from my stash. The sentiment is from Art Impressions Giant Cake Girlfriend set. I attached the Crazy bird on the card with dimensional foam & doubled up on the foam under his eyes & added glossy accents to make them even more buggier!! I think this card will crack her up & make her smile when she opens it! Sorry for the bad picture!! Thanks for stopping by!
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Sending Smiles
Well this card started off as an experiment., I had no Mojo, it was late at night & I decided to go off the grid & do something totally different for me. You know those telephone books that you NEVER use anymore but the telephone company is still delivering to your front porch? Well we had one delivered to us that day. I've seen other card makers use printed pages from a telephone book, reading books, etc to create cards. I decided to just water color one page with Tim Holtz inks, and die cut something out of it later after it dried. Well silly me forgot that papers such as this are not watercolor paper, so when I added my inks & spritzed with water, the inks didn't magically spread on their own!! Not wanting to waste the ink I just picked the paper up & ran it all through the ink colors I had placed on my mat until it was saturated with color & called it a night. The next evening when it was good & dry I cut flower layers out of it using Spellbinder's Rose Creations die. It looked boring so I spread the layers with some clear Wink of Stellar glitter pen & stuck a button from my stash in the center. Staring at it, I suddenly remembered (by some miracle) that I had ribbon my daughter had given me ages ago that contained the same colors as my flower, so I glued that on & tied a little bow on the end, added my sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp OWH Brave set and added the panel to a purplish card base. As silly as I felt trying something creative like inking up telephone book paper...I really like how it turned out!! The picture doesn't do it justice...the flower looks brighter & sparklier in person. Thanks for stopping by!
Challenges Entered:
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Total Card Fail!
My granddaughter Makayla turned 10 years old this past Monday, and we're just getting together today to celebrate. I had her gift for a week already, and basically knew what stamp I was going to color for her card. It was yesterday evening when I remembered I still had to make it!! The stamp is Punk Amara from the Paper Nest Dolls, and I colored her up with my Promarkers and added some Clear Wink of Stella to her hair & the star on her shirt. Thought it was really cute so far! I cut her out using an MFT Stitched Oval Die, picked some blue & pink paper from my stash, cut the blue paper with a Simon Says stitched rectangle die, and started to put the card together. That's when it got really ugly!!! Even though it would cover up some of her cute leotards & boots, I thought I would do something different & heat emboss the sentiment onto vellum...first fail...even though I used my anti-static tool, the black embossing powder smudged & left some random sprinkles under some of the words! Also I clearly wasn't thinking when I decided to add it to the card with glue dots on either side...second fail...you can see them through the vellum! Oh well...I told myself...she's only 10 years old. She'll take a 2 second glance at the card, toss it down, & start ripping open her present..she'll never notice the boo-boos. The best (or should I say worst) was yet to come though! I stamped a birthday wish inside the card with black ink, waited a minute to make sure it was dry, then closed up my card to take an overall look. Well look of horror is more like it! I realized I must have gotten ink on my hands somewhere because there was a big black fingerprint on the upper right hand side of the oval, a less obvious smudge on the lower left hand side of the oval, and another big smudge on the top inside of the card... third fail. Believe it or not I didn't totally panic...although there were a couple of swear words that leaked out of my mouth! All the experts call it a "chance to embellish" but I call it one gigantic mess!! Thus the gold stars placed on either side over top of the smudges. It looked okay though...matches the star on her shirt right? I already had gold sequins in the opposite corners though & didn't think it all looked that great together but whatever! As for the inside smudge on the top portion of the card, I simply covered it with a new white piece of cards stock. Went to bed & decided it was okay but of course the ugliness continued the next day when I went to sign it & put it in an envelope. I don't think you can tell in the picture, but the gold star on the left was not sticking well with the glue dot I had used, so I tried to turn it a fraction & smoosh it down, and the pink paper ripped a little underneath. REALLY!!!! Oh well..I'm giving it to her anyway LOL! Thanks for stopping by...sorry to ramble on about it...thought it might give a couple of you a little chuckle!
Challenges Entered:
Monday, September 14, 2015
Frank the Fun Dog
Recently I purchased some fun stamp sets from Unity Stamp Co. I wanted something different from the usual stamps I use to make cards & thought the sentiments that came with it were fun also! I just received the sets this past Saturday. This is the card I made using Frank the Fun Dog set. Unity Stamp is having a sketch/color challenge & I tried to challenge myself to whip this card together to enter. Coloring Frank was fun, putting the card together tonight within an hour was way more stressful!! But really...how can you go wrong with such a fun image?? I am donating this card to the a children's hospital & thought it would make a young child chuckle! I colored Frank with my promarkers, The orange/reddish background paper is DCWV Green stack, the tealish color from DCWV Dots, Stripes & Plaids mat stack. The eggshell colored paper is Stamping Bella. Thanks for stopping by to take a look!!
Challenges Entered:
Friday, September 11, 2015
Congrats Tyler!
My sister Mary is having a college graduation party for her son (my nephew Tyler) tomorrow.... lots of good food & relaxed atmosphere. Hopefully the weather will be nice because her & her husband just built a new house and there's lots of dust & dirt & construction surrounding them. They were looking around for a nice ranch style to buy (eventually retire in) but weren't having any luck, so they ended up finding a nice place close by to build their own. Anyway...Tyler has done quite nice for himself & has already settled into a well paying job that was waiting for him when he graduated! He went to Thomas More College here in Northern Kentucky, and there colors are royal blue, black, white & gray. I needed to make a card for him lickety-split last night, and I remembered that I had My Favorite Things Blueprint 11 die that spelled out the words "You Rock" that I had purchased earlier & never used yet. Plus I follow the MFT blog and knew they were having a "use your MFT stamps & die" challenge. I would definitely need some guidance in a hurry so I went to their website & searched their project gallery and.. BAM!! One of their designers ( Michele Boyer from http://papercuts.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/) had created a card using the same blueprint die. She used different colors, the card was for a girl not a boy, she added shiny crystals to it & die cut it a little differently than I did, but basically...I made the same card!! The stamp is Pure Innocence "Graduation Boy" and I colored him with my Promarkers! Can't thank Michele enough for the inspiration! So here is my card for Tyler...thanks for stopping by to take a look!!
Challenges Entered:
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Unforgettable Friend
I unearthed this super cute elephant stamp when I was trying to clean my craft desk off for the umpteenth time!! I seemed to keep coming across him lately, and I'm telling you for a fact....I stamped this image YEARS ago when I was going to Stampin Up parties with my daughter. Her friend was a Stampin Up demonstrator & we all got together at her house one night and each of us brought our stamp collections & white card stock & shared each others stamps, ate some great snacks, probably had a glass of wine!! Anyway...I colored him up with my Promarkers in about 5 minutes, cut him & the gray card stock behind him out with square stitched dies from Your Next Stamp. The patterned paper & card base I put him on are from my stash! I cut out the large stitched heart using Simon Says Stamp Bundle of Stitched Shapes & colored it with the same Promarker as the small hearts. I went over all of them with a clear Wink of Stella marker. Fastest card I've ever completed & I think it's so cute! Most of the times I lament forever over a card & get nowhere fast! Thanks for stopping by to check it out!!
Challenges Entered:
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Owl Be Here
Finally got around to making a card with this super cute owl! The owl & sentiment are from a Sweet & Sassy Stamps set called Owl Be Here. I also purchased the Owl Die that coordinates, but this time I just fussy cut him out and colored him with a few Promarkers, then added glossy accents to his eyes. The other papers I used behind him are from my stash. The card is fashioned after a sketch I saw on the Reverse Confetti blog. There are a lot of other cute sentiments that come with this set, so I imagine you will be seeing him/her again soon! Thanks for stopping by!
Challenges Entered:
Crafty Calendar Challenge
AEIHeartuChallenge
Reverse Confetti
Paper Smooches Sparks
Penny Black At All Sorts
Sweet Stamps
All Sorts Challenge
AEIHeartuChallenge
Reverse Confetti
Paper Smooches Sparks
Penny Black At All Sorts
Sweet Stamps
All Sorts Challenge
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Love You!!
Found another CAS style card (my favorite) on Pinterest from Mary Gunn Funn's blog. I used a heart die from a set I own (can't remember the name) and cut five stars across a white panel. Then I picked out some patterned papers from my stash & glued them inside the hearts. I glued some black ribbon with white dashes on the top & bottom of the heart panel. The sentiment is from Hampton Arts. I added some black enamel dots to finish it off!! Thanks for stopping by!
Challenges Entered:
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