Apple + Banner

Just a sweet and very basic card tonight. This one is a cute 4-1/4 square. I got this adorable Doodlebug Designs paper pack the last time I was in the US. As awesome and bright as it is, I actually wanted to tone it down a bit for this card. I achieved that by placing vellum overtop.

 

 

Supplies:
Stamps: Fruitful, Birthday Basics (PTI)
Ink: Pure Poppy, New Leaf
Paper: White, Pure Poppy, Fruit Stand, Harvest Gold, Vellum
Accessories, etc. Banner dies (Simon Says

Artichoke Birthday?

Do you ever just see a set that you really want, you're not really sure why, and you don't even know what kind of projects you'd make with it? For me, that was how I felt about Vegetable Garden. I just really like the images and the two-step stamping options.

 

So when all else fails, make a birthday card right? I'm sure I can find someone that wouldn't mind an Artichoke birthday card!

 

For this one, I did some generational stamping to make my background paper. The vegetables were all stamped in the first step. The text images were stamped after stamping off once.

 

Supplies:
Stamps: Vegetable Garden, Reason to Smile (PTI)
Ink: Class Kraft, Certainly Celery, Old Olive
Paper: Certainly Celery, River Rock, Class Kraft, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip
Accessories, etc.: Linen Thread

Feathers- Two Ways

 

There are some trends that I just cannot help but hop on board and go crazy for. I've been surprisingly restrained with this one, but I love all the feather images out there. This set is by Hero Arts. I have been eyeing the recent releases by Waltzing Mouse and WPlus9, but my budget says no :(

 

I made this card for Father's Day (it's not that I'm not actively making cards, I've just been really bad about getting motivation to post about them...). I remember seeing someone do the gold tipped feather, and I thought that was a neat idea. So that's exactly what I did. I stamped both feathers onto sturdier cardstock (with Versamark), then sprinkled the majority with Zing! powders (Aqua and Leaf). Then while the ink was still sticky, I sprinkled on some gold embossing powder and then heated it once. I did some extreme fussy cutting here and placed the 2 feathers onto a Rustic White background. I love banner dies too (there I go with trendy things again!), and so I had to make use of one here, with a touch more of gold embossing powder.

 

 

For this next one, I was reminded of how fun Pearl Ex powders can be.  They were one of those products that was almost over-used for a while, and then they kind of seemed forgotten. I think they're making a bit of a comeback! And what's great about them, is if you bought them the first time they were trendy, they are still good and they almost last forever!

 

For this one, I stamped the feather image on black cardstock with the versamark, and then just had fun blending a variety of powders. With Pearl Ex, you have to seal the image, so remember to give it a good spray of hair spray, or whatever you use for that sort of thing.

 

Supplies:
#1 Stamps: Hero Arts Feathers,  Men of Life,
Ink: Versamark,   Island Indigo
Paper: Rustic White, Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo, Bermuda Bay
Accessories, etc.: Zing! (Aqua, Leaf), Gold embossing powder, laced velvet ribbon (AC), Pearl Ex, Banner Die (Simon Says)

Supplies:
#2 Stamps: Hero Arts Feathers, Men of Life, Inside & Out: Birthday (PTI)
Ink: Versamark, Black, Island Indigo
Paper: Black, Shimmer Pack, White
Accessories, etc.: laced velvet ribbon (AC), Pearl Ex

Butterflies!

Hello!

 

Here are 2 vastly different cards that use butterfly punches as the common theme.

For the first one, I just started punching out butterflies and arranging them on a plain white card base with dimensional tape. I added a bit of extra sparkle with the tiny rhinestones. Very straight forward!

 

 

The second card was a bit more complex (it was for my Mom's birthday afterall). I added some leftover paper from when I had been playing with watercolour techniques. I decided to punch out several large and small butterflies. I liked the idea of putting them on circles, but I wanted extreme dimension. What I actually did here is punch out 1-1/4 circles on the Naturals cardstock. Then I adhered that the Garden Green cardstock and punched out 1-3/8 circles. I attached that to my Kraft card base, so the base is actually what the butterflies are directly attached to. A bit complicated, especially when you could probably achieve a similar look by just putting a kraft punch-out onto a green punch-out and placing that on the previus layers. However, the way I did it made the card not seem so bulky.

Supplies:
#1 Stamps: Reason to Smile (PTI)
Paper: Chocolate Chip, White, Strawberry Slush
Ink: Strawberry Sluch
Accessories, etc.: Butterfly Punches, Rhinestones

#2 Stamps: Stylish Sentiments: Birthday (PTI)
Paper: Kraft, Rustic Cream, Garden Green, Savoy Cotton
Ink: Garden Green (reinkers: Old Olive, Garden Green, Pool Party)
Accessories, etc.:Butterfly Punches, Rhinestones, Circle Punches (1-1/4, 1-3/8)

Gradient Backgrounds- One Layer Wonders

Here's a group of one layer cards. I was still on a water-colour blending kick on that luscious cotton paper. For the backgrounds, I free-handed the water-colouring, let them blend and then stamped overtop once everything was dry.

Supplies: Stamps: Harvest Berries, Through the Trees
Paper: Savoy Cotton- White and Natural
Ink: Pacific Point, Pool Party, Lucky Limeade, Summer Sun, Pumpkin Pie, Cranberry Crisp, Early Espresso

I wasn't as fond of the re-inker colours here. I used Curry, Pumpkin Pie, and Cranberry Crisp (an interesting food mix, haha). The curry was not quite the right colour, which is why I wanted to try jazz up the water-colour background a bit. I masked off the background and stamped words and then the leaves.

Supplies:
Stamps: Leaf Prints, Background Basics: Text Style, Autumn Abundance
Ink: Curry, Pumpkin Pie, Cranberry Crisp, Early Espresson
Paper: Savoy Cotton- Naturals

Vellum Blooms

Good evening!

I hope you're ready for the posting frenzy to continue! I've seen this technique and have been wanting to try it for some time.

I stamped the flowers and leaves in white pigment ink on the vellum and then embossed them with white embossing powder. I flipped that over and starting blending Copics. The great thing about this technique is you don't have to be that precise with your blending. Once you turn the vellum back over, it looks great!

Supplies: Stamps: In Bloom, Stylish Sentiments: Birthday

Ink: Fresh Snow

Paper: Summer Sunrise, Terracotta Tile, Vellum

Accessories, etc: White Embossing Powder, Copics

Mixed Backgrounds

I've been having a lot of fun mixing re-inkers and making blended backgrounds. It's amazing what the right paper will do when you bring in a bit of "paint" and water. I love using 100% Cotton Card Stock - Savoy Bright White - 8.5 x 11 - 118lb Cover for watercolouring. It is absolutely luxurious to paint on and it makes a stunningly elegant card base.

For my first card, I mixed re-inkers on a piece of acetate, spritzed it with water and then dipped the cotton paper into it. It gave a delicate and pretty background. Next up, I die-cut a leaf from the same paper then stamped it. I wasn't thrilled with my stamping (I didn't press it down heard enough), but I was happy that I got the stamp lined up on the die-cut. So I carried on with the watercolour theme and went over the image with an aquapainter. I was thrilled with the result. No more patches of white were left shining through!

For my next card, I decided to do some free-hand water colouring directly on my card base. That's another wonderful thing about this paper- heavier colours do not bleed through and the paper does not distort easily. I mixed three different re-inkers and just mixed and blended them on the paper.

Once that was done, it needed some lightness- so onwards to vellum butterflies!

Supplies:

#1:
Stamps: Turning a New Leaf, Fillable Frames #4
Ink: Ripe Avocado
Reinkers: Soft Sky, Old Olive, Lucky Limeade
Paper: Savoy Cotton, Soft Sky
Accessories, etc.: Baker's Twine, Turning a New Leaf die

#2
Stamps: Stylish Sentiments: Birthday
Ink: Melon Mambo, Pink Pirouette, Cranberry Crisp
Paper: Vellum, Savoy Cotton
Accessories, etc.: Gelly Gems, Butterfly Punches (both by SU!)

Stamp-A-Faire 2013

I had lots of fun participating in SAF2013. I didn't really play along last year since I had to work on the Saturday.

This year was totally different, I had the day off, and I had two crafty friends that joined me in celebrating!

As is typical, when the three of us get together, the fun increases, but the productivity goes down a little. We each still got between 3-6 challenges done. I think the group favorite was the salt/watercolour technique. We each made 2 of those!

I was so inspired and I really wanted to get all 10 challenges done, so I planned out the rest of my projects last night and got to work. I'm only posting the challenge and the cards. Any supply list/instruction can come later, if there's a demand for it.

Breakfast Bake & Take

"Tea"-Staining

Rolled Dough Designs

Mixing Mists:

Sprinkle of Salt:

Gallon: Quart: Pint

Custom Accents from the Oven:

Scent-Sational Cards

Limited Supplies Challenge:

Sugar Coated Embellishments

Poppies bring Sunshine!

Good evening!

Here's post #2 of several!

I've had this poppy background for some time and haven't really used it. Finally I just sat down, stamped it out and got to colouring. And once you spend all that time colouring something, you don't want to cut it apart or cover it up, so it became my background. I made use of some old hodgepodge and twill ribbon and called it a day!

One thing that I still do (and it's by no means a new technique) is outline Copic coloured images with a grey marker. I've always liked the little pop it gives.

Supplies:
Stamps: Pleasant Poppies (SU!), Hello Sunshine (PTI)
Ink: Bamboo Leaves (Memento)
Paper: Real Red, Ripe Avocado, Very Vanilla
Accessories, etc: Twill, Pewter Hardware and Brads, Copics

Happy Patterns

Good morning.

In honour of trying to get this blog up and running and back to being a bit more of a presence in the stamping community, I present the first of many posts to come. 

This card is ridiculously simple. I decided to make use of one of my favourite colour combinations (blue and orange) and a fun mix of patterns (polka dots and lines).

I cannot recommend enough- get the wide style Sookwang tape! It is perfect for cutting out die-cut letters. What I do is cut a strip of the paper that is just wider than the die, then I put a piece of the tape on the back and cut it out. Voila! Instant sticker. This is SO much easier than taping the letters after the fact. For this purpose alone, I would suggest keeping various sizes of double-sided tape (with backing) in your stash- if you don't already.

Supplies:
Stamps: Stylish Sentiments: Birthday
Ink: Orange Zest
Paper: Various retired SU! paper, White
Accessories, etc.: Headline Alphabet dies