Design team submissions

I made these cards for a design team application, but wasn't able to share them, because I didn't know if I was allowed to or not. I didn't make the design team, but I love how they turned out.

This first one to the left is a digital image by Wink Wink Ink, called Baby Blossom. I colored it with Prismacolor Markers, then matted it with a dark brown card stock. Then I adhered it to a lighter brown patterened paper, and used Tulip Fashion Bead Paint to make the pearls. The red card stock is a white cored card stock that I ran through the Cuttlebug with the Stylized Flowers embossing folder. Then I sanded it so the white would show through. It's on a plain white card base, and there you have it.




This card was a card I made for a friend. Sometimes I need the reminder. I used a stamp for the butterfly, and stamped it in chocolate chip. I used a cream colored metal frame by Basic Grey, and used Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink in Copper to color it. I added the cream ribbon, and used the same marker that I accented the dark colors of the butterfly to color the thin ribbon, and tied them around the frame. Then I used The Ultimate by Crafter's Pick to glue down the one inch glass tiles. These were on a striped paper by Diane's Daughters. I love that line! It's one of my all time favorites. Distressed, very muted colors. I love it. Anyway, then I put it all on a cream card base that had been inked on the edges.

This last card was made on a pink base with some patterned paper from Target that came in a clearance pack. I loved the bright happy colors. The image is a Dustin Pike digi, colored with Prismacolor markers. The "fluff" in the basket is called Flower Soft, and it's available in many different colors, but I have started to make my own. One of these days I will get brave and post a tutorial. :) The scallop punch is from Stampin Up, as is the stamp. It's a simple card but it was fun.

Though I'm disappointed I didn't make the design team, it was fun to make the cards. :)

Card Swap

So, because I'm insane, and have nothing else to do, I signed up for a card swap :) FOUR GROUPS. SO anyway, the swap was for birthday cards broken down into the following categories: Male, Female, Boy, Girl. So of course, I HAD to be in all four groups.

Well, after a TON of stress over the female group because I made some mistakes and didn't know how to fix it (thanks Lex!) I am NOW FINISHED with all of them. Good thing they were small groups. I would have been toast. :) Here are my groups.

Male:
I made this card using a Glimmer Screen stencil from Tattered Angels. I inked it with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Walnut Stain using a sponge. I stamped the Happy Birthday with a stamp from one of my Stampin' Up sets, inked the edges of that with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Antique Linen. I matted it on navy blue paper. I also matted the stenciled image on navy blue paper. Then I took some striped paper by The Paper Loft and inked the edges with Chestnut Roan chalk ink. I used staples to fasten the papers to each other, because I like the masculine look of them. Then, to keep the inside of the card smooth, I adhered the striped paper with regular adhesive. I love the look of staples, brads, and other things, but I don't like it when they poke through to the inside of the card itself. Anyway, I am fairly happy with how it turned out. Masculine, with deep blues and browns.

Next is my female card: Let me tell you, first off, how I stressed and freaked over this card! I am a huge perfectionist, and when things aren't perfect, I get a little freaky. Well, here is an absolutely GORGEOUS stamp by a superbly talented artist named Elisabeth Bell. This lovely little gal's name is Danni. Well, I bungled Danni's wings HORRIBLY. And my dear friend Alex, who is on a design team and sometimes works with Elisabeth's images, gave me the suggestion to use Shimmerz on her wings, so I did, and thank heavens! I feel bad that so much of the detail of her wings was lost, but before, it looked like she had clown wings, and it was very, very bad. Anyway, I could not, in good conscience, let anyone see her that way. So what I've done here is colored her with some alcohol based markers, matted the image in red and adhered the image to a navy blue speckled paper. Then, I added the velvet floral ribbon, stamped "make a wish" with a SU! stamp (I chose this because she's blowing dandelion fluff, you're supposed to wish on those before you blow, did you know that?) and then punched that out with an oval punch. I used a red Zig writer to line the border of the oval. The dandelion and it's little fluff pieces are colored with Spica (prounounced SPEE kah) which is a great little glittery pen that makes it look all sparkly and magic. :) Anyway, after all of that, I adhered everything to a white card base. There you have it.

Next up, I have my boy card.
I knew before I made it what stamp set I was going to use for this card. I have had this Basic Grey dinosaur stamp set for a while now, and have been waiting for the perfect occasion to use it. VOILA! Thanks to my friend Frank for help with the greeting. So this one, I stamped the dinosaur in Versamark, and then used chalk on a sponge to apply color to the image. It was fun, I haven't used that technique in YEARS! Then I inked the edges of the dinosaur and the greeting, and adhered them to this great striped paper. I am having a thing for stripes lately, I guess, because three of my four cards for this swap have them. :) Then I used the little half round beads and put those in each corner of the stamped image. Fun!

OK, now most of the time, I know people say to save the best for last. NOT ME. I'm saving the worst for last. Or, my least favorite. I finished this card and just am not loving it, but hopefully it won't reduce some poor little girl to tears if someone gives it to her. Anyway... it's done. Maybe I will get some super cool inspiration for it this week. Then again, maybe not. But here it is...

Okay, well, I LOVE the striped paper. And the ribbon matches the light pink stripe in it, though from this scan it doesn't look like it. The strawberry is from the SU! set Tart N Tangy, and I stamped and embossed it with red for the berry, and then with something moss or moss something for the green... I'm sorry, I really need to clean my office... I can't find the container that it's in that has the name on it. Convenient, huh? Creative people, VERY MESSY. At least this one is... But, I digress. So I pieced those pieces of the berry back together and then matted it on a black sqare (ok, rectangle?) of card stock. Then I used my printer to print out the sentiment. I used a clear Glaze pen to go over the word BERRY to make it look shiny and embossed as well. Then I matted that in black too. I used a pop dot to raise the strawberry off the front of the card a little bit. OH!!! Let me back up a second. The whole reason I wanted to make this card was because I made a bit of scratch and sniff embossing powder with some jello powder and clear embossing powder. So I was going to make the card smell wonderful, like strawberries! YEAH. Apparently you have to use sugar free jello, which I did not know. Guess what happens to sugar jello when you emboss it. Well, for those of you who do not know, embossing is done with heat. And for those of you who don't cook, heating sugar makes it carmelize. Quickly. So while I was using my embossing tool (think hair dryer) to heat this home made embossing powder, some of it blew up. Seriously, popped, burst into a tiny flame, and burned itself out. Yeah. It will be a while before I attempt to make anymore scratch N sniff cards... Anyone remember the blonde joke about the blonde making jello... well, that's sort of how I feel about my embossing powder fiasco. And now, I'd appreciate it if we wouldn't talk about it anymore. Maybe that's the real reason I dislike this card. :)

Sketch challenges

Since my daughter is still up finishing home work, and I was supposed to go to bed at ten, I will upload some cards I made from sketches. I don't have the original sketches, they were from the Card Cafe group I'm on, but you can sort of get the idea from the finished card...


this is the first one, made with chatterbox paper, before they went all weird and I didn't like them anymore...

Here is the next one... I love playing with shrink plastic on cards. I've also used it for jewelry, too.
Please don't ask me what paper line this one is, because I honestly have no clue. All of this stuff is from my stash, and a lot of it is old... so I don't remember. :) Also, don't ask me why I used that color green as the card base. I'm sure I had a good reason at the time. OH! there, I see it!
See, under the slide mount thingy, there's a green wheel thingy? I know it's hard to see, but it's there! And then right under the shrink plastic tag, there's also one. It's green. Yeah, I see that they don't match, but it could just be the colors in my monitor...

What's that? On yours they look great? OH good! I was worried I was going to have to tell you about the time I was shopping the day after Thanksgiving with my friend Betty. We were at the LSS, and (ok, let me back up here a second. I feel it necessary at this point to tell you, when I say LSS, it's actually in a neighboring city about 30 mins away, AND I am a woman who VALUES my sleep. I am NOT a morning person, so for me to be standing outside of a store, ANY STORE, at O-dark-thirty on Black Friday is unheard of. I have NOT done it since, and this was several years ago)
Anyway, I was helping her pick out coordinating papers. Well, a few weeks later at a crop, we were looking at said papers together, and I said, "Betty, no offense, but those papers do NOT match at all," and she said, "Oh really, because I had help picking them out and everything..." I think my words were something to the effect of, "What colorblind idiot helped you pick out those papers?" and she smiled at me sweetly as only Betty can and said, "YOU DID!" Uh, OOPS... so yeah, occasionally I have lapses in judgement. Like when I am SLEEP DEPRIVED! I'm not sure what this one was all about, so we'll call it a bad scan... :) ANYWAY....

This next one is a great card, I love it, being the patriotic soul that I am. Just don't ask me how I cut this star, because I can't remember. I *think* it was on my silhouette, but I am not sure... it might be a die cut, though I don't think so, because I'm pretty sure I got rid of all those MANY moons ago. ANYWAY... The papers are Rusty Pickle, I have yet to see anything of theirs that I don't like. This sketch was hard for me, but I like how it turned out.

Well, my 14 y/o is STILL not finished with her home work, but I am exhausted, because I only got four hours of sleep. So I am going to bed. She can go when she's done or whatever, but I'm not waiting anymore. Enjoy. Perhaps tomorrow I will post some bead stuff. And I have a card swap to do for an upcoming retreat, so be watching for those! :)

Another birthday card

I used a SU! stamp set and some Basic Grey to create this fun card for a friend. I love to play with paper, and this set was really fun to play with as well. I also love all the bright, happy colors in the paper. :)

My daughter liked it so much, she asked me to make her a card just like it for her birthday. I made her a card just like it, but not for her birthday. :) For another special occasion. She loved it!

Birthday Card

I have participated in card swaps that was for a Stampin' Up group that I did stuff with once a month for a while. We would make and cut enough supplies for all the members of the group and then we'd go and put the cards together. This was my creation for the birthday card month. That group of girls doesn't get together anymore, the gal isn't a demonstrator for SU! anymore I don't think either... Anyway, I used the happy birthday Cuttlebug embossing folder, a metallic gray paper with a gray ribbon on it (that actually looks white here for some reason), and a tiny little charm made of shrink plastic that says "eat cake" on it. I LOVE that stamp, because I love cake, and I love putting that on birthday cards! Anyway, I love this card, it's one of my favorites. :)

Shaped cards

This card was SO fun. Once in a while on the Yahoo group that I'm on called Stamped, we have card swaps. A few different times, we've had shaped card swaps, and they are SO much fun, I just can't ever say no! I am usually involved in more than one group. This one is one of my favorites, it's a frog, I cut out little ovals in black velvet paper for fly bodies and heads with my Silhouette, and ovals in vellum for the wings. I was initially going to use a little spring to stick the fly to and make it look like the frog was trying to grab it with its tongue, but that didn't work out like I planned, so here is the final product. :)


I also have done two different cake slices, one that opened at the top, another that opened at the side, a fish bowl, complete with goldfish, and a cupcake.

I can't find the fish bowl card right now, but it was so cute... Anyway, if you have the opportunity to do a shaped card, I recommend it. It's a LOT of fun!

Go with the flow...

So I am on a group called Card Cafe. I haven't been active on it for a while now, because I had shoulder surgery in July and have been dealing with some personal issues as well, so have taken a little break. But when I was active, we did a swap with images from House Mouse.

Here is my card. I feel it necessary to mention that I always have loved dandelions. YES, I know they're "weeds" but you know what? If roses grew like dandelions, would we call those weeds and try to kill them? I love them! I love them even more now that I have children and get them as a gift from them! So these cute little mice with the cute little flowers just make me so happy!

Shaking things up!

Well, darn... I was planning on being SO SO good about posting to this blog every day. Heaven knows I've made enough cards and stuff to be able to for a long LONG time. Well... guess what? It didn't happen. Oh well... New start right? :)

Well, today I'm going to shake things up a bit. For Mother's Day last year I made a cool gift for my husband's mother who told us not to spend any money because things were so tight. So I used a leftover floor tile from when we tiled our upstairs bathroom, some Tim Holtz alcohol ink, and some white vinyl cut with my silhouette. I made my husband choose a scripture about mothers, and this is the one he picked.

Here is the finished product. The original tile was a light tan.

Bellas

One of my favorite stamps to work with are Bellas. You can see them here. So I decided to upload a few cards I've made with some of their stamps. :) Enjoy!

Balloonabella, shown above, is colored with Prismacolor colored pencils and blended with Odorless Mineral Spirits, which will be known as OMS from here on out because I'm lazy :) If you've never colored with a Prismacolor pencil, and you enjoy coloring with colored pencils, you should really try them. They're like the Cadillac of pencils! I love mine! I used a Sakura Glaze pen on her shoes (it gives them a lovely embossed look) and tied a pice of green ribbon around a piece of lightly striped green and white paper coming from under the matted image.

One complaint about square stamps is that they do cost extra postage to mail.

This Bella, called Curly Surpriseabella was colored with Spica (pronounced spee kah) pens. These pens give a sparkle effect to what they color. I used a pair of wavy patterned scissors to cut the card front slightly shorter than the card back, to which I adhered the blue gingham paper. The matted image overhangs the front just a bit when open. The white fabric strip is called a "frazzle" and it's what you get when you take a woven fabric and cut the very end, and then tear the fabric into strips, and fray the edges. I also used a piece of polka dot satin ribbon stapled to the edge of the image matte. Even though there are different patterns of paper, typically if you use papers from the same color family, you can get away with this.

I used a glaze pen on her shoes. I love that "patent" look it gives them!


The next card is one that I really like. It's using a technique called paper piecing. When I first started using paper piecing it meant something a little different. But this method basically means I've stamped the image on the card stock, and then I've stamped the image again on a piece of patterned paper, and cut the portion that I want to piece out and run it through my Xyron Sticker Maker to make a part of the card a little different. As you can see, this next Bella is wearing a houndstooth skirt and carrying the matching handbag. The way I accomplished this was to stamp MWAHbella onto the cardstock, the stamp her again onto the houndstooth patterned paper. I then cut out the skirt and handbag and placed the directly over the stamped image on plain cardstock. I colored in her top with a Spica pen, and her boots with a Glaze pen. She is adorable isn't she? I then matted the image on a piece of white cored card stock I had run through the Cuttlebug with the Spots and Dots embossing folder. I sanded the embossed card stock slightly and adhered those down to the pink paper with brown polka dots. The ribbon was adhered at the time the image was matted to the embossed cardstock. Guess what I used on her boots? YEP! Glaze pen! I have fallen in love with those things! In fact, I love most anything by Sakura. Jelly roll pens, Souffle pens, Glaze pens, they're all awesome! I haven't met a pen by them that I don't like! :)

Anyway, that is my post for the night, hope it makes up for not getting it done by midnight. :) NIGHT!

A New Card!

Imagine that title said in Bob Barker's best "Price is Right" voice :) And you don't even have to play Plinko or anything :) LOL

So, this card is one done with Chatterbox papers and it's not crooked, but it scanned crooked, and I was too lazy to change it - hey, it's Friday, so, you know -

The image is from SU! and is stamped in Chocolate Chip on cork. The result is a masculine birthday card that I really like. :)

Shimmerz

Good morning. I slept horribly, because I had sick kids. FUN! :) I had two kids in my bed and two kids who don't feel well minus an out of town husband makes W something something... (Simpsons reference) :)

ANYWAY... While I contemplate on 4 hours of sleep what to do with my middle school child who accidentally just took his sleeping meds instead of his meds for ADHD this morning before school, I'm going to share with you a card I made with Shimmerz paints. If you like bling, these are ridiculously blingy! :) I love them.

I made this monochromatic wedding card with the set called A Little Birdie Told Me from SU! and some Shimmerz (and maybe some Blingz made by the same company, it's been a while so I can't remember, plus I'm operating on half of what I normally need for sleep. I just got up 40 minutes ago, and my eye is already twitching.. LOL

Here... enjoy this card while I go eat breakfast.

Acetate

So, I belong to a really great group called Card Cafe, and lately I have not been active, but this card was made by me when the challenge was to make an acetate card. (Think overhead transparency, that is what acetate is)

This card is stamped on the acetate with black Staz On, and then there is paper lining underneath the acetate overlay. It's hard to see, and I should have taken a picture of it open as well, I guess, but hindsight is 20/20. Basically, the ribbon hides the adhesive, and the "joy" is actually stamped on the inside of the card, so the scallop circle is punched in the paper underneath the front acetate cover. I'm making it sound more complex that it really is, so I will make another one sometime and show you :) But I do like how it turned out.

Direct to Paper

OK, this technique is called "Direct to Paper", which means you put your ink directly on the paper from the stamp pad. It was a challenge from a group I am on called Card Cafe. I used a stamp from Inkadinkadoo and stamped with Versamark on white card stock. I then embossed with clear detail embossing powder. Then I inked it all up, my image and everything, plus the card base, with Bordering Blue by Stampin' Up! Then I used a wipe to wipe excess ink from my embossed image, and there you have it. I forgot how much I LOVE this one, and EASY PEASY, Lemon Squeezy! :)

Try it! :) TFL

Another Christmas CASE

This one was also from Splitcoast stampers, but please don't ask me for the link to the original card, because I can't find it anywhere. All I know is that the one I saw used Wild Wasabi and Soft Sky. Now, I don't have an issue with the Wild Wasabi, but to me, the Soft Sky was WAY too blue. I grew up in Iowa, and it was gray from October to April, and I am pretty sure the sky NEVER looked like that even when the sun was out...

So I used Bordering Blue and Old Olive, and I didn't own Really Red, or is it Real Red? Anyway, I don't have that color. So I used the VersaFine color I have. Please don't ask me the name of it right now, I'm too lazy to roll the five feet to where it sits on the shelf. Hey, it's been a rotten Monday, and I'm exhausted, I took the man to the airport this morning at 4:30 and it's past my bedtime. :) Anyway, it's red. And it's a pretty red.

The technique on this card is called reverse masking, and it was fun since I'd never done any kind of masking before at all. :)

Enjoy. I'm out!

A Christmas CASE

For those of you who don't know, CASE means Copy And Share Everything.

This card is a CASE of one I saw on Split Coast Stampers. If you have never been to their website, I highly suggest paying a visit. It's a GREAT way to find new uses for stamps you have, and I find that if I'm having a creative block, it helps me get rid of it. :)

You can see the original card here. She used the set called "Lovely As a Tree" which I have, but chose not to use, because I liked the pine bough from Peaceful Wishes just a bit better. I cut out two ornament shapes with my silhouette, and cut the top off the green one. I inked the flourish from Baroque Motifs with VersaMark and then heat embossed with red embossing powder. The paper is metallic. I placed the green over the copper, and I love the effect. I only wish I'd had gold paper for the "hanger" part of the ornament, the cream sort of gets lost... but hey, I used my stash totally for this, which is always a good thing, right? :)

I sponged some Old Olive ink behind the pine bough just for some shadowing, and I know she used Garden Green ink for her "boughs" but I don't have that, so I used Forest Foliage, which I believe might actually be retired now. I'm not current on my SU! stuff. Again, I use what I have...

Also, I LOVE the "joy" stamp I used at the top. I stamped this in Craft White. This is all Stampin' Up, btw, except for card stock and embossing powder, etc. The ink and the stamp sets are SU! I don't use them exclusively, but for this card I happened to... Anyway, I digress... the "joy" stamp is from the Small Script set. And without further ado, here is the card I created.