Riot of Petals Thank You

I'm sitting here enjoying some Bob Dylan while I stamp (one of my favourites, Subterranean Homesick Blues). I have a huge backlog of stamping to do (now there's a good problem to have!) but I also have other things needing doing urgently. I guess that's the nature of life. And I have just been asked to conjure up some squares for a funeral on Thursday. Sounds like a job for my two little bakers.

Here's a card I made today using Riot of Petals. I really like that stamp. It's a big one so I just used a portion of it here, and coloured it with mellow moss, so saffron, blush blossom, groovy guava, and pumpkin pie markers. The layout is really simple, just a torn background strip and the sentiment stamped in some white space. It's nice to do something quick and easy but still really pretty. I like more complicated cards too, but I just spent the weekend on a scrapbooking retreat so I'm feeling a little bit designed-out.

It was a great time and I got 16 layouts done and I won a great folder-tab punch and got to catch up with a good friend that I don't see very often. So all in all it was a good weekend, but I came home a bit tired. DH and the DD's held down the fort here and had a good time. On Friday night I left them a slow-cooker full of chicken soup, which had celery root and parsnip (and one carrot) in it for vegetables. On the down side this combination resulted in a fairly monochromatic look to the soup, but on the up side, DD#2 thought all the vegetables were "pea-totos" and hoovered them all up with alacrity. I have a feeling I'll be giving her more celeriac under the guise of pea-toto more often. DD#1 liked it too. It was an easy recipe that everyone liked that tasted good - that's a keeper! The secret ingredients were organic chicken stock from Costco and Mt. Scio savoury from Newfoundland (yum!). Oh yeah, and pea-totos.

Thanks for looking!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Riot of Petals, Amazing to Zany; Paper: Whisper White, Pumpkin Pie, Mellow Moss, Apricot Appeal; Ink: Basic Gray, Pumpkin Pie; Other: Stampin' Write markers (mellow moss, so saffron, blush blossom, groovy guava, and pumpkin pie)

Faux Batik Card

Here's the card that was published (!) in Crafts 'n' Things (http://www.craftsnthings.com/) in the Design Focus section. I'd submitted a card for the design focus using mulberry paper. I just heard back from them that I'm allowed to post this here.

Here's the tutorial on splitcoast that I followed to get the look.

I stamped the fern with Versamark and clear embossed it. Then I added colours in random patches with watercolor wonder crayons and a damp foam brush. Then I removed the embossing powder with an iron and scrap paper. The sentiment is embossed as well for texture, and the punched fern is one I had in my stash so I don't remember who the maker of the punch is. This was a fun card to make and I'll be trying this technique again. There are so many possibilities! I just need to expand my selection of solid-image stamps since I tend to be drawn to the line art ones since I love colouring so much.

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: Stamps: Monkey Paw Fern - Rubber Stampede, Sunshine in the heart... - Friend to Friend by Stampin' Up; Ink: turquoise pigment - Colorbox, versamark - Tsukineko; Paper: blue metallic paper, white mulberry tissue, elegant eggplant, taken with teal, whisper white; Other: clear embossing powder, rhinestone brad, fern punch, watercolor wonder crayons, foam brush.

Prize package thank you card

A short while ago I got the good news that my Hearts card was a winner in the Hearts Galore contest at Sunshine Designs. This meant that I also received a great prize package of Sunshine Designs stamps in the mail. It was a great gift and I wanted to make a special thank you card for the folks at the Stamp Barn for choosing my project as one of the winners.

I wanted to use at least one of the stamps from my prize package so I thought I'd use one of the faces from the Girlz 2 Cube. I stamped it in black Palette ink and coloured it with Tombow markers and an aquapainter (if you read the Dinosaur b-day card post, you're snickering right now, admit it!). I went with a gold/mustard/burgundy colour scheme, which looks strangely familiar (if you read the Bible verse challenge post, you're nodding right now) and I must have been influenced by the scrap of BasicGrey leftover from that other project. Well that scrap has now found a good home on this card as background paper. The sentiment is an Impression Obsession stamp, stamped in ochre pigment ink, clear-embossed, and filled in with burgundy marker. I felt the design needed a bit of balance and the visual triangle was missing, so I added a couple of eyelets in the corner, which coincided nicely with today's Ways to Use it Challenge at splitcoast :-) The finishing touch was a bit of gold glitter glue in the hair (hers, not mine!). A note on the mats: the first mat on the girl is More Mustard coloured with a goldy-brown for depth, layered on some brown metallic paper. The sentiment is matted on chocolate chip and a narrow layer of the same brown metallic. The main image is popped up on dimensionals.

Hope they like it! There are a whole bunch of new Sunshine Designs stamps that were recently released for spring/summer and it's going to be so hard to choose! If only all dilemmas had such happy endings :-)

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: Stamps: Girlz 2 cube - Sunshine Designs/The Stamp Barn, thank you - Impression Obsession; Ink: Palette black noir, Colorbox pigment in ochre; Paper: watercolour, bravo burgundy, more mustard, brown metallic, chocolate chip, Perhaps - BasicGrey; Other: mustard eyelets, Tombow markers, gold glitter glue, clear embossing powder.

Baby card in Pink

Our neighbours recently adopted a little girl so I wanted to make them a card to wish them well. I turned to one of my few baby stamps (why did I think I don't need baby stamps???), the Wash Day wheel. Good thing this one wasn't snapped up at my retired stamps sale!

The colours are a bit off on the scan. I don't know how to fix the settings on the scanner, but it always turns light pink into really bright pink. I could fix it somewhat in the editing software, but to be frank, I ran out of patience for that sort of thing. The main card is Pretty in Pink so you can the idea.

I wheeled the image on some PTI white I had on my desk top and coloured it in with my aquapainter and inkpad lids, and some markers here and there. The colours I used were Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery and Almost Amethyst. I like to stick to a few colours when I'm colouring an image like this. I find it gives a more unified result. I highlighted bits and pieces with my Sakura glitter pen. The message is stamped in Certainly Celery and Pretty in Pink and accented with my Sakura glaze pen to give a bit of an embossed look. The image is mounted on celery, over a background of pink gingham paper. I added some pink taffeta ribbon and some liquid pearls and this card was finished.

We got them the Sandra Boynton Going to Bed book. We like her books and our eldest always liked that one at bedtime. I can still (and probably always will be able to) recite this one from memory.

Thanks for looking!

Supplies Stampin' Up unless otherwise noted: Stamps: Wash Day jumbo wheel, Riveting; Ink: Palette Black Noir, Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery, Almost Amethyst; Paper: PTI white, Certainly Celery, Pretty in Pink, pink gingham (sorry I forget the maker); Other: pink taffeta ribbon, 1 3/8" and 1 1/4" circle punches, liquid pearls - Ranger, stampin' dimensionals.

April Bible Verse Challenge

There's a challenge on Splitcoast that involves doing an inspirational Bible verse each month, posted on the 8th of the month. I joined late (in March), and had meant to catch up, but here it is, the 8th again, and I only have one done. There's always next month! Or maybe I'll just go till March '09. I'm making a flip-style desktop album from an acrylic frame from Ikea. Each page is 5x7". I plan to do the other sides as pictures and put it on my desk at work for some inspiration.

Sorry it's a bit blurry - I think it's because the hardware is "deep" and the scanner focusses on that not the font. I might try to get a snap of this but it's supposed to be rainy tomorrow so it wouldn't be good snapping weather. IRL it's not blurry :-)

The gory details:
I printed the verse on the computer onto Blush Blossom cardstock and did the font in brown. I started this project off with wanting to do some dry embossing, so I framed the passage with the small scallop on the Priceless brass template. I had a tricky time going around the last corner, so I covered it up with a photo turn (sneaky!). I sponged a bit around the edges with pink and brown so it wouldn't look so new and so it would tie in a bit more with the background paper (BasicGrey - Perhaps). I remembered at the last minute that I had resolved to use ribbon on all my projects this month (oops - missed the boat on last week's dino card!) and added two (!) bits of ribbon to this project (how many heavily punctuated interjections can I fit into one sentence?!?) (stop!!!). The ribbon I used was the chocolate chip ruffle from last year's Flirty Ribbon Originals and some More Mustard grosgrain on top of a strip of Bravo Burgundy paper. The hardware is aged copper hodgepodge hardware, and I really went to town here! I usually don't use so much on one project, but I definitely enjoy using more than hoarding. It's much more gratifying. The designer paper is matted on More Mustard, and the whole shebang is on a piece of Chocolate Chip that I rolled with my new (free!) wheel "It's Beautiful" using Versamark.



It feels good to get back to my stamp desk. My next project will be a baby card - my friend had a baby girl on the weekend! I'm so happy for her. Baby girls are wonderful. I took mine to the Experimental Farm with some friends today to see the baby animals. We had a great time, even the littlest one who had to sacrifice her nap for our outing. My favourite is always the draught horses, and the Swiss brown cows. It was nice and quiet there today too, which made the experience even more enjoyable.



Thanks for looking!





Supplies: Stamps: wheel - It's Beautiful - Stampin' Up; Ink: Versamark, Pretty in Pink, Chocolate Chip; Paper: Blush Blossom, More Mustard, Bravo Burgundy, Chocolate Chip, Perhaps - BasicGrey; Other: aged copper Hodgepodge Hardware, Flirty Ribbon Originals, more mustard grosgrain ribbon, Priceless brass template (SU), stampin' around handle, Prima flowers, Adirondack eggplant acrylic paint (in the centres of the flowers)

Dino-birthday

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted! I haven't felt much like stamping lately (gasp!) and last weekend I was at a two-day scrapbooking event so I kind of blew the creative motor on that. I've been puttering away at my stamp desk, and have something that I kind of like, but I need to get a picture of it.

Today I needed to get a card done for my nephew turns 5 soon. He likes dinosaurs so I thought I'd make a card with the Dino-Mite set from My Favorite Things. I stamped the t-rex with palette ink on watercolour paper and coloured it in with Tombow markers and blended it with my aquapainter. I regret doing that because it was too wet and now it's blotchy, but I will just decide that it just gives the dinosaur skin texture. Next time I won't be lazy and I'll go fill up my water dish and use a paintbrush instead. I must heed my own advice on this. It's kind of like the stamp-a-majig. I'm usually too lazy to use it, but I always regret it when I don't.

Back to the card! I coloured him in, found a pre-stamped scrap of turquoise and some red scraps too. I fiddled around with the layout and settled on this. I added some red stickles and a few dots of Stream acrylic paint, but I kind of wish I hadn't now. Oh well. I must remind myself it's for a 5-year-old boy who won't give two hoots about whether there acrylic paint dots on it let alone where they're dotted!

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: Stamps: Petals (jumbo wheel) - Stampin' Up!, T-rex - My Favorite Things; Paper: watercolour, real red, more marigold, tempting turquoise; Ink: Palette black noir, tempting turquoise; Other: Tombow markers, Stream acrylic paint - Adirondack, red stickles