Sending scoops of love

Hello!  Here's my entry for Bellarific Friday at Stamping Bella this week.  The theme is Valentine's or Red and Pink.  I have this cute Valentine stamp, so I used it.  Inside the card it says "sending you scoops of love".  The image is stamped in India Ink and coloured with pencil crayons (mostly Bruynzeel, some Prismacolor).  The scoop is accented with Sakura glitter pen and the hearts are accented with a couple of layers of glossy accents (let dry in between layers).  The "bottom" hearts have one layer and the "top" hearts have two layers.  The background paper is Basic Grey from the Lemonade collection.  I had some heart shaped rhinestones so I coloured those with a Copic and added them.  I didn't have enough to go all the way across, so I used some little rhinestones in there too.  Here I am, with a Valentine's card in time for Valentine's Day.  Whodathunkit?!

Thanks for stopping by.

Another Japanese paper card

As I was writing my last post, I remembered I had wanted to try this card with a black background for my vase and branch.  Ignoring my to-do list, I set to it and came up with this while all the stuff was still out.  (Blithely ignoring the fact that this state is likely to continue indefinitely....)

I used Brilliance Coffee Bean ink for the branch and Brilliance Pearlescent beige for the flowers (branch and flowers - Impress Rubber Stamps).  I tried adding in some light blue flowers in pigment ink and didn't like a blob, which I tried to scrape off, causing a smudge and necessitating some punched butterflies (a.k.a. Stampers' All-Purpose Concealer).  I may whip up a few more like this as I have enough for at least 3 more in black with blue and brown accents . 

The background stamp is a calligraphy stamp from Fred B Mullett, stamped in Bordering Blue (RIP; BTW I found a whole package, unopened!  Yippee!  I can downgrade its status from Perma-Hoard to Short Rations.) 

Playing with Japanese paper

 Hello!  For the past couple of days I've been playing with my stash of Japanese paper.  I had picked up a big bag of scraps, so I used those to make about 17 or so cards.  Here are two examples.  For all of them, I punched a vase (punch from Carla craft) and stamped the bough+flowers (Impress Rubber Stamps) on a 2x3 3/4" piece of neutral cardstock.  I used the colours in the vase to determine the colours of the flowers, and the background accents, etc.  I found some wonderful scraps and these are two of my favourite cards.  When they were bright and cheerful like this, I made them into birthday cards, Mother's Day cards, thank you cards, etc.  More muted tones and purples I turned into sympathy cards.  Almost all the card bases are the wonderful tsumugi cardstock that comes in such beautiful colours and has such wonderful texture, reminiscent of slubbed silk.  For the purple card, I only had a tiny scrap of the vase paper, but I found another tiny scrap of the red and white and black that looked nice, and a bigger piece of the crumply paper.  On the blue card, I used an Oriental calligraphy stamp (Fred B Mullett) in the background.  (It's the stamp that has the poem about the words like stones and youthful tongue growing gray.)  The green card is a Mother's Day card, with the sentiment on the front (Stampin' Up) and a lovely quote on the inside with a Quietfire Designs calligraphy stamp. 

It was a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, finding all the bits to go together and arranging them to look nice on the card.  All the cards are finished off with some liquid pearls in the centres of the flowers, and the colours again depended on the overall colour scheme but I used mainly white opal, platinum, and used pale yellow on a couple and lettuce on one with yellow flowers and a brown base.  I now remember that I had thought of trying some on a black backdrop.  Hmmm...maybe something to try before I clean up the scraps!  Thanks for stopping by!

Another Birthday Card

Hello!  Here's a super-quick card I made for my nephew's birthday.  I used a Darkroom Door robot photo strip that I had on hand and paired it with a Darkroom Door word strip.  The background is a seafoam glimmer paper, run through a Tim Holtz cogged wheel embossing folder.  I coloured in some of the depressions with an avocado marker to give it a bit of interest, and added some black liquid accents (Ranger) here and there for a finishing touch.  The card base is Dusty Durango (SU).  Speaking of SU, have they retired Bordering Blue?  I couldn't find it on their website.  I use this colour all the time, and frankly find it quite astonishing that they discontinued it without consulting me, their largest volume purchaser of that colour.  Now my remaining stock will have to go into perma-hoard status, never to be used again since it's the last I have (along with Purely Pomegranate and Soft Sky) until Future Karen no longer likes those colours and wishes she'd used them when she loved them.  Too bad Future Karen isn't here to give Present Karen a swat upside the head for that!  I'm sure if Future Karen were to come back in time to today, she would have better things to admonish me for, like spending more time stamping and less time doing laundry, etc. And bring me winning lottery numbers for next week and things like that.  I would put up a with a few swats in the head for that!

Thanks for stopping by!

Birthday Card

Hello!  Here's a card I made today for my brother's birthday.  He's an avid video gamer, so I thought this would be a good card for him.  It's a Sunshine Designs image, one of a set of four.  I stamped it on watercolour paper and embossed it, then watercoloured it with Tombow markers, and accented with Stickles.  I added in some sound lines and Batman-style "pops" "bzzts" and "zaps" for the sound effects.  The background paper is from the Marrakesh pack of BasicGrey accent papers and the background stamp is another Sunshine Designs cube.  The card base is Mellow Mossand I added a final accent of dimensional pearls (Ranger) in Denim.  A quick card that was good for using some paper scraps.  The longest time is figuring out the layout.  It's also quicker to decide on the paper and then choose the marker colours.  Edited to add:  This is more vibrant in real life but Sauron the Scanner hates me and refused to cooperate.  I tinkered with my photo editing software to the full extent of my patience to no avail.  You'll just have to picture it brighter :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

PS  A huge thank you to the ladies who came out to my calendar class at Heather's Stamping Haven last week.  I had a wonderful time!

Calendar Class

Calendar - closed

Hello!  Happy New Year!  Hard to believe 2012 is upon us, isn't it.   Here is my first class this year at Heather's Stamping Haven - a 2012 desk calendar.  It will be a two-part workshop on Saturday, January 14th.  Please contact Heather at the store to register. 

In the morning, we will do the images and you will learn the essentials of Krista Schneider's popular technique for watercolouring with Tombow markers.  In the afternoon, we will make the calendar pages and assemble the calendar. 

Calendar open to January 2012



Calendar Pages











I really had fun making this calendar and I would be hard pressed to pick a favourite page.  I think I could narrow it down to three contenders: the bunny, the witch, and the poppy.  I used Sunshine Designs and Heather's Stamping Haven images as they lend themselves so well to the technique, but also because there is tremendous variety to choose from, seasonal and floral and birds...gorgeous.  This calendar also has two bonus pages for 2013, which presented some challenges to DH to understand (in his engineer's world, calendars have 12 months you see).  I said it was because years are only randomly selected points in time, roughly timed to include one trip around the sun and any old pope can make one up.  Plus, we are making this later in January, so the two extra months are to make up for that.  Also, a calendar that will go to February will allow people to purchase their 2013 calendars at deep discounts in February, thus offsetting the cost of the class.  He remained unconvinced.  I, on the other hand, thought it was great to be able to include the extra months, which is the whole reason you *make* things, not buy them, because then they get to be how *you* want them. 

Hope to see you at Heather's on January 14th!  It's going to be a great class and a lot of fun.