October Stamping Challenge #4

Hello!  Here's the next installment of my October Stamping Challenge.  I used that same nice ginger jar die cut and a scrap of alcohol ink glossy paper.  I stamped the flower (Impress Rubber Stamps) and embossed in gold.  The card base is stamped with the same stamp and its solid image counterpart in Azurite chalk ink.  The chop (Blockheads) is stamped in Barn Door Distress Ink on an unintentionally jaunty angle.  Serves me right for adding it after everything was done!  The focal panel has a lovely background stamp (Impress) stamped in Versamagic Aspen Mist.  I added a bit of a ground shadow with a Bruynzeel pencil crayon.

Not bad for 15 minutes!  (I never said they would have to be Earth minutes....this one was more like Neptune minutes, but only because I fussed and faffed over the layout.)  This card was mostly scraps - the only new piece was the card base.

Thanks for stopping by!  Time to go watch TV with hubby and work on my Opal Dot scarf (Kaffe Fassett pattern).  I'm auditioning colour combinations on swatches and teaching myself to knit with two hands at once. This girl knows how to par-tay!

Floral card

Hello!  Can't believe it's been more than a month since my last post.  It's because of a few things like I haven't been stamping as much since I've rediscovered the joys of knitting (currently doing a scarf from some gorgeous Noro Furin).  Also, I have been teaching two classes per month in March and April, and coming up with twice as many samples takes a bit of time.  And work has been quite demanding, so in the evenings I tend to just collapse.  So that's why you haven't seen too many posts from me. 

Here are some cards I did, inspired by a sample Heather made at Heather's Stamping Haven.  She had embossed the floral background (Hero Arts) in white and coloured with Distress Inks. That's what I did here too, swiping my inks on a craft sheet and lifting the colours with a wet paintbrush.  The birthday sentiment is from Impress Rubber Stamps.  The image is mounted on a piece of citron cardstock and the card base is white shimmer.  This kind of makes me think of a china pattern or something.  I did a whole bunch of these in different colourways, and mostly thank yous and happy birthdays.  Once I came up with the layout I liked, it was easy.  Now I wish I'd matted the sentiment panel, but it's too late now!  I tried adding some stitching with a white pen, but it doesn't look great.  I think I will just live with them like they are. 

Hope all is well with you where ever you are!  Happy stamping :-)

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!

Artichoke Birthday Card

Hi!  Here's a card I made recently for my husband's birthday.  I needed a quick and easy masculine card, so I cast  my eye over my stamps and cards on-hand and threw out that notion.  It was 11 pm and a long day and I really just needed some stamping therapy, not a "requirement".  My eye lit upon a Stampin' Up stamp set called Homegrown, with beautiful line art vegetables. Instantly I knew I needed to colour some artichokes, so I stamped them on a card base (naturals ivory) in India Ink and coloured them with my Bryunzeel pencil crayons in lots of different shades (green, yellow, brown, red, blue and purple).  I also added a bit of shadow with a soft grey.  I didn't blend with anything, just the pencils.  I find if I don't get too carried away, they blend well together, and if I do get a line, I can cover it up with something darker or assist it with my finger and some firm rubbing.  Besides, I wanted the variegation of the different colours to make them look more lifelike.  I needed a birthday message, and once again, my eye lit upon just the thing, a wonderful script stamp by josephinekimberling for Impress Rubber Stamps.  That got stamped in India Ink too, and then it made my card lopsided, so I trimmed off some "white space" at the top to get the proportions I wanted and I was away to the races.  I normally like to make a card with the person in mind, and in this case I don't really have any cause to associate DH with artichokes.  Instead, this card was all about just following what felt right and taking the chance that I could give it to someone who would appreciate that aspect.  And failing that, not really mind if he got an artichoke card for his birthday. 

Well, I'm off on holidays now, and my wenting is done for the morning.  I went to my daughter's class to help them sew felt ornaments for a little bit, then I went to an electronics store to return something, then I went to get groceries.   Now I'm home and about to the fruit I soaked overnight in rum into fruitcake and then do some wrapping and maybe make some peppermint bark.  We'll see how long the other things take me.  I'm taking two days off before Christmas to do my baking and wrapping and general getting ready. 

Thanks for stopping by!  Have yourself a merry little artichoke!

Scrap Sunday 12

Well, my mojo is still missing. I can usually find it foraging in my scrap stash, but today I was only able to come up with this. The flower is a scrap (grungeboard, Tim Holtz die, Judikins mica gloss) that's been on my desk for a while. It had the button on it already, from its near miss on another project. The card base is another scrap, with a dragonfly cover-a-card background stamp (Impression Obsession). The sentiment (Stampin' Up) is on kraft paper with some black glaze pen written over it and a portion of it in red, slavishly bowing to the rule of 3 for the red. I think the kraft piece is too big, or the sentiment too small. There is also a background stamp of dotted swirls (Impress Rubber Stamps), stamped in Lake Mist on the kraft. On the upside, my five year old really liked it, but turquoise is her favourite colour, so I could be accused of playing to the gallery there.

In other news, I got my two days of all-colouring-all-day at Heather's Stamping Haven. It's that magical time of year when Krista Schneider comes up and teaches colouring techniques with Copics and Tombow markers. We made 17 projects in two days. She does all the assembly and stamping and we do the colouring. I didn't quite finish yesterday - hit the wall at about 4:30. Still, it was a great time and nice to catch up with friends who share a common interest. The only downside is that it's hard to come crashing back to earth. Still, it's better to have stamped and lost than never to have stamped at all. Isn't that how the saying goes???? Hope you've had a good weekend too.

Paint Challenge

Here's my card for the March challenge at Inkurable Stampers, which is to use paint. I started with a sheet of textured shimmer paper, and coated it with acrylic paint dabbers and (pool and lettuce). The shimmer didn't show through, but I still like the texture of the paper, and the white bits still show shimmer. The "thanks" (Impress Rubber Stamps) was stamped in black and heat embossed in black, and matted on more black. The card base is olive, with some botanical silhouettes (Darkroom Door) stamped in dusty lime and Opaline blue ink. The flowers are from my stash.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sympathy Vase

Sadly, I needed a couple of sympathy cards, so I turned to my go-to stamp for the occasion. It's a beautiful stamp by Impress Rubber Stamps, with a branch on one side and a flower on the end. I use it with my small vase punch and Japanese paper. I liked this patterned paper for its muted shades of navy, brown and purple, and picked those out in the card base (tsumugi in Heather) and mat (chocolate- PTI). The image itself is stamped on shimmer white (Stampin' Up) in Rich Cocoa (Memento), Lavender (Color Box) and Night Sky (Versamagic). I added a small shadow with gray pencil crayon. The sentiment is also in cocoa (Fancy Flexible Phrases, Stampin' Up). The paper was too nice to leave off, so I added an accent strip to the background. The nice thing about the bough-flower stamp is that it embellishes the envelope nicely as well. This is such a quick and easy card to make, which is nice when you need a card in a hurry. You could make a more cheerful version of this, certainly, in lovely fresh greens and pinks or blues and yellows, etc.

Well that's it for now. I have to go check and see if my fairy wands are glued together. The wood glue said to clamp for an hour. My binder clips weren't holding the stars to the sticks, so I found a long thin box and laid it over the wands, and piled some paint cans on top. If I balanced them just so, the box wouldn't collapse or tip over. They are on the freezer right now and if DH discovers this contraption, he will be very cross indeed. (He's never a fan of my teetery piles, whereas I somewhat enjoy seeing how I can pile things on an unstable base. What's that they say about the triumph of optimism over experience????)

Thanks for stopping by!

Sunny thank you

I wanted to send thank you notes to my friends who helped make dinner for the women's shelter yesterday. I have used this layout/technique before and it is so quick and easy, but very striking. It's what Julie HRR likes to call a 5MQ (five minute quickie, which always makes me laugh). I used a flower punch I got recently at my LSS. It has two pieces, one is a punch, the other is an embosser. So you punch your flower then put it in the the embosser and it gently curls the petals and gives them gentle ridges. Now you can have flowers in any colour, any time! I had a scrap of glossy alcohol-inked paper that was waiting to be used so that seemed just the ticket. I punched the whole piece and it gave me twelve little flowers, just enough for my four cards. A quick trip through my paper stash yielded just the right cardstock - Dandelion from Memory Box (duplex, so it's white inside). The stamp is from Impress Rubber Stamps, and it's stamped in Forest Moss (Distress Ink). The perfect finishing touch was some lemon yellow self-adhesive pearls (Kaiser) in the flower centres. In real life it is so soft and pretty, and the flowers have a slight silver sheen from the silver mixative and of course the glossy is reflective. The pearls have a lovely lustre and the lemon yellow cardstock (not at all dandelion yellow) is so sunny. I didn't have the patience to tinker with Paintshop Pro to get just the right yellow. I am still learning that software, so please bear with me.

No funny jokes tonight - I am under the weather with a cold. My voice is gone and I can't be more than arm's length from the tissues, so I am all out of spontaneous hilarity. I would recommend the show Dan for Mayor, if you want a laugh, featuring Fred Ewaniuk from Corner Gas (Hank). There have been some pretty funny moments. It's not Corner Gas funny, but it's still good. You have to like a show that has the Looneyspoon ladies for cameos. How funny is that!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you get some stamping time in your little corner of the world. I'm off to actually write and send some cards! This is a sadly neglected aspect to my card-making endeavours.....