Good Friday - Florals

Hello and happy Good Friday!  I'm just popping by today to drop off a few pretty spring cards, just in time for Easter.  When I think of springtime I think of all the bright colored tulips and daffodils and beautiful blooming apple and cherry blossoms and those gorgeous bradford pear trees in my back yard.  I decided to make up a whole cheerful gift card set that I can give to a friend.

For this set of cards I used one beautiful stamp set by Penny Black for all of my flowers.  I also used the Thanks So Very Much sentiment stamp set from My Favorite Things.

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I did some no line coloring with distress inks to make these beautiful blossoms.

I used a heart die to spotlight parts of my cards to add some interest.

A Wink of Stella clear pen added lots of sparkle to my blooms.

I also pulled out my Zig Kuretake watercolor markers on a few blooms to achieve some bright colors.  This Yellow for instance was much brighter than distress inks.

For these cards I used the following supplies:

Stamps: Thanks So Very Much (My Favorite Things), Blooming Garden (Penny Black).

Ink: onyx black (Versafine), festive berries, ripe persimmon, old paper, peeled paint (Ranger Distress Inks).

Paper: khaki, green leaf (Simon Says Stamp), white 140 lb cardstock (Neenah).

Accessories: Heart STAX dies, Blueprints #15 dies (My Favorite Things), Silly Stitched dies (Lil' Inker Designs), wink of stella glitter pen, Zig Kuretake real brush watercolor markers, clear sequins.

There's another new challenge up over at StampNation this week with some amazing inspiration from the design team, FREE for all members so go check it out!  Just click on the picture below and it will lead you over to the StampNation page to learn more on how to join in on the fun!

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

First day of spring - bring on the flowers!

Happy first day of spring!   

You'd never know it by the cold weekend we just had here in Illlinois.  Brrr!  Since I can't plant outside I thought I'd do a little watercoloring inside and  whipped up this pretty little card using the Large Peony 2 stamps by The Ton and some distress inks.

This is my first time working with this beauty and it was so fun.  I was experimenting and while the shading isn't perfect it did have the watercolor look that I was going for.  I clear embossed it first so it was much easier to control the flow of water and ink.

For this card I used the following supplies:

Stamps:  Large Peony 2 (The Ton).  Ink: peeled paint, crushed olive, broken china, tumbled glass, milled lavender (Ranger Distress Ink), onyx black (Versafine), clear watermark (Versamark).  Paper:  white 140 lb cardstock (Neenah).  Accessories: Lattice Frame die (WPlus9), clear sequins, clear embossing powder (WOW).

Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

Happy Birthday Stenciled Balloons

Well hello Friday!!  It's time to PAR-tay!!

And what's a "par-tay" with out balloons right?   This week I posted a tutorial over at StampNation with a lot of tips on how to use your balloon stamps and dies in unique and fun ways.  Check out these lovelies that I made with a custom stencil using the Party Balloons die set from My Favorite Things along with a little blended distress ink.

For this card I used the following supplies:

Stamps: Big Scripty Greetings (Simon Says Stamp).  Ink: ripe persimmon, spiced marmalade, crushed olive, cracked pistachio (Ranger Distress Ink), onyx black (Versafine), vintage photo (Ranger Distress Marker)  Paper:  white 140 lb cardstock (Neenah).  Accessories: Party Balloon dies, Pinking Edge Circle STAX dies, Split Diagonal Stencil (My Favorite Things), sequins, fun foam, blank plastic stencil sheet (unknown). 

I drew the strings on with a marker, using a t-square ruler.  I also did some spotlighting on the sentiment by just diecutting with the Pinking Edge Circle and popping it up with a layer of fun foam.

If you're looking for some more great ideas and tips on cardmaking, StampNation is loaded with videos and tutorials posted every day  from their talented design team and their awesome members.  It's like opening up a treasure box of crafty fun!   Stop on over, we love to see new faces join the mix.  Follow this link to learn more about how to join StampNation today!

There's a great challenge going on for all StampNation members this week too.  Here's a little peek!!  Can you guess what the theme is?

Have a great day!

Hi Everyone!  There's a great tutorial posted over at StampNation today by Dream Team member Allison Cope.  She gives some great pointers on how to use patterned paper on your cards.  It's so informative and inspirational that I decided to pull out the few paper pads I own...dust them off and take on this challenge of mixing  3 or more patterns onto a standard sized card.  Here's what I came up with:

Even though these three patterns came from three different pads of paper you can see they coordinate very well together.  The only color that really looked a little out of place to me was the bright yellow on the patterned arrow paper.  I decided to tie that in a little better by using yellow for my sentiment.

For this card I used the following supplies:

Stamps: The Big, The Bold, The Happy (Winnie & Walter), Stained Textures (Bo Bunny).
Ink: onyx black (Versafine), coral crush (My Favorite Things)
Paper: Lucky Charm (American Crafts/Dear Lizzy), Ombre' Stripes (Lil' Inker Designs), Dreamy (Heidi Swapp), Sunshine cardstock (Simon Says Stamp) white 140 lb cardstock (Neenah Exact)
Accessories: Stitched Jumbo Fishtail Banners die, Blueprints #15 (My Favorite Things), Roses die (Paper Smooches), Painted Thanks die (Simon Says Stamp), clear sequins, fun foam (unknown)

If you'd like to get in on the fun and check out some of the great tutorials over at StampNation, come on over!!  Click on one of the photos above and they will take you directly to where you need to go to learn more about becoming a StampNation member.

Have a great day!!

Birthday Wishes with Layers of Vintage Roses

Hello everyone!  I'm back with a very feminine birthday card featuring the gorgeous Vintage Roses by Altenew.  As much as I love these flowers, layered stamps always seem to be a challenge for me and require much time and patience.  After searching for the exact color combination that suits my eye I also find that I have to practice lining up each layer a few times before I finally get a flower that passes enough to showcase on my card.  I admit, I'm very picky and I tend to be a perfectionist.  What I end up with is pages and pages of stamped flowers to chose from in different colors, some lined up....some not so much.  Practice makes perfect right?  The good thing is, I only used a few of them on this card and I have plenty of left over images that will hopefully make my next floral card much easier.  I also made sure to write down the color combinations for future use.  I'll list them below for you also.

Roses:

First I tried the recommendation of starting with the darkest layer, then adding the medium layers and saving the lighter color for last.  What I ended up with was a flower that looked like it was out of focus.  Very blurry.  I'm thinking it was probably the inks I was using;  Hero Arts Shadow inks. Adding the light layer of ink on top seemed to mute all of the darker layers.  So I switched them around and started with the light color first.  That made a huge difference!

Leaves:

With that problem fixed I moved on to the leaves.  For those I did some generation stamping using only one color ink.  I inked up my stamp, stamped off on a piece of scrap paper and then stamped my image. It gave a nice, light, textured impression.  The second layer I stamped directly over that image with the same color.

For the shaker element on this card I decided to use some vellum cardstock for the window instead of clear transparency film.  I love how soft it looks while still being able to see the sequins and beads shaking around inside.  I went with silver sparkle cardstock for the diecut birthday sentiment.

For this card I used the following supplies:

Stamps:  Vintage Roses (Altenew)

Ink:  field greens, soft pink, bubblegum, ultra pink (Hero Arts Shadow Ink), pink lemonade (My Favorite Things).

Paper:  ombre' stripes (Lil' Inker Designs), silver sparkle cardstock, translucent vellum cardstock (My Favorite Things), white 140 lb cardstock (Neenah Exact).

Accessories:  Birthday Wishes die (Stamp of Approval Young at Heart Collection/CAS-ual Fridays), Anytime Tags die (Lil' Inker Designs),  dinensional tape (3M), sheer ribbon, assorted sequins and beads (unknown).


There's another awesome challenge going on this week over at StampNation. Check out this little peek into our wonderful world of cardmakers.  Can you guess which one is mine?

If you're not a member yet....what are you waiting for?  Come on over and join in the fun!!  Click on the above photo and it will take you right over to get all the information you need on becoming a StampNation Sistah!

Thank you so much for stopping by.  If you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you.  Just leave a comment below.   Have a great day!