Flower Garden

This was a fun card to make and pretty quick to put together.  I loved this DP by Making Memories (Vintage Findings) for the bright colors, texture and glossy finish (which was hard to photograph without the flash creating hotspots).  Because the DP is so bold, it really didn't need much in terms of a stamped image so I selected Papertrey Ink's "Garden of Life" set for the floral images and for the butterfly.  I thought these flowers coordinated well with the flowers in the paper.

I used the rock n' roll technique for stamping the flowers to add some depth and interest to the images and try to pick up the same colors.  For the butterfly, I used a Martha Stewart butterfly punch with the same flower stamped image.  I coated it in Versamark and then heat embossed using SU Irridescent Ice EP to sparkle it up.  I used my Nesties Labels 9 dies to cut out the image panel and then distressed the edges with SU Soft Suede ink.  Both Stampin' Up and EK Success scallop border punches were used to edge the top panels in Bermuda Bay and Soft Suede SU In Colors.  I finished it off with Regal Rose ribbon to pick up the pink in the DP. 

Thanks for peeking in to view my creations!

Flutter By Butterfly

This is a quick birthday card I made up for a friend at work.  My inspiration for the colors was taken directly from the DP - Basic Grey's Indian Summer series.  The three main colors are Stampin' Up In Colors - Rich Razzleberry, Curry and Dusty Durango.  Before adherring my elements to the Razzleberry cardstock, I spritzed the card with a mix of SU champagne shimmer paint with 70% alcohol.  You can see a bit of the shimmer that gave to the base card.  I used this on the butterfly images to add a bit of sparkle there too.

The butterfly stamp is from SU Great Friend and I stamped it on the inner color ink first (from top: Curry, Durango, Melon Mambo) and then rocked and rolled the edges on the Razzleberry inkpad before stamping on Whisper White cardstock.  I punched the butterflies out using my SU square punch but using different angles for some interest so they looked like they were fluttering by.  Each butterfly square was then mounted on Durango cardstock and popped up with dimensionals.  The Curry cardstock was punched using a Martha Stewart punch which I thought coordinated really well with the DP design.

Thanks for fluttering by my blog!  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Candy Anyone?

Doesn't this just make your mouth water?  It should - especially if you're a Cosmo Cricket fan like me.  Just look at all that paper and the buttons - who doesn't love buttons?  Well now is the time to head on over to Kadie's In My Minds Eye Creations blog to get the details on how to win this wonderful candy (that is if I don't win it first!).  Just click the link I provided and it will take you there.  The winner will be chosen April 22.  Oh and while you're there, take a peak at the pretty cards Kadie has posted.  She's a very talented lady.

Squirrel!

The peanut gallery at work will love the title of this blog post - it'll remind them of the dog "Doug" in the movie Up.  But you're not here for that....let's get on to the card!

I have to admit that I made this card last fall and have never posted it.  Such a shame because I like this card - something to do with the colors and the coloring of the image itself.  The image is a digital stamp from Mo Manning's creations that can be found here.  I love her work and this one is a favorite of mine. 

I started by coordinating the Copic marker colors for the image with the background paper that I wanted to use from Cosmo Cricket.  I use my Spellbinders Nestibilities dies to cut out the image and the background panel. 

Thanks for taking a peak at my work!

Good Grief Charlie Brown

My brother loves all things Charlie Brown and Snoopy so I grabbed this stamp knowing I'd use it in a card for him.  I colored the image using my Copic markers and cut it out using my Nestibilities Labels 2 dies.  For the background polka-dot panels, I stamped them using a background stamp from a My Favorite Things stamp set and also randomly colored in the dots with the same copic markers as the main image panel.  The color background panel was embossed with a Cuttlebug folder.  The cardstock is all Papertrey Ink.

Thanks for looking!

Jeans Day

I made this card for a co-worker's birthday who always appreciates my handiwork.  When he got this one he remarked that I always make the "coolest cards".  He framed the card I gave him last year for his son's room - it was a Detroit Tigers themed card. 

Well this year I went for a jeans theme.  This is one of my favorite stamps from Judikins.  I stamped it using SU Buckeroo Blue ink on Buckeroo cardstock and stamped it twice.  The second one I used to cut out the pocket only and mounted it on the other stamped image and punched two brads at the top corners of it.

For the hankerchief, I used a SU paisley stamp on Real Red cardstock and embellished it with my white gel pen.  The twine belt was threaded through the belt loops by cutting small slits on each belt loop sides.  The word stamp is from AMuse.

I dressed up the inside by using another pocket with a tag insert that says have a great birthday.

Thanks for stopping by!


Stamps:  Judikins "Jeans 1701J", AMuse
Cardstock:  SU Creamy Caramel, Real Red, Buckaroo Blue; PTI Enchanted Evening
Ink:  SU Buckeroo Blue, PTI Enchanted Evening

Trendy Trees

Just a quick post with a card I did a couple months ago for a colleague that was retiring.  The DP is Cosmo Cricket "Want S'More?" and I love this paper from the moment I saw it.  The colors are my favorite thing but it's also a great paper for guy cards, which this was.  I also thought Stampin' Up Trendy Trees stamp set went perfectly with the paper.  I like that set too - quick and easy to put a card together with these stamps and the paper.  To add a bit of interest without using ribbon and other girly accessories, I stitched around the edge of the main panel of the card and the image panel.  Thanks for stopping by my blog!

Stamps:  SU Trendy Trees, AMuse Happy Retirement
Paper:  SU Mellow Moss, Ruby Red, Close to Cocoa, Cosmo Cricket
Ink:  SU Mustard, Ruby Red, Cocoa, Moss
Accessories:  Rhinestones, Corner rounder punch

Got Milk?

I crack up every time I see this digital image from Mo Manning. Isn't he the cutest with his cheeks so puffy with all the food in them?

There are so many darling digital images from the talented Mo at Digital Pencil Too, her online store.

I never thought I'd like digital stamps but I really like them for several reasons - you can size them to whatever size your project calls for, you can instantly use them after you download them with no waiting for that pesky mail. (Really I'm not that impatient - only when it involves new stamps or card making supplies!)

This image was fun to color using my Copic markers. I cut out the image and layered them on the card. To make the little critter stand out, I colored a second image of him and cut out the top half of his "body" and popped it with a dimensional.

The cardstock and pattern papers are all from Stampin' Up.

Thanks for stopping by!

For My Hilly

This digital image from Mo Manning is a totally accurate depiction of my daughter Hilary (Hilly). So when I saw this I knew it would be perfect for her.

I just love the carefree, relaxed, day-dreamy look. I can imagine the words "whatever..." rolling off her lips like my Hilly says when absorbed in her own important thoughts!

I colored the image with Copic markers and edged the image panel with my copper metallic marker. The background swirls are Papertrey Ink as well as the embossed daughter stamp at the bottom. Stampin Up cardstock was used - Bordering Blue, Creamy Caramel and PTI Enchanted Evening blue.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog!

To Give You A Lift

I made this card for my dad when he was in the hospital a couple months ago. I loved the paper because it reminded me of colors my dad wears. Both the stripe and pattern papers used here are from S.E.I. and have metallic copper accents that make them glimmery - hard to see in this photograph.

The stamps are from Papertrey Ink - Button Bits. I use this stamp set a lot - it makes a quick image and let's face it, who doesn't love buttons especially when used like this?

The cardstock used is PTI Enchanted Evening (blue), Stamping Up Really Rust and Creamy Caramel. Buttons are Stampin' Up!

My Wonderful Grandmother

I just had to post this picture of my Grammy who just turned 90 years old last month. All her grandchildren surprised her by gathering together in Florida for her birthday.

I hope I have her genes - doesn't she look great?!

Celebrating Jenny

So, last night I practically pulled an all-nighter working on updating my blog look. I found this wonderful background and template from Leelou Blogs - I just love it. It comes with the post separators, header, layout and design and was very easy to install.

So while I was on a blog-roll, I thought I'd upload several cards that never made it out of my camera. And this card is one of them.

I made this card for my sweet niece Jenny and it reminds me of her. There is a picture of her sitting like this with "Grandpa" when she was younger. She was just the cutest darn thing. So when I saw this stamp from High Hopes, I thought it was perfect for the occasion.

I colored the image with my Copic markers, cut it out, along with the other High Hopes images used here, then popped them with dimensionals.

Jenny really appreciates the cards I make and I don't think this one disappointed her. Love you Jenny!

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday and I made this card for her. Lots of detail and layers on this one.

I first saw this technique on the Flourishes blog from the Limelight Designer for December, Yvonne. She is one talented stamper - I've been following her blog (Yvonne's Stamp, Paper and Ink) for a while. The most beautifully creative cards I've ever seen. Yvonne is an expert in creating with Spellbinders dies and when I saw what she did with the Spellbinders Classic Frame I put them on the top of my Christmas list because I knew I wanted to create that design for my Mom's birthday card.

The link to Yvonne's tutorial for this design is here.



For the image I used Papertrey Ink's "In Bloom" stamp set, stamped in PTI Smokey Shadow ink and colored using my Copic Markers.

Thanks so much for looking!

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

Recipe:
Stamps - Papertrey Ink "In Bloom", Sweet Impressions Stamps for the sentiment; Stampin Up "En Francais" background stamp
Cardstock - Stampin Up Saffron, Mellow Moss, Vanilla, Really Rust
Ink - Stampin Up Really Rust, Copic Markers for the image, PTI Smokey Shadow ink
Accessories - Spellbinders Classic Frame, Labels 1 dies; Fiskars Heritage corner punch; pearls and Stickles glitter; Martha Stewart butterfly punch; Cuttlebug embossing folder

Balloon Ride - SC245

Just a quick post tonight - it's late because I was participating in the Papertrey Ink September release party tonight and then had to get my order in at midnight!

Made this card for a friend and for the Splitcoast sketch challenge last week -boy am I behind.

The last two weekends I've been either out of town or entertaining family in our home. I did sneak away though to do this card on Saturday morning. It was pure therapy to get back in my "happy place" and stamp a bit.

I've had this PTI stamp set since it was released a couple months ago. I hadn't used this hot air balloon image yet though and have been anxious to use it with the PTI vintage buttons.

I tried to repeat the theme on the inside, only I used circle punches of the DP for the balloons.

Thanks so much for looking!

Recipe:

Stamps: Papertrey Button Bits

Cardstock: SU Razzleberry, Pixie Pink, Razzledazzle DP

Ink: Razzleberry, Curry, Melon Berry

Accessories: PTI vintage buttons, SU circle punches

Flower Vases

Today's Splitcoast Facebook entry featured the most incredible collection of cards by Freshn'Sassy that was uploaded yesterday. I was awed at these vases of flowers that she did on a variety of cards - all basically the same, just a variety of sentiments, colors and patterns. I couldn't wait to get more details.

Thankfully she credited a tutorial by Michelle Zindorf at Freedom and Creating blog. As quickly as I read it, I was reaching for my oval punch, flowers and sponges to make one of these incredible creations myself.
This card is the result.

It's super easy and quick and is essentially punched out ovals that are cut off, sponged for the shadows and perspective, the edge they "sit on" masked and sponged with gray as vase shadows, and then flowers (I just used flowers from Prima and other sources) added. Took me longer to decide how to mat the main panel and what colors to use!

The tutorial is great and the samples from Michelle and Freshn'Sassy are not to be missed - please follow the links to their creations and leave them a comment or two!

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

Recipe:
Stamps - A Muse (Happy Retirement)

Paper - More Mustard, Sage Shadow, Dusty Durango, Whisper White
Ink - More Mustard, Sage Shadow, Dusty Durango, Going Gray, Chocolate Chip
Accessories - Flowers by Prima, MS edge punch, decorative brads, Marvey oval punch

Sweet Violets

Sometimes you just make a card that is one of your favorites of all time! Maybe it's the image and how you colored it, the layout you used, the colors or the technique. Well this is one of those cards for me.

I had been admiring the Sweet Violets set from Flourishes for some time now but hadn't ordered it - don't know why? Because I was to get it as a wonderful birthday gift from my dear friend and fellow stampaholic Heide! The best birthday present ever! Now every time I use this set I will think of her which makes it pretty special! Thanks Heide!

I made this card for an incredible woman at work that is retiring at the end of September. And with the pearls I used as embellishment, it qualifies for this week's Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge-FTTC30! Each Tuesday a new challenge goes up on the Flourishes Newsletter Blog.

For the card, I stamped the image and colored it with my Copic markers (Flourishes stamps are perfect for the Copics). Instead of just cutting out the whole image with one of my Nestabilities dies, I thought it would be more interesting, and make the beautiful image stand out more, if some of the image was outside the die cut. So I traced from the Labels 1 die, keeping the leaves hanging over and cut it out by hand. I love how that looks! I then multi-layered the image using Spellbinders Shapeabilities Fleur de Lis with Sage Shadow cardstock and Nesties Label 1 for the Almost Amethyst and Banana cardstock layers. I like the look of the Banana layer which seems to bring focus to the image.

For the background, I used my Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing folder on VELLUM! With this being a 5 1/2" square card, the embossing folder didn't fit the whole piece. So I carefully repositioned the vellum in the folder for a second time through the Cuttlebug. Even then, there was a small patch that wasn't embossed, so I lined that area up in the folder and with a little hand pressure, made the final embossing on the vellum. It doesn't really take much pressure to emboss on vellum - give it a try! I just used regular adhesive to attach the vellum but did so behind the multi-layered focal image so it wouldn't be seen and the ribbon I used also keeps it in place.

So that's the story of my new favorite card. Hope you like it!

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

Recipe:

Stamps - Flourishes "Sweet Violets", SU Oval All

Cardstock - Almost Amethyst, Sage Shadow, Barely Banana, Vellum

Ink - Palette Noir Black

Accessories - SU organdy ribbon, adhesive half pearls, Nestabilities Labels 1 dies, Shapeabilities Fleur de Lis die, Cuttlebug Swiss Dot embossing folder, oval punch

Just For You Darlene!

I created this card for the Featured Stamper Challenge at Splitcoast yesterday. The featured stamper was Darlene (akronstamperdpk) and what an amazing gallery of work she has. There was just one problem for me - there were too many beautiful cards to choose from, they all inspired me! I must have put 20 of her cards into my "Favorites" list!

After looking through her 1300 card gallery, I chose this card to CASE. I was so excited when I saw that card because I have the exact same stamps from Just For Fun and Endless Creations in my arsenal and they are some of my favorites to work with. Especially the "Just For Fun" postage stamp templates. Making a card with these templates is fast and fun and always makes an interesting card. I used different colors, background panel and sentiment to vary my version from hers.

So Darlene and I are kindred spirits in a way with common fondness for the same stamps. So this is for her with thanks for inspiring me and with congratulations on being chosen as the Featured Stamper of the week at SCS. Enjoy!

Recipe:

Stamps - Just For Fun, Endless Creations Inc (H16), PTI Polka Dot Basics

Paper - Night of Navy, Brocade Blue, Whisper White

Ink - Night of Navy, Brocade Blue, Bashful Blue

Accessories - Fiskars stamp deco scissors, ribbon, curly-cue doo-dad for tying ribbon to!

Cool Cat

Happy Birthday Nic!

I had a fun time with this one. I downloaded a free digi stamp available at Hambo Stamps and printed this in the size I wanted from my own printer. I colored the Cool Cat with my Copics - only had a few tiny areas where the printer ink seemed to bleed but after that I was pretty careful. I got the DP from a friend Laura who does scrapbooking for a living (soooo talented). Pretty simple but a fun card for a 12 year old birthday! Card stock is Only Orange - his favorite color. The sentiments (outside and inside) were printed from my computer - guess I just don't have all the cool sayings in stamps - my 10-year old daughter coached me on this! Enjoy!

Recipe:

Stamps - None - Digital stamp from Hambo Stamps

Paper - Only Orange, Green Galore, Whisper White, DP unknown
Ink - None - Printed image and sentiments from my computer onto Whisper White cardstock

Accessories - Nestibilities deckled rectangles, eyelets, slot punch, sewing machine, ribbon, circle punches

For Heide

I love this stamp set from Flourishes (Peaches and Cherries) and think it's the most beautiful cherries stamp of any out there. This set was a birthday gift from my dear friend Heide (see her magnificent Splitcoast gallery here). So this is for Heide with thanks and love.

I'm also posting this to the Flourishes Timeless Tuesday challenge this week - FTTC30. The challenge is to use pearls in your card. Since I already had this done and it had pearls and it qualifies, what do I have to lose - right?

It was a lot of fun to color this image with my Copic markers - in fact most of the Flourishes are. I used several different markers for each color - Reds R35, R37, R59, R22, RV29 and the Greens BG93, BG96. G94, G98, YG95. The beauty of these stamps is that when you color them with any kind of shading they look almost three dimensional. Then if you outline the image with a pale grey or sand color like I did here, they really pop off the paper!

The rest of the card was pretty standard. I chose Mellow Moss and Chocolate Chip as the main background colors because of the contrast with the red - in my eye the image popped the best on these.

Thanks for visiting my blog today.


Recipe:
Stamps - Flourishes "Peaches and Cherries"; SU Swiss Dot Background
Paper - Mellow Moss, Chocolate Chip, Artichoke, Riding Hood Red, Whisper White
Ink - Chocolate Chip, Palette Black Noir
Accessories - Half pearls, corner punch, Nestabilities Labels 2 dies

Blooming With Buttons

This card uses the layout from the Splitcoast sketch challenge 243 this week. I really had fun with this sketch and with using this darling Cosmo Cricket paper.

I also adore this stamp set "Button Bits" from Papertrey Ink. Buttons on cards are so perky and this particular stamp using the buttons as flowers is divine. I mean who doesn't love flowers - especially flowers made of buttons!

Papertrey offers so many different colors of their vintage buttons and they're such a good value. And they're so pretty in my craft room in the glass jars I store them in! It's eye candy in my room!

Pretty simple card really. Thanks for visiting my blog!

Recipe:

Stamps - Papertrey Ink "Button Bits"

Paper - Papertrey Ink Berry Sorbet and Vintage Cream, Stampin' Up Blue Bayou, Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday DP
Ink - SU Kiwi, PTI Vintage Cream
Accessories - PTI vintage Buttons, Ribbon, Nestabilities Labels 1 dies, Martha Stewart scallop edge punch, Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder