a CASE in blue

 Hi there peeps! 

I was very inspired by a card Andrea M. made recently and it actually moved me to hit my craft room and CASE it.

Loved her color combo so I stuck with it. Perused my dies for something that would give that fall feel, but keep my life simple. Chose a bit bigger pattern for my BG but it sure looks a lot like hers. Love it.

Because I loved the design so much I decided to put a twist on it and go a bit masculine. Same colors. Different motif. Feathers this time. And an embossed plus clock BG to go with the happy birthday, time passing theme.

Inkystamp sentiment stamp,

Penny Black Berries and Leaves die,

embossing powder, twine

Lifestyle Crafts feather die,

A Pocket Full of Happiness cover plate

That's it for today. Thanks for looking.  

when you're swatching your new catherine pooler inks... part 5

So the other day I finally got around to swatching my new Spa Collection inks from Catherine Pooler. And I had some time on my hands so I had a play...

Meet the last four cards to emerge from this playtime! I totally CASEd Lisa S. and her plays with this Hexagon Hello stamp set from The Stamp Market and the sentiment from Beautiful Blooms.

First in navy blue with copper accents.

Then in colors inspired by The Stamp Market.

Then in horizontal form with black accents and a copper embossed sentiment.

And finally, I had to use that woodgrain hex too. Paired it in purple with a gold embossed With Love and a die cut Folk Heart.

Catherine Pooler Spa inks

I'm very satisfied with the colors and also the coverage of my new inks. What do you think of the Catherin Pooler inks? How about the colors in the Spa collection? Do they speak to you or do you prefer the bright and beautiful ones? Thanks for looking.

I'm taking my first card to Addicted To Stamps June - Man/Boy.
I'm taking my third card over to Craft Stamper TIMI for June and  to Inkspirational Fashion Photo.

I'm taking my fourth card over to ATSAM - CAS

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winnie and walter 4th birthday - scraps, dies and comeback

Winnie and Walter's 4th Birthday Bash! Are you playing? I'm using up more scraps today. And die cuts. And making a comeback.

I loved this card of Lydia's when she first made it and proceeded to CASE it. Today I've revisited it, albeit a bit differently, in the process of using up some more scraps for Kelly's Scraps challenge.

 Winnie Walter Renee's Leaves stamp
Winnie Walter Big, Bold and Extras stamp
Winnie Walter Multifaceted Heart die
Winnie Walter Friends die

Winnie Walter Maggie's Roses die

Tim Holtz word die

MFT number die

No idea where the leftover bits were from on this card - but I think they found a great place to live. All I had to do was stamp the leaves on the cardbase and add a strip of grid paper (yes, finally for Keren, a real grid!). Again more white leaves - I love how this card, though fully loaded, has a light and airy feel to it!

Thanks Winnie and Walter for being such a great company and inspiring with such great challenges! I'll be back with more scraps...

First I'm taking this over to Simon Says Stamp Wednesday's  Add a Die Cut challenge. And hooking up at Taheerah's Comeback, Lydia's Use Dies and Keren's Grid challenges  too!

CASEplorations August

It's CASEplorations time again, folks! And how about some navy and white striped goodness for August? This bold beauty is from Shalu of All By Art Creations. There's so much to work with on her card. I went with the navy and white stripes, an orange bloom, silver CS and thread and lotsa sequins.

I die cut a label tag and stamped grungy stripes from Mixed Media Elements onto it with navy pigment ink. I heat embossed the rose from Blossom Overture and watercolored it before fussy cutting. Die cut a sentiment from silver CS. Before I adhered the tag I stamped the frame and sentiment from the same set onto my cardbase. A messy nest of silver metallic thread and a liberal sprinkling of sequins (literally, I dropped them and glued them down where they'd fallen) finished off my card.

Please check out the rest of the DT's creations and join us in the gallery. It's open until end of day on August 31st. The DT's favorite will win a $15 GC and two runners-up win a $5 GC!

CASEplorations July

Welcome! I'm sharing my card for the July CASEplorations challenge over at STAMPlorations. We're CASEing this fabulous mixed media card by Elina Stromberg of Elina's Arts and Crafts. So much goodness on her blog to check out. You can read about her card in this blog post.

I definitely wanted to do some Distress Inking and keep the love birds theme. Here's my recipe.

1. Make a mask with heart die and use the negative. (TIP: Draw a pencil line down the center of the cardbase and align the points of the top and bottom of the heart along it!)
2. Stamp birdies from Smallbirds. Stamp and fussy cut a mask and cover them up.
3. Use sponge dauber to apply Wild Honey in center, Barn Door around outside of heart.
4. Stamp text element from Mixed Media Elements a few times on heart with Memento black ink.
5. Use hearts from Sketchy Coffee Cups and Frames and Flowers with water to bleach several spots on the heart.
6. Splatter with paintbrush and water.
7. Remove masks.
8. Watercolor birdies' bellies with Tumbled Glass.
9. Selectively ink and stamp sentiment from Party Time.
10. Die cut branch and sentiment and adhere.

Here's a close up so you can get a better look at the faint text stamping and that oh-so-fun water bleaching!

Whew. Sounds like a lot, but it wasn't really. Especially if you like playing with your Distress Inks, I certainly hope you'll join us at CASEplorations this month!

I'm joining the Red, White and/or Blue challenge at Simon Says Monday, All Things Bright and Beautiful at The Artistic Stamper and at Inkspirational

exploration STAMPlorations sketched: birthday cake (CASE, Craft Stamper, AAA)

You may have seen the latest STAMPlorations release. We hopped last week. Today I'm exploring these two sets

SKETCHED: Birthday Cake

SENTIMENT BUILDERS: Celebrate

and playing along at CASE Study #198 where the muse is none other than the amazing Shari Carroll with this beauty that speaks to my graphic-loving heart!

This is what I did.

I CASEd myself on this one too, but definitely went all girlie this time. I love playing with the wonky cake and inking it up two tone.

I got an "office supply" vibe from Shari's card. I used a layer of vellum with a circle die cut from Amy Tangerine's Plus One paper pack on top and a little tab from another die cut circle tucked underneath. I stamped "big day" from the sentiment builders set on the tab. Figured I could handwrite the recipient's birthdate to personalize the card even more. Cool, eh?

Layered focal point. Sequins. Gold splatter to mimic the flow of Shari's sequins.  A die cut number. It's a CASE.

Then I broke out the watercolors, inspired by the July challenge at Take It, Make It - Emboss Resist and the AAA Cards Challenge #10 - Watercolor Techniques.

(This photo looks like it needs to go into the washing machine to get rid of the grime - UGH - it's actually a nice cream colored CS)

Heat embossed the images and partially watercolored them. Some pink splatters and Wink of Stella shimmer to the swirls on the frosting and voila! It's "12 candles for you".

You could also fussy cut the cake and pop it up like Monika did here. And I'm thinking it would look pretty cute paper pieced on tiny polka dot PP too.

Come back and visit tomorrow when it'll be about shaking your cupcake. And if you participated in the birthday blog hop the winners have been announced here. If you didn't win, there's a great deal in the shop until July 11 - all six sets for $30. TTFN.

32 to go (WW, Make the Day Special, Lawnscaping, CASE, Time Out)

I so loved the color combo from the Winnie and Walter Playdate #2 that I've four more invitations for you today. (Then I'm moving on, I promise.)

You saw my Distress-Ink-to-acrylic-block-misted-and-squished-to-paper technique BG yesterday. Well I made another while I was at it, just using the pink tones. That's what you see above. I used the sketch from the current challenge #3 at Make the Day Special. Because I embossed the words from W&W onto the vellum banner I'm hooking up to the current Lawnscaping challenge - Embossing too. And I'm going over to A Sprinke of Imagination one more time, too (peony, fuschia and lime)!

I only wanted the words for my sentiment above so I partially die cut them with my Dieversions die from a third panel I had created, the remainder of which you see in the next card.

Angled the panel,  heat embossed the cascading confetti stars in silver and die cut the sentiment from silver CS. Opted for a green base for this one. 

This BG I created by swiping Adirondack ink pads across normal CS then spritzing with water. The result is more vibrant but also watercolor-y. I die cut the sentiment from the center of the panel and heat embossed some of the twinkle confetti in gold on the cardbase before adhering the negative. I also heat embossed "birthday" and "anniversary" across the bottom cuz we are celebrating both events at our "161" party. I'm joining CASE Study with this one where Pamela H.'s amazing card is up this week (negative die cutting, birthday sentiment at the bottom).

So where did the positive die cut go from that last card? Funny you should ask...

Now doesn't that look like a party invitation? Totally inspired by Vanessa M.'s card in the W&W gallery, I changed it up a little and love the result.  I'm playing at Time Out challenge #7 where the theme is "summer" and this definitely says summer party in my opinion. Some of my DT teamies run Time Out and I've been meaning to join in!

Whew, that's it for today. TTFN. But I've still got 32 to go...

more butterflies and blooms (CASE, SSS, sprinkle of imagination)

Did you see my card yesterday?  Butterflies. (And a giveaway!)  Well with rabbles on the mind and this cool card of Wida's up at CASE Study...

... and a nudge from Tracey M. to use this PTI Cutting Garden bloom, this is what I came up with. 

Some stamping, heat embossing, dry embossing, washi taping, die cutting, splattering...

TIP: Best to do splattering before you've got your card done. Unfortunately, it dawned on me that splatters were one element of Wida's card that I wanted to CASE after I had everything else done. I had to fake them. Do I like my splatters? Nope. Do I like the two-toned embossing on the Ranunculus? Yep ;)

So with blooms on the mind as well as these challenges...

A Sprinkle of Imagination - May

and

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Botanical

I went on another adventure.  With gelatos.  Everyone makes them look so easy but they are definitely not my BFF. Watched this video and thought "looks easy enough." Ha! This is my salvaged card.

Heat embossed the CHF distressed diamonds BG. Knowing I wanted to stamp the CHF daisy, I applied gelatos in lime, turquoise, purple, orange and fuchsia roughly where the bloom would later be.  Spritzed with water.  Painted with a wet brush.  And the darn blue (around the lime center - nod to Darnell K.) just kept disappearing.  Crazy. 

Kept playing with it until I finally decided it was time to give up and just iron off the embossing.  I do like how the distressed nature of the stamp let some of the color through so that the emboss-remove diamonds were not totally white.

But then the next crazy.  Stamped the daisy with purple Adirondack ink. Didn't work. Is there such a thing as "gelato-resist"??? Dabbed it up as much as I could and restamped with orange StazOn. Couldn't see it well enough so I stamped it again with black StazOn.  Then added some more blue gelato where I wanted it to be. Nothing like force, eh? Geesh.

A heat embossed sentiment on vellum and a couple punched dragonflies decided to hop on board.

The purple layer behind the panel?  That was my stamping off of the daisy stamp after stamping it on the panel and before cleaning it ;)

Happy weekend.  I'll announce the winner of the STAMPlorations stamp set tomorrow, BTW.

Supplies for happy birthday A

Paper:  CS Bringmann, vellum, PP Pink Petticoat

Stamps:  PTI, sentiment STAMPlorations

Ink : Adirondack, Versamark

Tools: butterfly die Hero ARts, alpha die PTI

Other: Heidi Swapp spray ink, gold polka dot washi, white and gold embossing powder

Supplies for happy birthday

Paper:  watercolor paper, vellum, old book

Stamps: CHF, sentiment STAMPlorations

Ink : Versamark, StazOn

Tools: 

Other: gelatos

exploration STAMPlorations sentiment builders: thank you (CASE, ABNH, SSS)

Back with the second installment of my exploration of STAMPlorations' latest release.  This time I've used the stamp set called SENTIMENT BUILDERS: Thank You.

Is that one versatile sentiment set or what?  Even an extra "s" so you can use the "thank you" or "thanks" version in combination with the other words.

So I found these challenges at A Blog Named Hero and CASE Study. And I'm hooking up once more to the Die Crazy challenge at Simon Says Stamp.

And made this card.

Another CAS, like yesterday's, but with a couple more techniques. I heat embossed the large "thanks" sentiment in white on white (although it's lookin' gray here) three times before adding the secondary sentiments in gray ink. TIP: Using an acrylic block with lines on it makes lining up the individual words of the smaller sentiments a piece of cake.

Then I die cut the blooms twice and inked them with the colors of Wida's embellishments. TIP: Leave intricate die cuts in their negative when inking and use a pouncing rather than swiping motion to prevent them breaking. I rounded all the corners and voila!

So, stay tuned for my third and final card tomorrow.  Remember to come by and leave a comment and you might be the lucky winner of a stamp set from the latest STAMPlorations release.

Supplies for triple thanks

Paper:  CS Bringmann

Stamps:  STAMPlorations

Ink : Distress Inks, Versamark, Hero Arts Granite

Tools: daisies die SSS, corner rounder EKS

Other: white embossing powder

yippie... (CASE, Inspired By)

...I've used up some letter stickers!  That's certainly not what you were expecting, eh?  But after thinking of "the best laid plans..." and "neglected children " as post titles, it occurred to me that something positive occured here.

Backtrack.  DS takes a final exam in German today.  Four hours long.  DD has a Math test and let's just say she and Math don't get along well.  And there's this saying in German that loosely translates to "the shoemaker's kids have the worst shoes in town".  I'm whipping out cards all the time, but rarely for my own kids.  That's about to change.

Since I had two cards to cover and Alicia T.'s bitty bag had been playing in the back of my mind, this is what I did.

Printed the "yes you can" (nod to a certain presidential campaign) then placed the "you" stickers on one card and misted with blue Dylusions and the "can do it" stickers on the other card and sprayed with pink Dylusions.  Took the letters off the cards and adhered them to the "other" card - get it?

TIP:  If you want the letters to look clean after they've been misted... they probably won't.   Maybe they would if you wiped them quickly with a baby wipe.  But I didn't.  So I now have some yellow-misted-pink  stickers back in my stash replacing the clean ones I had to pull out to use on the blue card!

I'm hooking up at CASE Study - #141.  I had Maile's hearts in mind when choosing the colors to use for the two cards and I just love the words-on-top-of-gobs-of-color idea.

And I saw this cool photo at Inspired By #45 and that stark "E" at the top inspired me to use strong black letters in the pink mist with the design flowing from upper left to lower right.  Cool photo Laurel.

Thanks for visiting today.  May the sun be with you this weekend, wherever you are.

Supplies you can do it:

Paper: CS Bringmann, copy paper

Stamps: none!

Ink: Dylusions

Tools: 

Other: letter stickers Pebbles and KI Memories

CASEing retro style (CASE, Retro, CFC)

One of my cardmaking heroes, Maile B., is the muse at CASE Study #140 this month.  Remember this beauty of hers?

 I actually have that Dogwood stamp and die, so a visit to Retro Sketches #63

and the decision to use my new gray CS going monochromatic led to this card:

Inspired by the subtle BG stamping on Maile's card, I pulled out a mesh BG, stamped with Versamark and sprinkled a tiny bit of black embossing powder for added interest.  Distressed the edges of the panel and added some embossed powder to the cardbase in a nod to the sketch.  Knowing I was making a sympathy card I didn't want to get carried away with embellies.  My flowers are stamped on gray too, so I used a pink colored pencil to highlight the areas shaded on the stamp for a teensy bit of color.  The strip of washi across the bottom nods to Maile's ribbon and the sketch.

Also playing at CASual Fridays - Tic Tac Toe (die/text/B&W)

Appreciate your visit.

Supplies Thinking of you:

Paper: CS Bringmann

Stamps: BG CHF, flower Hero Arts, sentiment Tech Tuesday

Ink: Versamark, Versafine

Tools: die Hero Arts/Sizzix

Other: washi Freckled Fawn, black embossing powder, dimensional adhesive

behind the clouds (SCS, CASE)

Creating again with Teri A.'s card over at CASE Study # 129 in mind.  I love me a rainbow and I happen to own the rainbow die from MFT so I used it for the SCS Love Fest 2013G Challenge sponsored by MFT.  It's called Make My Day and the challenge is to create a card of encouragement.

I love the sentiment on Teri's card and it reminded me of a banner I made back in high school.  We're talking  3' by 6' to hang on the cafeteria wall!  Used blue burlap, cut white clouds out of felt and wrote the sentiment - the one I've computer-generated on my card - with glued-on orange yarn.  The sun was actually "Son" on my banner.  I've always been inspired by rainbows and by that saying.

My neighbor/Zumba instructor is having thyroid surgery today and the doctors are not sure what they will find.  Figured this card covers all bases...   Hoping for the best of course.

Thanks for visiting, folks.

Supplies for Behind the clouds:

Paper: CS Bringmann, white The Paper Company, vellum Ursus

Stamps:  PTI

Ink : Cat's Eye

Tools:rainbow die MFT, cloud die PTI

Other: computer generated sentiment, glue dots

happy springy anniversary (SCS, CASE, Charisma)

Here's an anniversary card (what's your favorite stamp set for anniversary cards?) that I made with the Splitcoaststampers Love Fest 2013H in mind.  It's sponsored by Unity Stamp.

Which I don't own so I went with Paper Smooches.  Dry embossed a die frame into the CS then masked and stamped around it with orange and turquoise.  Love the bright colors comin' back at us (even tho' we have snow flurries here again in the Germany Tuscany today!)

Also hooking up to:
 CASE Study #129 - went with the orange and blue and flowers from Teri A.'s card
Charisma Cardz #7 - One layer cuz it is!

Thanks for visiting.

Supplies Happy Anniversary:

Paper:  CS Neenah

Stamps: Paper Smooches, sentiment Technique Tuesday

Ink :Versacolor, Versafine

Tools: die Spellbinders, corner punch EKS

Other: embossing powder

saved by sequins (2) (muse, CASE, SCS)

Finally took the time (I'm actually procrastinating on another project) to play at Jackie R.'s new Muse, where we're to be mused by the Monday muse.  This is Marion V.'s card for inspiration:

There was (as there often is) a creative journey behind my card.  I'll share it with you tomorrow.  There were actually two other cards born before this one.  But let me say that I was mused by Marion's colors, washi, use of dies and Debby H.

Do you get a Debby H. vibe on this?  Suffice it to say I had an idea, but it didn't work like I'd planned.  The birch bark paper came to mind (maybe that's what makes my card limedoodley?!?!?) so I tried a better placement of my die and am happy with the result.  Tomorrow you'll see what I mean...

Also joining the fun at:

CASE Study - #128

SCS - LOVEFEST2013E Die Crazy sponsored by Simon Says Stamp

p.s.  I know birch bark grows the other way.  Creative liberty, ya know ;)

Go get (a)mused.

Supplies for just saying hello:

Paper: cardbase Craft UK, PP Basic Grey

Stamps: Hero Arts

Ink :Hero Arts

Tools: label die PTI, flower die Memory Box

Other: washi Rayher and Bella Blvd., sequin