still not over... but embossed

Pretty monotonous here on my blog lately, eh? CAS and watercolored rainbow paper heaven. But monotonous. Today I've a couple cards that I took up a notch. Still CAS but not as extreme.

A wedding card. Absolutely inspired by the inspiration photo at Altenew's February challenge.

Pink, burgundy, glitter, gold, love theme, embossing. Got it all. I stamped the gorgeous blooms from Persian Motifs in gold. Partially embossed the top with Maggie Holmes Doily embossing folder. TIP: Put cardboard over the areas you do not want embossed before running your folder through your Big Shot. A strip of glitter CS and hand-stitched metallic gold thread up top finished the white panel.

Then I die cut "celebrate" from Essentials by Ellen Zipper Panel from my rainbow watercolored paper, using the purple to pink spectrum of the lighter version. Stacked it, inked the edges with a Distress marker and wink of Stella-ed it too. The secondary sentiment from Persian Motifs completed the sentiment.

And I even channeled my inner Joni A. and Jocelyn O. (notice the inked panel underneath and the lifted edges of the panel?!?!)

My second card is also love related. An anniversary card this time. 

Papertrey (Tipped Tops die) meets Technique Tuesday sentiment (Swanky Sentiments which BTW is a fabulous set for "go to" sentiments) meets a dry embossed Sizzix heart for a bit of interest in the background. "Happy" was also die cut from the lighter rainbow watercolored version and stacked before adhered. TIP: I use a skinny paintbrush and Matte Medium for stacking and adhering die cuts. It's still tedious work, but beats the days of adhering skinny strips of foam adhesive doesn't it?

I'm hooking up to these challenges:

Mod Squad - Use Water (I've used watercolors)
Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge - "H is for"
Happy Little Stampers February

Inkspirational #75

AAA Cards #32

CASual Fridays #136

1. TGIF. And happy weekend!

now you're vintage

Someone in the neighborhood is turning 50 this weekend! Welcome to the club. Or as my card says - "Congratulations. Now you are vintage."

I jumped on the glittered blues bandwagon at House of Cards January challenge. Those certainly look like milkweed pods to me. Milkweed and I go way back. As a kid on the shores of Lake Huron I would watch big, fat, green caterpillars disappear into and emerge from cocoons dangling on milkweed plants as Monarch butterflies. And at summer's end I would tear open those pods and blow the seeds to high heaven. Now? Now I spend a week pulling all the weeds on the beach every summer when I am there. Adios milkweed.

Back to the card at hand. The glittery blue was easy. Some bottles cut with my new SSS Adult Beverages die and labelled with personalized vellum labels. Just love this touch. And I'm playing at A Blog Named Hero - Personalise too.

The front panel (Stampendous Wine Labels) and the clear embossed, ombre stamped sentiment strip (Stempelküche Grüße II)) were inspired by the Heat Embossing challenge at Stempelküche.

Distress inking over the heat embossed panel with ombre blues was also inspired by Inkspirational #74.

And the entire theme of the card was inspired not only by the recipient (we've emptied many a bottle together) but by the great Cheers challenge over at City Crafter.

Phew! Just wanted to squeak this one in here. Do come back later today for the last installment of the STAMPlorations release.

day 4 of STAMPlorations spotlight week

Welcome to day 4 of STAMPlorations spotlight week. Today we are showcasing The Bee's Knees: Newlyweds Extras and Sentiment Builders: Love. If a couple of those sentiments look familiar, maybe you saw them here ;)

First off the Newlyweds Extras.  Today I'm sharing with you a CASE of myself. Remember these one-layer cards?

Well, one of the trends I'm calling for 2015 I'm calling "the illustrated look". So I've tried to capture that feel again with these stamps. What do you think?

I arranged the stamps in a group and stamped once with black Versafine on white and once with Versamark on kraft which I then heat embossed. Colored in a few details with colored pencils, pink on the B/W version and blue and green on the kraft.

Then I had the brilliant idea to make the diamonds sparkle.

Rock Candy Stickles worked great on the white card.

Wink of Stella, ahem, not so great. It seeped around the embossing and left a stain when dry :(
Must be some oil in there. Oh well. Thought I'd share that with you.

I think these are cute designs for one of those we're-getting-married-in-a-chic-old-barn kinda weddings. Know the ones I mean?

Image Source

One of the other trends I don't see going anywhere in 2015 is watercolors. I achieved a watercolor look with distress inking through a mask on this card using heat embossed Sentiment Builders: Love.  I think this design makes for a great card to send to a couple whose wedding you do not attend.

Bet ya didn't notice the slightly different fonts in the small sentiments. "Sending" and "to" are from Sentiment Builders: Christmas and New Year. Happy that those fonts work well together.

I'm joining the Ombre fun at Inkspirational #74.

As always, there are lots of prizes to be won - from comments left on the DT blogs and the STAMPlorations blog - and eye candy from the DT and our super special guest. Have a looksee.

day 2 of STAMPlorations spotlight week

Welcome to day 2 of STAMPlorations spotlight week. Today we are showcasing Bold Sentiments: Hashtag Authentic. You can probably guess that I love these babies.

This is how they moved me...

I watercolored a piece of CS with ombre yellow tones using the wet-on-wet technique. Then I heat embossed the sentiment and random hashtags in gold. Lastly, I dipped the edges into Versamark and added  heat embossing to the edges too.

I was going for the "looks-like-a-child-made-it" (read: sloppy) look which I'm noticing is kinda trendy these days. Do you agree?

And I also paired the yellow with metallic gold, cuz I don't see the gold trend going anywhere anytime soon. As a matter of fact, I'm calling the pairing of gold and silver as the trend of 2015.

Anyhoo, do you like these stamps? I think they'd be wonderful too for mixed media projects. Which is, BTW, another trend I see ramping up in 2015. Mixed media is not just for the artsy fartsy anymore!

I'm hooking up to the Ombre challenge over at Inkspirational #74.

Visit the STAMPlorations blog here to see the eye candy from the DT and leave a comment here and there for a chance to win some great prizes. Thanks for coming by today.

ho! ho! what?

Happy Saturday. I've got a oh-so-easy and oh-so-graphic card for your today. Inspired by all the gold going around in blogland.

Screams Santa Claus to me somehow. Maybe cuz it reminds me of one-piece footie PJs I had when I was 18. Anyone else have those? All you need is striped PP, some die cut "h" "o" and "i"  or you could use alpha stickers.

I'm going places with this card:

Paper Crafts and Scrapbooking November Gallery - Gold

Inkspirational #69 where the cue word is Shine

and at the risk of wearing out my welcome, Virginia's View #9 Metallic Challenge

WARNING: brain dump ahead. Feel free to leave now.

So have you heard? Paper Crafts and Scrapbooking is closing its doors. Guess digital mags are not the way of the future. Feb 2015 is the last issue. Really kills me for the talented and competent staff in Utah with whom I've had the pleasure of working the past couple years. Adios jobs. And I must admit it kinda feels that way for me too.

Which brings me to my next observation which is that that's kinda crazy. I was pretty wrapped up in "submission calls".  Thinking about card designs when I should have been sleeping. Refraining from making social plans on the weekend before submissions were due cuz I'm the world's best procrastinator and knew I'd be in the basement creating. 

(One good thing about getting older is that you also get smarter. I know why I was so crazy about it. Sure, the money was nice but it was all about the recognition. I'm a SAHM. You don't get much recognition for vacuuming.)

So there I sat Friday a.m. head in a fog after Thursday's email from PCS informing me that my projects awaiting publication in UT are in the mail on their way back to me. Finito. And of course the whirlwind of FB activity as other designers got their emails too.

Woe is me. What to do with myself now?

And the first post I see in my reader is that Barbara Gray is going to see Spain Jane. "Huh?" you wonder. I wondered the same. This is what I read. Clueless, I click through to Jane and the tab entitled "reflections on the little c" catches my eye first. This is what I read. Noticing the "2006" at the end of the page, I click on "home". This is what I read. And then I sobbed.

OMG. I am so vain.

Flashback to the whirlwind of FB activity... lotsa comments about God closing one door and opening another. Well God opened my door and smacked me right in the face. How lucky I am that I can get older.

And smarter. I went to watch DD ride her horse today. And will watch The Voice with her now. And that's good. Monday would have been a submission deadline. I'm kinda glad it won't.

joyful and happy

Hi folks. I'm wrapping up the week of play with the Joyful stamp set from STAMPlorations with a fun card. I mentioned previously that I was smitten with the teensy "ho!" stamp down in the right corner... well here's what I did with it.

I thought I was going to stamp "ho ho ho" onto the longer speech bubbles from PTI Bubble talk and then use the "happy" Christmas sentiment to underscore the fun. But then I opted for a whole lotta speech bubbles, including the ovals from Avery Elle Oh Yeah and just went with a single "ho".

I used various PPs from an old KI Memories Holiday pad. And the sentiments other than "ho" are from Sentiment Builders: Christmas.

And to spice it up just a bit, I added three silver star sequins. It's amazing how they, with their dimension and shine, take the card up a notch. So I'm going to join the party at Virginia's View Metallic Challenge. And at Inkspirational #69 where the cue word is Shine!

Next week I'll be hopping with the STAMPlorations DT girls showcasing the five stamp sets in the November release. They too are tons of fun and I've got a quiz for you. Take a gander at one of the new sets.

We have a special guest designer joining us next week with this stamp set. Any guesses at who it might be?

Enjoy your weekend and stay warm.

copper - another trend? (LIM, Little Red Wagon, Inkspirational)

I'm playing in the Sparkle challenge over at Less is More.  It's CAS.  Really.  It's only a colored image and a piece of patterned paper!

And where's the sparkle, you ask?

I was the lucky winner of the 1st Anniversary celebration over at Addicted to CAS with my geocaching card and my prizes have started rolling in ;)  Seriously ATCAS ladies, you are tooooooo kind.

Got some Joanna Sheen and Stampendous Christmas stamps from Karen B. and was excited to put this Santa Claus image to use with some new glitter embossing powder from Zing (copper - another up and coming trend?!?) and non-traditional colors.  I watercolored the image with Distress Inks. Since I'm sending it as a thank you card, I left the sentiment off the front.

Waddayathink?  I'm joining the Here Comes Santa challenge at Little Red Wagon and also the Anything Goes fun at Inkspirational.

And today I received another prize - some Siligum from Marie along with this beautiful card.  She used the most amazing cardstock.  Love that sentiment.

Is it really Friday again?  So much to do...  Thanks for stopping by.

Supplies for card:

Paper: watercolor paper, PP Studio Calico

Stamps:   Joanna Sheen

Ink : Versamark, Distress Inks

Tools: die Spellbinders

Other: Zing embossing powder, waterbrush

festive wreath (Inkspirational, CASology)

How about a non-traditional card for the holidays?  Don't think I'd actually mass produce and send this one, but...

Found these little neon punched circles in my ironing board cleanup and decided to make them into a wreath. What goes with neon?  Not much.  Black. (Catch the hint of a front door?)  And gold, maybe.  Circles = polka dots, right?

Playing at:
Inkspirational - #42 Wreath
CASology - #68 Black (I'm stretching the definition of CAS with this one, I know)
Rudolph Day - October - Festive

I'm also sending this to Vera Y. for this year's Caring Hearts Card Drive.  Make cards and write notes in them.  They will be distributed to nursing home residents during the holiday season. Having had a grandma in a nursing home (back in the 70s), I feel the need to support this wonderful drive.  Check it out here.

Appreciate your visit.

Supplies happy holidays:

Paper: cardbase The Paper Studio, PP Fancy Pants

Stamps: WMS, sentiment Hero Arts

Ink:  Versamark 

Tools: circle punch, square die and embossing plate Sizzix

Other:  twine, gold embossing powder