Thank you pumpkins

I made this card using the sketch for this week's SC204 sketch challenge over at Splitcoast Stampers. I also took the opportunity to play with my new Labels Two Nestability dies. The Pumpkins in Wheelbarrow image is from Lockhart Stamp Company and was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with my Copic markers. I added some Spica glitter in gold and green on the pumpkins and the grass. The pumpkins and the mat were both popped up with foam tape.

The paper is all from Stampin' UP!, except for the card base, which is my ever-favorite Papertrey Ink Kraft. The sentiment is from Stampendous and I added a few dew drops in the corner to balance it out. Not much to it, but I like the color scheme. And look, Jenny, I've got NINE layers on this one (counting the card base)!

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving!

Card Details:
Patterned Paper: Stampin' UP! Haiku
Card stock: Papertrey Ink Kraft; Stampin' UP! - Tangerine Tango, More Mustard, Old Olive and So Saffron
Ink: Stampin' UP! Old Olive
Stamps: Lockhart Stamp Company; Stampendous
Other: Nestabilities; Dew Drops; Copic and Copic Spica markers

For the birds....

There are a lot of birds in this photo considering the image, the brad and the watermark! And yes, I know it's Fall, and this is a pretty 'Spring-y' card, but it's an image I needed to make a card with for Repeat Impressions, so there you have it.

I used the sketch from Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge, except I rotated it to be vertical rather than horizontal. The image was colored with Copic markers to match the background paper, and cut out with my new Curved Rectangle Nestabilities. I added some gold Spica glitter to the flower centers and a little green Spica glitter to the leaves for some sparkle.

The flowers and brad, which I think is very similar to the bird image, are my round element, and I balanced that in the other three corners with Dew Drops. That's it for this one - pretty easy, but a nice sketch that I'm sure I'll use again.

I'm glad it's Wednesday and the week is almost over! I'm really looking forward to the long weekend and some time with family and friends, as well as some time in my stamp room.

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Card Details:
Patterned Paper: BasicGrey Urban Prairie
Stamp: Repeat Impressions
Flowers: KaiserCraft
Brad: K&Company
Markers: Copic and Spica glitter
Other: Nestabilities; Dew Drops - The Robin's Nest

Blog candy, awards AND a card!

Yesterday was a fun and interesting day! First, I received my first-ever package of blog candy from my blogging friend Pat for her blogoversary. I NEVER win anything, so this was a really fun treat! It was chock full of goodies - two stamp sets, a K&Company Hannah 6x6 paper pack, a package of glitter snowflakes, two spools of Christmas ribbon and four sleeves of self adhesive gems! And there was also a lovely Holiday Greetings card made with elements from Stampin' UP!'s Ski Slope paper pack, felt flurries and Snow Swirled stamp set. Such a nice assortment! Thanks, Pat!

Second, I received my first-ever blog award. I have to admit that I was not familiar with this particular award, but I was touched to receive it from the very sweet Heather and by its sentiment:

This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships!These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

So, now the hard part - picking eight blogging friends to pass it to. There are many blogs that I read, but I don't really 'know' the people who write them. The following are people I have met through the card making/blogging world, and who have become either real or cyber friends as a result, so the sentiment for the award seems to fit:

Pat
Julie
Janine
Jenny
Marcy
Susan
Sandy
Michelle


OK, on to a card! I've been working on a few Christmas cards lately, so here is one of them. I used my new Cuttlebug Snowflake embossing folder to do the background, then I rubbed red and gold metallic rub ons over the raised snowflakes and I rubbed the edges with the gold. I added some of the new Distress Stickles to some of the snowflakes.

The 'O Christmas tree' image was stamped with Memento Cottage Ivy and matted with green card stock. I ran my gold Spica glitter pen around the border to give it a little sparkle.

The ribbon is from Stampin'UP! and the card base is my favorite Papertrey Ink Kraft.

That's about it for this one. Hope you're having a good week!


Card Details:
Stamp: Repeat Impressions
Paper: Papertrey Ink Kraft; Stamper's Anonymous matte white
Ribbon: Stampin' UP!
Other: Metallic Rub ons; Distress Stickles; Copic Spica glitter pen

Cats are children in fur coats

This is an imageI have needed to use for a while, but have put off because coloring fur on a big cat image like this is a bit daunting to me. The image is one that Wendy at Repeat Impressions drew of one of her cats and I was afraid I wouldn't do him justice. The image was stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa and I colored him with my Copic markers. The image was stamped with StazOn Timber Brown and the background of the tag was airbrushed with a couple of the same Copic markers I used to color the cat. I also airbrushed the plain twill ribbon to match.

The patterned paper is from the Stampin' UP! Autumn Vine collection. I selected it because it reminded me of cat paw prints. The card base is Stampin' UP! More Mustard and the mats are Chocolate Chip and Really Rust. A nice collection of fall colors, I think. The kitty face brad on the ribbon is from Around the Block. Finally, I paper pierced three of the corners to fill in the white space.

That's about it for this card - the hardest part was just motivating myself to start coloring! Hope you had a nice weekend and hope those of you working folks like me have a nice, short work week this week!

Card Details:
Patterned Paper: Stampin' UP! Autumn Vine
Card stock: Stampin' UP! Chocolate Chip, Really Rust, More Mustard
Twill ribbon: Stampin' UP!
Brad: Around the Block
Ink: Memento, StazOn
Markers: Copic

When a man loves a woman...

This card was made for a friend who was recently married. At this stage of my life, I don't have many opportunities to do wedding cards, so this was fun. It also provided me with a great opportunity to play with a few new things. The first piece of the card was actually the bow. I saw Becca's tutorial on making a bow and threading the ribbon through the back of it and wanted to try that out. I had just purchased this beautiful double sided satin ribbon, so I used that. The pointed tails of the ribbon are cut off in the photo, unfortunately.

The other new toy I had recently purchased was the Cuttlebug folder I used to emboss the white background paper. I really like the pattern and it seemed perfect for a wedding card.

I'm embarrassed to say that I've owned this stamp set from Gina K. Designs for quite some time, but it had never met up with an ink pad, so this gave me an opportunity to use it. The wedding couple stamp really makes a nice, clean impression.

Finally, I pulled out my Copic airbrush with my new compressor (a birthday present from my hubby - thanks, honey!!) and masked the image of the couple so I could airbrush the background. It was really hard to get a good photograph of this card and show the contrast between the gray and the white, but it looks really nice in person!

I used my ticket corner punch to notch out the corners of the embossed white paper and placed some KaiserCraft pearls in the corners. That's about it for this one!

Tom and Helen, I wish you a long and HAPPY life together!

Thanks for looking!

Card details:

Paper: Stamper's Anonymous Matte Postcard; Stardreams Stationery

Stamps: Gina K. Designs

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Misc.: ribbon, Kaisercraft Bliss pearls, Cuttlebug embossing folder, Copic Markers and airbrush system

Taylor's Cupcake Challenge and Tim Holtz Mask

This card was made using the sketch for Friday's Taylor's Cupcake Challenge. I needed to make a card using the Tim Holtz Flourish mask, so I used it to make the background for this card.

I thought I was being really clever when I pulled the mask off its original sheet, which is the mask material adhered to a transparency. There was a lot of unused area around the flourish, so I decided to try cutting my own mask in that space. I ran four different Spellbinder's dies through my Wizard three separate times and it still didn't cut through completely. I used a craft knife to finish off the cuts, which didn't work too well on one of the shapes and I ended up throwing it away.

I used the three remaining 'masks' to make my three elements on the left side of the card instead of the squares that were called for in the sketch. As you can see by the top flourish, the adhesive on my 'homemade' masks wasn't nearly as strong as it was on the real mask on the right side, so some of my ink ended up under the mask. Oh well, live and learn. I hate wasting things, but in this case, it just wasn't usable. I threw the makeshift masks away as soon as I finished this card!

The real mask, on the other hand, works great and was fun to use. I sponged two different shades of Distress inks over the masks to give that vintage look. The Santa postage stamp image was also stamped with Distress Ink and cut out with my postage stamp decoritive edged scisors. The edges of all the layers were sponged with Distress Inks. I topped the card off with that fun reindeer ribbon - I don't know who makes it, but I love it and only have two reindeer left!

Hope you've had a great weekend. I managed to make six cards, which is a lot for me, so it's been a good one for me! Thanks for looking.

Card Details:
Card stock: Papertrey Ink Kraft
Patterned paper: The Paper Studio - holly; red check - unknown
Stamp: The Paper Source
Ink: Ranger Distress - Antique Linen, Frayed Burlap, Vintage Photo
Misc.: ribbon, decorative edge scissors, Tim Holtz Flourish Mask

Moments that take your breath away...

This is a card I made earlier this week for Repeat Impressions. The card base is Papertrey Ink's Kraft card stock - love that stuff! The images were stamped with Stampin' UP! Old Olive ink. The center panel and its mat were cut with my long rectangle Nestabilities. The patterned paper used for the center mat is from Stampin' UP!'s Haiku set and the mats under the foliage images are Tangerine Tango.

For the left panel, I added a butterfly brad from Creative Imaginations in the upper part of the image. I wrapped some olive green ribbon and a bow around the bottom of the right panel. This is a very simple card, but I love the sentiment.

For the last four years, three months and one week (but who's counting?), my husband has been involved in a project that has snowballed to massive proportions. When we were fairly newly married, we purchased a brand new 1987 Toyota Supra. He always wanted an exotic sports car, and although the Supra didn't totally fit the bill, it was a fun car for him. Fast forward to 2004 and he decides to have a few things 'tweaked' to improve the handling and increase the amount of horsepower it makes. Unfortunately, our mechanic was only able to work on it part time, so it dragged on and on. And they kept doing more and more 'tweaking'....(i.e. spending LOTS of money....)

Finally, it was ready in September. We joked that our baby was finally home from college after four years. Except for one problem: Tim was disappointed. It wasn't really fast enough....so it went back to school for its Master's degree (to a different mechanic who builds and races drag cars).....and now it is turbo charged. Tim brought it home on Wednesday, and when I showed this card to him that night, he got a big smile on his face and said that he was having one of those moments that takes your breath away. He is now a happy camper, which makes me a happy camper! This isn't a great picture of it, but it's all I've got at the moment:

And the best part is, he knows that after all the money he has spent on this project, he can NEVER complain about what I spend on stamping supplies!!!

Hope today brings you a moment that takes your breath away! Have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.

Thinking of you!

When I received my compressor for my Copic airbrush system a few weeks ago, I pulled out a blank piece of white paper and a couple of my favorite color Copic markers and started playing around with airbrushing. When I did this background, I decided to pull this new stamp that I hadn't used yet out of my 'new toys that need to be played with' basket and stamped it in black on top of the airbrushed background. It's not perfect by any stretch, but I still liked it.

Fast forward a week or two, and I received this patterned paper from Scrap Chic Boutique that I needed to make a card with, and the two just seemed to go together to me. I hate to waste scraps, so this was a great way to make use of my practice airbrush piece!

Recently I've seen a couple of people post on their blogs about adhering Dew Drops to ribbon, which I have to admit had not ever occurred to me, so I decided to try it on this card. The ric rac was perfect , and it matched the background paper, so I perched a few Dew Drops in the peaks and there you have it!

The sentiment was stamped on some Stampin' UP! Whisper White card stock and the little flowers over the i's were colored in with my blue Spica pen. I also went over the letters of the sentiment and the larger areas of the scroll image with a clear Spica pen to add a bit of shine to them. And the sentiment is strategically placed to cover up a really dark spot in my airbrushing! As I have said many times, most of my cards are an exercise in fixing a mistake!

Hope you're having a good week. I received some really sad news today about one of my clients in Pennsylvania. He had a heart attack while raking leaves yesterday and passed away at the age of 56. He was a really nice man and he will be greatly missed. So, my heart is a bit heavy tonight, thinking about his family and co-workers, and remembering the night a little over 13 years ago when my family went through the same thing and my father passed away after having a heart attack. At least my father lived to be 76, but even that seems young to me, the older I get!

Take care and hug your loved ones. Thanks for looking and making it this far - sorry for the novel!

Card details:
Patterned paper: Melissa Frances - Fiona
Card stock: Stampin' UP! Old Olive
Stamps: Inkadinkado
Ribbon: Making Memories
Ink: Adirondack Pitch Black
Other: Copic Spica, Copic Markers, Copic airbrush, Dew Drops

Sweet Little Baby

I've had the Bitty Baby Blessings stamps from Papertrey Ink for a while but just got around to unpacking them this weekend. I stamped the little elephant three times - twice on pink paper and once on patterned paper. I cut out the one on the patterned paper and adhered it on top of one of the images on pink paper with some foam tape. Next I cut out the ear from the second pink paper image and adhered it on top of the patterned paper version with foam dimensionals from Stampin'UP!. These are only 1/16th of an inch thick so they are thinner than the foam tape, but still give a bit of dimension to it. I added a Heidi Swapp jewel for the eye and paper pierced some holes in each corner of the olive mat. Sorry the photo is a bit dark.

I experimented with something on the ribbon - I ran it through my Wizard with one of my Cuttlebug border embossing folders to emboss some flowers in it. I passed it through three different times and you can barely see the embossing, so that was a bust on this particular ribbon. I'll try it on some other ribbon, though, because I've seen it on other cards, so I know it works in some situations. If at first you don't succeed....

Hope you had a nice weekend! Thanks for looking.

Card Details:
Patterned Paper: Melissa Francis - Piper
Card stock: Stampin'UP! Pink Pirouette and Old Olive
Stamps: Papertrey Ink Bitty Baby Blessings
Ink: Stampin'UP! Old Olive
Jewel: Heidi Swapp
Ribbon: from one of Jody Morrow's ribbon shares

We lost....

Do you remember this post, where our next door neighbor put up the "Elect Kirkpatrick" sign? Well, since we weren't actually running for anything, and not enough people cast votes for us as write in candidates, we lost. So last night when I came home from the airport after having been out of town all week, this is what greeted me!

Too funny, Chuck! Thanks for the giggles!

I didn't get any stamping done today - hopefully tomorrow will be better. I did get a chance to visit my massage therapist and am feeling much better! I woke up at 4:00am yesterday with a really bad tension headache, so I was glad to have this appointment scheduled.

Hope you're having a nice weekend!

Happy Birthday, Friend!

This is a birthday card I made for a good friend whose birthday is the day after mine. We had dinner tonight to celebrate our birthdays and I was finally able to give her this card, so now I can share it here!

The leaf/branch image and Happy Birthday sentiment were stamped on a chipboard coaster and the edges were sponged with some Distress Inks. The coaster was covered with Glossy Accents and when it was just dry, I bent it a little bit to get the cracked effect.

The chipboard scroll was painted with Distress Crackle paint and when that was dry, I sponged it with a couple of shades of Distress Inks to enhance the crackle effect. The front panel of patterned papers was wrapped with ribbon and I added a bow, then adhered the Friend tab to the back of it and adhered the panel to a Kraft card base. I added a few Dew Drops in the upper right corner to finish it off!

Hope you've had a good week! Mine's been filled with meetings and too many nights of staying up late! I'm glad tomorrow is Friday! Thanks for stopping by - have a great weekend!

Card Details:
Patterned Paper: Frances Meyer
Card stock: Papertrey Ink Kraft
Stamps: Stampin' UP! Fresh Cuts, Fundamental Phrases
Ink: Ranger Distress, Adirondack Terra Cotta
Miscellaneous: Chipboard, Coaster, Glossy Accents, Ranger Distress Crackle paint, ribbon, tab punch, Dew Drops

Thank you

This card was made for last week's sketch challenge at Splitcoast Stampers. I made a series of cards using the Stampin' UP! linen background stamp and the Fresh Cuts stamp set, so you'll see a few cards with this color scheme and stamp set.

The card base is Papertrey Ink kraft, which was stamped with the linen background stamp in Adirondack Espresso ink. The rest of the card is Stampin' UP!'s Baja Breeze and Chocolate Chip card stock.

I cut one inch square sections out of the collage background stamp from the Fresh Cuts set and matted them with the Chocolate Chip card stock. For the center of the three squares, I added a butterfly, also cut from the collage background stamp and added a few pearls to give it a little 'body'!

The largest panel is the collage stamp from the Fresh Cuts set, also matted on Chocolate Chip card stock. The sentiment was stamped with Adirondack Espresso ink and cut out with my Nestabilities and matted with the Chocolate Chip card stock as well. I wrapped some Baja Breeze grosgrain ribbon around the whole card front and that's it!

Hope your week is going well so far. I had a really busy day today, filled with meetings. I planned to get to bed early since I woke up at 4:30 this morning, but here I am up late again. Tomorrow will be a rough one...

Thanks for looking!

Card Details:

Paper: Papertrey Ink Kraft; Stampin' UP! Baja Breeze and Chocolate Chip

Stamps: Stampin'UP! Fresh Cuts, Linen background

Ink: Stampin' UP! Baja Breeze; Adirondack Espresso

Accessories: Baja Breeze ribbon; Kaiser pearls; nestabilities