In all things of nature...

This is another card I made for a Repeat Impressions design team assignment. Naturally, I love all the underwater images and thought the sentiment went perfectly with them, as did the scrap of 'wave' paper I had in my stash. The main image was stamped and then cut out using a Labels Four Nestabilities die from Spellbinders. The image was colored with Copic markers and then I masked the fish, crab and coral, and airbrushed the background using two different blue green markers to make the bottom a bit darker. I added stickles to the bubbles to give them a little sparkle.

The three smaller images were stamped directly on inchie squares, colored with Copic markers and then sponged with some matching ink. The sentiment was stamped and cut out using an Oval Nestabilities die and airbrushed while it was still in the die. The image and the sentiment were both mounted with foam tape. Pretty simple, but fun! It makes me want to get back in the water and see some of these critters up close and personal!

Hope you have had a good week. I'm glad it's Friday and am looking forward to the weekend! Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

How great is the wonder...

Greetings! Sorry I've been MIA, but we were on vacation last week in our favorite diving destination, Saba. It had been three years since we were last there, so it was nice to be back and catch up with our friends there. Saba is a five square mile island that rises to almost 3,000 feet, so it's small and hilly. It's located 28 miles southwest of St. Maarten and we stay in a village called Windwardside, shown in the first photo. The arrow points to the house where we stay - Shell Cottage. Our first visit to Saba was in 1988 and on that trip we met the owner of Shell Cottage and we've rented it ever since, except one year when we rented the cottage next door.


The second photo shows a closer view of Shell Cottage. It's fairly secluded and sits at about 1,500 feet elevation with a beautiful, unobstructed view of the Caribbean Sea.

The diving is great and there are several really good restaurants within walking distance, so it's a very relaxing place for us. Our days consisted of diving in the morning, lunch at Shell Cottage, an afternoon nap and dinner out. Not bad!

OK, enough vacation talk, on to today's card! I love this whole Botannicabella line of Graphic 45 paper. The dragonfly paper was perfect for my little dragonfly fairy stamp from Repeat Impressions. I stamped the image using Memento Rich Cocoa and colored it with Copic markers, then cut it out using a Spellbinders Curved Rectangle die. While still in the die, I airbrushed the background and then doodled the dots around the border after it was removed from the die.

I layered the velvet flower ribbon on top of some sheer two-toned rust and gold ribbon to cover the seams of the two pieces of patterned paper. The tag is also from Graphic 45 and was randomly stamped with the dragonflies and sentiment (also from Repeat Impressions).

Not much to it, but it's a cute, whimsical little image. Hope you're having a good week so far! Thanks for looking!

Happy Spring!

This card has a nice Spring feel to it, which is quite apropos considering how beautiful it is in Atlanta right now, with the dogwoods and azaleas blooming. This is my favorite season, and Atlanta is a great place to experience it!

This card was made using five different stamps from Repeat Impressions. The three panel section was made by stamping the LOCKEbility image once on white paper and once on patterned paper. I stamped and colored the butterfly, bird, dragonfly and flowering vine images on the white paper and then cut the centers of each of the three sections out of the patterned paper and layered it on top of the white paper with the colored images. All the images were colored with Copic markers. The patterned papers are from Imaginisce. I mounted the main image with foam tape and popped the right and left sides so they were a bit higher than the center to make it look like a bay window.

The three squares of patterned paper were cut out with a square punch and then I used a circle punch to cut the circular images from the Spring Fling paper. I finished it off with some beautiful silk ribbon from Flourishes.

Hope you're having a great week! Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Easter!

This is a quick Easter card I made using stamps from Gina K. Designs. The image was colored using Copic markers and the flower pot was paper pieced with some paper from the Die Cuts with a View Nana's Nursery Baby Boy paper pack. The background paper is from Making Memories' Flower Patch collection. The mat for the main image is Stardreams Stationery and the sentiment was cut out using a Spellbinders double ended tag. I ran some beautiful silk ribbon through it to match it up with the mat from the main image. I dabbed some Stickles on the flower centers and some Shimmerz on the eggs and that's about it!

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, but I finished up the card while I was out of town for work last week and had to make do photographing it in my hotel room! Hope you have a Happy Easter! Thanks for looking!

S.C.U.B.A

I must admit that I haven't been on the Changito bandwagon....until now, that is! Since I am a SCUBA diver, I had to have these two stamps as soon as I saw them, and now I am forced to admit that this little Changito monkey is pretty fun to color!

For those of you who are wondering, this is actually the birthday card I made for our friend Chuck, not the one in my last post ;-) There isn't much to tell about this card - the image was colored with Copic markers and I highlighted the mask, fins, tank and fish with Spica markers. I also added some Stickles for the bubbles. In keeping with the underwater theme, I cut the sentiment layer out using wave edged scissors and layered a couple of strips of Magic Scraps' Coastal Netting under the main image.

That's about it. Hope you're having a good week! Thanks for stopping by.

Another Happy Birthday

Today is our friend Chuck's birthday, so I found myself in need of a masculine birthday card for him. Chuck is a retired Marine and comes across as being pretty gruff, when in reality he's a big ol' teddy bear (sorry to blow your cover, Chuck!).

So, whaddya think - will he like it?? Don't worry, this isn't the card I made for him ;-) This is one I made a few weeks back using some pretty Italian paper and a new stamp set I had just received from Flourishes. There's really not much to it. I stamped the tulip several times on Cryogen white paper using Memento Bamboo Leaves ink and colored it with Copic markers. I cut parts of the bloom out and layered them on top of the main image with some foam tape. I then painted over the bloom with some Shimmerz paint to give it a little sparkle, and added a trio of small yellow rhinestones in the upper right corner. I cut the main image using a long rectangle Nestability die and then used a Perfect Layers ruler to cut the green mat to fit inside the yellow mat, which was cut using a scalloped long rectangle die.

The sentiment was also stamped on Cryogen white paper with Memento Bamboo Leaves ink and then cut using a double ended ribbon tag die. Thread some ribbon through the tag, adhere it to the back side of the Italian paper, mount the panel on the card base and you're done!

This second photo is of the inside of the card. I layered a leftover strip of the Italian paper on a green mat and then adhered the tulip, which I had stamped, colored and cut out. The tulip was mounted with a piece of foam under the bloom to add a little dimension, but not too much bulk.

A simple, but pretty birthday card that will go to a female and NOT to Chuck ;-) But don't worry, I have a fun card for him that I'll share next week!

Hope you've had a good week and thanks for looking! Enjoy your weekend!

Happy Birthday

I made this card for the Caardvarks March 20th sketch challenge. The focal image is from a brass stencil, which I embossed and then colored using chalks while the paper was still on the stencil. Of course I had to make the bird a robin...The image was cut out using an oval Nestabilities die and while it was still in the die, I chalked the blue sky background. I created an eye for my robin with a drop of copper Stickles.

The card base is my favorite Kraft paper from Papertrey Ink and all the other papers are from the BasicGrey Marrakech line. Across the striped paper, I placed some green ric rac, which was then topped with a flower and a couple of buttons. The buttons were tied together with some brown Scrapper's Floss.

The sentiment was stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa ink and then cut out using a double ended tag die. While it was still in the die, I also chalked the background so it would match the bird image. Since the tag was too long for the card, I cut off the right end with some scallop edge scissors and then put a coordinating brad from the Marrakech line through the remaining hole.

I think that about covers it! Hope you're having a good week! Happy April Fool's Day!

Happy Easter Basket

I made this card to play along with this weekend's Cupcake Challenge over at Taylored Expressions. The basket of flowers, Happy Easter sentiment and chicks are from Flourishes' Signs of Spring set. I colored the images with Copic markers and added a little Sweet Pea Flower Soft to the hyacinths in the basket. I stamped the two chicks separately, cut them out and popped them up with some foam squares.

The image was cut out using my Labels Two Nestabilities and I used my Stampin' UP! Really Rust marker to add some dots around the edge of the main panel. The flower is from Stampin' UP! and was airbrushed with a Copic marker to match the mat color. I topped it with an orange button, tied with some Scrapper's Floss. All the papers are from Basic Grey's Marrakesh 6x6 paper pad.

Here's a close-up of the Flower Soft. It's pretty neat stuff and adds some nice texture and interest to flower images.

That's about it for this card. Hope you had a nice weekend and that your week is getting off to a good start!

Thanks for stopping by!

CPS108 - May the light always find you...

The first line of this sentiment certainly fits our weather here in Atlanta today - it's a dreary, rainy day. The last line of the sentiment is just a bit silly....but good for a chuckle. And these little frogs are pretty cute and very fun to color!

I used this week's CPS108 sketch for this card, and I can also use this card to play along with Sharon's Mix and Match challenge today. I thought the green polka dot paper was perfect for frogs, so I started with that. It's from the DCWV Nana's Nursery Baby Boy paper pack, so it was easy to find a coordinating stripe to add for the little strips. I weaved them together in the corner and added a purple Dew Drop in the center where they intersected.

The frogs were colored with Copic markers to match the colors in the striped paper. After I colored the frogs, I used the pale yellow marker and pounced it on the frogs to give them some texture. Then they got a little Diamond Stickles on their eyes to make them sparkle.

I stamped the set of frogs twice and then cut out the individual frogs from one set and mounted them with foam tape on the top of my Labels One die. I punched and embossed the bottom edge of the polka dot paper using the replacement punch that Fiskars was kind enough to send to me when I complained about the one I bought recently. Unfortunately, this one isn't much better, but it's not as noticeable on patterned paper.

I don't usually show the insides of my cards here, but I always decorate them to coordinate with the front. For this one, I repeated the woven paper strips and used a section of the punched polka dot paper. I stamped and colored one more frog, then cut it out and mounted it in the corner.

I think this card would be a good 'pick-me-up' for someone who is down in the dumps.

Hope you've had a good week and that there are no frogs in your underpants...eeeewww!

Card details:
Patterned paper: DCWV Nana's Nursery Baby Boy 8x8 paper pack
Stamps: Repeat Impresssions
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Markers: Copic - Y21, Y23, YG03, G24, BV000, BV11
Other: The Robin's Nest Dew Drops (Water), Ranger Diamond Stickles

WSC73 - Happy Easter

This card was made using Beate's weekend sketch challenge, hosted this week by Cambria Turnbow.

I received this Signs of Spring set from Flourishes last week and thought it would be perfect for this sketch and combined with this patterned paper from Dream Street Papers Heartsong collection. The card stock is all from Prism - the Teal Pack and the Desert Coral Pack.

I stamped the two little chicks and the daffodil on Cryogen White paper, then colored them with Copic markers to match the colors in the patterned paper, and then added a little shimmer by coloring over each image with a Copic Lemon Spica glitter pen. Each image was punched out using a 1" punch, then matted on a scalloped square. The top edges of the white and teal mats were cut with a Fiskars Lace border punch.

The Happy Easter sentiment was also stamped on Cryogen White paper and cut out using a Circle Nestability, as was its mat. I added three Dew Drops from the The Robin's Nest, Water collection. I think that about covers it!

Thanks for looking, hope you have a great week!

Spring Birthday wishes

When I went on the road last week, I took a bunch of supplies with me to make some cards for Scrap Chic Boutique. I had tried to plan ahead the cards I wanted to make using the patterned papers I had been given. I was a bit overzealous with the amount of paper and stamps I took with me, thinking that I was going to have lots of time to work on cards. I only completed 4 cards, and ended up lugging most of it back, unused.

This is one of the cards I did manage to complete. As soon as I saw this patterned paper from Dream Street Papers' Heartsong collection, I knew I wanted to pair it with this Fiskars eyelet punch, which I had seen before, but did not own. So that meant a trip to JoAnn's to use my 40% coupon and pick one up. I have to say, I'm not particularly happy with it at this point. It doesn't cut a smooth, continuous border and it doesn't emboss as well as I'd like. I'm a bit frustrated with it, but still trying to get the hang of it and make sure it's not the paper I'm using or operator error. Time will tell...

At any rate, I stamped the butterfly and the sentiment from Papertrey Ink's Butterfly Kisses set. Since I was on the road, I didn't have my Nestabilities, so I just cut the layers using my portable paper trimmer and then used the eyelet border punch on the bottom of the panel with the stamped images. I tied a bow using Papertrey Ink's Aqua Mist satin ribbon and then added some Taylor's Tiny Twinkles above the bow and throughout the butterfly. The pink patterned paper is just the back side of the Dream Street Paper. Definitely not much to this card, but I like the color combo and the spring feel it has.

Hope you're having a good week! Thanks for looking!

The bad blogger is back....

Wow...forgive me readers, it's been 11 days since I've blogged...sounds like confession...

Anywhooo, here I am again. This has just been one of the craziest of months around here - please forgive me for being so bad about blogging. I am finally home, after being out of town for 8 days - partly for work and partly for pleasure. The part that was for pleasure was very fun and included attending a Copic Certification class this past weekend! So, now I'm not only certifiable, I'm also certified! Probably the most important thing I learned from the class is the need to continue to practice, practice, practice.

This card is one I made before I went out of town, and intended to post it from the road, but time just got away from me. This is some more glittery patterned paper from My Mind's Eye's Laundry Line - Coastal collection. Since I've needed so many sympathy cards lately, I guess I was still in that frame of mind when I made this one. The quote is a little hard to read in the photo, but it says "May hope sustain you, friends surround you, and love give you strength.".

The main panel was stamped with Brilliance Pearlescent Copper ink and I used Papertrey Ink's With Sympathy set and a Nestabilities Label One die to cut and emboss the panel. The rhinestones in the flower centers and the butterfly are Taylor's Tiny Twinkles. The buttons are from Papertrey Ink and 7 Gypsies and were threaded with embroidery floss. The flower behind the center buttons was a plain white one from Stampin' UP! that I colored with the Copper ink. The crochet trim is from my stash.

The chipboard pieces on the top and bottom of the card are also from the My Mind's Eye Laundry Line collection, and were originally a single, 12" long piece, that I cut it into sections to fit the card. I added some Dew Drops in the left corners to add a little something to it.

I think that's about it! Hope your week is going well so far! Thanks again for bearing with me - I'll try to be a better blogger this week!

Spring is here!

It appears that Spring is here in Atlanta, at least for the foreseeable future. It's supposed to be in the 70s for the next five days. I'm looking forward to it! The birds are chirping like crazy outside and it's driving one of my cats nuts! She sits and looks out our sunroom window at them and swishes her tail and whines. Then she gets frustrated and takes a nap. Ahhh, the life of a cat!

I made this card a couple of weeks ago for Beate's weekend sketch challenges (WSC69), but didn't get to submit it. I love this little Garden Friends stamp set from Penny Black and decided it would work perfectly with this American Crafts Backyard Crackle paper.

I stamped the chick with the egg three times on white paper using Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and then stamped it over the eggs on the patterned paper so I could paper piece the eggs on the chicks to match the paper. All of the chicks were all colored with Copic markers (Y11, Y15, Y35, Y38). The panel with the three chicks in the eggs was popped up with some foam tape.

The sentiment and the group of chicks stacked on top of one another were stamped on Cryogen white paper and colored with the same Copics as the other chicks, plus a green for the grass and a pink to highlight the word spring, but I'm afraid I didn't note the colors I used for those areas.

The blue brads are from Queen & Co. and the striped grosgrain ribbon is from Stampin' UP!. I layered a couple of buttons and tied a bow around them with a burlap string and adhered them to the center of the bow. That's about it for this card!

Hope you're getting some spring weather wherever you are! Have a great weekend!

Plant a seed of friendship

I created this card using the CPS104 sketch from March 22nd. The embossed and glittered patterned paper is from Mind Mind's Eye's Laundry Line collection (Sundress Heirloom) and the rust colored paper I used for my mats is from BasicGrey's Marrakech collection (African Nectar).

The flower stamp is an old one from Hero Arts and was colored using Copic markers (E11, E35, R02, YR00, YR41, Y26, YG95, G99,0). The sentiment is from Cornish Heritage Farms. Both stamped panels were sponged/distressed using Ranger Distress Inks (Antique Linen and Vintage Photo). The ribbon is from May Arts. Here's a close up of the glittery embossed background:

Hope you're having a good week! I'm excited about going to see A Chorus Line tonight at the Fox Theater. Thanks for looking!

HOTlanta???

This was the scene here at our house yesterday afternoon. Welcome, March.

It's kind of entertaining to get snow in Atlanta occasionally, but it was icy out this morning, which makes for an interesting rush hour here. Luckily Tim made it to work this morning, safe and sound, but he did pass a vehicle that had flipped over on its roof. Many of the local schools are closed, so it's a bit interesting here in 'HOT'lanta today. We're due for another freeze this evening, so tomorrow's morning commute may be another adventure.

Since we were out of town most of last week, attending to Tim's mother's funeral, I don't have a lot to show. This is a card I made last month for the Spring Flowers Inchie Challenge. There isn't much to it. The geranium stamp is from Lockhart Stamp Company, and the sentiment is from Amuse Artstamps. The little crystals are Taylored Expressions Tiny Twinkles, and I'm afraid I don't know who makes the patterned paper.

Hopefully this cheery Spring card will drive the cold and snow away!

Hope you had a nice weekend! Thanks for looking!