Orchid Sympathy

Last week I needed a sympathy card for a good friend whose father passed away. I love this orchid from Gina K. Designs' Botanical Dreams set and think it's perfect for sympathy cards. It's a lot of fun to color and so versatile.

The orchid was colored with Copic markers to match the Memory Box Poppyfinch papers (sorry, I bought mine from Ellen Hutson but she seems to be out of it at the moment so I can't link to it), then I matted it with some teal card stock. Both layers were cut out and embossed using Long Rectangle Nestabilities die.

The sentiment is from Flourishes Flourished Words set and was cut out and embossed using a Square Nestabilities die and layered with foam tape on pink card stock that was cut out using a Labels One Nestabilities die. I layered two of the Poppyfinch papers on the teal card stock and wrapped some Martha Stewart ribbon around it, than adhered both stamped panels on top. I added some pink rhinestones to the corners of each panel and some blue pearls to the center of the flower on the patterned paper. The card base is 5 1/2" square textured olive card stock.

To the left of the card in the photo above, is the envelope, which I stamped and colored to match the card.

For the inside of the card, I added a layer of the striped paper I used on the front, matted with the teal card stock. I stamped and colored another orchid, then cut it out and adhered it on top of the striped panel. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's With Sympathy set and was matted on pink card stock. Both were cut and embossed using the long rectangles Nestabilities dies. That's about it!

Yesterday I learned that I won the Belli Challenge that I had created this card for, so that was some fun news! I'll be the guest designer over there in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

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

Have a Delightful Day!

Happy Tuesday! Hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend. We had company over Saturday and Sunday nights, so I spent most of my time in the kitchen, and very little time stamping, unfortunately. So, today's card comes from the archives...it was made using supplies from one of our Krafty Kat kits and was submitted to Take Ten magazine for the Design Challenge for the Summer 2009 issue, but it was not accepted. Oh well, if at first you don't succeed...

The stamp is from Cornish Heritage Farms, the inks are from Stampin' UP! and the patterned papers are all from Sandylion Sticker Designs - Kelly Panacci collection. I believe the crystals are from Kaisercraft, but I don't recall whose ribbon it is. There's not much to explain about this card - pretty simple since it was supposed to be a ten-minute card, although I've personally never been able to make that happen....;-)

Have a delightful day and thanks for looking!

Wedding time

A friend asked me to make a wedding card for her to give to someone who is about to get married. It's always tricky to make a card for someone else to give since we all have different styles and ideas. She said she wanted it all black and white, so here it is!

I started with a pre-made white card base that had the embossed hearts on it. I knew I wanted to use this Gina K. Designs stamp of a wedding couple and I wanted to try my hand at stamping and embossing on vellum after seeing these cards my friend Sandy did.

I stamped the couple using Adirondack Snow Cap pigment ink on vellum and heat set it. I flipped the vellum over and placed it on a mouse pad and used my embossing tool to go over the stamped image from the back side of the paper. It makes the white really pop, especially when it's mounted on dark card stock. I cut the vellum using a Nestabilities oval die and then cut the black card stock and silver paper mats using the Labels Four Nestabilites.

The border on the black card stock strip on the right side of the card was cut using the Victorian Borderability die and layered on the white card base. A strip of silver and black striped card stock was added in the middle section and the matted image was placed on top.

I have had the Stampin' UP! Pretties kit for some time, but haven't made much use of it, and love the stick pins I've seen used on other people's cards, like this one, this one and this one from Sharon Johnson and this one from Becca Feeken, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I started with the taffeta bow, then adhered the flowers on top of the bow and then assembled a few beads on the stick pin, pushed the pin through the knot in the bow and then added the remaining beads and the end cap.

After the card was all assembled, the black panel looked a bit bare, so I added some pearls in the top and bottom right corners and called it done.

I hope you're having a good week - mine has been busy and I've been making things I can't post here just yet, so sorry for the lack of activity! Thanks for looking!

It's a triple!

I really enjoy playing along with some of the challenges out there, but I have to admit that if I try to combine too many of them with one card, I get a bit overwhelmed. Plus, there are so many out there, it's hard to keep all the challenges straight. At any rate, I was able to combine THREE challenges in one card, so I'm feeling pretty good about it!

I started with the color challenge over at Creative Belli Blog - Apricot Appeal, Certainly Celery and Cameo Coral. Then there was the FTTC15 Timeless Tuesday challenge over at Flourishes - make a birthday card. So I sat down with my new Sweet Pea set and the three colors of paper and tried to find some patterned paper to use and I found the perfect piece - Lavish from Fancy Pants' Aged Florals line. Once I colored the image, I had all the components, but how to put it together? Then along came Taylor's Friday Cupcake Challenge, which was the perfect sketch for all my elements. Once all of that was out of the way, everything came together pretty quickly, although I had to fudge on the sketch a little with the placement of my flower to make it balance out.

The sentiment is from Flourishes Flourished Word Set and was cut out using a Spellbinder's Ribbon Tag Trio die. While I had it, the butterfly and my Sweet Pea image in their respective dies, I airbrushed them first with a pale yellow Copic marker and then with a pale yellow-red marker around the edges. I matted my floral image on a scalloped circle of Cameo Coral, then a circle of Apricot Appeal and then a Certainly Celery Labels Three layer.

For my scalloped edge layer, I decided to use my new Martha Stewart Cornice border punch. But a single layer of it seemed too boring, so I used it to cut a layer of each of the three colors of card stock and then stacked them on top of each other. It was still missing something, and then I spied my jar of Sweet Pea Flower Soft - how appropriate! So, I ran a layer of glue along the Cornice border and added some Flower Soft.

For the final touches, I pulled out my Martha Stewart frond punch and punched a couple of fronds out of Certainly Celery, and layered them under my flower and added a button with some Scrapper's Floss tied in a bow. A couple of Dew Drops in the corners of my Labels Three mat and a few of Taylor's Tiny Twinkles for the butterfly's body and you're done!

Sorry for being so long-winded - thanks for hanging in there with me! Have a great weekend!

Happy Mother's Day from the cats...

We are very fortunate to have wonderful neighbors who take care of our cats for us when we are away. Since they are surrogate 'parents' for them, the cats give them Mother's Day and Father's Day cards each year... ;-) This card is this year's Mother's Day card. The stamp was perfect to depict our three cats, who all have coloring that is black, gray or a combination thereof.

One of the fun things about the Krafty Kats group I belong to is that each month we take turns putting together a kit of papers and embellishments for each member and the next month we have 'show and tell' for all the cards and projects that were made using the kit supplies. There is usually so much in each kit that we end up with lots of leftover scraps and embellishments, so I'm trying to use them up. The black and white components of this card are all from one of our previous kits.

Our cats are all females, and since this is a Mother's Day card, I added some pink accents. I also used last week's sketch from Splitcoast Stamper's sketch challenge. I don't know who the patterned paper is from, but the floral papers are double sided, which makes them good for this kind of layout. I used a Martha Stewart punch to cut the edges of the black and white vertical strips, then adhered them to the floral panel and wrapped some grosgrain ribbon around the seam. I then layered a black flower sticker strip on top of the ribbon.

The cat image was cut out using an oval Nestabilities die, then I doodled some circles around the edges and colored them in with a pink Copic Atyou Spica marker. I then matted it on black and pink layers that were cut out using the Labels Three Nestabilites. Each of the mats also has doodling on the borders. The flowers were matted on a pink scalloped circle to make them stand out more and a black and white flower button was affixed to the center with a pink embroidery floss bow.

I added some of the same elements to the inside of the card. I matted the corners with the polka dot scalloped paper and added the pink matted floral paper panel. The sentiment was stamped using a pink marker and then I went over it with the pink Spica marker to give it a little sparkle.

It's a busy card, but it was fun to make and I used up quite a bit of the leftover kit! Hope your week is going well. Thanks for looking!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms! My fur kids gave me a sweet card and some books, and Tim fixed a nice breakfast, complete with a Bloody Mary, so I'm happy!

This is the Mother's Day card I made for my mom this year. I pulled out my supply of Italian paper and then looked for a floral stamp to complement it. The stamps I used are from the Papertrey Ink With Sympathy set. The stems and leaves were stamped on Cryogen White paper with Memento Bamboo Leaves ink.The flower outlines were stamped with Memento Potter's Clay ink and then colored in with Copic markers.

The focal image and its mat were cut out using a Spellbinder's Nestabilities Labels Four die. The edge of the focal image panel was colored with a gold leaf pen and the centers of the flowers were covered with gold beads. The Italian paper was matted with the same paper as the focal image, Papertrey Ink's Ocean Tides card stock. The card front was wrapped first with sheer gold ribbon and then with May Arts 1/4" silk ribbon on top. The tag was cut with a Spellbinder's open ended tag die and one end was cut using scalloped edge scissors. The card base is Papertrey Ink's Gold card stock, which has a nice shimmer to it.

For the inside of the card, I layered a strip of the Italian paper, matted with the Ocean Tides card stock, and then cut out the remaining portions of the focal image stamp and adhered them to the bottom corners of the card. I also lined the envelope with the Italian paper and repeated the stamped image on the front of the envelope.

This was a fun card to make and I hope my mother likes it! Love you, Mom! Hope your day is special!

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Mother's Day!

Inchie Birds

This is a card I made for Repeat Impressions using three stamps - the flying bird, the feathers and the nest with eggs. I stamped the bird on two Inchie squares and stamped the nest on the the third one. They were each colored with Copic markers and matted on squares of the patterned paper. The edges of each of the squares were distressed with Ranger Distress Antique Linen and Vintage Photo inks. All images were stamped with Memento Rich Cocoa ink.

The panel on the left was cut from a larger sheet I stamped randomly with the bird and the feathers. The SEI Love Notes patterned paper, from the Love Birds collection, was a perfect match to the bird theme.

Not much to it, but it's fun to play with the Inchies occasionally! Hope your week is going well so far! Thanks for looking!

Home....

We spent this past weekend visiting my mom in Tampa. She's got a lemon tree in her yard and it was brimming with lemons, so we brought some home - you can't really tell from this picture, but they are HUGE. That bowl measures 9 inches across, to give you an idea.

One of them was the size of a grapefruit. And they are very mild - with a hint of orange, like a Meyer lemon. We used the large one last night to make one of our favorite dishes - Lemon Sage Chicken. It was great. The lemon produced a little over half a cup of juice.

She also has an avocado tree and let us have one of the avocados - it weighs over two pounds! I see guacamole in my near future!

After being gone a week for our dive trip and then a three day visit home to my mom's, it's nice to be back in my own home again. So, in keeping with the 'home' theme, I decided to post this card today! This is a card I made as part of a design team challenge from Repeat Impressions. The layer with the chair and the border is from a Hambly transparency. The patterned paper is from Prima Marketing's Tea and Silk paper collection.

The sentiment was stamped with Versamark ink and embossed with Powder Keg embossing powder. I cut the panel out with a Spellbinders Label Four die and doodled some faux stitching around the edge of it. I punched slots in either end and ran some wide silk ribbon through the slots and adhered the ends behind the mat layer. The teal card stock is from Prism Papers.

Not a lot to it, but I must say that although using this particular transparency was a bit of a challenge, I think it turned out OK. I like these colors together.
Hope you're having a great week! Thanks for stopping by.

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!