A Masculine Birthday Card

Just a quick post today, to share a card I made for another August birthday in our family, this time for a nephew.  Masculine cards are always hard for me to make, so I'm sharing it to hopefully inspire others who have the same problem.

I started with a piece of watercolor paper, and repeatedly stamped Hero Arts Silhouette Fern on it, spritzing the stamp with water after inking.   The little dragonfly was done in the same way; it's also a Hero Arts image, from their Made with Love clear set.  After everything was dry, I overstamped the Winnie & Walter sentiment, then framed my panel in green and attached it to an ivory card base.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Simon Says..........Anything Goes!

It's time for a new Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge!

Since it's the last week of the month, it's an Anything Goes challenge.  The Design Team are all using products from either Casual Fridays or Technique Tuesday.  Here's my card for this week:

I've seen my teamies using this Chickadees set by Technique Tuesday, and now that I've played with it I know why it's so popular!  These little guys are so cute, so I stamped all 4 of them and paper-pieced their bodies with a yellow hearts paper from Lawn Fawn's Let's Polka. (the top and bottom edges are from the same pad). 

Now it's your turn!  Heidi has provided yet another $50.00 gift voucher to our fabulous Simon Says Stamp Superstore for the random winner of our challenge!!  Will it be you?

A Shaker Birthday Card

I recently pinned a beautiful card by Angela, thinking that it would make a great shaker card.  I loved her mix of a striped frame with those lovely florals. August is full of birthdays in my family, and this CASE of Angela's card will be for my sister.  Thanks, Angela, for your inspiration, I love your style!

supplies: Hero Arts Happy Birthday Message, an oldie from 2001, Simon Doll Pink ink, papers from KaiserCraft Hey Birdie Collection, Wplus9 Folk Art Florals leaf dies, Simon's Partial Cut Flowers dies, Anna Griffin Rosa embossing folder, white enamel dots, pink and green sequins

Thanks for stopping by today.

eta: Thanks to Cornelia's comment below, I'm entering this card into the AAA Cards Game #13: Make a Shaker Card.   Kind of neat, because Angela is a DT there!

My first card for fall

When I saw the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches, I immediately wanted to play because I knew I could use some washi tape for the strips on it.

I spied this floral Doodlebug one, thought of fall colors, and off I went.

supplies: kraft cardstock, Doodlebug washi tapes, Lawn Fawn Stitched Leaves dies, Clearly Besotted Autumn Flowers sentiment, Cuttlebug D'vine Swirls embossing folder.

Fall is my favorite season, and I've seen a few autumn cards starting to pop up already........and here the temperatures have modulated already to a bit cool for July.....wonder what Mother Nature has in store for us in the coming months?

Thanks for stopping by today......enjoy the rest of your weekend!

For Virginia

I am positive I'm not the only person who bought Penny Black's Botanithis post to see a listing of all of them, and then you can click on any one to be taken to the post where it was featured.  Truly a work of love.

cal Notes as a result of Virginia's work with it.  Over about a month's time, she created SEVENTEEN cards with just this one cling stamp!  Look at

So of course, I had to get myself one of these stamps, and my first idea was to try paper-piecing it.  Penny Black does such a nice job of making stamps that are collage-style,  and I wanted to use some subtle tone-on-tone papers with it, to give it a vintage feel.  Here's how my card turned out:

I used a wide variety of 6" paper pads from My Mind's Eye, Graphic 45, Lawn Fawn, and Carta Bella.  I added a simple sentiment from Simon's Handwritten Sentiments set.

Thank you, Virginia, for showing us how to get the most out of our supplies; we should all take a page out of your book!

Another hollyhock!

Just playing around today.  I saw this card by Laura Jane on Pinterest, and it inspired me to try my hand at paper-piecing a hollyhock.  Love your card, Laura Jane, thanks for the inspiration!

My version uses Simon's Favorite Flowers, along with some paper scraps from Lawn Fawn and Basic Grey.  I stamped the flowers and leaves and white embossed them, then cut them out.  My stem is just a strip of green paper, and I arranged my flowers and leaves along it, popping up a couple of the flowers and adding  some squiggles from the stamp set.  I just got this Technique Tuesday hugs die, and this one was sitting on my desk, so that got added, and then I stamped this old Hero Arts butterfly twice, on Audrey blue and print papers, and layered them for some more dimension.  

Simon Says.........Emboss It!

Hello!  It's Wednesday, so that means a new challenge at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge blog!

Our theme this week is Embossing.  You can use an embossing folder, embossing powder, a stencil and embossing paste - it's your call!  Today I made a card using both wet and dry embossing.

I love this Penny Black Petal Party stamp set; it has both outline images and solid ones.  So I chose a solid flower and leaf and heat embossed them in aqua and leaf embossing powders, then cut them out, and centered the flowers with a Doodlebug Sprinkle.  My embossing folder is from Sizzix, one of a set of 2, both of which I love; this one's called Vines.  My sentiment is one of Simon's Handwritten Sentiments, framed in a bit of Audrey Blue cardstock, and I added a couple little aqua flower sequins.

Now it's your turn!  As usual there's a $50.00 gift voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store up for grabs to the random winner of our challenge!

And, since these colors work so well for The Card Concept Challenge this week, I'm entering my card there.  I'd guess my card would be considered Clean & Layered.

SSS August Card Kit: Summer Dreams

Have you seen the Simon Says Stamp Card Kit for August?  If this isn't summer, I don't know what is!  My grandkids arrived at just about the same time as my kit, so I'm just now getting around to playing with it.  And being the ice cream addict that I am, I decided to use only the ice cream cone along with one of the sentiments and a heart from the adorable stamp set.  I also used the solid Simon cardstock in the kit, adding only my own Audrey Blue for the party hat on the center oval, and some kraft for the cones in the background.

After paper-piecing all my ice cream cones, I glued most of them to my white card base, stamped some hearts in matching colors, and then embosed the whole front in dots.  There are 2 tiny smiley faces in the stamp set, so I used one of them on my center cone.  

They've thought of everything for this set!  Do you see the 2 Distress markers?  Here might be a good place to try them out, if you haven't already......

Thanks for stopping by.  I'll see you tomorrow for a Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge!

FINALLY!!

I have been lusting over these Altenew Painted Flowers since they first debuted way back in the spring.  Anytime they'd be in stock I'd always miss them and they'd sell out again, but I finally nabbed them last week!  They are just lovely, and of course I had to ink them up in my favorite color for their first stamping.

supplies: blue and white cardstock, Altenew Painted Flowers, ColorBox Sky Blue, Brilliance Sky Blue, Hero Arts Cornflower, Stone Wash, Green Hills, and Grass inks, sentiment from Hero Arts Live Life, blue iridescent flower sequins from Paper Sweeties

There's a little bit of a learning curve to get all the steps stamped, and I'm not there yet,  but it is so worth it, in my opinion, to get results like this!  I know you'll be seeing lots more of this set.

Thanks for visiting!

Simon Says................A Blue-Eyed Chicken????

Wednesday again, and time for a new fun challenge at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge blog!

This week our theme is Spots & Dots!  Fun, huh?  You can interpret that any way you want - the design team cards will get you started, I know!  We're all using Paper Smooches products, and we'd love to see you doing the same, but it's not a requirement to enter.  Here's my first card:

When I went looking in the Simon Says Stamp Store for some Paper Smooches stamps, this Dippy Dots jumped right out at me.  It made me think of champagne bubbles, and so I stamped it in clear ink and embossed it in Ranger silver and gold embossing powders.  I framed it up with some gold foil paper and added some gold and silver sequins.  I also picked up this set of sentiment dies called Birthday Words, and I cut "Cheers" out of both silver and gold foil paper, then inserted the gold die-cut into the silver negative.  This is pretty much the way I envisioned my card, and except for the difficulty in photographing all that glow, I'm pleased with the results.  

My next card uses one of Paper Smooches first sets that I think is still just darling......I like to use it for my grandkids: Chubby Chums.

And I went all-out on the dots here!  I used dotty paper, dotty washi, embossed dots, and used pearls as dots!  You can see my supplies down below.  

Okay, so now it's your turn!  

 

There's a $50.00 gift voucher for the Simon Says Stamp Superstore up for grabs to the random winner of our challenge!

*Paper Smooches DIPPY DOTS Clear Stamps Kim Hughes	*Versamark WATERMARK Rubber Stamp Emboss Chalk Resist INK PAD	*Ranger EMBOSSING POWDER SUPER FINE SILVER Detail Rubber Stamp Ink	*Ranger EMBOSSING POWDER SUPER FINE GOLD Detail Rubber Stamp Ink	*DCWV Cardstock 6 x 6 FOILED Paper Stack Printed Matstack MS-019-00050	*Kelly Purkey KPSQ02 METALLIC GOLD SEQUINS
*Kelly Purkey KPSQ08 METALLIC SILVER SEQUINS	*RESERVE Paper Smooches BIRTHDAY WORDS Wise Dies Kim Hughes	*Paper Smooches CHUBBY CHUMS Clear Stamps Kim Hughes	*Simon Says Stamp Premium Dye Ink Pad AUDREY BLUE ink018	*Simon Says Stamp Card Stock 100# AUDREY BLUE AB19	*Bo Bunny 6 x 6 SOFT SHADES Paper Pad Double Dot 10017487
*Doodlebug SWIMMING POOL Washi Tape 12 Yards	*Doodlebug BUMBLEBEE SWISS DOT Washi Tape 12 Yards	*Doodlebug SPRING MINI PEARLS	*Scrapbook Adhesives 126 3D WHITE FOAM SQUARES Adhesive

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Hero Arts ATC swap

Recently in the Hero Arts Flickr group, Heather organized a small group of us to swap some ATCs. Each of us got a partner, and it was up to each group to decide what our theme would be, if any, how many ATCs to swap, etc. My partner Lucille came up with a theme of summer, and here are the ATCs I sent off to her.

In case you're unfamiliar with the term, ATC stands for Artist Trading Card, and they are traded in many of the arts.  The official size of each one is 2.5" wide by 3.5" long, about the same size as a sports trading card,  and some of them can be very ornate, with layers and layers.  I chose to keep mine on the CAS side.  As you can see, summer to me means gardens, butterflies, daisies, and lots of color!  

Lucille sent me 3 gorgeous floral ATCs - she knows how I love my flowers!  Aren't they gorgeous?

I mentioned that Heather organized the swap for us.   I wanted to send her some ATCs "just because", so  here are the ones I made for Heather:

We both share a love of anything fiber-related, so these are in homage to that.

Here's a very special ATC that Heather made for me when we visited Ireland a year ago.

She actually made it into a little ATC-sized card, with the famous Irish Blessing inside.  The sentiment on the front means "a hundred thousand welcomes".  Isn't it amazing?  It's a much-treasured souvenier of our trip to her beautiful country.

I hope you'll try making your own ATCs if you haven't already - they are amazing tiny treasures, and a really fun way to collect some of your friends' art!

Just Saying Hello

Here's another card for the Hero Arts One-Layer challenge.  I've seen these swoosh stamps used as backgrounds several times now and I like the effect they give......

supplies: Hero Arts Forever (bird silhouette) and Dauber Bunch (sentiment), The Craft's Meow retired Typically Teen (swoosh stamp), Hero Arts inks Soft Pool, Tide Pool, and Splash

This card reminds me of the birds that we hear each morning, even before we get up, singing their little hearts out!  

Thanks for coming by!

Mama Elephant challenge

Mama Elephant has started its first challenge, called Mama Elephant & Me!  This inspiration was so fun that, even though I just have 1 ME set, I had to have a play!

Love those colors, and it just so happens that my set has a sentiment that could refer to a wedding day, so here's what I did:

I chose one of the several flower clusters from their Water Blooms set, and after stamping and masking off the sentiment, proceeded to stamp it all over the card front, changing the ink colors as I went.  I never noticed this before, but I think this particular flower cluster looks a bit like hydrangeas.....what do you think?

Emboss Resist

Last week as I was visiting my favorite blogs I came upon Judy's and found THIS amazing card.  I couldn't get it out of my head and finally decided to CASE it.  Here's my version of Judy's card:

supplies: W&W's The Big, the Bold, and the Extras (embossed flowers and leaves and dots), The Big, the Bold, and the You (sentiment),  versamark ink and white embossing powder, worn lipstick and squeezed lemonade distress inks, Penny Black Flutters butterfly die, Lawn Fawn sequins

Thank you for your inspiration, Judy, and I still like your card better than mine........

 I'll enter this at the Winnie & Walter blog, where they're playing with distress inks and resist.