Washi Challenge

Washi tape really challenges me. I love it, it's pretty and I rarely know when or how to use it. So this card was from a washi tape challenge and I'm very pleased with how it came out.

I put stripes of washi on a piece of cardstock and then made it a panel under my flower cut out. The flower opens to the card underneath as I was also going for a "fun fold". Although fun folds are definitely not my favorite. The flower was actually the easiest part as I just stamped a watercolor panel I had made a while back. It's always nice to get more pieces out of my scrapbox. The blue was a little more heavy handed than I would like...but that's what happens when you accidently dump out most of a bottle of paint...

Happy Spring!

Dancing Dragons

I knew when I saw this die from Spellbinders it was going to make it to my stash! I LOVE this little guy! I had so much fun creating his paper too, lots of distress sprays and inks, and some gold shimmer. The beautiful dungeon background I created with a Whimsy stamp. I used a dark brown though as I didn't want a stark contrasting dungeon. Some patterned paper to mount it and voila! The gold coin was actually a scrap from something that I just found lying in my craftermath of a desk. 

Special guest appearances by Minsc and Hazel. Love those kitties! Can't get up for two seconds though without loosing a chair. 

 

Layers of Alice

I am feeling an awful lot like Alice today! Just a little confused and running around. I started cleaning one thing and ended up doing something totally different. I figured that made it a good day to post an Alice card! I just made this one for a Cora Crea "Fantastical" challenge, mind you not fantasy. Fantasy is more things that are completely made up like unicorns. Alice is a person so it is an overly exaggerated and fantasy based on real things not made up ones. I'm not sure if that made sense, but I tried!

 

This started with stamping the letters which are a passage from Alice in Wonderland, then stamping the bigger image over and going to town with inks and splatter. Overall it was just a silly and whimsical card to make. I even know which friend to send it to, since she loves all things Alice! I will definitely be repeating this in more of a red, black, and white color scheme. 

Viva Las Vegas!

Today is a big post, I had so much fun making all of these slot machines! Pink and Main have this adorable set called Jackpot. With some scratch off sticker paper from Pink and Main these are just so fun to make!

 For all three I stamped the machines first and then did some coloring.  I used that with a combo of other stamps from some St.Patrick sets I have. The shaker poker bits are from Buttons and Galore and the lights for the triple 7 card are from Chibitronic. 

For my March birthday card I did a little masking to add this cute pot of gold to the top. 

A tip when working with inked backgrounds is leave a space somewhere that doesn't have ink. The adhesive sticks better without ink beneath it. 

The gold detail on the machine was done with a sharpie.

For this one I was going for a more vintage casino feel. Steel machines, red details and a little gold. I love the little playing cards and poker bits in the machine. This one has three bells behind the scratch off. A fun fact is that three bells used to be the big win on the vintage machines. At the time you would win ten nickels. It's so funny how much money has changed since then.

All of the cards were meant to focus on birthdays for my birthday hop. Plus it was my Mother-In-Law's birthday and I knew she would love this, especially with the vintage vibes.

What better way to make a Vegas card than to have it light up with flashing lights.  As you can see I used the blink special features light from Chibitronics. Then I added in three lights to light up behind the "Jackpot" screen. 

I made the letters behind the screen by stamping them on vellum and than using adhesive to put them on the back of the card. Then when you take the small magnet coin and place it on insert coin it activates the switch in the circuit to turn it on and light up the jackpot sign. Such a fun set!

Valentine's My Way

 Valentine's are so PINK. I made some pink ones, but honestly it's just not my favorite color. Probably because it looks terrible on me, hehe. Anyways I went with a super non-traditional Valentine for a friend. I also love the colors because I used to pick out the blue and green Sweethearts to eat them, yum. Don't get me wrong I'd eat the other ones too, but there is something about that green color!

This card started out with the heart Sissix embossing folder, then I took a gradient of inks to blend over the embossing to make the hearts pop.  Then off to my paint box to add some Distress Mica shimmer and some white acrylic paint splatter. I think it just adds great dimension. I have a hard time stopping at just ink blending. 

This cute little turtle friend is from May May stamps. It's from the Happy Thoughts set. How adorable is this turtle!! I probably should have stamped first then embossed, but the ship had already sailed. Plus ink blending would have ruined the stamp image. It worked out though. I just had to stamp a few times to get the depth of blue with my mini Misti. If you don't have a Misti I'm pretty sure it's like one of my most loved tools. 

A little sentiment from my Tim Holtz strips and it was ready to go. 

I am entering this card in the Double D Heart Challenge. I don't know if the color board was super inspiring with all the pink but that little pastel green heart made me go whew! I don't mind pink, I just don't understand pink. We have a work in progress relationship. But of course I went with the hearts! What I love about my card is it really doesn't have to be a Valentine either. 

Happy Lunar New Year!

Lunar New Year is an amazing holiday! I was lucky to have been able to go to Hong Kong during the week of Lunar New Year and it was so much fun! Disney was decorated and there were lion dances to see in the streets, it was incredibly festive! This card is my tribute to the new year!

 I started the process by using the ornamental Sissix embossing folder. Then I used  ink blending on the background. I used a variety of distress inks with reds and oranges to bring out the beautiful embossing. To add another element I used gold splatter. 

The background felt beautiful but one dimensional, so I used my hero arts nesting rectangles to cut a red cardstock and gold layer and pop out a layer of the background.

These adorable little plushie dragons are from Clearly Besotted. I was so blessed to be able to snag a set! I am practicing adding white gel pen details. It came out okay, but I need some more work. 

I am also entering this beautiful card in the "Can You Handle The Pressure" Challenge It's a perfect red card for February and the New Year! Visit them for some great embossing inspiration!

Classic Stencil Time!

Today I made a mixed media stencil card. This one was pretty straight forward, but a lot of fun to play with. 

 To start I have these old Stampabilities Inks that I am working on using up. So, I just took light green and ran it over the whole entire card for a base. Then I took other greens and started layering them up with the stencils. I then grabbed my patterned stencil and some beautiful gold Lunar Paste for one more layer.  The last piece was to grab my St. Patrick's Day set from the Colorado Paper Company and pick out a sentiment.

I'm not sure if you can see it (I should have taken a better picture) but there is also small light green St. Patrick's Day stamps in the background.

 The inside says ," hard to find and lucky to have". I am definitely ready to make more. Valentine's Day is so hard for me as pink is not my favorite to work with, but I love everything Irish and will enjoy making cards for this holiday. 

Carnival!

 Carnival is around the corner on February 9th! I participate once a month in a wacky and obscure holiday hop. Now I don't think Carnival is "obscure" but it is certainly overlooked by card makers typically! When I got my faire box from Cora Crea I knew immediately I would be making Carnival cards for this hop!

How gorgeous are these ephemera!? The detail and the colors are stunning. I used two sentiments from Tim Holtz Small Talk strips to give them a birthday party feel to use as birthday cards. So the first card says, "Let's celebrate."

The second card reads "life is a grand adventure" it was hard to capture the beautiful glossy gold font.

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February - Gods and Goddesses

 It's February and it has been so warm up north this year! Despite that my kitties are still cuddling to stay warm, I must have left only for a moment before I lost my chair! I host a Instagram Hop once a month that is fantasy related. I love that it seems to really stretch a lot of brains! I picked gods and goddesses because it's February which always makes me think Aphrodite, which led me to a more generic pick of all of them. Ironically enough she is not who I based my card off of...

Here she is! I hope that you get Gaia vibes! Also known as Mother Nature or the green goddess or well she has lots of names. I got this beautiful stamp in my Cora Crea box. I just love all of her stuff it's so beautiful! The stamp behind her and the focal stamp are from her Enchanted Garden set. 

The paper is probably one of my favorite things to create. I used a LOT of different sprays and inks for this one. So many that I took a photo so I didn't have to type them all! I feel like the more you add with the paper the more dimension it has by the end with all the color layers. Definitely a fun one to make. 

Here is all the ink, as you can see I used similar colors but it came out lighter for my other card I will post tomorrow!

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Whew, that's a lot of dust!

Challenge today was to use our oldest and newest stamp sets. Basically that ended up being cats (newest) plus stuff (oldest).

 I have this giant background die that I just didn't know what to do with. I stamped it and didn't like it I decided to just take a small die and cut out some pieces for my new kitties from Waffle Flower. I actually really love how this came out. Clean and Simple is SO challenging for me, so when it comes together it's a nice feeling. 

It figures one of my very first stamps I ever bought was a paw print! I am not surprised. I grew up with cats and dogs. My parents had four dogs for a long time, now they have three and I have four cats...Since the goal was clean and simple I went for a border with the paws and a little cat from one of my new Waffle Flower sets. I think it came out pretty cute! Super easy too since I didn't care if they overlapped, I did start with yellow though since it was one stamp. I didn't want to contaminate my stamp. Then I cleaned after orange to go do the light blue and then just stamped away for the rest.

So this is also an old stamp, the embossing folder is new from this Christmas. It's a Stampabilities stamp and I just love it. I ended up cleaning up a lot of old stamps from looking through them but this one isn't going anywhere! 

 

Dragon Valentines

Pink and red are not really my jam for making Valentine's Day cards. But I had this adorable FSC Chasing Rainbows paper pad and thought it would make great Valentine Cards. I used these for a hop that is supposed to have cards that contain a tie besides the theme (Love) and made the tie in for all three, my adorable dragon buttons and the paper pad.

This first card was actually really straight forward. Paper base, check , giant heart in the middle, add the two embellishments and done. I wasn't going for complex cards as I didn't want to spend to much time working on Valentines, but I think the effect came out adorable.

Hopefully this close up helps you see that there are unicorn sequins in the heart too! These beautiful colors reminded me of the Double D Challenge for the week. You can read more about that at the bottom.

Card number two was to highlight the paper pad more! The paper says I love you more than rainbows all over it. Plus I have a TON of washi tape so it was nice to break some out to create this barrier in the middle!

My last one highlights more of this sparkly rainbow paper. It's a bit of an odd smooth texture so I wanted to use it sparingly and I think the busy paper helps keep the shine from being to much. I did have to go back and use glue instead of my tape runner, since the smooth surface keeps the adhesive from adhering very well. 

Hope you enjoyed my alternative Valentines! I still managed to get some pink in there, but all that blue really helped me to enjoy them more! 
 

I'm playing along and entering my project here:

Double D Challenge Blog - Sparkle and Shine - This time I feel like my inspiration was more the colors! I love the opalescent shine and went with something similar for my sequin mix. Plus there is lots of sparkle and shine with that rainbow paper for the third card. I am really feeling inspired by this photo set!

My Newest Stamp

Ironically I got a new stamp two days ago, but this challenge was for this morning, and I had made the card with the next newest stamp! Hopefully, I squeeze in the very newest one tonight. 

How cute is this little cupcake fairy from Whimsy Stamps! I love Whimsy Stamps they always have the cutest stuff. This card was really simple too. First I inked the stamp with Ink3. Their black ink is really the best with alcohol markers from what I've found. Then I colored her in, and used pink. It's not my go to color but I think brown and pink make a cute combo.

Next I distressed the edge and added the inked blue border. Peacock Feather is one of my favorite distressed inks. It felt like it was missing something though, so I grabbed my Waffle Flower Cat Sentiments and added this cute little sentiment. You would think I was done there, buuuut those wings needed sparkle, a quick stickle pen on the wings and she was ready to go. 

I'm playing along and entering my project here:

Double D Challenge Blog - Sparkle and Shine - How pretty is the pictures they used! I went with some wing inspiration for my fairy cupcake gremlin! I suspect there will be more inspiration from this picture in the near future. I just love the opal colors and shimmer!