Poinsettias - Merry Monday's Christmas Challenge

This will be my 19th MM challenge so far this year.  WOW!  It's pretty awesome that I have such a great start on my Christmas cards for 2014.

This week's Merry Monday Challenge #109 is to use flowers on our card.

I started with Gina K's "Kraft" card stock as my base and also what I stamped Penny Black's "Poinsettia Script" on, in VersaMark ink and embossed with "Snow White" embossing powder.  I then used some scrap pieces of Gina K's "Pure White" luxury card stock and stamped the leaves and poinsettias from Gina K's "A Year of Flowers" in Stampin' Up's "Gumball Green" ink and then colored the poinsettias with Copic's
R46 and Y08. When I colored the poinsettias, the Gumball Green ink turned black.  I didn't realized that would happen.  I colored the leaves with Copic's YG17 and fussy cut out both the flowers and leaves.  I added dimensionals to pop up the poinsettias and leaves off the Kraft card stock.  I embossed a scrap piece of green card stock (not sure what color it is) with SU's "Pretty Print" embossing folder.  I finished the card by cutting the "Kraft" card stock on a diagonal, adhering the green embossed card stock and putting a piece og American Crafts "Peace On Earth" ribbon across the diagonal cut. 

I'm pretty happy with the way this card came out.  The most time consuming part of this card was fussy cutting the poinsettias and leaves.

Thank you for stopping by and please follow this link over to Merry Monday's Christmas Challenge #109 to see the other beautiful cards.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend and please don't forget to take a few moments and say a prayer of thanks to all veterans who died fighting for our freedom and if you know of a current or veteran service man or woman, call, text or send them a facebook message to thank them for serving our country!  We are truly very blessed to live in the United States.

Happy Birthday for Make It Monday

 I have another birthday card to show you today and made it work for this week's Make It Monday Challenge #165--Artsy Watercolor background. 

This week Betsy Veldman showed us how to make a watercolor background after stamping with dye ink.  You can check out this neat technique here. 

I used 140lb water color paper and stamped the leaf from PaperTrey Ink's "Turning a new Leaf" stamp set in Stampin' Up's "Pacific Point", "Coastal Cabana" and "Strawberry Slush" inks.  I then used a water pen and pulled the color from the leaves to make the background.  I also make some ink splotches to by adding water to "Strawberry slush" ink and flicking the water pen on the paper.

After letting it dry, with the help of my heat gun...never patient enough to wait, I stamped "Happy" from PTI's "Wet Paint" in SU's "Strawberry Slush" ink and the "birthday" also from "Wet Paint" in SU's "Pacific Point" ink.  I finished off the card with ribbon, buttons and a couple of paper flowers, which is mounted on SU's "Pacific Point" card stock.
 
Thank you for stopping by and check out the other cards made with Betsy's artsy water color background. 

Happy Anniversary

My parents celebrated 56 years of wedding bliss this past weekend.  Here is the card I made them for their special day.

I used Gina K's "Pure White" luxury card stock and cut to the Gladstone card size.  I used PaperTrey Ink's "Embroidered Blooms" stamp set and "The Big Favorites #24" mini stamp set.  I used Stampin' Up's "Pear Pizzazz", "Tangerine Tango", "Melon Mambo" and "Daffodil Delight inks.  I finished off the card with a scrap of yellow designer paper, some rhinestones and orange baker's twine.

Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.  After some cold temperatures last week, we are currently in the mid 70's...yay!!!

Christmas Star for Merry Monday Challenge #108

Hi everyone, I'm back again with another Merry Monday Challenge.  This week we are to use stars in our card. 

I knew I wanted to use Stampin' Up's "Christmas Star", because I hadn't had a chance to use it yet.  Of course all the ideas I had in my head didn't exactly work out on paper, so I came up with a pretty good comprise between all the ideas.

I started out with Gina K's "Pure White" luxury card stock.  I stamped SU's "Christmas Star" in SU's "Night of Navy" ink twice on  24lb copy paper.  The reason I used copy paper was because I originally stamped the star on card stock, put the two stars together on another piece of card stock and then tried to die cut out the word peace, it wouldn't cut through all three layers.  It was too thick, I tried everything, including trying it in both of my die cutting machines. 

After die cutting out the word "Peace" from PTI's "Wonderful Words: Holiday Die Collection", I die cut "Peace" again out of SU's "Real Red" card stock and placed it back into the star.  I finished the card off with lots of star rhinestones and red bakers twine.

Thank you for stopping by and don't forget to check out all the beautiful stars at Merry Monday's Christmas Challenge #108.

Lots of Dots -- Make It Monday

I needed to make a birthday card and Heather's Make It Monday challenge fit perfectly.

On Heather's video, she shows you how she starts with VersaMark ink and embossed with clear embossing powder and then you use shapes to make your sentiment pop.

I started with Gina K's "Pure White" Luxury cardstock and used VersaMark and clear embossing Powder on PTI's "Happy Birthday" stamp from "Keep It Simple: Birthday Mini Stamp Set".  I then used Hero Arts "Box of Dots" stamp set in Stampin' Up's "Gumball Green", Pear Pizzazz", "Wild Wasabi" and "Garden Green".  I used SU's "Garden Green" Cardstock and a piece of designer paper from Gina K's "Wisteria Lane" Patterned Paper Pack.  I finished the card off with some DMC floss.  Such an easy technique and fun to do.

Thanks for stopping by and stop by Capture the Moment, Make It Monday Challenge to see some beautiful cards make with this technique.

Thought I would post the cards I made for Mother's Day.  Both Al's mom and my mom loved the cards...always a bonus!

PaperTrey Ink's Make Monday from a few weeks ago had us using up some of our endless pieces of designer paper.  See Melissa Phillips video here.  

I loved Melissa's card and Marcia's card, so I cased their cards.  The card size is called "Gladstone".  I cut my scrap pieces 1-1/4" x 3" and then cut them into a triangle for each piece of designer paper.  I used a piece of typing paper as my backing and ran my glue stick over the whole piece and glued down the different dp triangles to make my pie chart.  I then used heart dies (I think they are from PTI) I borrowed from Marcia (thank you) and cut out a heart shape on a white piece of Gina K's "Pure Luxury White" card stock.  I cut out a scalloped heart out of Stampin' Up's "Pool Party" card stock to make a pretty border around the heart.  I then attached the dp pie chart to the back of the cut out heart shape and attached a yellow button to the middle where all the pieces came together.  I stamped "Happy Mother's Day" by Paper Inspirations with SU's "Daffodil Delight" ink.  I took a piece of yellow dp paper and attached it along the left side of the card and DMC floss in blue and yellow.  I made this card for my mother-in-law.  She loves yellow.

The next day, my package from PTI came.  It held the very hard to get "Make It Market Kit - Shakers + Sprinkles by Betsy Veldman.  I was so excited.  So I decided to use the yellow sequins on Al's mom's card.  I thought it would be a great idea to try my first shaker card on my mom's card.  It didn't go as smoothly as I anticipated.  It took three tries.  I used more of the foam sheet that was included in the kit then I wanted to.  I hope I can buy foam sheets somewhere.  I haven't looked into that yet.  I used the same scrap dp and made another pie chart and used a pink sequin heart for the middle.  I cut acetate for the heart, cut a larger heart out of the foam paper to attach the pie chart piece of paper too, added the sequins for the shaker part and attached it to the cutout heart card stock.  It was hard to hide the foam from view.  Third time was a charm.  The scalloped heart is cut from SU's "Certain Celery" card stock and "Happy Mother's Day" stamp by Paper Inspirations was stamped with SU's "Certain Celery" ink.  I used a scrap piece of green dp and yellow DCM floss and green sequins to finish mom's card.  She loved the shaker part of the card.

If it hadn't take so long to do the shaker card, I would have remade Al's mom's card into a shaker card, too.  I will make her one for her birthday in August.

I can't wait to play some more with the Make It Market  kit!!!  The whole kit is so pretty!  Thank you for stopping by.


Your comments are very much appreciated. Thank you!

Merry Christmas Sketch for Merry Monday's #107

This week's Merry Monday Challenge #107 is to use this sketch.

I find sketches hard to do.  Give me colors to use any day and my creative juices flow like mad.  Not so much with sketches.  I find them a lot more difficult because there are so many options.    It took me all week to come up with something for this sketch.  I don't have a lot of time for this post, so it is short and sweet.




Products used:
Gina K's "Pure Luxury Ivory" card stock
Carta Bella's "So this is Christmas" (striped designer paper)
Carta Bella's "Christmas Day" (25 days designer paper)
Stampin' Up's "Crumb Cake" card stock
Stampin' Up's "Decorative Dots " Embossing Folder
Stampin' Up's "Bravo Burgundy" ink
Stampin' Up's "Merry Christmas" and "Santa Post" stamps (don't know what sets they came from...sorry)
PaperTrey Ink's "Button Stacks" dies,
PaperTrey Ink's "Wreaths for All Seasons" stamp set
Tan colored ribbon and DMC floss
Spellbinders circle dies and scalloped circle dies

Thank you for stopping by and don't forget to check out the other wonderful sketches at Merry Monday's Challenge #105.

Lastly, I want to wish everyone a wonderful Mother's Day!  I have been very blessed to have a beautiful loving mother who is still very active, loves her family to pieces and loves it when we are all together.   We'll be spending the day with her and dad, and I can't wait!

Your comments are very much appreciated. Thank you!

Merry Monday's Gingerbread Men & Women

The MM's design team had me scrounging around for a gingerbread man stamp this week.  I found 2 small ones.  I was going to print some off my silhoutte, but this card idea popped into my head yesterday.  I struggled with it a little but as I was putting it on paper, but overall it came together the way I envisioned it in my head.  It took me a few times to make the gingerbread men work in a circle, but the third time was the charm.

I started out with Gina K's "Pure Luxury Ivory" card stock and stamped the gingerbread man from Stampin' Up's "Holiday Sampler" set many times in a circle with their hands touching with SU's "Baked Brown Sugar" ink.  I cut out the bottom part of each gingerbread man.  I then stamped the sentiment from Stampin' Up's "Sketch It" set  in the middle.  I thought it was a great sentiment for this card.  Christmas isn't complete without gingerbread men/women cookies.

I did use my Silhoutte to cut the larger Gina K "Pure Luxury Ivory" circle and also the SU's "Real Red" circle for a ribbon look.  I cut up three different designer papers one from Carta Bella's "So this is Christmas", another from Brazzill Basics Paper "Blizzard" and the third from Crate Paper's "Bundled Up Noel" to made a starburst effect, which I attached to Gina K's "Pure Luxury Ivory" Card stock, which is attached to Stampin' Up's "Real Red" cardstock.  I used dimensionals to adhere the circle to the starburst effect.

Another great challenge from Merry Monday's.  Please check out the other wonderful gingerbread men/women cards at Merry Monday's Challenge blog.

Thank you for stopping by.