Easter Wishes

 Wishing everyone

 a blessed Easter!

I don't usually send out Easter cards as it is always so busy at  Church.

This year, though, I was able to finish about 30 of them and was able to get them out in the mail earlier this week.  What an accomplishment for me!

I've been wanting to ink up this beauty for the past year!  Then I saw Penny Black has a Penny Black Saturday Challenge - Anthing Goes, Optional Easter and my card works perfectly for their challenge.

I used PB "Spring Day" and watercolored this beautiful image

Products used

PB Spring Day
TH watercolor paper
Arteza Real Brush markers
PinkFresh Studios Folk Edge Rectangle dies
SU Purple Posy card stock

Thank you for stopping by, I love it when you do.  

A Little Bit of Christmas in August

 So I had the honor of being the Feature Winner of CTD #653, which means I'm the Guest Star Stamper for this week's CTD #655.  The colors we are working with are Pink, Gray and Mint Green.  

My first thought when I saw the picture Susie sent me was a baby card, but I don't really have any baby stamps.  Then I thought, why not a whimsical Chrsitmas card.  I went right to my MFT stash and grab a NBUS (never been used stamps--stash in my case).  Of course the elf needed to be colored.  This is where my struggle began.  I have most of the green Copic markers, but none of them really screams mint green.   I even tried to match my markers to SU's Mint Macaron CS, but even that didn't go well.  I think I ended up coloring 4 or 5 elfs until I came to the conclusion that G00 is the only color green that came close to Mint Macaron card stock.  I still think he looks a bit neon. I finished off the card with using a glitter pen on the Christmas lights, the Christmas ornament and the jingle bell on his hat.  I love how the card turned out.  I just wish the elf would have looked a bit more like the Mint Macaron cs I used.  

Supplies:
Momento London Fog Ink
MFT Christmas Elfies Stamp Set
HA Christmas Lights Bold Prints Stamp
MFT Selfie Square Die
PTI Shape Shifters: Square 4 Die
SSS Sentiment Labels
Copics:  G00, W0, W3, R11, C2 and RV000
SU Mint Macaron, Blushing Bride and Smoky Slate CS
Glitter Pen

I hope you will be able to join in the fun.  I would love to see what you come up with using these great colors.  

Thank you for stopping by.  I'm grateful when you do.  Please leave a comment so I know you were here!  Have a  great week!

Masculine Happy Birthday

 I'm back again this week with another card for the Color Throwdown Challenge.  The colors for this week  CTD #654 are Kraft, Gray and White.  To me these colors are perfect for a masculine card.  This card also works for this week's SSS Monday Challenge:  Birthday.

 I find it funny when I need a masculine card, I can never come up with an idea.  I'm always scouring Pinterest and Instagram looking for them. This idea came to me very quickly.  

Back in May, I saw this bundle at Taylored Expressions and jumped on it.  I love this bundle and it's perfect for masculine cards!!!

 

Supplies:
Inks: SU Crumb Cake, Smoky Slate and Gray Granite
Momento Black Tuxedo
Card Stock:  SU Crumb Cake and Gina K's Luxury Layering Weight and Heavy Weight White.
Stamps & Stencils:  Taylored Expressions' Argyle Stamp & Stencil Combo and SUs's Biggest Wish Stamp set
Dies: Taylored Expressons' Dimonds Piercing Plate and SU Forever Flourishing Dies

I pierced my white cs first and then stamped the diagonal grid background.  After that, I used the three argyle stencils to color the gray and kraft diamonds.  I used blending brushes and blended Crumb Cake, Smoky Slate and Gray Granite to color the branches.

Have a great week!  There is still time to play with these colors.  The challenge is open until 6pm Monday, August 9.  

Thank you for stopping by.  I love it when you do.  Please leave a comment so I know you were here!

Having fun with ink blending

 Hi everyone. It’s been awhile since I have posted. I keep thinking my life will slow down, but it just keeps flying by with the speed of light.  Most of my spare time is spent watching my two year old grandson while his parents and my husband build their house. I’ll explain all of this at the end of my post.

It’s been awhile since I’ve played a challenge or two.  I loved the colors for this week’s CTD #653.  They are pink, yellow, orange and green.  I decided to do some ink blending that Cindy of My Stamping Style / Cindy Westerink showed us Thursday night.  I love ink blending and just don’t do it enough.  I’m also linking this in SSS Wednesday challenge, Anything Goes.

I made a rectangle mask and then blended my colors.

SU supplies: polished pink ink , daffodil delight ink, mango melody ink and granny apple green ink.  Butterfly Brilliance stamp and the sentiment is from Celebrate Sunflowers.  Granny apple green cs and Gina K thick and layering luxury  white cs.

  The housing market in Michigan is nuts. Our son and his wife had been trying to buy a house since last May when they moved back to Michigan.  After losing out on many houses by $30 grand or more, they stopped looking and my husband drew up house plans.  They found almost an acre of land about 30 minutes from us.  My husband and son are building the 1600 sq. ft. house.  They are working their normal jobs during the day and spending every evening and all day Saturdays at the house.  Here’s the progress so far…

Thank you for stopping by and leave me a comment so I know you were here.  

Hello Friend

 Well things didn’t go quite as planned today. I thought I had until 9pm pst for the Color Hues Challenge. It was 9am pst. Oops. Oh well, I have two cards done and I can submit them into SSS Weds challenge for “Anything Goes.”

I did get a chance to practice coloring with my Copics, which is always a plus in my book.  

Products used...

Copic colors: YR 20, YR00, YR 21, YR 31, Y23, Y32, Y35, YG01, YG05, YG13 & YG21

Ink Colors: Momento Tuxedo Black and Versa Mark

White Embossing Powder

Stamp sets:  Gina k’s Heartfelt Bouquet & A Little Love

Dies: Gina K’s Master Layouts, 1, 2 & 3, A little Love Stencil Bundle and W Plus 9 Hand Lettered Hello.  

Card-stock: SU’s Granny Apple Green, Apricot Appeal (discontinued) Gina K’s heavy weight card-stock.

Thank you so much for stopping by.  I really appreciate it.  Have a great week.

Twofer challenge for January—Flowers

It’s been along time since my last post. I really hate how my job and life in general interferes with my

hobbies.  But I’m back for now, and I can’t think of a better way to post, but for the January Twofer challenge #34.

I have so many flower stamps, but as per many of us, I keep buying more of them.  This is one of my latest from Stampin’ Up called “Wild Roses”.  I love big background stamps. They are so easy to work with and you can use so many techniques with them. 

For my first card, I used the Joseph’s Coat technique that Gina K showed on one of her lives a little over a week ago.  Here is a link to her video.  https://youtu.be/414V0m2qw0k.

I used  SU’s inks “Wild Wasabi,” “Tangerine Tango,” and “Daffodil Delight.  I blended the three randomly  on Gina K’s luxury white layering CS.  After letting the panel dry for a few minutes, I inked up the Wild Roses stamp with Versamrk ink in my Misti so I could ink up the stamp a few times so I knew I had the entire image stamped well.    I then embossed the image with clear embossing powder.  After that, I blended SU’s “Pretty Peacock” ink all over the panel and then used a paper towel to wipe the access ink off the embossed image, which is how the yellow, green and orange shows through.  Pretty cool technique.    I layered the panel on SU’s “Shaded Spruce” CS, then adhered the panel onto SU’s Daffodil Delight” CS.  I die cut happy twice from Daffodil Delight” CS and glued them together before gluing it to the card.  I stamped the word anniversary in Versamark ink on SU’s “Tangerine Tango” CS and embossed it with white embossing powder and die cut and trim down to size.  

The second card doesn’t have near as many steps.  In fact I ended up with two cards using this one panel.  I started out by inking up the SU “Wild Roses” stamp set with Versafine Onyx Black ink. I then embossed the panel with black embossing powder.  I then die cut the panel with SU’s “Curvy Dies”.  I layered the panel on black CS and stamped the word thanks from SSS “Hand lettered Winter Wishes” with Versamark ink and heat set with white embossing powder.  I trimmed the panel down and adhered it on a white piece of heavy weight white CS from Gina K.

I thought I would share the other card I made with the other half of the panel.  The “Smile” die is from Gina K and the “Happy Looks Good on You” is from SSS “Choose Happy” stamp set, which is stamped in Momento Tuxedo Black ink.  I’m going to enter this card into the Flower Challenge #52 - heat or dry embossing.  

Thank you for stopping by.  I really appreciate it.

Butterflies Twofer Challenge #29

Hi everyone,  I thought I would finally submit a couple of cards for my friend, Darnell’s Twofer Challenge. I think this is the first time I’ve submitted for her monthly challenge.  You can check out the challenge here.

I love stamping butterflies and so this was a fun challenge.

I’ve had this watercolored panel for quite awhile and just wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Finally on Sunday inspiration hit. I love Nichol Spohr’s one layer cards and she helped with my inspiration. I had used TH Salty Ocean, Squeezed Lemonade and twisted Citron DI and randomly water colored them on the panel. I let it dry for weeks 😊. I think if you let it dry overnight, it would be fine. I then stenciled SSS Butterfly Trails in TH Seedless Preserves, Twisted Citron, Salty Ocean and Spiced Marmalade DI.  Before I embossed the butterflies from SSS Beautiful Butterflies in White, I used the embossing buddy liberally so the embossing powder didn’t stick where I didn’t want it. The sentiment is from the same set and embossed in white, too.



The next card was just as fun. I started with cream colored cs and stamped PB Vintage Postcard

stamp in Memento’s Toffee Crunch. I took TH Antique Linen DI and sponged over the panel lightly. Next I stenciled some of the butterflies in the SSS Butterfly Trails stencil with the Antique Linen ink.  I used the same butterflies from the SSS Beautiful Butterflies set and stamped them randomly with SU’s Chocolate Chip ink (stamped off once).  I colored them with Prismacolor Pencils and added some glitter with a glitter pen and stamped Happy Birthday (from PB’s Special Wishes) in SU’s Early Expresso ink.  I also sponged Early Expresso ink around the edge of the card before adhering it to SU’s Crumb Cake cs.

Thank you for stopping by.  I love it when you do.  Enjoy the rest of your week.

Smackin Acetate with Gina K

Gina K has been helping me get my mojo back. It’s been fun.   If you haven’t been watching her videos on Mon, Weds and Fridays, you should.   Her Facebook page is Gina K Designs & StampTV friends.   She also has a YouTube channel, Gina K. designs.

This past Friday was “Smackin Acetate”.  Here are the six cards I made with this technique...

I used TH watercolor paper on all of my cards, along with GK heavy weight white cs and orange and turquoise blue cs from my stash.

 

This first card features GK’s ink cubes, Moonlit Fog, Bubblegum Pink and Turquoise Sea.  The flowers are from a retired SU stamp set and “hello friend” is from GK. It must have been a freebie as it doesn’t show a name of the set on the packaging.

I used the same ink cubes and “grateful for you” is in the same GK set that didn’t come with a name. The cattail Stamp is from Paper Inspirations.

This card again uses the same ink cubes and sentiment by GK.  The stamp is from GK’s “Framecape Winter Trees”.

This card, I used Peach Bellini, Turquoise Sea and Moonlit Fog ink cubes.   The grasses are from Sweet ‘n Sassy “Wetland Grass”

I switched to Tombow markers for this card. The orange is  #933, the pink is #703 and the blue is #371.
The hello is from WPlus 9 “Hand Lettered Hello”.  The trees are from GK’s “Seasonal Sentiments”, which I stamped 3 times on the card panel.

This is my favorite.  Again I used the same Tombow markers as I did in the card above. The stamp set is from GK “Framescape Winter Trees”.

This one I’m saving for Father’s Day to give to my hubby.





I usually don’t have much success with this technique, but I will say I like the way my panels with the Tombow markers turned out best. I think I’ll be using this technique in the future with other Tombow markers.

Have a great week.

Gamsol & Colored Pencils

Hello everyone!  Yes, I'm still here.  It's has been quite awhile since I posted on my blog.  Time flies.  Life sure does know how to throw some curves!  Just as I'm starting to emerge from the curves into the straightaway, COVID-19 hits!  I'm praying for everyone who has been affected by COVID-19.








I've been enjoying Gina K's "Stamp & Chat" on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7pm central time.  Here's the link to her Youtube page. 











Last week she worked with Gamsol and Colored Pencils.  I haven't used Gamsol or colored pencils in a very long time, so I thought I would color right along with her.  Here's the cards I ended up creating from March 27. 















The stamp sets and the sentiments are all by Gina K.























Have a great week.  I do hope I will be able to start posting on a regular basis again. 

 Take care...stay safe...stay healthy...wash your hands often!!

Go Tell It On The Mountain

One of my favorite Christmas carols, especially sung in a gospel style. I used my new stamp set from Penny Black as my jumping off point for this card.  Again, the color throwdown gave me a bit of a challenge.  I don’t think of black much when I think of Christmas and just this week, I saw a news blurb about black Christmas trees, but I don’t think I could ever buy one.  So here is what I came up with for this week’s Color Throwdown #521.    I’m also entering this card at Simon Says Wednesday Challenge “Anything Goes.

I used GIna K white luxury cs, SU black cs, SU merry music dsp, SU ribbon, PB manger die and He is Born Stamp set & die set.

Thank you for stopping by, I love it when you do.