A Few VSN Challenge Cards

Here are a few of the cards I did for the VSN Challenges over the weekend.  Oh I had so much fun with these!  Now, I'm being brave and showing the good, the bad, AND the ugly, so be kind! ;)

The second challenge was to make a card using the Serigraph technique.  With this technique, you use your brayer to layer on three colors of ink, and you also emboss an image in white before brayering on the darkest color.  I thought it was a really interesting technique, but I know now to be more careful in my color choices, since this turned out pretty muddy.  I've had this image stamped and colored for about two weeks now, so it was about time I built a card around it!  The purples on this really do match in real life, honest!

Challenge number three was to make a flower pot card using the tutorial at Splitcoast.  The challenging part was to somehow texture the flowers without using patterned paper.  I had made these tissue paper flowers a couple weeks ago, so this one went together pretty quickly.

The fourth challenge was a color challenge, using So Saffron, Kraft, and Cameo Coral.  Now, I have an AWESOME SU! lady who made me a color wheel of all the current colors.  I woulda been really winging it if I didn't have that to point me in the right direction for this one!  This one went together pretty quickly.  The yellow and pink pieces were all actually scraps from my Tower o'Scraps!

Challenge number five was to use Versamark ink on your card, and we could use clear embossing powder only.  I've made a similar card to this one before, but only because I love Love LOVE this stamp set!  And I also have a ton of this paper. ;)

The sixth challenge was to try something new!  You were to use a new product (even if it had been in your stash for several months) or to try a new technique.  I actually did both! The sentiment stamp is from the new line from i[heart}papers called Mint Motif.  I think this is my new go-to set for sentiments!  I also made this ribbon flower, which was a new technique for me.  The lace is something I've had on my table for weeks now and I bought it specifically to make flowers!  The paper is also new, it's out of a paper packet that I've never even opened!  I swear, every day is like Christmas in my scrap room!

Challenge number seven was to include some sort of baby critters on your card, to incorporate the color green, and to carry over the critters onto your envelope if you made a card.  I've had this set for almost a year, and I've never inked it up!  Isn't that sad?  The papers are all scraps out of my tower, and even the stamped panel was already cut and had the corners rounded!  I thought the pup would be cute with a Scooby-like tag on his collar, and then I carried the brads over to the top of the card as well.

Well, I'll be back with more pics on Wednesday.  Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

VSN is Here!

Wahoo!  VSN is here over at Splitcoast Stampers!  VSN is Virtual Stamping Night, it's a series of card challenges on Friday and Saturday.  There is a new challenge every hour for the entire VSN, and the goal is to get the card made in 45 minutes, and have 15 minutes for clean up in between!  I actually took the day off work in order to get my errands all done and my workspace ready before the first challenge... I feel like I played hookey today!

The first challenge was to make a card inspired a few photos of remodeled bathrooms that the hostes had found drool-worthy. We were to incorporate white, blue, and grey into the card, and pink was optional. It seemed to be the perfect opportunity to ink up this Rubber Romance stamp! The patterned paper in the background is a fabric paper, and it reminds me of a terry cloth bathrobe!

Happy Stamping this weekend!  I'll be back on Monday to post some more of my creations!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

DT Challenge Card Two

Here is the card I made for round two of the CAS DT Challenge over at SplitCoast:

I just can't get enough of these girls!  I used my Nesties to emboss directly into the card base, then used a mask to stamp the tree.  I held the mask in place while I colored and used my OMS so there would be a definate clean line around the image.  I made the flower using my Nesties, and then crumpled up the layers before stitching them all together.  Here is a detail shot of the embossing:

This is a technique I've wanted to try for months, and it seemed like this was the perfect opportunity!  Good luck to all the ladies who are participating!  There is a LOT of talent over there!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

I {HEART} i{heart}papers!!

I had a visit from my mailman on Satuday, and did the happy dance in my front yard!  My blog candy came in from i{heart}papers and HOLY COW! was there a lot in there!  Heres a pic:

I can't believe how much stuff was in there!  The package was stuffed to the brim with awesomeness!  All I can say is, Kate is *extremely* generous, I wish I could just drive out there and give her a big ole hug!! (of course, that would probably scare the pants off her, so I won't!)

Here's what she sent: an acrylic album from Maya Road, two mini stamp sets from Basic Grey, a stamp set from SEI, a stamp set from Sassafras (LOVE the bunny!), a stamp set from Upsy Daisy, a box of awesome chipboard tags from Basic Grey, a 6x6 paper pad from Basic Grey (drool), a package of epoxy stickers from Crate Paper, two spools of awesome ribbon, two packages of flower embellies, and two (yes that's TWO) sets of Spellbinders dies!!!  Ohmygoodness!  On a funny note, I had these same two Spellbinders Die sets in my shopping cart on Tuesday over at i{heart}paper and I took them back out because I wanted to wait until my candy came in to make sure I wasn't duplicating!!  There was also this little package of wire and mesh little embellies, aren't they awesome?!?

Look at the detail on this little guy:

I just love them!  These will definately be saved for something special!  Well, I'm off to create!  Hopefully I can put something together to do justice to all the pretties!!  Head on over to i{heart}papers and see all the slick stuff she has!  Also check out their blog and leave a little love!  They have some awesome cards over there!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

DT Call over at Splitcoast!

They anounced a Design Team call for the Clean And Simple Challenge over at Splitcoast.  I've been waiting with baited breath since Monday to find out what the challenge would be, and they announced it tonight!  The challenge is to:

1) have a person, character or group as our focal image
2) add a bit of bold, flashy ribbon
3) keep it clean and simple
and bonus points for texture!

I used my Swiss Dots CB folder for the bottom, then my Scor Pal for the lines on the border. The stamp is from the Greeting Farm and I used my prismas and OMS to color her in. I'm not sure why the color looks blotchy in her shirt because it doesn't in person. The ribbon is from my stash, I had five 4 1/2 inch pieces of this ribbon and NEVER thought I'd use it, because pink is NOT my color! But when I read the challenge, it was the first thing that came to mind! Now I just need to figure out what to do with the last piece! LOL

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

ETA:  I waited for some sunshine and took a more flattering picture.  The one I had from before was pretty blah!

Summertime Pop Up Card

I came across this tutorial on SCS and have been meaning to try it out for ages.  Beate does such a FANTASTIC job on her cards that she really inspired me to get out of my card rut!  I saw this sample of hers in the SCS galleries and had to CASE it!  This is what I came up with:

I didn't have *exactly* the right shade of blue for the card base, so I improvised!  I used my D'Vine Swirls CB folder and then did some very liberal sponging with Chocolate CTMH ink.  It toned down the brightness of the blue so it looks much better with the DSP.  Here is what the card looks like when it's closed:

Can you believe this is the first time I have cut into a sheet of SU! paper?!?  I have a bunch of it, but it's so pretty that I didn't want to cut into any of it!  Not to mention I have so many scraps that I don't remember the last time I cut into a 12x12 sheet anyway, but the SU! stuff has been in my stash for YEARS!

I am trying to gradually ink up some of my never used stamps and stop using the same old stamps all the time.  This little girl is a set from the Greeting Farm and I have never inked any of them!  I thought she would make a cute pairing with the SU! paper, and I think she turned out pretty doggone cute!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

ETA:  I took another photo in the sunshine, and I think it shows off the colors better.  And it was an excuse to go out in the sunshine! :)

Baby Boy Pages - Batch 3

Here is the last batch of pages I did for the Baby Boy Book.  Yes, I did waver a little bit about the inking, but they look sooo much better with it!  The pages really tie together so much better with that little bit of distressing.  The paper has a vintage circus feel to it, too; I probably would never have considered some of these color combinations, but they work beautifully!  All of these patterns are from the book Imagine.

I am sooo pleased with how this project turned out!  The pages went together so quickly I'm actually starting on a Baby Girl Book for my sweet friend Reba!  I just hope she doesn't look at the backs of the pages, since the Frugalista in me uses otherwise unattractive paper as base pages!  :)  For example, all of the pages I did for this book here have a reeeeally bright green as the base paper!


Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Blog Candy Rocks!

So I'm up a little early this morning, and imagine the awesome surprise I get when I find out I won the blog candy over at  i {heart} papers!!  A fabulous lady I know just designed a couple of stamp sets that have me simply drooling, her new line is called Mint Motif and the gears in my head are churning with ideas!  So I follow the trail over to i {heart} papers and WOW do they have some awesome stuff!  I love that they have both digi and regular stamps, and they even carry Nesties and Basic Gray paper!!  What more can a girl ask for?  Other than borrowing some of their design team and absorbing some mojo from all that fantastic talent, that is!  Thanks ladies, for holding the giveaway and for having an awesome variety!!

Cheers!

Baby Boy Pages - Batch 2

Here are a few more pages I did for the Baby Boy book I'm working on.

The first two pages are from the book Cherish, and the third one here is from Imagine:

I also added some Chocolate ribbon from CTMH, as well as Chocolate buttons.  The brads and ribbon slide are Colonial White, and the little phrase on the second page is from a package of tags that coordinates with this paper pack.  The little bird on the third page is just something I cut out from the patterned paper.  He was so cute I wanted to bring him to the forefront!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Baby Boy Pages - Batch 1

I decided to add a few more pages to a book I *thought* I was already finished with for a friend of mine that just had a little boy.  Since I happened to have 10 more page protectors for that specific brand of book, I thought that would be perfect!  The book looked a little skinny as it was anyway, and I had some mojo running through my veins last night!  Here's what I came up with!

I used a few patterns out of the book Cherish to make these, and the paper packet is from K&Co (I think.)  I used CTMH Chocolate to sponge the edges of all the pieces, even though I may come to regret that decision after another batch!  I love the look the distressing gives, but it can be time consuming when there are so many pieces!  :)  I love the books CTMH offers because they really get the creativity flowing when you're feeling a little stuck!  The patterns are designed for 12x12, but I tweaked them to work for 8x8.  I think they turned out pretty stinkin' cute!

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Mother's Day Card

Here is the card I did for Mother's Day this year. 

Can you believe with all the cutting I do with my Nesties that I have NEVER before used one as a stencil?  I love how this turned out!  Well, at least I love the way the inking turned out, I'm not really happy with the rest of the card.  The stamp is from Hero Arts, and I made the flower using a technique over at SCS.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Spring in the Northland

Can you believe that this??  This is just wrong... it is May, right?  Or did I miss the memo and we jumped straight to October??

Cheers!

Wedding Thank Yous

Here is a sample of the Thank You cards I made for a shower gift for a sweet gal I'm proud to call family!  I fell in love with this paper a long time ago and never came up with an excuse to buy it.  Well, when the store closed I bought ALL of it because I knew I could find a project for it!  I kept the design pretty simple since I was making 50 of them, and I think they turned out pretty doggone cute!

The wedding dress stamp is from Inkadinkado, and I used VersaFine ink to stamp with.  The ovals are cut with my Petite Ovals dies from Spellbinders, and the flowers are Prima.  This was a great stash-using project since I was able to find enough silver scraps for all 50 cards!  Actually, I have enough silver scraps left over I could probably have made another 100 of these little babies!  Here's a shot of the In Progress stage:

I'm sooo glad I have a large work space!  Can you imagine trying to stamp 50 of these in a little table?

Thanks for looking!

Cheers!

Scrap to Spend budget!

So there have been a lot of posts over at SCS about a Scrap to Spend budget, where you allow yourself a set amount of funds for every project you create.  I've been letting the idea marinate for a while now, and here is what I came up with:

Amount   Item
$1           Card
$2           Layout
$2.50     3D project
$2           Organization Project
$.50       Contract Work
$1           SU/DI Project (Shut up and Do It! project.... I have a LOT of these!)

Another stipulation to my budget is that when I buy something, I have to actually USE it right away!  I know, novel idea, huh?  I can't tell you how many stamp sets or paper packs or embellishments I have come across in my stash that I TOTALLY FORGOT that I had purchased!  I won't tell you how many paper packs I've actually bought multiples of because I had forgotten about them!  It's too embarassing...  I also have a huge weakness for that four letter S word.... you know the one.... SALE!  It's amazing the stuff I have purchased that I had absolutely no need for just because it was on sale!  Here's to using up my stash and saving up some cash! 

Cheers!