Guest Designer Time Out #239...Thank You

 

Hello and welcome to my sadly ignored blog.  I have been doing lots of crafting lately, posting occasionally on Instagram, and not doing much with this dear old blog.  Happily, I am here today because I have the honor of being the Guest Designer at Time Out this week.  I get to play along with my friends and colleagues on the Design Team plus all the talented new DT members who joined after I left.  

We are challenged to make a card inspired by this photo:

Here is a bigger picture:

I was inspired by the bottles on the tray, and pulled out a Greetery set I haven't used in a long time called Bottled Up.  I stamped and cut out each of the two bottles in various colors, added texture to two different card fronts, and then played around with them until I had two cards I liked.

Color scheme one...

And color scheme two...

And, here they are together.  

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Guest Designer...Poppystamps

Hello and happy March.  I am posting on my blog for the first time in a long time.  It may seem like I haven't been crafting, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I've been crafting--just not posting.  Call me lazy, and you would be correct.  I am posting occasionally on Instagram--so much quicker and easier.

This is an exciting post for me, however.  I am joining you today as the Guest Designer for Poppystamps in March.  The challenge this month is "Die Cuts Only" and I pulled out a few different Poppystamps dies to create this card.

The dies I used are:  Thank You Background, Pine Twig, Whittle Fox, Whittle Moose and Whittle Squirrel.  I wanted a masculine look for my card, so went with kraft and some other rich fall colors.

While I was fiddling around, I made another version of this card using a completely different color scheme.  Hard to imagine that it is the same main die cut.  This card says 'spring' to me.

I hope that you will pull out some dies and join us for the March Poppystamps challenge.

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Retro Rubber #193...Guest Designer...Happy Birthday

 

Today I am so happy to be playing along with one of my favorite challenges, Retro Rubber, as their Guest Designer.  I love this challenge because it reminds me to look through my stash for some older stamps I may have forgotten about.

Because I am guest designer, I decided to pick one of the oldest of my oldies....PTI Dot Spot.  This set is so old that it is in a CD case.  I'm thinking more than 10 years.  I pulled out out and was reminded all over again about why I love this stamp set so much.  I did a bit of inlaid die cutting, an old technique that I haven't used in quite a while.

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Guest Designer...CAS on Friday #241

 

Hello and happy Friday.  I am so pleased to be playing along with CAS on Friday as Guest Designer when this card of mine was chosen as the winner of a recent challenge.  The theme of this challenge is 'STARS', so I went with an older PTI cover plate called Night Sky.  Lots of stars in this sky.  I paired it with some really sweet Mama Elephant images I stamped using Kim's stamps when she recently visited me.

I hope you will play along with CAS on Friday this week.  My biggest challenge was to decide which stars in my stash I should use.  I bet you will have the same issue.

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Guest Designer Color Hues #45: Peach & Gray

Hello and happy Saturday.  I am posting today as the Guest Designer at Color Hues #45, where the colors are Peach & Gray.

This is such a lovely color scheme, and I immediately thought of creating some peach flowers.  This card actually was quite quick and easy to make.  I pulled out a very old PTI stamp (Bigger Blooms, I think) and stamped one corner in DO Dried Marigold.  Flipped the card over and stamped the opposite corner.  It looked a little flat, so I used colored pencils to add a bit of darker peach to the flowers.  Then I cut the center out of the panel and popped it up just a bit for some added dimension.

This is where I confess that for my first version of the card, I got the colors wrong.  For some reason, I had it in my mind that the colors were Coral and Gray.  No, I did not check the email before starting my card!  So, at least the card was very quick and easy to make, and once I realized that Coral was the wrong color, it was very easy to redo using peach.

A very happy mistake, because now I have two cards!

I big 'THANK YOU' to the kind folks at Color Hues for having me as their Guest Designer for this fun challenge.  I would encourage you to head over to the Color Hues blog to see the lovely inspiration provided by their Design Team.

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Guest Designer....CAS Mix Up...Tomorrow is a New Day

 

Hello friends.  I am so happy to be posting today as the Guest Designer for CAS Mix Up this month.

The challenge this month is to make a CAS Watercolored card inspired by the prompt FLIGHT.

I used a stamp from WPlus9 that I have had for ages, and don't think I have ever used before.  I bought it because I thought the images would be perfect for water coloring.  I used PTI reinkers for my water coloring.  After water coloring the image, I surrounded it with a very light wash of Aqua Mist watery ink to match the matting.

Thank you to the nice folks at CAS Mix Up for inviting me to be their Guest Designer.  I hope that you will play along in this fun challenge.

And...I am also entering this card at Happy Little Stampers Watercolour Challenge: Anything Goes.

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Guest Designer...Addicted to CAS #191...Hearts

I am so pleased to say that I am posting today as Guest Designer at one of my favorite challenges, Addicted to CAS.  Our challenge is HEARTS.

My card is ever so simple.  I used a Simon Says Stamp die called Heart of Roses to die cut a heart into my card front.  Then, I cut the heart out of red card stock and inlayed it back into the card front.  I added a sentiment and then my card was done.

I hope you will play along with me over at Addicted to CAS!

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Guest Designer...12 Kits of Occasions

 

Hello friends.  I am a lucky girl today, because I was invited to join my friends at The 12 Kits of Occasions as their Guest Designer this month.  Tracey is our hostess, and when she invited me to join in on the fun, I was so excited.  Way back in the day, I was one of the original members of this group, but left a few years ago when life just got a little too busy to participate every month.

Take a look at the kit Tracey sent.  Her theme was 'BIRTHDAY'.

I had such fun playing with this kit.  It was so easy to use, and before I knew it, I had made 8 cards.

The first two card were made with supplies from The Greetery.  It was especially fun to play with the colorful pinwheels.

I added a card front panel made with a STAMPloration stencil I had in my stash, and I will enter this card at the STAMPlorations Anything Goes Never Ending Challenge and the STAMPlorations January Stencil Challenge.

One of the elements of the kit was a card front panel that Tracey cut with the MFT Big Birthday Die.  I sponged Distress Oxide ink and splattered water on that panel, and was able to make 2 cards using the die cut letters as well as the left over negative panel.

I sponged Picked Raspberry Distress Oxide ink on another card front panel and then splattered it with water.  I used that panel to back up the die cut negative from the kit.

And, here are the 2 cards together.

Next up is this adorable critter, completely hidden by all his festive presents.  I added some balloons to make the card even more festive.

I loved the soft colors of the balloon trio in Tracey's kit.  I didn't have to do much to create this card.  I drew on the balloon strings by hand, and added my sentiment in grey ink, rather than black, in keeping with the softer color scheme of this card.

Tracey included some really fun crafty images, and I colored this mug with a rainbow of crafty tools, and added it to a card front panel I created using  MFT stars stencil.

Last but not least, I used one of the sheets of patterned paper from the kit along with  a die cut sentiment for my last card.  I really love the papers Tracey sent, and have held on to quite a few to use in the future.

Hard to believe, but I still have some leftovers from this kit.  Thanks again, Tracey, for inviting me to be your guest this month.

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Guest Designer...Just Us Girls...Very Happy Birthday

 

Hello and happy Saturday.  This is my last post as the Guest Designer for Just Us Girls for the month of November.  This month has gone by so quickly, and I have really enjoyed creating along with the talented team of designers at Just Us Girls. 

This week is a photo challenge.  What will you create?

Here is a bigger picture of the inspiration photo.

When I saw this photo, I was inspired by the presents.  Loads and loads of festively wrapped gifts.  I wanted to pull out a stamp set I have had for a while, but hadn't seen much (if any) use.  I used Mama Elephant The Birthday Bash stamps to create my slimline card...chock full of gifts, and a few cute critters, too.  This card took quite a while to color, but I am very happy with the final project.  I am definitely going to save it for a very special someone.

True confession...when I first got this stamp, I couldn't figure out why anyone would make a stamp that was too wide to fit on a horizontal A2.  Even though I'm sure that slimline cards were already all the rage, I was not familiar with them.  Once I noticed the trend, I finally got it.  This single image fits perfectly on a slimline card.

I hope that you will have some fun with this photo and play along with Just Us Girls.

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