Three Kings Day Kitty

You may have seen my New Year's post about our grape tradition; well, there's another Spanish tradition we always followed while I was growing up: Three Kings Day. You can see the cards I've made previously for this holiday here on my blog. This year, I focused on the tradition of leaving your shoes out for the Kings to leave presents in.

I thought it would be fun to use this "Party Animal" rubber stamp by Strawberry Kisses/Crafter's Companion.

click to enlarge

I stamped the image four times: on white, shiny gray, gold, and silver papers (all purchased at Michaels). The silver base piece was cut/emobossed with a Pagemaps die. I added some detail on the kitty with a Warm Gray Copic, and then covered it with white flocking by rubbing it through my Xyron sticker machine (I did retrace it with an XS Pitt pen. The confetti & streamers with colored with a Wite-Out pen and also retraced with the black pen. The gold shoe was painted with gold Stickles. The sentiment is from a Dilo En Español set and was heat-embossed in detail gold (Stampendous).

Although difficult to see in this photo, there are three die-cut hearts on the bottom of the card. They were cut using SCAL and my Silhouette, from a black pre-glittered Core'Dinations cardstock.

The black background was edged with zig-zag scissors, and is backed with a shiny black paper (Recollections/Michaels). I finished the card with some Platinum Opal Liquid Pearls in the corners.

ColourQ #222

Inspiration/Challenges:
ColourQ: Color Combo #222
Crafter's Companion January Challenge: Hearts + CC product (die-cut hearts + Strawberry Kisses/CC Stamp)
Delicious Doodles #69: Layer Up
Sparkle N Sprinkle January Challenge: Anything Goes with Glitter, Embossing Powder and/or Flocking (used flocking a glitter glue)


Thank you for visiting,

Layered leaf Notch-swing card

Ya'll are going to get tired of my notch swing cards...I'm just having too much fun playing with my Silhouette machine! I've pre-cut some front panels from my favorite DPs, and this lovely yellow pattern from Graphic 45 worked well for this week's colourQ challenge.

I also used my Silhouette to cut the leaf overlay embellishment (you can read more about my process in this post.

For the the sentiment, I created it in SCAL using the Georgia font and the "Union" tool. I cut it from a yellow paper and used chalks to add some dimension. I sprayed it with a matte coating to set the chalk, and used orchid Liquid Pearls for the border.

If you'd like to try it yourself, this Notch-Swing card design is now available for purchase as SVG files in my Etsy Shop.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Chalk N Stock: Anything goes just use chalk (on sentiment)
colourQ challenge: Color combo #215
Connie Can Crop: Leaf it up to me...
Creative Card Crew #49: Pearls
HIMCR #124: Die Cuts


Thank you for visiting,

Simply classic

I used the hard-mounted rubber Raspberry Vine Bookmark stamp by Magenta to make this CAS card:

I dry-embossed the flowery branches with a Cuttlebug border texture folder. The sentiment is from a Lili of the Valley stamp, and is cut out with a Spellbinders die.

This is my first time using my long-desired orange/Carnelian PEARLustre Embossing Powder from Stampendous ... I colored in the stamp with various markers I have ... I can't use my Copics with colored embossing. It was difficult getting a good photo of this, so here's a scan of the heat-embossed piece:

ColourQ

Less is More

Inspiration/Challenges:

ColourQ Challenge #148: Green, Orange, Rose, Pink, White (right)

Less is More Week 78: Sketch (right)

Thank you for visiting,

Hello Little One

My sister-in-law's best friend just had her second child, and being as she's practically family I wanted to send along a card.

This week's Lili of the Valley Challenge is New Beginnings and I just happen to have a new Baby stamp from LOTV! I used the lovely color combo #118 at ColourQ and the fab sketch #33 from Deconstructing Jen.

The Lili of the Valley Thursday Challenge recently changed management, and I'm so glad that it's still up & running as Lili's Little Fairies!

Peace on Earth with Fall-to Layouts and ColourQ

I've been on a stamping/embossing kick, so I decided to try my hand at the ColourQ Combo #114 (Poppy Parade, Certainly Celery, Cool Caribbean, Kraft + white) and Clean&Simple Fall-to Layout #168. Oh my goodness, be sure to check out the DT and contestant projects for both challenges...simply amazing. I was truly inspired.

The blue & white pieces are stamped & heat-embossed with snowflakes in Kaleidoscope (clear, glittery embossing powder). I used some small snowflake stamps to  heat-emboss the border on the red circle. The "shadow" is the same kind of paper, but embossed all over in Kaleidoscope. I added a little hand-drawn border on the kraft piece with a glitter gel pen.

Stamps: Raisin Boat, Martha Stewart, K&Co.

Happy 100th ColourQ Challenge

Oooh, wait 'til you see the ridiculously gorgeous projects for the 100th ColourQ Challenge. We get to pick our favorite color combo from past challenges (tough choice!), and match it with a sketch from Clean&Simple Stamping.

I chose the combo of bravo burgundy, really rust, taken with teal, old olive + white. These butterflies may look familiar to my readers...I'm loving my new Stampin' Up set!

The base card is a burgundy Core'dinations piece, with the flat side on the outside and the textured side on the inside. The top teal piece is also Core'dinations, but with the textured side facing out. I punched the flowers with a Martha Stewart border/corner punch set, and punched out a butterfly on the bottom with the SU punch. I put a "cajun craze" piece of stash cardstock into the butterfly cut-out. The front piece is backed with olive-colored cardstock, which I trimmed to fit.

The white punched-out butterflies are stamped in olive, "cajun craze", and teal and backed with their corresponding cardstocks. The sentiment (from the same SU set) is heat-embossed in white, as is the butterfly on the inside of the card.

Thank you ColourQ for 100 fantastic challenges, and many more!

Inspiration:
colourQ #4: bravo burgundy, really rust, taken with teal, old olive + neutral
Fall-to Layout #155 by clean&simple


Hey, I have a question for you dear reader: I try to include the sketches and color combos that I use on my blog posts, because most challenge sites seem to like it. However, I was just asked to take down a sketch for a challenge. What're your thoughts? Only include the images if asked in the rules, and otherwise not? I just like folks to know all the inspiration I've found.

Little Miracles

I'm super tickled that the "ticket corners" trick Mom & I shared at Top Tip Tuesday last week won their Top Tipper prize! We're such a great team (and we look & sound so alike). We're gonna have to figure out a way to share the prize, which is 3 digis from Karen's Doodles. I couldn't wait to hear back from Karen, though, and bought her First Taste of Snow to use for a Christmas card along with a ticket sentiment from When the Scrap Hits the Fun (Marion's blog). Her tickets helped inspire our "ticket corners" tip, so this card is sort of a celebration. It has lots of ticket corners!

Marion recently posted the loveliest Christmas-themed ticket -- please take a moment to check out her incredible shaker card -- and I totally lucked out that this week's colourQ combo includes the purple of the ticket. I was blown away by Julia's decidedly nontraditional Christmas card, and decided to use the bright colourQ combo as a cue for the Xmas in July challenge at Creative Inspirations. I'm also entering this into the Faith theme at the 2011 Christmas Card Challenge, and used the fab circle-and-rectangles sketch from Paper Cupcakes Magic Monday.

I kinda started this story at the end, because my first thought for this card came from Helen's Make your Own Backing Papers (BP) trigger for the Christmas/Holiday Card Club at Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack. I took the super-easy route of stamping & heat-embossing a snowflake to create my papers: I used white powder on the white paper, transparent yellow powder on the yellow, and clear powder on the green. The inside green piece isn't heat-embossed, just stamped with watermark ink. It's difficult to see the embossing in the photo on the right but if you click on it, it will enlarge & you can see more detail.

I had terrible fun coloring the image, and it just screamed for textural embellishment. First, I used my heat-activated Marvy Snow pen for the snowflakes. Then I used my glue pen to add some color-matched flocking: white on the snow, green on the cuffs, yellow on the collar, and purple on the ear-muff.

The boots are coated with Glossy Accents. The doily was sprayed with Tattered Angels glimmer mist, because I wouldn't bring myself to just leave it white! Everything is edged with a Copic marker (G07 / Nile Green).

Inspiration:
Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack Christmas Card Club: Make Your Own BP
Creative Inspirations Challenge #64: Xmas in July
2011 Christmas Card Challenge Week #33: Faith
Paper Cupcakes Magic Monday: Sketch
colourQ challenge #94: Tangerine Tango, Green Galore, Daffodil Delight, Rich Razzleberry + white

Stamps: First Taste of Snow by Karen's Doodles, Xmas Ticket by When the Scrap Hits the Fun, stash
Tools: Marvy heat tool, Fiskars papercutter, Tim Holtz scissors, HP printer & ink, Adobe InDesign, awl, hole punch
Other: ZipDry glue, ZIG glue pen, Marvy snow pen, Elmer's gel pen, Versamark watermark ink, Glossy Accents, doily from stash, Tattered Angels glitter mist, bakers twine from stash, embossing powders from Stampendous & Hero Arts, flocking from Martha Stewart, Recollections, & Stampendous
Copic markers: b0000, yr01, e11, e13, rv02, e37, e17, v06, v17, bv00, y06, y17, yr04, yr09, yg03, g07

Retro Vintage Shabby-Chic

I've really been inspired to craft today, and made these two cards. I'm distressing machine now that I have my handy paper distresser. Oh Tim Holtz, you are so much wiser than your years!

This week's combos at the Color Throwdown and colourQ are really challenging & really wonderful, and I had lots of fun pulling out some long-hoarded papers from my stash and just letting the card come together (with a little help from the sketches at Top Tip Tuesday/Robin's Fetish and Mojo Monday!)

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I haven't had much luck taking photos today: everything either looks washed-out or technicolored. But I'm pleased with how the colors match the challenges' in real life. The card above uses mostly paper from the 5&Dime October Afternoon collection (wow, it really came through for me with this otherwise challenging combo).

When I saw the classic-black rotary phone image, I just had to make a "missing you" card. I covered the phone image with Glossy Accents to create a faux-epoxy embellishment. It looks & feels really cool, but it took hours to dry.

Totally off the crafting subject, I love that the classic-black rotary phone not only evokes a retro feeling to me, but also feels vintage. My mom (Ann, because she actually has a name other than Mom, much to my dismay!), was telling me about some children who were scoring low on standardized tests that used images of rotary phones. What 4-year-old now would recognize a rotary phone?! Which makes me feel...experienced.

Inspiration: Color Throwdown #150, Top Tip Tuesday/Robin's Fetish Sketch
Stamps: StudioG, Paper Studio, sentiment from Regal Greetings set by {ippity} Stamps
Paper: Recollections, Core'dinations, 5&Dime
Tools: Marvy heat tool, Fiskars papercutter, Tim Holtz scissors & paper distresser,
Other: ZipDry glue, Stampendous embossing powder, Gary M. Burlin & Co. brads, Making Memories buttons, Simplicity thread & needle, Versamark & Stampin' Up! inks, Glossy Accents

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This card is all about the paper: each piece has its own wonderful texture. The medallions are heat-embossed with silver and colored with Copics.
The sentiment is actually a (clear) horizontal stamp that I partially inked and stamped to fit into the circle frame. Um, yeah, that took a little doing! But I'm pleased with the result.

Inspiration: ColourQ #93, Mojo Monday Sketch #199
Stamps: Hero Arts, Paper Studio, K&Co., large medallion from stash (thank you Spotlight Challenge)
Paper: Recollections, Core'dinations, handmade from stash
Tools: Marvy heat tool, Fiskars papercutter, Tim Holtz scissors & paper distresser
Other: ZipDry glue, ZING embossing powder, Versamark ink, Copic pens, Offray ribbon, pop-dots

New Home gift tag

So at the last minute I decided to make a tag for my gift of the new home notelets I made earlier this week. How could I resist the great sketch from Mad for Markers?!

The friend for whom I made the gift is a real ornithophile, so I used a TLC image I've been saving and colored it like an American Robin, with its red breast (I wanted to keep to the color palette I used for the notelets). When I gave it to her, she said It's an American Robin! Which made me happy.

I colored the ribbon and the red button with copics. I used brown StazOn for the brown button and actually heat-embossed the white one. I sewed them onto the card with coordinating bakers twine, and backed them with matching buttons.

Inspiration:
Mad for Markers Tag Sketch Challenge (pic on the right)
colourQ combo #86: Real Red, Daffodil, So Saffron, Early Espresso + white

Stamps: Vintage Bird on Holly by TLC Creations, flourish from Regal Greetings set by {ippity} Stamps, sentiment from stash stamps sent to me from Mom from Nepal
Paper: Hammermill, Recollections
Tools: SCAL, Cricut, Marvy heat tool, Sizzix Texture Boutique & paisley embossing folder
Other: ZipDry glue, Stampendous embossing powder, StazOn and InkItUp inks, bakers twine
Copics: E08, E47, R27, Y17, Y13, Y000, E33, E31, YG03, YG63, YG67, BG93

New Home Notelets with the ColourQ

I've been keen on making a set of small, one-sided cards ever since I saw the lovely Reading Relish notelets at Jacks Arty Crafty Kreations. A friend just bought a new house, and I liked the idea of her having some pretty yet simple cards that she could use for "new address" cards. She's one of those people to whom art & poetry are as natural & necessary as food & sleep, and I love making things for her. I know she'll love this colourQ combo.

Guess who just got a Sizzix Texture Boutique?! That's right it's me, CG! I just love it, more than I even thought I would. For these, I stamped and embossed the pieces, mounted them to the secondary colors, and then ran them through the embosser with the paisley folder. I can't believe how well that worked!
Inspiration:
colourQ challenge #86: Real Red, Daffodil, So Saffron, Early Espresso + white

Stamps: Regal Greetings set by {ippity} Stamps, wooden house stamp from Mom, sentiment by StudioG
Paper: Hammermill, Recollections
Tools: SCAL, Cricut, Marvy heat tool, Sizzix Texture Boutique & paisley embossing folder
Other: ZipDry glue, Stampendous embossing powder, StazOn and InkItUp inks, bakers twine, brad
Copics: E47

A sketch so nice...yadda yadda twice

My lucky number is 3 so I love challenges that incorporate it, such as the Sketch over at All Things Unity. I designed one card using their stamps, but then found that the sketch popped into my head for the Terrifically Thrilling Thursday Challenge at Shelly's Images. So thank you ATU for the inspiration!

I went "simple" for both of these cards, and really enjoy how they came out; almost like what I imagined in my head!

Sketch: ATU #29
Theme: Use a Punch, Card Cupids New Challenge Sunday
Color: colourQ Challenge #82: Always Artichoke, Kiwi Kiss, Pear Pizzazz, Baja Breeze & White

Supplies: {ippity} rubber cling stamps, Heidi Grace Designs glitter paper, Recollections cardstock, Memento ink, Marvy brush markers & punch, ZipDry glue, Fiskars papercutter & punch, MS detailing scissors


Theme: Buttons, Brads & Bows, TTT Challenge Thursday at Shelly's Images
Color: Color Throwdown #139: Dusty Durango, Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip, Pear Pizzazz, Crushed Curry

Supplies: digi stamp by Shelly's Images, silicon sentiment stamp from stash, Heidi Grace Designs glitter paper, Recollections, Hammermill and Brazzil cardstocks, Offray ribbon, ColorBox chalk ink, ZipDry glue, Fiskars papercutter, MS detailing scissors, HP printer & ink, stash button & brad

An old-fashioned Family affair

So the other day I was yapping at my doctor and I mentioned the craftosphere and how I follow & am followed by like-minded crafters around the world. He looked at me, like he so often does, like I was some kind of wild hippie with a glue gun & a dream. I do respect him greatly, but it struck me how small we tend to make our personal world, for better or worse; Granted he has a good 40 years on me, but you'd think he'd be a little less surprised that technology has led to the simplest of conclusions: we're all pretty much the same. Culture and location have never really limited those of us who love to decorate our world.

That unnecessarily long introduction is just to say that I had tons of fun with the Technology Sucks challenge at Drunken Stampers. I'm also really loving seeing others' takes on the challenge. Normally, I would have used my Cricut to at least cut templates, but it was really fun to do it the old fashioned way: with my many, many tools.

After choosing the lovely combo of Kraft, Cherry Cobbler, Kiwi Kiss, Tangerine Tango + White from colourQ, I started by stamping and coloring the daffodil-and-tulip stamp for the inside; I still can't believe I paper pieced those little pieces! But I really like the resulting subtle texture.

For the flower border on the front, I stamped it three times: in cherry, orange & green. I made one-inch templates for the square and circle and did my best to line them to match the lovely CPS sketch. Then I made bottom layers, using the same inks.

When I had completed the border element, I showed it to my husband, who really loved it but wondered it we could add some color with fun flock (or embossing, but I didn't want to use my electric heat tool for this project). I've had great luck using ZIG 2-way glue to adhere flocking, so I was all over that suggestion. They come in different sizes, so I used the medium chisel for the flowers, and the fine point to trace the stamped sentiment.

Oh, and I decided to use watermark ink to create a shadow for the sentiment, because why not add one more thing?!

Speaking of "one more thing", I didn't want to edge the pieces (it just wasn't the look I wanted), so I used my ball-point embossing tool to create a raised border on the front and inside Kraft pieces. It's a bit difficult to see in the photos, but it adds more subtle texture.

So this is how we spent this Springy Sunday morning, crafting as a family!
Inspiration:
Card Positioning Systems #214: Sketch
Drunken Stampers challenge #63: Technology Sucks / no electric tools
colourQ #80: Kraft, Cherry Cobbler, Kiwi Kiss, Tangerine Tango + White

Supplies: Memento, ColorBox and CraftSmart inks, Versamark watermark ink, Copic markers, MS detailing scissors, Fiskars papercutter and finger knife, ruler, Offray ribbon, ZipDry, ZIG and Tacky glues, embossing tool, Hammermill and Recollections cardstocks, pop-dots