New Home

Hi and welcome!  I'm here today with my card for the latest challenge at Freshly Made Sketches where our sketch hostess this week is Kim Singdahlsen.  Her sketch was perfect for a card I needed to make for my daughter.

Some of you will know that our daughter has moved to Blenheim (about 4 1/2 hours drive from us at the top of the South Island of New Zealand).  She is in her first year of teaching high school in Design and Visual Communications as well as Automotive.  She finally moved into her new home up there a couple of weeks ago and this was the card I made for her to celebrate that.

I created a panel of pink stripes onto a gray card base and onto that I adhered a little house and trees I made using Honey Bee Stamps dies.  I had to do a bit of swapping out between their various house die sets to get windows that more closely resemble hers. I also snipped off some pieces around the roofline. I then took a white panel, die-cut a heart from the centre and stamped a sentiment, before using foam tape to adhere over the die-cut image.

Thanks so much for visiting!  The design team have some gorgeous cards using the sketch so I hope you'll check them out.

Products used:

Stamps:  New Home (WP9)

Ink:  Versafine Onyx Black, Cloudy Night, Charcoal Suit, Espresso, Volcano Lake, Mountain Mist, Lagoon (Altenew)

Cardstock:  White, Cement Gray (MFT), Cream (SSS), Sweet Pea, Carnation (C&9), Blush, Tutu, Chiffon (Spellbinders)

Dies:  Spring Cottages, Summer Cabin (Honey Bee Stamps), Infinity Hearts (Hero Arts) 

Sarah's Adventure

 Hi all and welcome to my blog!  Today's card designer for Freshly Made Sketches is Amy O'Neill and I used her sketch to make a rather special card.

My daughter, Sarah, left Christchurch on Monday to start a new life in Blenheim (which is about 4.5 hours drive away).  She got her post-graduate degree last year and is starting her career as a high school teacher in Design & Visual Communications at Marlborough Boys College next week.  So of course, I had to make her a special card.  I'm going to miss her terribly - her and I spent a lot of time together - but I wish her a full and happy future in Blenheim and I now have an excuse to go road-tripping to visit her.

I had bought the Spellbinders Beaded Bracelet products a few months ago and they were the perfect choice to make a fun and positive card for my 22-year old daughter.  I die-cut the hand and heart from white cardstock and ink-blended some colour on.  For the bracelets, I used the BetterPress dies for the letters and numbers and coloured cardstock for the shapes.  The bracelets themselves were cut from silver foil cardstock.

In keeping with the sketch, but slightly deviating, I used frame dies to mimic the layers.  This left a lot of white space allowing the hand and bracelets to be the star of the card.  The sentiment was stamped in black ink.

Thanks so much for visiting.  Please check out the wonderful cards made by the rest of the design team.

Products used:

Stamps:  Bestie Alphabet Beads & Sentiments (Spellbinders)

Ink:  Versafine Onyx Black, Antique Linen, Tattered Rose, Worn Lipstick Distress Inks

Cardstock:  White, Paradise (Hero Arts), Sour Apple, Pink Lemonade, Peach Bellini (MFT), silver foil

Dies:  Bestie Beaded Bracelets, Bestie Alphabet Beads BetterPress, Bestie Heart in Hand (Spellbinders), Fine Frames Cover Die (Altenew)

Cheers

Karren

Time to be Awesome

It's time for another fun challenge from the team at Freshly Made Sketches where Jacquie Southas is our hostess this week.  Here is her sketch:

My youngest is moving out of home in a couple of weeks.  Yes, the timing is not great and I don't want her to leave, but we're not going to stop her as she is craving independence.  So, on the day she moves out, I'll give her this card:

I deliberately chose this Neat & Tangled set for William's card because this was the set I used when Matthew left home the first time 3 1/2 years ago.  Here's a link to the card I made for Matthew. 

Apologies for the poor photography - I think my camera focused on the silver and dulled everything else.  The card base is white and I added a strip of black embossed with the Weathered Embossing Folder.  I die-cut another white panel as well as some silver cardstock with a stitched border die and used foam tape beind the panel to pop it up. 

I stamped some stars and the first part of the sentiment onto this panel and then used a silver die-cut with the black shadow and called it done.

Thanks for visiting.  The design team have some wonderful cards so I hope you'll check them out.

Products used:

Stamps:  Awesome (Neat & Tangled)

Ink:  Obsidian, Cloudy Night (Altenew)

Cardstock:  White, Black, Silver

Dies:  Stitched Basic Edges (MFT), Awesome (N&T)

Accessories:  Weathered EF (Taylored Expressions)

Oriental Happiness

Hi, I had so much fun making this card!  The theme at The Male Room is "Oriental" and it gave me the opportunity to pull out some unmounted plates I've had since the early 2000's from a stamp company called Non Sequitur.  I'm also linking to the "Cards for Guys" challenge at Stampin' Royalty.

I started by making the vertical panel by sponging various distress inks onto a piece of white cardstock.  I then used the Crocodile stencil and Pumice Stone ink to add a bit of interest, before flicking some water onto the panel.  Once I was happy with the result, I sponged Vintage Photo around the edges before stamping the Asian Text image three times down the panel, using my Misti for placement.

The panel was then layered onto some black cardstock and then onto a Neenah Desert Storm card base.  I then went looking for an Asian-looking sentiment and found the Ori Kami set by Altenew.  I stamped the sentiment onto the card base using black ink then stamped the bird onto a piece of white card onto which I'd smooshed Blueprint Sketch ink and then flicked water on.  I fussy cut the bird and adhered him using foam tape.

Thanks for visiting.

Before I go, my daugher asked me to post her first attempt at watercoloring.  This is an Art Impressions image and she found some cheap, old watercolors of mine and wanted to try them out.  Not too bad for a first attempt :)

Products used:

Stamps:  Oriental Love Letters plate (Non Sequitur), Ori Kami (Altenew)

Ink:  Ranger Archival Black, Cracked Pistachio, Tumbled Glass, Blueprint Sketch, Peacock Feathers, Pumice Stone, Vintage Photo Distress Inks

Cardstock:  Desert Storm, white, black

Accessories:  Crocodile stencil (Tim Holtz)

Cheers

Karren

Edited to Add:  This card got a shout out at The Male Room.

10th Birthday Card

Next week is my youngest's 10th birthday.  Today is my last chance to make a birthday card.  I used this week's Fall To Layout plus the color challenge from Just Add Ink.

I really loved the sketch and decided to stick with the star images.  However, Marina Mist is not one of my favorite colors, so working that into the card was a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, Sarah's favorite color is green, so hopefully she'll like the card.  I took inspiration from Christine Blain's cool card and went for a grungy look.

I randomly stamped images from PTI's Grunge Me set over the card base and also over the stars and the "10".  The hardest part was deciding what to stamp in the Very Vanilla panel.

Details of the challenges:

Thanks for looking.

Products used (all Stampin' Up! unless otherwise stated):

Stamps:  Grunge Rock; Grunge Me (PTI)
Cardstock:  Early Espresso; Wild Wasabi; Marina Mist; Very Vanilla
Ink:  Early Espresso; Wild Wasabi; Marina Mist
Accessories:  Large and Small Star Punches; MFT Fishtail Flags Die; Timeless Type Sizzix Alphabet Die

Edited to Add:  This card received an Honorable Mention at Just Add Ink this week.  Thanks, guys!

Cheers
Karren

Birthday Party Invites

My youngest will be 10 next month and has been nagging me for ages to make the birthday party invitations.  So here's the prototype - for which I used the colours of this week's Dynamic Duos challenge and had a second go at the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches.  This also meets the criteria for this week's Stampin' Royalty challenge, which is to go masculine.

For the card, I embossed the guitarist in white EP on Whisper White cardstock.  I then cut him out with an oval nestie and while the die cut was still in the nestie, I sponged some Island Indigo ink.  BTW, this took me four attempts because the nestie kept moving.  I think because my cutting pad on my Big Shot is so warped, it's actually warped the nestie, so it wouldn't sit nicely on the cardstock.  Time for new cutting plates, methinks!

Anyway, once I finally got that sorted, I layered onto another Whisper White oval.  The rest of the card is pretty self-explanatory.

Here are the challenges I used:

Products used (all Stampin' Up! unless otherwise stated):

Stamps:  Extreme Guitar; Introducing

Cardstock:  Real Red; Island Indigo; Whisper White

Ink:  Versamark; Read Red; Island Indigo

Accessories:  Stripes EF; Nestabilities; sponge; Tasteful Trim die

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Karren

MDS - March Enhanced Sketch 2

Here is my version of Jan & Wendy's 2nd March sketch.  I again used some of the photos taken by my 9 year old at her recent school camp.

I used the grid background papers for this layout and brightened it a bit using Summer Sun (which I absolutely hated when it was a current color LOL).

Products used (all Stampin' Up!)

MDS