I love my scrap bins!

 Scrap bins come in handy!

Hi all!  It's time for another AAA Cards Challenge!  This time we have a sketch challenge...and I was able to use items from my scrap bin to make it!

Do you have a scrap bin?  When I mean scrap, I mean extra-made pieces.  For example, I tend to make multiple sentiments for a card and pick the best one.  The rest go into my sentiment scrap bin.  I also stamp multiple images for a card and try different color combos.  The ones I don't use, off to the stamp images scrap bin.  Yes...I have multiple scrap bins.  4 to be exact.  It does come in handy when life is INSANE and I need to make a card super quick!  Since life is SUPER crazy for us, the scrap bins came to the rescue!

This flower from Altenew's Japanese Cherry was stamped on vellum paper with embossing ink and heat embossed with white powder.  It was then colored on the back side with alcohol makers which gave it a soft color.  This is a simple stamp set with coordinating dies for less than $15.  A total bargain.

The sentiment is also from Altenew called Essential Sentiments.  It's a foil set with a coordinating die, so you create 6 sentiments at once!  My kind of set...  This sentiment was foiled with gold foil.

So what about you?  Can you create a card for our challenge using casted-off items like I did?  I'd love to see them in our gallery.

Have a colorful day!

EASY CAS card with an Altenew Craft Your Life kit!

 EASY CAS card with an Altenew Craft Your Life kit!

Hi all!  What a crazy start to summer!  In the last 5 days, I brought my oldest daughter home from college this week, hosted a cookie decorating class which meant I needed to bake 12 dozen cut-out cookies, it was my youngest's last day of school yesterday and I left today for the holiday weekend with my hubby to camp in Petoskey Michigan.  It will be nice to get a little break from life, but it's hard to leave when there is so much that needs to be done around the house to prepare for the summer!

CAS card designs are PERFECT for a busy mom.  This is for our new challenge at CAS on Friday BIG HUGS.  To make this card even easier to whip out in no time...using Altenew's Craft Your Life kit.  Seriously, it comes with EVERYTHING you need to make gorgeous cards....dies, stamps, embossing folders, and stencils.  I just love them!

This card uses Altenew's Sunshine Flowers CYL kit.  Perfect for this challenge since the sentiment in the kit has 'big hugs' in 2 different sizes included...total score.  Altenew's Molded Lines stencil was ink blended with Warm Sunshine onto the card base for the background.

Using the kit's stamp and coordinating stencil, the flower was created with Altenew's Wisteria, Hydrangea and Ultra Violet for the petals; Buttercream and Warm Sunshine for the center and Minty Mint; Volcano Lake and Lagoon for the leaves.  After stenciling, the black outline stamp was added and die cut with the coordinating die.  Finally, it was also embossed to give it some subtle texture with the matching embossing folder.

After the flower was finished, it was cut in half...gasp....and added to the bottom of the card.  To finish the card, the bigger 'big hugs' sentiment was stamped with Obsidian ink and 3 enamel dots were added.

Now go make a huggable CAS card and share it in our gallery now!  We love to see your work!  Have a colorful day!

 Tic Tac Toe Guest Designer with CREATE finds!

Hi all!  I'm excited to announce I'm the guest designer for the Tic Tac Toe Challenge blog this fortnight!  I was lucky to have gone to Simon Says Stamp's CREATE event earlier in the month....which was AMAZEBALLS btw....and was able to pick up some fun items.  I had to break them out for this challenge!

The challenge is focused on masculine cards, and I really don't have much in the way of masculine items...except for this lovely die I picked up!  We have a Jeep Grand Wagoneer, so I had to get it to use for our Christmas cards this year.  This is a possible design...thanks TTT!

Following the challenge of the diagonal from right to left the card started with gold mirror paper from Altenew that was die cut using Concord and 9th's Sunburst Card Front die.  Christmas cards need a bit of shimmer or shine, don't you think?

When I spotted this Simon Says Stamp die at CREATE called Vintage Christmas Station Wagon, it went straight into my basket!  Since our Woody is ivory colored, this cardstock was the closest in color.  It was a mistake because it did NOT take to alcohol makers.  As you can see, the red bled terribly.  If this is the design for our cards this year, a different cardstock will need to be chosen.  All the pieces and parts of the car were done with alcohol markers and the silver bits were done with a paint marker.

Finally, the banner is from The Stamp Market called Layered Banner Die and the sentiment from Simon Says Stamps Circle Sentiments Christmaswas heat embossed with gold.

Are you going to join in the fun?  I hope you do!  Have a colorful day!

Happy Birthday AAA Cards Challenge!

 TONS of GIVEAWAYS for AAA Cards Challenge’s 10th Birthday!

Hi all!

I am very excited to share. We are celebrating AAA Cards Challenge blog 10th birthday today!  Isn’t that exciting! 10 years of continued inspiration… I am honored to be a part of the design team.

For the celebration, the design team has assembled, not only beautiful cards to inspire you, but also fantastic products for you to win! After all, what’s a birthday without presents? to qualify, make sure you share your CAS designed card with us in our gallery.  Be sure to head over to the challenge blog to see all the fantastic, fantastic goodies we are giving away! In the meantime, here is my inspiration for you.

One of my favorite companies, Altenew, is giving away a $25 gift card to one of our lucky winners! I decided to use one of my favorite Altenew kits, their Craft Your Life Splended Bouquet kit. Altenew CYL kits are my favorite subscription. They literally come with everything you need to create gorgeous cards! And boxing folders, dies, stamps, and stencils are generally included in these kits.

For my card, I use the stamp set, and it’s coordinating stencil set. I only used pinks, yellows, and blues to create this rainbow flower. The color, families of cherry blossom, pocketful of sunshine, and Sweet dreams blend together perfectly to create the rainbow.  The rock collection color family was used for the leaves.

Finally, Enamel dots were added from the same collections for a little shine.  I kept my card CAS in design by keeping it one layer. A piece of Post-it note was cut to mask where my sentiment was going to go when I did my stamping and Ink blending.

All right! Let’s see what kind of CAS cards you can come up with! Have a colorful day!

CAS on Friday May 10

Spellbinders NEW Leafy Helix and Sprigs BetterPress plates!

Hi all!

It’s time for another CAS on Friday Challenge!  I have another project sharing some new Spellbinders product.  The theme is FLOWERS!

The card started with using the new Sprigs BetterPress plate.  The cool thing about this set, is they are solid images that you can ink in various different ways.  I opted to use a blending brush with my Altenew fresh dye inks to add ink to the plates in various colors.  Sprigs also has coordinating dies To easily cut out the images! I also die cut a few out of vellum as well.

Next, a panel from Spellbinders Petal Labels dies was cut, then embossed with the Leafy Helix embossing folder.  This piece, along with the sprig pieces were then assembled on the front of the card.  Splatters using watercolors and matching colors as well as gold metallic Add some interest.

 The fabulous Hello wax seal was created with the same colors used for the inking with added gold paint marker to help make the word pop.  Even made a few blobs To match!

Now let’s see your creations! Be sure to link it to our gallery so we can check them out. Have a colorful day!

Blogger jail

 Hi all,

I've been trying for hours to get Blogger to post this...either way I hope you'll join us for our AAA challenge this fortnight.  It's a great sketch that has so many possibilities for creativity.

See!  Cute, right?  I pulled out Altenew's Stamp and Paint set, which debuted in March.  It's really a fun way to get into watercolor painting, pretty foolproof!

I have a Youtube video of the process of how to make this type of card. Check it out here:

For this sketch, I decided to pull it out again!

The leaves were stamped with Versamark and heat embossed with gold powder, and then it was time to play with watercolors.  Yellows, greens, teal blues were used for the colors.

It was topped off with enamel dots from Altenew's Martian Terrain to make it more special.  Now, let's see what you can do with our sketch!  Please share your creations with us in our gallery...we love to see how you do it!  Have a colorful day!!

Trying again...ALPHABET CHALLENGE SPOTLIGHT WINNER!

Playing with Pinkfresh Washi's and Altenew stamps and foils!

Hi all!

    

I've been playing around with a stash of Pinkfresh washi sets I've had for a long while that has never seen the light of day...for shame I know....and combining them with some new things from Altenew I've received recently.  With the Festive Friday...pink, metallic elements, foiling and flowers....and Freshly Made Sketches...mirrored....and the Triple B and Alphabet challenges in mind, I created this little ditty...

It started with the Pinkfresh new foil plate Dotted Petals.  Instead of foiling, it was inked with their Sage ink and run through the Spellbinders BetterPress system, which is my new obsession BTW...  The background it created is so pretty, this plate will be a new favorite of mine.  To keep with the sketch, the Pinkfresh Nested Arches were used for the center panel. 

For the corners of the sketch, beautiful flowers with berries were used and are from a retired Pinkfresh washi/die set called Blossoms and Berries.  Ironically enough, they have a new stamp/stencil/die bundle with that name they just released!  The washi tape has a matching die plate making the creation of these embellishments easy enough.  Their new Fluttering Butterflies washi/die set also makes an appearance here with the soft sage teal gut in the top right corner.  The washi tapes have gold foiling which led to the decision to foil a sentiment with Altenew's Sweet Sentiments.

The sweet bird is from the new Altenew Craft You Life series called Rustic Charm.  Altenew's CYL kits are by far my favorite subscription I have, they come with EVERYTHING and this set is genius!  The stamps have mirror images of the stencils, so you can use them either way...so smart.  This little guy is part of that set.  Instead of the stencil for coloring the bird, alcohol markers were used following the stencil as a guide.  He was first stamped with Altenew's Permanent Mist Gray ink, colored, and then stamped with their Gold Metallic ink...thank you Stamp Wheel...  He'd be great watercolored as well!

I think the final product is a little busy for my taste, but I really do love each element separately.  Have a colorful day!

Altenew Inspiration Challenge

 Alcohol Ink and Swiping Techniques with Altenew Inks!

Hi all!

What platform do you have your blog or website on?  I've been having issues with Blogger taking down posts...I'm a card-making site for goodness sake.  What guidelines could I possibly be breaking??  It may be time for me to look into other places for hosting...any suggestions?  In the meantime...hopefully, this post won't get taken down!  

It's the first time in a LONG while I've been able to play along with Altenew's Inspiration Challenge!, and I even have 2 cards!  I went into 2 different directions with 2 very different techniques for each card.  First up, a 'literal' interpretation of the photo image.

This started with a Bristol cardstock.  This type of cardstock doesn't absorb the inks very quickly, so blending is easy, and swiping is even easier!  A bazillion different inks were used to create this background.  In the order you see here, each color was swiped in the area shown in the inspiration photo.  After each different color group was added, a quick swipe with a mini blending tool was used to soften the swipe marks if there were any.

Next the panel was trimmed down and die cut using the Dotted Waves cover plate.  The stencil was then used to deepen the colors in the open areas and Stickles in Crystal was added to the lines to make them sparkle like waves at sunset.

Next, the sentiment from Inspiring Quotes: Sunshine was heat embossed with white powder on vellum.  Finally, the whole panel was added to a piece of dark gray cardstock and some yellow sequins were added for extra sparkle.

For the second card, I decided to FINALLY break out some alcohol inks!   Using permanent markers on acetate with rubbing alcohol was a technique I used often in my teaching days, but fluid inks?  Nope.  I've had a stash for quite some time, but have not educated myself on the technique of using fluid inks.  I decided to just jump in with both feet with a little rubbing alcohol, Sunkissed, Orange Cream and Firebrick alcohol inks.

Some leftover SU! glossy paper in my stash is the panel base, but not sure it's really the best choice as it did seep through to the back side of the paper.  Is that normal?  Either way, it seemed to work well enough, so it will be used for this technique until it's gone.  It took time to figure out how to get the inks to move without creating lines, after some trial and error....lots of error....it worked in the end.  A little bit of Nimbus ink was added for some splatter at the end to help bring in the color deep gray-blue color from the florals.  

I couldn't get over the intensity of the color!  No wonder this medium is so popular!  The gorgeous Craft-A-Flower Hibiscus die set was used for the florals.  They were die cut from gray card stock with details added with the Tranquility alcohol markers.  The edges of the blossoms were highlighted with some Cloud White Fresh Dye Ink on the edges.

There is nothing better than a die set with included sentiments, which this one has!  To give the sentiment some interest, the 'for my' was die cut from vellum paper, while the 'friend' was die cut from matching gray cardstock.

Whew!  Thanks for continuing on with me!  Have a colorful day!

Manifest some SUNSHINE!!

Manifest SUNSHINE with the CAS on Friday challenge using The Stamp Market and Altenew!

Hi all!

It's time for another challenge with CAS on Friday.  This time we are manifesting the need for SUNSHINE!!  I don't know what kind of weather you have where you are, here in Ohio, it's been pretty dreary with only a few hints of sun popping here and there.  Help us manifest more sunshine by creating some of your own sunshine projects too!

This card started with Altenew's Rainbow Burst scene-building stencil and using their Pocket of Sunshine color family was an obvious choice.  FYI, this stencil comes with a coordinating foil plate which is glorious with it.  Each of the 3 the stencils were inked with the lightest of the graduated inks to create the rays of the sun.

For the sentiment, the new-to-me stamp set from The Stamp Market called Arched Greetings 2 had the perfect sentiment to help keep this a CAS card.  An option for this design would be to die-cut the arch from the corner of the panel for a window and stamp the sentiment along the edge.  However, to keep this as simple as possible, the sentiment instead was stamped on the outer portion of the rays.

The center of the stencil leaves a white spot.  A circle sentiment would be perfect for it, but instead a large enamel die from the perfectly matched Pocketful of Sunshine collection was added.  In hindsight, the yellow border isn't needed at all.  Funny how you don't notice those kinds of things until you're posting them on the internet!

Now help us manifest more sunshine and join us for our challenge at CAS on Friday.  Have a sunny, colorful day!

SOC Designer Paper Challenge! - WORD POWER HONORABLE MENTION!

NEW Pinkfresh Studios Flower Market designer paper HACK!

Hi all!

Are you a collector of designer papers?  Come on...admit it.  We all do it.  They're addicting for some reason.  I used to get all KINDS of printed papers, as I love the inspiration they provide, but can NEVER seem to cut into them.  It's like it causes panic or anxiety...if they're used, then they can't be used for a different project...whatever that may be!  Tell me I'm not the only one....

This fortnight challenge at Sisterhood of Crafters is to use DESIGNER PAPER....SO today is the day to let go of that anxiety and USE THOSE PAPERS!!! .  Now, did I use some from the stash I've been collecting for over 20 years? Ummmmm, no.....  BUT I did get some new papers from Pinkfresh Studios...I had to feed my addiction and ensure I didn't run out...so I opted to use that instead.  I rarely buy new designer paper, so it was a treat to open that package with the gorgeous colors!  So here is my little hack for DSP papers....

Using Pinkfresh as an example, there 12x12 paper packs and 6x6 paper packs have the same papers in them....only difference is the size of the prints.  Generally the 6x6 size papers are geared more toward card making.  While I love the 6x6 papers, the 12x12 papers have some real benefits when it comes to card making.  The larger papers sometimes coordinate with their dies, and the sentiment pages have great sentiments, perfect for card fronts.  When purchasing DSP paper packs, be sure to look at their sentiment pages...getting the 12x12 size paper can save you the need of investing in specialty sentiment stamps.

Sticking with Pinkfresh products, I also opted to use their new Fluttering Butterflies washi tape and die set, along with the gorgeous Nested Corner Frames.  The washi tape has been a new to me product and its ease of use is so fantastic!  I do have the coordinating stamp set, so the option for custom colors is there, but it matched my paper perfectly so I didn't need to.

The frame was die cut 2 times and stacked, with a little accordion folded piece of cardstock on the sides to make the card pop when pulled out of the envelope.  Cute eh?  That's a little trick picked up from the Pinkfresh Create & Connect this spring.  The whole thing is finished off with the cute little gems from Pinkfresh as well!

I think I'll spend the day using designer papers and washi tapes to make more cards.  What about you?  Are you ready to join us for some printed fun?  Hope to see your work in the gallery!

Have a colorful day!

Altenew's April Kiss Camillia Layered Floral Die System is AMAZING!

Hi all!

I'm trying to catch up on my crafting life given the craziness in my normal life right now!  Our little goddaughter is doing well and has been with us for over 3 weeks now.  It's been a re-fresher on motherhood of an almost toddler for me, but this is a first for my hubby and he's doing amazingly well!  We continue to pray for her mom on her journey to mental well-being, until then, she's been a joy to have around.

I was a guest designer with Altenew for March, and haven't been able to use some of their products again until now.   Challenges always are a great place to start and The Flower Challenge and the As You See It Challenges worked well with the beautiful April Kiss Camilla die set.  Their updated floral die systems make assembling the layers SO easy!  You could opt to not apply all the layers to make the bloom smaller, it's genius really.

You can opt to ink blend the paper before die cutting or after.  These blossoms were die cut first then ink blended using Altenew's Martian Terrain Crisp Dye inks.  It adds a little extra shading to the die cuts if you ink them after...just a little tip for some added pizzaz!  The leaves were inked with the Frosted Foliage Fresh Dye inks.

The background panel was embossed using the Natural Wicker Pattern embossing folder.  It adds a fantastic texture to the background without distracting from the beauty of the floral die cuts.  A little bit of Altenew's Warm Sunshine was added behind the blossoms to help it pop off the background.

An added bonus of the April Kiss Camillia die set?  Sentiment dies.  Both 'thanks' and 'hello' are part of this set...another genius move Altenew!  The sentiment 'thanks' was die cut from gold mirror paper along with a final overabundance of splatter using metallic gold watercolor and white gouache, and the card is finished!

Seize the Birthday with Spellbinderst Stampendous Birthday Messages

Seize the Birthday Challenge with Spellbinders NEW Stampendous Birthday Messages

Hi all!

I have a super quick one here for you today again using the new Spellbinders Stampendous Birthday Messages stamp set for the current Seize the Birthday challenge.

This sentiment pairs PERFECTLY with Altenew's Majestic Mountains stencil don't you think?  The mountain was created using Altenew's Tropical Forest color family with a touch blue with Altenew's Dew Drops and Mountain Mist for the sky.  Admittedly, the stencil layering was done out of order...but it's such a great design, it isn't too noticeable, is it?  

The was stamped sentiment in the top right corner with Altenew's Permanent Black ink, then the panel was die cut using the Spellbinders Hemstitch Rectangles die set.  It gives it a nice simple touch to not distract from the mountain scene.

To finish off the card and to give it some sparkle, Icicle stickles were spread onto the lighter areas of the mountain using my finger.

It's a simple card yet is perfect for someone having a hard time going 'over the hill'...not too snarky and a little inspiring perhaps?

Like I said, a quick post for today.  Have a colorful day!