Whirlpool of Imagination

Cas Sketch

Not only am I spending 2012 with Stephanie Ackerman in a scrapping adventure, I really enjoy the stamping classes put forth by the folks over at the Online Card Classes website. I've done a few but you know of my love for Clean and Simple Stamping so I definitely knew I wanted to sign up for the two week CAS workshop.

Of course I am hopelessly notorious for posting things late so don't expect my posts to stay on track with all the daily lessons - LOL!

The first day of the workshop gave sketch ideas. I took one of the sketches and minimized it and made it tiny by making a mini 3 x 3 card with it.

The heart is from Verve and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

I took the basic sketch.......

and made it into something small for Valentine's Day.

I am actually hard at work using the Day 2 info although I did kind of change it up a bit. Like food recipes, I can't seem to follow card challenge directions too closely either!

Have a great day!

Thank You Note Cards

Whenever the kids have thank you notes to write, I generally take that as a invitation to create something new. With Christmas over, there are thank you's that must be written so I created some note cards that worked perfectly.

The tree is from Papertrey and the sentiment is from Verve. I went with garden green for the ink because besides wasabi, it's my favorite green!

I got the kids to sit down and write out the thank you's so it's another thing crossed off my list! I've been making my lists this week and am amazed at how well I'm accomplishing everything! Now I remember why I was always such a big fan of lists - it keeps me on track.

Hope you have a fantastic day!

Boat Birthday

My monthly guild challenge for the month of July is "paint".  Some guild members got nervous with the very word so I'm on a mission this month to show what that means even if you never actually "paint" a scene.

Today's card was inspired by a CAS sketch challenge over at Splitcoasters a couple of weeks ago. I did use acrylic paint but only as a background.

For the background layer, I embossed the background and then dry brushed it with acrylic paint to give the ocean like feel to go with my image. Once it was dry, I cut it up into equal sections (note to self, next time make the measurements more basic so I'm not forced to really do math to figure out the sections!)

The boat image is from Stampin Up and I think the sentiment is from Verve Visual. I attached the boat image with mounting tape because I'm really digging the small uses of dimension lately in my cards.

And I have laundry that is just about ready to be hung up so I'm wrapping this up. Hope you have a fabulous day!

Working With Browns

Today I'm into the third week of my summer card class. I've really enjoyed the challenging color combos and I haven't even really dug into the techniques yet. I think I'll attempt those in August (pace myself and all).

When I first saw this week's colors, I thought, no problem. But then I got down to the studio and I wasn't so sure it would be as easy as I thought.

                                          

I may have to try some more variations of these colors but here's the first one I came up with.

The leaves are from Verve and then sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

I chose those leaves because I knew I had a CB folder the same basic design so I thought I could repeat the pattern that way.

I'm not 100% thrilled with how I added in the kraft color but like I said, I may have another go at those colors this week.

Hope you have a fantastic Monday!

Peachy Feel Better

One of my favorite challenges at Splitcoast is the CAS challenge (hmmmm, I wonder why....). But while I always check it out, I never seem to actually create anything applicable to the challenge. But this latest creation fits one of the recent challenges.

I'm not sure if it was this week or last week's challenge to create a long card but I figure I'm within the last month so I'm doing good.

The flowers are from Sweet n Sassy stamps. It's the first time I think that I've used their stamps and I was very pleased. They are clear stamps that inked up well (Stampin' Up inks) and stamped with good coverage every single time. And that's not always the case when you first get clear stamps.

The flowers themselves are stamped twice so I got a bit of a shadow.

The sentiment is from Verve Visual. I like the combination of fonts and thought it matched nicely with the flowers.

I've had a good week studio-wse ~ I'm hoping this is a good sign for a productive and creative summer. Have a great night!

Simple Pink Owl

I got distracted by the rain this past week - I don't think I accomlished much at all during those long dreary days.

Here's my second owl creation. It's a simple A1 card.

With those big buggy eyes, I feel I can ink this guy up in fun, bright colors which is why I went with pink.

The owl is from Stampin' Up and the sentiment is from Verve.

So after making it through a horrible season of pollen without falling victim to my alelrgies, I jinked it when the rains came. I was so sure I would make it through spring without getting the allergy bug. What good did that bragging do? I jinxed myself and am now struggling with my allergies. So now I'll quietly slink off to get more kleenex and never brag again how I didn't get sick when everyone else did.

Dragonflies for Dad

The monthly challenge for our ArtFire card makers guild is things with wings. As soon as I saw these new stamps from Gina K, I knew I wanted to use the dragonflies for this layout.

The sentiment is from Verve Visual, another one of my go-to stamp companies, especially for sentiments.

I've used this layout before and am happy with the dragonflies. I have more planned for the dragonflies and my wings challenge ~ just need to get more stamping time!

Have a great night!

Magical Birthday

It's time for Conor's birthday and I've finally got his birthday invitations made and sent out. He likes magic (probably due to his sister's obsession with Harry Potter these last few years) so I drew heavily on that for his invites.

This fun image is a digi stamp from Bugaboo. My wizard is colored with copic and prismacolor markers and sponged with a little distress ink.

The sentiment is from Verve and the little stars behind the sentiment are from Papertrey. The dies for the sentiment layer are also from Papertrey.

Can you believe it's May already? I've got another couple of crazy weeks and then I might be able to breathe again. I think most of my crafting projects are done because I HAVE to make it rather than just getting around to puttering around in my studio. Ah well, what I should be doing is cleaning my studio. After several weeks of last minute projects, it looks like a hurricane blew through (and you all know how much I "love" to re-organize my stuff!)

Have a great night!

Blue Flowers for Mom

Now that Easter has ended, my focus has been Mother's Day (with a smattering of First Communion cards). Today and tomorrow, it's all about mom.

Sweet and simple ~ the flowers are from Verve and the sentiment is from Papertrey.

Working on Conor's birthday party invitations ~ every year I make some that are time intensive and every year, I say I won't do that again. Do I learn? Nope. I've been busy coloring the last couple of days....I may have them ready by next week!

Hope you all are having a great week so far!

Wishing You Flowers

In getting a gift together for a wedding shower, one of the fun things for me is to make the card. I usually take the shower invite and try to match the colors to whatever design I decide upon. Today's card comes from a shower I went to a couple of weeks ago.

As soon as I saw the blues and greens in the invite, I knew exactly what shades of card stock I would pull out. This was classic garden green and night of navy.

I love making blue flowers so that was an easy call on image design. And I always like the generation stamping look for flowers.....I guess I'm getting predictable!

The flower stamps are from Stampin' Up and the sentiment I think is from Verve.

I have to say that the blue and green are a nice color combination ~ and would work with lots of images besides flowers.

My stamping time took a hit as I had an unfortunate paper cutter incident. No matter what they say about the guillotines not cutting you. If your knuckle is in the way and you really slam down the arm, you will get a really nice gash. Who knew our fingers are bent for pretty much everything we attempt to do??????? Hopefully, I'll heal fast!

Have a great weeekend!