Whirlpool of Imagination

Yep, I tried red and purple

A few weeks back, Stamping Bella had a color challenge for their first weekly challenge. The combo was red, purple and white. At first glance (even second or third) this would not be a color combo I would have chosen. I never did do the challenge with a bella but the combo must have lingered in my mind because the other day, I had stamped these poppy red butterflies and that little stamping voice told me to try it with purple.

  Here is the card in all its red and purple glory. The butterflies (from Papertrey) are stamped in PTI poppy ink. The sentiment is from Stampin' Up and stamped with concord grape Distress Ink. I have to say I really like that shade of purple. I have a lot of purple ink pads but that is the truest purple and my go-to ink when I need that shade.

The paper is from the polka dot pack at Papertrey. Pretty simple layout - I can't remember if it is a Fall-to-Layout from the CAS blog but wherever I saw it, I really liked the simplicity and thought these tag stamps from PTI would be perfect for it.

Meg and I went shopping for a headpiece for her First Communionoutfit today. Who knew it would be so hard? Many stores had the dresses but not the headpiece - thank goodness for Nordstrom's, her outfit is now complete. That was the big excitement for my day - hope your day is going well!

Shamrock Fairy

Have you seen the new stamp company Paper Makeup Stamps? I first heard about them on Splitcoast and of course HAD to click the link. Go on, I know you want to click it. These fairy stamps are awesomely cute. I ordered a few to give them a try. They are red rubber stamps with nice deep etching and give a wonderful clear stamped image. I liked the first one so much, I've already pre-ordered the new fairy's coming out next week!

My little fairy is stamped with palette noir ink and colored with a combination of prismacolor and copic markers. Because I never know what color to do hair, her hair is colored with a pc pencil and blended with baby oil (I'll show some pics of this later in the week so stay tuned Barbara). I also used a Sakura gelly roll metallic pen for parts of her outfit and her wings. Her hair and the shamrock have just a tiny bit of spica pen on them for extra sparkle.

The sentiment is from River City Rubber Works. The layout here revolves solely around my nesties, which include the label dies with the sentiment.

A note about card size.....95% of the time I make A2 cards (5.5 x 4.25). On this one, I wanted the entire focus to be on my fairy so I cut this down just a wee bit. The final size is 5.5 x 3.5 inches.

And a little PSA: Along with other yearly checks, don't forget the skin doctor. A skin check is quick and easy but oh, so important. Can you tell that today was my yearly check? And thankfully, I'm clear for another year. I think about my teenage years and all that tanning and I shudder to think about it! That's the end of my lecture - have a great day!

Stripe-y Girl

I am on a roll with Splitcoast challenges. Okay, so they are never the challenge of the day but hey, I'm working on them. Last weeks Ways to Use It challenge was stripes. Now I love striped patterned paper so I knew that would figure into the challenge. I had a few different choices of paper picked out but then little Elzybell called out to me and she won out.

I had decided to ink up this little girl about the same time as the challenge rolled around and thought why not paper piece her dress with stripes? I went through a couple of choices of paper but settled on this great orange and pink color combo.

The image is obviously from Elzybell's and the sentiment is from Lizzie Anne. Does the sentiment look familiar? I used it in another form on my one button card. I probably have this sentiment in 10 shapes/sizes/designs.

Elzy is colored with copic markers except for her hair. That I colored with a prismacolor pencil and blended with baby oil. I used a gelly roll metallic pen for her shoes and hairbow for a little sparkle. Its a fairly simple design but one I like to play around with. This paper is so pretty in person that I figured you needed to see a lot of it.

I've looked at today's sketch challenge and have a few thoughts. I'm sure some time next week you'll see the fruits of my labor. Have a great day!

A CAS Rainbow

I am really enjoying the CAS challenges over at Splitcoast. This week the challenge was a sketch.

  Here is my final go at the challenge. Although I did like the sketch so I will definitely be using it again.

For this card, I used new stamps that I got from Storage Units, Ink & More. I have never used these stamps before but this little St. Patrick's set was adorable so I gave them a go. These are polymer stamps of very good quality. Like most of my good quality polymer stamps, I need to do one initial stamp off on scrap paper and then I get great images. These ran true to form. After that first image to get the ink on the stamp, these inked up very nicely.

The image is colored with various prismacolor and copic markers and the gold has a bit of gold spica pen to make it sparkle. The paper is from Reminisce.

Hope our day is a lovely one. I have more new stamps to show off tomorrow. See you then!

Happy Mail

Today I am working on wedding shower invites. Not all that super interesting after like the thirtieth time! But I will put on some music or a book on tape on and let my mind wander as I work.

Since I don't have any fun stuff of my own to show, let's show some fun mail from others instead. Here are the three I've randomly picked from cards I received recently....

This first one is a pretty card from Dianne. Pink and brown is one of my all time favorite color combos and I really like how she mixed the papers too.

This second card is from Mary. I opened it up and my first word was, wow! Between the pretty stamped background, the awesome window and the sparkly butterflies, I fell in love with this card right away.

 

Gail sent me this sweet heart pocket card. Inside was an awesome mango tea tea bag. I am a big tea fan!

I hope to take a picture or two tomorrow and be back with something of my own. Have a fantastic day!

The Almost Button Card

Mo and I are going out tonight so I thought I'd blog a little earlier today before I forgot. This card started out as my attempt at the CAS one button challenge this week. As I went to look for the button I realized I didn't have any that were small enough or the right color. That didn't stop me - I just improvised.

The pattern block was the jumping off point for this card. I stamped the design (Papertrey Ink) several times in SU garden green ink. Because I am horrible at eyeballing, I made this on a slightly bigger piece of cardstock. I then cut out the rectangle with my nestibilities so the design would be evenly centered.

Since St. Patrick's Day is approaching, I decided to go with the green, goldish, and ivory (white was too stark) colors. Alright, I took a little artistic license with the colors, but you get the picture. The patterned paper is Basic Grey from a couple of years ago.

The center design was supposed to be where the button would go but like I said, I had none that would match. I pulled out my Swarovski crystals and found these great topaz colored ones. They match the paper perfectly and since it doesn't take much to make me happy, I was thrilled. And there you have a quick, simple all occasion card that just so happens to match the St. Patrick's theme. Ionically, we are going tonight to a fundraiser for the St. Patrick's Day parade so that seems to be my theme for the day. Hope you have a good one!

Starting to go Green

I missed you all yesterday. Mo had to work from home and he took the computer ALL day long - no breaks. While I missed checking out all my blogging friends, I did get a chance to work on the SCS sketch challenge for the week. I originally started work on this one on Wednesday but couldn't wrap my head around it. So I put it aside and yesterday things started to click a little better.

 I have had these bella (Stamping Bella) images colored for a few weeks now so I pulled them out for the challenge. I hemmed and hawed about colors and the paper I would use but I really liked this paper from Basic Grey, I believe, so I kept coming back to that.

Bella is colored with copic markers and everything else is just a matter of layering.

Stamping time was limited yesterday. I was using my newly sharpened knives for chopping when yep, cut my thumb. My taping thumb. It's not deep enough for stitches, just more of a nuisance. Today it feels better so I should be back at it with no problem!

Have a great day!

Grand or Great?

If someone is your parent's aunt, are they considered a great aunt or a grand aunt? Today I said goodbye to Aunt Marian, my dad's aunt. I have not seen much of her in recent years but will remember her fondly from when I was younger.

The card I have today was actually made last week. We had another wake to attend last week and this was made to give to Mo's uncle, hence the color scheme.

The tree (Cornish Heritage) and the sentiment (Papertrey) are both stamped in palette burnt umber. Overall, a fairly simple design but I like the simplicity of it, especially for a sympathy card.

A big hello to my Ocean's 11 blogging buddies. I'm carving out some surfing time tomorrow to check out your blogs and add everyone to my blogroll. Have a great night!

Button Friend

The more I stamp, the more I realize how much I love CAS (clean and simple) cards. There is something so pleasing to me with all that white space. It's probably a reaction to all the clutter in my house. If I can't have clean spaces at home, I can have them in my art!

I made this card for Splitcoast's CAS02 challenge. We were challenged to use one button on a CAS design.

I have had this flower (from See-D's I think) stamped and matted for ages. It sat there for months while I figured out what I wanted to do with it. Today, I knew. The flower is stamped with SU's real red ink.

I wanted to have just a little sentiment so I pulled out this one from Papertrey and stamped it with PTI's brown ink. Add the button and a quick, simple card.

Sorry about the picture. I took it a few times and fiddled with it when I uploaded. The light was just not with me today.

Quiet day here - hope you all had a good one!

Not Ready to Give Up Valentine's

I had a posting plan this weekend. Meghan's stomach bug threw my plans out the window (or down the drain, pun intended). So I'm just going with the flow here and keeping with the plan, just a couple of days late.

Here's the little gift we brought in for the teachers for their Valentine's gift. I took one of those wood bucket like things (what DO you call this thing?) and painted it with acrylic paint.

I added a layer of cardstock and pretty patterned paper and finished it off with a nice big flower and some Swarovski crystals.

For the inside, I first filled it up a bit with floral foam. I then put a layer of red shredded paper before adding the Hershey kisses and Hershey sticks. I had big plans of decorating the sticks and making them flowers but well, I'm a procrastinator and life (and germs) got in the way. Plan B went with the simple placement of candy.

Dare I say it? I think we may have turned a corner here and Meg may be on her way to feeling better. I'm hopeful that the rest of the week will be healthy and uneventful. Have a great night!