Whirlpool of Imagination

Tree of Hearts

Happy Wednesday! I have been engulfed with all sorts of reds and pinks this past week as I look to Valentine's Day and get a little crafty.

Today I pulled out this cute stamp from Taylored Expressions and had some fun coloring.

I pulled out my copics and a glitter red spica pen and got to coloring. It's been a while since I've used stamps that need me to sit down and color so it was fun. I'm not sure I have the patience to color every day which is why you won't see only these types of images - LOL!

This set has all sorts of little tree images for all seasons. I've yet to try any of the others yet but I definitely will!

Limited computer time due to muscle spasms (I think) so I'm making this quick. Have a fabulous day!

 

Chinese New Year!!

Today's the day of celebration for the Chinese New Year. I've got two more cards to show off to celebrate the year of the Dragon.

Red and gold are the colors you see most often with this celebration and that's what I did for my first two attempts. But I wanted to dig a little deeper so I asked a client who celebrates the holiday with her family what colors work for this celebration.

I found out that blue is a complete NO-NO. This is a color of funerals in the Chinese culture so definitely not a color you want on CNY cards. In the end, she advised me to stay away from blue, white, green and black.

Good colors to use turned out to be red, pinks, orange, yellows, golds and pastels of those colors. In going with the spirit of things, I came up with the following two designs.

I used the same dragon stamp from Rubber Stampede on both of these designs.

And now it's time to hang up my little dragon stamp and move onto Valentine's Day. I've been busy thinking and creating so expect lots of hearts in the coming days!

Have a great night!

Little Gold Dragon

I bet you thought I'd skipped out on the rest of my Chinese New Year cards but I got myself back into the swing of blogging this morning so here is the second my my CNY series.

This one goes with the same color scheme as the iris folded dragon from m y previous post. It's fascinating how different cultures view color (I'll talk about that more tomorrow) and this is one color combo that works for this holiday which is why it got the double treatment.

This dragon image is a stamp from Rubber Stampede. I decided to pull out my heat gun and gold emobssed it. The panel behind it is embossed with an embossing folder and then I dry brushed it with gold paint. The gold layers are made from Gina K gold card stock - first time I've tried this stuff - it's fabulous!

And that's all for today - tomorrow I take the same image but give it a totally different look. Stay tuned!

Preparing for the Year of the Dragon

Happy Tuesday! I took a little break over the holiday weekend and am ready to jump right into the Chinese New Year!

Do you know that we are fast approaching the Chinese New Year. It will begin on January 23rd. This year is the year of the dragon and this week I have several cards to show that will celebrate the dragon.

Today I went with an iris folded dragon.

The dragon image was hand cut from a template I found on Circle of Crafters and then the image was filled in with a shiny gold paper ribbon. I kept the dragon size fairly large so I went with an A7 card size.The edges seemed a bit empty so I added a gold border to finish the card off.

Lots of fun to create but be careful with the shiny paper ribbons. It's very easy to get your fingerprints all over it! I ended up using a cloth I have for getting fingerprints off pictures for scrapbooking. I worked carefully in the direction of the ribbon and was able to get the picture cleaned up and looking shiny again.

I'll be back this week with some more dragon examples. Have a great day!

The Triangle Rule

In Day Two (woohoo, I'm on a roll here people) of my card making class, they talk about the idea of visual triangles on one layer cards.

As usual, I took the basic idea but then steered off the beaten path.

This card is not a one layer card and I'm not sure if one of the components of the triangle was supposed to be a sentiment but mine is not.

This is a little different for me and pretty plain in a non-CAS way but I went back and forth with placing more items on it and nixed that idea every time.

The beige-ish layer is a piece of ivory card stock that was tea stained. No big technique there - I brewed some black tea and "painted" the pieces with the brewed water. I liked the tea look better on an ivory base than a white base. On white, the contrast was too stark.

Side note: we have a lot of different herbal teas and such. You can play around with them and colors. Different tea types have much different distinct colors.

The stamps are from Stampin' Up and I just played around with these items in some sort of triangle.

A bit different for me but I'm liking the tea stained background. I really think I need to brew some pomegranate tea!

Have a great night.

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!

Scrapbooking in 2012

Last year my scrapping took a new direction when I discovered junque journals. I loved the "old school" feel of these books and I enjoyed the process much more than what traditional scrapbooking has become.

Sometime over the last few months of 2011, I discovered the blog of Stephanie Ackerman. Little did I know I had been enjoying her stamp designs from Purple Onion, but now I could see her creative work on a more regular basis. She's designed a brand new class for 2012 that I knew I wanted to take as soon as I saw the info about it!

 

Want to read more about how the class came about and what to expect? Click here to take you to the pertinent post. Stephanie has decided to keep registration open until the end of January so you still have time to sign up if you like what you see.

Personal thoughts on my "Scrapbook Life Journal" journey so far: I have very little physical to show you but my mind has been whirling. I already see a change in what I want for myself this year and how I want to live my life. I am really happy I chose to give this class a try. Nine days in and it's already worth the cost (and more).

If you do decide to join up, I'll see you on the FB page!

Last Day for Bicycle Cards

I've just discovered Stampin' Up's In Color Calyso Coral - so super pretty! I used it to make my final bicycle card for the week.

I mixed the peach with the coral although I didn't fo a great job editing this picture to show that!

As a reminder, the bike is from Paper and Such and the sentiment, stamped in cocoa, is from Papertrey.

Next week I have another series coming to you courtesy of a customer request.

Have a great night!

Day Two of my Bicycle Cards

It's amazing how one stamp can thrill you to stamp and then stamp again and then stamp some more. I've gotten into the rut of the same old stamp designs, that when I got this stamp, I just felt the need to create.

Today's card is just slightly more involved than yesterday's simple card.

As a reminder, the stamp is from Paper and Such.

I used another one of my favorite colors, marina mist.

And did you see that scallop ribbon? It's gorgeous in person from Stampin' Up. I feel the need to get every.single.color.

This new year has been a creative boon for me. I've been in a rut for way too long ~ it feels great to just make something again! Hope this year is giving you a creative boost too!

Using My Christmas Gift

This Christmas, one of my gifts from the kids was this stamp set from Paper and Such. I adore that bicycle and the ideas are swirling around on how to use it.

Today I started with a super simple CAS design (redundant but emphasis on the simple) - but really, anything that uses rose red is just lovely - that's one of my favorite Stampin' Up colors.

For this one, I went a little smaller in the A1 size. The image is just the tright size to focus on that with this size.

Tomorrow I'll be back with a few more elements in a card using this stamp. See you then!