Whirlpool of Imagination

Birthday Numbers

A couple of months ago I challenged the members of my card guild to create something using vegetables as the inspiration. I decided to create a card and use this as a color inspiration. I chose an avocado and it's shades of green.

The cake stamp is from Spunky Stamps and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

This is a layout design that I like and use often. I decided to have a little fun with the background layer. I took a lighter piece of green cardstock and used the numbers cuttlebug folder on it to emboss it. I then painted the entire thing with a darker green. Once dry, I took a piece of sandpaper and rubbed off some of the paint to reveal the lighter green below.

I love using paint but usually just dry brush some on. This time I went with fuller coverage and then removal of some color. It's a totally different look but lots of fun in a slightly distressed way.

I am finally almost done with my moving announcements - phew. But I can't seem to find all my A7 envelopes from the move - oops - quick trip for some envies for me!

Have a great day!

Bunny Mini's

I've been wanting to make some more mini cards for the Easter category of my store ~ they are a great item for adding to Easter baskets and my inventory has been a bit slim. When I saw the little bunny metal die,  I thought he would be perfect for such a project.

Here's the pink and blue versions....

The sentiment is from Spunky Stamps and  I pulled out my beloved Bobunny dots paper/ card stock.

I've come to the realization that dots and stripes are my weakness. If the patterns have dots or stripes, I just can't resist it. Luckily, I've been staying away from the stores as I have enough patterned paper to last me three lifetimes!

Musn't ramble - it's UCONN basketball tonight ~ go Huskies!

Unusual Colors

A while back I was given a challenge to create anniversary card using the colors orange and brown. Luckily my client still had the wedding invitation so I could match the shades of orange and brown a little better.

The invite was fun with lots of circles and color. I decided to try to recreate that feel for their anniversary card.

I took the picture first thing in the morning when it was dark so forgive the lighting. I used a combination of circles and dots in the orange and brown using Papertrey and Spunky Stamps. The sentiment is from Verve.

I was happy with how the final product matched the original wedding invite but I had a few moments of panic when I first discovered the color combo!

Have a great night.

Back to School Reading

In honor of the kiddos going back to school, I thought I'd focus on reading and those bookmarks I like to make to hold your place.

This one is stamped with a Gina K image in cherry cobbler ink.

The soccer ball image is from Spunky Stamps and stamped with real red ink.

And for those animal lovers, we have a paw print stamped with cocoa bean ink. I can't tell you who the image is from though - no markings on the stamp.

I am participating in my first blog hop very shortly. Tomorrow I'm showing a bit of a sneak peek. See you then!

Today we have a CAS card - as if I do much else!!

I had to laugh at Michelle's comment yesterday about me and the CAS challenges. I really don't need a CAS challenge to do CAS do I???? Surprise, surprise - today I have a card I did for yesterday's Splitcoast CAS challenge. The challenge was to make a birthday card.

On Sunday I got the wild notion to make shaving cream backgrounds with my kids. Now, the plus to all that was Mo is down to his last can of shaving cream so we were only able to make one color set (thereby cutting down on ink and shaving cream incidents). We mixed Stampin' Up's brilliant blue with a couple of other blue shades from CTMH. We then swirled in some CTMH key lime reinker to add a bit of pizzaz to the blue.

The kids wanted more color (what kid doesn't?) so then we tried adding some pomegranate (SU). I think that was when we hit the too much color stage. One of the three color sheets came out okay but I was really alright with the kids taking those sheets and me taking the blue and green ones - LOL! What's neat is that now I have some great backgrounds already created so once I knew the direction this card was taking, it turned out to be pretty fast to create.

The stamp is from Spunky Stamps and inked with brilliant blue ink. The sentiment is from Papertrey and also inked with brilliant blue. The rest is pretty obvious. I'm off to yoga for some inner peace - namaste!

Blue Birthday Truck

Happy Friday! I had planned to make this post last night but I got the chance to hang out and talk with Meg just girl talk. She doesn't always want to do that anymore so I took advantage of it and we spent my computer time chatting. It was time totally well spent!

So today you get my masculine card instead. This card was a customer request. She asked for this truck in blue. Beyond that, I had free rein.

I like using kraft cardstock (a lot) and decided it would pair nicely with the blue. The truck is from River City Rubber and it stamped with Palette Prussian Blue ink. The sentiment is from Spunky Stamps and uses the same blue ink.

The patterned paper is from Bo Bunny and is called Walnut Stripes. You don't need a full explanation for this card.

I am still having a tough time believing that June is really here. I think its partly due to the chilly temperatures, the rain and the three weeks we have left of school! This weekend we celebrate my mom who just had her birthday yesterday. Oops - I need to go make her a card! Hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Getting A Face Lift

Nope, no face lift for me. My cards.....that's another matter. Since I have a running inventory that my clients work from, very often someone will pick an older card from my catalog of designs. At times, for various reasons, that exact card is no longer available. Whether its because I cannot get that specific paper anymore, or a really don't like the design anymore, or sometimes I just want to change it because I have an itch to. Today, I had an itch to change a card so that's how I spent my day.

I'm not sure either of these companies is even producing new stamps anymore but there are similar stamps out there in the market.

The cupcake tower stamp is from a company which was called Inkspirations. I stamped it in palette noir ink and colored with prismacolor markers.

PC Markers: cool grey 50%, cornflower, crimson red, cool grey 10%

I used a stardust sakura jelly roll pen for the cupcake tops and a glaze pen to go over the red in the cherries.

The sentiment is from a company called Spunky Stamps and is stamped in plum ink (from Stampin' Up). I used an SU circle punch and nesties for the sentiment.

I kept many of the same elements of the original card, including the color scheme and the overall layout. I made some minor changes to the layout and changed the ribbon, although I'm still thinking that will change again. I think this design is definitely still transitioning but another set is good to go for now.

I was all excited for my day off yesterday when a 24 hour stomach bug hit me hard. Sadly, no stamping was done this weekend - at least the bug waited to hit until I had a day off from all my responsibilities! Luckily, I'm feeling 1000x better today and am looking forward to the week. Have a great day!

Meg is sketching again

Last year Meg did up a couple of sketches for the blog and my job was to make something with those sketches. Then she went through a dry spell where she was overthinking them so she gave it up and just started to draw things (meanwhile, I have some fabulous Star War scenes that she has since created!). Last week I gave her one of my stamped penguins from TAC to fool around with. Before you know it, she comes up with a card created. I really liked the layout so I challenged myself to create a card with her design.

Here is Meg's finished card.

And here is my version of Meg's design. The background is created using red line tape and Martha Stewart glitter. The words are from Spunky Stamps (yes, the last thing I did was stamp that crooked joy but I'll just have to learn to live with it). The bella is from Stamping Bella. She's paper pieced and colored with prismacolor pencils and baby oil and for the heart I used a copic spica pen. I wanted a bit more sparkle so I added Swarovski crystals for the corner.

Would you like to create a card with Meg's basic layout/design? If you do, please leave a comment - meg gets such a kick out of checking out your creations.

Have a great night!

Watercolor Leaf

  Time for another set of notecards. I wanted to do something Thanksgiving but I don't have any traditional images - no turkeys or pilgrims or such. Instead I decided to pull out one of my favorite leaf stamps and use that. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this stamp is from Spunky Stamps, but don't depend on me for that one. Whenever I use this stamp, I always like to use my watercolor crayons. Depending on how wet I spray the stamp, this image can be blurry or very detailed with all the leaf striations.

I used orange and red crayons and colored right onto the stamp. I then spritzed it with water. I usually kind of go over it again a little bit with the crayon once wet. Then stamp. A lot of times I will do several generations with the one spritz which gives me all sorts of neat variations on the same image.

I found this leaf paper in my (HUGE) stack of patterned paper and thought it matched quite nicely.

And here is the set of them. If you look closely, you'll see the ones on the left are a bit "thicker" for want of a better word. The leaf images on the right are a bit more delicate.

I'm thinking of sending in quick Thanksgiving notes to the teachers tomorrow since it's the last day before the vacation starts.

If you are traveling for the holiday, I hope you have safe travels!

Anniversary Mice

Yesterday was my anniversary - 9 wonderful years with Mo.

There we are on the steps of the church. I can't believe how young we look. There is a lot more grey and a few more "character" lines but I love him as much now as I did then. And I'm super excited to see what the future brings for us.

I find making cards for Mo pretty difficult, especially for something like this. I don't want it to be too mushy (he is SO not a mushy guy) but I still want it to be romantic, at least in my eyes. Since I am a big fan of cute, you'll probably notice I lean that way a lot and for themes such as this, I really lean towards cute.

In addition, I decided to use this card as a way to fulfill Bonnie's pen pal challenge. We were to use critters in some way. Stamp critters are generally cute even if the real things are not (I shudder here as I saw a mouse in my garage yesterday - I shooed that thing out REALLY fast). Bonnie is a big fan of House Mouse designs so that was her first choice of critter. I don't have a lot of HM stamps but I pulled out the few that I had and found the perfect one for Mo's card.

                                           

Here we go. The mice are colored with prismacolor pencils and blended with baby oil. I used a sakura sparkle gelly roll pen for the flowers and the sentiment is from Spunky Stamps. And to give it an added something, I pulled out my velvet brads from Doodlebug. Since the HM design is so large, I made this a bigger card than I usually do, going with the 5x7 rather than normal A2. I love this paper and wanted to be able to showcase it a little bit in the background.

I hope you have a fantastic day. It's pouring rain here so I'm staying inside and creating!