Coffee

I'm working on some challenges this morning and I came up with this card for the current CASology challenge - Washi. I used Washi tape to decorate the coozie on my coffee cup!

I had to tilt the card a little in the photo so the sentiment would show up better. I heat embossed it in gold to give it a little shine, but it's hard to capture in pictures. The rest of the card is pretty straight forward. I used a die to create my coffee cup and covered a square in the washi tape before I die cut the coozie from it. I added some drips and dribbles with my stamps and then popped the cup up with some foam tape for dimension.

I'm also adding this to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.

Drips and Dribbles	Caffeine Crush	Coffee Cup	Neenah Solar White 80 lb	Neenah Desert Storm	Real Red Cardstock	Versamark	Soft Suede
3M Foam Tape	Ranger Multi Medium Matte

InLinkz.com

Share Handmade Kindness

I'm participating in Jennifer McGuire's Share Handmade Kindness Challenge this month! I'm super excited to encourage myself to send the things I'm making. Too many times, I just put it in my stash and think I'll send it later and then later becomes even later and then never. It's a bad cycle and one I can't wait to break! This week is about sending handmade kindness to friends and family.

Today, I made a card for a friend I haven't seen in about a year. I miss her dearly and I wanted to let her know that I'm thinking about her.

I used the Frappi Anya stamp from The Greeting Farm because she looks a little bit like my friend and she just LOVES coffee. All together, this card uses products from a total of 6 companies! (Wow!) I'm putting it in the mail tomorrow. In fact, it's already to go with an addressed envelope and everything. (I'm so proud of myself!) I hope she enjoys this card as much as I enjoyed making it!

I'm also going to enter this into the Simon Monday Challenge (Glossy) because I added glossy accents to the heart on the cup, her bracelet, and her shoes. Hard to show in a picture, but it's really pretty in real life. It's also going into the Simon Wednesday Challenge (Anything Goes).

Supplies:
Stamps: Frappi Anya (The Greeting Farm), Drips & Dribbles (Papertrey Ink), Love You a Latte (Lawn Fawn), Happy Mail (WPlus9)
Dies: Stitched Rectangles (Simon Says Stamp)
Paper: Neenah Solar White, Crumb Cake
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark, Crumb Cake, Soft Suede, Assorted Copics
Other: Glossy Accents, 4mm and 6mm Espresso Sequins (Pretty Pink Posh), Silver embossing powder

Simon Monday and The Challenge 34

I'm back! We had a ton of fun in Vegas with our friends, but I'm glad to be back home with my fur-children and my craft room. Travelling is always fun, but sometimes it takes you some time to recover when you finally get home!

I started playing with my ink and paper today with some inspiration from The Challenge #34.

These colors always remind me of fruit and with summer coming up, I just gave in and played with some fruit images.

I'm submitting this first card to The Challenge because I just love how it turned out. I used Papertrey Ink's Bowl of Sunshine for the fruit, but I swiped the sentiment from MFT Stamps You're the Sweetest set. I added some Wink of Stella to the fruit for some glimmer, but it's really hard to capture in a photo.



Supplies:
Stamps: Bowl of Sunshine (PTI), You're the Sweetest (MFT)
Dies: Stitched Rectangles (SSS), Bowl of Sunshine (PTI)
Paper: Kraft, Whisper White
Ink: Fake Tan, Sunflower, Mowed Lawn (Lawn Fawn), Sahara Sand, Baked Brown Sugar, Soft Suede
Other: Clear Wink of Stella

This next card I made for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge. Again, I used the colors from the Challenge because they were on my desk and just went with my fruit theme. The challenge this week is to use Simon Exclusive products, so I broke out some stamp sets and had fun.

I used the You're the Sweetest and Lemonade sets for this card. It's so easy to change up the type of fruit with just a simple color change!

Supplies:
Stamps: You're the Sweetest (SSS), Lemonade (SSS)
Dies: Stitched Rectangles (SSS)
Paper: Wild Wasabi, Whisper White, Vellum
Ink: Mowed Lawn, Sunflower, Fake Tan, Black Licorice (Lawn Fawn)
Other: Yellow Baker's Twine, Moonshine Sequins



Papertrey March Blog Hop Challenge

When I saw the inspiration for Papertrey Ink's March 2015 Blog Hop, I knew I just had to play along.

That yellow and blue combo is absolutely one of my favorites and it immediately made me think of a bowl of lemons. I'll admit, maybe it's because I've been using that stamp set recently, but I thought the Bowl of Sunshine stamps went perfectly with these colors.

 

I went for a clean and simple style with this card. I know I've been playing with backgrounds recently, but I thought I'd get back to my roots. You can't see in the photo, but I used a little clear Wink of Stella on the lemons to give them some sparkle and shine. I finished off the simple stamped image by inking on a black border using a pen and ruler.

 

Supplies:

Stamps: Bowl of Sunshine (PTI)

Ink: Daffodil Delight, Pool Party, Wild Wasabi, Sahara Sand, Early Espresso

Paper: Whisper White

Other: Black pen, ruler, Wink of Stella, Post-It Tape (masking) 

Experimenting with Backgrounds

As most of you know, I just don't like designer paper. If I want to reproduce a card, inevitably I'll have run out of the paper I used and then I'm stuck. I much prefer to create my own backgrounds so I can reproduce if I love a design.

This week, I've been experimenting with backgrounds. Some were really pretty and others sort of look like a mess, but at least it was fun!

I bought some new watercolor paper so I was eager to get my brushes out again. I created this card by simply dipping a brush in water and then my ink and transferring to a wet paper. I dried the colors and then re-added the ink to create those harder edges that you see. When I was finished with that, I dripped water onto the paper and blotted it away with a paper towel to create the bleached spots. Finish it up with an embossed sentiment and you have a cute birthday card.

Supplies:
Stamps: Fabulous Four
Paper, Whisper White, Strathmore Watercolor
Ink: Daffodil Delight, Garden Green, Pacific Point, Versamark
Other: Watercolor brushes, gold glitter embossing powder

I actually wasn't as happy with how this one turned out, but I think it's because I really don't have a great floral set. I have flowers, but I'm just not happy with them. I'll be looking around for something different. I used a light watercolor wash in the background and then stamped and die cut my flowers. I added a few candy dots (made from perler beads) to the centers of my flowers and then added a few  glossy accents randomly around the card. The sentiment was heat embossed on vellum and attached under the flowers.

Supplies:
Stamps: Flower Patch, Holiday Home (sentiment)
Paper: Whisper White, Strathmore Watercolor, Vellum
Ink: Strawberry Slush, Tangelo Twist, Crisp Cantaloupe, Daffodil Delight, Wild Wasabi, Garden Green, Versamark
Other: White embossing powder, candy dots, Glossy Accents

I used the same design from my last post for this card, but I wanted to experiment with the background. I used a stencil and two different colors to sponge on the dots. Then I offset the stencil and used a white gel pen to trace the inside of each circle. It gives it a little bit of an optical illusion that creates dimension. I stamped and die cut my bowl of fruit and then heat embossed the sentiment. Finish it with some crochet thread and attach your panel to a card base.

Supplies:
Stamps: Bowl of Sunshine (Papertrey Ink)
Paper: Whisper White, Kraft
Ink: Strawberry Slush, Tangelo Twist, Daffodil Delight, Wild Wasabi, Versamark
Other: Crochet Thread, White embossing powder, Glitz embossing powder, Circle Stencil, White gel pen

Bowl of Sunshine Birthday

Friday the 13th has always sort of been a lucky day for me. I don't know why, but it seems like good things always happen on that day! And today...inspiration struck!

This is just such a fun birthday card! I used a piece of Kraft paper and sponged some Baked Brown Sugar through a stencil (I think it was a Heidi Swapp). I made sure to vary the amount of ink on the card so that it faded toward the center. I just liked how it framed my die-cut and my sentiment. I die cut the bowl from Pistachio Pudding and heat embossed the white stripes on the front. Then I stamped the apples, stems, and leaves and die cut that piece. The die leaves a longer white border on the bottom of the fruit, so it was super easy to adhere my two pieces together for the perfect bowl!

All that was left was to heat emboss the sentiment beneath the bowl (which was popped up with dimensionals) and wrap some off-white crochet thread around the panel. I used foam tape to adhere to panel to a top-folding card base and it was all done! Easy-peasy!

Supplies:
Stamps: Bowl of Sunshine (Papertrey Ink)
Paper: Whisper White, Kraft, Pistachio Pudding
Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Chocolate Chip, Versamark
Other: White embossing powder, Off-White crochet thread

Monogram Madness!

Just a quick detour from card making...My husband and I adopted a new kitten just before Christmas and she's a sweetheart! Adding her to our family brings us up to 2 dogs and 3 cats. I know, that's a little crazy, but I just can't seem to find the heart to say no when I see an animal in need. She was found in a live trap outside of our vet's office. They believe that she was dumped at the RV sales place next door with her litter and that she was the only one that survived. If we didn't take her home, then they were either going to release her again or take her to a shelter. I gave my husband the "sad eyes" and we ended up taking her home with us! I mean, how could you say no to this?

 

Introducing a new pet to the family is always a trial and error process, but I think we've achieved harmony in our house.

 

Our Great Dane, Jax, just adores his new sister, Penny. He thinks she's his baby.

 

And for her part, Penny isn't afraid of anything. She's definitely made herself at home with us.

Okay, now back to the cards!

I decided that I needed some monogram cards in my stash. Sometimes I need to send a card that doesn't need a particular sentiment and I love having some monogram stationery on hand for these occasions.

This one is probably my favorite of the bunch. I used PTI's Drips and Dribbles to create the coffee stains and then added my initial with Sophisticated Serifs. It fits in the with my personality and love of coffee!

This card was made using PTI's Bowl of Sunshine and the smaller letters from Sophisticated Serifs. I absolutely loved how this turned out, so I used the same stamps to create different bowls of fruit for a cute set of 5.

And finally I decided to create some cards with my husband's and my initials. It looks kind of like thank you stationery for after a wedding, but I still love it.

 

I used the Your Perfect Day and Sophisticated Serifs sets for these cards and I love the way they turned out. It's a little girly for my husband's taste, but when does he send the cards anyway? He'll survive my sending out some girly cards in his name!

 

Supplies:



Stamps: Drips & Dribbles (Papertrey Ink), Bowl of Sunshine (Papertrey Ink), Sophisticated Serifs, Your Perfect Day
Paper: Whisper White
Ink: Baked Brown Sugar, Early Espresso, Crisp Cantaloupe, Daffodil Delight, Wild Wasabi, Crumb Cake, Pear Pizzazz, Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Coastal Cabana, Smoky Slate, Tangelo Twist, Old Olive, Calypso Coral, Blushing Bride