Sunday 29 April 2012

FS273 - Abbysmom

Man, this one wore me out! lol!

I chose a beautiful card from abbysmom's gallery, and then proceeded to CASE it in the most difficult way I could think of. Everything went wrong and was picky, picky, picky. This card did NOT want to be made! lol! But then I recovered and made two more (one's for tomorrow).

Here's my inspiration from abbysmom:



Here's my finicky  CASE, which was also influenced by the gardens full of tulips in my neighbourhood.



I used the Dancing Tulips die from Memory Box, cut it out of the white panel 6 times (and then glued back in the tiny little white pieces that weren't still attached). Then I cut the tulip heads from Tangerine Tango and Melon Mambo and glued them into the holes. I was happy that by doing it this way, the green from the card base showed through for the stems, and I'm quite happy with the result but I can't say I'll be rushing to try it again! lol!

Then I made an easier one, using a Martha Stewart Blossom punch:



Hope you have as much sunshine as we do - I'm heading out to take my daughter and her friend to the park to play baseball AWAY from the windows!

Saturday 28 April 2012

IC334 - Rosenberry Rooms and Mojo Monday 238

A kids' decor site for today's Inspiration Challenge. Rosenberry Rooms has so much to see - once again I had a hard time choosing.

Inspiration #1





Inspiration #2






Inspiration #3




Inspiration #4 (my favourite!) and I'm also entering this into this week's Mojo Monday 238 challenge.





For supplies, please click on the link to my Splitcoaststampers Gallery.

Afternoon Fun with Funky Flowers

This week's CASual Friday challenge is to make a card with flowers or trees. Well. How easy is that? The hard part is to choose only one! lol!

I have this set Funky Flowers, by My Stamp Box, which had not yet been inked, so I played around for a while. Not everything worked, but here are a few that I quite like.

First, the one for CFC 50 - The 'stems' are actually one of the Funky Flowers.




Next, this one uses Stampin' Up!'s Summer Smooches colour scheme and designer paper, along with white enamel accents for the flower centres.






This set has the sweetest little butterfly. I chose last week's (yes I'm too late to play) Play Date Cafe colour combination:




Then I went cool, maybe even a little Asian?



Finally, who says you can't make a masculine card with a Funky Flower set?



This is now one well-loved stamp set! Thanks for stopping by! 

Friday 27 April 2012

Playing Around

I don't have any challenge cards for today, so here's a mishmash of different things I've been doing over the past couple of weeks:


Something about the asymmetry  in this one is not sitting well with me - maybe I need a smaller swirl of dots so that it's not as close to the edges. But I do like the colours (and I'm dying to stamp "You're a Star" in the lower left corner, but do you think I can find that sentiment anywhere in my stash?! lol!)




This one and the next are products of my "You and Me" venn diagram card from the other day. This Hero Arts set comes with a number of &'s, and I thought it could make a nice wedding card, even without the Mr and Mrs. I started plain and simple in black and white, but I'm not sure people will get it (I may add to this to make the message clearer).



Then I went white on white, more traditionally 'wedding'. I embossed the edges of the cardbase  with the same silver pearl embossing powder as the ampersands, which I placed on a large acrylic block and then stamped to fill the panel. I think it's elegant, but still may need "Wedding Wishes" or something.



This was inspired by a lot of the nautical shirts and tops that are around this spring, along with an added pop of colour.




Finally, a fun clock inspired by a photo on Pinterest. All the 'numbers' and the hands were cut using the word window punch (and the hands' ends cut off with the corner of a square punch). Then they were placed using a protractor to ensure the correct angles (if you can believe it - who knew there was so much math in cardmaking?!) That's a brad in the middle, so you can move the hands if you want. Finished off with a fun sentiment from Paper Smooches.



Thursday 26 April 2012

My Birthday Day at Michael's

On Sunday, I was running all over town, dropping off this kid, picking up that one. I guess one of the benefits of a day like this is that you may get half an hour to spend browsing in Michael's. I'm not a huge fan - I find the selection limited and the prices high - but every once in a while I have a good shopping trip there.

I browsed the $1.50 bargain bin to find three of these stamps. When I got home, I put them in my 'birthday' drawer. Today I had some time to play, and pulled them out, along with the one on the right, that I've had for a long time.



Here's what I ended up with:


I knew I probably would never use the Wish Big! sentiment, so I just cut it off. But then I couldn't find my 'bird-day' sentiment, so ended up using this one, which I think works quite well. (just noticing now, that two of the stamps were rows of images, and I made this one into a row of images!) 




When I stamped this stamp, I saw little hearts in the bows, so I decided to colour only the bows, to emphasize them. Of course there are many possibilities for this stamp - Christmas, birthday, colourful etc, etc.





This is a different treatment of a row stamp. I knew I wanted an all-round border, but using a stamp like this on corners can be tricky. This is my solution - stamp to the left end on each side. You should see how this glows in real life - I put a tiny dab of diamond stickles in each flame and the sparkle is really pretty!










This stamp has been in and out of my 'sell' pile many times over the years (you can see the remains of a price tag on it!) - I always felt like I was limited in how it could be used, but I think this proves otherwise. Repetition is one way to take a small stamp and make a bigger card out of it. I made the 'grey' one first - I'm so pleased with the sparkle on the neutral background squares. Then I thought I would do another one with the same layout, but just black and white, but somehow ended up with turquoise and red and lots of stickles again (have I mentioned that stickles are probably my favourite card making tool - it's rare to find a card that couldn't look prettier with stickles! LOL!)


Supplies:
Birds
Stamps: Michael's, ? Sentiment
Paper: Whisper White, Ballet Blue, Summer Sun
Ink: Memento Tuxedo
Accessories: Copic Markers, stickles


Heart Presents
Stamps: Michael's
Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Memento Tuxedo
Accessories: Copic Marker, stickles


Candles
Stamps: Michael's, Hero Arts
Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Gina K pure Luxury
Ink: Memento Tuxedo
Accessories: Copic Markers, Stickles


Red/Turquoise Square Birthday
Stamps: Stampendous
Paper: Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Memento Tuxedo
Accessories: Copic Markers, Stickles


Grey Square Birthday
Stamps: Stampendous
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Grey, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Memento Tuxedo
Accessories: Copic Markers, Stickles

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Time to Celebrate

Time for a quick post before I head out to see Itzhak Perlman with the Toronto Symphony tonight with my dad. Although my parents live out of town, for the last few years my dad and I have bought annual subscriptions to the TSO. The TSO is a wonderful orchestra (and this season is their 90th anniversary, so there are lots of amazing special guests), but the best part is the special time that I get to spend with my dad.

But back to the post. This set, Time, by Uniko Studios is really fun. It has 3 geometric flowers (all the same, just different sizes) and lots of clocks and gears and punny, time-y sentiments. I used the small flower as a border to make this card:


I admit I had moments of doubt about this colour combination, (it came from my Stampin' Up colour cards), but overall I'm pretty happy with it - I get kind of a Tiffany lamp feel from it.

Lots of cards coming up tomorrow - I had fun at Michael's earlier in the week!

Supplies:
Stamps: Time - Uniko Studios
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Acessories: Circle Nestabilities, Doodlebug Ink gem

Retrosketch # 8 - Double the Joy

Here's this week's Retrosketch:



First I made this one, reversing the sketch:


And then I thought, man, I should have made it square - there's SO MUCH green on this (as much as I love this dp!)

So I made this (and in real life, the red paper actually matches the red ink):


Which do you prefer?

Supplies:
Stamps: My Stamp Box (lots of dots)
Paper: SU! DP, Riding Hood Red, Gina K Pure Luxury Cream
Ink: Riding Hood Red
Accessories: Circle nestabilities, Diamond Stickles

Tuesday 24 April 2012

CASual Friday - CFC 49 - Synergy

Yesterday, someone suggested that I (dared me to (lol!)) try out this week's CASual Friday sketch:



I could not come up with anything for the squares, so I focused on the interlocking/joining piece of the two elements and came up with this:



Remember way back to Venn diagrams? This card represents the fact that two people together can be magic. Or fireworks. Or better than what they are separately. Or something. Hey, I've been married for 15 years (almost) - sometimes I forget! LOL!

Supplies:
Stamps: Hero Arts
Paper: Basic Black, Whisper White, Silver Glitter
Ink: Versafine Onyx
Accessories: Circle nestabilities, black pearl pen

WMS 94 - Tattoo Birthday

This week's Waltzingmouse sketch:





I used reinkers and a sponge to create the coloured stripes before stamping the image and the sentiment.

Supplies:
Stamps: Waltzingmouse (Free Spirit)
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black
Ink: Pacific Point, Only Orange, Summer Sun, Versafine Onyx Black

Monday 23 April 2012

FTL 187 - Party Time

I got a new set of stamps called Time from Uniko Studios, a new stamp company in the UK. It's got clocks and gears that could be used to make perfect steampunk cards and some really fun geometric flowers that I can't wait to play with. In the meantime, here's another card for this week's FTL 187 layout.







To create the 'background', I masked the centre panel and the white diagonal lines before sponging with distress inks.

This could be a good invitation for my son's birthday party - he and his friends love steampunk  and those black dots could be paint splats (he wants to have a paintball party). Hmmmm.


Supplies:
Stamps: Uniko Studios (Time)
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black
Ink: Versafine Onyx, Mustard Seed, Peeled Paint, Broken China
Accessories: 3M Masking tape




FS272 & FTL 187




Today's card is the offspring of these two photos (first one is this week's FTL, the second is from this week's featured stamper, Kthaman):



plus

equals:




Supplies:
Stamps: Papertrey Ink
Paper: Gina K Pure Luxury, Soft Stone, Various scraps of mirror and glitter paper
Ink: Versafine Onyx
Accessories: Circle Nestabilities and punches

Sunday 22 April 2012

FS272 - Kthaman

I really enjoyed this week's featured stamper challenge. So many amazing cards to choose from and I really got into it.

First I chose a Christmas card:


I almost never make green-based Christmas cards, despite the fact that green is my favourite colour. Time to get over that!



Next, a cheerful rainbow card:

You know how I love rainbows - I used glossy paper and got a really cool reflection in the photo.:




Next, this pretty flower card:


I focused on the cut out and changed the colours to some I have had sitting on my desk for weeks, just waiting for the right idea to come along:



I've got one more, but I'm also using it for this week's FTL challenge, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow!

Supplies:
Peace on Earth
Stamps: PTI (background), Artful Stamper (angel), ? (sentiment)
Paper: Whisper White, Lucky Limeade, Red Glitter
Ink: Real Red, Lucky Limeade
Accessories: Egyptian Gold EP, Diamond Stickles


Celebrate
Stamps: PTI
Paper: Glossy White, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Various distress, Versafine Onyx
Accessories: Clear EP


Flower:
Paper: Concord Crush, Island Indigo, Sour Apple
Accessories: PTI flower die, cirlce nestabilities

IC333 - BHLDN

This week's site is BHLDN, a wedding site. I chose some white confetti on a grey background. (sorry, only one this week - much chauffeuring of my son was required on Saturday!)








In retrospect, snowflakes may have been a better choice, but I do like these funky 70's flowers!

Supplies:
Paper: Smokey Shadow, Whisper White
Accessories: Cuttlebug and Cuttlebug die, Stardust Stickles