Thanksgiving

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For some reason, Halloween has fallen off the radar in favor of Thanksgiving. I think it is the autumn colors I am feeling and they lend themselves to Thanksgiving. 

This card uses a technique that Jennifer McGuire showed us at the Insider card class. It uses a resist with white pigment ink and strips of dye ink on top of the pigment ink. What a cool look!

Over at Just Us Girls they are having a photo inspiration challenge. You all might remember how difficult these are for me. I chose to focus on the pumpkins and the green hills of the photo. I kinda wimped out, but I still like the simplicity of the card.

The sketch at Less Is More was my basis for the card. I don't usually make square cards, but try as I might, I couldn't make this sketch work for an A2 card.

So glad school is done for a month! I am gonna stamp like crazy!

Have a fabulous weekend!

It's what is on the inside that counts!

Since there are no stamp stores left in my area, I really depend on Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner's Online Card Classes to provide me with inspiration and new techniques to create my cards. Right now I am taking Insider. This class focuses on the inside of the card. This is something I never focus on, in fact, I don't even do the insides of my cards until I am ready to give it to someone and then I am scrambling to find a sentiment and an inkpad! 

So this class is a challenge!! during our first day of class Jennifer focused on easy popups- another thing I never do! I loved the idea of a card popping up in the inside of the card.  She showed us a water color technique she calls "I painted this". I can't explain, you will just have to take the class!

I chose to make a Thanksgiving card using one of my favorite Thanksgiving stamps from Amuse. My sentiments came from Hero Arts . Jennifer used watercolor paper, but for my card I wanted the harvesty feel of kraft paper. 

Does anyone have any special Thanksgiving stamps they like? I could use some new ones, but they are hard to find.

More fall cards

The sketch at Try Stampin' on Tuesday also includes a fall theme. This is a very popular theme right now at many challenges. Fortunately I have quite few autumn type stamps. This tree stamp and die from Memory Box is one of my favorites. Depending on how you color it, it can be for any season. Last August I used this stamp for a card for a friend. Gives you an idea how you can change up the stamp.

Please join us Try Stampin' on Tuesday and share your creation!

Scary Cat not Scaredy Cat

Oh the Halloween ideas are flowing. I love this scary black cat from Stampers Anonymous and it is perfect for the challenge over at My Time to Craft. They are looking for Halloween cards that feature a black cat! 

How perfect was this!!

The only thing that is missing when I look back is, I should have added sparkly green bling in the eyes. I know it's not to late, but it is to late to photograph it.

Well off to bed, 5:00 comes awfully early!

Autumn Blessings

The autumn equinox will occur at 4:44 pm today. With it being a cool 60 something out, you can feel fall in the air. It's funny just about this time of year regardless of the temperature, I just want to start wearing long pants, sweaters and cozy up in comfy chair with a cup of hot tea and a book. These are the blessings of autumn.

Just Us Girls is having a color challenge this week. This is the second week for design team applications. As I said last week, I am crossing my fingers.

I love this color combo and us it quite a bit at Christmas. I pushed myself to use this combo for a fall card. Thank goodness for distress inks, with their many shades of brown and red! 

The design inspiration for this card comes from Kathy Racoonsin's card over at CASE Study.

Several other challenges are featuring fall as the challenge this week:

CAS-UAL Fridays features fall colors and a leaf

An Inky Situation asks us for fall leaves

Lastly over at ABC challenges (All Beautiful Cards) they are asking fall theme cards too.

I usually can't figure out how to make one card fit several challenges, but all of my friends at the various challenges made it easy for me this week! Thanks everyone!

Happy Dancing!!

I am so doing the HAPPY DANCE!!!! I just finished my final take home essay test for school!!! And while I still have my 4 core classes to go to finish my BSN, I have 4 weeks off till Spanish starts and boy am I gonna stamp!!

I am so gonna "live in the moment"!!

 I was surfing through the challenges and came across this technique challenge at "Just Us Girls". I involved a grid technique. I checked out this video and gave it a whirl.

Since the weather has been so fall like, and I had this new set from Paper Smooches "Leafy Greens" and I had to use it and create a CAS autumn card. 

Just Us Girls is also having a design team call, so with this card I am throwing my hat in the ring. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

The ladies over at 613 Avenue Create have a fall challenge going, so I am entering this card there too.

My Time to Craft is featuring autumn colors, so I think I will submit this there also.

Try the grid technique, its cool!

Bubbleishes

YIPEE!!! This is my first challenge as a member of design team of Try Stampin' on Tuesday !! I am honored to part of this talented team of artists.

This week challenge is a sketch.

I rarely take a shower- no don't start running... I take a bath every night. It is the way I relax before I go to bed. I make the water as hot as I can stand and grab a good book and settle in for the next half hour. 

So I had to use an old Penny Black acrylic set- Bubbly bubble and more critters.  To create more of a feeling of bubbles I stamped a variety of circles in various colors and added some bling. What you really cannot see in the photo is the glossy accents over all the tiny bubbles.

What looks good in this image that I am going to so try is a glass of bubbly while soaking in bubbles!

Please join us at Try Stampin' On Tuesday.

Cuppa cuppa

It's another color challenge this month at House of Cards. The colors are very vintagey (is that a word?!!) and not really my colors at all. But heck- isn't that what challenges are about? Embracing our discomfort? Making us think outside the box? Taking the road less travelled?  OK I will stop!

Here are the colors for this months challenge:

Wow, this was quite the stretch for me until I went through all my stamps and came across this vintage tea set stamp from Whipper Snapper. The colors called to me and I made a very clean and simple colored card. I used my inkpads on a craft sheet and a water brush to color the image. The colors I used were: Momentos- morocco, grape jelly and espresso truffle and Distress inks: milled lavender and stormy sky. To add a little something I used my Wink of Stella brush to add a glitter sheen to the image.

I can't wait to see what my fellow designers come up with and what you all come up with also. Please join us for September's color challenge!

It's that time of year!

I so did not think I was going to have time to stamp this weekend, what with my Capstone project to do for school- a huge month long take home essay test that is the culmination of all my nursing courses. My advisor told me when I e-mailed her in a panic about the whole test, to relax and do some art. Good advice! I can now see the forest through the trees and am plodding along on the whole thing. 

I loved the challenge sketch over at CAS(E) this sketch and it gave an opportunity to use my new Papertrey Ink Trick Trio die collection. I originally was going to do this card with a kraft base, but I came across this charcoal grey card stock and I loved the way the black die cut looked against it, along with the pop of orange on Penny Black's Spooky stamp set. 

This is the first Halloween card for 2013. I love making Halloween cards as much as I love making Christmas cards. But then I love Stephen King, Face Off and creepy movies. How about you all, do you like making Halloween cards?

After the Storm. 2nd post

Our Labor day was full of dark skies, rain, thunder and lightening in my area. It sure affected my art. Usually I ink this cloud stamp from Hero Arts in happy sky blue, but it is all grey skies today.  I'd give you a link but I can't find it anywhere. I got it on sale at one of those big box craft stores.

I grabbed a plane stamp from Papertrey Ink's Fly Away set  and stamp in a bright cheery red. I added the saying in red also and added some glitter to the clouds. Isn't there always a silver lining?

I was excited when I saw the photo challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More. I even had to make a second post in one day!!

I reminded me of my card!! Greys with the pop of red. How about that!! So of course I had to enter!!

Hope you all have a sunny week or you find the silver linings in a stormy sky.

Try a cupcake....

This is a little different then my usual CAS cards, but I felt like using some of my paper scraps today- i have tons! The theme at An Inky Situation is cupcakes. 

The theme at An Inky Situation is cupcakes. I have the best cupcake stamp from Penny Black and knew it would be perfect. I just love the sentiment. It says it all huh? The saying is so old, I have no idea where it came from. Don't you all have stamps like that. They are usually the well loved and inked ones. 

Well I gotta go, I have lots of cooking for my Labor Day Barbecue.