Awesome Birthday

While it is still warm and humid it is overcast and the trees are beginning to yellow. Fall keeps creeping into my art and cards. This card perfect for my brother Bill's September birthday was in response to a couple of challenges, especially for Shopping our Stash where the theme is "for the boys".

CASE Study is featuring the last week of inspiration from Jennifer Maguire. Here is the inspiration card: 

I took a few liberties with the sketch. I thought of adding an embellishment or two, but I like the simplicity of the sentiments being the total focus. 

Over at CAS-ual Fridays they are celebrating new design team members and the challenge is kraft and text. I thought it appropriate to use CAS-ual Fridays's RAD stamp set.

I am going out on a limb entering this card at Just Add Ink, where the challenge is to just add coloring. I did add coloring, using Distress and Momento markers. I used a technique I showed in my last post.

Every now and again Miss Pinkie insists on taking center stage. For some reason she really liked this card and wanted her picture taken with it. Must be the coloring on the card!

Have a fabulous Labor Day weekend and if you must labor I hope it is with an ink pad in one hand and stamp in the other!!

P.S. Chana over at 613 Avenue Create asked me to post this card. Chana, I am happy to do so, Hope everyone enjoys it also. The theme includes spotlight stamping, well... its kinda like a spotlight, I am spotlighting the words- hee hee hee..... :)

 

Summer into fall, 2nd post today

I have been rooting through my stamp drawers and pulling out stamps that haven't seen a good inking in so long. Starburst lace from Hero Arts is one of those I rescued from ink neglect. CASE Study is featuring Jennifer Maguire again this week as our inspiration. Here is this week's card inspiration-

Bright colors are my favorite. I am trying to keep summer in my heart and mind as long as possible, but it got so chilly last night, I had to snuggle into the covers. It reminds me that fall is not that far away.

Therefore I went out on a limb and created this similar card for the challenge at Inkspirational. 

They had this card as our inspiration and it fit right in with my idea for the challenge at Inkspirational.

A quick idea of what I did, I stamped starburst lace with white pigment ink and embossed with white powder. I took water based markers- distress, tombos, and momento markers and colored over the image and wiped off excess ink with a soft rag. A fun technique that worked great with this stamp.

I am hard pressed to decide which one I like best.

I hope that I haven't violated any challenge rules by putting 2 cards for 2 separate challenges but they were related, so I didn't want to break up the family. :)

Blessings

Oh my, where does the time go? Just yesterday we were looking forward to summer, now I am looking  forward to the fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving. 

This stamp was a found treasure. I have had it for a few years and rarely let it get inky. I stumbled across it a week or so back and now I keep coming back to it. I used it in this post  and when I saw the sketch at Try Stampin' on Tuesday, I knew that this wreath would be the ideal stamp. I went with a Fall/Thanksgiving theme and kept to my one layer CAS card.

Susan at Simplicity, my one layer CAS guru is hosting the Thanksgiving Crusade to remind us that Thanksgiving isn't about food, drink and football (try telling my family that!! :)) but it is about remembering our blessings. I am entering it at her Crusade Site also.

One layer, one stamp, one color, one sentiment, oh my!

I try to participate as often as I can in the One Layer Wednesday (OLW) hosted weekly by a variety of amazing artists. This challenge is where I have honed my CAS techniques. To go from multiple layers of card stock and pattern paper to one layer of paper certainly has been a challenge. Now my poor pattern papers are tucked away and getting dusty. :(  

I have turned into a CAS gal totally, but I usually might have one popped up layer or stamped image,

so this weeks challenge at OLW154 one stamp, one color and one layer was certainly a challenge. I checked out what others were doing and pulled out a variety of stamps and started to play. 

I finally decided on this stamp from Hero Arts as my focal image and a saying from the Penny Black set- "Friendship" .  I stamped with distress inks and taking my water brush I blended various areas on the flowers. I don't think this is cheating do you? I mean, it is the same ink and color. I just needed some contrast to pop the flowers.

I liked the results so well, I made a set of these cards in a variety of colors.

This was so much fun and easy, I may just have to try it again. The only thing missing though is a popped up butterfly- oh it is so hard to control myself!!

Sunny flower sketch

I noticed that using an inked acrylic block as a background has had a resurgence. I enjoy making this backgrounds using different distress inks. Personally I think the distress inks work the best with this technique. My card is an interpretation of the challenge sketch over at CAS(E) this sketch.

I also made a blue version. I couldn't decide which one I liked best to enter in the challenge. i ended going with the orange version. Which one do you like? 

I have my last class tomorrow night and I hand in all my projects Yee Hawww!!!!

See  you all soon.

School's out..... lets play!

YIPEE!!! I am all done my school projects and I have a week or two off before I am back to the grind. i have been catching up on various challenges. 

CASESTUDY had an interesting one. It featured a card by Jennifer Maguire as our inspiration. I remember seeing this card on her blog, soon after I had done a similar one for the Memory Box blog- Outside of the Box. 

I went very CAS and used a Penny Black wreath to make my interpretation. Using the challenge colors of green, aqua and orange from CASual Friday, I made a non-holiday card with a holiday stamp. Let's hear it for multitasking our stamps!

I liked the idea of this card and want to try it in other color combinations.

Well, enough of blogging, I have to get back to stamping!

Picnic anyone?

I am really going clean and simple here! The cue over at CASology is picnic. I immediately pulled out my "bite me" stamp from River City Rubber Works. I am happy to see it is still available. I use this stamp for so many things and it never fails to bring a laugh to someone. (It's great at Halloween if you catch my drift..... :) )

I don't have a watermelon stamp so I had to improvise with a stamp from an old Hero Arts set, I don't know the name. Once I took a bite out of the stamp it just fell into place. 

I think this card will fit in well with the summer theme at Addicted to CAS also. What's more summery then watermelon!

Part of me still thinks this is very minimalistic, but I am sure that Susan at Simplicity would applaud me!

I even made sure I thought of my composition and created a triangle to create a more pleasing card.

My last nursing class is this Tuesday, I am done my paper, my poster and all I have left is my video which I am making this weekend. THEN I AM GONNA STAMP AND STAMP AND STAMP SOME MORE!!! YAY!!

Hope you enjoy my CAS picnic card, if not well..... just BITE ME!!!

House of Cards, CAS sketch challenge for August

Over at House of Cards the August challenge is a sketch. I love sketch challenges- better then photo challenges and this sketch was perfect for us CAS folk. I hope all of you check out the designers cards and participate in the challenge.

I made these cards while I was in the Poconos, because I knew the month of August would be all about my senior research paper for school along with a poster presentation and community service project- I am nauseous thinking about getting it all done.

My blog postings will be very sporadic through the month.

Meanwhile as my challenge card says- I am sending all of you "a whole lot of happy!"

Because "friends are special treasures!"

Girl's Stamping Weekend Recap

I am back and settled back into my routine. The Girl's weekend was so much fun. We arrived early Friday morning, hauled our stuff in- 3 girls sure can bring a lot of stamping stuff!! Not to mention all the provisions to keep us strong for our crafting! By 10:00 we were at our places and we were creating.

Boy did we create! My buddy Jude, had lots of left over scraps and pieces of cards that she was working with. She ended up going home with over 30 cards I think!! Way to go Jude!!

My other best bud, Pat was determined to finish an ink tag swatch. Darn it, I wished I took a photo, it is a great way to match your ink colors when stamping. 

This is where Pat got her inspiration, at Jennifer Maguire's blog.

Do you remember, the photo inspiration I planned to use, the first two cards are the results. I love cattails and they grow profusely where we stayed. Naturally I used them as the basis of my photo inspiration. I created the back grounds using distress inks on a kraft sheet, spritzing them and laying a sheet of water color paper on it. Boy, was I happy with the results.

I have so much more to share, but will not overwhelm you today. Please check in again for more from the Poconos.