Miracles

I truly believe in miracles. For one thing how can you not wake up in the morning and find the dawning of a new day a miracle. I am celebrating a small but long prayed for miracle today. For those who know me or have followed my blog, you all know that my muse is Pinkie my sweet calico kitty. She spends her days hanging with me in my studio inspiring me to create. 

Poor Pinks has been pretty sick over the last month or so. Not unexpected I suppose in a 16 year old girl. She has been quite a trooper through, hospilizations, IVs, sticks, xrays etc etc. She is on multiple medications and the poor thing has been not eating and losing weight. 

Yesterday morning after yet another visit to the vet, a small miracle happened and Miss Pinkie woke me up asking for food. She scarfed down a small bowl and cooperatively took her meds.  I tried not be to excited until I awoke this morning and she was waiting for me in the studio asking to eat. She is now a member of the clean bowl club!

In honor of this small miracle, I created this card using a fav sentiment from Simon Says Stamp.

I die cut an old die from Memory Box and lightly traced the flowers onto the water color paper. I then just created a watercolor wash just trying to stay within the confines of the image. When I was happy with the water-coloring, I adhered the  die cut and stamped the sentiment. 

I am submitting this card to three challenges:

My old teamies at Just Us Girls are hosting a watercolor challenge:

Just Add Ink inspired my flower colors:

Muse has a card by Tracy McNeely.  Her colors and flowery card inspired mine:

I hope you all find miracles every day!

Berry Bird

I have been on a roll in my studio. stamping my wee heart out until school starts again. Today's card is for the bird challenge at  Addicted to CAS that Ashwini a new blog friend shared with me and even better yet they are having a DT call. They are looking for CAS folk who want to join a fun and exciting family oriented team, well that's me!!

For today's card, I went to my Memory Box roots. Before MB became the source of all things dies, Dave the owner made the best stamps. I am happy to see that he is creating some stamps again. Mybird stamp is older and I could not find it at the MB web site, but they still have it at Ellen Hutson!

The bird is paper pieced and I added pearls for the berries. I cut a partial window to show case my little bird and added a sentiment and this CAS card was complete.

Now that I made this bird card, I have an idea for another using a new stamp set from Essentials by Ellen.

Shake it, shake it up

Shaker cards-wow they are the hottest thing around! Do you think is is a coincidence that Taylor Swift has switched to pop music (not that she wasn't always popular) just when shaker cards were being reinvented. I think not- I mean her new song is "Shake it Off". It is pretty darn close dontcha think? Talk about reinventions.

So when Just Us Girls decided to make shaker cards as part of the trend challenge this week, I put Taylor's Shake it Off on and went to work!

I used a butterfly die from Memory Box and had some fun. I love the flower confetti in the butterfly bellies.

Be sure to check out what the Just Us Girls DT created. I know it will give you inspiration and if that doesn't work, put Taylor on!

Enjoy the simple things

This week at Just Us Girls we have a very autumnal photo challenge. As you know I have such trouble with photo challenges. I always read to much into them.

Why can't I just "enjoy the simple things"? When I finally put away the 10 or more stamps I thought might work and settled on 4, I was much happier and could actually take a deep breath and my pulse dropped below a 100!!

The wheel barrow was in the bag of StampinUp stamps that I was purging- another reason I am glad those stamps were still in my studio! The cute little bird is  such an old Memory Box stamp. I could never get rid of him and I am so glad I didn't.

So the moral of this story is to not sweat the small stuff and just have fun! Please join us this week at Just Us Girls!

Retro ornaments

Hi everyone, I am back with another card using the hanging ornaments die. It seems when I grab something from Memory Box in my stash, I become obsessed and have to play with it until I can't figure out another use for it. 

My last card using the hanging ornaments die showed up on the Scrap Mart website!! A fellow MB buddy sent me an email letting me know. I didn't know companies "borrowed" our art work!

Well, I digress, let me get back to todays card. I started by essentially creating a stencil from the die- I just used the negative of the die cut.

Do you notice what I did? I took the positive and cut out the snowflakes from the balls.  I didn't want them there- save them! Save the bubbles too! I gently laid the positive die cut back inside the negative.

Using copics, I stated filling in the ornaments and bubbles.

I colored the whole thing.

I added the ornament embellishments of the dots and stripes.

"Stencils" removed. Almost done. I glittered the ornaments and bubbles and adhered the positive image back over the colored area. I added the snow flakes and popped the bubbles. 

This might take a wee bit of work, but the results are gorgeous, the ornaments remind me of those retro glass balls from my childhood!

Come on back again and see how I can manipulate this awesome die cut!!

Freestyle stamping

I call this technique free style stamping, sounds fancy huh? It really just means doodling, something that I love to do. Did you know that doodling can make you smarted. Check out this article. Lots of famous people doodle also, so we doodlers are in great company.

While have done this technique for years, it wasn't until I was taking the new online class Stretch Your Stamps, that I was reminded of it.

I stamped gathered blooms using my favorite inks Momentos.

The trick with this technique is to think outside the box!! Instead of the stems on the gathered blooms, I saw a vase. I stamp the image off the paper, which always creates more interest.
I then put some ink directly to a craft sheet, but you just as easily use an acrylic block and added some greenery to the image with a waterbrush.

From there I began my doodling using an extra fine point sharpie. (make sure your piece is completely dry before doodling- no smears please.)

Here the doodling is just about complete. To finish it I added some accents to the vase and flowers. I created shadows around the image and added some splatters.The trick is just to have fun.

Card Inspiration

I know this isn't very patriotic but I really wanted to join in the challenge over at Muse. This is my first time playing along with them. 

The card challenge from Jen Wills spoke to me and I used it to inspire me but went in a different direction. 

The "rhapsody" stencil from Memory Box is my most used stencil. I just love it! I created a negative mask a sponged through the stencil on the mask and with an extra fine sharpie I outline the design. To finish the card off with a die cut butterfly.

I hope you see how Jen's card inspired mine.

Thanks for stopping by and if you are in the US- have a Happy 4th of July!!

Orange is the New Challenge

This week's color challenge at Just us Girls just breathes hot sunshiney summer days with a tall glass of lemonade in hand. Orange yellow and a neutral color. Just perfect for this time of year.

I went with my favorite trend right now-ombre. I created a yellow orange ombre card. Please disregard the ink smudge. I do not know where that came from. I didn't even have a black pad out!! Don't you hate when that happens!!??!

Anyway today's card uses two Memory Box products. The "floating butterfly background" die and the "garden peony blossom" stencil. I cut the butterfly twice, save both the positive and negative pieces.

 I colored the butterflies with copic markers using yellows and oranges, creating an ombre effect.
The negative piece, I put through my big shot with the peony stencil to emboss the design. See this post for a how to.  Then I put the whole thing back together with foam tape.

Here is another look in pinks. this time I embossed the butterflies and not the background.

 Hope you enjoyed my creations and will join us at Just Us Girls for this week's color challenge!

Outside my comfort zone

The new challenge at Simply Create Too is called "Stack 'em Up". You must use at least two layers. That is so not me these days. I am all about simplicity. I dug deep and went way back to my roots. I also tried an old technique called spotlight stamping. 

I used a stamp from Memory Box called On the Lake F1770. I stamped the base image on kraft paper and spotlighted areas with with card stock colored with copic markers.

Here is another great guy card. I have been on a roll with them lately. Good thing I know lots of guys!!

Please join us at Simply Create Too for this layered challenge!

Abracadabra- it is a twofer!

Well, how about a twofer!! I am all about finding the most uses out of one stamp, die etc. Remember this post from Memory Box? When I received the Cosenza tree border die # 98855, I knew how else I could use it. But first things first. 

I made a set of hello cards each color featuring a different season with the cosenza tree border die cut from various MB papers. I die cut cosenza tree border outline # 98864 from brown card stock. I added a matching strip of washi tape and using the new urban alphabet dies to add the hello. Please check out this post to see the cards individually.

NOW FOR THE MAGIC!! ABRACADABRA! Just say the magic words- Memory Box!

Do you see the magic? Do see the twofer? All those left over pieces from the cosenza tree border, minus their trunks made perfect little balloons!! How fun is that!! A subtle sponging of starry nights stencil and this bonus card was complete.

There is relatively new challenge site out the in blog land called The Card Concept, it is similar to the House of Cards that I design for. Since my resolution this year was to try and participate in more challenges, I thought the Card Concept would be a fun one to try!!

The challenge for this week is birthday cards. I am entering this as a CAS card- main focal point lots of white space, very easy to recreate.