Flowers and friendship

I have been on a kick lately where I grab one stamp and try to use it as many ways as I can. Today I pulled out an old wooded stamp from Hero Arts. (I betcha some of you don't even own a wooden stamp!!- talk about old school!!) I paired it with the stitches cover plate from Ellen Hutson. Something old and some thing new. 

I felt it needed one other element, so I added the butterfly. The saying could is from one of my favorite sentiment sets-  Penny Black's Friendship. 

I am submitting this card to the challenge at Time Out. They have an inspiration quote for the challenge.

When the card was done I added glitter with my nuvo aqua shimmer pen. 

Lots of folks are playing along, so head over to Time Out for some awesome inspiration!! 

A little crafty time.

Oh come on! Who doesn't love Lawn Fawn and their fun and whimsical stamps. I know I do and "Octopi my heart" just cracked me up and made my heart laugh. So when I decided to play along at a few challenges this week, I had to pull out this adorable little set!

I combined to challenges to create this card. CAS(E) this Sketch had a fun CAS sketch. You could go in so many directions- check out what the design team created.

Because the design just seem to fit better on a smaller canvas I lifted this idea from the inspiration card over at Time Out Challenges.

These were two awesome challenges to combine.

Here is a close up of the center panel and some of the detail. I questioned whether I should glitterize the octopus, but decided to leave well enough alone. What do you all think?

Well that is all the stamping for today. Be sure to check and play along with this two fun challenges!

Go to your happy place

Every year I get away to the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania  for a crafty weekend of stamping, good food and good times with my best buddies. My buddy Judy aka "the angel" has a house in the "Nos" right on a gorgeous lake. Every year the weekend seems to grow and this year all of us will be there.

To get everyone psyched, I will be sending out this card. My card reminds me of one of the views from the porch.

My card fit into three challenges so I am submitting this to Time Out Challenges where the challenge  is:

'Holidays with the Optional Twist of No Stamping' 
(stamped sentiments allowed)

 I am submitting it to my friend Kylie's Happy Little Stamper CAS challenge   

where the challenge is:

I am also sending this out to a new challenge to me: The Sisterhood of Crafters

CLOSE TO NATURE

What does that mean to you?  

This is a perfect challenge since that's what we have going in to the NO's- a sisterhood of crafters and the theme couldn't be better!!!

I used the British view of holiday- our idea of a vacation here in the states.

The inside of the card says "go to your happy place". We have a running theme of the Nos being our happy place so this card is perfect for our upcoming holiday.

 The masking was a bit tricky and took several tries to get the masking inside to line up with the outside diecut window.

Check out both of these fun challenges and join in!!

May showers bring June flowers?

Yesterday was a free day for me. I spent it with my bestie stamping. The fun thing about stamping with a buddy is you get to use their stuff!! I "borrowed" her Altenew Botanical Gardens set. I stamped every darn piece and embossed with gold and watercolored the images with bright sunshiney colors. I then die cut the images and had fun placing them in a pleasing design.

playing with placement

 

 

My buddy Pat looked at the finished card and laughed. She said that is soooo not you. Where did this come from? She is right. I am more CAS and whimsical. This classic and elegant creation my have come from an alter ego.

We have had so much rain this May that I am hoping it will bring June flowers. Because of that I am entering this card the Time Out challenge.  The there is: 'May All your weeds be wild flowers'.

I am also entering this card at The Card Concept .

Sunshine brings flowers and my flowers are sunshiny colors, so why not enter this classy and elegant card!

 

 Done playing, time to get back to work! The pharmacology and pathophysiology of reflux and Barrett's esophagus. Woo hoo!!

Ombre blooms

So once again I was out walking with my good buddy Miss Patricia and we were yakking about stamping. the topic of Hero Arts ombre inks came up. I mentioned how I had them on my wish list at Simon says Stamp and Ellen Hutson. Pat said she had three, but she wasn't feeling them. She just didn't see the ombre. When we finished our walk she lent me the three HA ombre inks she had and said play with them. See if you like them any better than me. Well, if that wasn't a challenge!

I went right home and starting playing. Guess what? I thought they were amazing!! I want all of them. You definitely should use them on bold stamps with a lot of surface to stamp on. I started with the pink to red ombre  and the mint to green ombre inks and used the bold bloom set from Ellen Hutson. I loved how they worked and I could totally see the ombre. Can't you?

The bold pinky ombre blooms with the minty leaves totally felt like this inspiration picture from the Card Concept. And while my card is a bit more muted than this photo at Time Out challenges the blooms reminded me of the wall paper.

The pink card is going to my friend Margarita for her birthday. She is all about pink. But for Miss P, I made the same card with butter to orange ombre ink. I think the ombre is just a little more difficult to see with this ink than the pink to red ink.

Shopping Our Stash is having their 200th challenge!! Can you believe that! They want something BIG, BOLD and BEAUTIFUL. I used big and bold blooms and bold beautiful inks. I mean entering this card was a no brainer. Congrats to Shopping Our Stash for such an awesome milestone!

I hope you enjoyed this review of ombre inks. Let me know if you have any and what you think of them.

Thankful

Sundays seem to be challenge day for me. I wake up and sit in front of the puter and go through all the challenges and see what inspires me and then I go to work. I am in a Thanksgiving mood and have been making quite a few to send out to those peeps I am thankful to have in my life.

This card was inspired by several challenges. First over at the Male Room (  a new challenge site I discovered and really like) we are asked to use wood in our design. Well, I used real wood on my card. The wheat sheafs (from Impression Obsession) were die cut from a thin piece of balsa wood and lightly sponged with khaki brown ink. What is more male than using real wood huh?

TIME OUT challenges has a photo inspiration and while it is somewhat Christmasy I thought the cream sofa and the wood crate coffee table was the perfect inspiration for my card. 

The Pink Elephant challenge also has a photo inspiration, I  hope you can see the elements that inspired me.

Lastly I am going out on a limb, but Shopping our Stash has a word theme of leaves. I know this is not a conventional leaf card, but those wheat sheafs are full of wheat leaves. I pulled out the balsa wood and the Tim Holtz Thanksgiving folder from the stash, dusted them off and used them for my card. Hey if you folks over at SOS think I am stretching it, I totally understand.

So wow weeee, one card, four challenges!

Thanks for taking a look and if you like what you see leave a comment- and hey if you don't like it don't leave a comment- I am very sensitive! :)