Feelin' like autumn

 I work right across where the Pope will be staying when he comes to Philadelphia, needless to say it has been getting progressively more intense as we get closer to Friday. I have to stay at work the whole weekend. So I get camp out with some of my fellow workers. Because I will be at work all weekend I decided to give myself today off and play. I watched the first day of "Watercolors for Cardmakers: exploring mediums". 

I have both the Zig markers and the set Kristena was using, but I hadn't really had a chance to mess with them. I decided to play with them and enter a few challenges while I was at it. My card is a riff on Jennifer's and Debby. The stamp set is a very old Amuse set that I won when taking a stamp class. The poor thing had never been inked before today!

AAA cards is having an autumn colors challenge, so I am joining in there.

Addicted to CAS is having a challenge with leaves, well duh! This is a no brainer!

Lastly, Inkspirational has a color challenge using green ( the most beautiful color in the world!) and orange. Maybe I am stretching it, but I did use green and orange on my leaves.

 Surprise days off are the best! Well I better figure out what I will be taking with me this weekend. I am planning on a few make-n-takes with bored staff.

Check out the class and challenges and have fun creating!

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!

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!!