Christmas in September

This is the card I was working in when I shot the photo for my banner. I thought you'd like to see it finished! I work on my Christmas cards year round, but you can be sure that I'll still be scrambling to make a few more at the last minute!

Those of you who are familiar with Outlines Rubber Stamps will recognize this a one of their designs right away. I find the geometric designs very appealing for some reason. It must just be the way my brain is wired because I'm also an avid quilter.

Anyway, this card uses three stamps in all: an Outlines geometric background, an Outlines greeting, and a polka dot background stamp from Stamp Camp. I think the Outlines stamps I used have been discontinued, but they have very similar ones available if you're interested in making one of these cards. The technique is simple, just stamp your images on different colors of cardstock, emboss and/or color as desired, cut out the different elements, and finally layer everything using mounting foam for dimension. On this card, I used Prismacolor markers for coloring, embossed my images with clear embossing powder, cut some of the layers with scalloped scissors, and added a few rhinestones for some glitz.

Party!

This stamp really struck my funny bone when I saw it at a stamp show this Spring. After I got it home though, I wasn't quite sure what to do with it since it's not my style. Besides, haven't we put party hats on enough things yet? But hey, at least it doesn't have wings!

Anyway, now that I've finally inked up this stamp, I'm thinking that it was a whole lot of fun to work with. The coloring was super easy with Prismacolor pencils. I just colored in the image, grabbing whatever color jumped out at me. When I was done, I burnished over everything with a colorless blender pencil. I added some ribbon, a Cuttlebug diecut ribbon slide, some Basic Grey paper and scraps of cardstock, and voila!

The only thing I can't tell you about this card is who makes the stamp. I bought it unmounted and there is absolutely no marking to tell me who the vendor was. If you recognize it, please leave a comment so that I can give proper credit.

10-1-07: Michelle Adams left a comment to let me know that this stamp is from Lost Coast Designs. Thanks, Michelle!

Flight of the Monarchs

A friend of mine in Kansas had a backyard full of Monarch butterflies during the week. What a beautiful sight! All those Monarchs made me think of this card that I made awhile ago.

This gorgeous butterfly stamp is from StarvingArtistamps. I first inked up the stamp with some SU classic Certainly Celery and Apricot Appeal. Then, I stamped the image on watercolor paper that I had misted with water until it was quite wet. After the colors ran to my satisfaction I blotted up the excess water and let the paper dry thoroughly. Finally, I stamped over top of the first image with Palette Noir Black ink and cut out the image.

The printed papers are from the Basic Grey 6x6 Scarlet's Letter collection, the printed acetate strip is cut from a sheet of Hambly On-Edge Screenprints, and the acetate tag is from the Making Memories Funky Vintage self-adhesive Clears Tags and Shapes pack...boy, that's a mouthful!

Enjoy, and Happy Fall!

Trick or Treat!

Autumn is right around the corner, and we've been having some nice crisp Autumn weather here. There are so many things to love about Autumn in New England, but Halloween if one of my favorite things. What's not to love? We all have an excuse to be kids again playing dress-up and eating too much candy.

So here's my card for today, which I hope is at least a little bit of a treat! The layout I used is from Sketch Challenge #141 over at Splitcoast Stampers. Most of the papers are from my scrap pile and the stamps are dollar stamps that I picked up at Michael's last year.

Happy Fall!

Rustic Chickadee

I've been fiddling around with this one for days and have finally decided to call it a card. My vision when I started out was to recreate the look of hand-tooled leather. I think I did get some of that feel, but now that I'm looking at it I think some debossing would have helped.

I stamped the chickadee (smARTworks Chickadee Wishes) on celery green cardstock with brown chalk ink, colored it with Prismacolor pencils, and blended with a colorless blending pencil. Then, using a scalloped circle as a mask, I sponged on two shades of brown ink and then embossed the frame with clear EP. The clear dots are Crystal Effects. The pinecones and pine boughs are from the smARTworks Bough and Cone set.

I'm hoping to get some stamping time in tomorrow, but that will probably be it until next week. Hubby and I are going to Gillette Stadium this weekend to see the New England Patriots home opener on Sunday. It's a night game and since we were going to need to stay over on Sunday anyway, we decided to make a long weekend of it and stay over on Saturday too. That means that I get to spend some time at the outlet mall in Wrentham. Hey...it's only fair!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Blue Wildflowers

I really should be cleaning today, but I decided to do the Inspiration Challenge over at Splitcoast Stampers just to get me in the mood. I'm not sure how I thought rubber stamping would inspire me to clean, but it sounded good at the time!

My Prismacolor pencils are fast becoming my favorite way to add color to an image. Talk about easy! For this card, I stamped the flowers (a beautiful set from smARTworks called Real Stems and Blossoms) with Alabaster Fluid Chalk Ink using Post-It note masks to keep them from overlapping. Then I colored over the white flowers with my pencils. The little bit of blending I did was achieved simply by using one color on top of another.

The blue background panel is a piece of Basic Grey paper that I embossed with my beloved Cuttlebug and sanded just a bit to bring up the design. The background paper is from Paper Adventures.

And now, about that frisket I used on the Winter Chickadee card...

I've had a few questions about the Grumbacher Miskit Frisket (yes, Dina, it is fun to say!), which I'll attempt to answer. Frisket comes in two forms that I know of; film and liquid. I've never used the film, and I've only used the liquid a couple of times now. I bought mine at Michael's in the Art Supply department, and it goes for about $8 regular price in my neck of the woods (CT, USA). Michael's sells a couple of different brands, but I went with the Grumbacher because is was the least expensive and it's tinted. The slight tint means that it's very easy to see where you've painted it on. The frisket cleans up with soap and water while it's wet and forms a waterproof film when it dries.

The label on the bottle says that you can only use the Frisket on hard-finished, dry paper. I've only tried the frisket on watercolor paper, but I imagine it might also work on coated cardstock. I'm assuming that if the paper has too much tooth, like regular cardstock, you wouldn't be able to remove the mask. So there you have it -- Grumbacher Miskit Frisket -- fun to say and cool to use!

Winter Chickadee

This is a card I made for the smART Cookie Design Team over at smARTworks. I used two stamp sets for this one: Chickadee Wishes and Bough and Cone. Don't you just love that little chickadee? My backyard is filled with them in all year round, and I find them completely irresistable.

To make the center panel, I stamped the chickadee image and then painted over it with Grumbacher Miskit Frisket (a liquid latex masking material). I did a simple blue watercolor wash over the whole piece, and once it was dry, I stamped the pine boughs. After that, I removed the mask and colored the chickadee with watercolor pencils. The light blue mat has a pierced border, and I embossed the dark green mat with my Cuttlebug.

I hope you like this first offering from Dee's Studio. Stay tuned because there's plenty more to come!