Saturday, March 29, 2008

Aaaah....Saturday!

What a long week! I really needed to relax and unwind, so I took some time this morning to color. It works better than a spa treatment for me.

Here's the card I came up with this morning. The stamps are from Starving Artistamps. I stamped the Lily with a reddish-brown chalk ink and colored it with Prismacolor pencils. I did some blending with a Prismacolor colorless blender and darkened up the spots on the lily with a Tuscan Red Prismacolor marker. After it was all colored I took a huge leap of faith and decided to add a background. You really should do the background first, but I like to live dangerously!

Anyway, I masked the lily and spattered the piece with Ranger Peeled Paint Distress Ink. Then, I stippled some more ink around the flower to create a shadow. Finally, I stamped the lily buds and colored them in lightly with pencil.

Enjoy your weekend!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

It's Tea Time!

It's time for another smART Cookies Tea Party, and this week our hostess, Heidi, has us bursting into bloom. Our "challenge" was to use flower stamps. Using flowers is definitely not a challenge for me, but it certainly is fun, so thank you muchly, Heidi!

I've been wanting to try Inchies for a while now, and when I saw the card that Susan Liles posted for Jen Del Muro's Sketch For You to Try challenge, I also had the perfect layout to use with them.

The stamps I used are from smARTworks: the periwinkles from the Friendship's Flowers set and the saying from Lilac Blessings. I colored the flowers with Prismacolor markers, and since I didn't have any cardstock to match, I also colored the circle behind the saying. And...since I only had one scrap of printed paper that went and I needed two shades, I also used a Prismacolor marker to darken the color of the mats behind my Inchies. I did happen to have some brads that were the exact right color, though. Go figure!

Don't forget to check out the other Cookies' creations: Heidi, Susan T., Dina, and Trish.

Happy Spring and Happy Stamping!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Here Come's the Sun(flower)

Good morning, all! I don't have very much time to post this morning, so this will have to be short. The sunflower and harlequin BG I used on this card are both from Starving Artistamps. I colored the flower and leaves with Prismacolor markers, and the BG is stamped with Fluid Chalk Ink in Warm Red. The scalloped rectangle was cut with a Nestabilities die.

Enjoy!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Happy Saturday, Happy Spring!

Finally, Spring is here! Well, it's here on the calendar, anyway. I'll take it...the warm weather can't be far off now. I am sooooo sick of winter.

We're having a pretty quiet weekend. My poor DH has the flu, and I'm feeling somewhat less than 100% myself. I'm thinking that in order to protect my health, I should just take it easy and do lots of stamping. And, I think I'll make some chicken soup later just to be extra safe.

Here's the first card I made today. One of my fellow Starving Artistamp Design Team members, Carole (TruCarMa), guest hosted the color challenge on Splitcoast Stampers this week. Carole always comes up with the coolest color combos, and better yet, I actually had the colors on hand: Kraft, Sage Shadow, and Orchid Opulence. This is another two-fer card since I used the layout from SCS Sketch Challenge #168.

All of the stamps are from Starving Artistamps, the purple ink is Warm Violet Colorbox Fluid Chalk, edge distressing was done with Ranger Vintage Photo Distress Ink, the embossing powder is Weathered Copper from Stamp a Mania, and for bling I used a few self-stick rhinestones.

Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

I Won!


I entered this card in the Technique Junkies Card of the Month contest and it turned out to be one of the winners. What a nice surprise! Thanks to all who voted, and if you're a Junkie you can my card on the TJ 1-on-1 Yahoo group homepage. If you aren't a Junkie, well, why not?

OK, back to the card. I used the Reinker Splash technique from the latest TJ newsletter. The stamps are from the Stampin' Up Always set, and the paper came from my scrap pile (it's huge). I got the layout from the Splitcoast Stampers Fan Club sketch challenge for February. If you aren't a member of the SCS Fan Club yet, you should be. It's worth every penny, so go join!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Two-fer

I was determined to do at least one of the Splitcoast Stampers challenges this week. Yay for me...I made a card that works for the color challenge and the sketch challenge. No fancy stamping or techniques here, but I did get to use my brand-spankin'-new Swiss Dot Cuttlebug embossing folder. The background stamp and dandelion silhouette stamps are both from Starving Artistamps, and that pretty ribbon is from the dollar bin at Michael's.

TGIF{almost}!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

A Different Kind of Tea

Our Tea Party hostess this week is Susan Liles, and her challenge was to create anything but a card. Wow. Cool challenge, Susan! I had lots and lots of ideas, but each one required me to buy something, and as it turned out, none of the things I needed to buy were readily available locally (at least not at the stores I frequent). My challenge pretty quickly became to make anything but a card using materials that I have on hand. Now, before you get feeling all sorry for me, I should admit that my friends refer to my craft room as a mini Michael’s. Believe me, there’s plenty of stuff in there to work with.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to dig too far into my supplies. The only things I used are a wooden frame, some fluid chalk and pigment inks, and some clear water-based varnish. I started by coloring the frame with yellow, green and aqua inks applied directly to the wood. I heat set the base coat and then stamped the leaves and floral spray (smARTworks Leaves #1 and Purpose). After that, I heat set again and brushed on the varnish. Just a word of caution about the varnish…don’t brush too much or you’ll smear your images. As an alternative, you could use a spray sealer.

Be sure to check out what the other Cookies did. This should be a great party!

Monday, March 10, 2008

Go West {or go shopping}

I was very busy this weekend. Mostly I shopped. Hey, DH was away and a girl's gotta keep busy, right? I got some new clothes, some new stuff for the house, I made a stop at my LSS, and my Stampin' Up order came in. Oh yeah, I was busy this weekend!

Even with all that shopping, I did find time to do plenty of stamping. I think I made 12 cards over the weekend. One small problem, though. I haven't taken pictures of any of them. Why? Because I bought a light tent (I told you I shopped this weekend!), and I need to figure out how to use it. Hopefully that will happen tonight and my photography skills will improve by leaps and bounds. Hopefully.

In the meantime, here's a card that I made a while back. The stamps are all from Starving Artistamps from the Southwest and Equestrian collections. The technique I used on the Kraft paper is Varnished Floating Pearls from the Dec 07 Technique Junkies Newsletter. I also used Ranger Distress Ink in Walnut Stain and Broken China, Ranger Distress Tea Dye EP, a Prima flower, ribbon, and Perfect Pearls (in the Vanishing Pearls technique).

Wish me luck with the light tent!

Thursday, March 6, 2008

More Flowers

I still have Spring fever and who could blame me? I got up yesterday to find a flock of Robins outside my window. And today? Well, today it's going to be 52 degrees and sunny. Not bad for March!

Today's card uses stamps from the smARTworks Friendship's Flowers set. Like them? Well run on over and get some...all in stock stamps are 35% off this month. Now that's a sale!

As for the card, I colored the rose with Prismacolor pencils. The printed paper is from the Basic Grey Stella Ruby collection, except for the red, which is from my scrap pile.

Have a sparkling day!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Think Spring!

Spring is getting closer. Can you feel it? My bulbs are already starting to come up on the South side of the house, and the buds on the trees are really starting to swell. Can Spring really be right around the corner? Boy, I hope so!

And if this card doesn't get you in the mood for spring, I don't know what will! The Big Tulip is one of the newly release stamps at Starving Artistamps. I love to color, and this stamp is coloring bliss! I used Prismacolor pencils, and although I'm not a huge fan of Gamsol, I did use it on this card because the Canson Art Paper I used is so heavily textured.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

New Stamps in the House!

I got my latest batch of Starving Artistamps in the mail Thursday! This is my first card using some of the stamps in the new release: lil' Squares Background and Large Silhouette Iris (FS-10). I also used a sentiment from the Sun Spirit Studio Greetings set.

Don't forget that you can get 10% off on your next order from Starving Artistamps! Click here to find out how.

This card uses the colors from this week's Color Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers, which are Black, River Rock, and Whisper White. I used faux River Rock since I don't have any of the real stuff, but I think it's pretty close. I made the upper left BG panel by inking one side of my embossing folder before running it through the Cuttlebug.

You may have noticed that I changed the look of my blog. I was getting bored with the dark blue background I had before. I think I like this better, but I'm not sure. Don't be surprised if it looks different next time you come back!