Freshly Made Sketches 345

Hello hello!  We're back at Freshly Made Sketches with a brand new challenge this week designed by little ol' me!  I used a tilted layer *gasp* in the sketch so I hope you like it!

I decided to make a Christmas card with a kraft card base (one of my Christmas faves) and finally inked up this stamp set that I've had for at least a couple of years.  That's my cool-dude Santa!

The Jingle Bells challenge is looking for stars and stripes this time around and I used a bit of both here and at AAA Cards it's Christmas in July.  It's kind of fun to think of snowy things when it's 90-degrees outside!

Thanks for stopping by!  And I hope that you will join us at Freshly Made Sketches this week!

Supplies
Stamps:  Tis the Season (Essentials by Ellen)
Paper:  Desert Storm (Neenah); Riding Hood Red (Stampin' Up!); Marker Paper (Strathmore); Heidi Swapp patterned paper
Ink:  Black Licorice (My Favorite Things); Nocturne (Versafine Clair); White (WPlus9); Polychromos pencils
Accessories:  white embossing powder

Freshly Made Sketches 318

Hello hello!  It's Wednesday so that means there's a new challenge at Freshly Made Sketches!  This is our last challenge of 2017 but don't be sad - there's lots of time to play along.  We're leaving the challenge open until January 8th and our first challenge of 2018 will debut on January 10th.  To finish out the year we've got a classic sketch designed by Linda.

I decided to do a kinda-sorta one layer card.  There's a feather challenge going on at Less Is More so I thought it would be fun to stamp a feather and sentiment then draw a box around it a la the sketch.  For that vertical layer I used some embossing paste and a stencil of small circles to create a line above and below the box.  I'm pretty sure it's hard to see in the pic but trust me it's there!  The philosophical question here is if I use embossing paste (plus I heat embossed some gold accents on top of the feather) does this meet the technical definition of one layer?  Does bumpy stuff negate the one layer aspects of a design?  Cue the stamping police for a definitive ruling!

Thanks for stopping by.  Don't forget there's plenty of time to play along with our sketch.  Check out the Freshly Made Sketches blog for all the details about our current challenge.  I hope you can round out your year by joining us for our last challenge of 2017.  And I'm sure we'll see you in 2018 too!

Supplies
Stamps:  Feather Finery (Papertrey Ink)
Paper:  White (Catherine Pooler)
Ink:  Dusk, Desert Night, Jet Black (Altenew); Golden Glitz Delicata (Tsukineko)
Accessories:  Bokeh Lights stencil (Simon Says Stamp); white embossing paste (Dreamweaver); gold embossing powder

Freshly Made Sketches 237!

I am woefully behind on my Christmas cards this year.  Worse than usual, even!  So I took the opportunity to use Linda's new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches to add one to my meager collection.

This card, simple as it looks, gave me all sorts of trouble when I was trying to put it together.  I was using the colors from Cupcake Inspirations and the challenge at CAS Mix Up was to use stamps, heat embossing, and another thing of my choice (in my case washi tape) so I thought I'd emboss my sentiment in gold.  Bad idea.  My first three or four attempts didn't look embossed at all so I finally blamed it on a somewhat dry Versamark pad.  I finally had good luck with a gold pigment pad so I moved on to the ribbon stamps.

After I stamped the first image I found an ink smudge.  So much for adding another card to my Christmas card collection!  But the smudge was small and I knew I could edit it out so that at least it would look ok posted here.  I kept stamping away and by the time I had all those ribbons done I had about a million smudges all over the place.  I don't know where they came from, all I know is that I had to start over again.  This is the last attempt and I'm sad to report that there is a small smudge on here too, but thanks to the powers of photo editing software you can't see it!

I love this sketch and I predict that you will too and that the Freshly Made Sketches gallery this week will be filled with beautiful cards.  The FMS design team has made some beautiful cards so be sure to check them out!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies
Stamps:  Holiday Bows (The Ton); Joyous Noel (Verve)
Paper:  Sweet Tooth (My Favorite Things)
Ink:  Blushing Bride, Cherry Cobbler (SU); Gold (Encore)
Accessories:  washi tape

colourQ 319

I've got Christmas on the brain so even though the colors this week at colourQ are anything but Christmas-y I wanted to use them for another Christmas card anyway!

And in a strange twist of fate The Challenge wants us to make "non-traditional" Christmas card.  Yay!  A little help from the sketch at Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge and I was off.  I didn't actually have any real wood in my stash so I used the next best thing - woodgrain patterned paper!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have time to play along with us at colourQ!  The design team has made some amazing cards so be sure to check them out!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Holiday Greetings (Amy R Stamps)
Paper:  Sweet Tooth (My Favorite Things); Chocolate Chip, Summer Starfruit, Blushing Bride, Melon Mambo, Woodland Walk DSP (SU)
Ink:  White (WPlus9)
Accessories:  Blueprints 15 die Favorite Things); Blooming Poinsettia die (Memory Box); white embossing powder; enamel dots (My Mind's Eye)

CAS(E) This Sketch 150

Hello!  And welcome to a new edition of CAS(E) This Sketch!   This sketch made me think of snowflakes!

Many years ago, when I first started stamping, I made silver and navy card at a workshop featuring a big embossed snowflake.  To this day it's one of my favorite cards and I try to re-design it every so often.  For this card I tried embossing the snowflakes but they were too small and the embossing powder muddied the details so I die cut some snowflakes instead with some silver glimmer paper.  I did emboss the sentiment, though.  And I added the silver cord, just because!

I'm also playing along with The Paper Players where we are challenged to make a clean and simple Christmas card.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to pop on by CAS(E) This Sketch and check out the design team cards.  They're pretty amazing, just sayin'!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Jingle All the Way (Technique Tuesday)
Paper:  Midnight Muse, Brushed Silver, Silver Glimmer (SU)
Ink:  Silver Shimmer Delicata
Accessories:  Blueprints 20 die (My Favorite Things); Make a Snowflake die (Taylored Expressions); silver cord (SU)

colourQ 261

Hello everyone!  Tuesday's are all about colourQ and this week we've got a fabulous palette for you.  Inspired by this doormat these colors will surely inspire you!

I love Chocolate Chip so I decided to make it a large layer on my card plus it looked good with the Dusty Durango diagonal layer.  I paper pieced a stamped flower out of Island Indigo DSP and thought it looked awfully plain.  So I added a circle punched out of Island Indigo cardstock to the center of the flower.  But that didn't do too much to jazz this up so I put some Crystal Effects on it.  Perfect!

I loved the angles on the sketch at Viva La Verve this week, so I'm playing along with them too!

These colors have inspired some amazing cards from the colourQ design team.  I hope you have a chance to check them out and to play along with us!  We love to see you in the gallery!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:

Stamps:  Lean on Me, Dream Big (Verve)

Paper:  Classic Ivory (Flourishes); Chocolate Chip, Dusty Durango, Kiwi Kiss, Island Indigo, Vellum, Island Indigo DSP (SU)

Ink:  Frost White (Colorbox); True Black (Papertrey Ink)

Accessories:  Sprightly Sprigs die (Verve); On the Diagonal die (Lil Inker Designs); Witch Hazel button (October Afternoon); Crystal Effects (SU); white embossing powder

MUAH!

I got some new stamping goodies in the mail from Mama Elephant and couldn't wait to ink them up so I teamed up the colors from Color Throwdown and the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch and put one of these stamps to work.

I learned this technique of doing a heat embossed sentiment over some sponged shapes at an Online Card Class that I took a while back.  (I think this is actually called "emboss resist").  Kristina Werner demonstrated this technique and I love how it looks with this big MUAH stamp!  In the video accompanying the class, she outlined the sentiment in a gray ink to make it stand out a little bit so I did the same.  I was a little nervous doing it, sure that I was going to wreck it, but I'm happy to say that I think it looks pretty good.  The effect is subtle, but makes a big difference in how the sentiment looks.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:

Stamps:  Big Words (Mama Elephant)

Paper:  Classic White (Flourishes); Neenah Solar White; Pool Party (SU)

Ink:  Pool Party, Daffodil Delight, Old Olive, Smoky Slate (SU)

Accessories:  Splatters stencil (Tim Holtz); white embossing powder 

Something New for CASology 25 and Inkspirational 1

It's a new year so CASology is celebrating with a NEW cue card this week.  I spent some time thinking about what I could do for the challenge when I stumbled upon a NEW challenge site called Inkspirational.  Since their inaugural challenge was some very cool colors I decided that it qualified as NEW for CASology, but decided to make my card out of NEW-to-me stamps that I got for Christmas.

I chose Basic Black, which I heat embossed, Melon Mambo and Lucky Limeade for my card.  The black splatter is from Extreme Elements which, although retired, I managed to pick up on eBay as a little Christmas present to myself!  I think the butterfly is too big, but it's growing on me.

Well that's it for me.  Thanks so much for stopping by.  And if you're so inclined stop by my For Sale page to see what I'm cleaning out of my stamp room.  It's long past time to clean house and make room for future goodies!

CCMC207 and Some Exciting News!

Today I am not only posting a card that I made for the CreateWith Connie and Mary 207 challenge but I also get to tell you that I will be joining this fabulous group of Thursday stampers until October!  I was so excited when they asked me to be a part of the Thursday challenge team and I still can't quite believe it's true!  I owe a big "thank you" to Connie and Mary for giving me this wonderful opportunity.  Thanks ladies!!

My first challenge with them is this fabulous CAS sketch (a sketch after my own heart)!

I started with a base of Early Espresso then layered on some of the gorgeous Natural Compositions specialty paper with musical notes.  Then I added small layers of Raspberry Ripple and a paper pierced layer of Primrose Petal.  I followed that up with some Primrose Petal ribbon.  The sentiment is from Creative Elements and I embossed that in white so that it would really show up against the dark background.

Don't forget that it's not too late to subscribe to the Create With Connie and Mary New Catalog 2012 Edition.  There will be lots of tutorials using products from the new catalog and I, for one, can't wait to see them!

So be sure to stop on by CreateWith Connie and Mary and check out the design team interpretations of this sketch.  I know that you will be inspired to create something of your own!