Hey there! Popping in with a clean and simple card that I made using the August Spellbinders Small Die kit. I have been looking at their kits for months and finally decided to take the plunge and sign up for the small die kit. I think the kit is a really good deal at $12.50 and that includes shipping! Ever since I received them in the mail I have been looking for a way to use the set. When I saw this week's Freshly Made Sketch layout (thank you to Karren for picking my card for the last challenge to receive an honorable mention!) I found my opportunity. I had already die cut the cute little birds from the die set from a yellow polka dot paper from My Mind's Eye and so I found the matching papers and die cut the additional pieces from that. I trimmed down some PTI rustic white cardstock, added some score lines and then stamped my sentiment (from the MFT set A Tweet Hello) in VersaFine CLAIR nocturne ink. I layered up all the die cuts on the panel, adhered it to my card and I was done. Still in my clean and simple mode, lol! Adding this to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge of anything goes.
Hello! As my title indicates I have a couple of cards to share. The other day I found a new to me art supply store in town. When I got the chance to be back in the area I went in and asked if they carried Faber-Castell polychromos pencils. To my delight they do... so picked up some! As soon as I got home I wanted to try them out and remembered that when I got my Honey Bee Stamps order over a month ago one of the things in the package was a little postcard with a floral image stamped on it. So I colored it up and I am in love with my new color pencils! I made the piece into a card that I have shared on Instagram. Today I colored up some of the flowers from the Honey Bee Stamps set Spring Blossoms using my pencils and turned it into a card for this week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge. After everything was colored I die cut them with the matching dies. The sentiment is from the Honey Bee Stamps set called Donut Worry. I stamped the words in VersaFine CLAIR Nocturne and then die cut them with matching dies from the set. The I layered everything up. Threw in a little bit of sparkle with my strip of silver glitter cardstock. 
The second card is for Color Throwdown and Where Creativity Meets C9. This will be my third entry for the WCMC9 challenge. I used the one C9 turnabout stamp set that I have (Wreath Turnabout) to create my card. I stamped the wreath using all the colors and then stamped the sentiment in the center with VersaFine CLAIR Nocturne ink (yes... I LOVE that ink, lol!). I added three little hearts using the eggplant, aqua and lime green inks and then added a little twine bow that I made using white and dark green baker's twine. Super clean and simple... my favorite kind of card!
Hey there!! I'm popping in with a sneak peek of a couple of cards that I have made using a brand new stamp that Simon Says Stamp will be releasing on September 1st as part of Stamptember! So thankful that Simon Says Stamp reached out to me to be a part of their new releases a few months ago and I'm super excited to be a small part of Stamptember! I can't say much about Stamptember other than there are lots of fun things in store! The new stamp that SSS sent me in absolutely gorgeous and so very intricate. Every time I look at it I see something new! For both cards I did some embossing. On the top one I embossed the image on white cardstock with clear embossing powder to do the emboss/resist technique with some Distress Oxide inks. For the bottom card I used some sparkly gold embossing powder on kraft cardstock. I will be sharing both card in full at a later date so stay tuned!
Hey there! I got some crafty time in and made a card for a few challenges: Freshly Made Sketches, Altenew August inspiration challenge and Time Out (bright). Initially I thought about making something with a sun, but them remembered how bright the colors are in the Altenew challenge so decided to go with that instead. One of the colors in the inspiration challenge is orange... I don't have a lot of orange inks, but I did manage to find three that worked well for stamping out the flower from the Altenew Build A Flower Coral Charm stamp set. I stamped the outline in SU! Pumpkin Pie and then the solid image from the set using Memento Tangelo using second generation stamping. Then I added the detail images using Catherine Pooler Tiki Torch and the Memento Tangelo. The leaves were stamped using green inks from Hero Arts, My Favorite Things and PaperTrey ink. All the images were then die cut. I die cut some white cardstock with a rectangle die and then stamped the little floral cluster images from the set using Memento Danube Blue ink. I added score lines to the panel for the strip portion of the sketch and then layered on the die cut images. Finished by stamping the sentiment from Peony Spray on vellum and embossing in black. The sentiment was trimmed down and adhered with glue dot. 
Hello! Popping in with a card for two challenges: Where Creativity Meets C9 and Color Throwdown. I have had the C9 Posies Fill In stamp set for ages but sadly have not used it... until today! I stamped the background using gray ink and then used two shades of aqua ink (I went for a more green aqua instead of blue aqua) to stamp the solid leaves and the outlines. I stamped the little flower clusters using a peach ink. The flowers were inked up with the peach ink, stamped off and then stamped on my white cardstock. I then added the details to the flowers using the same peach ink without stamping it off. Once I had all eight flowers stamped I die cut them and then popped them up on the background after I die cut the background with a large rectangle die. Once all the flowers were adhered I trimmed off the flowers that hung off the edges. The panel was then adhered to a white cardstock base. The sentiment was stamped in the same gray ink used for the background, trimmed out and popped up. 
Hello! Hope you are having a good week! A week or so ago I finally got my hands on the gorgeous Essentials by Ellen Mondo Sakura stamp set. It sold out quite quickly once it was released by Ellen Hutson and I wasn't able to get one. Then it came back in stock, but I think it sold out, again. Finally third time was a charm for me! I stamped it on Bristol cardstock with VersaFine CLAIR Nocturne ink and then I colored the image with Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors and a water brush. I'm not very good at all with a water brush so my first effort didn't turn out very well. I think it had to do with the fact that I was trying to use my ZIG markers. The end result was bad, but it wasn't great either. So I switched to my Gansai Tambi watercolors and things turned out much, much better. I actually pretty proud of my effort. Anyway, once the image was dry I die cut it with the matching die. I then did a light wash of pink and yellow on a piece of watercolor paper. I let it dry and then splattered it with the same color paints and some black paint. I trimmed down the fully dry panel and then adhered the die cut piece to the panel. Because I didn't want to cover up the image I stamped the sentiment on vellum with watermark ink and heat embossed it in white. That was adhered with glue dots. The layout is courtesy of Freshly Made Sketches so I will be posting it there as well as with the Essentials by Ellen color trend challenge since I used a couple of the colors from the palette.
Hey there! Popping in with a card that I made using the sketch from the MFT Sketch challenge, as well as the MFT color combo. I created a background for the main panel in the sketch and so I'm going to add this to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge to create a background. Using some thin cardstock that I purchased over a year ago for this purpose I spent sometime working out how I would use the color combo most effectively. I used the MFT Plentiful Petals stamp set for the flowers and leaves. Once I had things worked out I committed the design to some of my nice MFT white cardstock. I stamped an A2 size card panel initially and then cut it down to the size I needed. I have to say that I was really happy with how my background stamping turned out and I was a little sad to cut it up. To make that panel pop a bit more I layered some black cardstock behind the stamped panel. The word celebrate was die cut from MFT white cardstock and then several more times from the thin white cardstock. All the pieces were then adhered together. I stamped the sentiment in watermark ink and heat set it with white embossing powder. The sentiment was then die cut with the MFT Slanted Sentiments die. I popped up the sentiment and then slipped the word celebrate behind it slightly. Everything was then adhered to a white cardstock base. Seems I am still in my clean and simple mode, lol! 
