a spring flower?

 Hey there!  Popping in to share a card that I made for two challenges:  Paper Players and JUGs.  The JUGs challenge is a mood board challenge and it closes in just a few hours so I'm cutting it close for that one.  The Paper Players challenge is a clean and simple challenge to use spring flowers.   Take a look.

The JUGs mood board features soft muted colors and pictures of a flower, friends, coffee and a scene of the ocean.   I went with the flower and the ocean scene to create my card.  I tried to pull out a color from the color palette, but it turned out to be a little too dark.   I'm trying to use up different products that I have in order to free up space on my desk.  To that end I have been using my Tonic Studios Aqua Flow pens to watercolor things.  I used several for my flower that I die cut from watercolor cardstock, including a color called Cameo Pink.  Had I not used such concentrated color it might have been more muted, but I still like it.   The flower die is from Simon Says Stamp.  For the ocean I used a very old Hero Arts sea scape stencil to create the waves using Salty Ocean distress ink.  I then pulled out my distress grit paste and added some swipes of the paste to create "foam".   I made a boo-boo at the bottom of my panel so I created some "sand" by tearing a strip of kraft card stock and then adhering it to the panel.  I finished with a sentiment from a Simon Says Stamp set called Brushed Flowers.  The set has matching dies for some of the sentiments which comes in handy!

That's it for me!  Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

Easter Bird...

  Hello!  Hope all is well in your part of the world.  I have a card to share today for several challenges:  Freshly Made Sketches, Time Out, JUGs and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge.  JUGs and Time Out are doing a collaboration and the theme is "birds of a feather".   I recently received an order from Simon Says Stamp that included the sweet little bird die set called Sitting Sparrow from Memory Box.  Perfect timing, right? Here is what I made.

I used a MFT brickwall stencil and some grit paste that I tinted with Hickory Smoke distress ink re-inker for the background.  The little bird is sitting on the Memory Box Magnolia Leaf Branch that I die cut from watercolor cardstock and then colored with distress ink re-inkers in Brushed Corduroy and Bundled Sage.  I tried to do the same thing with the bird not once, but twice and both times it was an abysmal failure.  So, I went back to my tried and true technique of inkblending with my Waffle Flower 0+ blending brushes and distress oxide inks.  This time success!  Once the grit paste had dried (with a little help from my heat gun!) I assembled the card.   Since I wanted the card to be an Easter card I finished with the Happy Easter sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp Bunny Love stamp set.

Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day!

mixed media tag...

 Hello and happy March!  Can you believe it is already March?  Where is the time going?!  Spring isn't quite here, yet, but I'm definitely in a spring-like mood!   With that in mind, I decided to play along with the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge of fur or feathers.  And I will add this to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge of anything goes.  The amazing Emma William, who is on SSS Monday challenge design team, created a beautiful tag featuring a bird.  Her tag is a bit more moodier than mine, but I was 100% inspired by her tag.  Take a look at what I made.

I started off my tag by spritzing a #8 distress heavy stock tag with a combination of Speckled Egg, Salvaged Patina and Antique Linen distress spray stains and Frozen Fog distress mica spray.  I dried the tag in between the layers of color.  Once the tag was dry I uses a Simon Says Stamp pine bough stencil and some grit paste to add more texture to the background.  I also added some crackle paste.  Once both pastes were dry I scribbled some distress crayons in ground espresso and crushed olive onto an acrylic block, spritzed on some water, mixed the colors and then dabbed them onto the pastes with my finger.  I then adhered my tag to a #8 Etcetera thickboard tag.  Once that was dry I rubbed more of the ground espresso/crushed olive mix around the edge of the tag.   

For the bird I used my favorite Backyard Wren die set from Memory Box.  The twiggy wreath, feathers blossom stem and budding stems are from the Greetery.   For the wreath I sprized heavy stock with walnut stain and Crooked Broomstick distress mica spray.  I spritzed on water to move the colors around.  Once the panels were dry I die cut them with the wreath die and two dies that cut twiggy branches for layering on the wreath.  There is a wreath stamp that coordinates with the wreath base and I used that to stamp on some Scorched Timber distress ink.  Once that was dry I adhered on the branches.  The other pieces were inked with distress oxide inks in Speckled Egg, Pumice Store, Vintage Photo, Spun Sugar and Bundled Sage.   I assembled everything, let them dry and then adhered them to the tag as you see.  I finished off the tag with some chunky twine and a small key that I tried to grunge up with some grit paste and ground espresso distress crayon.  A small pin was used to attach the key to the twine.    I'm super pleased with how my tag turned out.

Christmas cards...

 Hope everyone here in the US had a really nice Thanksgiving.  Our Thanksgiving was quiet.  Just me, hubby and our boys.  We didn't even had turkey.  We had a nice roasted chicken!   Anyway, with Thanksgiving over it is on to Christmas!  And I have two very clean and simple Christmas cards to share.  

The first card is for the Paper Players, Color Throwdown and Freshly Made Sketches.  The colors at CTD are copper, kraft, sage and black.  I just used a little of the copper and black and alot of the kraft and sage.  I know my copper doesn't look copper, but it is.  The sentiment was hot foiled with Spellbinders copper hot foil.   I took a close up that shows a bit better that the foiling is copper.   For the bird I blended Bundled Sage distress ink onto white cardstock and then die cut the bird using the Memory Box Serene Bird & Branch die set.  The branch was die cut from black and copper glitter cardstock then layered slightly offset.   I embossed a piece of PTI rustic white cardstock with the Spellbinders Holly Swirls embossing folder and adhered it to a kraft base.  I assembled the bird using thin foam squares to adhere the wing for a little dimension.  I die cut the beak from black cardstock, adhered it and then added the eye using black Nuvo drops.  I layered up all the elements on the card front and I was done. 

The next card will be going to the Card Concept.  I didn't go with any of the colors, but more with the idea of the tree.  I would consider the card clean and layered. 

I bought the Memory Box Layered Narrow Pines die set a few months ago and I have been wanting to make something with it.   When I made the first card, I foiled two sentiments because I wasn't sure which sentiment I wanted to use.  Originally, I was going to use the sentiment on this card on the first, but thought it was too long.   After I finished the first card I just kept going and pulled out the dies for this card.  I cut the trees from dark green cardstock and the snow layer from Memory Box white frosted cardstock.  The frosted cardstock has a nice subtle glitter look to it.  I pulled out a Simon Says Stamp snowflake stencil (don't know what the name is) and used distress grit paste in Snowfall to stencil the snowflakes.   The look is very subtle, but pretty.  Once the panel was dry, I added the trees and the sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day!