Birthday Songbird

Here is ANOTHER card that was accidentally saved as a draft instead of published!  I don't even remember who I made this one for or when!  O-well.  Enjoy!  :)

Here is a birthday card I made for a friend using my new stamp and die sets from Papertrey Ink called "Songbirds".

Products Used:

Stamps by PTI:

Songbirds, Inside & Out Birthday II

Dies by PTI:

Songbirds

Papers by PTI:  Stampers Select White, Smokey Shadow, Tropical Teal, Orange Zest, Raspberry Fizz, Hibiscus Burst, Simply Chartreuse, Aqua Mist, & Tropical Teal patterned paper

Inks by PTI: 

Ripe Avocado, Terracotta Tile, Raspberry Fizz, Hibiscus Burst, Orange Zest & Simply Chartreuse 

Other Ink:

VersaFine Black

VersaMark

Embossing Powder by PTI:

White Filigree Detail

And some random orange rhinestones

OMG! A little Sparks!!!

Ohmygosh!  I made this card in January, but for some reason I didn't click publish!  It was still listed as a draft!  So, the baby in question is actually a month old!  And by the way, she's absolutely beautiful.  Mama and Daddy are truly blessed with a sweet little princess.  <3  

Ok, this post needs a little explanation.  I've had the same best friend since I was about 14 years old.  When she got married in 2004, her last name became Sparks.  And when I met MY husband in 2006, he became best friends with her husband.  They were the best man and matron of honor at our wedding in 2007.

Now, my friend has never been a big fan of babies or really small kids.  I have never gotten the impression from her that she would ever be interested in having children of her own, however, I've always known that her hubby wanted kids.

It was still a surprise to me to find out last week that they are expecting a baby this June.  I'm so excited I can't even begin to tell you!!!!  A little baby Sparks!  I just can't believe it!!

So, naturally, I had to make them a congratulatory card for the occasion!

I used stamps from a variety of companies:  Winnie & Walter for the little diamonds or "sparks" flying from the baby buggy, MFT made the little lightning bolts, PTI made the baby buggy, and My Thoughts Exactly for the majority of the sentiment.  The word Spark is from a Hero Arts stamp set, but the stamp actually says Sparkle.  I just masked of the "le" and only inked up the the "spark".

All of the papers used are from Papertrey Ink.

The sparks and lightning bolts, the baby buggy outlines and the word Spark are heat embossed with silver powder to make them shine.  I wanted them to seem like they were electric or something.

I created a mask for the baby buggy that left only the body of the carriage and the bonnet exposed so that I could stamp the pattern on it.  Then I used a dry water brush and ink to paint the stripe, the edge of the bonnet and the wheels.

I also added some clear mirrored pearls for a little extra bling.

After seeing the embossed word Spark, I felt like it just didn't stand out well enough.  So I decided to stamp it again in matching ink for a shadow.  I also clear embossed the rest of the sentiment so it would also "pop" a little more.

The little "sparks" coming from the baby buggy are probably self explanatory, but I feel I should enlighten you on the reason for the lightning bolts.  My girlfriend and her husband have a dog named, Lightning, who they adopted from the pound.  Until now, he has been their baby.  Her nail salon is named after the dog, and she has a tattoo of a lightning bolt on her foot in his honor.  I'm sure that, as soon as she sees the card, she will immediately make these connections and hopefully be as thrilled to get it as I was to make it!

Congratulations to you, Mr. and Mrs. Sparks!  I can't wait to meet little Sparky!!!! 

Have a beer on me!

So, I totally forgot that I have one more card to share that I made over the weekend!  :)

Our junior high band teacher for the past two years has moved on to bigger and better things.  He was hired as a band director at a high school in another nearby town.  I wanted to send him a card to congratulate him, and since he is a connoisseur of craft beers, choosing a card theme was very simple.  :)

This stamp set is called Craft Brew and is a recent release from Papertrey Ink.  Most PTI dies are solid dies, however, some of the Craft Brew dies are not; so I was able to stamp the beer glass first and then die-cut after.  I inked up the beer stamp with Summer Sunrise and rolled the edges in Canyon Clay.  It took a few practice tries to get the look I wanted.  The best part of this stamp set are the detail stamps for the beer glass.  See the darker line running down the glass and the other at the bottom?  They add so much dimension and make the glass look so realistic!  Love it!  I die-cut the foam from some white felt that is actually sparkly on one side.  I just put the sparkly side down since it didn't fit with the theme of the card.

The sentiments are designed to look like beer labels and this one was perfect for the occasion.  I added some drops of glossy accents all over the glass to appear as sweat drops.  That awesome patterned paper is from the Three Piece Suit paper pack.

The sentiments on the inside are from the Watercooler Talk stamp set and are stamped in Enchanted Evening ink to match the card base.

I'll be linking this one up on the MFT Summer School blog for for Color Temperature.  

The majority of this card was made with cool colors and neutrals, but the beer glass is a distinctive and bright pop of warm color.  

I'm done for tonight, but let me just say that I've been watching the other link-ups for the Summer School challenges and there are some gorgeous cards to see!  If you haven't already, check them out!  :)

Good night!

Rosie Posie for Summer School

I'm back again!  [I spent a lot of time this weekend in my crafty space, ignoring my housework and yard work.  ;) ]  I have one last post for the MFT Summer School challenge.

This time, I pulled out my Misti and made 5 different cards with the same design but different color palettes.  Truth be told, I just couldn't make up my mind which colors I wanted to play with most, and I have a few new inks that I wanted to try out.  :)  The Misti made it really easy to make multiple cards this way.

I left the first three unfinished since I haven't decided what I'm using them for just yet.  I'll list the inks I used below each card.  All of the cards were made with the PTI Rosie Posie stamp set and Rosie Posie Step Two.  For one card I used PTI Vintage Cream card stock and the rest were made with PTI Stamper Select White card stock.

For this card, I wanted to try out my new inks from Simon Says Stamp and My Favorite Things.  I used SSS Coral Reef for the darker coral shade, MFT Peach Bellini for the lighter coral color, and SSS Fog for the leaves and second step of the hexies.  Unfortunately, I used a darker color on my hexie stamp right before this and didn't apparently get the stamp clean enough, so those came out a lot darker than the leaves.  But no one would know it was unintentional if I didn't tell them.  I still love how the card turned out.  :)  

This next one feels much more like Fall to me.  :)  This was made with Vintage Cream card stock, PTI Orange Zest and Pure Poppy inks, and Hero Arts Charcoal shadow ink.  I LOVE this shade of gray!  It reminds me of Russian Blue cats, African Gray parrots and Weimaraner puppies!  :)  See?

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

I think gray animals are some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet!  :)  

Anyway...moving on....

I had the same issue here with my hexies from using a darker ink prior to this lighter ink.  Obviously, I need to find a better stamp cleaner than I'm currently using.  O-well!

This one is stamped with PTI Pure Poppy and Scarlet Jewell inks and Hero Arts Tide Pool shadow ink.  You can see how the hexies on the right match the leaves of the flower but the rest of them are a little bit darker.  Almost blue-er.  That's because I used the Charcoal ink right before this.

This one is similar to the first card, except I used a different shade of gray.  The gray on this one is PTI Soft Stone.  I wanted to see how it compared with SSS Fog ink when stamped with the Coral Reef and Peach Bellini inks.  In person, this gray has a slightly more yellow-ish hue to it than Fog does.  However, they both look stunning when paired with these coral hues.  :)

The sentiment is from PTI's Signature Greetings II stamp set.  This is going to the third and final new addition to my staff at work.  :)  The sequins are the Moonshine mix from Simon Says Stamp.  Aren't they great!  They truly shine in person!  :)

And last, but not least...

This one is the same Peach Bellini and Coral Reef inks paired with PTI Hawaiian Shores.  Again, I was comparing colors between the Hawaiian Shores and Tide Pool.  And again, I love them both!  This card is for another co-worker who has a birthday this week.

I added more Moonshine sequins and another Signature Greetings II sentiment.

Over all, I love every one of these cards.  If you asked me to pick a favorite, I'm not sure that I could.  All of these companies have such wonderful ink colors to choose from and I enjoyed mixing and matching for these cards.

Here's one last shot of my two finished cards together for comparison.  Exact same design, but I think they each have a unique feel to them.  I think the one on the left feels bright and cheery and even celebratory, while the one on the right feels soft and inviting while still very cheerful.  

What do you think?  Do colors strike an emotional cord for you?  They certainly do for me!

I'll be sharing these in the MFT Summer School challenge.  On all of these cards I used mostly "warm" colors paired with neutrals and a little bit of "cool" aqua.

I also used repetition by including the repeating hexie background pattern [not to mention repeating the same card design!  ;)  ]

That's it!

Bye!

A Pop-up Challenge and more Summer School

I'm playing along today with Kathy at The Daily Marker blog for her first Pop-Up Challenge.  :)

The challenge is using lines in your artwork.  Although her examples used hand-drawn or die-cut lines, the first thing I thought of was this stained glass stamp image from The Cottage Stamps, Inc.

The popcorn is in honor of the Pop-up Challenge.  Cute, huh?  I bought my son a box of popcorn last weekend, and I think he already ate about the whole thing!  I snatched a handful for my photos.  However, my other shot turned out blurry so I had to retake it later [sans popcorn].

I was excited to try out my new Zig Clean Color Real Brush pens and this seemed like a great image to use them on.  I wanted the colors to stay really vibrant so I didn't add a lot of water to the flowers; just enough to blend the colors a bit.  For the "glass" around the flowers, I colored the narrow, darker strips heavily with a Zig marker and then used a brush and water to drag color onto the lighter areas.

The background panels are PTI Tropical Teal, which I stamped with a WPlus9 background stamp from their Defining Words set in Tropical Teal ink, and PTI True Black for the actual card and the mat around the focal image.  That incredibly awesome ribbon is something I found at a scrapbook store near Chicago and was sold by the yard.  Unfortunately, that store was going out of business at the time.  :(

I used a Jelly Roll glitter pen from Sakura to add shimmer to the flower stamens [I think that's what they're called?], and some Simon Says Stamp sequins for accents.  The sequins look especially sparkly and gorgeous in person!  :) 

Can you see why I chose this image for the Pop-up Challenge?  All those wonderful lines representing the leaded panes of glass?  I only wish I knew how to make it look as if light were shining through it.

I'm also sharing this card in the MFT Summer School challenge for it's very saturated colors.

I'll be gifting this card to another of the new teachers at my school.  I have one more day of semi-peacefulness before I get bombarded!  LOL

Summer School Lessons with MFT and Lil' Inker

As I mentioned in my last post, the teachers will be returning to work this Thursday,  [If you don't know me, I'm a school secretary.] and we have a whopping three new teachers this year!  Considering we only have 12 teachers on our staff to begin with, that's HUGE!  As in 25%-of-our-teaching-staff-is-new, huge!  With that many new folks around, I'll really have my work cut out for me.  As the secretary, I'm the first person anyone goes to with questions about anything.

So anyway, I want to welcome our new staff members to the building.  I created this card for our new band/chorus/music director.  Birds make me think "songbird" and nothing says songbird like a music teacher, right?

I recently bought the new Fossilized Amber and Abandoned Coral Distress Inks, so I was playing with them one evening and created the background paper using the "smooshing" technique.  After it was dry, I trimmed it down and splattered it with some Mister Huey's Opaque White spritz.  The sentiment is from PTI's new Watercooler Talk stamp set.  Perfect, right?  :)

The frame was die-cut from PTI Berry Sorbet card stock using Lil' Inker stitched rectangle dies and popped up with foam tape.  The leaves are cut from PTI vellum with a die from the Songbirds set and the little birds I used are a die from Memory Box.  The leaves are glued down to the frame wherever they overlap it and there's some foam tape behind the birds to help support the branches.  Those gorgeous yellow sequins are from Pretty Pink Posh.

I die-cut another stitched panel for the inside [to hide a stamping mistake, but shhhhh!  No one can ever know that I stamped the exact same sentiment on the inside that was already on the outside!  ;)  Our secret.] and stamped a couple of sentiments from My Favorite Things and some musical notes from a Lawn Fawn set and a PTI Boy Basics mini stamp set.

Three new employees.  One card down, two to go!  :)

I'm submitting this card to the following challenges:

This card falls under three different categories on three different posts.  Each one is linked.
1)  Color Saturation - The colors I chose are sort of in the middle, but I think they lean more toward saturated rather than muted.
2)  Hard vs. Soft - My card features softness in the splashy background paper, vellum leaves and die-cut birds; but it also features hardness in the straight lines and sharp corners of the card panels and gorgeous, contrasting sequins.
3)  Color Temperature - I used a warm color palette consisting of coral and yellow with just a touch of neutral - black and white.

Lil' Inker's Monthly Meetup Challenge for August is "anything goes"!  They are celebrating their 5th anniversary this month.  Congratulations on 5 years of crafty success and awesome products!  I'm certainly a big fan!  :)

Creating with Papertrey Ink, My Favorite Things and colourQ

This post is going to be a triple threat!  Three challenges in one!  :)  

Papertrey Ink has introduced a new challenge they are calling Create Along With Us: Release Week Challenge.  The idea is to create a new project during release week that is inspired by one of the release week inspiration projects.

Here is the inspiration for my card layout:

This card, by Danielle Flanders, features their new stamp set called Brushed Off.  It reminded me of a stamp set I have from Flourishes called So Distressed.  It has a similar brushstroke stamp in it that I have never used before today.  :)  However, my stamp is much smaller in scale than the one used here, so I decided to shrink down my card too; it's only about 3 1/4 by 4 1/4.  [I might have to make a custom envelope for it.  Not sure if I have one it will fit.]

I stamped all the brushstrokes on the background first.  Then I die-cut the leaves from colored card stock [except the purple one] and used Copic markers to add some dimension to them.  The purple leaf started out white, but I rubbed some of my purple ink directly on the paper before die-cutting.

Once the leaves were arranged and adhered with glue dots, I added a little bow made of twine and a pretty purple button.  Finally, I stamped the sentiment in the corner.  I felt like it sort of got lost in the brushstrokes, so I stamped over it with VersaMark and clear embossed it.

Now, over at the My Favorite Things blog, they are hosting session three of Summer School.  I'm going to submit this card as an example of asymmetry.

 That's my favorite part of this card; the asymmetrical background stamping!  I'm typically a big fan a symmetry, so it's nice to step outside my usual comfort zone.  :)

The colors I chose to use were inspired by this weeks colourQ challenge.

I don't have the colors they used for the swatch, so I chose similar ones from my stash.  All the products I used are listed below.  

Thanks for visiting me today!  I hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of summer!  It's back to school in just a few days.  My son will start 10th grade on Tuesday!  [Eeeek!  How the heck did that happen?  It feels like he just graduated 8th grade!]  And the teachers at my own school will be back on Thursday.  The next few days will be a crazy rush to get all the registrations completed and class lists out to the teachers before the kids start next Monday.  Probably my most stressful week of the year, but I'll manage!  :)

TTFN!

Products used on this project:

Stamps:  Flourishes So Distressed, PTI Sunflower Bouquet

Inks:  PTI Canyon Clay, Tropical Teal & Dark Chocolate, VersaMagic Perfect Plumeria

Papers:  PTI Canyon Clay, Tropical Teal, Dark Chocolate & Stamper's Select White

Dies:  Impression Obsession Leaves

Misc:  PTI Autumn Mix buttons & clear embossing powder, Copic Markers & misc twine

Pop Up Challenge

Just popped in to share a link with you for a brand new challenge at The Daily Marker.  

The first Pop Up Challenge will run from August 14-17.  Follow this link for more details.  Sounds like fun to me!  :)

colourQ challenge #302

I think the color palette for the cQc #302 might be my favorite ever!  See for yourself...

Aren't these colors PERFECT together?!  As soon as I saw this I knew I HAD to play along.

I found additional inspiration from this post by Jennifer McGuire.  I really like how she used shape dies and word dies to create word windows.  I decided to do something similar but using inlaid die cuts for a one-layer look.

The first thing I did was pull out my new Abandoned Coral and Fossilized Amber Distress Inks; still fresh in their wrappers and unopened (that's how new they are).  :)  I grabbed some ink blending tools and a piece of watercolor paper and got to work inking up a blended background.  

Then I used a paint brush and plain water to splatter some water spots onto the background, but this didn't create as dramatic of an affect as I thought it would, so I grabbed some Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Mint Green [which to me looks much more teal than mint].  I pulled out the spritzer and just tapped the straw so big drops would splatter onto my paper.  I held it up a little higher to get the smaller splatters too.

Once this was all dry, I used Lil' Inker Designs stitched dies to cut out my card panel and the circle.  The Hello die is from Lawn Fawn.  I did the same thing with a piece of PTI Tropical Teal cardstock and Stamper's Select White cardstock and then started mixing and matching.

I dressed up this first one with some sequins from Pretty Pink Posh in Marigold, Lemon Drop and Watermelon.  I think this photo does the best job of showing the shine in the Color Shine splatters.  I also think this first card is my favorite of the three.  :)

I'm also entering this card in the Sparkle & Shine Challenge #11.  I think my color choices have very citrus-y feel about them.  You could even change their names to Grapefruit Juice and Tangerine if you wanted to!  :)  LOL  [though I'm partial to Fossilized Amber for sure.  ;)  wink, wink]

For this second card, I needed to do something with that big blank space in the lower half; so I grabbed some PTI grosgrain ribbon in Summer Sunrise and a Berry Sorbet button.  I added that little bow of yellow twine to the button and stuck it all down with Zots.

Last but not least:  

The pattern on the apron skirt in the color palette photo reminded me of these Mehndi Medalions from PTI.  I have the Mega Mehndi and the Mini stamp sets and used some from each set.  The inks are My Favorite Things Coral Crush, PTI Tropical Teal and Harvest Gold, and Hero Arts Shadow Ink Butter Bar.  I considered stamping on the die-cut word, but decided it pops better if it's just white.

So that's it for tonight.  I will, without a doubt, be revisiting this color palette again soon.  I am excited to have recently purchased the coral inks I used on these cards and look forward to playing with them some more.  :)  And by the way, the premium dye inks from My Favorite Things are AWESOME!  They stamp out so smooth and even; I am really impressed with them.

So, it's off to bed now.  Good night!