Lovely in Lavender

I love color! But especially shades of purple and lavender. This card I made today makes me happy. I used an Outlines parasol stamp, colored it with Spica glitter pen and dressed it up with some of the same paper I used for the background--the American Crafts lavender texture paper. I am still imagining this paper done up in purses, but right now I am using it for the umbrella. The technique with the eyelets and ribbon is one I have used before, but really like. And Suze Weinberg's grape glitter glue makes the image pop. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do for a sentiment on the front of this card--I have several vertical sayings, each of which would have fit perfectly, but none went with the image of the umbrella. Looking through my clear stamp collection I found these little flowers with text from MSE. I hadn't used them in some time, but I think they fit perfectly! Now if I only had a punch rather than having to scissor each of them out (sigh!) And April is just about here!

Wood Paper!

I made this card using the new wood paper from Creative Imaginations. Yes, it is actually thin sheets of wood with a paper backing. I stamped the border piece with light brown Ancient Page and a Hero Arts wood grain stamp. The label is a Hero Arts stamp image colored with Spica glitter pens. I tried coloring the flowers with copic markers, but they feathered. The pigment pens did not feather on the wood. The wood is so thin it can be cut with sharp detail scissors, but very intricate cuts are tricky. The sentiment is from Penny Black stamps. I did not get a good picture of the Teresa Collins tree transparency--too much reflection from my flash. I like the natural tone of this card, from the twine to the kraft card to the wood paper to the subject matter.

Here is a sneak peek of my March challenge entry for our Stamp Antonio Hero Arts club. I used three Hero Arts stamps: Engraved Daisy (CG142) , "Friend" from CL284, and "A friend is forever from CL046. I stamped the daisy in Memento black, and colored it with Copic markers R24, YR16, Y17, and YG25. I then cut it out with an oval scalloped nesting die from Spellbinders. I also cut the same size scallop from green gingham Amuse paper and a smaller oval scallop from green Hero Arts layering paper. I stamped the sentiments on the green ovals, curving the clear stamps to fit the shape of the die (I love that about clear stamps!) I used green chalk ink for stamping and went over the stamping with an olive Spica glitter pen. I stamped the three dot elements from CL284 in opposite corners with green chalk ink. I needed a design element in the small scallop above the curved sentiment, but didn't want to cut apart my dot stamp (LOL--if you know me you know I love to do this, too--clear stamps are so fun to alter!) So I used the eraser on the end of a new pencil! The exact size I needed, and it stamped beautifully! I just added a bit of lime glitter glue on the dots to get the final touch I needed for this project. You can't see it in the picture, but I raised the engraved daisy image with pop dots, and it looks great popped up above the other two ovals. I don't know what kind of color scheme this orange and green thing is, but I think the colors really make each other jump!

Isn't this picture fantastic? This is Mahala's take on the donut challenge we did last month for Hero Arts club at Stamp Antonio. She has taken the donut images, stamped and colored on watercolor paper, and made them part of the collage as facial features. How creative is this? I loved all the challenge entries, but this one caught my eye because it is so unusual. Yes, that is Mahala "hiding" behind her donuts! I can't wait to see what the group has come up with for this month's challenge!

Billie the Bird

Say hello to Billie the Bird! Yes, she is behind bars, but the alternative is to be eaten by my dog Gracie--really very sweet, but she already has one parakeet to her credit! I couldn't resist taking a picture of Billie with my new camera--just a pocket EasyShare, but I can't learn anything complicated, and I like the pictures it takes. My camera was state of the art, 5 years ago--now it's passe. Not to mention it sometimes doesn't work. Like my internet--cable guy coming tomorrow. Just like Billie is behind the bars in her world, I often feel like I am behind bars in mine, especially when it comes to technology. I know there's a whole world of creative technology out there, and I sometimes feel hampered and limited by what little I know about it, not to mention what happens when the gadgets go haywire. Words and phrases like "3Gnetworks", blueteeth, SDHCs, turbo boosts, micro cars, mega long--and unending alphabetic phonemes and nonsense syllables give me a headache. Ignorance is bliss, they say, so I'll just stay behind bars in my nice little world of limited technology, and make some handmade cards! I'll bet my world, like Billie's, is a lot more colorful and fun!

Seeing Green, Again!

Here is what I have been up to the last couple of days--St. Patrick's Day tags! I have been collecting green elements for some time, and I am having loads of fun putting them together. I started with an idea I came up with last year--the "top of the morning" tag with the ribbon on it in the picture above. I never can copy anything exactly (I think that's a good thing!) so I made numerous variations and then went different directions as I worked with new materials. I love the little stickers of the Anne Geddes little boy with the green hat. I added chipboard elements, colored with chalk inks, altered scrapbook papers with inks and resist techniques, added ribbons and trims--anything green. And I am not nearly finished--too many green things! BTW, the paper in the background is Reminisce--too pretty to cut up! Now--back to work...uh, play...!

Here is a picture of one of the cards I designed for my Card Factory this past Saturday. I used one of the new Hero Arts background stamps colored with Tombow marker (green!) and overstamped with some of the Hero Arts stems and embellished with glistening rhinestones. I added a little fairy (Harlee Quinz) dancing from the flower background. I like everything about this card--the peek of pink color reminds me of the flowers blooming amidst spring foliage, and who knows--maybe little fairies do hop from flower to flower, perhaps adding touches of color with their wands! Who among us is not ready for spring?

Material Girl

The above sign was posted in a kit I happened upon at a discount store. The company is Cosmo Cricket, one of my favorites, and when I saw this originally exorbitantly priced kit marked down to just a few dollars I knew it was for me. Well, who wouldn't be an artist with 9,000 different items to work with! I mean, a couple of monkeys at a typewriter for few hundred years. . . Anyway, I was fascinated at all the items included, and can't wait to "monkey" around with them. If 9,000 pieces are just waiting to be stacked, organized, altered, and wrenched into a work of art, lookout, world--a masterpiece is about to happen!

Getting Ready

This Saturday will be one of my favorite days--the first Saturday of every month, that is. That is the day I teach Card Factory at Stamp Antonio. In the picture above, you can see the papers laid out for each card I will present. This month I promised to make two St. Patrick's Day cards and two spring/flower/Easter cards. You can see they almost all turned out green in color! I have gone "green" crazy for some reason--really noticing things green and choosing papers and embellishments in shades of green. I think it's the season--the weather here is warming up, trees are budding out, and the green grass is starting to peek out at the sky. Green is always such a restful, peaceful color. It shouts--we're ok--good to go! When the grass is green, we have enough water and the weather is cooperating. Green is the color of emerging life--algae on the rocks, the new sprigs on the tree, the verdant green of the fields. I think I made a good choice--green for my cards!

Above is another alcohol ink card I did. I made a polished stone background of some vibrant alcohol ink colors, punched them into "inchies" and made a mosaic against a copper metallic card. Then I stamped the brand new large flower medallion stamp from Hero Arts, S5356 onto pink cardstock then onto an alcohol ink polished stone background. I cut them out, using part of the polished stone image for the center. I then thought some white would offset all the color. I used my new i-top brad maker from Imaginisce to make a brad from Claudine Hellmuth's Studio Canvas. Thank you Tim Holtz for showing how to make the brad from the canvas! I stamped a greeting (an older Hero stamp) onto the canvas first, and luckily it remained pretty centered as I finished the brad. Pop dot adhesives helped the brad adhere to the center of the flower, and no brad parts show through to the interior of the card! To finish the card, I continued the white onto the greeting at the bottom (Hero Arts) and couldn't resist adding a little bit of the new scrapbook tape I just got--it adds a perfect touch. I love how the black and white give a "base" for all the color on this card.

Wow, I now have a follower! Thank you, Lisa! Lisa is always such a fountain of inspiration through her blog, Sideoats and Scribbles, and through her entries on the Hero Arts blog. Above you can see one of the cards I made for the alcohol ink session we had during our last Hero club meeting at Stamp Antonio. I made a monoprint according to the directions from the book Inkessentials showcasing Ranger products by Design Originals. I then stamped over the inked paper with a now discontinued collage stamp from Hero Arts. I love my collage stamps! They really are fun to work with. This application was really easy because all I added was a dot ribbon rub-on and some little flowers. I had not played with my alcohol inks for a while, mainly using them to color metal embellishments, but now I really like making cool backgrounds with them. They are a great tool to color my world!