Hello....

 Well hello!  Hope your year is off to a great start.  We have been experiencing rain of biblical proportions of late so that means lots of time inside doing inside things like crafting, lol!   Didn't do much crafting over the holidays as there were other things to do and my husband decided to paint the ceiling in the room where I do my crafting.  Once he was done I got rid of a lot of things, did a little organzing and now I'm ready to craft!  I got a couple of cards made to share on the AJVD blog this week and next and then I made the card I'm sharing today.  This card is for the Paper Players, Sunday Stamps and Simon Says Stamp challenge (sparkle and shine).   Just a few days ago I received my Spellbinders Glimmer kit for December.  That is my new item for the Paper Players challenge.   The glimmer plates in this kit are so beautiful!  After foiling everything and die cutting the panel with my Spellbinders essentials rectangle die I colored the flowers and leaves very simply with Copic markers.  I was trying to capture the colors from the Sunday Stamps palette.  I think my blue could have been a bit darker so hopefully it pasts muster.  Once done I adhered the panel to a light gray cardstock base and then added lots of little silver pearls to the card for some additional shine. 

Was trying to capture the colors a little better in the second photo.  With it being so dark and rainy it has been hard to get good photos. 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

foiled cards...

And I didn't use my Glimmer foil system!  I think about 2 years ago I purchased a Simon Says Stamp monthly card kit that included some Gina K. Designs Foil Mates sheets.  They were fall inspired and exclusive to the Simon Says Stamp card kit so there is not information about them.  At the time I did not have anyway of foiling the images (that I didn't know about) so I set them and the foil sheets I received aside for a later date.  Finally about a year ago I decided that I needed to figure out how to foil the sheets and make something with them.  So I got on the internet and started searching and found a couple of blog posts (don't remember the blogs... sorry!) and learned that it is possible to use an iron to do the foiling.  I gave it a try and it worked!   It wasn't easy to foil using the iron, but the end result was actually pretty darn good.  Once I was done I die cut each of them with a rectangle die and then promptly set them aside!   Recently I was going through my little box of scrap pieces and found them, again.  This time I was determined to turn them into cards and I did with two of the pieces.  Before turning them into cards I decided to color the images as I had seen someone else coloring foiled images.  I think that person (I'm not sure who it was) used Copic markers, but I decided to use color pencils to be on the safe side.   The first card is this pretty daisy like image and sentiment that I foiled using a deep red foil that was in the card kit.  I used two shades of red Polychromos pencils to color the flowers and then added a little bit of shadow with a dark brown.  The leaves were colored with just one shade of red.  I adhered the panel to a dark red cardstock base.  I'm going to add this one to the September Gina K. monthly mix challenge.   Here is a close up of the foiling.

With the second card I was able to use three different colors of foil to foil the falling leaves and then an foil with a fun pattern to foil the sentiment.  I colored the leaves using the some of the colors from the current Color Throwdown.  To bring in the brown from the combo I mounted the panel on a dark brown card base.   The top and bottom leaves were colored with several different Polychromos colored pencils to create the color blends.   I did this so that one leaf was more yellow in color and the other was more orange in color, but still a blend of the two colors.  I think they turned out pretty well.  The middle leaf was obviously colored red (same colors of pencils that I used on the daisy image.  I'm also including a close up of the foiling.   While it was fun learning that you can foil with an iron I'm glad that I now have a laminator that I can use to foil should I get additional Gina K. foil mates sheets.   May enter this one in the monthly mix challenge, too.

I hope my cards inspire you to try an unconventional approach to your crafting!  Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day!