Shopping my Stash

The new challenge at Simply Create Too is to "shop your stash". I wasn't quite sure what that meant. I even had to ask. Basically, it means using what you have and not buying something new. At least I think that is what they said.

For me, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to use only what I have in in scrap bins. As you can see I have a lot of scraps saved! My cards today were made totally from the scraps in these bins. the only thing I stamped for these cards were the sentiments.

This challenge is the your opportunity to show us at Simply Create Too what you can make with your left overs! So get out your carts and shop your stash!!

Have a banner birthday!

Let's face it folks, if you are true to yourself, you will admit that guy cards can be some of the more difficult to make, more so then even a sympathy card. I mean with sympathy cards you can always use flowers, whereas not so much with guys. You can't use those cute little images that we love to copic color from various stamp companies- no teddies (except for my DH, who loves a good teddy card!) or bunnies, fairies or sweet little girls.

That is why this explosion of design element stamps from such companies as CASual Friday, Mama Elephant and Papertrey Ink have been awesome for the easily created guy card.

This week at Just Us Girls,  Lisa has given us a very cool photo inspiration challenge. There are so many ways to go with this one. As usual I take things literally and focused on the stripes of color on the top spool. I grabbed this set from Papertrey Ink and the card was quickly put together. I have a couple of guy birthdays coming up and this will certainly be in some lucky recipient's hand!

Please join us at Just Us Girls for this awesome photo challenge!

Spring Birthday Wishes

Today at House of Cards we are breathing in a bit of springtime with the color challenge. I am so ready  for spring and I am sure lots of you are too. There are rumors abounding that we will reach 50 degrees later this week. I am so hoping that is true!

I tend to take all these challenges literally, so my colors are not quite the pinks of my fellow designers. But what the hey, it just makes for a more vintagey feel to my clean and simple card. All my stamps are from Hero Arts except the sentiment which is Papertrey Ink.

I hope you will join us this week at House of Cards and contribute either a CAS (my specialty) or a Classic and elegant interpretation for this light and springy color challenge. 

I will have a little sun with my snow please!

We have had way to much snow here in Pennsylvania. I am soooooo done with it. All I want is sunny skies and flowers. How about all of you? I don't think I am alone here. Even the south has been pummeled with cold yucky weather.  

So what do you do when the skies give you snow? You make flowers! That's what  did with this winter stamp from Memory Box- snowfall CS 1961E.

Can you see what I am talking about? Those snowflakes made perfect flowers. I love it when you can get double duty out of a stamp, don't you?

I used the Shine stencil to add the sunshine to the card using the technique I showed on this blog posting.

I used the same technique with a clean stencil to emboss the background sun shine. 

I sure would love to see what stamps you all have that can do double duty.

So once again, when the skies give you snow, make flowers! 

Rainbow Birthday

 Hey Everyone!

As you can see I am sooooo done with love, well not exactly love itself, but I am done with hearts and Valentines. This weeks color challenge at Just Us Girl's was right on time. Bright cheery colors!

 I took this rather literally. The photo along with the colors inspired me. I had several false starts before this card came together and I am pleases as punch with the results.

Please join us this week at Just Us Girls for this fun and happy color challenge. I can't wait to see what you all create!

New stencil technique

Hello everyone! It has been awhile since I've posted a memory Box card. I am using some of the  new products Memory Box is offering for 2014. New dies, of which I did get a few, but Dave put out stencils for this year. You all know how hot they are right now. Usually I am a day late and a dollar short with stamping trends. Not so this year- embrace the new!

Of course I had to do everything short of cutting them apart (that will come, I am sure!!:)) I would like to think I came up with this technique, but I am sure someone else has tried it. I am surprised it wasn't featured during the Stencil class by Jennifer Maguire and Kristine Werner.

Here is what I did:

First I used markers and colored the Butterfly Vine stencil itself.

Next I LIGHTLY spritzed it, really just a mist of water- no puddles or beads of water!!!

I gently placed it ink side down on my card stock and ran it through my Big Shot using the same platform combo I use for dies.

When you remove the stencil the ink is embedded into the card stock, almost like a letterpress.

I trimmed the piece and created the base card. I die cut the Oriel butterfly with MB gingham card stock and the Lunette butterfly with white card stock and colored it with markers and added a coating of  glitter and added it as an embellishment.

I was going to add a sentiment, but I just didn't want to interrupt the simple beauty of the card.

I have been trying to come up with a catchy name for this technique and haven't been able to- any ideas?

Let me know if you have a good name.

No guilt

This is the week of techniques! Tomorrow I am posting a technique that I came up with using stencils. and this week at Just Us Girls we having a technique challenge hosted by Sue V. It is clever way to make inked borders on your die cuts.

Thanks to your comments I am feeling no guilt this week over the fact that I only have a stamped sentiment on my card! 

 I am still creating Valentine's. I am hoping I have made enough from the past months to challenges to send out those I care about. Not much time for extra stamping with school being the busiest it has even been. 

This technique is cool, but it does take a bit of practice, but I found the results were worth it.

Here is the video on how to do the technique.

Hope you enjoy the last Valentine card for 2014. Please join us at Just Us Girls this week for this great technique!

Simply Create Too

Exciting news! I am finally allowed to share with all of you that I am part of the Simply Create Too design team!! Simply Create Too is a biweekly challenge blog. The design team is amazing and I am honored to be part of them. I will be sharing my creations once a month. I hope you all will check the challenges out and participate! 

This challenge is either a Mother's day card or a card for a female. That can pretty much cover anything! For my first challenge card I wanted to keep it CAS and use one of my favorite flower stamp set- Flower Friend by Simon Says Stamp. I have been creating a few cards that the image comes down from the top. It just looks so cool to me. I wanted bright happy colors to remind me that all the snow and polar temps are just temporary and spring is just around the corner!

Here is the same card but oriented from the bottom. Different but the same huh? 

I hope you are inspired by my cards and will join us at Simply Create Too. I am looking forward to see what you all create!

ohhhhhhhh the guilt!

This week at Just Us Girls, the challenge is this great CAS sketch from Maria. Naturally, I had to make a Valentine card. 

The first card I made (see card below the sketch) didn't have any stamping except for the sentiment. I really liked it- I really did. I loved the papers I used and how they just went together so well.  I kept looking at it and smiling and this little nagging guilt started rearing its head. The problem with the card was there WASN'T any stamping except for the sentiment. That just is not acceptable in my world. I am a stamper, I use dies folders etc as embellishments not the main focus. I even wrote a wee rant about it here.

So I got out my stamps and reworked the card. I tried to keep the same patterns on the nonstamped card because I really do like it. 

What do you all think, cheater card or stamped card? Am I nuts to even worry? Is this all a product of too much school work or work in general? Who knows? But please join us at Just US Girls with your take on Maria's sketch.