Beach barks

It has been a long time since I have been to the beach! Up until covid I visited my brother and SIL at the beach a few times a year. I so miss those days! Hopefully, I will be able to visit again soon.

 

Today is reminder that you have one more week to join us in our stripe challenge at Inky Paws. Who doesn't like a good stripe.

For today's card I just cut an ombre of beach blue stripes and added "Beach Barks" from Newton's Nook.

 

Come and join our theme of stripes challenge at Inky Paws.  We will chose a RANDOM entry to win a $20.00 Newton's Nook store gift certificate. Our favorite entries from each challenge will be highlighted the following Monday, so all entries have a chance to be featured on the blog.
The deadline to enter today's challenge is  Friday, August 13, 2021 at MN CST. The winners will be announced on the following Monday at Inky Paws.

XXXOOO

Does ombre' ever get old? I don't think so. Today is new challenge at CAS on Friday. Naturally the theme this month is: 

LOVE

This challenge is the perfect way to have a Valentine day card on hand for that special someone in you life. My guy loves getting cards and I usually make about 5-6 for him.  I have to get busy, I only have three made.

I am entering this card over at Addicted to CAS. They are challenging you to use ombre colors on your card. 

 

Join us at CAS on Friday for this "LOVE" challenge. You have till Wednesday February 20, 6:00 PM Dutch Time to enter.

the hardest card to make

We never run out of ideas and we are so happy when we are creating  birthday, baby or wedding cards. It is much more difficult when we have to sit down and make a sympathy card, especially for someone we care deeply about. 

I never have a stash of sympathy cards, because it is cathartic to sit down and make a special card to help with someone's loss. I will give you a tip though, keep it simple with soft soothing colors.

My older brother's wife's dad just passed. He was well into into his 90's and lived life to the fullest. He was a happy guy with a great smile and laugh.

My card design was based on this sketch at  As you see it, another new challenge site I discovered.

today. 

I used the stamp set "turning a new leaf" from PTI. This is an oldie but goodie and is perfect for CAS card.

The saying and die cut is from Simon Says Stamp. I don't usually do anything fancy inside my cards, but it just felt right to carry the branch to the inside also. If you are wondering about the ombre, I don't have enough space to collect the HA ombre inks, but used my Marvy blending blox. Compared with the HA inks, I think they work just as well and I have every color.

Please check out this great sketch challenge at As You See It.

Happy Little Stamper's Blog Hop

 Hey everyone! Exciting news! Happy Little Stampers are celebrating the first release of their stamps with a blog hop!! I am honored and thrilled to be part of the festivities. There will be all kinds of fun.

 Comment on the HLS blog and then continue on to each Designer. You MUST comment on all the blogs in the hop to be eligible for prizes.

You should have come to me from the awesome Melissa Lane's blog.   If you got lost, no worries. Just start back at the Happy Little Stampers Blog.

The blog hop will run for one week giving you enough time to hop through and check out what the designers have created.

One lucky commenter (selected randomly) will win the WHOLE release! Four sets of awesome HLS stamp valued at AUD $69.

Four lucky commenters (selected randomly) will win a gift certificate to the HLS store.

My first card uses the versatile holiday set called "Mixed Christmas Sentiments". when I first saw this set I thought what fun it would be to create a card using as many of the sentiments as I could.

Here is a video tutorial on how I made this card. 

 I laid out the sentiments to create a rough triangle shape with my MISTI.

I stamped and in embossed with white ink and embossing powder on watercolor paper. I took masking tape and masked out a triangle shape.

I gathered a variety of shades of green distress markers.

Using the distress markers I shaded the "tree" and with my waterbrush I spread the inks into each other  to create an ombre look.

I then cut the "tree" out.

  

I popped it up on my snow embossed base card and added the stump from would grain paper. I just love this clean, simple and graphic Christmas card.

I hope you are inspired by my card and enjoyed the tutorial. The designers and I are having so much fun playing with out HLS stamps. Please hop on over to the amazing Anita Bowden's blog!!!

Best friend

Welcome to a fun color challenge at the Male Room this week. Khaki, pool and olive green. Perfect guy colors don't you think? Today I used that incredibly popular set from My Favorite Things- "you make my tail wag". You have to hit the stores at the right time to get it, as it seems to always be out of stock. I am still trying to get the matching dies! Soooo- I had to do a bit of fussy cutting.

The borders on my card were stamped with Papertrey Ink's "ombre builders".

Now personally I am a cat person, but they say a dog is man's best friend, so this card is perfect for The Male Room. I hope you will join us share with us how you use this great guy color scheme.

favorite peeps

For those you have been following my blog the last few days, you are probably thinking, I thought she was going to do her homework. To those I say,  yes I did my homework. I finished what I could. I have to go over it with my group to make sure it is OK and then I will do the power point this weekend. 

When I finished I went back to some of the challenges I wanted to play along with. Today's card is for the challenge site Muse. For some reason don't play along very often at Muse. I am intimidated by the challenges-don't ask why- I have no idea. But I really liked the inspiration card by Shona Chambers and ideas started forming. 

Since spring holidays are on my mind, I went with an Easter card. When I was sorting and purging earlier this year I rediscovered a die set from Wplus9 that I never used. I grabbed it and the rest is history.

I had the card put together with out the striped strip and it looked just blah. Normally I like all the white space, but it just did not look at all right. I had set aside a pad of springtime paper to use over the next few months and I found the strip of yellow stripes. It add just the right touch to temper all that white space.

The saying is two separate stamps that just blended so well together. I hope you will check out the challenge at Muse and don't be intimidated like I was. I can't wait to see what others come up with.

Candy cane ombre

It's looking a lot like Christmas! Wait!! I haven't even started my Halloween cards!! Yikes!

This week I am hosting the trend challenge at Just Us Girls. The trend is one of my favs- ombre.
You see it everywhere from fashion to hair color to furniture. No surprise it is everywhere in paper crafting too.

I had such fun! I created a series of candy cane ombre cards using Papertrey Ink's "ombre builder" stamp set. The ink pads I used were  Memento- angel pink, Distress ink- worn lipstick, Hero Arts- mid-tone pale tomato and Impress ink- poppy red. Remember it's not rocket science, take what ever inks you have and play with them until you get the graded tones you like.

Now on a sad note and with a heavy heart, I have stepped down as a designer for JUGs. As the saying goes "life just got in the way", what with a new FT nurse coordinator job and graduated school. I will be checking out what our designers are creating and hope to play along myself when time permits. It has been a great year and the JUG girls are an awesome group to work with!

Computer Circuits

This month at House of Cards we have a fabulous sketch for you. As I have said before sketch's and CAS don't always come together for me, but this one seemed to work right away. I grabbed a new new stamp set that I have been playing with a lot- Basic Borders by Mama Elephant. 

I turned the sketch on its side and added the dotted border in summery colors and added the sentiment from Mama Elephant's Splendid.

I wasn't sure even I liked this card when I first finished it. I kept it on my desk for a few days and it began to grow on me. then I realized what I was looking at- a computer circuit!

This card will be perfect for those puter geeks in my life.

Check out what my fellow CAS designers created to for this challenge and head over to House of Cards and show us your sketch inspiration.

Orange is the New Challenge

This week's color challenge at Just us Girls just breathes hot sunshiney summer days with a tall glass of lemonade in hand. Orange yellow and a neutral color. Just perfect for this time of year.

I went with my favorite trend right now-ombre. I created a yellow orange ombre card. Please disregard the ink smudge. I do not know where that came from. I didn't even have a black pad out!! Don't you hate when that happens!!??!

Anyway today's card uses two Memory Box products. The "floating butterfly background" die and the "garden peony blossom" stencil. I cut the butterfly twice, save both the positive and negative pieces.

 I colored the butterflies with copic markers using yellows and oranges, creating an ombre effect.
The negative piece, I put through my big shot with the peony stencil to emboss the design. See this post for a how to.  Then I put the whole thing back together with foam tape.

Here is another look in pinks. this time I embossed the butterflies and not the background.

 Hope you enjoyed my creations and will join us at Just Us Girls for this week's color challenge!