Baby SPARKS!

Friday, and I have a Paper Smooches SPARKS card already! This week is a photo inspiration challenge. 

  
Here's what I took from this pretty photo:

• from the balloons, I was inspired to make a bokeh-style background
• the background colour gave me the shade for my "ground"
• the couple reminded me of a "paired" Paper Smooches stamp

Put all that together with a desire to make a baby card, and here's how it all came together:

It may not resemble the inspiration pic, but at least I explained how I got from there to here. ☺The elephants are stamped and embossed on watercolour paper and coloured with distress markers. I used my sponge daubers to make the background, and added a bit of Glossy accents on a little punched heart to add some shine. 
Hope you have a great weekend planned! 

Supplies: white & teal cardstock, Canson 140 lb watercolour paper, Paper Smooches A Little Lovin' stamps, Memento Luxe gray flannel, Memento teal zeal, canteloupe & tangelo inks, Wow clear embossing powder, distress inks, small heart punch, Glossy Accents, pop-dot tape

Snow Globe Flair!

Happy Friday! I finally had a few moments today to ink up some Unity stamps so I could play along with Friends with Flair. Also a chance to get another Christmas card done!

I have a soft spot for snowmen. And this guy just happened to fit perfectly in this snow globe die cut! Paper-piecing him was a little trickier than I had originally envisioned, but I do like how it turned out. I'm also adding this to Simon Says Stamp's Anything Goes challenge and CAS on Sundays winter challenge. 
Remember to check all the Friends with Flair entries for lots of inspiration! 

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Supplies: white, white linen, grey & Stampin' Up old olive cardstock, Echo Park This is That Christmas patterned paper, Unity roly poly winter joy & Hero Arts decorate you stamps, Memories black & Colorbox frost white inks, Ranger snowflake embossing tinsel & Zing white embossing powder, distress markers, a muse snow globe die, Winsor & Newton iridescent medium

Be Merry!

I've got another card for the current Hero Arts Holiday Challenge, once again using my very favourite stamping technique... heat embossing! 

Inspired by this card by Tami Hartley from last year, I started with the little tree from the Snow Much Joy set, and gave it some shimmer three different ways -- painted the tree itself with rainforest Twinkling H2Os, coloured the star with gold Smooch, and added red liquid pearls for the ornaments. While everything dried, I stamped some random stars and sponged around the edge of a die cut mask. Then I stamped and embossed the sentiment. After that, it was a simple matter of putting everything together! 

Supplies: white & Stampin' Up pear pizzazz & real red cardstock, Hero Arts Snow Much Joy, Christmas Reindeer & Get Merry stamps, Memories black& Colorbox frost white inks, Wow white embossing powder, Twinkling H2Os, gold Smooch, ruby red Liquid Pearls, distress markers, Spellbinders reverse wonky rectangles die, EK Success 3/4" square punch, pop-dot tape

The Drunken Stampers Go to the Diner

Hooray, it's the weekend! Saturday means it's time for a new Drunken Stampers challenge, and this week the Yellow Canary team are hanging out at the local diner.

Luckily, there's an alternate challenge of anything food or food-related, since I came up blank on a diner-related card. (But not my teammates! Wait till you see some of their cards!) Possibly to compensate, I have two samples to show you today. My first project is very food-related:

Paper Crafts Magazine was nice enough to offer this free digital image at exactly the right time! I just happened to have a few homemade chocolate chip cookies that I could use as a stand-in for the Christmas baking that hasn't started yet. 
Next, I went back to first principles... food production:

There are exceptions, I know, but a lot of the food we eat has to be grown first, so that's where I went for my second project. Interestingly, a couple of birthdays ago, a friend gave me this seed packet stamp set, while another friend gave me Papertrey Ink's Garden Variety set. And I've combined the two of them here. 
Make sure you check out today's Drunken Stampers post for some mouth-watering inspiration! 

Supplies: (tag) white, manila & Stampin' Up real red cardstock, Paper Crafts magazine digital image, Spellbinders circle & Papertrey Ink tag sale #4 dies, $ store ribbon; (card) Canson 140 lb watercolour paper, Stampin' Up old olive cardstock & patterned paper, TPC Studio victory garden & Papertrey Ink garden variety stamps, Memories black & black soot distress inks, distress markers, Papertrey Ink garden variety & Spellbinders circle dies, pop-dot tape

Colourful SPARKS

This week, Paper Smooches SPARKS has a colour challenge. 

This colour story is called "Thanksgiving". Now maybe it's because as a Canadian, I finished the last of the turkey leftovers well over a month ago, but I looked at these colours and thought of Christmas. Or maybe it's just because I'm in full-on Christmas card making mode. ;) After I picked my stamps and played around with several designs, I realized a card was too big a canvas for my design. So I've got a tag this week, instead:

All four colours are there, though none of them in large amounts. There's a little sparkle from the Smooch-spritzed sky, the pearlescent ink sponged for snowy shadows and the glitter pen on the snowman's toque. I think this will be a great boy-present tag! 
And look, it's only Thursday! I'm days away from the Sunday challenge deadline. 

Supplies: white, manila & Stampin' Up old olive cardstock, Paper Smooches freezy fellas & chilly chums stamps, Memories black, Brilliance pearlescent sky blue & peeled paint distress inks, distress markers, sea kiss Smooch Spritz, Sakura Stardust clear glitter pen, 1" circle punch, one-hole punch, blue paper raffia, red crochet cotton, pop-dot tape

Holidays at Crafty Creations Challenges

At Crafty Creations Challenges, we want to help you get ready for the upcoming holidays! This week, we are looking for your Christmas or (American) Thanksgiving cards or other handcrafted creations. Our former teammate Deena, through her Etsy shop A Creative Need, is sponsoring this week. I used her beautiful Christmas Wreath with Bow image.

I do like that you can heat emboss a digital image printed on vellum. In this case, I printed on green vellum and embossed with gold. I die cut a window in both the raised panel and the card base to take full advantage of the translucent property of the vellum. Gold square brads in the corners hold the vellum to the cardstock without worrying about using adhesive that might show. 
If you need a last-minute Thanksgiving craft, or are hard at work on your Christmas cards, why not join us this week? 

Supplies: Stampin' Up very vanilla cardstock, green vellum, A Creative Need christmas wreath with bow image, pirate gold embossing powder, Spellbinders circle die, $ store square brads, pop-dot tape

Bird-Day SPARKS

Happy Saturday! In my little corner of the world, it's even been a somewhat warm and occasionally sunny day. :D And I made a sunny-day birthday card for this week's Paper Smooches SPARKS Designer Drafts sketch challenge. 

I think I've used this cheery little bird from Birthday Buddies more than any other Paper Smooches stamp. He's just so happy! I stamped him on watercolour paper, coloured him with distress markers, cut him out and layered him on the scalloped circle. The Nirvana cloud background is embossed in snowflake embossing tinsel. The yellow mat behind the clouds? Yes, I had to trace my die and cut that out by hand; the next size die looked much too big.

Did you notice? I'm a whole day ahead of this week's SPARKS deadline! Woohoo! And that means you still have a day to link up a card, too. 

Supplies: white, blue & yellow cardstock, Paper Smooches Birthday Buddies stamps, Brilliance graphite black, Memories passion red & Versamark inks, Zing clear embossing powder, Ranger snowflake embossing tinsel, distress markers, Spellbinders circle, scalloped circle & reverse wonky dies, Paper Smooches lemon twine, pop-dot tape

Hero Arts Holiday Challenge!

Now that we're well into November, I'm all about the Christmas cards. So it's nice of Hero Arts to have a helpful Holiday Challenge! 

I've got a card for their "A Few of My Favorite Things" category -- a Christmas/Holiday/Winter card with a favourite stamping technique. I've managed a card with my all-time favourite technique, and a new love. 

The all-time favourite technique? Heat-embossing, of course; I've never lost my love for that look. My new favourite? Watercolouring with distress markers, although I'll admit I used Stampin' Up real red ink for the sweater, to make sure it was, well, really red. ;)
And here's the inside of the card! Fun, don't you think?

Since there's lots of ink on both the outside and inside of my card, I'm also linking up to this week's Simon Says Stamp "Got Ink?" Monday challenge, as well as Blitsy's Holiday Cards challenge. Now, back to making Christmas cards! 

Supplies: white & blue cardstock, Amber Ink digital patterned paper, Hero Arts Christmas Reindeer & Holiday Conversation stamps, Brilliance graphite black, Memento tuxedo black & Stampin' Up real red inks, Zing clear embossing powder, distress markers, EK Success border punch, pop-dot tape

Moxie Fab Thanks! Blog Hop

This is my second post of the day!

Please visit my weekly Drunken Stampers post

right here. 

It was big big news in our little stamping world when Cath Edvalson announced she was stepping away from her duties as trend-watcher-extraordinaire at Moxie Fab World. A few (hundred) of us decided to get together and participate in a blog hop to show just how much Cath has done for us. 
To see everyone who is participating in the hop, you can start at the Moxie Fab World blog. If you are hopping, you should have arrived from my stamping buddy Jessi's blog. 

In addition to keeping us all informed on the latest and greatest trends, Cath challenged us with Tuesday Triggers and magazine-related challenges. She also hosted great giveaways, many through her "Moxie Fab Stamp of Approval" posts highlighting the best of the stamping world. I was lucky enough to win sets of stamps through these posts twice. I decided what better way to show my appreciation for Cath than to put some of my winnings to good use. 

I hadn't heard of Gourmet Rubber Stamps until Cath introduced me to them last year. I was thrilled to win the sets, and received them just in time to make a few Christmas cards with them last December. This set, Holiday Lane, didn't get to see ink until now. I used a stamp positioner to line up the two houses and fence before watercolouring them with distress markers. I probably could have made a night sky what with Santa involved (did you notice him?) but wanted to keep look lighter. 
So Cath, thanks for your inspiration, your giveaways, your all-round Moxie Fabness! Next up on the thank you blog hop: my Drunken Stamper cohort Chris! 

Supplies: white & Stampin' Up ruby red cardstock, Canson 140 lb watercolour paper, Gourmet Rubber Stamps Holiday Lane stamps, Memories black & stormy sky & tumbled glass distress inks, distress markers, Frisket masking fluid, vanilla Smooch Spritz, Simon Says Stamp small folded banner die, dimensionals

The Drunken Stampers Use Chipboard

Please come back after 8am for a surprise blog post! 

The start of a new weekend, and the start of a new challenge at Drunken Stampers!

Chipboard! Or grungeboard, if that's more your thing. Neither of them are particularly my thing, but it doesn't mean I don't have some tucked away in my stash. ☺ In fact, a few years ago I purchased a Stampin' Up Christmas kit that included several sheets of precut chipboard. I pulled a chipboard star from the collection and got to work. 

Now I know that gesso and glimmer mist don't actually play nicely together. Huh. So thought two was glitter. And I had some new sticky embossing powder to play with. (Thanks, Em!) Now that worked really well. At the end of the cardmaking process, there truly wasn't glitter everywhere! Just a few places. Not even glitter on the cat! I count that as a success. Once I had my chipboard piece ready, I just had to decide what to do with it. I decided it would make a fun focal element in a freestyle collage card. A stamped tag, a couple of cardstock elements, washi tape and sparkly gold stars managed to keep my collage still relatively clean and simple. 
Check out all the fun ways my fellow designated designers have used chipboard this week, then come and join our crafting cocktail party! 

Supplies: Stampin' Up naturals ivory and old olive cardstock, pale gold pearl paper, Unity winter delivery tag, Stampin' Up old olive ink, clear embossing powder, Stampin' Up chipboard star, Ranger sticky embossing powder, Martha Stewart crystal coarse glitter, KaiserCraft Turtle Dove collectables die cuts, May Arts jute twine, Recollections washi tape, star punch

Autumn Colours at Crafty Creations Challenges

Wednesday already! Halloween is past, so of course all the stores seem ready for full-on Christmas. But we're taking time at Crafty Creations Challenges this week to celebrate fall, with an Autumn Colours challenge. (Or Colors, whichever you prefer. :D) Our sponsor this week is Beccy's Place, and I have used a pretty sentiment panel that was generously provided to the design team. 

I tend to gravitate more to bright colours than to the muted tones of autumn, but I do like how this turned out. I printed the sentiment panel on natural cardstock, then painted the flower with Twinkling H2Os. The green panel is inked with Versamark and embossed. I found patterned paper that picked up on both the colours of the flower and the background. My corner punch also echoes the pattern of the paper. 
Be sure to check out the rest of the design team's projects, then create your own autumn colours creation! 

Supplies: Stampin' Up naturals ivory & old olive cardstock, Echo Park For the Record patterned paper, Beccy's Place happy birthday image, Hero Arts large plaid pattern stamp, Versamark ink, clear embossing powder, Twinkling H2Os, Fiskar's threading water border & floral corner punches

Poinsettias

Every once in a while, I see a stamp set that speaks to me. Of course, what it says is, "you NEED me". Often I resist, but when I saw the new WPlus9 set Pretty Poinsettias in use, it had to be mine. Here's my first card using the set:

You will just have to believe me when I tell you that the colours are even richer in real life. I wanted to really showcase the flowers, so left the rest of the design simple. I used four layers of stamps on each poinsettia -- thank goodness they're clear! I also really like that you don't have to be exacting, they still look good even if all the layers aren't precise. I am going to have so much fun with these stamps! 
I'm going to link this up to Simon Says Stamp's current "Anything Goes" challenge. Don't be surprised if you see more poinsettias here in the next month or so! 

Supplies: white, green & Recollections gold cardstock, WPlus9 Pretty Poinsettias stamps & dies, Versamark, Memento ladybug & bamboo leaves, Stampin' Up riding hood red, Colorbox evergreen & Brilliance galaxy gold inks, clear embossing powder, pop-dot tape

Warm Wishes, Cool Colours

Sunday... could that mean I'm posting a card for the Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge that ends tonight? Why yes, it could. This week is a Picture Perfect inspiration challenge, and it's one where I am definitely going to have to explain my inspiration. Here is the picture:

And here is my card:

You're not seeing it? ;) I don't blame you. One of the things I liked best about this photo was the water droplets on the leaves... and that inspired me to try my masking fluid for the first time. So that is my main inspiration; I also tried to keep the colours of my card muted, a little like the photo. I covered the bottom of my panel with a mask made from my evergreen punch -- I love this punch, but use it mostly for masking. I flicked masking fluid on the top part and allowed it to dry before painting the sky with distress inks. I thought this snowman had just the right pensive expression for the snowy landscape. He's painted using distress markers. I just couldn't find the right combination of sentiment and size in my Paper Smooches sentiments, so used this Unity one. Isn't it nice when stamps play nicely together? The back mat is white cardstock swiped with distress ink.
My thoughtful snowman is going to link up with the Monday and Wednesday Simon Says Stamp Anything Goes challenges, as well. 
Enjoy what's left of your weekend! 

Supplies: white cardstock, Canson 140 lb watercolour paper, Paper Smooches Swanky Snowdudes & Unity October 2010 Kit of the Month (Take Time to Laugh) stamps, Memories black, stormy sky, tumbled glass & dusty concord Distress inks, Zing clear embossing powder, Frisket masking fluid, Distress markers, EK Success border punch, dimensionals

Patterned Paper Overdose

I think I may have gone a little overboard here...

So I decided I wanted to try a sunburst/starburst with patterned paper, and proceeded from there. I did manage to incorporate both the colours and sketch (sort of) from this month's Unity {be inspired} challenge. Of course I'm going to add this to today's Friends with Flair! I'm also linking up to Simon Says Stamp's Monday and Wednesday Anything Goes challenges. 
Thanks for visiting -- have a great weekend! 

Supplies: red, green & Stampin' Up kraft cardstock, Canson 140 lb watercolour paper, DCWV patterned paper, Unity Oh! Joy! stamp, Versamark ink, Wow ultrafine white embossing powder, distress markers, Spellbinders oval die, pop-dot tape