Me, Prickly?

I'm playing along for the first time with the challenge Inspired by All the Little Things.  Here is the current inspiration photo: 

For this challenge, Tracey is hosting, and featuring guest designer Stephanie. Now it just so happens I was at a crafting get-together recently, where I used Steph's stamps and dies with Tracey's watercolour markers to make all of these: 

What better time to start putting them to use? My finished card: 

I chose the cactus that picked up some of the colours in the inspiration photo and made a clean and simple card. Of course, with that sentiment, I have no idea when I'll ever use it. ;) 

Supplies: white, Stampin' Up naturals ivory & DCWV All Chalked Up cardstock, Strathmore mixed media paper, My Favorite Things (MFT) Sweet Succulents stamps & dies, MFT black licorice ink, Zig clean colour real brush pens, MFT Blueprints 24 & Wonky Windows dies, pop-dot tape

Christmas Musing in March

Two of my talented friends are getting together with some Christmas inspiration... Emily is the guest Muse for Ardyth's Muse: ChristmasVisions challenge this week! I'm practically obligated to play along. ;) Here is Emily's fun inspiration card: 

So much in this card to be inspired by! Having no yetis, I looked to: the deer in the trees; the use of patterned paper; the varied colours of the evergreens; the gold cord; and the overall clean design. Emily's little jar scenes are very similar to a stamp I have, so that was my starting point. Here's my finished card: 

I think it's easy to see why I pulled out this particular stamp! I really wanted to duplicate the shades of green that Emily used for her trees, but having all of them on one stamp made it a little trickier. After inking the whole stamp with Versamark (both to make sure my inks stayed juicy as I played, and so I could heat emboss), I used sponge daubers to ink the trees in three different greens and the deer in brown. I was able to curve a cling stamp enough to echo the line of trees. And of course I messed up trying to put the sentiment right on the panel! I kind of like the curved panel I had to use to cover up my mistake. It barely shows in the photo above, but you can see it here a little better: 

I brushed a little Wink of Stella along the curved edge, as well. Rather than try to match the brown of the deer in cardstock, I just sponged the edges of a white panel with the same ink. 
It's great to start building up a small stash of Christmas cards so early in the year! Maybe you'll be inspired by Emily's card to play along, too. 

Supplies: white cardstock, Echo Park Dots & Stripes Metropolitan patterned paper, Memory Box Deer in the Field & Stampin' Up Winter Memories stamps, Versamark & iced spruce, peeled paint, evergreen bough & ground espresso distress inks, clear & pirate's gold embossing powders, My Favorite Things blueprints 24 & Paper Smooches borders 1 dies, Wink of Stella clear glitter brush pen, May Arts white & gold twine

The Legendary Snarky Stampers

Yes, the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is truly legendary... in our own minds, at least. So what better theme for our latest challenge than L IS FOR LEGEND?

The Sisters are looking for legendary or mythical creatures... fairies, mermaids, unicorns and the like. I have a shocking lack of such stamps in my collection. Or maybe not so shocking, mermaids and fairies being not so much my thing. But with St. Patrick's Day just behind us, I went with the legendary leprechaun: 

This is a larger format, 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch card to hold all the stuff I wanted to put on it. I knew I wanted to have a pot of golden amber ale mugs, a rainbow, and this cute leprechaun all represented. The rainbow is die cut, watercoloured (I tried for an ombré effect in each arc, but not very apparent) and Wink of Stella'd. The leprechaun and beer mugs are also watercoloured. This card seemed to call for sparkle everywhere: the wee fellow's teeth are Winked and Glossy Accented, his shamrock and tie Winked, and his various buckles painted with gold Smooch. The beer foam has white shimmer paint. The cauldron is heat embossed with black gold embossing powder. Of course the clouds are Winked as well. The background sky is sponged using a Paper Smooches border die cut as a mask. 

Trying to photograph shimmer seems as elusive as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but you can see a little of it here: 

I'm entering my card in the current Curtain Call rainbow challenge and the Shopping Our Stash Oh Me Lucky Charms challenge. 
Be sure to pop over to our challenge blog to see all the fantastical cards the Sisters have created, and that of our latest guest designer, Sharon! And then I hope you will join us!  

Supplies: white & American Crafts textured green cardstock, Strathmore mixed media paper, Paper Smooches A Magical Spring stamps & dies, Stampin' Up Tee-Hee-Hee stamp, Versafine onyx black, MFT black licorice & mermaid lagoon distress inks, black gold embossing powder, Paper Smooches Rainbow, Clouds & Borders 1 & MFT Scenic Safari dies, distress markers, Tsukineko frost white shimmer paint, gold smooch, clear glitter Wink of Stella marker, pop-dot tape

Clean and Simple Coffee

It's time for the Spring Coffee Lovers Bloghop! It starts today, and since I haven't had the chance to play along in the last couple of hops, I wanted to make sure I played along with this one. I thought a clean and simple (CAS) card would be just right for spring. 

The coffee mug is die cut from My Favourite Things Hot Cocoa Cups... but I wasn't going to put hot chocolate on a spring card! ;) I like that there are left- and right-handled cups. All handles should be on the left in my opinion. The sentiment seemed perfect for the hop. The steam and little star in the sentiment are sparked with some clear wink of stella. 
I'm going to get this linked up while I can still be in the low 3-digit numbers. :D Be sure to check out all the beverage related inspiration... there are even prizes! And I hope you'll come back tomorrow for the unveiling of the latest Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers challenge. Happy Friday! 

Supplies: white & Stampin' Up real red & early espresso cardstock, My Minds Eye Lime Twist Life of the Party patterned paper,  MFT Perk Up stamp, Hero Arts cup o' joe ink, MFT Hot Cocoa Cups dies, Wink of Stella clear glitter pen, pop-dot tape

An Easter MFT Sketch

Happy Monday! But not just any Monday... today is PI DAY! March 14th = 3/14, or in more mathematical terms, 3.14. Bonus this year... if we add the year, we get 3.1416. Happy sigh. 
Okay, enough math geekiness for one day. I have a card for the current MFT sketch challenge. 

I have a couple of Easter cards to make, and this sketch seemed to work perfectly for an idea I already had in my mind: 

On my vertical panel, I added embossing paste with glitter through a scraped paint stencil to suggest the stripe. My three part sentiment stands in for the star elements. For some reason, I didn't have this exact sentiment in my collection (weird, I know), so I had to print it on computer. My Easter birdie is grounded by a little bit of MFT grass. He's watercoloured with distress inks and markers. If I had a yellow distress ink, I'd have used it to sponge the vertical panel, but since I don't, I used two Memento inks along with carved pumpkin distress. 
Hope you enjoyed Pi Day... perhaps it included pie! 

Supplies: white, American Crafts green textured & Stampin' Up basic black cardstock, Strathmore mixed media paper, Craft City green textured card base, Stampers Anonymous/Tim Holtz Bird Crazy & Crazy Things stamps @ dies, MFT black licorice hybrid, Memento dandelion & cantaloupe & carved pumpkin distress inks, MFT grassy edges die, distress markers, Memory Box scraped paint stencil, Dreamweavers glossy white embossing paste, Stampin' Up dazzling diamonds glitter, pop dot tape

Pretty Gears

It's time for the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers annual STEAMPUNK challenge! We've had S is for Steampunk, P is for {steam}Punk, and now...

G IS FOR GEARS! I think you can make a steampunk card without any gear images, but I imagine it's a rare occurrence. ;)  My card has gears made of paper and clock.

There are also lots of layers, at least compared to my usual style. My first step was to stamp a large gears stamp on black cardstock and and then brushing green perfect pearls over it. It says green, but it matches the textured teal cardstock layer. Which matches the teal in the papers I used! The large panel was pre-cut on the sheet but the roses are fussy-cut... a decision I started to regret soon after I started. :D The gears are from an old-style alarm clock; I have two left and then I guess it will be time to start checking garage sales. In case you're adhering gears to paper any time soon... multi medium matte did not work! Glossy accents did the trick. 
With textured patterned paper, heat embossing and metal gears, I'm adding this to the current Simon Says Stamp Touchy Feely challenge. 
Be sure to check out what the other snarky sisters have created — although we are surprisingly low on snark this week! Must be the challenge of going all steampunk. We also have a returning Queen of Snark, Cyndi! And then you should gear up and join us! 

Supplies: Stampin' Up basic black & Bazzill textured teal cardstock, Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante patterned paper, Stampers Anonymous/Tim Holtz Collection gears & Unity gratitude=joy stamps, Versamark & Versafine onyx black inks, Zing clear embossing powder, mint green Perfect Pearls, pop dot tape

Naughty or Nice Goes to the Movies!

It took an extra day, but we've left February behind, and here we are in March! Of course, that also means it's time for a new Naughty or Nice challenge. With the Oscar winners  announced just this past weekend (Have you seen Spotlight? I highly recommend it), we are going to the movies! 

I ended up making two cards for this challenge. My first one is more of a general tribute to the silver screen:

I combined some movie-related Graphic 45 patterned paper with gold-stencilled stars , two stamped movie night tickets, and a sprinkling of gold star sequins.

For my second card, I chose to be inspired by a specific movie. I hope it's pretty obvious which one...

Did you guess "You've Got Mail"? Or if you're a classic film fan like me, you could also link it to "The Shop Around the Corner". I thought this little love letter image would be perfect. While I tried stencilled hearts first, I ended up going through my envelope of die cut hearts and picking an assortment to float up out of the envelope. The full sentiment is "happy mail enclosed", but I thought I was already being obvious enough just using the first two words. 
The other troublemakers have some fun film-related creations for you over at our Naughty or Nice blog! I hope you'll join in on our salute to the movies! 

Supplies: (movie night) Stampin' Up naturals ivory & Bazzill black tie cardstock, Graphic 45 Curtain Call patterned paper, Unity stamps, Versafine onyx black & Brilliance galaxy gold inks, Zing clear embossing powder, Dreamweaver glossy white embossing paste, Heidi Swapp confetti stencil, My Favorite Things Blueprints 24 stitched rectangle die, pop dot tape; (happy mail) white & assorted glitter & metallic cardstock, Echo Park For the Record 2 patterned paper, PSA Essentials Love Birds & Viva Las VegaStamps Happy Mail Enclosed stamps, Versafine onyx black ink, Zing clear embossing powder, pop dot tape