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

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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

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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

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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


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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

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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

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