Q is for Quote

Q is for quote in the 2nd part of the ABC Christmas challenge.  I love this retired candle set from Sweet N Sassy and lucky me, it has a die to go with it.  The quote is direct from the scripture.  Figured i could only go right with that one.  Thanks for the challenge.

Background is an embossed die from Spellbinders.  Ran it through my cuttlebug with an embossing mat.  copic colored

P is for Plain

Playing catch up with ABC Christmas challenge.  This is the current challenge and i need to go back and pick up the N and O.  I haven’t entered very many this year but I have played along.  Mostly because I am playing along after the challenges close. 

Simple white embossing on teal cardstock and popped a ribbon on. 

Thanks for stopping by, as always.  Here’s to more stamping time for all of us. 

Monday is back to school

The best thing about going back to school for our children was always the friends they made and seeing the ones they had missed during the summer. 

For this challenge from SSS creation  i used the Best Blender Brushes in the world from PIcket Fence studios.  The color was so easy to apply even to the tiniest areas because the brushes come in so many sizes. 

I’ve been noticing shadow dies popping up as an on trend focus.  I made my own with this large FRIEND die from MFT.  I embossed the die onto some dark brown card stock and then cut it out.  I then die cut it the regular way in my big shot and laid it on top and wow, perfect fit.  I was so happy with my experiment.  Thanks for stopping by.

Back at it

Simon’s wednesday challenge is Back to School.  What that means to me is MUSIC.  Our music teacher here in town has been a family friend since she and our son were in kindergarten together.  She puts together the best musicals and talent shows.  The students love her.   School means looking forward to her dedicated work with the students that she gets to do their best. 

Technorati Tags: masculine,music notes,embossing

Summer School #2 day 5 Ombre

Ombre has always intrigued me.  the soft fade of colors, light to dark.  Using an ombre pad is a very simple way to get this wonderful techinique.  Penny Black images and Simon sentiments.
MFT day 5 Summer School #2
Simon Says Monday Challenge

Technorati Tags: penny Black,WISHING,Scoring,Flowers

Summer School Day 4

Rainbows!  I love them in real life but i have to admit they are one of my least favorite designs in crafting.  They always look so contrived, to my eye.  Hmmm…what to do when the challenge is rainbow.  I took all of the ROYGBIV in oxide inks and made a horizontal strip of color on my craft mat.  Sprtized liberally with water and tipped my mat so they would run together a bit.  Grabbed a piece of watercolor paper and laid it on top and let the watered colors seep into the cardstock.  I love the soft look and just a hint of each color.  MFT Wildflowers.  I love this set an dit is likely the most used set in all of my stamps.

MFT Summer School #2 day 4

Visual Triangles

Visual triangles are so subtle the viewer doesn’t even know his eye is being led to elements.  There are two main triangles on this card.  I was glad I learned this theory in my earlier card making years.  I wish I could draw lines on here to show you but alas, that is something I don’t know how to do. 

MFT Summer School #2 Day 3

Technorati Tags: Washi,diagonal,CAS,Summer

Day #2 MFT school

Day 2 for summer school is Focal image.  You can barely see the little bokeh dots i stenciled from the left corner down to my image.  I then went over the stencil again with my wink of stella brush.  I paper pieced her cute dress and colored in her wings and shoes with clear star Sakura pen for some real fairy shimmer.  Putting the sentiment right into the image really draws the eye straight to this sweet fairy.  A couple of punched scraps from the glitter paper brings the eye right through the sentiment.  Just a touch of pink with a stencil brush for contrast finishes her off nicely.   MFT retired images and sentiment.

it’s summer school part 2

Part one of part 2 MFT summer school.  Monochromatic is the lesson for today.  I thought these bokeh stencils were from MFT but when I went looking on their site I couldn’t find them.  Maybe they are from Simon???? i dunno.

The sun stencil is definitely MFT.  It says so right on the stencil.  You can find it here.  

MFT SKetch

All American sketch reminded me of baseball.  I was glad I had this little retired PI image form MFT.  I made my homemade candies by using a 3/8 inch punch and matching cardstock scrap.  Just punch, use a stylus on a rubber mat and voila’ matching candies.  I placed this little guy on a shadow die also from MFT.  I wondered how much use i would get out of them but surprisingly i use them quite often.  MFT DP Sweet Sunshine pack.  Entereing in MFT sketch challenge.

Technorati Tags: MFT,PI,Baseball,Masculine,Candies

Simon’s Wild Things

Another entry for Simon’s Monday Challenge. Our nephew just had his heart valve replaced.  He’s doing really well.  Thought he would get a kick out of this pig as my husband works for Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Meats featuring pork.  In fact, he calls himself, the pork merchant.  Inside reads, “you cured yet?”

Technorati Tags: Sweet and Sassy,Pig,you cured yet?,SSS Monday Challenge,Envelope

Wild Thang, I think i love you

Wild side, is Simon’s Monday Challenge.  It’s been awhile since i made a watercolored background.  I love these distress colors blended together.  Here’s some wild flamingos for you. MFT die cuts.

Technorati Tags: Tickled Pink,flamingos,water color background,SSS Monday Challenge

B & W can be stunning

Simon Wednesday Challenge this week is to make our own background.  I pulled out my Unity stamps because they have challenged us with black and white.  I have to admit it was with trepidition as I am a woman of COLOR!!  Give me pink, green, orange…as evidenced by my blog background.

Anyway, I astounded myself with how this turned out.

Technorati Tags: Unity,Flowers,Scalloped border die,SSS Wednesday Challenge,Black and White,B&W

Sparkle/Shine

Simon’s Monday Challenge has me pulling out all my shiny things.  I added some Heidi Swapp Color Shine drops , in Citron, to give a little sparkle to my underwater scene.  This was so fun to do.  Swipe some gesso onto cardstock, let dry and then use distress crayons to blend the colors.  I stamped over it with Altenew inks but I would suggest StazOn.   I used Glaze over the scene and i hope my color shine will dry on top of that.  I love the added sparkle.

The stamp set is from Hero Arts and the die cut sentiments are from MFT.

loving on die cuts

Using Dies or punches is the  kick off point for Simons Wednesday challenge. I used Viva’s InkaGold paste in Rose Quartz on my background.  I just used my finger and rubbed it all over.  Next step: A striped Ranger Stencil place over the top and a slightly damp baby wipe (squeeze it out well) was rubbed over the top, lifting the color from the open spaces.  I cut my hearts with Spellbinders dies.  I used just a light spritz of Dylusions spray color in BubbleGum to give some interest to the embossed heart and tie it to the background.   I used a piece of acrylic that I embossed with MFT border dies to put a cross stitch border on the acrylic panel.  Stamped with Versa Mark and attached with small touches of adhesive right along the very edge of the acrylic.  Thanks for stopping by.

Fun in the Sun

Simon’s Wednesday Challenge is fun in the sun.  i have typed this and now I am going to create a card.  Let’s see how that goes.  My only idea right now is to use the Sunshine die I bought quite a while back. Tha’ts more like it.  One hour from thought to finish.   Using a brand new stamp that’s been sitting on my desk.  He’s so cute.

Sparkly Giraffe-What’s Up

Playing along with Simon’s Monday Challenge to add a little sparkle.  I cut my giraffe out of yellow glitter paper.  These die cuts are from MFT’s Jungle Friends.  it looks so simple but me and lots of parts and pieces just don’t do very well together.  A three hour production, REALLY!!!???

Technorati Tags: Jungle Friends,Giraffe,Alligator,Slider

Some Summer Fun

Simon’s Monday Challenge for summer fun.  Is there anything better than listening to all those sweet summer birds chirping away in the early mornings and evenings?  I love to sit out on the deck in the evenings and just hear their various songs.  These images are from Gina K Hearts and Flowers kit.  I used a die to emboss the rectangle and then masked off the area to do a bit of sponging with oxide inks.  Hand drawn music notes.  Thanks for dropping by.  You’re tweet!

llama goodness

This creation is for MFT’s sketch challenge. Usually when playing with a certain company’s challenge I like to use their stamps.  This llama set was given to me by a friend and I’ve been wanting to use it and also a technique that uses the MISTI to line things up without moving your stamp.  It went really well with the little blanket.  I did use MFT dies and also the striped background stamp that i only partially inked.  The DP is also from MFT’s pack called Fun & Frolic.   Thanks MFT for letting us use other company’s stamps.  Here’s a picture of how the MISTI stamping went.  The added corner piece really made this easy to line up. I just kept moving it over by two squares and it worked perfectly.

Technorati Tags: llama,center strip,MISTI,MFT BG

MFT color challenge 96

As long as I was in MFT mode I decided to hop on over to their color challenge which intrigued me and I didn’t really think I could pull that color combo off.  I thought about it a couple of days and what do you know, the perfect solution came to me. 

Technorati Tags: balloons,MFT,Color Challenge

Day 5 MFT 2018

The last day of summer school with MFT.  It’s been great fun and I’ve learned a lot.  I guess this was my most difficult challenge.  My personality is messy, spontaneous and on the fly.  It was a really challenge to lay everything out so neat and tidy but i do love the end result.  Thanks MFT for another great learning opportunity.  It was lots of fun.

Technorati Tags: MFT Summer School 2018,Wild Things,Elephant,Symmetry,Day 5

Day 4 MFT summer school 2018

Complementary colors, those that sit across from each other on the color wheel. This is the MFT school lesson for Day 4.  I have an old colorwheel that i bought from SU many many moons ago.  I still pull it out for reference more than I would have guessed.  All Items except Nuvo drops are MFT.  Using MFT Morroccon Tiles plastic stencil run through my Big Shot gave some dimension to the first layer.
I used elements from Blueprints 6 and one of the layouts for a kick off point.  The  MFT Fancy Flowers stamps and dies are some of my favorites.  I used my free Happy Birthday die from MFT in a horizonal way and used the little triangles form the letter A cast offs to give a finishing touch to the sentiment.

Repeat after me

MFT Summer School Day 3  is all about repetition.  To me, the easiest way to get a repeat pattern is to use a stencil.  All supplies except nuvo drops are MFT.  I have long loved my sequins die for making clear sequins out of packaging material.  It’s been a useful item many many times for just the right touch.

Technorati Tags: herringbone stencil,MFT summer School 2018,Wild flowers,Happy Birthday die

squeek

Squeeking out a quick card.  This week is FULL with company from Alabama and then not feeling well for two days.  This is for MFT Summer School day two.  Primary Colors.  This Bold Background stamp from MFT worke great for this.

Technorati Tags: primary colors,bold background diamonds,large sentiment

White Space 2

This was actually my first attempt at a white space card.  It went together so quickly I decided I would try it again on that first one I posted.  I need to restock my Birthday Stash and I think this technique is going to come into play.  Enterting into MFT Summer School

Technorati Tags: MFT Summer School 2018,large flower,daisy

White Space

MFT is having summer school.  I love following along and I always learn something.  This was a class I didn’t know i was waiting for.  How to use White Space.  Laurie is the teacher for this class and she teaches in an easy to understand format with some nice examples. 

I think the reason I have such a difficult time with this technique is because I am such a messy stamper.  It seems I so often get smudge marks, ink marks, bent edges or what have you, somewhere on my project and then i need to cover it up with ribbons, sentiments or whatever.  It happened here too.  The grass is colore in because I somehow had a green smudge on the left corner.  Otherwise my intention was to leave it white.  Up above the sentiment, I used a white gel pen and lightly dotted over some crazy light blue line that appeared.  I didn’t even use blue!!!!  Any way, I love my sweet littl PI girl holding her harvest in her paper pieced dress.

Technorati Tags: MFT Summer School 2018,PI November,Embossing wheelbarrow,paper piecing

drink a smoothie

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is all about food and drink.  I love summer smoothies made with berries and ice and protein powder.  This fun drink image  from Unity Stamps reminds me of smoothies.

MFT blueprint die and embossing folder make a nice background to hold these refreshments. the teeny sentiment is from a Kristina Werner set.

Technorati Tags: drinks,mft blueprint die,washi,Unity

M is for Mouse/Mice

Isn’t this the sweetest little mousie?  I surely had fun putting this together.  ABC Christmas Challenge for June 2018

Technorati Tags: ABC CCC,Whimsy,Mouse,Christmas

L is for Love in the ABC Christmas Card Challenge

L is for Love and doesn’t this just depict love and care.  I love this sweet scene from Whimsy Stamps. Playing in the ABC Christmas Card Challenge for Wednesday June 6.  So far I am staying caught up with my two cards per month.  Even if I haven’t been able to get them posted I have done all all the challenge suggestions. 

Technorati Tags: Whimsy,ABC CCC,Christmas

 

Masculine Cards

My stash of guy cards got down to one!! That makes me a tad bit uncomfortable.  I used to make as I go through life but that got too hectic with so many birthdays all in one month.  It works so much better for me if i have a stash.  Simon’s Monday Challenge is TRANSPORT and I am featuring that card that I just made.  The others I have made this past week and am just getting them posted. This is surely my most difficult category to make but I am having fun with it.

humor me

This guy!! ha ha!  this is a really old Mark’s Finest Papers image that i had never used.  Look at that sentiment.  We just spent a weekend by lake MI and those Gulls, they just digest things really quickly, I guess.  ha ha.

For Simon’s Wednesday Challenge to Frame it.  He is framed by the dotted lines and the corner frame piece.  I ran my black marker over the MFT die to get a better imprint of the  piercing.

This worked out perfect for the guy I have in my mind. 

Technorati Tags: MFP,Gull,Bird

Challenges:  Simon Says Wednesday Challenge

this bird

Frame it! is Simon’s Wednesday Challenge.  I’ve had this bird hanging around on my desk for three years now.  It was the very first image I colored with my InkTense pencils.  He turned out so bright i didn’t know what to do with him.  I need some masculine cards and thought this cheerful bird would fit the bill.  (pun intended)  I crack myself up!!  I framed him in black and doodles and that black corder piece that i ran through an embossing folder.

Technorati Tags: tim holtz,bird,frame,washi

Challenges: Simon Says Wednesday

where does time go?

It’s summer here and that time moves along so quickly. I just got back from a wonderful reunion of two grade school friends in MI .  Forty Eight years have passed and we are still special friends.  I was gone six days though. It’s time to get creative again.  Simon’s Wednesday Challenge is to Frame It.  I don’t know who’s die this is, I think, Penny Black.  I cut it out and then cut the corners of the frame piece with my scallop scissors to round them.  Placed the die cut back into the frame and placed it onto this stamped background of flowers from Unity.  I used Distress Crayons for the water color effect.  

Technorati Tags: Penny Black,wild flowers,distress Crayons,die cuts,Unity

Challenges entered:  Simon Says Wednesday: Unity

Hot Dog

Yep, hot dog!! We have a tradition at our home where we kick off Memorial Day and Fourth of July with the all American hot dog.  Yep, with fresh chopped onions and mustard and ketchup.  Yum.  We choose Nueske’s hot dogs because there is NO JUNK in them at all.  How do I know that?  My hubs is R & D for them for 38 years.  No JUNK allowed.

Here is a card that fits the occasion and also fits Simon’s Monday Challenge for a masculine card.  Thanks for stopping by.   Distressed edges and Tim Holtz mini crazy dogs.  so adorable.  LOL

Rose Gold

It’s difficult to tell on here and the photo quality is lacking.  This is black cardstock with home made rose gold embossing powder.  I saw a video where GKD rose gold was used and I hope to purchase some but in the mean time, what to do.  I had some Ranger Queens Gold  EP and also some Stampin Up Blushing Bride EP.  In a spare jar i just mixed equal parts and came up with this gorgeous rose gold color for myself.  Embossed and then colored with prisma and gamsol.  I love love love the look.  In real life those gold splotches are a coppery color but they look awful on here, much softer IRL.  I am enterening this in Simon’s Wednesday challenge to use more than one stamp.   I have the GKD flowers and the sentiment also embossed in my own rose/gold.  Thank you for stopping by.  Hope you enjoyed your holiday.                                                                               

catching up with Christmas 2

My plan has been to make double cards for each of the challenges.  I did seven cards today while i was playing catch up for the ABC Christmas Challenge.  Yep, I forgot to make one of them double and had all my stamps cleaned and put away before I remembered.  Here is second card for the current challenge K is for keep it simple. Yes, the whites are off but I had to open a new pack of cardstock and the dye lot had a little bit of ivory to it.  It says white on the pack but it looks ivory to me.  sigh.  it’s going to be sent as is anyway.  Most people won’t notice.  LOL

catching up with Christmas

Today was a free day.  I thought I would be making spring cards but i have made lots of flowery cards lately and I had a note on my desk to catch up with the ABC Christmas Challenge.  I was behind.  I haven’t posted many to the site but I have been playing along in the challenges.  Heres the ones i did for H is for Hat, I is for ice, and then the current challenge of J is for joy.