Some Saturday Stampin'

Happy Saturday to you!  Thanks for stopping in at my blog.

I had a chance to make a couple cards today.  The first one is for the Inspiration challenge on Splitcoaststampers  from the LoveArtWorks Clay Pottery website.  I was drawn to Kristen's raspberry treat platter.

Kristen uses a lot of black/white line drawing with splashes of color on some of her designs, as well as a lot of bird images, so I brought all three of those elements into my design using an old SU hostess set. I relied heavily on my stamp-a-ma-jig to get the images lined up within the frames as well as for the solid image within that set to stamp the soft pastel colors over my images after I colored them with reinkers and a blender pen. I then cut each frame and adhered to a piece of black cardstock. I used my ScorPal for the scoring outside of the black frame. My card is 4 1/4" square.

My next card is in honor of this week's Queen for the Day zgirlsgranny, aka Linda.  Linda is such a sweetheart and a terrific stamper to boot! She's also a crazy tea partier at Teapot Tuesdays, and we always have such a blast.

My poochies are clear stamps by Inkadinkadoo in solid images. For the pappa pooch on the left, I stamped him first in creamy caramel, lined him up with my stamp-a-ma-jig and stamped him again in chocolate chip. I then took a black marker and colored just certain portions of the image and stamped the image again using my stamp-a-ma-jig. For the darling daughter poochie on the right, I stamped her in Adirondack's ginger (to reflect her lovely reddish brown tresses) and then took black marker and colored portions of her, too. I had to cut out each piece of both poochies and glue them to the kraft cardstock.

This darling daughter pooch with the beautiful reddish brown hair is giving her pappa pooch a particularly delicious bone for Father's Day. It will be in the form of a gift certificate to one of his favorite stores.

Happy Father's Day Pappa!

Majestic

Shirley from my CCEE group gave us a terrific sketch challenge this week.  If you'd like to play along with us, please visit our CCEE blog to get all the details.  You can also see the fab projects my team mates Cindy, Joanne, Shirley, and Frances designed.


For my card, I silver embossed and watercolored with Basic Gray reinker this terrific horse image from Out West by Gina K. on Gina's Pure Luxury White cardstock.  I then cut him out and adhered him with dimensionals.  I think he looks majestic; therefore, his name!



I'm thinking about using this for a swap I'm going to be participating in.  We have to create half masculine and half feminine cards.  Obviously, this is a masculine theme.

Stamps:  Out West (Gina K)
Cardstock:  Basic Gray, Gina K Pure Luxury White, Pebbles Inc dp
Ink:  Soft Sky
Accessories:  Versamark, silver embossing powder, silver brad and lasso, star punch, paper piercer, dauber, dimensionals, oval Nestabilities, circle Nestability

Feature Stamper - LeAnne

LeAnne Pugliese is this week's featured stamper on Splitcoaststampers.   I chose LeAnne's striking My Hero card, changing the stamps, color base, and adding an eyelet.  Oh, yes, I also used an octagonal Nestability for my sentiment....using the smallest one in the package.....it's a wee baby ocatagon!

As a matter of fact, this card was so quick to make that I made two!  The only change I made is in the designer paper pattern.

From Masculine to Feminine

I was telling my friend, Lynn, the other day about needing to make a bunch of masculine birthday cards for all the June birthdays we have in our family, and how much I dislike making them.  It's not that I don't want to make my beloved family members a card; I just struggle so with making masculine-themed cards. 

Lynn offered to let me borrow several stamp sets that she thought might help out, one of which is Stampin' Up's Classic Pickups.  These images are perfect for my stepson.  Here's what I came up with for him:

Ever since he was a little guy, my stepson has always wanted everything to go "fast," so what better image to use than this pickup truck with the custom flames paint job.  I cut it out with an oval Nestability and put it on the inside of my card to meet the Free for All challenge requirements Silvia gave us to make a jelly-filled doughnut card. In other words, make a hole on the outside of your card and then put the image on the inside.  I stamped You're a Classic just above the pick up truck. I covered the black embossed panel on the outside with metallic Perfect Pearls for some added masculine gleam.  Vroom, baby!!!

Still in the mood to make another card, I checked out the Inspiration challenge on SCS which is this gorgeous Tea and Roses website.  I love decorative boxes, so I chose these beautiful nested hat boxes as my inspiration piece.  Obviously, this website called for a feminine theme.  Okay.  Okay.  I know.  It's not achieving my goal of getting my masculine birthday cards done, but I just couldn't resist, especially since Lynn also loaned me her Fifth Avenue Floral stamp set. 

I stamped the flowers onto SU pink pirouette dp, cut them out, sponged the edges in pink pirouette and pretty in pink, colored the stamens with white gel pen, and rolled some of the edges for dimension. I lightly stamped the larger Fifth Avenue Floral image on the background of the pink pirouette cs.    Ooooo!  I jes luvs purty, girly things.

Well, I need to sign off.  Hubby and I are off to visit some friends.  I'll be back!!!  Happy Saturday to you!

Golfin' and Rockin'

Shirley has us making masculine cards for our CCEE challenge this week.  Masculine cards have always been a challenge for me; I probably just need more masculine stamps, huh? 

I pulled out my Let's Hear It for the Boys stamp set from My Favorite Things, using the sentiment, golf club and ball on the tee from the set.  I watercolored the grass and then stamped grass sprigs with a grass stamp from my Rubbernecker Kittie Kits Cause a Scene set.  Sponged the sky and used an embossing folder that reminds me of golfball dimples.

My friends and I from the CCEE team hope you'll join us in our challenge.  You can get the details and see my friends' projects on our CCEE blog.

This next card is one I made last night for the sketch challenge on Splitcoaststampers.

The diner, records, and sentiments are from the Fabulous 50's stamp set by Rubbernecker.  The diner was silver embossed and then colored with Copic markers to resemble the colors of the 1950s. Those are platinum records at the top of the design which were also embossed in silver.  I made this card for a family member who was born in 1950.  Since she's an Elvis fan, I'm going to tell her that these are Elvis's platinum records.

Thanks for swingin' by today; now, go rock someone's world and do something nice for them!!!

Show the Love!

I don't know about you, but I get so much inspiration just by participating in challenges from various blogs and websites.  They really help me get my mojo going....especially when I feel my mojo has up and left me.

One of my favorite challenges on Splitcoaststampers is the Featured Stamper challenge.  This week Beth chose a stamper whose gallery I had not come across before:  NikkiSchmaltz.  I chose this darling, glittery heart card she made.    Isn't it just the sweetest?

Of course, we are required to change two or more things when we case the featured stamper.  I changed:

1. stamps
2. designer paper
3. different embossing folder
4. used heart punch instead of ribbon

Yesterday I made a card for the Inspiration and Queen for the Day challenges on Splitcoaststampers.  The inspiration website Stef provided was Layla Grace, whose, as Stef wrote "...tagline is Love your Life, Express Your Style. The founders of Layla Grace state, "We feel that beautiful surroundings bring harmony, balance, and happiness to your home and life, and strive to showcase products that will achieve this philosophy.” There store is filled with inspiration.

I fell in love with this Beige Provincial Decoupage Frame. 

Secondly, the Queen for the Day was Connie Jo9 and I chose her beautiful Mom card to case.     As an option, we could also tell a story with our card.  I don't have a humorous story to tell as a lot of the other challenge participants did, and I don't know if this qualifies as a story, but I did want to relay that I am constantly touched by the deep bond of sisterly love between Connie Jo and her sister Cathy (Mutnik). They always encourage, inspire, uplift, respect, and love one another that comes through clearly in their posted comments on one another's designs.

So, I thought I'd use a photo that was taken of me and my two sisters a couple years ago when my sister, Kay (middle), came to Michigan to visit me after I had my hand surgery. We haven't been able to see each other often (like Cathy and Connie Jo) over the last 35 years because she lives on the Pacific coast and I'm alllllllllll the way over here in the midwest of Michigan. Nonetheless, we have a deep sisterly bond as well, which includes our baby sister, Wendy (left). Wendy and I have been fortunate to live near one another and we, too, share a close relationship as sisters. We took my parents to the local cider mill on a beautiful fall day, and we had so much fun! My husband had us pose for this picture in front of the wagonload of pumpkins at the cider mill.

I used my Rubbernecker Weeds and Vines images by stamping and heat embossing them in white onto kraft cardstock.  To line up the vine image for framing my photo, I relied on my Stamp-a-ma-jig.   I matted the kraft with SU's Soft Suede.

Am I Too Pink?

You know that saying "Does this make my butt look big?"  Well, I'm wondering if my card is too pink for ya'll?  Woo!  It is kinda bright, aint' it?  Bertie (my alter ego for those of you who don't know Bertie...and at least I admit to having one---ha! ha!) and I were up late the other night tryin' to git our CCEE challenge card done.  Shirt the Squirt, aka Shirley (wannabcre8tive on SCS) is our June CCEE challenge hostess and gave us a fabo sketch challenge this week.

Well, as you might have guessed, Bertie loves the bright colors and she really wanted to use this Pink Passion in the sketch design this week.  I liked my idea to use the black and white designer paper squares, and Bertie just kept insisting that it called for Pink Passion, so I just let her have her way.  It's so much easier than listening to her yammer on and on and on.  LOL!  I did convince Bertie, though, that it would look better to do a watermark effect for our cupcake image behind the happy birthday sentiment.  I colored the stamp with Pretty in Pink and Going Gray markers and then stamped it off once first before adhering the image onto the cardstock.

So, whadda ya think?  Would we make someone lose their cookies or go blind iffin' we wuz to send this bright birthday card to someone?    :-) 

If you'd like to play along in our challenge and see the magnificent cards my team mates made, please check it out at our CCEE Stampers blog!

Happy Stampin'!!!