Paper and Vellum Posie

Hello, dear friends!  Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I hope those of you who celebrated Independence Day yesterday enjoyed your day.  We had fun by having family over on Saturday for a cookout and to celebrate June and July birthdays.  It was such a beautiful day weather wise for us.  We had clear, blue skies with warm temperatures accentuated with a light breeze to keep us comfortable as we sat outside. 

Anywhooo, as a result of the holiday, I have today off from work, and I plan to make cards!  The first card I completed today is for two challenges on Splitcoaststampers:  (1)  the Clean and Simple challenge to choose one of the outrageously beautiful wedding cakes from Carrie's Cakes.  Here's the cake I chose because I love black and white accented by pink; and  (2)  the Technique challenge to make our own paper posie.  Here's my card:

I used my 1/4" circle punch on black cardstock to add the larger dots to my dotted paper, and I cut 3/4" strips of black cardstock for the stripes on the top layer.

and here's a couple close ups of the flower I made:

And, if you're interested in knowing how I made my posie, here are the parts I used to make it:

Supplies:  vellum punched with the five-petal flower punch and one of the boho blossoms flowers embossed with dotted swiss embossing folder; regal rose cardstock punched with the scalloped circle and the 1/4" circle; pink glitter; glitter glue; barely banana brad. 

The vellum and cardstock was sponged with regal rose ink on the outer edges.  You can see in the photo how I cut slits between every two scallops on the regal rose cardstock.  This helps with shaping your card once you're ready to put it together.  The vellum five-petal flower petals were folded upwards with my bone folder and then just the tips bent backward to shape them.  For the little boho blossoms piece, I added tiny dots of the glitter glue and applied the pink glitter for a bid of sparkle.

I'm off to do some more creating.....possibly using stamps this time!.....and plan to stop by your blogs later to see what you've been up to!

Oompa Cat

Hi!  I hope you are having a fantabulous weekend; I appreciate your visit to my blog today.  We have family due to arrive shortly for a cookout, but I did have a little time this morning to participate in the Inspiration challenge on Splitcoaststampers.  Stef gave us another terrific website for our inspiration called Oompa.   I absolutely love the darling artwork by Noelle Dass at Oompa!!! All of her animal drawings are adorable. I chose this Cat Blue Print for a friend who is a cat lover.

I replicated her cat image using punches and Nestabilities. I made mine a full body image adding the kitty's paws.  Isn't he funky?


Cat Parts:

ears = five-star flower punch
eyes = double circle punch
face = oval Nestabilities
neck = arrow punch
body = circle Nestabilities
paws = 3/4" circle punch
whiskers = free-hand cutting

I inked up my dotted swiss embossing folder with Night of Navy and ran my Bashful Blue cardstock through my Cuttlebug. I added additional sponging around the cat to outline it like Noelle did in her drawing.

Kittie is Queen

My dear friend and fellow Rubbernecker Red Hot Mama, Kittie747, has been crowned Queen for the Day! Kittie has a style that is all her own with her beautiful watercolored scenes. Each and every one of her magnificent cards is My Favorite. As much as I would've liked to have cased one of her scenes, what takes Kittie probably an 30-60 minutes to do takes me hours and hours and I'm limited on time. However, I did want to case one of her cards and finally settled on her beautiful Cupcake Wedding Cake as the main premise for my card.

I kept the cupcake and liquid pearls theme, changed colors , incorporated her signature gingham ribbon, changed orientation, and added a flower border panel.  I colored the cupcakes with Copic markers and then added pale pink liquid pearls around the Crystal Effects cherry and pink glitter to the frosting.
Congratulations, Kittie, and I hope you had a grand and relaxing vacation!

Love Without End Bookmark Card

I'm working on making cards for a swap I'm participating in next week.  I made my required masculine cards already with my horse post on June 17.  Here's what I came up with for my required feminine cards.

I wasn't able to capture the swirled embossing on the black vase that I made with an octagon Nestability cut in half, and now that I look at my photo here on my blog, the colors look kind of washed out.   I tried indoor shots and outdoor shots and this is just going to have to do because I've spent way too much time on trying to capture a good photo.  The pink on the flower really is quite pretty.  I wish my friend, Sabrina the photographer, lived here, but it'd probably be asking a lot of her to travel all the way from Ireland to take my photos for me, huh?

Well, I'll just try to explain what I did to make my card for those of you who like the details.  The colors are Pink Pirouette and Certainly Celery cardstock accented with black.  The green and white polkadotted designer paper is by American Crafts and does match Certainly Celery quite well in real life.  I heat embossed the Love Without End floral in black on pink designer paper (it's kind of polkadotted), cut it out, and popped up on a dimensional; the flower stem and the word "friend" are also heat embossed to make the black more prominent as opposed to when you just stamp with black ink.  We aren't suppose to use a sentiment on our designs as a part of this swap, so I'll keep this card for a friend and come up with something else to replace it on the bookmark.  The leaf on the right side of the flower stem was punched with the 1" circle punch and punched again by inserting the leaf almost halfway back into the circle punch to shape the leaf.

The corner piece is actually a detachable bookmark, which I made as part of the Our Daily Bread Designs blog challenge.  This was a technique challenge over on Splitcoaststampers all the way back to September of 2008.  Here's a link to TLC187 in case you're interested in making some yourself.  These bookmarks are so easy to make, and would make great little gifts for those who love to read.  Here's a picture of it removed from the greeting card.  Cute idea, huh? 

We're also required to use two embellishments on our swap cards.  For this card, I used a black brad and the pink polkadotted ribbon.  I used my wavy border punch for the black and pink panel behind my main image.  For the center of the flower I used the Boho Blossoms and 1/4" circle punches.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'd love to hear what you think of this card as a card for a swap.

Flowers of Summer

Thursday brings another CCEE Stampers challenge, and this week Shirley challenged us to make a summer-themed card using flowers or floral ribbon in our design.  I chose to use my Florals and Weeds images by Rubbernecker.  My red poppies were colored with a red marker directly onto the stamp onto glossy cardstock.  I added a touch of orange ink with a blender pen for color variation and then I took my burgundy marker to add shading for depth.  The lavender flowers were also colored with SU markers (lovely lilac and old olive).  The weeds were stamped in Peeled Paint Distress Ink.  I applied sahara sand ink using a paint sponge to create the wispy sky and then lightly sponged soft sky over that.  Because I wanted my field of flowers to be the sole focus of my card, I kept my design simple.  I matted this to a sahara sand panel and punched the lattice border.  I wanted to use these brads that match sahara sand perfectly, but, since I do not like to have the back of brads show on the inside of the card, I cut an extra piece of real red cardstock, punched it with the same lattice border punch, and stuck my brads through the lattice holes.  I applied this to a strip of sahara sand to hide the metal of the brads and then raised this panel on thick dimensionals.

If you'd like to play along with us and/or see the designs my friends, Frances, Joanne, Shirley, and Cindy made, check out the details on our CCEE blog.

Happy stamping!

All Aboard the Birdbrain Train

Splish, splash, I was takin’ a bath
Long about a Monday night
A rub dub, just relaxin’ in the tub
Thinkin’ everything was alright

When what to my ears did I hear?
Comin’ down the track in the rain?
Yellin’ come on, Bertie, is party time
Why, it’s the tea partiers on the birdbrain train

Well, I stepped out of the tub
I put my feet on the floor
I shook my tail feathers
and I headed for the door

There I saw da Mudder
Reelin’ with the feelin’
Movin’ and a-groovin’
A-wheelin’ and a-dealin’, yeah

Bing, bang, I saw the whole gang
Headed for Californ-iiii-aaaaa
Flip, flop they wuz doin’ the bop
In celebration of mom’s 75th birthday

I began a-rollin' and a-strollin'
reelin' with the feelin'
movin' and a-groovin'
splishin' and a-splashin', yeah!

Hey, tea partiers!  Are you a-movin' and a-groovin' this fine Tuesday?  Be sure to check out Mothermark's Teapot Tuesday story and challenge and come on board the Birdbrain Train!

My bird and flowers were colored with Twinkling H20s; the center of the flowers and dots on the bird's shower cap were colored with pretty purple Smooch Broom sent to me (thanks, Hilda!); the bird bath was paper-pieced with SU dp; the sky was watercolored with bashful blue; and the grass and flower stems were colored with reinkers and blender pen.  I applied Lavender glitter to my faux brads (1/4" circle punch).

Hope to see you at da tea party today!  Bertie is movin' and a-groovin' to the tunes and flingin' soap bubbles today, so you're guaranteed not to get hurt or dirty!

Punchin' Cute Tree

Iris (Pam) is the chosen featured stamper on Splitcoaststampers today.  I chose to case her cute Happy Bird-day card.  Obviously, I made several changes with colors, stamps, and using no ribbon.

Isn't this punched tree cute? I got the idea for it after I saw Mary Fish use SU's 1 1/4" circle punch to make a leaf for her flower stem, and I thought, why not tree leaves?

 

These sweet flowers and grass are from Rubbernecker's Kittie Kits Cause a Scene and are the perfect size for fitting under my tree.

I used the same punch for the tree trunk on chocolate chip cardstock, using the remaining piece of cardstock after I cut out the leaf portion.  I then used my 1" circle punch for the center of the tree and adhered the leaves with glue.  You can see the pieced sections in the photo on the left and how I inserted just a portion of the 1 1/4" circle.  I then finished off the tree by adhering an olive green button with embroidery thread tied through it.

Want to know how I made those clouds? With my SU slotted punch! I just punched bashful blue and white cardstock at various depths, sponged the edges in ballet blue, and then glued them together.  Here's a close up.  The black buttons on each side of the main image panel were made with the Buttons #5 Sizzlits die.