ColourQ255

Hi everyone!  Tuesday brings us another ColourQ challenge, and it’s a beauty:

I don’t think I did this challenge justice; I think Rich Razzleberry just always throws me for a loop!  I wanted it to be the focal color but I am never quite sure about using it when all is said and done:

I used watercolor paper to give my images a softer tone, using Hello Darling (one of these days I am going to type “Hello Dolly” by mistake, LOL).  Maybe I should have softened the images with a damp paintbrush….but no, I probably would have made a big mess!  Instead, I added some Gorgeous Grunge speckles and some Work of Art swooshes to imitate watercoloring!  The sentiment from A Dozen Thoughts seemed to fit the mood of this card.  And although you can’t see it here, I added a little sparkle with a Jelly Roll pen to my faux sequins:

IRL, it adds just a little shine and shimmer.  My Old Olive cardbase was stamped with another floral image from this set, creating a nice monochromatic background.  Ooops, almost forgot, the sketch today is from CAS(E) This Sketch #88:

Hope you will stop by the ColourQ blog to see the amazing samples the others have created….be sure to share your creation with us too!

Cassidy requested a Hello Kitty cake for her birthday.  Here’s my attempt (cake-decorating is not my forte, although I WISH it was!!):

Well, she liked it….and it tasted good….so I guess that’s all that matters!  Enjoy your day!

Creative Blog Hop

(If you're looking for my Merry Monday card, you can find it here!)

My friend Lisa at My Paper Tales invited me to participate in a Creative Blog Hop!  It’s just a little way for readers to get to know various crafters (not just stampers) here in blog land!  Lisa has been one of my most faithful followers….she always leaves the most encouraging comments!  And her stamping style is just delightful!  It is as sweet as she is!  Be sure to stop over and visit her blog, if you’ve never been!

So, the hop asks four questions….and I’ll try to make my answers short and sweet!

• What am I working on right now? 

Right now, I am busy making samples using products from the upcoming Holiday mini catalog!  This includes creating Christmas cards for my Christmas card stamp camps too!   Finally, whatever I need to prepare for my design team obligations is always on my mind!

• How does my work differ from others in my genre?

Well, I think when you have thousands of stampers, stamping with the same SU sets, you’re bound to see similarities among projects!  I try to be a little different by changing up my style; one day I might do a clean and simple card, and the next day, I’ll do a vintage-style card with lots of sponging and background stamping.  I do tend to keep my cards a little simpler than I used to, just because it costs more to mail them, and I truly do try to mail most of my cards out!  But I do have quite a stash here in my craft room, LOL!

• Why do I create what I do?

Oh, that’s an easy question!  First, I love color and art and making pretty things, be it with paper, fabric or even food!  But I can’t draw!  So stamping and cardmaking allow me to use someone else’s art and add my own spin on it!  I have always sent out encouraging cards to my friends and family, so when I was first introduced to stamping, I had the best of both worlds.  And in today’s world, receiving a handmade card in the mail pleases the recipient in ways that an email or text can never replicate!  It means you cared enough to take the time to create something unique, just for them!  It means LOVE!

• How does my creative process work?

Usually I am inspired by a piece of designer paper, or someone’s clothing, or a piece of fabric or upholstery I see in a magazine or catalog!  Other times, I use a sketch to inspire me, and sometimes my stamps themselves seem to beg to be used with certain papers, colors and embellishments!  (I wish I was more creative in combining unusual images and products together; I am still working on that!)  And sometimes, for design team work, I am given an inspiration or challenge to work on.  Anyway, I try  to start with a clean area, gather my supplies together and just get to work!  Sometimes it takes a few tries and a couple of samples before I get the look that is pleasing to me….other times it falls together easily!  I just love the process of putting stamps and ink to paper….it makes me smile!  I do have a funny quirk before my card is finished; when I have all my elements laid out and they are pleasing, I put all my major supplies away….close up the ink pads, put away the stamps and punches and ribbon….and THEN I glue it all together!  Isn’t that odd?  It’s like a little reward I give myself for finishing the project.  And then my area is already fairly cleaned up.  I say “fairly”…..the last two weeks I have had over 20 stamp sets just sitting on my desk.  I finally put them all away!!!  Just lazy and busy, I guess!

SO….that’s it for me!  Now, I want to introduce to you three stampers who inspire me and whose work I love!  They’ll be sharing their stories next week, so be sure to check them out!

Sandy Mathis

Sandy is a fellow Paper Players DT member and one creative stamper!  She always encourages me and inspires me daily!

"Hi there! My name is Sandy Mathis. I'm a wife and mom to three adult kids, my best friends. I'm a lifelong resident of beautiful Long Island, New York, and love the beaches, wetlands and nature here. I have always loved crafts of all sorts but I am totally addicted to paper crafting. I went to my first scrapbook class in 2004, and my friend Sue introduced me to stamping in 2008. I was immediately hooked! I am now a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, have a blog (stampwithsandy.com), and hold paper crafting classes in my home. I love blogging and participating in challenges and feel so fortunate to have made so many amazing friends along the way who share the same passion.  When I have time, some of my other interests include cooking, jewelry making, gardening, reading and biking. 

Thanks very much to LeAnne for tagging me in The Creative Blog Hop! I'm so honored that you thought of me!"

Claire Broadwater

Claire is also a Paper Players DT member, and she has an enthusiasm and zest for stamping (and life!) that will make you smile from ear to ear!

"Hello, my name is Claire Broadwater.   I live in Greensboro, Georgia.  It is an hour east of Atlanta at beautiful Lake Oconee/Reynolds Plantation.  My husband, Bill is my biggest supporter.  I am the mother of twin sons and I also have a bonus son and daughter.  We have 7 grandchildren.  (5 girls and 2 boys ranging in age from 3 weeks to 5 years)  Let's just say, there is never a dull moment at our home!   I am a retired Elementary Educator (27 years) 20 of those years were spent in First Grade—my true love.  I have been cutting and pasting paper as long as I remember.  I LOVE everything about paper!  The way it feels, smells, the texture and all the different patterns. If you look in my craft room, you would say I am a Paper Collector!  I save it thinking I might need every little piece!  I was a scrapbooker for many years and was introduced to Stampin' Up! two years ago and became a Demonstrator the first day.  I LOVE making cards, teaching classes, entering challenges and blogging. I believe my style is eclectic, but I must admit, the more layers a card has—the better.  Ribbons, pearls and rhinestones are some of my favorite embellishments!  SO maybe, clean and layered is a better way to describe my cards.  I am not an artist, but feel very blessed to be able to create and send cards to people.  Opening your mailbox to find a handmade card is such a lovely way to show someone you care!  I am very thankful for all the wonderful friends I have met through card making and challenges.  LeAnne is one of those amazing friends that I met online through challenges.  I love her work and started leaving her comments and she always left the kindest, most encouraging compliments on my blog.  I was so thrilled to meet her at the Stampin’ Up! Convention in July.  It was one of the biggest highlights of my trip!  THANK YOU, LeAnne for believing in me and for choosing me to be a part of this blog hop!"  

Joanne James

Finally, Joanne is another fellow Paper Players DT member, and she amazes me with how she can take simple elements and put them together to make something extra-special!

"Hello I’m Joanne and live in Northampton in the UK, although I’m Welsh at heart. I am a busy Mum of a 9 year old daughter and 7 year old son and have an amazing husband who is as much of a whizz with the ironing board as he is an IT genius, which can be a real benefit at times! I have always been creative and enjoy lots of crafts and papercrafting and rubber stamping is my passion – I love that I can produce something unique and truly personal. I only discovered Stampin’ Up! relatively recently and became a demonstrator 2 years ago. Stampin’ Up! enables me to share my passion and creativity with others through parties, classes and writing my daily blog, which is my therapy! My style is fairly ‘clean and layered’, although I love participating in challenges and find them a great way to push my creative limits. I am grateful to LeAnne for nominating me to participate in the Creative Blog Hop – I have been following her blog for a long time and am a big admirer of her work and I consider her a true stamping buddy."

Thanks, ladies!  Be sure to check out their blogs next week to find out more!

Merry Monday 122

Happy Monday, everyone!  Hope you had a marvelous weekend! Thank you so much for all the birthday wishes for Cassidy!  She enjoyed her day very much!  Now, on to today’s challenge!  Sue is our hostess for Merry Monday this week!  Check out this gorgeous inspiration:

Since I seem to be running at warp speed these days, I chose a very simple Christmas silhouette from Come to Bethlehem for my card, matting it on Brushed Silver and Brushed Gold mats:

I added a wee bit of gold embossing with the star, then added some tiny stars with my gold Painty pen.  It just added a little interest to the sky! 

My final touch was a bit of silver ribbon.  Clean, simple, and easy to reproduce!  The design team came up with some stunning samples…be sure to check them all out, and share your Christmas creation with us as well!  Just remember, it’s not that far away!!  There is still time to get a wee bit ahead!

A photo of the birthday girl (I’ll share more as the week goes on!):

Enjoy your day!

Paper Players 209

Hi everyone!  Happy Sunday---it’s time for another Paper Players challenge, and I am the hostess today!  Today, August 17, is a very special day—it’s Cassidy’s fourth birthday!  So in honor of her, my challenge is a clean and simple child’s birthday card:

Isn’t that graphic awesome?!  Thanks, Nance, for such a fun one to inspire us!  I chose to make a one-layer card using a retired image from Turtle & Company:

I know that children don’t really care too much about their cards, unless they’re older kids and then they only care about what’s inside their cards!   So, the simpler, the better!  I stamped Mr. Turtle in Stazon black ink and colored him with various markers….quick and easy! 

I did add some googly eyes from the Halloween kit that was in last year’s holiday mini…..it just adds a little whimsy to the card; I finished it off with a sentiment from Four You!  And now, check out what the others created with my challenge:

• Andrea
• Ann
• Anne Marie
• Claire
• Jaydee
• Joanne
• Laurie
• Mike
• Nance
• Sandy
• Yapha

And we hope you’ll play along too!  You can find all the details as well as the samples at the Paper Players blog!

Here’s a little walk down memory lane:

My favorite newborn picture:

One year:

Two years:

Three years:

Four years:

And my daughter found this picture of the two of us, one of my favorites, taken when she was three months old:

Thanks for indulging me!

Mojo 358

Happy Saturday, peeps!  I have had this little image from Hello Darling sitting on my desk, stamped and colored with Blendabilities, for a couple of weeks now, and I thought I should actually finish it up and make it into a card!  I used the Mojo Monday sketch for this week:

and added some pretty new papers from Flower Pot and All Abloom:

I have been slow to get on the Blendabilities bandwagon, but after watching a few videos and a little practice, I was pretty happy with this effort.  I’ll keep plugging along!  The original piece had a little smudge of ink close to the smaller leaves, so I fussy-cut the good part out and stamped the image again on a scrap of Lost Lagoon and colored the leaves, then popped up the cut part of the image:

I just hated to toss the image after all my work!  The leaves do look a little different on the two different colors of cardstock, but I still like the effect.  I added some Mossy Meadow ribbon and a wee bit of Coastal Cabana scallop in the background to complement the Coastal Cabana flowers.  I also finally used my new Heart Border punch!  What a fun little tool!  And I added some piercing, and finally a sentiment from A Dozen Thoughts.

It has been downright chilly here in SE PA, although I am not complaining a bit, it’s been even too chilly to go swimming!  But we got out our slip & slide and Cassidy and her cousin braved the cool air to do some slipping and sliding!

Enjoy your day!  Tomorrow I am the hostess for the Paper Players, AND….it is a very special day in our household!  Be sure to come see what it is!

FMS149 & KJ184

Happy Thursday, peeps!  I have a fun card for you today, one that I really enjoyed creating!  It seems that this month, making cards has been a struggle….I think the garden has cast its long, long shadow over me, making me feel guilty when I am in my craft room!  But this came together quickly, so the garden couldn’t complain!

I used the Freshly Made Sketches sketch from Rita this week:

and I finally got to play with some of my convention goodies that will be available soon in the Holiday mini catalog!  Mostly it was paper!  This is the uber-cute Motley Monsters DP, along with the photopolymer set Holiday Invitations:

I let the paper do most of the work!  The Little Letters dies were used for the “boo” and I stamped one of the little images from the set on my Tangelo Twist “moon”; then I stamped a few more images and a sentiment on the inside:

Don’t let the name of this set scare you away!  I rarely send out invitations, but there are more than enough fun images and sentiments in this set for other uses; it is definitely worth your while!   I am entering this the The Kraft Journal's challenge of "What's on your Work Table", since Halloween stuff is on my table this week!

Cassidy finally grasped the concept of matching her little domino cards:

She made quite a long train!  And it continued with her M&Ms:

Enjoy your day!

Stampin’ Royalty 241

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  It’s time for another wonderful Stampin’ Royalty challenge, and this week it’s GLITTER!  Woohoo!  Most of us like glitter, right?!  Well, I know a few who don’t, but at least it’s fun to look at if you don’t like to work with it!  I do, and I have a plethora of colors that rarely get used, so I was excited to get to work on my card!  I found an old SU set at a yardsale for a dollar….can you imagine….and it worked perfectly for glitter and heat & stick powder, because it had big, bold images!  Here you go:

I don’t even know what the name of the set is (anyone know?), but I stamped each image in Versamark ink on cardstock; added my heat & stick powder; heated it up just until it was shiny; then poured on the glitter.  After I shook it off, I heated it up just a wee bit more to set the glitter.  It’s so hard to photograph, but it looks wonderful IRL! 

I kept my layout simple so as not to detract from the bold image, just embossing my background with the Snow Flurries (ret) embossing folder.  I used a sentiment from the new upcoming hostess set Good Greetings:

I also used a couple of sequins and a simple ribbon; hope you like it!  My colors were Real Red and Wild Wasabi, and the glitter is Martha Stewart.   I had all kinds of ideas in my head for using glitter, and I know you probably do too, so be sure to check out the others’ designs at the Stampin’ Royalty blog and share your creation too!

Just bein’ goofy!

Enjoy your day!