Gnome Valentine

 Hello everyone. I hope you are staying warm!  It has been a cold winter here!

Hey, I am wondering what challenges everyone is interested in nowadays. I have been doing so little crafting lately that I am out of the loop.  I am totally back now so please drop me a comment if you want to recommend a Cardmaking challenge!

Onto my card, I am trying to work through a number of NBUS items. I probably purchased more stuff during the pandemic than I used.  One of them was this SUPER cute gnomie image from Stampendous.  I decided to color it some sortof vintage shades, which I think works well for Gnomes.  

I fussy cut this image out and put it over the die cut and stenciled background. I just recently purchased these from Honey Bee.  I hadn’t ever used anything from them but I was really happy with my purchase and have more to share in the future.  

Supplies:

Stampendous Gnome Love, Honey Bee Stamps Quilted A2 Cover plate, Honey Bee Quilted Hearts Stencil, Distress Oxide ink, Spectrum Noir markers.

Thank you for visiting!

Easy Tri-Fold with Bouncing Brayer Technique

Hello everyone! I hope your February is going well!  We are expecting some icy weather tomorrow.  However, this card is all Spring!

This is a card my friend April taught our online stamping group.  It is a fancy fold, and I have to admit that I almost never never never make these.  I don’t know why I assume that they are going to be too hard, but this one, you will see, is so easy!

The backgrounds were made with the Bouncing Brayer technique.  You ink up your brayer with dye inks and then just bounce it along your glossy cardstock.  Just repeat till you get the look you like.  

The stamps are Stampendous Hummingbird Hello and Birthday Wish, colored with pencils.

 In the above photo, I think you can see how you just take off one quarter of a full sheet of cardstock, and the others fold over each other for the Tri-fold.  

Thanks for stopping by!  

House Mouse Back to School Cards

 Hello! I wanted to share the rest of the back to school cards I made.  

These are all done with Stampendous Masked Mice and then several different school stamp sets I have, both from Stampendous and Close to My Heart. I colored all these images with markers and then die cut them, sponging blue ink inside the die.

I did decorate all the insides of the cards too. Here is an example of what I did, although they are all different. I hope these have all made it to the intended students by now, as most kids will go back by tomorrow at the latest.  

I would love to enter Dies R Us Back to School challenge, Cute Card Thursday’s Anything Goes and Word Art Wednesday’s Anything Goes challenge.

Thanks for visiting!  

Back to School Cards - 2020 Style

 When I saw this new stamp set from Stampendous House Mouse, I knew I had to have it.  I love the cute mice in masks, and thought that they would, at least, work great for Back to School cards.  I don’t always send cards, but I think that today’s kids need a little extra encouragement to move into this strange new year.  

For this batch, I stamped on patterned papers and colored with pencils.  I used a variety of dies and patterned papers from my stash to make them looks school related. I also have several sets of stamps that are school related, so I used little elements to further the school theme and personalize them.

I’d like to enter these into the House Mouse Challenge this week, Simon Says Stamp’s Wednesday Challenge (Anything Goes) and with Word Art Wednesday. 

Watercolor Stormy Skies

Hello!  I am continuing to work on my watercoloring.  Although we have had a few absolutely gorgeous sunny days, I worked on my stormy skies.

I know the second one is prettier because the sun is coming out, but I am really proud of both skies. I love how they look like clouds.  

Stamps are from Stampendous Sunrise Sunset stamp set and Close to My Hearts Wordfetti.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Watercolor Sunrise and Sunsets

Hello! I hope you are having a good weekend. I recently had some time to work with watercolors. I made a bunch of backgrounds, and then continued to work on the free watercolor class by Stampendous.  I finished up these two cards.

Stampendous Sunrise Sunset stamp set, Versafine Black ink, Watercolor paper, Daniel Smith watercolors, Darice embossing folder.  

I’d like to enter ModSquad’s Nature scene challenge.

Thanks for visiting!

Watercolor Stamped Scenes and a Worthy Card Drive

Hello! I hope you are having a nice start to your weekend!

Today I would like to promote a very worthy card drive and share some of the little paintings I have been doing as I follow along with the Stampendous Watercolor Friday Series.  

I think I told you before that I started out using some of the stamps I already have.  This farm set is very old, as is the background bandana stamp. Not a perfect painting, but I love this country look.  And watercoloring is forgiving.

Then I decided to purchase this scene builder set that is part of the watercolor class.  I have only had time to use the little sailboats so far, but there are many other little stamps that will create other kinds of scenes, and I hope to have time to play with those today.

This scene is from the class, and is very simple.  I decided to use the torn edges and an additional bird die cut to jazz it up.  I think this turned out nicely.  

I am sending these cards to Operation Safelight 2020.  This is a wonderful opportunity to share your creativity with women and men in a domestic violence shelter.  Carole asks for hand made cards, hand sewn makeup bags and money to sponsor spa bags to give to the people who need the services of the domestic violence shelter.  Such a wonderful cause!  Please check it out.  (Oh, there are prizes to be won too!)

So, these cards need appropriate sentiments (check the Operation Safelight blog post for guidelines).  The wise and wonderful sentiment is from Power Poppy, but I stamped inside all the cards I am sending with stamps from this set.  (This set is just retired, but if you are interested, check with your Close to My Heart consultant to see if they still have any around, often they will have some extras.)

Supplies:  Stampendous Scenic sampler, Bandanas Cling Background, On the Farm stamp sets, Close to My Heart Everyday Magic stamp set, Power Poppy Woodland Carpet stamp set, Versafine Black ink, Daniel Smith Essentials watercolor set, Bo Bunny Early Bird 6x6 paper pad, Carta Bella Ahoy There 6x6 paper pad

I would love to enter Word Art Wednesday Anything Goes challenge.

Thank you for spending some time with me today! I hope you have time to leave a comment so I know you were here, and please consider subscribing.

Sailboats in Watercolor

I don’t know how many people have seen this but Stampendous is having a tutorial each week at YouTube on watercoloring.  They started out with in depth videos about the tools, and then in February started the project tutorials. They have so much information in the videos and I have learned a lot!

  They do have a line of stamps out for these projects, but I decided to buy (on sale) the Daniel Smith watercolor paints, and then start working with some stamps I already have.  

This is an OLD Stampendous stamp that I thought was a similar style.   I think this scene is awesome for masculine cards, so I decided to get ahead with a Father’s Day card.  

Supplies: Stampendous Cling Sailboat Bay stamp, Hero Arts Celebrate Everyday sentiment set, Versafine black ink, Daniel Smith watercolors, Canson Watercolor paper, other items from my stash.

I did pick up one of the stamp sets from the videos now, and will be working with it in the future.  I definitely need a lot of practice! What do you think about watercoloring?

I’d love to enter Retro Rubber’s Anything Goes Challenge (have to use an old stamp, this stamp is 5-10 years old)

Christmas Cards for 2020 Already??

Hello!  I hope you are enjoying your weekend.

This past year, I made more Christmas cards in November and December than in past years.  It was a bit overwhelming, so this year, I hope to get many more Christmas cards done throughout the year.  If I did ~5 a month, I would be comfortably ready to send them out after Thanksgiving this year.

I won this stamp recently, so it was the perfect choice for my first Christmas card of 2020!

I simply colored the image (House Mouse Sharing a Sip) in with alcohol markers and added flocking to the hats!  I love white flocking on winter hats!

I would love to enter House Mouse & Friends Challenge - Anything Goes/Optional Christmas, Cute Card Thursday - Anything Goes, SimonSaysStamp’s Wednesday Challenge - Something New, and WordArtWednesday’s Challenge - Anything Goes.

Thank you for your visit today! 

Halloween Card with Pop-up feature inside

Hello and I hope you are well. Today I am going to share my last Halloween cards of the year.  These both have similar card fronts, but for the blue card, I decided to use the W-Fold on the inside so I could add a lot more images!  (I shared a tutorial on how to do this HERE.)

Stampendous, Just for Fun and Hero Arts stamps.

I would love to enter this in the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday Anything Goes challenge and Lost Coast Portal To Creativity’s Halloween Challenge.

I am all ready with piles of candy to give out tomorrow night.  Unfortunately, we are supposed to get a lot of rain, so I hope I don’t have a lot leftover.  Handing out candy is something I look forward to every year.  We typically get LOTS of trick-or-treaters, as we have a very safe road, and I have found that most kids are very polite and trying their best, for their ages.  That being said, the tiny ones will probably always be my favorites!

Have a wonderful day!

Not too scary Halloween Cards - Distress Oxides

Hello everyone!  Most of the Halloween cards that I am going to share in the next few days were made using a combo of my time spent at my craft group, plus time spent at home.  I have found that traveling with my supplies is best used by making “pieces-parts” of cards.  

So, one week at craft group, I brought my Distress and Distress Oxide inks, and made a bunch of backgrounds.  I added ink with direct-to-paper techniques, and then added some water to blend them, and sometimes added salt to get texture.  

Another week, I brought stamp sets and just stamped out a bunch of images, colored them, and fussy cut them out.  I actually have a bunch of Christmas images done that I need to make into cards, too.  

Then I take them home, and I find it easier to put cards together there, where I have all my craft supplies at my fingertips.  Then I am able to make a variety of cards.

The first Halloween card, I stamped a creepy tree in the background, added black ink around the edge and then just added my cute costumed kids.  I really like this combo of creepy images and cute.  I don’t like too scary of cards for Halloween.

The second card, I went with a lot more detail.  I not only used my salt-treated oxide background, but I die cut and popped up some hills, stamped a haunted house on yellow and added glossy accents to the window.  I really love how this one turned out, and I hope the photo does it justice!

Supplies: Stampendous Bring to Life stamps set, Hero Arts CL057 October set, Just for Fun Rubber Stamps Haunted House and Tree, Distress Oxide ink and Versafine ink in black, Distress Oxide (card 1) Twisted Citron, Lucky Clover, Salty Ocean, (card 2) Seedless Preserves, Wilted Violet, Black soot,  Avery Elle Wonky Stitched Rectangles dies, Frantic Stamper stitched borders dies, other items from my stash.

I would love to enter the SimonSaysStamp’s Monday Challenge Spooky, and Lost Coast Portal to Creativity’s Halloween Challenge.

THANK YOU for your visit today!  Hope to see you again soon!

Bandana Card

Howdy, stamping friends!  Today, I created a card as a sample for the Free for All Challenge at Splitcoast Stampers - A Western Cowboy/Cowgirl theme.  My very first thought for Cowboy was a bandana, and I have the perfect stamp for this. 

Everything here is stamped, no patterned paper or embellishments.  I stamped the bandana over red cardstock and added details with my white gel pen.  I planned to cut it up and create a layout with this, but I just couldn’t cut it up!  So, instead, I matted it, added my sentiment and a little stamped flower.  

Supplies:  Stampendous Bandana background stamp, Power Poppy Folk Heart stamp set (sentiment and flower), Versamark black ink, Memento Black ink, alcohol markers, Signo white gel pen, other items from my stash.

Thank you for your visit and all your kind comments.  I really enjoy reading each one!  See you soon!