MIM #153 and CC #4 and NBUS

I really love the water coloring technique and have been playing around with it.  The challenge for PTI's Make it Monday is a water color background with an embossed sentiment.  The link will take you to Dawn McVey's video that explains the how to.

The Card Concept has a floral theme this week so I decided to combine the two challenges.

I used the NBUS PTI Circle Scribbles to make my flowers, stamped in Ripe Persimmon Distress Ink.  Using an aqua brush, I moved the ink around, added more, and filled in the center with Mustard Seed.  After stamping the sentiment from HA and embossing, I used Peeled Paint to make the background, adding a couple of leaves that are barely visible in the photo.  I need a lot of sympathy cards to replenish my stash so I may be making a few more of these.

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful weekend.

CASology 53 and Case Study 150

We finally have some relief from the intense heat.  It was so nice this morning that at 8:00 we went blueberry picking. By 10, as it was heating up, we each had a bucket full.  There are still plenty of berries to ripen, so we'll be going back in a couple of weeks to get more.  nom nom  blueberry muffins.  blueberry pancakes blueberry teeth.  Wait, what?

Speaking of blue (how's that for a segue?) my card for this week's CASology challenge is blue.

Blue is known as a cool color and since I struggled with an image to do, I just went with the color and the word.

I used three different Distress Inks and a circle stamp from the Best Mom Ever set from Simon Says Stamp. The sentiment, if you can call it that, was printed on the computer, punched out and popped up on foam tape.  I ended up trimming down the card to 4 1/4 by 4 1/4 so it would better fit the image, which it also on foam tape.

This card was inspired by the photo at Case Study so I will be entering it in their challenge, too.

.
Thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Muse #19

I've been doing some soul searching.  Well, that's a little overly dramatic.  I guess you could say I've been doing some creative searching - not for creative things but for where my creativity lies.  I started in the card making world with a Cricut, making cards with lots of cuts and layers and inking and challenges geared to these types of cards.  Then I saw the Clean and Simple challenges and thought, "hmm I like these, let's try it."   and have been doing them for a while.  I have seen some fabulous creations by other bloggers but most of them are stampers.  That I am not.

I told myself when I got into this hobby that  (1) I wouldn't buy more Cricut cartridges than I would use, (2) that I would only buy sentiment stamps so I wouldn't always have to computer generate them and (3) only make cards that I would actual send and would go through the mail  This means no bows and very little embellishment which to my mind made them CAS.  Somewhere in all this, I lost my "style" and the hobby became a competition, which took all the fun and creativity out of it.  Now I'm going back to my roots.  I do better with mixing patterned papers and using cut images.  I have purchased a few stamps and they will also find their way into my cards - a couple of quilt designs especially as in the card below, made for the Muse challenge.  This is the inspiration by Michelle Williams.

And here is what I was inspired to do.

At first I didn't think I would do this challenge because I didn't have many floral stamps and I didn't want to make a lot of Cricut cuts. Then I thought "Wait a minute!  This is inspiration, not copying." See this old dog can learn new tricks.  lol.  I used my quilt stamp from WPlus9 , stamped the outline in black and then used my small stash of Hero Arts inks to fill in the color.  I love these inks (no I'm not dissing my Distress Inks, they have their place, too) and plan to buy a few more colors.  Wait, what?  I'm not buying stamps but I'm buying ink?  Of course.  A girl needs the right color to stamp a sentiment on her card.  Plus I plan to make a few more quilt cards and who knows, maybe there will be another quilt stamp coming along.

What is is with me and quilts?  I have made numerous and have collected others.  I love the variety of colors and patterns.  Yup, there it is.  Now why is the Righteous Brothers song "You're My Soul and Inspiration" running through my head.

If you've made it this far through my ramblings, I give you an extra thank you for stopping by.  I hope you have a wonderfully creative day.

LIM 117

I mentioned the other day that I ran across some digital images that I had printed out from pcCrafter.  This was how Provocraft began - selling digital images in three colorations.  You could get black and white, painted, or colored images.  The painted versions are beautiful and look a lot like the copic colored pictures that you see bloggers doing.  If I ever decide to get into markers and coloring, I can use the black and white images that I already have to do it.

Since they've expanded to the Cricut cutting machines and all it's accouterments, they no longer have this part of their company but I have numerous images on my computer.   I'm using that found one on  my card today for the Less is More challenge.

This is one of those simple sketches that you could use over and over again.

I immediately thought of Mother's Day when I saw these cute owls snuggling up together.  I put a brown layer behind the image, rounded the bottom corners and hand cut the banner.  The sentiment is from the Simon Says Stamp Mother's Day "Best Mom Ever" set that I embossed in white.  I got the stamps and papers and embellishments when I ordered their May kit.  Great deal!

I loved the comments I got yesterday from some of the WOYWWers.  (What's on your workdesk Wednesday)  I think this is going to be a fun blog to connect with.

It's a beautiful day here and I plan to enjoy it.  I hope you enjoy your day too, no matter the weather where you are.

Fusion #3

There is a very sad face sitting at this computer screen.  Again I missed a deadline.  I spent a lot of time and endured considerable hair loss trying to come up with a card for CAS this Sketch.  My fault.  I hadn't written the deadline time on my "challenge chart" and mistakenly thought it was today.  I'm not going to show it to you now because it may come in handy later.  I'm just telling you this so you'll all be careful in checking the challenge deadlines.

Instead, I'm posting my Fusion challenge card early so I don't miss that deadline.  Here is the challenge:

Last week the fusion section won and I have a feeling it will win again this week.  That's the one I chose.

This old brain of mine can't remember who posted this technique on their blog.  I think it was Kelly Griglione at Notable Nest but when I went in search of it on her blog I couldn't it find it to link it up.  Anyway, it's called stained glass.  I stamped the bird from a set by Inkadinkadoo (that I got cheap at Marshall's) with Versa Mark and embossed with black embossing powder on vellum.  Then, and here's the good part, I colored it from the back side with a fushia marker.  I love the effect.  The sentiment from PTI is also embossed in black.  I was ecstatic to find that my tape gun of choice (Glue Arts) has tape that is invisible under vellum.  Yippee!

Thanks for stopping by to visit.  Have a wonderful day!