Royal Shaving Cream

Hi, everyone!  This week's Inspiration Challenge over at Splitcoast is to find inspiration from the glass works at Isle of Wight Studio Glass.....I'm a sucker for royal blue and white, so I chose this awesome vase and tried the shaving cream technique with Brilliant Blue ink.  It didn't come out as marbly as I planned since hubs only had shave gel instead of shave cream.  Since it didn't foam up, I had to get creative and move the ink around with the cardstock and swirl it around a bit.  It ended up to be one giant mess, so while I was inky, I made about eight different panels by adding different colors and designs with a paste knife.  Now I have a stash of backgrounds for later.  Once the panel was dry, it was adhered to a card front, a frame cut with the Divinity Designs Custom Pierced Rectangles Dies was popped with foam tape and the sentiments from the 'You Bless Me So' Stamp/Die Duos set were added.  I didn't want to cover up the background, so the only embellishments added were three sparkly blue sequins.

Thanks for visiting with me!

Blessings,

Mixed Media Sunshine

Hi, everyone!  My card for today combines three challenges over at Splitcoast: Color Challenge of peach, espresso, and light blue; Mixability 'Array of Sunshine' Challenge ; and Friday Free4All 'Orange' Challenge.  The background panel was created with the Wrinkle Free Distress Technique....espresso brown, peach, and light blue ink pads were swiped onto a craft sheet, spritzed with water, then white cardstock mopped up the colors.  Once the panel was dry, it was cut out with the Divinity Designs Custom Double Stitched Rectangles Dies, the sun and sentiment from 'Hello Sunshine' were stamped with Stazon Jet Black, then the sun was colored with both markers and water-coloring.  White chalk pen was added to highlight the clouds.  Three strands of blue baker's twine were cut and laid across the card;  they were curvy from being on the spool and I like how they looked laying on the card, so I knotted the end and glued them down in the natural shape.  Kinda weird and out of the normal for me, but I like it!  The panel was matted with espresso brown and adhered to a white card.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Have a blessed weekend!!

You're A Great Catch!

Hi, everyone!  This week's Sketch Challenge over at Splitcoast is perfect for a spinner card (I flipped the sketch horizontally).  I began by cutting a white panel with the Divinity Designs Custom Pierced Rectangles Dies, sponged the water over a piece of scratch paper and sponged the clouds over a template cut with the Clouds and Raindrops Dies.  The spinner channel was cut with a flagpole die from the now retired 'Pennants Dies' set, cutting one half at a time using the Die Re-sizing Technique, so that both ends of the slot would be square. The bass and sentiment are from the 'Great Catch' Stamp/Die Duos set; the bass was watercolored and a clear glaze pen was used over the eye.  The panel was popped up with foam tape and the spinning mechanism was created with a penny and foam tape, attached to the fish from the back side of the panel.  When tilted from side to side, the fish will spin.  The Grass Hill Die and Grass Border Die were used to finish the scene.

Thanks for visiting!

Blessings,

Wings of Time

Hi, everyone!  This week's Featured Stamper over at Splitcoast is Sally Merla aka CraftyMerla......congrats, Sally!!  Oh wow, it was extremely tough to choose a card from her gallery since I loved so many, but I finally decided on this gorgeous card for inspiration to create a birthday card for my step-dad.  I went with similar colors and a bird image, but added some stenciling, linen thread and two metallic dots.  The background was created using the Wrinkle Free Distress technique....ink pads were swiped onto a craft sheet, spritzed with water, then ivory cardstock was pressed into it.  The stamps I used are from the 'Woodpecker' set by Divinity Designs, the panel was cut out with the DD Custom Double Stitched Rectangles Dies set and the stenciling was sponged over the 'Arrows' Mixed Media Stencil.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Blessings,

Faith, Hope, Love, and Alcohol Ink

Hi, everyone!  Today's Mixability Challenge is to incorporate Love/Hearts into our mixed media projects.  I've been playing with alcohol inks and Yupo paper all morning and came up with a design for today's challenge.  I began by inking a panel with two pinks and one purple alcohol ink....I worked it quite a bit with a little mixative until it became a pretty solid consistency since the 'Bookmarks - Faith, Hope, Love' stamps (by Divinity Designs) had a lot of flourishes which I didn't want to get lost.  Each stamp was inked one at a time with Alcohol Lift Ink and pressed onto the inked panel; a clean cloth dabbed the lift ink to reveal the ghosted images.  Once each was lifted, I stamped off onto a piece of cardstock which I will use for a project at another time.  When finished, the panel was cut into strips.  The Clean and Simple Challenge this week is 'Bands of Color'.....I'm hoping that the strips and diagonal swipes of purple count as bands, otherwise, the challenge police may come after me! :) To finish the card, pink baker's twine, white heart sequins and tiny pink pearls were added.  I will also be submitting this to the 'Love Is In The Air' Challenge over at the Card Concept Blog.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Blessings,

Blessings Come Down

Hi, everyone!  This week's Featured Stamper over at Splitcoast is Joyce Whitman aka Cookielady01....congrats, Joyce!  Wow, there were so many awesome cards in her gallery to choose from, but I finally decided on this beautiful card to case. Instead of embossing the card base, I embossed the strip instead, but kept the layout the same.  When the new 'Arrows' Mixed Media Stencil was released by Divinity Designs, I knew that I would have to use the 'Blessings' stamp set at some point because of the arrows.....today is the day!  The die cut cross and embossed panel were created with the 'Cross' Embossing Folder/Die Duos set.  Also used were the Double Stitched Rectangles and Double Stitched Squares Dies from DD.  After stenciling the cross and coloring in the arrows on the sentiment panel, a clear glaze pen was used on them.  I chose the glaze pen instead of adding embellishments so that the card will be easy to mail.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,

Find Refuge / Gouache Watercolor

Hi, everyone!  Today I stepped way out of my comfort zone and tried a new technique, for the Mixability Challenge over at Splitcoast, which was a bit messy and my fingers are stained....eek!  (Next time I will wear rubber gloves! lol!)  The technique is called 'Gouache Watercolor'.....since I do not own any Gouache paint, I created my own by mixing watercolor re-inkers with acrylic paint.  With a wet sponge, the different colors of the hybrid paint mixtures were dabbed onto the panel.  Since my hands were already messy, I created several more panels to use in the future.  Once the panel was dry, it was cut out with the Divinity Designs Custom Pierced Rectangles Dies.  The Friday Free4All Challenge theme at SCS is 'I might use this someday'......I dug into my scrap bin and found this 'Find Refuge' Bible Journal image, already cut out, plus a bunch of feathers.  All I had to do was color them...yay!!  

Thanks for visiting!

Blessings,