Woodgrain Birthday

Hi All!  Today I'm playing along with Freshly Made Sketches.  We have a birthday for a very special carpenter and I wanted to do something in wood.  I stamped a woodgrain background and did a little sponging and scored at the board lines.  I stamped the sentiment on the panel in black and added a silver embossed nail through the "i".  The hammer was stamped in brown for the handle and the head of the hammer silver embossed.  It was added to the panel with dimensionals and the panel added to a wide dark brown border.

This photo is a little washed out, but you can see the scoring I did on the wood to 

create boards and the nail the hammer is pounding in to keep the dot on the "i".

Happy Stamping,

Dana

Snowy Trees

I really need to come up with a catchy phrase to welcome you and start out my blog posts.  I'm not a wordsmith and that type of thing doesn't come easily to me.  I'll need to work on it in my spare time (cough).  

I'm playing along with the Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge again.  Honestly, I've always shied away from tic-tac-toe challenges in the past - I think I was intimidated.  But, I have had so much fun with these.  I chose the top row of Snow, Glitter and Trees. It's a pretty straight forward card.  The trees were stamped, the sky and snow sponged and Wink of Stella added to the tree tips.  I wanted to play up the sparkle a bit more so I added prisma glitter to the snow.  I went with a larger border on this card as I thought it really complimented the main image.

A close up of the Wink of Stella in the trees and the prisma glitter on the snow 

banks (and an abundance of stray glitter, ugh).  The Wink of Stella is amazing IRL, 

but a stinker to capture in a photograph.

Happy Stamping,
Dana

For the Love of Pets

I am so excited to be the Guest Designer this week at City Crafter Challenge Blog, how awesome to play along with the talented design team!  This week the challenge is the theme "For the Love of Pets".  I love having a pet, to me they are a member of the family.  I tend to lean to cats and dogs. Pigs, fish, reptiles and gerbils, though perfectly lovely I'm sure, just don't do it for me.

I fell in love with this fabulous retro background stamp and thought it paired perfectly with the stylized cat image.  This was one of those cards that you map out in your head before paper and ink and even pulled out.  Sometimes the card in your vision doesn't materialize, but it did for me in this case and I love how it turned out.  It was pretty straight forward, some stamping and layering.  The sentiment and hearts were die cut and punched from glimmer paper.  It need another little element and I dug out some copperish/rose gold seed beads and scattered them about.

City Crafter Challenge Week 296: For the Love of Pets

Is that not the sweetest puppy ever!  I always find inspiration from the City Crafter design team and challenge submissions, swing by and take a look!

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Fooore!

Glen's Uncle has a birthday next week and is an avid golfer.  I recently acquired this stamp set and thought this would make a perfect clean and simple card, which happens to be the toppings this week at Seize the Birthday.  I stamped the golf bag on the main panel, a scrap of patterned paper, a scrap of green and a scrap of kraft.  A little fussy cutting and the golf bag has a cute little pocket with a "leather" accent.  Another scrap of the same patterned paper was edged with a bit of green and added to the left edge of the card.  I masked 2 stamps from a set to get the Happy Birthday sentiment.  Finally, Fooore was stamped in green. I sure used scrap a lot in my description above, I think I need to also play along at Pixie's Crafty Workshop.  It's been much too long since I've spent time on the playground.

Clean and Simple

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 213

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Love Birds

Today's card was a bit of a journey.  I contemplated the challenge colors at ColourQ but never quite landed on something until I began to play with the CASE challenge at Time Out.  The card fell into place pretty quickly after I joined the two challenges together.  I added my twist to the case by changing up the colors and using the bird image rather than a floral image.  I played around quite a bit with the colors of the layers on this card, it was pretty interesting how the color of the thin border really changed the tone of the card. I finally landed on the So Saffron and Crumb Cake. I really liked the softness of that combination of borders and that it let the birds and sentiment pop.

ColourQ #325

Time Out #48: CASE with Your Own Twist

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Cards Galore

I am seriously behind in my card making so I turned to challenges to provide some inspiration.  I am playing along with 3 challenges today. In alphabetical order:

Cards in Envy

WHITE ON WHITE Card Challenge 

I am completely out of Sympathy cards.  While I generally like to make cards with the recipient in mind, it is not always easy to predict when you need a sympathy card.  I try to keep a number of them on hand so I can select one based on the deceased or the loved ones left behind.  I wanted a bit of formality and something that could be masculine or feminine.  I lightly stamped a gray leafy stem and on the main panel and then dry embossed with a vertical stripe.  The sentiment was stamped full strength in gray and layered on top with sponge squares.  The main panel was then mounted to the card base with sponge squares.  I love those little sponge squares as they can be squeezed flat and pop back up - perfect for mailing!

CASology

Hmmm, Clear as a cue word.  I was intrigued and puzzled that around for a bit.  I immediately thought of clear embossing but wanted to include something a little more obvious.  I clear embossed the swirl on the front panel and lightly stamped the same image on the inside of the card so it could peek through the clear window sheet stripe down the front of the card.  The main image and sentiment were heat embossed in Crushed Curry.  A bit of layering and the card was complete.

City Crafter Challenge

The challenge this week is a photo inspiration.  I knew I wanted the soft blue and floral images to be the star of the show.  So I selected this lovely floral teacup as my main element.  But, I couldn't pass up the cookies, so I added touches of brown.  I lightly stamped the script in a warm brown on the main panel.  I also lightly stamped a floral stem in green and a light blue scroll image.  I stamped the postage stamp image a little darker in blue as I wanted the "5" to be visible as it caught my eye in the inspiration photo.  A sentiment, some layers and a scattering of pearls on the teacup and around the sentiment rounded out the card.

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Elegant Valentine

I, like so many others, fell in love with this gorgeous heart die cut from Stampin' Up.  I am not generally a big heart girl, but I couldn't resist this one.  I wanted to pull out all the stops on this card and use as much bling as I could.  The heart was die cut from some shimmer card stock that was in a huge stack of card stock samples from my Uncle, which became my main panel.  I heat embossed the sentiment in Cherry Cobbler.  A piece of red foil was attached behind the heart.  The heart was cut again from Dazzling Diamonds glimmer paper and inserted to main panel.  I added a few rhinestones,  adhered the panel to some fun foam and finally to a shimmer card base.  I thought this card would be a good submission to the Global Design Project as their challenge theme this week is Love.

Though subtle, there is a lovely textural and shine difference between the glimmer 

paper heart and the shimmer card stock. I hope you can see it here.

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Kindred Spirits

I had this gorgeous piece of DSP on my desk.  I planned to use it on another card but it didn't make the cut.  I wanted to give it another try and I thought the sketch challenge at Create with Connie and Mary would be perfect.  It is a Stampin' Up only challenge and this DSP is and goodness knows I have plenty of SU product on my shelves.  I played around with a number of flower images but they all competed with the DSP and no one was the winner.  I decided I needed to simplify so I dressed up a sentiment.  I like that it still has floral images and scalloped shape. For the horizontal elements I went with Whisper White baker's twine and seam binding.  I wanted a subtle element in the ribbon so I snipped a bit into the ribbon and pulled the tail through.  I really like how that turned out and expect I will use that again on a card.

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Birthday x2

Boy, is anyone else having a hard time getting their card making rhythm back after the holidays?  I sure am.  I have to work REALLY hard to complete a card.  I have a long list of cards that I need to make and even more that I want to make.  I had 2 birthday cards that I had to complete and I turned to challenges for my jumping off point for both.

The first card is based on the sketch at Global Design Project.  I used a combination of Whisper White, Calypso Coral and Crisp Cantaloupe.  I stamped the script background on the both the main panel and the rose panel.  I die cut the rose, did a little sponging and reassembled the bits.  The sentiment was heat embossed in Calypso Coral.  A few layers and a butterfly were added.  I also added pearls to the butterfly and a scattering around the sentiment to bring a little more weight to the bottom of the card as it felt a little top heavy to me.

My second card is for my nephew.  He is very active in sports and the color challenge at The Challenge immediately made be think of him.  For this card I wanted to leave a fair amount of white space.  I stamped the images in the orange, navy and teal.  I added a number of layers in those colors to give a little more emphasis on the great color combo.

Happy Stamping, 

Dana

Masculine Thank You

Today I'm playing along at Freshly Made Sketches.  I really liked the sketch, but turned for a landscape card.  My uncle is a graphic artist and he gave me a 4" stack of 11 x 17" discontinued cardstock - that will make a LOT of cards.  I need to send him an appropriate thank you card.  I wanted the card to be masculine and use the paper from the stack.  I started with some really cool black striped embossed paper.  Since is both elegant and graphically bold, I decided to mirror that in my sentiment.  The cursive "thank" is a a nod to the elegant and the "U" a nod to the bold.  I layered it up and added the "U" with dimensionals for a little interest.

Here is a close up of the paper.  Pre-embossed :)

Happy Stamping,
Dana

Floral Thank You

I am still trying to settle into a "normal" routine following the Holidays. I'm still not there yet but am anxious to spend time in my craft room, so far the time there has not been very productive.  Still trying to get my groove back I guess.

Today I am playing along with 2 challenges.  I came across a new challenge called Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge and thought it would be fun to play along.  I used the bottom row of Background Stamping, New and Shaped Frame.  I purchased the Stampin' Up set Awesomely Artistic a while back but was in a flurry of paper,ink and shiny embellishments making Christmas cards so it sat on my shelf unused.  I love the images and decided it would make my perfect something New.  As I contemplated my design I was stuck on color choices.  I have used a lot of blue lately and I wanted something fresh to stir things up.  I remembered the color challenge at Global Design Project and it was exactly what I was looking for - fresh, fun and a neutral to boot.

Happy Stamping,
Dana

I've Hit a Brick Wall

Whew, wonderful Holiday Season.  While I had a wonderful time, I'm ready to get back into a routine again.  I've had a tough time getting my card-making groove on though.  This card is intended for someone very special, but I don't want to spill the beans yet so I'll keep it to that for now.  I am playing along with Stamp Ink Paper Challenge in which the theme is anything but Christmas.  This card definitely fits the bill.

I used the Stampin' Up Brick Wall embossing folder which was inked with Smoky Slate and embossed on Sahara Sand card stock.  I sponged on a variety of ink and added a layered and flagged sentiment.  The trowel was die cut from silver foil paper and a scrap of Sahara Sand in which a wood grain was stamped.  The die is a garden shovel, but I think it can stand in as a bricklayer's trowel.

Happy Stamping,

Dana