A Very Dotty Happy 18th!

Can you tell we are absolutely dotty about our neice and she has a special birthday!  Well in England anyway.  They really celebrate 18th and/or 21st birthdays.  The 21st is more traditional but 18th is really popular too especially as they finish secondary school and don't really graduate like we do in the US (They do national exams and get their results a few months later).

I used a couple of Gina K Stamps sets for this.  I stamped the greeting on the white die cut circles with a rainbow of memento colors.  I then stamped the shirt with the lady bug red on scrap paper and before I cleaned it off I added some metallic Tsukineko ink to the stamp and stamped again to keep the color and add a metallic sheen to the lettering on the T shirt.  I cut out the shirt and put foam tape on it.  I then used my Spellbinders dies to cut out circles in both white and black.  I cut and adhered them together adding the shirt to the front and decorating with rhinestones.  Then I made the background layout and decided to go overboard with the dots theme and emboss the background which meant four passes through the folder and machine with some hand embossing to tease out the dots that get smashed in the sides of the folders.

Time to attach the image circle using some more foam tape and of course I just had to add the rainbow dotty ribbon I already had in my stash!  I don't know if it works or not but I like it.  What about you?

Ingredients

Card size -8.5 x 5.5 inches

Cardstock - Neenah, The Paper Source, Georgia Pacific

Stamps - Gina K - Just So Sporty & Little Tees

Ink - Memento, Tsukineko

Accessories - Embossing Folder, Die cuts, Ribbon, Crystals

You Rock!

Well you know you do! And so does the recipient of this card too!

I stamped the Stampendous image and went with blues - I tend toward red guitars but I wanted to be slightly less predictable. I colored both the base image and the second popped image with Copics. I then stamped the sentiment and adhered the second guitar on top of the first and matted the image in black. I put the three brads on it to echo the silver of the background image.

As you can see, because of the foiled paper it was a bit of bear to photograph. I went for a clear picture with a close up to show off the foil!

Ingredients
Card Size - 8.5 in x 5.5 in
Cardstock - Neenah, Georgia Pacific, DCWV, The Paper Source
Ink - Memento
Stamps - Stampendous, See D's
Copics - C1, C3, C5, B23, B24, B29
Accessories - 3 silver brads

Masculine mechanic mania (birthday didn't sound right!)

I just had to do this card quick and to the point - I wonder if it "qualifies" as CAS (clean and simple) - I guess it might only be a OLW (one layer wonder)

This card is pretty straight forward. I stamped my Clear Dollar Heavy Metal stamp in Memento London Fog for the background. I then played. I put the nuts on the card, then the wrench, then the screws and then worked out that I could put the Happy Birthday sentiment with three screwdrivers across. As I wanted the Happy Birthday to pop I opted for Lady Bug Red and then stamp more screws across the top.

With the little peek toward the inside you can see that I stamped the screws and screwdrivers in London Fog again on the bottom of the inside of the card.

I guess its obvious this card was for the special mechanic in my life, however, I think it can easily be given to a mechanical hobbyest too.

Ingredients

Card size - 5.5in x 8.5 in

Cardstock - Georgia Pacific

Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps - Heavy Metal, Screwdriver and Screws, Wrench and Bolt.

Ink - London Fog, Memento Tuxedo black, Lady Bug

I've got the Moo-sic in me! What Party a Animal.

I love this cow stamp from High Hopes! It's downright moo-ving, and makes me feel so moo-sical! It is absolutely udder-ly fun! The punny thing is that this card started with the candles!

For some reason I had Sixteen Candles in my head for my niece's 16th Birthday - well I think we can all agree I put a few more than sixteen on here but the stamp just made such fun and unique background paper.

I also used the cake from the same Stampendous set so our cow would have a purpose other than to party her life away!

My cow likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time...oh dear went a bit 80's retro there for a moment! However I made certain she was ready to impress, her cake candles have stickles and her hoofs are polished (glossy accents) and what silly card worth its milk doesn't use googly eyes when the opportunity presents itself?!?!?!

I cut out our party cow and cake and then had to think... what would pop with the colors I had already selected. I decided that pink and green color combo doesn't get the love it once did (and having a massive mound of green cardstock staring at me as well probably didn't hurt).

Now to decide on the layout... well I never said my process was straight forward. I had already decided to have a more upright card by the placement of the candles, thought they might look a bit odd on their sides LOL. So I trimmed up my artwork GASP! HORROR!! to make it fit the front of my card and started mounting everything... now the guilt trip over the little slip of tenderly stamps and colored background - my aha moment was to mount it and use it to decorate the inside of the card which you can just see with the photo.

Hope you like it! and thanks for all the support.

INGREDIENTS
Card size - 8.5 x 5.5 inches
Cardstock - The Paper Source, Neenah, Georgia Pacific
Stamps - High Hopes Party Cow; Stampendous Fifteen Candles;
Ink - Palette Noir
Copics -
Cow - 0, W3, W5, W7, C5, C7, E50, E51, R00, R20
Cake - 0, RV000, RV02, RV04, RV06, R00, Y02, Y06, Y08, C3
Background - RV02, RV04, Y02
Accessories - Stickles, Glossy Accents, googly eyes

A Lovely Anniversary

I honestly don't know "why" I wanted to use this image for this couple as they live on the outskirts of a large city and have never lived in the country. I guess my mind works in mysterious ways LOL!

I think the true inspiration for this card was actually on High Hopes website for use of the release but I had to go to the maker's site to find it again! http://6wackywomen.blogspot.com/2009/03/down-on-farm.html How gorgeous is that card! I just wish I had read her blog entry about time consuming before I attempted mine! LOL - I know mine isn't even a patch on the original but that was my inspiration. I did think about doing a stair step card, however as this was going in the international postal system I thought it would probably make it too uneven for the journey. Because I put a little bitty bow on it I already had to put bubble wrap on it! - so I hope it gets to its destination relatively undestroyed.


Ingredients

• Card size - 8.5in x 5.5 in
• Cardstock - base and mat HobbyLobby textured; Neenah Solar White; Georgia Pacific
• Stamps - High Hopes Stamps; Clear Dollar Stamps (crayon alphabet also used for internal greeting)
• Ink - Palette noir; Memento Lady bug, Rose bud ; Copic multiliner black
• Color - Copics (0, B00, B12, B93, B95, B97, C-1, C-3, C-5, E00, E02, E29, E31, E33, E35, E37, G000, G17, G21, G28, G85, G94, G99, R22, R27, R29, RV000, RV02, RV21, RV28, Y11, Y15, Y17, Y21, Y28)

British Invasion in a card!

I made this card for the Inkafriends gallery. I just had this image of using this stamp set to express my love of British Music from the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zepplin, Sparks, Duran Duran, Wham, Depeche Mode, Wet Wet Wet, Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Blur, Oasis, Stereophonics, Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Muse, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian, and you will probably even find me singing along with the Ting Tings.

Well you get the idea LOL.

The card itself is a single layer with masking. First, I stamped the guitars and the "You Rock!" and colored with Copics. The next step was to create two guitar masks, one "You Rock!" mask and two long strips of paper masks to help make the Union Flag reference. I stamped the light blue winged skull images first and I eye-balled the placement. Then I stamped the darker blue stars to layer the look even more. Next it was time to take off the strips of paper masks and stamp the border to create the red lines.

I really enjoyed making this card and hope you like it and it inspires you to do something musical with your stamps!

Ingredients

• Card Size - 5.5 in x 8.5 in
• Stamps - Inkadinkado
• Inks - Palette, Memento
• Color - Copic markers
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific, Archiver's

You Quack me up Birthday Girl!

We got the invite to the party in the late morning for a party that evening so I had to think/create/panic/think quick. If you know me, then you know that isn't my usual style at all. I think it came together ok, though I wish I could have just found some solid cardstock in the blue. I didn't want to run the risk of the blue on the orange looking horrible as I didn't have time for a "re-do" and wanted it to look fresh rather than distressed.

All the stamps are Clear Dollar Stamps. I just had a play with some of the images that were speaking to me and I thought I could put together quickly.

Hope you like.

Ingredients

• Size - 5.5 in x 8.5 in
• Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps
• Ink - Memento, Palette (black)
• Color - Copics
• Cardstock- Neenah Classic Crest Solar White, Georgia Pacific, Bazzill
• Ribbon - Michael's

Jumping or rather smashing Jukeboxes....

I made this card for a dear friend in England who enables the collecting of jukeboxes. I think at last count she told me they had three!!

When I think of jukeboxes, besides of her, I think of the 1950's so that was cue I took for my color scheme. I colored in my VivaLasVegastamps jukebox with copics in blues, reds and greys and and then put glossy accents on it and left it to dry. When I got back to it, it was bowed so I thought VOILA! I would put it through my cuttlebug to flatten it a bit...I really should have taken a before and after picture of that LOL, because the blob that came out the other end of the cuttlebug bore no resemblence to the lovely jukebox I had colored in. So I started again with my VivaLasVegastamps jukebox and colored it in with blues and reds and greys, though not too many greys as I wanted it to be cheerful, not depressing! then I clear embossed to get a shiny image staying well away from the mind bending experience of the glossy accents! LOL

I then thought whats a jukebox without some sparkle so I found out some of my holographic cardstock and cut it down and ran it through the cuttlebug with the Allegro folder (don't worry its even difficult to see in real life) and used my musical notes dies with black cardstock. I then used Nestabilities to cut out the apetures on the black and pink cardstock and ran the pink cardstock through the Cuttlebug with the Swiss dots embossing folder (twice to get the whole thing) and decide to run the paper through once on its own to knock back the dots so it looked more "retro". The frame and jukebox are 3D'd off the cardstock base.

On the inside I used a Martha Stewart punch to give a checkerboard effect to put the greeting on. and then did a white layer using the negative of the double note die and stencil through for a background for the sentiment.

Critical eye - I think I should have carried over the blue from the jukebox with the frame more and with a thin blue layer frame. I also think maybe I should have found a way to make those swiss dots black (I'm not great at brayering and wanted a very neat look) before I mashed them back down

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 x 8.5
• Cardstock - Bazzill, Hobby Lobby, Holographic unknown, Georgia Pacific
• Ink - Palette
• Color - Copics
• Embossing folders - Allegro, Swiss dots

Wooly thanks....

I have posted this card in my gallery on SCS from a quick scan. However I thought I would come to my blog and do it properly.

The image stamps are from Clear Dollar Stamps and when I got the little sheep with my last order I just knew that these two sets had to be combined! Maybe it was living in England all those years and seeing sheep in the field with random markings. I don't know but I think it is one of those kinda funny things maybe its punny. I keep thinking, is this what they mean by "pre-dyed" wool?

The sheep stamp is a single (as you can just get a glimpse of inside the card) so I had to make about four masks of her to get this effect.

I do like the mottled effect of the sentiment though I know some people wouldn't. It reminds me a bit of the texture of knitting.

Critical eye - I think if I did this card again I would spell "wooly" as "woolly" - I looked it up and both are correct but the double "ll" is more correct. Also I would have the bottom of the feet of the sheep on the same level as the bottom of the basket. I would have put an insert in the card for the little grey sheep to be on - because as we know copic colors bleed through.

Copic lowdown - I know I don't have a list of Copic colors for this one as I actually made it before the fairy card. What I do remember is that the colors are pretty low numbers 00's, 10's and 20's for the most part, and the basket is mostly numbers in E 30's.

Ingredients

• Cardsize - 4.25 x 5.5 in
• Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps, JustRiteStampers
• Cardstock - DCWV premade base card, Georgia pacific, Hobby Lobby black c/s
• Ink - Palette
• Color - Copics
• Tools - Nestabilities
• Techniques - Stamping, Masking

Fairy belated... Edited to add list of copics used

Well you know I told you about my trip to Nomojoland, which is a very scary place to be indeed. Well this was another friend who suffered not being remembered on her special day because of the scary monsters in Nomojoland.

Well this cardie friend loves rather funky fairies so when I saw the new(ish) Fairy stamps from Inkadinkado I knew that I had to buy them and do a card for her with them.

I colored the fairy first with my Copics. Then with my Sakura clear stardust pen over her wings. I don't know what it is with fairies but I nearly always tend toward purples, blues, greens and pinks for them - so I think I might need to do this image again a few times and ban myself from those colors! (can you just see the subtle sparkle on the wings? --------->>>>)

I decided that as she is flying I would just "pop" her away from the background with a little shading and I wanted the added contrast of the white around all that color in the image so she really stood out on the card.

The circles were inspired from the K&Co paper that I have had for about five years. The butterfly is from the same stamp set and the greeting is from a Brenda Walton Inkadinkado set.

I did use a new tool on this card which is the Martha Stewart Circle Cutter - I like it because of the variety of circle sizes you can get with one tool and cutter. There is a bit of a learning curve with it however, what I did in the end to keep the paper from slipping was just tack it down to the cutting mat in a few places with temporary glue stick - worked like a charm!

Ingredients

• Card size - 8.5in x 5.5in
• Stamps - Inkadinkado
• Ink - Palette
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific, K&Co, Bazzill
• Color - Copics, Sakura clear stardust pen
• Tools - Martha Stewart circle cutter

Copics Used

• 0
• Skin - E00, E02
• Hair - E31, E33, E35, E37, E47
• Dress, shoes, wings - V000, V04, V06, B00, B23, B24
• Flower and dots on wings - RV02, RV04, RV06
• Wand - Y00, Y02, Y06, Y08
• Shadowing - C1, C3

Subtle inspiration....

I belong to a very special group of ladies and this was a belated (read embarrassingly very belated) birthday card for one that LOVES frogs... so frogs were the theme... I think it is rather subtle, don't you? LOL

This is kinda how my thought process went with this card - hope you enjoy -

So I started with Frogs. Frogs are green and in my mind bumpy, now you toad enthusiasts don't get all technical on me! Oh I have just the stamps set from Clear Dollar Stamps and that sticker from Imaginisce I bought just for this card... but what safe place did I put them in?. Hmmmm.... now I need to decide on colour combos... oh the toadstool would be red... um no... her birthday is next to Christmas, no green and red together (remember I told you this was v.v.belated) - oh Pink that's nearly red but not so the toadstool will pass... and White will keep things crips and fresh... I want to use my threading water punch... oh and my swiss dots folder... oh, why don't I just have a secondary theme about the bumps I mean circles yes circles ;)

And yes when I'm in the "zone" that is pretty much what my internal conversations are like though I think I left out a squee or two.

As it was so late I thought it would be a bit "naff" to put a greeting on it.

On the mojo loss bit, I had never lost my mojo like that before. I really didn't want to look at anything creative at all and its a quite scary place to be. I don't want to go back to nomojoland anytime soon that is for certain.

Ingredients

• Card size 8.5 in x 5.5 in
• Cardstock - Bazzill, Georgia pacific, Michaels
• Stamps - Clear Dollar Stamps
• Ink - Palette
• Color - Copics
• Sticker - Imaginisce
• Tools - Threading Water Punch, Nestabilities, Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder.

Mother Expression

I got a Cricut Expression in the Black Friday sales (the friday after Thanksgiving) and in its box it sat until mid January when I got it out to do a quick card - yeah right!?!?! Plus my creative mojo seemed to be completely hungover and really was no where to be found - it was so bad that I am considering trying to get substantially ahead in my card crafting which I have never done before.

I had this vision of a card with "Mother" going down the side. ARGHHHH! I'm going to have to tackle Design Studio too. Yikes! My brain panicked. So I played with DS and got discouraged and left it for another day. When I struck up the courage again I played and got it sorted out with a bit math on my computer calculator. I picked my card stock, a lovely pearlescent blue - it was going to be a "jacket" for a base card. Well that was the original thought. In the end I thought it would curl too much so I cut it down to be a mat on the card base.

The daffodils are traditional in England for Mothering Sunday which is where this card was headed so that was the inspiration for the pot full of them.

I'm trying to use up supplies so the daffs were from Michaels cardstock that I have plenty and the pot and base card are Bazzill. I used pearlescent chalks on the flowers and pot for dimension and stickles on some of the leaves to add a bit of bling.

I think I would have been happier if I had layered the letters of the "MOTHER" on the side but I just couldn't work out how and it needed to hit the postbox. Hope you enjoy my attempts with my Cricut.

Ingredients

• Card size - 8.5 in x 5.5 in
• Cardstock - Wassau, Georgia Pacific, Michaels
• Cartridges - Plantin, Walk in my Garden
• Color - Pebbles Inc pearlescent chalks, Stickles
• Ribbon - Michaels

I really love those tiger feet...

I guess I can go old school on my singing - That's neat,that's neat, that's neat, that's neat I really love your tiger feet... Glam rock at its best - gotta love a bit of Mud LOL! Come on and dance along, you know you want to!

This is another card I posted in my SCS gallery. Its about my third or forth attempt with my Copics. All the inspiration for this card is my son's High School - colors and mascot.

Looking back at the image I can see things that I would change but I am generally happy with a good percentage of the coloring and the layout is fine - there is only so much you can do for non-frilly boy cards!

I love the High Hopes Tiger image and bought it specifically to use over and over and over again over the next few years! This card really is a hodge podge of brands so here we go and I hope you like it -

Ingredients

• card size - 5.5in x 8.5 in
• stamps - High Hopes Stamps; Kitchen Sink Stamps
• paper - Georgia Pacific, Bazzill, Michael's value pack, Hobby Lobby black textured.
• Color - Copics (low & middle E numbers and warm neutrals from the Ciaos - yes I have all the Ciaos where is that embarrassed smilie - but I do love them!)
• Ink - palette, versachalk (highlighting the embossing)
• Embossing folder - Provocraft

Let it Rock, let it rock, let it rock...

Because when I'm alive, I can feel the fire. Make you come alive...

oh wait...

this is supposed to be a card blog, not a group sing-a-long! LOL! Someone out there in bloggieland knows what I mean and yes Treacle, darling, we are in the Naughties not the 80's. ;)Another card I did for my son's birthday. I took him to his first concert, Live8 in Hyde Park 2005. We are still deciding if we need to do another gig soon, Franz Ferdinand is pretty near and then there are rumors that Kaiser Chiefs are supporting Green Day, ah but I digress again. I scanned the card so you can't really tell from the picture that the guitar is popped up.

Hope you like because I know people struggle with "guy" cards.

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 in x 8.5 in
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific, Bazzill, DCWV Rockstar
• Stamps - Inkadinkado
• Ink - Palette, Memento, Brilliance
• Color - Copics

Oh Boy - Card for an Egg Head

I'm truly blessed to be the mother of an incredibly bright young man, but don't tell him I told you so. He is currently working hard at maintaining his straight A's and is on the school's Academic Team as well.
So when I came across this VivaLasVegastamps image, I just had to use it for him! I hope he continues to try hard and accomplishes his dreams.

BTW the saying is JustRitestampers and it says "Massively" a bit of a play on the E=mc2 equation. Hope you like.

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 in x 8.5in
• Stamps - VivaLasVegastamps
• Cardstock - DCWV, Georgia Pacific, Hobby Lobby
• Ink - Palette
• Color - copics

But it kept looking too masculine!!!

OK this probably isn't grungy but it definitely isn't "perky" maybe muted is the correct expression with softer tones of earthy colors and beautiful stamps from Kitchen Sink Stamps and a Stampendous marble texture cube.

My personal challenge for this was to make a card for my MIL using the beautiful humingbird and the Basic Gray Archaic pad - just like many I'm a patterned paper collector. I buy it will all these ideas and get it home and stare at it wondering why I bought it. So I cut rectangles with the front rectangle being smaller than the next and so on. I was going to stack them in a decreasing fashion however, it actually looked too masculine. I stamped the hummingbird with memento inks (I bought all the little teardrop ones that Kitchen Sink Stamps had!). I then used my square Nestabilities to cut out and emboss the image and then to mask as I dappled brown ink over the entire image, leaving a white frame.

I needed a greeting so I turned to my beautiful stamps again and stamped the greeting in the darkest brown and cut again with the Nestabilities. I then thought the white around the image looked too stark so I did my best to match up my greens and some paler memento browns and used my cube Stampendous Marble stamp on both images. I found some Bazzill brown that tied into the color scheme to mount and then thought again - "it looks too masculine" so then I thought (as you do) "D'oh! Hummingbird! I need some flowers" so that is when I decided to add the flower brads and the ribbon bow (it looks a bit like a flower right? LOL).

Well that is it for today. Hopefully I will get some more of my stash up here soon!

Ingredients

• Card size - 5.5 in x 8.5
• Cardstock - Georgia Pacific, Basic Gray, Bazzill
• Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps, Stampendous
• Ink - Memento