Virtual Stamp Night!!!

Are you ready for this? There are a total of 9 cards that I completed over the weekend. Even after being gone pretty frequently. Amazing. 8 of those cards are for the VSN challenges over at SCS. The other was a Wish RAK February card contest. So, let's get started, shall we?

First up: the challenge was to use something new that you haven't used before. Everything but the cardstock must be new. So, I just got this Sizzix die from SU and I LOVE this thing! It's so versatile and just plain beautiful. One of my favorite color combinations is black and white and this die just fits perfectly for that. The white cardstock is actually a shimmer cardstock. I just bought this ribbon and the fibers recently and hadn't even opened them until I did this card. Amazingly, the fiber and the ribbon matched each other perfectly even though I bought them both at different places and times.

Next Up: The challenge was to make a monochromatic card. We were only allowed one neutral of white or vanilla. So I had a lot of fun with excessive and maybe even ridiculous amounts of pink. This card also features some things I haven't used or haven't used very much. I used my new border punch to do the eyelet edge and the dandelions are glittered with Martha Stewart glitters I've had for a while but not done much with. It may have been better without the glitter, but, hey, a little bling is always nice, especially with this much pink. LOL. The butterflies are from Dreams du Jour and the sentiment is from small script. The dandelions are from Happy Harmony. I can't even begin to tell you the names of all the pink colors. the inks however are pink passion and and regal rose (I think).

Card #3: This challenge was to use the split negative technique. I LOVE this technique and the card itself. I took the scraps from the first card when I made the die cut and used them in the background here. This is also on shimmer white cardstock. It's a very simple card. The butterfly is from God's Beauty and it is just perfect for this technique. This one did take some doing to get the placement just right, but I won in the end. mwahahah. Two way glue is a girl's best friend here. LOL.


Card #4: This was a card to make with the help of a child and was to feature things you love. So I made my 3-year old's hand print in red ink on the red paper. Now, for those of you who have ever tried to craft with a 3-year old, you can truly appreciate the mess that came next. I mean, honestly, what was I thinking?!!! Oh, well. Nothing a bath and a lot of ink remover can't cure. Anyway, back to the card. The other part of the challenge was to use a heart, a circle and a square on a standard size card. Since red is mine and my child's favorite color, there is a lot of red on here. My DH loves navy blue, but it just didn't look right on this card. So the background square is chocolate chip, which come to think of it is a definite favorite of his especially in the form of cookies. I made the hand print make and impression on the heart. Kind of symbolic. Then in the circle I took people out of the All in the Family set and put one for each member of our family in there.

Card # 5 This was a card that was all about chocolate. The hostess gave us several choices with color combo challenges and we were to pick our favorite kind of chocolate and use that combo. I love dark chocolate so I chose that one. It was close to cocoa, apricot appeal, and cameo coral. An absolutely beautiful color combination. This one also uses some new things I haven't gotten around to using yet. Sounds like I have a lot of new things lately, LOL. Shhh...Don't tell DH. :D Well, this on uses my butterfly dies from SU, a cuttlebug embossing folder (the name of which eludes me at the moment), and a new stamp set from Unity Stamps called Something Within.


Card #6 Now this is the one that is for the February Wish RAK card contest. I had a lot of fun with this one. The dog I got as a wish RAK and thought he was so cute and would go perfectly with my Cowboy Kid set. So I looked up a sketch (brain too fried at this point to come up with one on my own, LOL) and found a sketch challenge over at SCS and the sketch number is SC207 if you want to look it up. I used some pretty yellow I had in my paper stash, old olive, chocolate chip, and really rust. The read was markered in. Turned out really cute!

Card #7 This was a fun and very quick card. The challenge was to use acetate to make a card. Seriously, this took about ten minutes tops to do! I used a wheel stamp I have that is a new one in the catalog and matches the always set. The butterflies on the side are from Butterfly of Happiness, and of course my new butterfly die. that's about it. I have no idea what color of green that is, but it goes well with the cameo coral paper. The sentiment stamp is a dollar stamp from Michael's.



Card #8 Here was a really cool technique I had seen but never tried. The challenge was to use the melted crayon background technique. Granted, this is a stinky one, but the results are amazing. The tutorial for this can be found at splitcoast stampers, as usual. I used metallic crayons and then added in some purples just for a bit of variety and it looks like a piece of shale or some kind of rock. Then I took my Staz-On and stamped the deer image on top of it, tore the bottom and put it all together. Now, this card still needs some kind of work, but I'm not sure what it might be. So I'm open to constructive suggestions to this or any other card on my site.




Card #9 Now this was a new technique to me. It makes awesome cards, but is a bit more involved than a regular card. The challenge was to use a joy fold card. You can find the tutorial over at splitcoast. It's not hard, just has more paper and steps. Again, I went a little overboard with the pinks, but it was fun. I especially like the pearl closures I came up with. the paper is the new Raspberry Tart paper, and I had fun once again with my new eyelet punch. ;) there are several pics with this one that shows how the card works.

Tonight's the night!

For virtual stamp night over at Splitcoast. So much fun! I had a blast with the last one I did, and I won't be able to do all of them this time around, but I will do as many as possible. So be on the lookout for more posts to come! Probably a few.

Just had to share some fun or cool (in my ever so humble opinion) photos that I have taken of nature over the weekend.

The deer and the birds were taken through the window. Those cardinals gave me quite a hard time. They just wouldn't stay still long enough to get the camera focused in! I loved the fact, however, that one of the pics of the cardinal was with a berry of some sort in its beak. Didn't even know that was there until I uploaded the pics from my camera. The tulip was a Valentine's gift and they were just beautiful.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope all have had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Mine has been rather lazy and wonderful for that reason. Here it is 2:00 in the afternoon and I'm still in my jammies with no intention of changing either. LOL. Can't remember the last time I had that opportunity. Anywho. Here are two cards for you for today. One for my DH, the other for my little one. Both were a lot of fun to do.

The one for my DH was actually a challenge I ran across over at splitcoast to do a valentine's card without using red or pink. This was fun and I ended up with a monochromatic card. I loved the softness of this look! The stamp set is one of my favorites, yet I seem to forget to use it very often--Dreams du jour. I stuck with several colors of blue and white as my color scheme and I loved the way this card came out.






Next was the card for my little munchkin. The kiddo is so into Winnie the Pooh right now and really seems to favor Roo. So I did some searching on line for Pooh coloring pages and came across this one of Roo. Thinking it was an adorable picture of Roo, I printed it out. Okay, confession time. Funny story. I spent about two hours looking for a picture that would actually print out and was getting so frustrated that I couldn't get anything to print. After the two hours had passed, I just happened to look down and realized (DUH!) that the printer was unplugged so I could upload photos from my camera. Man, did I feel like an idiot. So, I finally got the picture printed and then watercolored it with my SU markers. After that I did some cutting out to layer it on the bright papers and then voila, in one hour I was finished. By this time it was 1:00 a.m. and I was exhausted. If I only I had looked down sooner, I could have been in bed a whole lot sooner. LOL.

Sale-A-Bration time! and a swap

Well, it's that time of the year where Stampin' Up customers can earn free stamp sets!! Now that's a word, I love to hear--FREE stamps. So this card uses one of those sets of stamps. This is the Yummy set, and it's probably one of my favorites. I love the swirls and flourishes on it, and the sheer elegance of it. This card is for a SAB swap this Wednesday with my upline and up. I used the in-colors on it and love the combinations of pacific point and pirouette pink. The lighter blue is actually bashful blue and it made a really soft complement to the bright blue and soft pink. I also used the sizzix sizzlits die birds and blooms for the bird and the flowers and leaf. This is also one of my favorite sizzlit sets. I can't wait until my set gets here! This card is a gift card holder and on the inside is a pocket where you can slide in the gift card.

Challenge card re-do

Okay, I didn't like the first black, white and red plus gold card so I gave it another shot. This one is better in my opinion. It's definitely more cheerful and more like my style. It's all out of scraps! I have way, WAY too many of those! So I found a baskets and blooms basket that I had cut out of chipboard and used that covered with black paper. I used a black marker on the edges to hide the chipboard edges. then I found this cute little oval nestie that was from Wish RAK and stamped the sentiment out of the happy heart set. The flowers are pieced together out of punches from scraps and then held together with a gold brad.

More Wish RAK challenges!

wow! It's been a while since I've been on here it seems. Been crazy around here and doing some wish RAK'ing like crazy over at Splitcoast Stampers. Now there are those who do way more than I do, but this week was a lot for me. 23 in one week with a few more planned to do as well. But I did manage to squeeze in the time to come up with these gems. These cards are for the wish RAK monthly challenge contest. As is always the case with wish RAK challenges, the cards made must use something received from wish RAK.

I really love the way the scripture one turned out. The challenge for this one was to make a gatefold card. I received this beautiful scripture stamp and just had to use it here. so I mounted it on some scraps of SU prints pack paper and then on kraft cardstock. I used antique copper brads to attach some scraps of chocolate chip ribbon and then more brads to attach the image to the card front. The designer paper I used was from my scrap bin as well and I can't recall the name of it. I punched a 5-petal flower out of some more scrap Kraft paper and used my dry embossing tool to make it more three dimensional. Then I punched out a couple of flowers with my boho punch to layer in the middle with the rhinestone brad.

The next card challenge I completed was to do in honor of Valentine's day or chinese new year and to use red, black, white and gold. The nestie oval was something I received from wish RAK so I stamped on the happy heart and embossed it in black. Then used the resist technique and colored over it with a red marker to get the letters red. I took a hole punch and punched each of the scallops on the oval. Then I took some black cardstock and put it through the cuttlebug to emboss that layer of cardstock. Those were then layered on red and white cardstock and put on a base of red. I used some gold embroidery floss to make the gold accents in the corners. I'm not too sure about this card. It seems a little dull to me in the layout, though.

Now on to the next challenge. A dog card. Hmmm....