Hi Everyone. I have a card to share with you today that I made using the sketch across at Just Add Ink. I paired my favorite Stampin' Up! set - Christmas Toile with some fussy cut leaves from the Forever Greenery DSP and the Tasteful Textile embossing folder. Here's the sketch: I stamped the cardinal from Christmas Toile and then colored it very lightly with watercolor markers. Generally I spend ages coloring this with either pencils or Copics - but the watercolor marker technique took no longer than 60 seconds and I actually like the way it turned out. Once... Continue reading

Happy Sunday. Again! :-) I have a card that I made using the new Stampin' Up! Forever Flourishing dies - that will be available this coming Wednesday! I saw this great sketch across at CAS Colors and Sketches and had this idea in my head to use three of the dies as the focal element. Here's the sketch: I stamped the leaves that have a matching die, and die-cut the leaves that don't have a matching stamp. With me? Not all of the dies in the Forever Flourishing die set have a stamp that matches them. :-) For the leaf... Continue reading

Happy Sunday. It's my turn to host our Paper Players challenge this week and it's a tic-tac-toe challenge. I went diagonally with flower, die-cut and embossing and used a set I bought a few month's ago. The purchase was inspired by the birthday card I received from Lou that was covered in gorgeous wild roses. I kept everything clean and simple and fussy cut the flower before mounting on a die-cut frame. I took a piece of black card stock and embossed a white sentiment onto it. Here's my card: The design team have some wonderful inspirations for you: Ann... Continue reading

Happy Friday! I have another card to share with you using the new Stampin' Up! Forever Fernery set that will be available June 3rd. Over the last week or so you have seen multiple examples with more layers and DSP than I normally use. For this card, I went Clean and Simple the whole way! Here are the colors from Color Throwdown and the sketch from Freshly Made: I fell in love with the crisp black, white and turquoise colors across at CTD and was very flummoxed by the sketch across at FMS. Now... one of the whole things about... Continue reading

Happy Thursday! I have a quick card for you today featuring the fabulous Stampin' Up! Butterfly Gala set. I was inspired by the colors across at Cupcake Inspirations and try as I might, I couldn't get the idea of butterflies out of my head for this challenge! I don't often use cream as the base for my cards, but I loved the way this very soft cream looked with the pink and black. I kept the pink to the butterflies, the cream to the base and the black as the outline of the butterflies - and for the sentiment. I... Continue reading

Happy Tuesday! I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I saw this great sketch across at AtlanticHearts and I had to think about it for a while. I love the fact that the AH sketches really do challenge me - and that's one of the reasons I like playing along. I finally decided to pull out some dies that I haven't used before - the flowers and stem from the Stampin' Up! Cherry Blossoms dies. I've used the one that matches the Forever Blossoms stamp set, but have never used the Cherry Blossom dies. I began by... Continue reading

Happy Sunday. It's the fabulous LeAnne's turn to host our Paper Players challenge this week and it's sketch week and I decided to pull out one of the 2020 Sale-a-Bration sets called "Happy Birthday to You". Here's LeAnne's sketch: I colored the cake with my Copic markers and used my Prismacolor pencils for the finishing details. For some reason I couldn't capture the real color of the cake - it looks more yellow than it is in real life. I fussy cut and popped the cake up on foam and backed it all with a soft grey base. Here's my... Continue reading

Happy Saturday! With apologies to Brahms :-) I have "variations on a theme" for you today all using the new Forever Greenery DSP and the Forever Flourishing dies - both available in the new Stampin' UP! 2020/2021 catalog and available on June 3rd. I made my first card using the sketch across at Altantic Hearts For the most part, the DSP in the Forever Greenery set are way busier than I would normally use, but I really am trying to challenge myself to use more DSP. Consequently, I bought the Forever Greenery and the In Good Taste DSP, that is... Continue reading

Happy Saturday! It's the fabulous Ceal's turn to host our AddictedtoCAS challenge this week and this is her code word: I used the March SimonSaysStamp card kit stamp set called "Stronger Together" for my card. I stamped the main image on the horizontal and colored the leaves in rainbow colors. I don't know about you, but there is something so soothing about things being in rainbow colors. I have to admit that my blouses, jumpers, tshirts, etc. are all in rainbow order. Here's my card: I hope you will play along with us this week. We would love to see... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Tuesday. I have a quick post for you tonight featuring one of my "old" favorites Stampin' Up! Good Morning Magnolia. I paired it with my new favorite - Tasteful Textiles. I can honestly say that this is my most favorite -ever - embossing folder:-) I saw the challenge across at CAS on Fridays I stamped my Good Morning Magnolia flower and colored it very lightly. I embossed a piece of card stock with the Tasteful Textiles embossing folder and mounted that not the base of the card. I die-cut the magnolia and popped that up on fun... Continue reading

Happy Sunday. Again! :-) As it is a cold, miserable, wet, windy day, I decided it was time to go huddle in my craft room and play along with some challenges. The two challenges across at Inkspirational and Festive Friday had me making a shaker card along with a little punny sentiment! For my inso list I went with fish, shaker element and pun sentiment. I inked up an old set from My Favorite Things called Gill Friends. I stamped and colored two of the fish and some seaweed. I fussy cut them and arranged them around a stitched die-cut... Continue reading

Happy Sunday! It's the fabulous Ann's turn to host our Paper Players challenge this week and it's clean and simple week and Ann chose a great theme for us: As it's CAS week, I decided to go with a one layer card. I'm also linking this up at Just-Add-Ink this week as their theme is Masculine cards are harder for me, but the Sailing Home set is perfect for man cards. I kept the layout and color scheme minimal as I really wanted the focal image to stand out. Here's my card: The design team have some fabulous inspiration for... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Saturday. I have two cards to share with you tonight. They were both made using the great sketch across at AtlanticHearts. It uses a couple of sneak peek products from the upcoming Stampin' Up! 2021-2021 catalog: Forever Fern, Tasteful Textile, Forever Greenery, Forever Flourishing, as well as an old standard - Free as a Bird. For my second card, I paired the sketch with the color challenge across at Color Dare Here's the sketch and color challenge: What I loved about this sketch is that you can go with a CAS design or use layers of DSP.... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Friday! I saw this great sketch across at FreshlyMade and immediately had an idea of what stamps I would use. I decided to use the retiring Stampin' Up! set called Nine Lives. It's such a fun set and I think it really worked well for the idea I had in my head. With all of us quarantined at home someone created an internal social channel all about cats. People are posting pictures and videos of their new managers (of the feline variety) and it's fun to pop in a couple of times a day and oooh and... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Thursday. Where has this week gone? I saw a great sketch across at Sunday Stamps and decided it would be perfect for some of the new paper from the 2020/2021 Stampin' Up! catalog. There is a new suit coming out and I wasn't sure that I would like the papers, so I bought the World of Good Memories and More card pack. That way I was able to try out the papers. Also, I just love some of the elements that come with the pack! I wanted to make a masculine card, so I paired the paper... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Monday. I made a card with my Stampin' Up! Forever Blossoms set for the new challenge across at AAA. This really is one of my favorite sets. I just love the versality of it. I paired it with a sneak peek from the upcoming Lovely You set for the sentiment. The challenge across at AAA was clean and simple - using just a third of the card and with a twist! With the twist, I decided to add an additional stamp from the main image in the set. That took a little masking and playing around to... Continue reading

Hi there. It's the fabulous Claire's turn to host our Paper Players challenge this week and it's color week. For some reason, I decided these colors would be good on a Christmas card and inked up and colored the polar bear from My Favorite Things Christmas Selfies. Considering it was 28 degrees and snowed last night, no wonder I was in the mood for a Christmas theme! Granny Apple Green and Melon Mambo are waaaay too bright for me, but I am a fan of Pool Party! Luckily I had a piece of DSP that worked perfectly for the background.... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Saturday. It's the fabulous Bobby's turn to host our Addicted to CAS challenge this week and this is her code word: I decided to ink up an image from the Simon Says Stamp March card kit called Stronger Together. I added this to a soft grey background and colored it with my Copic Markers. I really wanted something soft and serene. Here's my card: I hope you will join us and play along this week. As usual, the design team have some fabulous inspiration for you, including our guest designer. We would really love to see what... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Friday. I have a SU sneak peek for you tonight featuring my favorite embossing folder - Tasteful Textile and a new stamp set called Forever Fern. I then added a sentiment from lovely You. I made this card inspired by the sketch across at FreshlyMade I decided to go with a very monochromatic color scheme of grey/green and white. I stamped two of the leaf images from Forever Fern with grey/green inks and die-cut them with the matching dies. I then took a piece of card stock that I have had in my stash for so long... Continue reading

Hi there. Happy Thursday. I have a card to share with you that I made for the new Festive Friday challenge. I was late to the party "discovering" Festive Friday and I'm so glad that I did. I love the idea of the inspiration list - it makes for so many different and interesting cards from the design team and challenge submitters. So, lots of great inspiration. For this week, I went with green, stripes and gift packaging. When I saw the green and stripes, I decided I wanted to find a way to showcase some fabulous DSP that SU... Continue reading

Hi Everyone. Happy Monday. I hope you all had a great weekend. I have a card I made for the latest AAA Card challenge - Now... CAS a single image and inspired by a TV show. I looked at some of my new stamps and saw this cuter than cute stamp from MFT Picture Perfect and knew that I wanted to use it. What TV show did I have in mind? Well... two really - Top Cat - (showing my age!) and Garfield and Friends. Top Cat was one of my favorite shows and I was sorry that it really... Continue reading

Hi Everyone. Happy Sunday - again :-) This is my second post for today. I wanted to share a card I made using the FreshlyMadeSketches sketch: Instead of the splotch I used my Paper Rose Studio stencil to create sunrays using some Hero Arts Butter Bar ink. I then stamped a unicorn from a set that I have had for a couple of years - it came free in a card making magazine that Lou brough back from one of his overseas trips. That set was in a magazine from England, purchased at an airport in Australia and is now... Continue reading

Hi Everyone. Happy Sunday. It's the fabulous Joanne's turn to host our Paper Players challenge this week and it's theme week: I recently purchased a set from MFT Lawn Fawn called Loads of Fun. Not usually my style of stamps, but I saw a card made with it that made me smile and I thought it would be a great set for SendASmile4Kids - and some of my friends :-) I used a piece of DSP that was in the March SSS card kit - it kind of reminded me of wallpaper - as the base and the rest of... Continue reading

Hi Everyone. Happy Saturday. I am so late to the party on this challenge. I made my card, but work got me so consumed this week, that I wasn't even able to post my card for the challenge. The inspiration for the Library Craft Challenge this week is this wonderful book: I saw this sweet image and decided to bring out one of my favorite images from Penny Black. Even though it is a Christmas set, it can work for any season. I was inspired by the colors, the shape of the focal image and that sweet image. Here's my... Continue reading

Hi Everyone. Happy Monday. I have a quick post for you this morning.... yes... me... posting on a weekday morning! Guess that wait for the conference call to start must have given me an opportunity to do something fun :-) I saw this challenge across at CAS on Sunday and decided to have some fun with a stamp from the SSS Spring Gnomes set. I am a little obsessed with these gnomes and I paired this one with my MFT Polaroid Shaker Frame. I think this classifies as a bunny even if it is an imposter... but... oh.. what a... Continue reading