Muse Challenge #92

Hello and Happy Wednesday to you! I'm participating in another challenge today from Muse. Here's my interpretation:

I was inspired by several things in the inspiration image (see below): the blue & green dots, the flowers, and the vellum sentiment strip.

For my card, I chose a flower stamp from Hero Arts. I used Hero Arts black ink and stamped several times on textured white paper. The paper is actually the back side of the cover to a pad of el cheapo watercolor paper. I used some of my trusty Stampin' Up! markers to color in parts of the flowers. The blue dots were made with another Hero Arts stamp and Brilliance Sky Blue ink.

I trimmed this panel down and added a thin strip of green cardstock to the right hand side, then set it aside while I worked on the sentiment strip.

I cut a piece of vellum and used Versafine Black to stamp the sentiment from Altenew. I really like the larger sentiments that are available these days and would like to add more of them to my collection. After stamping, I heat set it and then stamped again in Versamark. I poured clear embossing powder over that and heat set again. I was interested to see that the Versamark lightened the black ink so that my sentiment was now stamped in gray. That's not what I had intended, but I went with it anyway.

I wrapped the vellum strip around my flower stamped panel and taped it down to the back. Then I adhered the panel to a dark pink card base.

Here's the inspiration card:

Muse #92

Thanks for reading - I hope you enjoyed this! Till next time,

Immi

Challenge: Anything Goes

Last week, the Wednesday Simon Says Stamp challenge was the wide open theme of "Anything Goes". I had just made a card  that I thought would work for this challenge, but today is the first chance I've had to post it.

This came about as a result of an experiment. I had seen a technique that I thought looked interesting and wanted to give it a try.

I took some off-white cardstock and, using a brayer, layered Distress Ink in Mustard Seed and Barn Door. I then spread on some acrylic medium by Golden called Coarse Garnet Gel. If you look closely, you can see bumpy spots, which are the grit embedded  in this gel. The grit is a dark red color, while the body of the medium is clear. I had no idea how this would turn out, but I thought it was very interesting. The colors of the inks stayed true and were even intensified, and the grit in the gel added texture. I left it to dry overnight - the next morning it was dry but the cardstock was rather flexible. I wasn't sure what to do with it at that point, but I decided to make a card background with it. I trimmed a little off the edges and adhered it to a green card base.

The pear stamp is an oldie from A Stamp in the Hand. It's a very solid image with little detail, so it works well for blending colors. I used several Distress Ink colors in the mini pads and then spritzed it with water. I stamped onto some watercolor paper and added a few splotches of color with watered down ink.

I trimmed it pretty close, tearing the bottom edge of the panel and mounted it onto some dark brown paper. I added some foam adhesive (3M) to the back and set it aside for a moment. I cut a length of twine and looped it around my fingers, then placed it on the card front with the foam mounted pear panel on top. The foam adhesive holds the twine in place.

The "happy birthday" sentiment is from Altenew's Label Love (I'm using that set a lot lately!). I've discovered that these stamps work best for me if I stamp on a surface with a little give, like a pad of paper. I used a teeny bit of foam adhesive on the far right side of the sentiment strip to bring it up to the level of the pear panel. Otherwise it would have been hanging in mid-air and probably would have gotten bent out of shape.

I thought the card still needed a little something, so I found a dark brown button and threaded it with a little gold metallic thread, then glued it on with some Glossy Accents.

This next card has nothing to do with the challenge, but it's so similar I thought I'd include it. The background was made with a checkerboard stamp, inked with Distress Ink and misted with water. It was stamped on some watercolor paper and trimmed a little smaller than the card base.

The pear was done exactly the same as the previous card and also mounted on dark brown paper. I wrapped some twine around the checkerboard panel, and added a die cut "p" just for fun.

That's it for today. I hope your week is off to a good start!

Immi

Challenge: Get Crafty & Use Kraft

Here is my submission to the Wednesday Simon Says Stamp challenge - Get Crafty & Use Kraft. I love the look of kraft cardstock so this was a fun challenge.

I used one of my favorite flower stamps from Stampendous, stamping in Versamark and heat embossing with white. I colored in the flowers using Inktense pencils and a wet brush, which went very quickly. The embossing makes it easy to "stay in the lines".

The sentiment is from Altnew's Super Script 2. I stamped in black ink and trimmed it closely. I brushed on clear Wink of Stella and added Glossy Accents on top, then set it aside to dry. 

Meanwhile, I cut a piece of lace edging and taped it down to the back of the kraft panel. I stitched around the entire panel using my sewing machine, then adhered a thin strip of green ribbon at the bottom. This panel was attached to a pink card base, then the sentiment was glued on top of that.

I hope your week is off to a good start! Happy crafting!

Immi

Make it Take it Challenge: October

So, I'm a little late joining this party, but I'm going to get this squeezed in by the deadline. This is a challenge from Craft Stamper Magazine. I'm not very familiar with it, but discovered it because it was mentioned on a blog I was reading. Every month they issue a new challenge - this month, participants are to use the technique of multi-color stamping. This involves using mulitple colors of ink, paint, etc. on an image.

Here's my card:

I pulled out a leaf stamp by Rubber Nature ArtStamps and started adding various colors of orange and brown Distress inks. After giving it a light misting of water, I stamped that on a cardstock panel. Then I stamped it again on another, lightweight piece of paper and cut it out to make a mask. I put the mask over my leaf, and inked up an old favorite script stamp from Stampin' Up! in various shades of green Distress inks. I stamped the script on top of the masked leaf, and then removed the mask. This left the leaf image untouched, with the script all around it.

So far, so good. I trimmed the panel down a little, and mounted it to some dark brown paper which was product packaging I'd saved. I pulled out some multi-hued thread and wrapped it around the top of the panel several times, securing it to the back with tape.

Next I pulled out Altenew's Label Love set and chose "thank you". I tried several brown inks before settling on a very old Ancient Page ink in Close to Cocoa (Stampin' Up!). I poured clear embossing powder over that and heat set it. I trimmed it close to the stamped image, leaving some of the white around it as a frame. I tried that on the card front, but I felt that it needed something dark behind it to provide sufficient contrast to the panel behind it. Brown didn't seem to be the right choice, but I thought a rust color would work. I inked up some paper using Distress Ink in Rusty Hinge, creating my own colored paper. I adhered the sentiment to this and trimmed it, leaving a thin edge of color showing. This was added, and that was that - all done!

Happy crafting!
Immi

Muse Challenge #90

I stumbled a cross a new challenge blog this week and decided to participate. The blog is called Muse: A Cardmaking Club. I liked the bright colors of the challenge card as well as the design. Here it is:

I immediately thought of a Tim Holtz stencil I've got called Rays. I got out a piece of watercolor paper and taped it down to my craft sheet so it wouldn't move around. I taped the stencil on top (painter's tape works well) and also used some strips of tape to mask off adjacent rays so that the colors would stay where I intended them to go. I did all the yellow first, using Mustard Seed Distress Ink. Then for the red rays I used Barn Red Distress Ink. 

The stencil is a narrow one, and it didn't work to use it to duplicate what you see in the photo above. I ended up cutting the paper in half lengthwise after stenciling it. I paired it with a strip of bright red cardstock and adhered both pieces to a card base. To cover the spot in the middle where the pieces join, I cut a thin strip of black cardstock and glued that down.

I found a small black tag in my stash, and decided to use that with a word from a new die cut set I just bought - it's by Tim Holtz and has lots of Christmasy words. I die cut the word "wishes" four times from bright blue cardstock and glued the layers to each other to make it thicker. I coated the word with my clear Wink of Stella pen and added Glossy Accents on top of that.

Next I got out the Label Love set by Altenew and stamped "Just for You" in Stampin' Up turquoise ink. I stamped the same thing in Versamark on top of that and added  clear embossing powder. After heat setting the powder, I cut out the word strip and mounted in on some foam tape.

To finish it up, I found a red heart-shaped button that I added to the tag along with some blue twine (thanks to Target's Dollar Spot!).

Here's my take on this challenge:

I'm actually glad that I wasn't able to stencil the pattern on both sides of the watercolor panel. I like the way it turned out. I wish you could see the shine and sparkle on "wishes" - it looks great!

Till next time,

Immi

Challenge: Anything Goes

Hi! I'm back with another Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge. My card was inspired by a recent post from Simon Says Stamp. Here's the original by Shari Carroll:

I really liked the layered paper banners, and the offset cut of the largest paper panel. I pulled out some papers from a 6 x 6 pad from My Mind's Eye. The nice thing about paper collections like this is that all the papers are designed to coordinate with one another; this simplifies things when using multiple prints together.

The hot air balloon image is also from My Mind's Eye, while the "hi" sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp. The red ink is from a REALLY OLD ink pad from a collaboration between Stampin' Up! and Ancient Page. (Some of my supplies are getting pretty ancient.)

This was pretty quick to put together. I did fussy cut the sentiment and balloon (not my favorite thing, but I like the way it looks), and ink the edges of the banner behind the sentiment. Just for fun I mounted the sentiment and balloon using foam tape to give some dimension to an otherwise flat card. Other than that it was just arranging and adhering layers of paper. I also used a 1/2" corner rounder from Crop-A-Dile on the upper right corner.

More Fall Decorating

As promised, here are the rest of the photos I took after finishing decorating for fall.

This is the coffee table in the living room. The pumpkin and horn of plenty were gifts from one of my sisters years ago. I love to get them out every year. They were made by Frankoma, an Oklahoma pottery. They are unfinished on the bottom, so to protect the table I made a runner. I found some Osnaburg at the fabric store. This is really a great fabric for anyone who likes the look of linen. Osnaburg has that look, but is made from cotton. It's really inexpensive and very easy to work with. It also irons up much easier than linen! I cut a length of fabric and stitched around all four sides. I pulled out the threads to make a fringe. Then, just for fun, I did a running stitch with orange embroidery floss around the edges. It really didn't take all that long from start to finish.

The wooden chair is from an old elementary school in Minnesota. My children attended there and I worked as a classroom assistant. It was quite old (100 years) by the time my children were there, and the decision was finally made to tear it down. Another old school was also torn down, and one new one built to replace both. The principal allowed me to take this old chair as a memento, which I thought was so nice. I love having a piece of Roosevelt Elementary!

The close-up photo shows a little display I made using some old books. Don't worry - the books were falling apart and probably ready for the recycle bin anyway. I tore off the covers, and tied them all together with a strip of burlap and some twine. I stuffed a torn piece of cheesecloth behind the twine bow and glued on a crocheted flower I had in my stash. I stamped the letters using brown ink. I could spend hours fooling around with this kind of stuff!

That wraps it up for my fall decorating. I hope you enjoyed it - I know I did! I love sitting down in a chair and seeing things all decked out.

Till next time,

Immi