petunias times two

Good morning crafty friends!  Are you enjoying your spring?  Everything is bursting with color here in north Florida.  The azaleas are blooming all around with shades of pink, purple and white.  We’ve been busy over the past month – planting a vegetable garden (tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and onions). We’ve also added a new weeping plum tree and two hydrangea bushes.  I am looking forward to watching everything grow.

Here are two springtime cards using a lovely Petunia stamp from Creative Visions (found here) – this red rubber image comes in two different sizes.

On this first card I embossed the image in white and sprayed colorwash inks to get a bright watercolor effect.  The butterfly punch is from Martha Stewart.  The stitching on the white panel was done on my silhouette machine.

On the second card I take the same image and color it with prisma pencils and sponged with memento ink for the background.  The background paper is basic grey and the ribbon is from May Arts.

 

clean and simple sentiment

For cardmakers, often we focus our work on putting an image on a front of a card and let the sentiment be somewhat of an afterthought.  Today I wanted to make the sentiment center stage on this card.

 

The design itself is clean and simple but has enough detail to make it interesting.   On the main panel the background was stamped with the dogwood branch from Mark’s Finest Papers Dogwood Blossoms set in versamark.   Using images to make background paper is such a great way to get the maximum use of all your images!  The sentiment, from the same set, was stamped Memento Rich Cocoa ink.   The leaf die is my latest purchase – it is just a portion of a die from Cheery Lynn Dies and the detail on the leaves is very nice.   The butterfly punch is from Martha Stewart.

All the paper is from Mark’s Finest Papers – Florida Peach, Sage Green and White Linen.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

 

 

sunny monday

What a beautiful day it is today here in sunny Florida!   We are having our usual wonderful warm weather  and I have a bright sunny card for today!

The images are from the newly released You Are Cherished set from Mark’s Finest Papers.   I love this black-eyed susan image and have several already colored in different shades.  This one is the more traditional yellow and orange shades – it was colored with various YR copic markers.

The green and patterned paper are from Basic Grey’s Kioshi line.  The gorgeous yellow paper and ribbon are from Mark’s Finest Papers – called Morning Sun  and it is a rich and vibrant yellow!

I also used an SU corner punch, a Martha Stewart border punch and a button and brad from my stash.

Thanks so much for stopping by!!

inspired by Belleek pottery

I’m playing along with today’s Technique Challenge at SCS  – inspired by Belleek pottery.  The techniques called for inking the inside of an  embossing folder with a light colored ink, then embossing the paper to get a dimensional bisque look.

So…..after several tries with light inks (the lightest I could find – which was not very light) I ended up using a grey ink and created this:

The background is done with Memento London Fog ink and a cuttlebug embossing folder.  I used Crane’s Lettra Letterpress paper because it dry  embossed so well.

  I stayed with the grey theme and stamped the image and sentiment, from Mark’s Finest Papers Love Remains set in the same ink and mounted it on grey cardstock.

The floral spray uses all Martha Stewart punches. 

Thanks for stopping by today!

a happy holiday card

hello friends! 

Well the cool weather we had a few days ago has been replaced with warm, humid weather we usually have down here.  It’s probably close to 80 – and feels warmer.  So, let’s cool down with a clean and simple wintery card!

The main image is from KT Designs and is one I pull out each year.  It’s simple design works well for coloring – either with copics or with pencils.  For this card it was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and  I used only pencils – no solvent to blend the colors together,  just a colorless blending pencil.  You can’t tell from the photo but a stardust gel pen was used to add sparkly accents.

The floral spray in the lower corner was created  using three different Martha Stewart punches.  I punched 3 oak leaves (I think that is what they are) in blue, 2 evergreen branches in green and used the small hydrangea punch in white with a blue rhinestone in the middle. 

A cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder was used for the embossed background.   The sentiment, from Flourishes, was stamped using Memento Danube Blue ink.

Thanks so much for taking time to visit today!

gift card holder

Every year I look around for new ways to package gift cards for the holidays.  Gift cards are frequently used by me for my nieces and nephews and I like wrapping them in more than just a plain envelope. 

When I saw the uber talented Becca Feeken’s gift card holder she did for Our Daily Bread Stamps I knew it would be my go to technique this year – and probably many more years!  The video of how she made this is HERE.

Here is my take…

The gift card holder is actually two pieces.  The pocket or “envelope” is one piece and the actual gift card holder is another.  This is the pocket with the gift card holder tucked inside.  I used paper from SEI Winter Song and edged the diagonal folds with thin satin ribbon.  The snowflake and red flower are both Martha Stewart punches.  You can’t tell from the photo but the snowflake is covered with pretty glitter.  The red brad is from My Minds Eye.   I wrapped some diy bakers twine around just for looks.

Here is the piece that contains the actual gift card.

The image is from Papertrey and was stamped on Cranes Lettra Paper in Memento Rhubarb Stalk ink and cut using a nestabilites die. The ribbon is seam binding (love this stuff!!)  I edged the label with memento blue ink.

Thanks so much for stopping by today!

punches and dies and stamps, oh my!

A little bit of everything went in to the making of this card and/or gift card holder.  One Sizzix die cut and one embossing folder, one spellbinders label die, two martha stewart punches, stamps,  digital paper, ribbon and pearls!  And I still consider this clean and simple – go figure!

The base is a tri-fold card using the Sizzix “Ornate Tri Fold Card” die.  This die is so versatile because it can be used as a card, a gift card holder, or for an invitation.  It was cut using DCWV green textured paper of which the top “ornate” piece was embossed with a Sizzix embossing folder.  I took a piece of blue cardstock and used the same die cut – but just the top portion – to have a mat – here is a close up of the embossed section and blue mat.

The patterned paper is a digital freebie I received from Design House digital.  I  usually have bad luck with digital papers because the colors never look right, but this one printed out perfect!  The snowflakes are Martha Stewart punches – embellished with a pearl.  The turquoise grosgrain ribbon is SU and the ribbon just slides off to open the card.

The sentiment is from Flourishes, stamped in Memento Bahama Blue and cut using a Spellbinders label die.

Here is a look at how the card opens up.  See that extra blue piece at the end of the patterned paper?  That was a leftover piece from when I cut out the blue mat and decided to use it to finish off this section.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! 

Easy backgrounds for clean and simple friday

This card is for today’s clean and simple blog layout sketch – and what is even better is that I had the background already done and set aside!

Years ago I received a bunch of different colored metallic papers as part of a kit club that I had joined.  I don’t use metallic often and I gave much of it away, but kept this piece that ended up being a perfect match for SU’s apricot ink! 

Not too long ago I was playing around with the PTI set Tin Types.  I did not have a card in mind, just stamping the background images on white cardstock in different ink colors, figuring I would eventually use them.  This is a great way to play around with your background images and gives you some ready made pieces when you need a quick card. 

I found this background that I had stamped in apricot and paired it up with the metallic paper and I was halfway finished.  Lucky for me I had just enough of the metallic paper to make the strip across the bottom (punched with a Martha Stewart punch) and for a flower (fiskars punch).

The sentiment is one of the $1 stamps from Michaels – chosen because the font had a nice handwritten feel to it.

All that was needed to finish the card was a white button for the center of the flower!  I like the light and airy feel to this and think it is perfect for a summer birthday.

Thanks for stopping by today!  Feel free to check out the other cards on the Clean and Simple Blog linked here.