Sympathy and the Sea

Hello Friday and hello to you, thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately I have needed 4 sympathy cards in the past couple of weeks and this design was one of my favorites. I purchased this stamp and sentiment at an estate sale held at a local stamp store and I love it.  I used the same lighthouse stamp for the inside, just off stamping it once to get a lighter shade that I could write over.

The coloring was done with Bic markers and a few of my Spectrum Noir markers.

I am entering my card at Fab and Funky Challenges and their Challenge #269 - No Patterned Paper and Stampin Royalty and their Challenge #288 - By the Sea.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

Stamping with Distress inks

The challenge for July at Stamplorations is to use stamps and distressing. I took it in the direction of using distress inks, I find when using the ink to stamp it gives an uneven distressed look to my images. I did a smoosh water color effect on water color paper for my tag and after it dried I started stamping my flowers and leaves. These are all from one of the newest set at Stamplorations which I just ordered, it is called Frames and Flowers. I also stamped and fussy cut some of the flowers so that I could layer them and create some dimension.

I love this layout and it is courtesy of this week's sketch challenge at The Paper Players .

For the inside I placed two of the foliage stamps on my block and created my own corner embellishment.

Although I am cutting it close on both of these challenges, you still have a couple of days to enter, why don't you join me? Thanks for the visit, hope to see you again soon.

My First Canvas

Do you have anything in your craft room that you keep meaning to use but just don't? This canvas is one of those things for me, I had been thinking about it for a while and finally just decided to jump in.

I created this using inspiration from Anything But Cute with this month's challenge "Summer Romance" and this beautiful mood board.

Although I love the ocean and shells, I took my lead from the "Romance" which is where my verse and wedding idea came from and the lovely shades of blue, white and cream.

I started with a layer of white gesso, then acrylic paint in parchment, sand and soft blue.

I added some torn design paper along with dictionary paper. I stamped, distressed and used stencils to create the background.

The quote is on vellum and backed with a piece that I water colored using distress ink re inkers.

I used Spellbinder and Sizzix dies to cut the flowers, leaves and swirls in very vanilla card stock.

Using the same acrylic paints I colored the flowers adding a script stamp when the paint was dry.

My heart and butterfly are embossed chipboard and the bird cage is wood. I painted all of them with the parchment acrylic paint, adding crackle texture paste to the bird cage after it dried. I love how the cracks stood out after I sponged it with antique linen distress ink.

I added some more of the script to the heart along with a key. I also added a hat pin with cream pearls and spacer beads. I hope you can see the bit of sparkle on the side where I added translucent embossing paste through a heart stencil with super fine glitter.

Although I am cutting this just about as close as I can, I am also entering this at Frilly and Funkie and their challenge "Something to Say" - to put your sentiment, etc front and center.

Thanks for seeing my debut with the canvas and mixed media.

Have a wonderful weekend. Hugs......

Markers, markers, markers

I have new stamps, yeah! I signed up last month at Technique Tuesday in their Greenhouse Society, in the auto ship program. This gets me the newly released stamp each month at a discount. My first month was a lovely stamp called Bootiful Tulip which I couldn't resist. Who doesn't love rain boots filled with tulips? At the same time, I was able to buy this beautiful stamp "Cosmo" at a discount.

I have grown cosmos in the past and love the soft delicate flowers. I used my Bic markers to color these and love how they turned out. Which brings me to the challenge that inspired me, Addicted to Stamps and their theme of "Make Your Mark", which is to use your choice of coloring medium-markers, pencils, watercolor, etc. to color your image. I have had some success in the past with the Bic markers and since I have been playing quite a bit and experimenting with different coloring mediums and tools lately....why not use the Bic markers?

I loved how this paper that I bought recently just blends wonderfully with the flowers.

I am also going to enter my card at Creative Moments and their challenge #72 - Anything Goes-Monochromatic.

Here you can see how I fussy cut the image and mounted it on the die cut.

Hope you like this card and will check out the blogs above, I love visiting and getting ideas and I am sure you are just like me. Have a great rest of the week.

Hugs....

Playing Around with Sketch Saturday

This week at Sketch Saturday  , they are playing with this fun sketch and I wanted to join in as well. 

My card started as just an experiment, I had bought this retired two step stamp set which is a retired set from Stampin' Up a while back and never inked it. I taped off the front of my card base to keep the back clean and started stamping....I love these big beautiful flowers. I then stamped the stem which is also part of the same set. After seeing this week's sketch, it was fate, a simple matter of putting this card together. 

Be sure and give Sketch Saturday a visit and see how their DT interpreted the sketch and then give it a go yourself, there is still over a day before the challenge ends. Thanks for the visit.

CASEing Virginia Lu

Hello everyone, are you having a great week? We have been enjoying a few days of cooler temps, which I love!!! Windows open, birds singing in the tree outside and me crafting away--a perfect day.

In between working on an order for some requested items, I decided to create one more card for the 

June Caseploration challenge at Stamplorations   , this time CASEing June's guest designer, 

Virginia Lu. Her card is gorgeous and I love everything about it.

I was inspired by the vellum, her embossed flowers and the washi tape on her sentiment.

I used Ranger's platinum embossing powder to emboss some of my favorite images, they are from an older retired set by Stampin' Up "Botanicals".

I colored them with alcohol markers from the back side of the vellum, I added a couple of patterned papers for my backdrop, love the script paper. 

Be sure to stop by the Stamplorations Blog where they are celebrating their 2nd birthday with loads of inspiration, new stamps and prizes. I will soon have my very first Stamploration stamps as I placed my first order today. If you order at least $22 --- free shipping, I am always drawn in with free shipping, lol.

Thanks for taking a look at my card, have a great rest of the week and may you find something here to inspire you.