Alex’s Almond Blossoms

Welcome back to my blog!  I’m featuring another one of the beautiful new images recently released by Alex Syberia Designs in the form of digital stamps!  If you haven’t ventured into that world yet you really should!  Not only are the images super affordable, but you have the option to manipulate and play with them to create a myriad of designs and layouts!  Once you’ve created a design you like, just print, color and go!  For today’s card I chose the trio of Almond Blossoms, printed it in a size to fit an A2 card and got busy!  

 I started coloring the flowers with Zig markers, then realized that I hadn’t printed on Bristol Smooth card stock which is my go-to for Zigs and water.  So I used my Prismacolor pencils to fill out the rest of the blossoms.  Next time I’ll leave a little more white space!  

How about those stamen?!   I made them by dotting Glossy Accents to the ends then sprinkled on black glitter!  I love how the light catches them!  I fussy-cut the blossoms then put them aside in order to create my background!  

On a panel of Bristol Smooth this time, I sponged a thick layer of Fossilized Amber, Scattered Straw and Lemonade oxide inks, then deepened the edges with a layer of Aged Mahogany and Worn Lipstick.  You can see my favorite script-y stamp which accents the side and of course, my lovely spatters of black!  I attached this panel to a white base card, put some foam tape under my blossoms and added that to the background!  Finally, one of the great sentiments from Taylored Expressions Simple Strips was the last touch!  Oh!  I can’t forget my pretty little gems which add a little sparkle!  I hope you like my card and I hope you’ll go on over to Alex’s Etsy shop to see which designs will spark your creativity!  Thanks for visiting!  

Clean Up Cards!

 I don’t know about you, but I have hundreds and hundreds of card photos stored in my computer and my typical habit is to edit them for blog posts or to post on social media then pop them over to my CopyCatCard file!  Once that’s done, I delete them from Camera Uploads but unfortunately, I often forget that step!  During this time of social distancing, I’ve been working on cleaning up my files and came across a number of cards that I never edited and so they were never used for a blog or Facebook post!  I thought I’d share them with you today!  You’ll see that I have quite a few cards made with some of Alex Syberia Designs like this one above!  I printed it onto Bristol Smooth card stock and then colored the blossom with my Zig markers.  After die-cutting the image into a circle, I mounted it to a white base card which I’d embossed with a lovely folder I have.  I think that script is so elegant, don’t you?  The sentiment is from Unity Stamps.  

Here’s another one of Alex’s designs called Roses Bouquet which I stamped onto Bristol Smooth and painted, again using Zig markers! I think the sentiment is from Taylored Expressions  Simple Strips set!  

This card features a stamp made by Crafty Individuals called Summer Poppy Meadow.  I have to admit that I didn’t check to see the actual dimensions of this stamp when I ordered it, assuming it was a full A2 size!  It was quite disappointing to see the actual size when it arrived but it’s still a beautiful image and easy to work with!  I paired it with a black and white striped panel of a store bought card I had in my stash!  

I made this card over a year ago (maybe two?) and I’ve kept it for myself instead of selling it!  The simple yet striking lotus blossom was drawn by Luisana Lowry for her collection of digital stamps she called Red Hibiscus Designs and I was honored to be asked to create cards for her!  I colored this blossom with Copic markers and paired it with a background I had in my stash.  A little gold cord and a few sequins are pretty details!  

How gorgeous is this moth?!  Another one of Luisana’s designs, it’s not something I would typically be interested in, but I loved coloring this!  My Copics collection was fairly new and quite limited at this point but with the excellent tutorials that Luisana has shared, I learned so much and just love how beautifully this came out!  The background was made with Hero Arts Everything Flower stamp and I think I colored directly on the stamp, misted with water then stamped it onto Bristol Smooth card stock.  A perfect pairing, if I do say so myself!  Oh!  That bold sentiment is from Stamplorations!  

I just love this card!  It’s a print I found on Pinterest and it came with the blue background so all I had to do was color the flowers!  I believe I used Prismacolor pencils on this because I had to print it onto regular weight card stock.  The addition of Glossy Accents on some of the blossoms give it a really nice touch!  Sentiment is Taylored Expressions Simple Strips!  

When Alex Syberia created her first line of digital stamps, she invited me to design cards to help promote the line and I was honored and happy to do so!  This image is called Spring Bouquet and you can find it here in her Etsy shop!  Because I printed this with an inkjet printer, the ink smudged a bit but I used the printer ink as my gray and just went with it!  

Here’s the same image in orange and yellow; I like the addition of the Tim Holtz Hello die popping out of it!  

Another colorful card using Spring Bouquet, again letting the printer ink be my gray for coloring.  

Alex rocked the flower frame with this digi called XOXO Floral!  What a glorious array of blossoms and leaves to frame the hand-lettered XOXO!  I used Prismacolor pencils for this card, die-cut it with Gina Marie Designs Stitched Rectangle die then mounted it onto a base card made with heavy patterned paper!  

My last card is a simpler design featuring a sweet little Stampendous set called Sunshine Daisy!  I colored it with Copics, die-cut it into an oval and adhered it to the dotted paper oval.  The embossed base card is perfect with it’s display of petals, right?!  The sentiment is from Butterfly Reflections, Ink set called Let’s Flamingle.  

Here’s the inside of the Daisies card with the rest of the sentiment!  

I leave you with this sympathy card done in restful colors of nature and Papertrey Ink’s Meadow Greensstamp set.  I heat embossed the ferns with clear powder then sponged oxide and distress inks over them for a resist look, one of my favorite simple techniques!  The sentiment is from an old Stampin Up set.  Thanks for coming with me on this little walk through my computer files!  

Unity Stamps In This Together

As I write this blog post, it’s officially been about four weeks since Vermont’s Stay at Home order in the face of a global coronavirus pandemic.  What an unprecedented, unsettling and bizarre time this is and it’s impact affects us all.  Since I’ve quit working and have so much extra time to spend in my stamp room, I’ve made a concerted effort to mail out many cards to encourage my family and friends.  It’s a small thing but if one of my cards brings a smile and a moment of joy then goal accomplished!  A number of stamp companies have created special sets that feature nurses, doctors, essential workers and sentiments that express our gratitude and admiration for them.  Other stamp sets are filled with beautiful images and encouraging words, like this one from Unity Stamps called In This Together.  

The beauty of this set is that it’s a digital stamp which means after my purchase, the company sent me a file in an email which I then downloaded to my computer.  I printed out the images onto regular card stock and then colored and cut them out. I just bought a laser printer so that I can print the images onto heavier card stock and watercolor paper and can’t WAIT to create watercolor cards with this set!  

In the meantime I spent a very happy hour or so coloring this beautiful blossom with Prismacolor pencils, adding many layers of color!  I had a panel of watercolor paper upon which I’d tried out my new Tim Holtz Alterations Collection-Mixed Media 2 die.  Some of the pieces didn’t pop out but I didn’t mind the look.  I layered it over a panel of lavender card stock, mounted my fussy-cut blossom using foam tape and then adhered it all to a base card of white card stock.  The final touch was to sponge a little lavender ink around the sentiment which came with the set and attach it to the panel along with a few iridescent sequins.   

This is another card using In This Together; this time I printed out the panel with both the blossom and sentiment all together.  I colored the flower with Copic markers, adding many layers of many colors as I always do, then added an array of dots inspired by Alex Syberia!  See her gallery of “dotty” cards here!  

I felt my card needed just a little extra “something” so pulled out a small embossing folder and added this lovely raised detail to the bottom left and top right corners!  Perfect!  

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these and will be inspired to use your stamps to create encouraging cards as well.  Thank you for visiting!  

All The Pretty Horses

Hi there, friends!  I apologize for neglecting my blog for so long but I’m back today with some cards I made last fall but never shared here! Let me tell you how I got all these beautiful stamps!  My friend, Janice is an avid horse lover and has a nice collection of horse stamps! One of our daughters became a rider in the past year and I wanted to make her some horse cards so I borrowed one of Janice’s stamps!  It’s such a great design that I decided to look it up on ebay to see if I could find my own and was thrilled to see that the seller had not just one but three beautiful horse stamps by Coronado Stamp Company!  Each one was listed for $14 apiece and although that was a little pricey for me, I ordered one anyway.  I was shocked to get a message from the seller the next day saying she’d made a mistake and sent me ALL the stamps for the price of one and to keep them!  Uh, sure!!  😀  (P.S. I did offer to return the other two but she declined my offer.)  

Because it’s been a while since I made these cards, I’m trying to remember the process!  But it seems that I basically sponged panels of Bristol Smooth card stock with a variety of distress and oxide inks and then added spatters of water, white and or black paint.  Such an easy way to add beautiful detail and interest!  

I then stamped and heat-embossed the horses over the distressed panels after dusting them generously with anti-static powder!  

I am just thrilled with how striking each card turned out!  This is my favorite background with all the colors!  

I made this collection for Courtney and she loves them all; which one is your favorite?  

Can you see the faint geometric pattern in the background of this card?  It’s Altenew’s Pattern Play-Hexagon background stamp and I spritzed it with water then laid it gently onto the distress panel, removed it and patted the panel dry with a paper towel.  I think that adds a little extra to the card, don’t you?  I haven’t made anymore horse cards since these but it’s good to know I have some great stamps to work with when I do!  Thanks for stopping by!  

Stampendous Cling Garden Mum

I wasn’t planning to write a blog post about this card- okay, actually, it never occurred to me to write a post!  I just pulled out this gorgeous new stamp set by Stampendous and went crazy with it!  But someone requested a post to describe how I made this so here I am!  I’ll try to remember to at least snap some photos of the process the next time I make a card!  But for today I’ll just explain my process!

The name of this set is Cling Garden Mum and it comes with a beautiful flourish stencil and some gorgeous samples depicted on the back of the packaging!  I was so inspired by the samples!  To begin my card, I taped the stencil to a panel of watercolor card stock and sponged on Broken China distress oxide ink.  The next step was to heat emboss the giant mum directly to the stenciled panel using black embossing powder.  I decided to use my Bister watercolor powders to fill in the blossom; the depth of color is determined by how much powder and how much water you add!  I tried to create shading with the use of both!  

When the flower was colored in I decided to add the row of flourishes down the right side; to do that, I stamped them in Versamark then heat set them with clear embossing powder.  I then sponged a layer of Black Soot distress ink over the whole panel, trying to stay away from the blossom.  This, of course, made those flourishes pop!  If you look at the top left you’ll see where I stamped on a scripty stamp using a little water then removed the dampness with paper towel.  This left a faint impression for yet another detail!  

My card looks far more complicated than it actually was!  To finish it off, I trimmed down my watercolor panel and adhered it to a base card of textured aqua card stock then added the sentiment strip.  I like how this pops against the colorful background!  

I typically keep my inside panel quite basic with a sentiment or a coordinating strip of patterned paper as a band at the bottom, but this time I went all out!  I used Technique Junkies Zinnia’s with Monarch stamp in Hickory distress oxide ink right over the stenciled pattern which I did first!  I heat embossed the sentiment onto a scrap of pink then cut it with a label punch.  I think I can still write a message inside despite all the other stuff going on here!  I had so much fun making this card and hope I’ve inspired you to play with your own stencils and stamps!  Thanks for your visit!  

New Lesia Zgharda Stamps!

 I’ve long admired the stamps and coloring by Lesia Zgharda, marveled at the precise and delicate detail of each image and have been enamored by their whimsical charm!  I don’t know why it took me so long to place an order but I finally did and just received my package from the Ukraine today!  (Am I the only one who gets a thrill knowing my mail has come from so very far away?!)  I pulled out my Prismacolor pencils and chose three shades of green plus the white to get started, copying Lesia’s style!  

I just love this sweet image which is actually two stamps!  Lesia’s cards are typically made with kraft card stock and coloring on the slightly rough surface gives the pencils some “tooth”!  I finished by mounting the kraft panel to a white base card which nicely accents the white highlights!  I stamped another Lesia sentiment in the center to complete my card which is appropriate for any person or occasion!  

After making two green wreaths I thought a purple one would be pretty and so it is!  I used my blender pencil to smooth out and blend the colors more on this card.  The sentiment is from a Stampendous set called Cling Garden Mum and is just a wee too big for the space but I still love it!  

This up close shot shows the smoothly blended pencil achieved by using the blender pencil.  

I’m not loving this third card but really enjoyed the creative process!  The stencil is part of the Stampendous set I mentioned above and I placed it over the panel then lightly brushed white distress oxide ink over it all.  After heat-setting the design with clear embossing powder it left behind a glossy, opaque impression which I feel overwhelms the delicate leaves.  I liked the gray tones of it though, so mounted the panel onto a gray textured base card.  A different look, for sure!  

My final and favorite card using the beautiful Eucalyptus Wreath was also colored in three shades of purple.  I added Crystal Effects as an added detail which I think is lovely against the organic card stock!  This time, however, I stenciled the background first, again using white distress oxide ink.  I just love how delicate it is and what a lovely backdrop it is for the bolder wreath design!   

Just look at that shine!  The sentiment on this card is from Studio Katia‘s Blooming Bunch stamp set.  I’m so happy with how each one of these cards turned out!  I hope you’ll go to Lesia Zgharda’s website and see all the wonderful images, cards and tutorials she shares there!  Perhaps you’ll be inspired as I was!  

I leave you with this final photograph of my favorite card.  Thank you for visiting!