Colorful Dots!

Welcome!  I’d like to share two cards I made this week using a “dots” technique inspired by the amazing Alex Syberia!  I’ve been fascinated by her work and her riotous use of color plus the unique way she incorporates dots into her cards!  You won’t believe your eyes when you check out her blog!  In the meantime, I recently printed off a couple of floral images I found on Pinterest; I resized the image down to fit an A2 card and then just got busy coloring with my Copic markers!  

Isn’t this floral spray beautiful?!  I enjoyed branching out a little with my colors, trying to loosen up and be more creative!  I opted for muted tones and layered color upon colors.  

This particular image came with a pale gray background so all I did was use the colorful “pointillism” style which Alex is known for to fill in around the blossoms and leaves.  Isn’t it fun?!  

Here’s the second card I made, using another floral spray image from Pinterest and a slightly less colorful use of the dots technique.  I began coloring with my Tim Holtz distress markers, Rusty Hinge, Dried Marigold and Tattered Rose for the blossoms and Peacock Feathers, Broken China and Evergreen Bough for the leaves!  

I wasn’t satisfied with the depth of color from just the distress markers so went over the images again with Copics.  I use so many different Copic markers that I feel it would be too overwhelming to list them all. But the Copics definitely boosted the color!  You can see that I made dots of black, gray, peach and aqua, then added white gel pen dots afterwards.  I also added shading to the leaves and flowers with a pale gray marker.   

To create the background I added more gray with Hickory and Pumice Stone distress markers and used a water brush to spread it in a lovely watercolor-y manner!  (That buckled my paper a bit as it’s only 110# card stock.)  The next steps were to stamp the beautiful Vintage Note by Stampendous with Pumice distress ink around the main image, then heat-embossed the sentiment (from Altenew’s Beautiful Day set) using Brutus Monroe’s Golden Gourd embossing powder for a perfect match!  I mounted this panel onto a soft gray base card and attached a strip of Tangerine Glitterstock along the edge for a little bit of bling!  Three shimmery sequins were my final touch! 

I leave you with this very closeup photo of my card, showing off the lovely colors and interesting dots!  I hope you enjoyed this post and my cards, and that you’ll have a look at Alex’s gorgeous creations as well!  

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Stampendous Dahlia Collage

Wanna know what makes this card artist’s heart go pitter-patter?!  New stamps from Stampendous!!  I just received a big fat package filled with wonderful new goodies and this baby was the first one I inked up!  It’s called Dahlia Collage and it’s HUGE!!  You may recall my obsession with their gorgeous Pointsettia Collage background stamp and can just imagine my excitement to play with this one!  

In my package was a container of Rose Gold Embossing Enamel and I used it to emboss my image onto a panel of watercolor card stock.  Isn’t it gorgeous?!  I then began to color with Aged Mahogany and Tattered Rose distress markers, blending the inks with a waterbrush.  I used Pumice Stone around the edges of the image and now wish I’d softened it a bit more.  The leaves were colored with Bundled Sage and Shabby Shutters and I colored the center of the dahlia with Fossilized Amber and a touch of Gathered Twigs for depth.  

I dug through my stash and found a strip of French Rose Glitterstock by Brutus Monroe which added a little more visual interest to my card.  

Here’s a final peek at my beautiful, complicated-looking card which actually was REALLY easy and quick to make!!  I encourage you to search the Stampendous website to see what a vast selection of stamps and products they have to appeal to every crafter’s style!  As always, I very much appreciate your visit here and your comments!   

Cozy Country Christmas

Can I just say I’m in love??!!  I’ve been playing with my spankin’ new Unity/Brutus Monroe Hit The Brick background stamp and having SO MUCH FUN!!  I have so many ideas of ways to use this one!  Yesterday I laid out three panels of watercolor card stock, then covered my Brick stamp with a heavy layer of Ranger’s Distress Resist Spray and stamped it onto the stock.  The card above is the first one I did, and the spray was so saturated on the stamp that it lost some of it’s detail.  The second one was a better image and the third one was perfect!  BUT!  There was no way I was going to waste this one and here’s what I made!

So, here are my three panels after stamping out the Hit The Brick background, as mentioned above.  Not a great picture but you get the idea!

I sponged on these colors: Suede Surface ink, Terracotta Surface ink and Walnut Stain Distress Oxide.  The Resist Spray is VERY resistant so the shiny parts didn’t take the ink very well.

My finished panel; I didn’t love it but was hopeful I could make something beautiful with it!

I decided to cut out the center of my panel with Oval Stitched dies and create a “window”~ but what to place in my window?  After trying out several stamps, I settled on this one by Stampendous called Cozy Cottage which I stamped on a separate piece of Bristol Smooth watercolor paper using Gathered Twigs Distress ink.  I then “painted” over the lines with a watery brush to create the soft sepia look and added a little color using Distress Markers.

Then I realized that this would make a great shaker card!  I’ve only made a few with much angst and frustration, but this one came together beautifully!  I attached a piece of acetate to the backside of the window, then built a wall of foam tape going all around the back of the sponged panel to hold in the “snow” which is actually Ultra Thick Clear Embossing powder!!  I added a few sequins and micro beads as well!  Can you see them?  Anyway, I got all the pieces and parts in the correct order and voila!  A shaker panel!

I found the perfect patterned paper to attach the panel to, then mounted it to a card base of Brutus Monroe’s Lunchbag card stock!  The final touch was a few sprigs of Tim Holtz’ Holiday Greens holly touched up with a bit of Gathered Twigs distress oxide ink and three little “berries”!   Now, isn’t this a lovely scene framed by that amazing Brick background?!

Unity is still holding their awesome giveaway!  You have until October 1st to comment on any of the blogs which participated in the blog hop for a chance to win!  Here’s the link to their blog with the lineup!  On October 2nd, they’ll choose the lucky winners!  I hope it’s you!!  

 

Blog Hoppin’ With Unity!

I’m so freaking excited!  What a week!  Christopher Alan just announced a new collaboration between Brutus Monroe and Unity Stamps!!  And tonight is the big collaborative blog hop including the teams from both companies!!   A line of  background stamps have been created just for this occasion and I got the awesome Hit The Brick to play with!  After making several backgrounds with it, I decided to do a partial brick wall background for my card.  So, here’s what I did: I tapped Bundled Sage distress oxide ink onto the Hit The Brick stamp, spritzed it with a fine mister then, by bending the flexible cling stamp, I was able to just stamp parts of it onto my paper.  BTW, it’s perfectly sized for A2 cards!

After drying with my heat tool, I heat-embossed in white the beautiful Conservatory of Quotes in the lower right hand corner.  I colored sections at a time with Distress markers, adding water to move the color.  I let each color dry, then added more ink to deepen the color.  I also used the markers to add color below and around the image to create that lovely, shadowy background.

In the upper right hand corner, I added my script stamp very faintly with Bundled Sage.  For the spatters, I scribbled out the deep red and green markers onto my craft mat, and mixed them together with my wet paintbrush, then spattered the resulting color over my card.  The sentiment is from a Unity Stamps set called Life Touches and I heat-embossed it in dark red directly to the card front.

 

 

When my panel was completed, I trimmed it down with Stitched Rectangle dies, added a layer of dark red paper behind it then mounted it to an off-white base card.  Doesn’t that brick background beautifully compliment the spray of roses?  I just love it and can’t wait to make more cards with it!

 

You’ll be amazed at all the projects made by the Inspiration Team!  The blog hop lineup includes not only our team but Unity Stamps’ team as well!  Waleska is next on the hop!
Amanda
Angeline
Camille
Donna
Echo
Gaylynn
Heather
Karen 
Lisa
Mandi 
Maria
Noelle
Robyn
Sharon 
Shemaine 
Stephanie
Brutus Monroe
Berina
Heather
Jess
Lauren
Marie Nicole
Sharon White
Waleska
Unity Stamp Co

Tim Holtz Distress Resist Spray Backgrounds

I thought I’d share a little of my creative process with you in this post!  Above are many backgrounds I created using Tim Holtz’ Distress Resist Spray which I received in my Simon Say’s Stamp June Card kit!  I finally tried it out and ended up with these!  Basically, I laid a stencil onto each piece of card stock, sprayed the Resist Spray over it, removed the stencil and let the paper dry; the spray acts just like heat-embossing and we all know how much fun that is!  The really fun part was to choose my color combinations for each panel and then let it “speak” to me in regards to which stamps to use and how to design the cards!

I LOVE this one!!  I’m partial to a gray & yellow combination, and I love how that black got onto this panel!  (I’m not actually sure how that happened!)  I used Fossilized Amber, Iced Spruce and a little Black Soot distress oxide inks to sponge the color on.  

Speaking of Tim Holtz (I mentioned the oxide inks, right?!) this is one of my absolute favorite “man” sets and just love this vintage car!  I heat-embossed it in black onto the panel, then over-stamped the other images in more Iced Spruce.  I can’t recall who makes the “let’s get LOST” sentiment, but it’s perfect, isn’t it?!  🙂  A lovely Bazzill textured gray base finished this card!  

Remember when aqua and brown was all the rage?!  I still love this soothing combination and added some Cracked Pistacio distress oxide ink to Broken China and Walnut Stain.  The resist background was made with a cool script stencil.  

I pulled out another favorite Tim Holtz set for this card; it’s called The Great Outdoors and has some really wonderful images!  I stamped the wood circle all over a white card base using Walnut Stain, then moved on to create my card.  I tore the resist background in half (now I get to make a second card with the other half!) and sponged more Walnut Stain around the edges.  On a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock, I sponged Antique Linen distress ink all over, then dripped water over it for cool texture.  I stamped the trees in Cracked Pistacio and Walnut and stamped the deer in Walnut too.  I used my Walnut distress marker to darken the deer in the foreground.  More Walnut Stain around the edges!  I heat-embossed the sentiment onto a scrap of textured card stock then adhered it to my card after assembling the other pieces.  

OH!  Big surprise!  Another Tim Holtz product; a stencil this time!  😀  I first sponged Fired Brick oxide ink at the bottom, then Carved Pumpkin over it and finally, Fossilized Amber at the top.  Those “cool” darkish stains are from my dirty baby wipe as I was wiping the ink off the resist parts!  Happy accident!!  

I kinda love this “dirty” card!!  The Celebrate You stamp is from Neat & Tangled and I heat-embossed it in black right over my panel, then sponged Black Soot around the edges.  A strip of black & white striped paper accents one edge and I mounted this onto a black base card.  The last detail was to add Nuvo Drops all over and then spatter black paint over it all.  I haven’t done paint-spattering in a while and I miss it!  😉  

How beautiful is this background?!  My favorite Iced Spruce oxide ink is paired with Shaded Lilac and a touch of Fossilized Amber, all sponged over the cool grid stencil.  That resist spray is SO easy and SO cool!  

I’ve already written a post about this beautiful card but it needs to be added here!  I used my spankin’ new Altenew set called Crown Blooms ; stamped out the images onto a piece of Bristol Smooth card stock, then colored with my Zig markers.  I fussy-cut the bloom and leaf and layered them over the background where I’d stamped the little floral sprig.  Lastly, the sentiment from Brutus Monroe‘s Super Sentimental set was heat-embossed in white onto a scrap of black, then mounted to the blossom.  A base card of my favorite textured card stock by Bazzill in gray sets this off beautifully!  Now…I have more backgrounds to play with so I’m out!!  Thanks for visiting!  

MAN Cards!

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with great “man cards” and I certainly am known for making tons of florals!  But over the years I’ve created some masculine cards which I really love and want to share with you today!  My first one is made using a very old, retired Stampin Up set called Fly Fishing.  I’ve had it for many years and will never get rid of it!   I used Stampin Up’s retired Old World Map and Crackle background stamps, Crumb Cake ink, and the images from Fly Fishing.  Sponging ink around the edges and roughing them up gives this card a great distressed look!  How about that lifted corner with a fishing fly stamped behind it?!  🙂  

This card was also made with Stampin Up’s retired Old World Map and a very cool texture stamp which I’ve had for years.  The ship image is one I bought from a Facebook stamping group, and I don’t know who made it.  I think the little knotted twine gives this an added nautical feel!  

Okay, so a beer card!!!  I made this for my husband and he loved it!  I used Unity Stamp’s Keep Calm- Have A Beer set and embossed it in black then colored the beer with Zig markers.  I added Crystal Effects clear glue as a glaze to depict the glass…just wish I’d thought to add beer foam somehow!  The sentiment is also from awesome Unity Stamps!  

What guy doesn’t love a card with a vintage car?!  I found and printed off this map of Vermont, sizing it down to fit my card and used images from Tim Holtz’ set Road Trip.  The Chevelle stamp is made by Deep Red Stamps company.  

A fun baseball themed card using Stampin Up’s Take Me Out To The Ballgame and assorted texture stamps.  The base card was embossed and sponged with ink to make the stars stand out.  I love this card!  

This card was made especially for my husband who was taking guitar lessons at the time. The sentiment was perfect and the brown metal thingie is something I’d had in my stash for ages!  I think it all came together beautifully!  

Isn’t this so serenely beautiful?!  The main image is from Northwoods Rubber Stamps and I just love it!  The base card was embossed with a pine branch embossing folder.  I used Stampin Up’s Woodgrain background stamp on the sentiment strip.  

Here’s another ship card using the wonderful set Getting There by Tim Holtz!  Distress oxide inks make this background so GORGEOUS!!  😀  Note: more aging/distressing/tearing and roughing up!  I can’t stop looking at this card!!  

Lastly, I’ll end with this cool train card which I copied from one I found on Pinterest!  Tim Holtz Getting There train and tickets…I hope you enjoyed my array of masculine cards and are inspired to create some of your own!