Saturday, August 23, 2008

Snowmen Invading My Space

I've started making snowmen cards and I can't stop. They are everywhere in my stamping space. Well, Beate is back with her weekend sketch challenges. Her first sketch challenge since she has returned was actually contributed by another SCS Rock Star, Jenn Balcer. I love square cards and circles, so this was a fun challenge for me. I used one of my favorite color combos, Bashful Blue, Real Red & White. I also added a touch of green.

Here is the sketch from Beate's blog:



Here is the snowman card I made for the challenge:



Card size 4 1/4" square.

You can also join in on the fun by going to her blog. Have a super Saturday. And I hope you have a chance to get a little inky.

Card Details:
Stamps: A Merry Season {SU}, Holiday Swirls clear stamp set {Inkadinkadoo}, & Christmas Sentiments clear stamp set {My Sentiments Exactly}
Paper: Real Red, Bashful Blue, & GP White
Ink: Real Red, Bashful Blue, & Ranger Archival Black
Accessories: white opaque pen, snowflake brad, mega oval scallop punch {Marvy}, circle cutter {fiskars}, red grosgrain ribbon {SU}, blue and green ribbon {target dollar spot}, colored pencils and blender pencil {Prismacolor}

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Frog and the Princess

So far I have 2 sets designed by Melanie Muenchinger for Gina K Designs. I used both of them to make this princess tee. I stamped the ringer tee from Little Tees with Chocolate Chip onto GP White card stock. Then I stamped the frog from Hip Hop Accessories with Olive Green Stazon ink. I stamped the frog slightly off the tee. I like that effect better. I colored the frog in with my Mellow Moss marker. I added a second layer of ink to make the color a bit deeper. I stamped Princess, also from Hip Hop Accessories onto the tee with Cameo Coral. I added a tiny rhinestone above the 'I'. I like the tee on a circle base, so I cut several with my Fiskars circle cutter. I distressed the edge of each with Chocolate Chip ink and layered them. I added the tee using foam tape for dimension. I ran Chocolate grosgrain ribbon around the card front hiding part of the ribbon behind the circle. I did this by cutting a slit along the lower side of the shirt. I like that look a lot. I added some ribbon and string (colored with a green Bic MarkIt Marker) to the little clip. I also glued a green rhinestone to the center of the clip handle. It fit perfectly. I used a retired SU background stamp Dots and Daisies for the background. And I added white to the centers of the flowers using a white opaque pen. I also used my sakura glitter pen to highlight the frogs belly, under legs and her eyelashes.



Card Details:
Stamps: Little Tees & Hip Hop Accessories {Gina K Designs} and Dots and Daisies {SU}
Paper: Ruby Red, Cameo Coral, Chocolate Chip, & GP White
Ink: Chocolate Chip Classic Pad, Olive Green Stazon, Green Bic MarkIt Marker & Cameo Coral marker
Accessories: circle cutter, bull clip, large green rhinestone, small clear rhinestone, chocolate grosgrain ribbon, string, white opaque pen, & sakura glitter pen

Monday, August 18, 2008

Holiday Snowman Tee

I love snowmen. They are a symbol of cold weather and childhood. Who can forget Frosty and his adventures? I have a lot of snowmen stamps, but don't seem to use them that often. So I pulled out one of my old favorite background stamps I purchased a few years ago. It has snowmen and other winter stuff all over it. I also pulled out an older SU set, A Merry Season. I wanted to create a winter tee with my favorite stamp set, Little Tees from Gina K Designs. I stamped one of the snowmen from that set on the corner of the tee; capturing just part of his face and body and the present he holds proudly on his twig hand. I colored the background, snowman, and the tee with PrismaColor pencils and used a PrismaColor pencil to blend. I layered them as you can see here. For the sentiment, I cut two different size circles with my Fiskars Circle Cutter. I stamped "Holiday Happiness" from So Many Sayings on the Wild Wasabi layer and added 3 small black brads. I raised the tee by adhering it with foam tape (love that stuff). The card size is 4 1/4" square.


Card Details:
Stamps: Little Tees {Gina K Designs}, A Merry Season & So Many Sayings {SU}, Holiday Background {Uptown Designs}
Paper: Wild Wasabi, Basic Black, & GP White
Ink: Ranger Archival Black
Accessories: black brads, PrismaColor Pencils & Blender Pencil, Wild Wasabi ribbon, Circle Cutter {Fiskars}, & foam tape

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Snow, snow, snow...

I am so ready for beautiful, glistening, pure white snow. I know, you think I'm crazy, right? I can't help it. I love snow and snowmen. They are the best kind of men. LOL! So in tribute to wanting snow, here is my snowman card. I've had this stamp for years and never really used it. I was never that good at coloring. But with the help of the many talented people at SplitCoastStampers, I have improved my coloring. I really like how this turned out. I used SU Markers to color him. I also read the thread featured in the newsletter on Wednesday about shading. I liked the idea of using the Sahara Sand marker. So I tried it here. It doesn't look too bad. I used a fairly simple layout with not much added. It took longer to color this little guy than it did to put the card together. The label on the wood block indicates the stamp is from Stampassions. I never heard of the company, but I am glad they made this stamp. He was very fun to play with.



Card Details:
Stamps: Starlight Snowman {Stampassions} & Sentiment M255 {My Sentiments Exactly}
Paper: Bordering Blue, Creamy Caramel, & GP White
Ink: Markers {SU}, Brown ink pad {Stamps by Judith} & Close to Cocoa Classic Pad
Accessories: brown ribbon, moss gingham ribbon, word window punch & Sakura stardust clear pen

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Skater Dude

I love 4 day weekends. And the weather in this area has been amazing. What better way to spend a few days off in this wonderful weather than to attempt the color challenge on SplitCoastStampers. I love this color combination; Elegant Eggplant, Taken With Teal, & Old Olive. I used some more of that cute turtle shell paper that I found in my old stash. I also was enabled to purchase the Bic Markit Markers that were on sale last week at Target. They work great for coloring ribbon to match my projects. I used Plumtastic Purple to color some white grosgrain ribbon. It matches Elegant Eggplant perfectly. I used the turtle from Gina K Design's new set "Whatever Float Your Boat", designed by Rupa Shevde. Isn't he such a cute little dude?



Card Details:
Stamps
: Whatever Floats Your Boat {Gina K Designs}
Paper: Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant, Taken With Teal, GP White, & Turtle Print DP
Ink: Brown Pad {Stamps by Judith}, Taken With Teal, Old Olive, Mellow Moss, Elegant Eggplant Markers, & Plumtastic Plum {Bic Mark-It}
Accessories: round tab punch, word window punch, ticket corner punch, grosgrain ribbon, & brads

Monday, August 11, 2008

A Moment of Silence for Another Group of In-Colors

Well another group of In-Colors from Stampin' Up! bites the dust. I will miss them all. The SCS color Challenge for last week was to use any or all of the retireing in-colors with a neutral color. I decided to use them ALL to make a set of square cards with some NEW Gina K Designs stamps. I stamped the short sleeve t-shirt outline stamp from Little Tees on GP White with Brown ink from Stamps By Judith. I stamped the butterflies from Tagger's Dozen using each in-color on a different shirt (minus River Rock). I made markers using re-inkers and Fantastix from Tsukineko and used them to color the collar and sleeves of each shirt. I cut short pieces of matching stitched ribbon, knotted the ribbon and layeried it on River Rock strips. I stamped Hello from Gina K's Summer Harvest stamp set. I adhered the River Rock strips to 4 1/4" square cards. I cut out the t-shirts and stamped them with the Linen background stamp using River Rock ink. I attached the t-shirts with foam tape.



Card Details:
Stamps: Little Tees & Summer Harvest {Gina K Designs}, Tagger's Dozen {SU}
Paper: Purely Pomegranate, Groovy Guava, Wild Wasabi, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, River Rock & GP White
Ink: Purely Pomegranate, Groovy Guava, Wild Wasabi, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, River Rock , & Brown {Stamps By Judith}
Accesories: stitched ribbon

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Sweet Strawberries

I bought some bright and yummy DP made by K & Company called Berry Sweet. I didn't have any stamps to go with the fruit themed sheets of paper. That is until Gina K released her new free with 3 set called Summer Harvest. I made sure I purchased all three new sets so I could get this one for free. I used the strawberry from the set to make 2 different cards. The first card uses that yummy Berry Sweet paper. The other I used some other DP (not sure of the manufacturer).



Card Details
Stamps: Summer Harvest {Gina K}
Paper: Summer Sun, Green Galore, Real Red, GP White & Berry Sweet {K & Company}
Ink: Real Red & Ranger Archival Black
Accesories: white brads, round tab punch {SU}, circle scallop punch {Marvy}, ribbon, & paper piercer



Card Details
Stamps: Summer Harvest {Gina K} & So Many Words {SU}
Paper: Ruby Red, Wild Wasabi, GP white, DP {manufacturer unknown}
Ink: Ranger Archival Black & Wild Wasabi
Accessories: word window punch {SU}, pewter charm, scallop square punch {Marvy}, white souffle pen, Wild Wasabi ribbon, linen thread, & foam tape

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Crazy for Cute Little Tees

Gina K Designs released 4 new fabulous sets last month. My favorite set was designed by Melanie Muenchinger and it's called Little Tees. There are 3 different T-shirt stamps and tons of phrases and small images to put on the shirts. It is a great set for paper piecing with all of the amazing DP that is our there right now.

For my first card I used some gorgeous DP I picked up at a Local Scrapbook Store a few weeks ago (Fancy That in Hummelstown, PA). I stamped the outline tee stamp on the DP and cut it out. I added some stickles to the large flower centers and used my glitter pen for the collar and to outline the tee. I used the butterfly from the set to stamped the background. I really like this color combination (Ruby Red, Cameo Coral, and Chocolate Chip).



Card Details
Stamps: Little Tees {Gina K}
Paper: Ruby Red, Cameo Coral, Chocolate Chip & Hey Sugar, Honey Honey DP {Cosmo Cricket}
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Accesories: pewter brads, Icicle Stickles, chocolate tafetta ribbon, & foam tape


For my second card I pulled out some old DP that I've had for years. I actually pulled this out to use with another Gina K set that I just received. I'll share that with you later. I stamped the long sleeve shirt stamp onto the DP and cut it out. I sponged the sleeves with extra ink to try to cover the design on the paper. I then stamped "2COOL" with VersaMark and brushed silver PearlEx onto it. I think next time I'll emboss it to make it stand out more. I pulled out one of these pewter charms that I picked up a few months ago from ACMoore. I stamped the little flower from the set onto the charm and strung it onto some cording. I poked holes above the shoulders and pulled the cording to the back to make it look like a choker.



Card Details
Stamps: Little Tees {Gina K}
Paper: Chocolate Chip, Olive, DP {company unknown}
Ink: VersaMark, Always Artichoke & Chocolate Chip
Accesories: pewter brads, grosgrain ribbon, cording, pewter charm, circle cutter, paper piercer, & foam tape

For my third card, I chose to make a circle card. Flaxy Chic challenged us to do this during the release party. They are challenging to work with, but fun. I found some old pink splattered DP that goes perfect with the Sultry DP from Basic Grey. I purchased the Basic Grey DP and brads from Gina K. I love the Sultry line. It is gorgeous. And the 6x6 pads are great.

I stamped the long sleeve tee onto the pink splattered DP and then stamped the flower trio from the same set onto the shirt. I cut it out and added a pink Sultry brad and 2 teeny rhinestones to the flowers. I also outlined the tee with my glitter pen. For the card base, I cut out two 4 1/4" circles with my Fiskars circle cutter. I scored one of the circles about 1" in from the edge. I glued them together on the scored edge and added two pewter jumber eyelets to secure it. I tied pink tafetta ribbon to to the edge through the eyelets. I cute a smaller pink circle and layered that on top the base. I used some scrap Sultry DP by layering it onto Chocolate Chip and glueing it to the card. Then I trime the edge to round out the one edge. I made the little tab with the SU Round Tab Punch. I layered a small piece of Sultry DP. Then I stamped "hello" from the Expressive Flexible Phrases SU set, trimmed it and glued it to the tab. I added a large pink rhinestone and two small pink sultry brads. The small scalloped circles are from a punch I bought in the Target dollar spot a while ago. I put it all together and here is what I ended up creating.



Card Details
Stamps: Little Tees {Gina K}, Expressive Flexible Phrases {SU}
Paper: Chocolate Chip, Olive, Sultry DP {Basic Grey}, & pink splattered DP {company unknown}
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Accesories: pink brads {Basic Grey}, pink taffeta ribbon, circle cutter, rhinestones (large pink and tiny clear}, mini scallop circle punch, jumbo pewter eyelets {SU}, glitter pen {Sakura} & foam tape