Rainy Day Sketch

Its raining out and all I can say is that I'm glad it isn't snow. Seriously, I'm really ready for spring. So for today I made a rainy card.
This card uses Amy R.'s Friday sketch for this week (see it here) and it also uses 2 of Amy's stamp sets - Boutique Sentiments and Amy's Boutique.

First of all this card goes way beyond my comfort zone, I have a very large fear of pattern paper. I just can't seem to make myself comfortable with it. Today I just went for it. This pattern paper is from the Citrus matstack by DCWV. The orange is Summer Sunrise from PTI.

Can you see the rain? I embossed a piece of transparency with the Forest Branches embossing folder at an angle. Then I added some "rain drops" of Star Dust Sickles to the back side. Instant rain drops! The umbrellas were added onto the rain layer with 3-D dots. I hacked a piece of vellum into a cloud (kind of) and stamped the sentiment onto it. "Friends are the umbrellas in the storms of life". The cloud could use a little more work, maybe another try later.

The little pierced border was made with a new EK Success punch I got at Mikes this past weekend. Love that thing. A little PTI Fresh Snow (I hate to even type the word) ribbon and that is my card for today.

Only 14 sleeps left till Stamp New England. Not that I'm counting or anything. Ok, so I'm counting every minute and I really want to start packing my bags. LOL!

Have a great day everyone. Thanks for stopping by.

Embracing the white space is hard!!!

This card does double duty! It uses the Mojo Monday sketch for this week AND it has a cow on it for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge at PCP. First the Mojo Monday part... Julee said this sketch "embraces the white space" and challenged everyone to do the same. Yea, that was tough for me. I really wanted to put something, anything on there. That is where I get myself into trouble with card making. It is never good enough. I need to learn to just make a card then leave it alone.

The second part of this double duty card was the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge at Paper Craft Planet. Today was 8 Maids a Milking. Thus the cow. And I need to stay in the Christmas card mode so she is decked out with her Holiday hat and scarf and sporting a little holly too. The cow is super 3-D. The body is popped up and the head is popped up again on top of that. I really wanted to add some flock to the hat and white spots on the cow but the other 6 projects on my desk are screaming finish me (ok so a couple are screaming start me) for Christmas.

I used 3 different stamp sets from 3 different companies for this one. The cow and the Moo are from My Favorite Things - Punny Farm. The hat and scarf are from Papertrey Ink - Made of Snow. And the sentiment is from Christmas Card Verses by Amy R. Stamps.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend.

Build a Holiday Background

Today is my last Monday as All That Scraps Guest Designer. I have had a blast this month. A HUGE Thank you to Amy and Christine for the opportunity and to the other DT members for making me feel so welcome.

Here is my last sneak peek at the new Amy R. sets being released tonight at ATS. I wanted to do something a little funky with this one. I kept thinking as I was using the images over the last few days, what great backgrounds they would make. So I made my own funky background paper.


The white squares are embossed to give them a little pop. I know it is super simple but I really like it. You could do this in any color combo and dress it up for a teen or guy's card. I have the most difficulties with those two types of cards, but I think this would be great.


So that is it. Make sure you check out all of the DT samples on the ATS Blog. All 3 of these awesome sets are going to be available tonight at 10:00 over at ATS.

Holiday Trees

Here is another sneak peek at the newest stamps from Amy R. Available tomorrow night at All That Scraps.

This card uses the triangle image to make a row of Christmas trees. The 3 different sized trees were all stamped and cut out then added to my glittery background. I stamped the trucks on the background prior to glittering.

I tried something new to glitter my background. I saw on "Martha" the other day that she ran her paper through her Xyron machine to apply the adhesive. Then she added the glitter. It really did make a perfect glittered background. Nice and smooth and best of all EASY! hard to photograph because it is so smooth but oh so nice.

This card took only a couple of minutes to make. With Amy's stamps you could easily make a bunch of these for your Holiday Cards.

The Holiday Greetings image is also from a new set of Amy's called Christmas Sentiments. Both of these along with Christmas Card Verses are being released tomorrow night at All That Scraps. For now go check out what the Design Team did with these sets and be sure to enter to win your very own Christmas Card Verses! This set is going to be a must have!

Build a Holiday Flower

Today I wanted to share the flower that I made using the soon to be released Build a Holiday set by Amy R. Stamps. It will be available at All That Scraps on Monday at 10:00 pm.

So if you have seen the DT samples with this set you already know that you can make just about anything with these images. Snowmen, reindeer, flowers... the sky is the limit. The first thing I set out to make when I received this set was a flower.

I started by stamping all 3 of the "petal" sizes onto a nice thick white card stock and colored them with copics. Water colors would be nice too. I cut out all of the shapes and arranged them starting with the largest petals at the bottom and ending with the smallest petals on the top. A few extra of the largest petals were colored green for leaves. A little white gel pen for detail, some small green beads for the flower center and voila, done.

I thought this flower would make a great package topper. I actually used a paper grocery bag to wrap my gift (I would love to wrap all of my gifts for Christmas this way) wrapped it with some red ribbon and added the flower. Every gift needs a tag so I used an image from Holiday Sentiments (also being released Monday) to make the tag.

As I was doing this I thought what a bummer that this flower might be tossed in the trash after the recipient opened the gift. So I attached everything using just a small amount of tape. That way all parts can be easily removed and the ribbon can be attached to the flower and used as an ornament for the tree next year. Another idea would be to add a pin back to the flower and it would make a great broach. Or a hair accessory, ok you get the idea it can really be used a bunch of ways.

Thanks for checking in today. I will be back tomorrow with another card made with Build a Holiday. Don't forget to check out the ATS blog to see what else the DT made and enter to win Holiday Sentiments from Amy R. Stamps.

New Amy R. Stamps

This is the first sneak peek I have for you using the newest stamps from Amy R Stamps. First let me just say that this set Build a Holiday is only limited by your imagination. You should go see what the design team did with this. Oh yea, while your are there, make sure you enter to win this set.

I wanted to keep this card as antique looking as possible. I love it! I used the circle images from the set to make some ornaments. I stamped the ornaments onto pattern paper and cut them out. Then I did the crackled glass technique on them. You can see how to do this here. Can I just tell you how much fun this was. I might have had a bit too much fun cracking them though because some of the cracks are a bit deep and well they almost fell apart.

For the hangers I glued a Hershey's Kiss wrapper (yes a candy wrapper) to a piece of card stock, to make them more sturdy and then stamped the hanger onto the wrapper. I cut them out and then stained them up a bit with a brown copic. A little bit of hemp cording finished off the ornaments.

I used an Ornare piercing template to make the swirls near each ornament. It needed something but I am quite sure that glitter and bling wouldn't have given me the antique feeling I was going for.

I tried to rough up my Peace image a bit by wiping some of the ink off prior to stamping, should have taken a bit more off. This Peace image is from another Amy R. set being released on Monday at All That Scraps. Just wait until you see these sets.

Don't forget to visit the ATS blog to see what the DT did and enter to win you very own Build a Holiday. I'll be back tomorrow with another peek.

Boutique Birthday

This is a card I made for my best friend Cindy. (Happy Birthday Tinny Lou!) I used the Amy's Boutique set. I got this set last month but I was so busy playing with the new All That Scraps release stamps I never got to ink it up until now.

All of the paper on this card is from a K & Company mat pad called Classic K Bailey. I LOVE IT! I have used it on a bunch of cards in the last few days. Really wishing I had bought a bigger pad of it.

I pieced the shoes onto a dark brown and used a brown copic to darken some areas for some depth. I also used a technique I have seen all over blog world the last few weeks for a tiny section of the shoes. It is used to put a light colored pencil onto a dark colored paper. I dipped my cream colored Prismacolor pencil right into my thinner and then colored it onto the insole part of the shoe. Great coverage and no blending necessary. I think it gave it some good detail to the shoe. It does show up much better IRL.

I went back to my favorite Birthday set, Birthday Basics from PTI for the little
"happy birthday" stamp. The ribbon is from a cute little store a few towns over called Rock Paper Scissors. She has amazing ribbon. This ribbon is almost like silk. I have been saving it for something special. A couple of Dew Drops and it was done.

Don't forget about the latest sneak peeks over at ATS. Another new designer and more great stamps.

Thanks for checking in today. Have a great evening.