Belli #19 - white gel pen

This week's Belli Challenge is to use your white gel pen. I wanted to try something different with it - not just make dots or lines on a card. So I used it to color in the flowers on the Sage cardstock. I also used it to give the pink flower some highlights. If you look closely at the pink flower, you can see where I applied the gel pen, and then kind of brushed it out (with my finger) to give it a gentle highlighting.

Pull out your white gel pen and play with it. Make dots, lines, color in images, draw some shapes, whatever. Play! :-)

Stamps: Embrace Life, Short and Sweet
Ink: Stazon Black, Regal Rose, Sage Shadow
CS: Whisper White, Sage Shadow, Regal Rose
Other: 3/16" corner rounder punch, aquapainter, white gel pen, Regal Rose wide grosgrain ribbon

Froggy!

I love this Froggy! I've had him for a couple years now, and I still love him. :-) I pulled him out this weekend to play with him.

The embossed celery cs in the background is from my stash. A dear friend sent me a bunch of embossed pieces and I'm slowly working my way through that stash. Froggy is stamped on watercolor paper, masked, and the Lily Pad wheel is stamped over him. These images are easy to watercolor - nice big open spaces. Nothing complicated.

I didn't have any tiny pieces of pink or green ribbon, so I used some leftover pieces of cardstock. I smushed them up before tying them with the white ribbon.

Stamps: Unfroggetable
Ink: Stazon Jet Black, Celery, Pink Passion, Artichoke, Bashful Blue
CS: White, watercolor paper, Pink Passion, Celery
Other: white grosgrain ribbon, word window punch, Celery brads, 1/16" hole punch, aquapainter

Rocky Embrace Life

I tried a different color combination on this card. I used River Rock and Regal Rose, and I have to say that I really like the pop of pink against this River Rock color. I sponged all the edges with Close to Cocoa to soften it up a bit. The flower is watercolored with Regal Rose reinker and an aquapainter, and then cut out. I used the So Saffron marker to color in the little stamens inside the flower.

Stamps: Embrace Life, Short & Sweet
Ink: Black Stazon, Close to Cocoa, So Saffron, Regal Rose
CS: River Rock, Whisper White, Ginger Blossom dsp
Other: sponge, aquapainter, nestabilities, dimensionals

Holly's Bees

Isn't this the CUTEST!!!! I love these bee stamps! These are from a set called Honey Bees over at Paper Trey Ink.

I made the background by scoring the Cocoa cardstock with my Scor-Pal, and then I stamped those millions of little bees with Versamark inside the little diamonds. It sort of resembles a honeycomb, huh? LOL

Stamps: Honey Bees (PTI)
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Summer Sun
CS: Summer Sun, Chocolate Chip, Vanilla, Cocoa
Other: word window punch, nestabilities, Scor-Pal

Apples in Bayou

Just a little "male" card I worked on over the weekend. I might give this to my Grampa for Father's Day. Think it's manly enough? :-)

Stamps: For Father, Sanded
Ink: Close to Cocoa, River Rock, Blue Bayou, Ruby Red, Garden Green
CS: Blue Bayou, River Rock, Naturals Ivory, Blue Bayou dsp
Other: aquapainter, Hodgepodge Hardware (Aged Copper), Blue Bayou double stitched ribbon, sponge

Belli #18 - piercing tool

This week's Belli Challenge is to use your piercing tool. You know, that sharp pokey thing that you poke holes in your paper with? LOL

I used my tool to poke holes all around the edge of the oval sentiment and the rectangular image. I also poked holes inside each of the punched out flowers. Lest you think this is time consuming - it really only took me less than 5 minutes to do the piercing.

Let's see what you guys come up with! Post a link to your card or project in the Comments on Chrissy's blog posting. Happy piercing!

Stamps: Embrace Life, All Holidays
Ink: Basic Gray, Apricot
CS: Apricot, White
Other: Large and Small oval punches, piercing tool and hole guide from the Tool Kit, Trio Flower punch from Three for You Punch Box, dimensionals

Thomas Kinkade Note

I created this for a casing challenge over at the Cornish Heritage Farms forums. Here is Julia's beautiful card:

http://forums.cornishheritagefarms.com/pp/showphoto.php/photo/8530/ppuser/390

I used a different stamp, and I colored with prismacolor pencils instead of chalk. I used pearls and moved them to the other side. The coloring and glue-ing down the tiles just right took a bit of time, but it's worth it. These Kinkade stamps are just gorgeous!

The Thomas Kinkade stamp and the sentiment are from Cornish Heritage Farms.


Stamps: The Garden of Prayer, Script Essential Expressions (both from Cornish Heritage Farms)
Ink: Versafine Olympia Green
CS: Pretty in Pink, Prism Smooth White
Other: Hero Arts Pearls, Prismacolor pencils

Chunky Glitter and Chipboard

Just a little card I whipped up a few minutes ago. The flower is a chipboard flower from On Board Accents (#107307, page 179), with some Light Blue Chunky Glitter (Chunky Sprinkles, Occasions Mini, page 5). I spread Crystal Effects around the chipboard with my finger, then quickly dumped the glitter on it and let it dry. So easy and so fun! The designer paper is from Summer Picnic (Occasions Mini, page 16).

Don’t forget you can still take advantage of the Chipboard promotion until the end of this month. With any $35 order, you can get 25% off any of the chipboard in the SU catalog. Enjoy your weekend!

Stamps: Hugs and Wishes
Ink: Old Olive
CS: Whisper White, Summer Picnic dp
Other: On Board Accents flower chipboard, Crystal Effects, Light Blue chunky glitter from Chunky Sprinkles, Red wide grosgrain ribbon

Stitchy Butterflies & Flowers

I just love the yummy colors on this card. The paper comes from Cosmo Cricket's Honey Pie collection. Mom had given me a stamp with stitched flowers which I thought would pair up nicely with this paper. I aged the vanilla paper a bit with Scattered Straw distress ink around the edges. If you look closely, you can see the distressed white edges on the Sage cardstock - just swipe your cardstock against White Craft ink and let it dry.

Enjoy your weekend! TGIF!!

Stamps: Hero Arts, Butterfly Kisses from PaperTreyink
Ink: White craft, Scattered Straw distress ink, Groovy Guava, Sage Shadow, Regal Rose, Timber Brown stazon
CS: Sage Shadow, Very Vanilla, Honey Pie dp
Other: Vanilla wide grosgrain ribbon, aquapainter, white gel pen (center of flowers)

Belli Challenge #17 - die cuts

Chrissy's Belli Challenge this week is to use die cuts on your cards or projects. I cut random sizes of circles with my Nestabilities dies, and stamped different dot patterns on them. This is very different from my normal style of cards.

Since I was cutting circles, I thought, why not stamp more dots and keep with the circle/dot theme throughout? This was fun! Very different and whimsical.

All stamps on this card are from Cornish Heritage Farms.

Stamps: Large Polka Dot backgrounder, Dots and Circles backgrounder, Polka Dots backgrounder, Garden Friends (the "Hello" sentiment)
Ink: Soft Sky, Lavender Lace, Certainly Celery, Basic Gray
CS: White, Soft Sky, Certainly Celery, Lavender Lace

Thomas Kinkade Aged Tiles

I tried a technique called Aged Tiles tonight. This comes from the Technique Junkie newsletter. 

I really like how this technique turned out. I need to try this with some other TK stamps and maybe some different colors, just for fun.

Both the Thomas Kinkade stamp and the sentiment are from Cornish Heritage Farms. I only used Very Vanilla cardstock, nothing else, and of course, my favorite hardware, Aged Copper Hodgepodge Hardware from SU. :-)

To get a nice crisp image, I brayered on the ink. I find brayering really helps these Kinkade images to get a nice even coverage of ink.

Stamps: CHF Foxglove Cottage, CHF Home is Best
Ink: Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain distress inks
CS: Vanilla
Other: Aged Copper Hodgepodge Hardware, dimensionals

Belli Challenge #16 - eyelets

This week's Belli challenge is to use eyelets. I decided to play with my jumbo eyelets and Cropadile. The Cropadile is such a wonderful tool for setting eyelets with - I don't know how I did it before! :-)

I also used Glimmer Mists on this card. I punched out a semi-circle from a sticky note, placed it over my stamped/embossed image, and sprayed Coral Glimmer Mist. Then I took the sticky note off, sprayed Pineapple Glimmer Mist over that, and then very finely sprayed more Coral GM over that. I hope you can see a little bit of the shimmer. (Click on the picture to see a larger version.)

The background paper WAS white, but I sprayed it very heavily with Pineapple GM, and then for fun, I sprayed some Coral GM over that. I got a very cool, very unique, and very shimmery background paper. Gotta love that!

Stamps: SU Essence of Life, PaperTreyink sentiment
CS: Chocolate Chip, White, Copper, Pumpkin dp
Ink: Chocolate Chip classic and craft
Other: clear embossing powder, heat gun, Pineapple Glimmer Mist, Coral Glimmer Mist, cropadile, nestabilities, Antique Copper extra large eyelets (W R Memory Keepers)

Gotta Love Texas!

Remember the Fleuriste paper from my previous post? I used that same paper on this card. The sentiment is stamped on it, as well as the Texas tag. This paper is a wonderful backdrop for collage-y type stamps.

In keeping with the Texas theme, I knotted up some linen thread and wrapped it around - sorta like a barbed wire fence. The star brads are actually silver, but I needed to color them up somehow. I heated them up with my heat gun, dipped them in Tim Holtz Distress Embossing Powder, and heated them again. I love the aged and distressed effect I got on these stars!!

Stamps: all from Stamp Salado store, copyright Deadbeat Designs
Ink: Versafine Onyx Black, Really Rust, Old Paper distress ink
CS: Fleuriste dp, rust and tan cardstocks from a friend
Other: linen thread, MM silver stars, Tim Holtz Walnut Stain distress embossing powder, sponge

Fleuriste Blessings

I was playing with some Cosmo Cricket papers called Fleuriste, and I wanted to use my retired Stem Silhouettes set with these papers. Here's the result. All the papers are Fleuriste dp, except for the Rust cardstock for the actual card. I like how it's such a simple card, yet so elegant. (Does it sound braggy to say that?? LOL)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! It's been gorgeous here for the past two days.

Stamps: Stem Silhouettes
Ink: Really Rust
CS: Really Rust, Cosmo Cricket Fleuriste
Other: Dew Drops