Tea for Mothers Day

Hello, I hope you are having a great week and getting ready for Easter.  The card I made today has a spring feeling to it, I think it is because of the bright, pink tea cup!  I love bright, bold colors, you can tell by looking at this card. I stamped the tea cup in momento ink so that I could color it with stampin blends. After I finished and used the framelits to cut it out I thought about doing the same with the tea pot, however I liked the idea of the tea pot just being in the background. I didn't think that it needed to also be pink. I decided to stamp it on gray granite and cut it out. I added a few highlights with a white gel pen and decided that was good enough.

The sentiments in the tea together stamp set are beautiful and I love the fonts that are used. I stamped the greeting in gray granite and then used the stitched label framelits for a beautiful, dainty look. Mother's day is still a while from now, but I love to make cards so I have an option. Plus you know how crazy life and get and before you know it, it will be here.  I better get working on some Easter cards, since that is just in 2 weeks.  Do you send Easter cards? Normally I do not but I was thinking of sending a few this year.  Have a beautiful day! Take some time out to make a card for someone special! Thank you for visiting my blog!

Color Therapy

Hi Everyone! As I have said before, I love to color! There are so many ways I love to color! I find it so therapeutic. I love to stamp many images on Stampin' Up thick white cardstock with the momento ink and then color away. It is also nice because then I can take it with me to appointments or even just to sit and watch tv.  The only problem is then I have so many images that I have to make into cards. The problem would be I might color 10 of one thing and then I make lots of the same cards. So just to beware I may have lots of baby cards on my blog. I just think the babies are so cute and really fun to color! 

For this card, I wanted to use many of the other images from the stamp set. I also had an oval shaped watercolor paper that I had created a yellow watercolor wash on from another project that I did not use. I thought it would be a good background for the baby in the jumper.

Here is a close up of the coloring on the baby. One thing that I would recommend is to wait to cut the images out after you have colored them. It makes it so much easy than having lots of little pieces around, especially the little bottle that you see in the above photo. I also like that this bundle has framelits that cut the majority of the images out. Makes life so nice!  I hope you can find some time to color this week!  I know that I will and stay tuned to more baby cards!

Simply sweet

Who loves to color? I really enjoy so many ways to color my stamped images. It is so relaxing and easy to do while waiting at the doctors, while watching tv or just when I have a few minutes of free time.  I really try to color something most days. Even if it is just one image.  For the baby card above I had stamped many of the onesies from the sweet baby stamp set in momento ink. I knew that I wanted to color them but still had no idea what I was going to do with them. I like these colors together and decided to create a simple card by mounting them on small stitched squares. I stamped the greeting on whisper white cardstock and ran it through my big shot with the subtle embossing folder. I thought my card was finished however, I saw this sweet little heart from a project that I did not use.  It went perfect.  Don't you love when that happens!

Take time today to color something. I believe it will spark joy in your day!

Tea Time

 Time for a beautiful cup of tea!  I love all things coffee and tea. I think it is because they are so warm and soothing to drink. So when I saw the tea together stamp set in the occasions catalog I knew that I would want to order it.

I used my stampin' blends to color the tea pot and cup in shades of blue, I used both the balmy blue and the night of navy colors. I really like the way that it came out. I do struggle with shadows and so I kept it very simple with a highlight in the center. I also stamped a few of the flowers from the stamp set to add to this beautiful place setting.

The flowers I colored with highland purple and blackberry bliss blends and I made the flowers have more dimension using a flicking motion with the pens.  I find this technique so pretty and easy to do. I used a little daffodil for the center of the flowers. I did not want the tea pot and other images to be floating and so I lightly sponged a background as well as added a pearlized doily.

I struggled with where and what greeting to use on the card. I did not want to cover up any of the coloring that I had spent time on and so I decided to stamp the greeting on the cup.  I think that it works and is not to distracting.  I hope you enjoy this card and give me your thought in the comment area below.  Have a beautiful day and enjoy a lovely cup of warm tea!

Birthday watercolor

 Today I have been practicing my watercoloring.  From everything that I have seen or watched online, I have learned that to be a better watercolorer I have to practice.  It is very difficult to figure out the amount of water that is needed to get the effect that I would like to achieve. I have been having so much fun with this medium.  For the card above I used watercolor paper and stamped my flower images with Staz on ink because it will not run when water is applied. I randomly stamped the flowers from the tea together stamp set. I layered the colors that I used, letting them dry in between each of the layers.  This is very important so that you get a layer, if you apply more color when the image is wet the colors will bleed into each other.

 I went in with a wash of balmy blue for the background.  I wanted to keep the background pretty neutral so that the flowers would stand out. I love to color my flowers bright and bold as I am sure you can tell from this painting.  Since the background is so busy and I decided to go with a simple greeting for the card. I hope you try watercoloring with the aquabrush and some of the dye inks. It really is fun and relaxing.  Let me know if you have any other questions.  Have a beautiful day!

One more dog

Happy Tails to you!  Is it just me or does this make you sing the song "happy trails to you"? Every time that I say the name of this set in my head I start to sing the song. It is the cutest little bundle! The set comes with a photopolymer stamp set, which makes stamping the dog and the house so easy. They both have extras that you can stamp on top for a 2 step stamp look. You can give the dog spots, dark areas, a collar and a few other things. The dog house has the outline of the house as well as the individual lines to show the wood texture. We made this card at my stamp club last month, and when I was coming up with designs I was trying to decide which dog house color I liked best. I decided to use the cherry cobbler one that is in the front.  What do you think? I used my versamark ink pad on this card for many things, for the dog paw on the strip in the back, for the markings on the dog and for the paw and heart behind the saying. I love how this ink pad adds just enough of an accent to the images. I went with a pretty easy layout for this card. I hope you enjoy this card as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Dog pile

Do you ever stamp a bunch of one of your favorite images and then just color? I do this all the time and I am sure that I have asked you this before. I love the adorable little dogs in the Bella and friends stamp set. The images are so cute and so fun to color. They make great cards for any occasion and for both males and females. Just recently I finished coloring  a few of the images and decided that I should make them into cards. I also had a bunch of scraps on my desk and so I decided to make dog cards with my scraps.  The first card is pretty simple. I used the stitched shape framelits to frame the dog, mounting it on a scrap of neutral designer paper, and mounted it all on early espresso cardstock. I had just the birthday part from the thinlit and so I used the happy from the sunshine wishes stamp set to complete the greeting.

For this card I had another scrap from the neutral designer paper with a circle punch out and then I realized after I cut the dog with the stitched shapes framelits that it fit perfect!  Don't you love when that happens!  I used the saying from the happy tails stamp set from the occasions catalog. If you do not have this set you need it!  The dog is adorable and the greetings are so cute. They also offer a punch that if you purchase the bundle you can receive 10% off. I white heat embossed the greeting on the basic gray card stock and cut apart to adhere seperatly. This card came together so quickly and I think is came out really cute!

Don't forget that there is less than 3 weeks to take advantage of the Free saleabration items. If you would like to order or have any questions please feel free to contact me.  Have a great day!

Mondrian Style

Today I used Mondrian as my inspiration. When I saw this grid pattern in the graceful glass designer series paper I immediately thought of art work done by the artist Mondrian. I decided to color the back side of the vellum with my stampin' blends and then added adhesive behind the color so that it would not show. When looking for a greeting I saw this one in the Part of my Story stamp set and it was perfect!  This stamp set is free and has the best sayings for making inspirational cards. I wanted to keep the card truly plain and simple and so I white embossed it on black card stock and used my pretty label punch. I really like how this card came out. While I was putting the card together I realized all the artist who inspire me with there blogs and other forms of social media. There are so many artist out there who I do not personally know but I feel like I do by seeing the works that they create. Thank you to all who share with me and others your creative process and your final works of art.  I hope that I too am inspiring some of you to be yourself and create what you love. Make it your own and enjoy the process.

20 years!

Yeah!  Can you believe it I have been a demonstrator for 20 years!  Wow I did not think 20 years would go so fast. I have loved so much being a demonstrator!  I want to thank all my customers for being so loyal to me for these years.  Especially the ones that have been with me since the beginning!  This is such a huge milestone and I am so happy that I have had such support from all of you! I appreciate all the love, support and orders from everyone. I could not have done this without all of you!  The best part of the past 20 years has been the amazing friends that I have made!  Stampers have the biggest hearts and make every event such a joy.  So many of you have shared your homes and families with me and for that I feel so privileged! God has truly blessed me with a craft that has led me to lasting friendships!  I look forward to another 20 years or more of friendship with all of you!  Thank you so much! God Bless you all!

Glad we are friends!

Hello everyone! I am trying a new size for my photos.  What do you think? Is it too big?  I know when I look at other peoples blogs I like a big picture so that I can see the card up close and so I thought maybe I needed mine a little bigger.  

I ordered the incredible like you stamp set and kit. I loved the colors for this kit and they were even better in person.  This kit was really fun to put together, it is a little more challenging than some of the kits that Stampin' Up offers but the results are beautiful cards.  The stamp set is sold separately and so if you like the greetings that they used in the samples you will want to order that as well.  After making the cards in the kit I decided to play with the stamp set.  I love all the images and especially that it is a two step stamp set.  The large flower has beautiful texture and so soft looking.  I used soft colors for this card, blushing bride and soft sea foam because I wanted to give the appearance of watercolor.

This set also has many wonderful little filler stamps which are perfect for creating a meadow of flowers. I used the stripes to make my own background paper. When I stamped the stripe it did not stamp solid, but I loved the way it looked like it was distressed.  The greetings in this set are so wonderful. I love the font that they used as well as the sentiments. I know that I will use this set for so many more cards in the future.  If you would like to order this set and the kit that goes with it just go to my store and don't forget for just a few more weeks it is saleabration. For every $50 spent you can pick a saleabration item for FREE!  You will not want to miss out on that great deal!  Have a great week!

Hey Love

It is that time of year to start making a few Valentines.  If you are like me you like to share your love with those important people in your life. And since I am so blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life I have made some quick and easy Valentines with Stampin' Up note cards. It is so easy to make a card with them because they have taken all the work of making the card and finding an envelope for you. Stampin' Up note cards come prescored and with matching envelopes. I just combined them with the Hey Love little critters, a few scraps of my neutral designer series paper and a few punches and cute little card are done.

I tried to get a picture of all the cards together, however I was not very successful.  I have included a close up of each of the cards for you.

This set makes a nice set of cards. I used all the images from the set and they all coordinate so well. I colored them with the Stampin' blends.This set is great for males, females, young and old. Hopefully this will give you some quick and easy ideas for Valentines for you to create.  Let me know what kind of Valentines you like to make.