High Tide!

Hi! So glad you are here! Today's card I CASEd a card from last years catalog. Do you still have all the past catalogs? I love to look at them for inspiration when I do not know what to create. The card today is for the priest at our church, he is celebrating 38 years of saying "yes" to his call. What a blessing he is to all of us. I thought that the sentiment was perfect. He does indeed shine the light of Christ to all of us!

If you have not checked out the new in good taste dsp, you are missing out. The texture on this paper is amazing. I stamped the lighthouse with smoky slate and then added some of sand and plants around it.

In the photograph that I took I am not sure why it looks like there are "x" marks to left of the lighthouse (there is nothing there). For some reason it only showed up in the close ups. 

For the sentiment I white heat embossed and then stamped the light in daffodil delight, sponged around it to make the glow and then used misty moonlight to make the greeting really pop. 

I stamped the sand with more of the smoky slate and stamped off a few birds. If you have not know what stamping off is, you ink up the stamp and on scratch paper stamp and then stamp on to your project. It make the image a little lighter, great way to get more from your ink. For the back layer of card stock I used the old world paper embossing folder with smokey slate paper. It had a lot of texture and so I used my bone folder to gently smooth out some of the wrinkles.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I had so much fun creating this card! I am so thankful for all the priests who dedicate their lives to serving us and saying yes to God! Have great day and I hope you have time to come back and visit again soon!

My own kind of masterpiece

Happy Friday! I really wanted to make a ink blended card today. So I started with my white card stock and picked my color combo, calypso coral, crushed curry, pumpkin pie, granny apple green, coastal cabana and blackberry bliss, using my sponge daubers started to blend. I am not the best at blending. I think I get to inpatient. You need to have a soft hand and slowly go over each layer. I tend to want to get the color on right away and push to hard. I was somewhat happy with the results and so I stamped my images from the high tide stamp set with staz on black ink. While I stamped the lighthouse I made a little smudge of the black ink. I should have just left it, but I thought I would try to erase it. Wrong! It took off the color from my ink blending and I was so sad.

However, I decided to try to blend a little of the color back in the spot. You can still see the mistake, yet it now is homemade looking. I still like the card and actually sent it out just the other day. Do you still keep or send cards that you make a little mistake on? I realize that not all my cards will be masterpieces, actually very few of them will be. But it is the thought and love that goes into the cards that I make! Right!?! The joy that feels the person that you thought of to make it for. So don't beat yourself up,  enjoy the process, let yourself make mistakes and embrace them. Next time I will just leave the smudge and not try to erase the blunders that I create. Have a blessed day and take time this weekend to create your own kind of masterpiece! Thank you for stopping by!

CAS(E) this sketch #357

Hi and welcome if you are new to my blog!  When I saw this sketch I was flooded with ideas. There are so many fun ways that you can make the stripes in the background, card stock, watercolor, designer series paper just to name a few. I decided to go pretty simple with this card. Using a piece of watercolor paper I made a quick wash of color. Turned out a little darker than I had wanted but thought it went so  well with the sentiment in this stamp set, high tide. It looked like a big messy storm. I used my stitched shape dies and then stamped the images in black. I used a stamp positioner because of the texture on the watercolor paper, I had to stamp it a few times.

Below is the fun sketch for the week. Check out the website and see all the amazing projects!

Check it out here!

Here is a close up of the center circle. Sometimes it is fun to just put a portion of the image, gives it more interest. I would love to hear what you think of the card. I truly appreciate all comments.  Thank you for stopping by and go check out the CAS(E) this sketch website. Give one of the challenges a try! Have a beautiful day!

Paper Pumpkin Alternative

Hi Everyone!  Today I want to share a card I made with this months paper pumpkin.  It is a lovely beach centered kit and I could wait to make a fun beach scene.  Keeping with my daily color challenge I did a quick watercolor beach wash.

I had envisioned a nice beach scene in a window type card and so that is what I set out to make.  This kit has so many extra little goodies even after making all the cards so I was really excited to play.  I used an extra palm tree to frame the scene and added the sentiment (stamp from the paper pumpkin kit) and a little linen thread to the back.  I did not want the background to be white and so I added a little texture by using the pinewood planks embossing folder.

I love how this card came out. I did decide that the sky needed a little something more so I added the birds from the hightide set, I just inked up 3 of the 5 birds. I think that added just the right amount of interest. What do you think? 

(sorry this photo came out so blurry)

This card was so simple and I love how sweet it turned out. If you are interested in paper pumpkin please let me know or if you would like give it a try for a month.  There is no obligation.

This kit looks like it will be another winner!  Let me know if you have any questions. Make sure to order before July 10th!  Have a great day! Enjoy summer!

CASE card

Have you heard people in the card making community talking about CASE a card and wonder what it means? Well it stands for Copy And Share Everything. Well at least that is what I have always put together with the letters. (hopefully it is right and I am not giving you the wrong info) Anyway I find that when I am in a slump and trying to make a card and have no creative juices flowing to pull out my stampin' up catalog and copy. I like to find a layout that I like and then find a set that I have that I can use. One thing that I think is important with this way of stamping is give credit where credit it due. I would not use an ideas or copy a layout or card without giving the first artist credit. I feel like that is just the kind thing to do.

This card is an example of CASE. I used the card example on page 59 of the Stampin' Up annual catalog for my inspiration.  The artist for SU have so many wonderful samples in their catalog so why not take advantage of using the ideas. I used daffodil delight and calypso coral for the background on watercolor paper for a quick wash of color. I then stamped the images from the high tide stamp set in black ink. I used a stamp positioner for this process because I find it hard to get a nice crisp edge on watercolor paper due to the texture. So with the positioner I am able to stamp the image multiple times. I also liked the way that the artist in the card in the catalog kept the scene going on to the card base and so I also used that idea in my card.

I hope that the next time that you are having a hard time trying to make a card you use one of the many beautiful samples in one of the SU catalogs. I have every catalog since I started stamping and reference back to them frequently.  Have a beautiful day!