Purple Power

This card is a whole lot of purple!  I had colored the iris image and wanted to use the purple in the background. To make the background I took a piece of water color paper and after taping it down completely covered it with water. I then added highland heather and gorgeous grape alternating the rows of color. I also tilted the paper a little to try and get the colors to run into each other. 

The color was a little strong for me and I wanted to add some extra texture and so I decided to use the pinewood planks embossing folder. 

The stamps I used are from the inspiring iris stamp set. I decided to color the outline stamps with stampin blends. I hope you get some new ideas from this card and create a purple masterpiece of your own. Enjoy!

Special Day

I love to make cards for special people in my life!  This card was made for a friend of mine who's birthday was last month. I also love a punch for my flowers because it makes the whole process so much quicker. 

I stamped the flower with calypso coral and then added dimension with my coral stampin blends and my white water color pencil. I used a few of the new dies: stitched nested labels and wild rose.

The sentiment is from the stitched all around stamp set and the designer paper is from the bird ballad DSP. I saved the negative portion to use on a future card. Check back and see what I did with that. Make someones day special and create a work of art for them! Enjoy!

Enjoy coloring!

I recently took the 30 day coloring challenge and I have been enjoying all the time I have dedicated to coloring. I find it so relaxing and great way to do something for myself. You can check it out at https://www.thedailymarker.com/  Kathy is so incredibly talented and she has a wonderful group of followers. So I have been either coloring with pencils, blends or water coloring the past 26 days or so.

These are just the sweetest little birds around. I wanted to keep them nice and soft with a subtle background. The focus on the birds!  I used my stampin blends for this image.

For the greeting I was afraid that I would mess it up when I went to stamp it and so I stamped it on a separate piece of white card stock and cut around it. So many times I have worked on a piece and then ruined it with the greeting at the end. 

I invite you to check our Kathy's website and join in for the last few days of the challenge.  She offers it pretty often and so sign up to receive updates. It is a great way to take time for yourself each day. I also love that she says you don't have to finish your projects, take a few days to enjoy the process. Bonus is that her videos are wonderful with lots of great tips!  Enjoy!

Happy 4th of July!

I hope that you are having a great 4th of July! Today's card is not red, white or blue. Sorry I did not have time to make a card for the holiday.  But I did make this card and wanted to share it with you. It is a very simple card and like I have said before, sometimes I think simple looks best. Since I have been coloring in many different forms for the daily 30 day coloring challenge I have had lots of images to make into cards.

This image is from the inspiring iris stamp set. I colored it with stampin blends and it was so quick and easy. I used the new rococo rose color. I love this color! I love the color pink and this one is really nice, not too bright, not too light it is just right! 

The other thing that I say is a must buy in the new catalog is the new designer series paper. This card was made with the neutral pack but I think you can't go wrong with any of the color combos. I just used one side and the other to make this card. The designs are so pretty and simple that they do not over power your card but enhance it in just the right way!  So order a pack today! Have a beautiful and safe 4th of July! Enjoy!

You are the Best!

How simple and encouraging this is sentiment! (from the picked for you stamp set) Letting someone in your life know that they are the best version of themselves.  That is all we can ask for, if you ask me!  I also think that the pets in our lives are the best as well.  They are so comforting when we need consoling and no matter what we look like or how we feel they love us!  That is the best! 

Only a few days left to order the Bella and friends stamp set. I think it is one of my favorite stamp sets of all time. I love the sweet faces on the dogs! I keep this card pretty basic. I used some of my scraps from the neutral designer series paper pack. If you like these designs make sure to grab them now because they are changing the designs in the new catalog.  I added a little pop by adding a few sequins and a doily.

After I stamped the dog with my momento stamp pad I used the stampin blends to color in my little friend. Who wouldn't love to get a card with that little sweet guy on it.  Have a great day and be your BEST!  Enjoy!

Jar of flowers

The jar of love stamp set has been so popular! It has so many wonderful images and matching framelits and soon it will be retired. I wanted to use it a few more times before I put it away, however I know it will be used very often even after it's retirement.

This large jar I stamped with momento ink on heavy white cardstock and colored with smoky slate blends. I love pinks and greys together so I stamped the flowers from petal palette (another set I will miss!) and colored those with blends as well. 

This jar will be missed! If you are interested in this set get it now before it is gone. I would love to order it for you or if you have any questions please let me know.  Have a wonderful day! Thank you for stopping by! Enjoy!

Celebrate Spring

Hello!  Thank you for joining me on my blog today! I really appreciate you taking your time to check out my latest card.  I am really in love with coloring the small flower from the tea together set. So I thought why not color them in several different colors? The flowers in California are so beautiful with all the rain we had this winter and so I decided to make my own super bloom with all my flowers. 

I really like the natural highlight that leaving the center of the flower petals white gives. It really goes quick with the stampin blends. 

Hopefully you are enjoying the beautiful signs of spring where you live. If not make your own super bloom today coloring your own flowers in colors that make you happy! Enjoy!

Baby in Blue

Who loves to cuddle a sweet little baby in a cozy blanket? I sure do! This little baby is so adorable all snuggled up in his blue blanket! I will be so sad to see this set retire. I have had so much fun stamping and coloring it.

And who can resist adding that precious little bear hat, not me!  I used my stampin blends to color all these images. I thought that the polka dots in the neutral designer series paper went well with the dots on his blanket and I used the coordinating other side to break up the card front. For the congrats greeting I glued 3 layers together so that it gave it more dimension and stood out more. The layout for this card is very simple and you can use so many different stamp sets that you have. Sorry this post is so short. Since I had skipped so many days I thought I would just share another quick card I had made today! Have a great day and enjoy!

We all need a serene garden

Don't we all need a serene garden to spend a few minutes everyday.  The flowers in California are so beautiful right now with all the rain that we have received! It is so peaceful to walk around and see so much color! For this card I wanted a pop of color. I love how bright and beautiful yellow is! It is hard to look at a bright yellow flower and feel the warmth of the color. Since I wanted the flowers to be the focus of my card I kept the rest of the card pretty neutral. I embossed the background with the garden scene framelits. 

I colored the flowers with the daffodil delight and mango melody stampin blends and used a little bit of calypso coral for the dark shadows. I really like how these colors blended on this flower. I tried to keep this card pretty simple and I really like that it will be easy to mail.  I love the images in this stamp set and the framelits that go along with it are amazing. I think this bundle has been overlooked in this catalog. Check it out. It is on page 166 of the annual catalog.

Have a beautiful day and create your own pop of color!

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!

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.