Amazing!


Well I am still trying that watercolor thing.  I see so many wonderful artist out there who make it look so easy.  The one thing that they all keep saying is to keep practicing and so that is what I have been doing. Hopefully you wont get to tired of seeing all my attempts at making it better.  For this card I white heat embossed the serene garden large stamp and the butterfly. I used my aquapainter and my ink refills for the watercoloring. It is much easier to watercolor when you have the white embossed area, the colors to not bleed. I was trying to use a few different colors in most images and also tried not to make it to exact. I used the balmy blue for the background color and then lots of splatter.  Make sure to let your painting dry before adding the splatter or it will just blend into the other wet areas.


Here is a close up of the watercoloring. Let me know what you think. I would love all criticism because I would like to improve in any way that I can.  The "amazing" is from the celebrate you thinlits, also sad to see that retire as well. Let me know if you have tried watercoloring and how that is going for you. Have a wonderful day and 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!


Petals and More



I apologize for not blogging the last week or so, with Easter and other obligations I have just been so busy.  I hope you had time to relax and have time with your families as well. I am going to be very sad to see the petals and more bundle retire! I love the images in the stamp set and I use the branches and other pieces from the thinlits all the time. They are great when you just need to fill in a little space.  For this card I had many extra branches from a project that I had made a while ago. So I decided to use them and make it into a card. The greeting is from the incredible like you stamp set, also retiring. The greetings in this stamp set just make me happy and I love to use them. I white heat embossed this one on the black cardstock and then punched out with the starburst punch.


The bird is colored with stampin blends and I used the pinewood plank embossing folder to keep with the outdoors theme.  Make time today to go through your leftovers from other projects and see what kind of card you can come up with.  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!


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!


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!


Storage!


I am so excited to share something new from Stampin' Up! Storage pieces to fit all your creative needs.  These pieces are so nicely streamlined and functional. I am really happy that they have come out with this line of storage. The pieces are sold separately and very affordable.  Check out my online store for the prices and if you have any questions please let me know in the comments.  Have a great 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!