Swan Card

I made this card for Simon Says Stamp's Father's Day/For a Guy challenge.  While swans and bullrushes/cattails aren't masculine, per say, my father LOVED nature and it's the kind of card he would have loved.

Look Who's Turning 1 card

This is a card I made for my nephew who turned 1 recently.  I'm submitting it to Simon Says Stamp's Stamp It Challenge.

I started out by carefully stamping a corner stamp all the way around the card, masking it so I could make a full frame (you can see one spot where there's no blue dot between the shapes and another with 2 hearts meeting, showing where the stamp didn't do quite what was needed).  I stamped the hanging moon and stars, and the presents, then started colouring all the shapes with markers.

I stamped the sentiment and ran over the 1 with blue glitter glue and the large moon with yellow glitter glue.  I finished the card by attaching the panel to a piece of light blue cardstock.

Enjoy Life's Moments

This card is for Simon Says Stamp's Anything Goes with Twine or String challenge.

I started out by making a cloud mask out of paper, than inking it with a sponge and light blue ink.  I wanted a string kite string and string ground, so I stamped the girl in pink (I originally wanted black, but thought with the other colours I was using it would look too harsh).  I added the string 'ground' and stamped the sentiment.  I added the kite string, gluing the hand end with glossy accents and the kite end with a pop dot.  I stamped the kite in black and coloured it in with a dark blue marker, then fussy cut it out.  I wanted it to pop, hence the darker colours, so I went over it with glossy accents.  In retrospect, I should have made it a bold bright colour for contrast, rather than black and blue.

I added the panel to my card base and, once the butterfly was dry, attached it to the top of the pop-dot I'd used to glue the string down.

The girl and kite are by Mama Elephant, the sentiment is Kaiser Craft.

Steampunk Brianna

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Last week I had to catch up on some reading for my other blog and this week I wasn't feeling well.  That passed yesterday and I managed to do some card crafting again, so I'll have some new cards up for you next week.

Today I've got my entry for Kenny K's Steampunk challenge and Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.  I've missed working with the awesome Kenny K digis.  Today I used Brianna Blaster for my card.  I printed her out and cut her outline using my Silhouette SD (one reason I haven't used digis for a bit is because my cutting mat needed replacing and I dithered over it as the SD has been discontinued, so I needed to find an alternate.  More on that next week).

I started with a red layer meant to back Brianna.  I have a doily stamp that looks like wrought iron, so I inked that a few times in black.  I then cut a similar sized black piece of cardstock to put underneath and stamped some gears on it in versa mark ink.  I then embossed those with red glitter embossing powder (much of which later wiped off, but it still looks cool).  I ended up switching the layers around to show more of the embossing.

The third layer is black magic cardstock from Core-dinations.  It's black on top and white underneath.  I cut the piece and then ripped the edges.  I embossed it with a steampunk plate and then sanded some of the raised bits.  The cardback is black cardstock.

For the embellishments I used some silver and grey gears I cut out the last time I did a steampunk card, glued on between the layers.  The 3D gear is from one of my tape runners painted with metallic nail polish.  I had to cut out the centre part as it stuck out too much, so I glued a gear brad to cover the hole. The colour of the brad was too dull for the card so I painted it with silver nail polish.

Finally Brianna.  I coloured her with pencil crayons, adding a silver pencil crayon for the hair, eyes and parts of her gun and outfit.  I also used black and silver glitter pens for the detail work and a red glitter pen for the gauzy cape she's wearing.  There's a touch of glossy accents on her goggles.

The layers are all taped on with Brianna added with pop-dots at the end.  It's one of the busiest cards I've made, but I rather like it.

Purr-fect Kitty

I'm submitting this card to 2 challenges, Some Odd Girl's April Sketch Challenge and Simon Say's Stamp's Anything Goes Challenge.

This is the sketch I had to follow:

And here's my card:

I started out with the idea of a cat playing with yarn, and having the yarn be the 'flags' at the bottom of the sketch.  Which meant finding yarn, or something close enough.  The only thing I had was pink floss, so that set my colour scheme.  I decided that since I needed two frames the pink would go best with a monochrome look, and so settled on black, grey and white.

I cut out my frames and used a tape gun to attach them to the black card base.  I then played with the floss to make my loops and cat toy.  I glued the floss under where the black ribbon was set to go.  Using a lighter, I fixed the ends of the floss and ribbon so they won't unravel.

I carefully glued the ribbon over the floss and then started on my images.  The ball of yarn was stamped in black on pink fluorescent cardstock, and the cat on grey cardstock.  I then coloured the cat with pencil crayons and fussy cut them out.

To give the card a bit of dimension I used a pop dot in the centre of the yarn and cat's face, gluing the rest of the images down.  This way they pop up a bit.  I left the cat's tail unglued.

For the sentiment, I used the 'Purr-fect' stamp from Some Odd Girl's Clever Kitties set (which is where the yarn and cat are from).  'Have a' was carefully inked from a JustRite stamp and 'birthday' is from a There she Goes stamp.  I'd intended to do the entire sentiment in black and at the last moment noticed my pink Hero Arts fluorescent ink, and so used that to give it a bit of umph.

Dragon Birthday

I made this card for Simon Says Stamp's Challenge Blog.  It's their 4th anniversary, and so the theme this week is Happy Birthday.

I started this card with the idea of using my Graphic 45 Bird Song cling #3 stamps.  I'm ashamed to say that though I've had the set for several months this is the first time I've used them.  I love the designs but haven't done much with an Asian theme lately.

I thought either the phoenix or dragon stamp would look fantastic embossed with my holographic embossing powder.  Turns out the stamp is too detailed so it's a bit hard to see what the picture is.  Next time I'll ink the image first in silver or gold and then emboss it.  Still, it's got a fabulous glitter effect in a fascinating mix of green and brown on its black background.

I wanted the sentiment to match and so daubed my bronze and teal metallic pigment inks on a sheet of plastic and then picked up the ink with the stamp (I didn't want to contaminate my stamp pads by using one colour and then the second.  This way I also got some fancy mixing of the colours).

The backing is red cardstock embossed with a Cuttlebug folder from an oriental set I have.