Merman card

For Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge of 'Anything Goes' I decided to do something different. I printed out the Some Odd Girl MerMan Cody and Make It Crafty's Mermaid Castle digital stamps. I coloured the images and then die cut them out, inking the edges with some blue. I mounted the images on a blue cardstock base and put some flowers around them.

Polar Wishes

This is a more complex card I made back when I had time to make cards. :P

I love this polar bear stamp from Some Odd Girl.  I stamped the hat, then masked it and stamped the bear.  I coloured him using pencil crayons (just some grey shading) and the hat with markers.  I then die cut him out.  I tried the 'ink the die to get a solid frame' technique, which didn't quite work as intended.

For the background I stamped snowflakes and sponged on some ink for a blowing snow effect.

The label was die cut, stamped and also sponged with ink.

Some Odd Girl Bliss

I've got a new card today, one that's not Christmas themed.  I scrabbled some time together to make this card for Some Odd Girl's See Your Project at CHA contest.  CHA is a big craft show for professionals, so it would be amazing to have a project at one of the display booths there.  I tried to make this card as perfect as I could (and therefore rejected two stamped and inked panels due to smudging).

This was a fairly simple - though time-consuming - card to make.

I stamped the image on white cardstock and die cut it out.  I then, very carefully (due to my previous errors) added ink around the edges, trying not to smudge it or make the colour uneven.

I picked out the backing papers and cut them, using an embossing punch on the corners of the darker page.

Finally I coloured the image and added a few silver and gold highlights and then put the layers together.

Winter Wishes

This card is for the Some Odd Girl card challenge, which is a card sketch:

I tend to use these pretty literally, so here's my card.

I started with a piece of dark blue cardstock for the card base (it looks black in the picture, but it's really navy blue).  I die cut the circle out of the light blue cardstock and then embossed it with a snowflake folder.  I debated using a smaller circle for the inset piece, but it looked strange, so I used the same die to cut out a white circle which I then stamped and coloured with pencil crayons.  The winter wishes was carefully masked so I could separate the sentiment (which overlaps a bit), and the ends cut with scissors.

If you're interested in trying digital stamping but aren't sure how, or if you already use digital stamps but could use some pointers, Some Odd Girl has put out a free downloadable ebook with information.  You get an image to practice with too, which is pretty cool.

Baby Snuggle Kaylee Card

I made this card for a family member who recently had a baby boy.

I printed the Some Odd Girl digi, Baby Snuggle Kaylee, and coloured it with pencil crayons.  I die cut the frame out of my cardstock card, glued the picture to the back, stamped 'Adorable' from a Fiskars stamp set and added the embellishments.  The duck was cut on the Silhouette SD and coloured in with markers.  The safety pin and buttons were embellishments from a button company I bought at a craft show several years ago.

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.

Some Odd Girl - Make a Splash Mermaid

I recently won a stamp set from Some Odd Girl Stamps called Clever Kitties.  I decided to take the opportunity to buy some of their other sets, as I love their designs - particularly the critters.  Yesterday they arrived, but I didn't have time for stamping so I finally got to play with them today.

I've wanted a mermaid stamp for ages, so instead of playing with the kitties (sorry kitties, I'll get to you soon) I went for the Under the Sea Mae set (they've got several characters they use, and Mae is one of them that's been turned into a mermaid for this set).

I started out with white cardstock.  Instead of inking in black the way I usually do, I decided to ink it in teal.  That set the tone for the rest of the colouring, which was done with pencil crayons and blended with gamsol.

I cut the image out with an oval Spellbinders die.  The oval came out when I switched plates for the embossing, which is why it's a bit lopsided (you can't really see it in the picture).  I don't mind though, I think it adds something to this image.  I used a red gel pen for the 'stars' and a clear one to go over the fins so they shimmer a bit.

I decided on a dark teal cardstock and cut and inked the sentiment label (also Spellbinders).  For the fish, I used the image from the Clever Kitty's set (so I did play with them a little bit), inking them with markers.  The red one's a reverse image, stamped first on plastic and then on paper.  As it came out very faint I just coloured over the lines with the marker again.  They're filled in with pencil crayon.

Something was missing...  I looked around my craft table and spotted some lighter teal crepe paper that wrapped stamps from an order a while back.  Perfect.  I punched out some flowers, stuck a rhinestone inside and wrapped the petals around them so they'd look a bit more dimensional before smoothing them back.  The mermaid and label are tape gunned on, the flowers glued and the fish on with pop dots.

I have to admit, I really like how this card turned out.