Tree House Stamps New Release!

I just LOVE cupcake cards! Look at this adorable Birthday Cupcake set that was just released at Tree House Stamps! I was so excited to get to play with these stamps, and with all the stuff I've had going on Tuesday through Thursday I didn't get to play until early this morning, a day late for the going green WT challenge, but going green nevertheless! This paper is called Twitterpated...I think just the sound of it is adorable! It is really beautiful paper, and almost looks enameled in bright bold color. I wanted to make a card that would take advantage of the two-sided print, so this is what I ended up with. It is a 5.5 inch square single layer card base matted with the stripe, with a 4.25 inch square floral/dotted card mounted on that. I scalloped the bottom of the card with my SU scalloped edge punch, which revealed the bold red polkadots from the inside.

The cupcake was stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink, then colored in with a combination of SU and copic markers. I stamped another and cut out the icing, then colored it with copics and embossed it with a half-and-half combination of clear EP and Iridescent Ice EP. I popped just the bottom part of it up on dimensionals and glued the top down to the original layer to make it look as 3-D as possible, then mounted the whole thing to a scalloped circle punched with a Marvy Giga punch. For the inside, I stamped the sentiment on a square of white matted with real red...the picture sort of captures the gloss of this delicious paper!

Just to catch you up a little bit on what I've been up to this week...I attend a Precept study at NAS Jacksonville. Tuesday that group started a study of Isaiah, which is going to be phenomenal! I also teach a women's study at my church, Fleming Island United Methodist Church. Wednesday we began a new Beth Moore Bible study called Stepping Up into Psalms (a study of the Psalms of Ascent). When I first opened the cover, I had to smile and even giggle...there was a diagram of Solomon's Temple and since I SO loved her study of the Tabernacle, I just know I'm going to LOVE this one too.

Thursday I taught a basketry class to 8 homeschooled girls. This is the sample basket I brought, which is so old that the original rich brown accents have faded so much they almost match the natural reed of the rest of the basket. I dyed some beautiful rose pink reed for the girls.

This was a really adventurous basket to teach for a first lesson, but I love it because it gives a sampling of several different techniques to give a true taste of what basketry is all about. The girls learned to weave a flat reed bottom, and how to twine and do 3-rod wale. They finished off with a lacy decorative border. I was so proud of these girls, and of how their baskets turned out. As they worked, you could see the personalities of each girl emerge, both on their faces and in their work. Although they all worked from the same model, their baskets were very different! I hope they enjoyed the class as much as I did!

ATC + Sketch=

a cute card! Or at least I hope you think so!

I just love these Caring Critters! This set was illustrated by Jami Bova for 2RedBananas.

You may have already seen the ATC I made for last Thursday's WT challenge. When I saw today's sketch with only 30 minutes to craft before I had to leave for Bible study, I instantly thought of this little ATC as a head start to today's card. The darling bunny was already colored and shaded with Copic markers, cut out, waiting and ready too. His cute little tail sparkles with Spica clear glitter. All I had to do was assemble the card base and attach the separate elements. Sounds easy enough right? Wellll....LOL! I think I spent most of my 30 minutes searching through my stash trying to find my sticker sheet of Kaiser pink pearls! It wasn't where it was supposed to be! :p

This card is a 5.5 inch square card cut from Pink Pirouette, layered with Baja Breeze. The floral background of Imaginisce Love is in the Air is accented with the companion stripe, Weak in the Knees. All the edges of the paper were distressed and lightly inked with Old Olive. The ATC and bunny were positioned with dimensionals and pop dots, and those elusive pearls finally found their way onto the top left corner!

Color Dare!

It's Color Dare time again. I must admit that certain color combos have made me cringe, and others have instantly inspired a certain idea for a stamp to use. This week was one of those easy weeks. The challenge was to use Perfect Plum, Old Olive, and Gable Green. After looking through a few stamp sets, I knew exactly which one I wanted to use!

Variety brings so much interest to stamping...I find it really fun to sometimes make a clean and simple design, and another time to create something fancy and frilly and frou frou. Today's card is one of those quick, easy designs. I stamped the image (SU's retired hostess set, A Little Bit of Happiness) using Palette Noir ink, then colored it in using prisma color pencils and baby oil. It took a little layering of colors to get a match for these colors of cardstock. I really wanted to use my Martha Stewart doily-lace edge punch, but it won't punch through card stock any more, so I grabbed SU's scallop punch instead. This is one design that I think I will use over and over again...it is quick, easy, and yet still pretty. I hope you like it!

Banana Split Sunday!

Today is the first of a new challenge brought to you by 2RedBananas! It is called Banana Split Sunday! Each week will be different...sometimes a sketch, perhaps some inspiration, a theme, a list of specific supplies to use, etc...something that will a-peel (pun intended!) to everyone! A weekly "top banana" will be randomly chosen, and on the 2nd and 4th week of the month, there will be a prize! Doesn't that sound scrumptious?!

This week's challenge is a sketch...feel free to rotate, flip, or manipulate the sketch, add or drop layers, etc., so long as it is still recognizable! Upload your creations to SCS using the keyword 2rbbss01.

Somehow or another I missed the memo about the Friday deadline for my challenge submission (it was right there in the email I got, in black and white...what can I say, except sorry Jami!). I spent my Saturday morning at a reFocus seminar for our church, and then when I got home went straight to work on my card. I wanted to use a 2RedBananas stamp set that hadn't seen ink yet (I still have several!) and after a morning of discussing our church's vision and mission statement, it seemed appropriate to use this beautiful cross and companion scripture about Unity and Love from the set Wrapped in His Love.

I inked the cross using SU's ruby red classic ink and colored the ribbon with prismas and baby oil topped with a Spica clear gel pen. I chose these colors with Imaginisce's Love Me/Weak in the Knees designer paper in mind. I used an oval nestabilities die to cut the image, then bordered it with a scalloped oval. All of the edges were inked with Tim Holtz distress ink. I was originally planning to use primas around the oval as the sketch illustrates, but the primas covered the beautiful Love is in the Air floral print too much for my liking and distracted from the image of the cross, so I opted for 10 pale yellow dewdrops instead. I'm really into liturgical symbolism, so I love the idea of the red cross representing the blood of Christ...the 10 dew drops make me think of the 10 commandments. For the inside of the card I inked the entire sentiment with Pretty in Pink ink, then markered over the words Love and Unity with a Ruby Red marker, stamping it in the bottom corner of some ivory cardstock topped with a bit of striped paper.

I hope you'll play along with our new Banana Split Sunday challenge every week! We have lots of delicious stuff planned!

Better Late than Never!

Yesterday was the best day! I drove just down the street to pick up my new friend Asela to go to A Small Cleverness to shop for stamps, and then to Applebee's for lunch. We had a great time and found that we have so much in common! It is not often that you meet someone and feel that you have been long-time friends, but that was definitely the case yesterday!

The only thing that could possibly have made the day any better would have been if Latisha had been able to go with us...that was the original plan, but she was not feeling well and had to stay home. She was sorely missed, and we all have agreed that we'll just have to make plans to get together again as soon as possible, when Latisha is well enough to get out and enjoy herself!

I bought this stamp (Penny Black's Wind Caressed) with my new Copic markers in mind, and couldn't wait to try my hand at Dawn's LSC challenge. I had to keep the layout very simple because I spent the majority of my 30 minute time-limit coloring. I had to use an SU marker for the stems because so far in Copics I only have yellows, browns, violets, and pinks...but I am pleased with the way my card turned out. I love the little bit of glitz that the gold Spica glitter pen gives the stamen.

I also bought one of Asela's sets, Flowers for Daisy. It was so cool to actually be WITH her and purchase a set she illustrated! I couldn't help but grin! Can't wait to make a card with it! She was a real sweetheart and brought me some stamped images and other goodies too, so I have a head-start on some cards! Thank you, Asela! Can't wait to see you again! {{hugs}}

Today's WT--ATC's!

I don't think I've ever made an ATC before, but I really wanted to try today's WT challenge because I had so much fun making Rolodex cards for a Challenge Chaser swap I participated in a while back, and this seemed similar. I had this cute little bird, part of a set called Caring Critters illustrated by Jami Bova for 2RedBananas just waiting to be inked, and the image seemed the perfect size...I stamped it in Memento Tuxedo Black, then colored it with prismas and baby oil, adding a little bit of grey shading with Copics under the bird's wings and under the limb/leaves. Then I stamped it once again, cutting out his body and right wing. I adhered his body with tape, and popped the wing tip up with dimensionals. Next I used my nesties to cut a scalloped oval frame to place atop this beautiful striped designer paper, Loves Me/Weak in the Knees by Imaginisce. Thankfully I am planning to use this as a focal image for a card, or I would have really been distressed about covering up those pretty stripes! A few Kaiser pearls accent the ticket-punched corners.

Hopefully sometime tomorrow I'll be able to finish a card with this as a great head-start! I hope you'll come back to see it! It won't be until after I've returned from stamp shopping and lunch with Asela and Latisha! I'm SO excited that we are planning this get-together! I hope it is the first of many! I admire them each so much and look forward to learning from them and just enjoying their company!

To post...

...or not to post? That is the question! LOL!

Do you ever work on a card for a while and just get more and more frustrated as the minutes tick by...and when you're finished you're not so happy with it but feel that you've spent so much time on it that you have to do something with it?! Well, this is one of *those* cards! Hopefully it isn't that it is so bad...it's just that I've grown tired of looking at it already! Sometimes it is good to walk away and try again later!

I wanted to make a more elegant St. Patrick's Day card, so I started with the poem from the set, Luck of the Irish, and a sheet of Sugardrop paper, both from i {heart} papers. I sponged the paper edges with River Rock ink and backed it with black...one of my all-time favorite color combos (I loved River Rock SO much and hated to see it retire). I stamped the small clover twice and punched them out with a 1/2 inch circle punch, then adhered them to build-a-brads to accent each horizontal element of the design.

I was pretty happy with things up to that point. I played around with several options for an accent for the bottom of the focal image because without something there it felt a little naked, and that was the part that got me frustrated. Finally I settled on a harmonizing prima...it isn't exactly what I was hoping for but was the best the options I had available...and now I'm just hoping that the look is gonna grow on me. We'll see!

Color Dare!

Today's Color Dare was to use Basic Brown (or Chocolate Chip)

Pretty in Pink, Whisper White, So Saffron, and (optional) Going Gray. I had no Basic Brown, but I found this piece of designer paper that had browns and grays in it (DCWV Old World 8 x 8 pack), so I thought that would be a good substitute, especially with the image I had in mind, Sweet 'n Sassy's set His Eye is On the Sparrow. I love that song, and immediately fell in love with these graceful birds. I stamped them in Memento Tuxedo Black, then colored them with prismas and baby oil. Everything seemed so stark white against the designer paper, so I got out my SU linen background stamp and inked it up with Tim Holtz distress ink, stamping off once before stamping the image. I repeated the same process with the horizontal strip of Going Gray, just to give it an aged, distressed appearance. A pair of Saffron colored buttons tied with brown hemp bring out the tiny bit of So Saffron in the flower centers...a spiral clip with some knotted bi-color ribbon dresses it up just a bit more.

Today's Technique!

Today's TLC was a quick and easy crimped envelope card...my friend and upline Kathy showed me one of these a while back, and after seeing it in person I was excited to try one for today's challenge. Another of our friends, Vicki, had given us each a giant box of envelopes (the ones that are large enough to hold a card made from a full sheet of cardstock folded in half)...so I have enough envelopes to make a boatload of these in a rainbow of colors!

I used one of my new OCL stamp sets, Drake the Dragon, from i {heart} papers...I just love these stamps! I love the way they're stored nearly as much as I love the stamps themselves! Some come as clear acrylic, others as unmounted rubber, but they're all great! Most of them are illustrated by Marianne who taught our Copic class last weekend! She showed us her original sketchbook...so full of amazing art and absolutely fabulous Copic coloring!

I stamped this cute little dragon in Palette Noir ink, then colored him in with prismas and baby oil to match this bright Itsy Bitsy Spider paper. I used my clear Spica glitter pen to add a little glitz to his wings, ridgeback, horns, tail, and the dots of the eggs. I kept the layout very simple because of the busy-ness of this designer print. The flower is cut from the designer paper and topped w/ a button from my stash. A few knots of dotted ribbon embellish the top of the envelope that slides off to reveal the card inside.

The card inside is a 5.25 inch square. I stamped the eggs at the bottom and colored them the same as the front just to add a little fun detail to the bottom of the inside, and then added a strip of the companion striped paper across the top. I think it came out kinda cute! I hope you like it!

Last Day of Week of Peeks

Today is the last day of this release's Week of Peeks at the new sets from 2RedBananas...the sets go on sale tomorrow, March 2!

The set being previewed today is Bunnies and Eggs. Hop on over to Jeanette's and Teresa's to see this adorable set and what you can do with it!

I had planned to stamp a card for you also, but instead, I took a nap and got some much needed rest! After church today I'm gonna play!

Sunday blessings to you!