Cards for Missy

My sister-in-law's birthday is just around the corner and I let me hubby go through my cards today to pick out a card for his sister!  He has such good taste.  He picked out this card.   This is the card that I made for the last Limelight Papercrafts sketch challenge.  The  twist for this sketch was to use Butterflies. 

This is the card that my mother-in-law picked out for her daughter.  This was for a fun CAS sketch challenge a hundred years ago.  Okay, not really a hundred years ago, but quite a while ago anyway.  I just looked it up and the challenge was about a month and a half ago!  I called him my Passionate Gator, for the pink passion ink that I hardly ever use!  This turned out really cute!  I'm glad that Missy will get it!

Butterfly Card -

Stamps: Great Friend, Full of Life

Paper: Rich Razzleberry, Soft Suede, Whisper White, Razzleberry Lemonade dp
Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Creamy Caramel, Close to Cocoa, River Rock, Chocolate Chip
Accessories: MM eyelet, thin satin burgandy ribbon, stampin' dimensionals, corner rounder
Techniques: masking

Passionate Gator -

Stamps: Wild About You, Teeny Tiny Wishes

Paper: Whisper White, Green Galore, Pink Passion, Yo Yo Yellow
Ink: Gable Green, Green Galore, Pink Passion, Yo Yo Yellow, Basic Black
Accessories: 1/8" hole punch, Trio Flower punch, glue pen
Techniques: masking, rock and roll


All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

Have you ever wanted to be part of a design team?

Well, I have wanted to be try my hand at working on a design team for some time.  Mandy from Limelight Papercrafts put out a call for new design team members a little more than a week ago.  I decided to give it a try.  I am sure that Mandy will get tons of fabulous applicants and she will chose an amazing design team.  I am eager to see what comes from my application.  For the application process, Mandy asked to see pieces of work that applicants consider to be their best.  I offered this gift card holder and matching card as my gift project.

In addition to the gift project, I submitted pictures on three cards that I really love.  This card I made following a sketch by Julee Tilman.  This card include some fun Limelight products as well!  The designer paper you see here is October Afternoon Ducks in a Row and Cherry Hill.  I embellished this lovely with some Spring Bloom dew drops. 





I made this fun card as part of a VSN challenge a couple weeks ago. The challenge was to create "a mask" that enhances your focal image! I had tons of fun with a swirly wheel and some white ink on acetate. The only way I could think to hold my acetate on to my main image panel is with those cutesy little Bazzill mini brads from Limelight!

Finally, I made this card for a Unity Bachelor Bro Challenge.  The task here was to include both plaid and polka dots on the same card.  Yikes, I opted for a very subtle plaid and tried to make it work for me.  Since I was going for subtle I grabbed a sentiment from Unity's Sentiments O'Simple and some fabby October Afternoon paper.  How can you not love that paper?

Sooo....Mandy will be announcing her next design team on Saturday, November 7th on her blog.  Will you keep your fingers crossed for me?  Thanks, I truly appreciate it!

Verve release sketches with some SU stamps

Honestly, I just love Julee Tilman's sketches. They are always so well balanced and fresh. I have been on a Christmas kick lately, so I used my new Christmas SU stamps. I have no Verve Christmas stamps. Maybe soon!
I know this isn't a new SU Christmas stamp, but the embossing folder is relatively new. It's called Petals-a-Plenty and it gives a lovely deep impression. I used some Handsome Hunter, which I rarely use, and paired it with some Sage Shadow. I like the monochromatic effect this card has. I had to add some silver for a little bit of sparkle.


Dasher is a new SU stamp this season and I love it! It's one of the under $10 singles offered in the back of the catalog. I embossed it in gold and paired it with SU's In-Color Soft Suede and some Christmas paper with the same In-Color! When I stamped Dasher on the main panel, I thought the rest of the panel looked a little boring. So I inked up just one of the snowflakes from Dasher's antlers and stamped it three times. Then I sponged around the edge of the main panel to give it a little more oomph!





I wanted to try an find a really nice piece of Christmas patterned paper to work in this sketch. I found this piece of retired SU Holiday Treasures paper that I thought fit nicely with the Gifts of Christmas sentiment. I think those poinsettias are gorgeous. I found a piece of textured Old Olive card stock to serve as my base and I was off! I thought a big bow would complete the look, so I tied on some brown satin ribbon. Not much else to this card.






I busted out another new set for this card, as well as some old designer paper. I stamped my ornaments directly onto some Basic Grey Mistletoe and Pear paper. I was trying to replicate the colors in the other sheet of designer paper from the pack, to no avail. The top corner of the image panel looked lonely, so I affixed my red grosgrain bow there! Another thing I discovered is that most of the sentiments from Teeny Tiny Wishes fit into the large oval and look great framed with the scalloped oval.




I chose my color scheme for this card from some SU designer paper, Bella Bleu. Unfortunately, the vanilla embossing didn't really show up as well as I would have liked it to against the kraft card stock.
Next time I think I will switch the Not Quite Navy and the Kraft. I think the vanilla embossing would show up much better on the dark blue.

Check out my SCS gallery for additional product details.

October's Viva La Verve sketches

I totally rushed through these and thought they would end up looking like it. With a second look at them, they are alright! My camera skills still need some development. What else is new? I have some plans for improvement. I just need some free time. This first card is the the week 1 sketch for Viva La Verve. Amber's sketches are always more challenging for me, but I made it happen. The task for this card was to make a shabby chic version of this sketch. Here is my interpretation of "shabby chic".
I tried to use soft colors, distressing and faux stitching! I also used some BG paper that I thought was already distressed and also was sweet.

This card was for the third Viva La Verve sketch of October and the challenge was to use fabric on your card. I feel like I cheated on this one because I used ready made fabric embellishments. I used a felt flower and a taffeta ribbon. I suppose it doesn't matter too much or they would have sent the challenge police after me!
I attempted to replicate the swirls in the patterned paper with the swirls in the card stock from the embossing folder. I like how bright and cheery this card turned out.

By the 2nd week of October's Viva La Verve most people are tired of brown and orange (so many fall cards), so that is the twist. No brown and orange, no problem! I went all kinds of Christmas-y on them! I have been trying to stock up on Christmas and birthday cards, as that is what is most requested and right around the corner!
To jazz up this card, I added Shimmers to the die cut swirls and stickles to the snowflakes! This is a new digi-set that Julee Tilman offered just before the last release! I used it on the next sketch too!




This was the fourth and last sketch for October's Viva La Verve. Amber is so tricky, her twist this time was "no twist". What a funny lady! (Don't worry, she more than made up for it with November's 1st sketch) Anyway, I had an easier time with this sketch than most. I broke into my new Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses paper for this little cutie. I also used the white flocking that has been sitting on my desk since forever. I flocked those cute little mittens. Fun and so soft! Beware my rookie stitching around the outside of the burgundy mat!



Sketch 1 -
Stamps: Beautiful You (Verve)
Paper: Very Vanilla, BG Two Scoops, BG Porcelain, Candy Lane dsp
Ink: Ruby Silk Color Box
Accessories: clear ep, heat tool, Kaisercraft latte pearls, mat pack, paper piercing tool, white gel pen, Nestabilities, MM edge distresser
Techniques: faux stitching, embossing, distressing

Sketch 2 -
Stamps: Winter Mittens (Verve)
Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Baja Breeze, BG Mistletoe & Pear
Accessories: Waterfall Stickles, Angel Wings Shimmerz, Swirls & Scribbles sizzlet, M's white organdy ribbon

Sketch 3 -
Stamps: Beautiful You (Verve)
Paper: Soft Sky, Melon Mambo, Whisper White, Tinkering Ink Al Fresco
Ink: Melon Mambo
Accessories: TE felt flower, white taffeta ribbon, CB D'vine swirls embossing folder, ice circle rhinstone brads, mat pack, paper piercing tool, glue dots
Techniques: embossing, paper piercing

Sketch 4 -
Stamps: Winter Mittens (Verve)
Paper: Pretty in Pink, Bravo Burgundy, BG Eskimo Kisses
Ink: Pretty in Pink, Bravo Burgundy
Accessories: white gel pen, Nestabilities, glue dot, stampin' dimensionals, M's silver pearls, white embroidery floss, white flock, two way glue pen, Sakura clear star gel pen

All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

Who doesn't love a good challenge or 5?

Me, that's who!!! I can hardly resist a set of good challenges. Seriously, last week, I made 10 cards. The first half of them, I was seriously low on creativity but I pushed through anyway.
This was the first of five VSN challenges from last Friday's mini. The task here was to take one holiday stamp and use it to create a card for a different holiday! I love what I did as it was simple yet effective. I took my candy cane stamp and made myself a little old heart. Fun stuff, huh?
I was feeling a little low on creativity, so I just went clean and simple. It seems to work okay for me!


This next card was for the second VSN challenge from Saturday. The challenge here was to make a one layer card that looks like several layers, via the technique called masking. This one to me looks like the tan layer is under the pink layer. I'm not really sure how I made that happen, but I did. I was a little disappointed that the text in the center came up so dark over my floral image.

Mojo deficit? Probably!

Oh well, it's still pretty!



This was the hardest of all the challenges for me! The third challenge of VSN was to make a card inspired by the "Masquerade" scene from Phantom of the Opera. Of course, I have never seen Phantom of the Opera, so I did watch the video clip provided by the VSN hostess. I chose to be inspired by the heroine in this scene. She looked so sweet in her pale pink gown. I took my focal image from the flowers that she wore in her hair. I chose my sentiment as it seemed quite as proper as she!
I used a sketch from the Verve October Release sketches to flesh out this card. I try to always have an assortment of sketches on hand when VSN comes up. I find that this saves me some time!

Here is the card that I made for the fourth VSN challenge on Saturday. I had an idea in mind and made this card while watching cartoons with Sweet Pea on Sunday morning. The task was to use the technique called masking. I added to the challenge by working in the latest CAS challenge to create a sympathy card!
This was the fifth and final challenge of this mini-VSN. Ah, my favorite card of the bunch! The task here was to "create a card that wears a mask, one that enhances the main image without hiding it, an accent". This was super fun! I am certain that I will do this technique again.

There are so many details to list, that I have provided a link to each card in my SCS gallery rather than take up space here!

For the love of Limelight

Do you know about Limelight yet? And have you met Mandy yet? She is fabulous and she runs a challenge every other week. It's a sketch challenge with a product focus! This week's challenge has a product focus of ribbon. Everyone loves ribbon, don't they? For this particular card, I followed the sketch very literally. I added one more circle than the sketch because my circle were smaller than the original and I rounded a corner for interest. I placed my sentiment in the bottom left hand corner to try to achieve some balance on my card.

What do you think?

Here are the details:
Stamps: Sentiments O'Simple (Unity)
Paper: Whisper White, Ruby Red, ? dp
Ink: Versamark
Accessories: white ep, heat tool, M's white satin ribbon, glue dot, 1 3/8" circle punch, corner rounder
Techniques: embossing

All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

The Latest Bro Challenge!

I don't know, I think I like straight-forward designs. This one is pretty square and I have to say, I like it that way! This is for Week 5 of the Bachelor Bro challenge.
The challenge was to use something from your HOME that you typically would not use in a paper crafting project. So, I raided the medicine cabinet and found some gauze. It isn't terrible cutting edge, but I am following the rules! I wanted to use a band-aid, but I didn't have any Unity sentiments or images that I thought would work.
I ended up coloring this image with some gel pens (I had to be careful to not smear them) which were sparkly:) So this qualified me for Stamp Something's, Bling It Somethings. Fun stuff!

Here are the details:

Stamps: Folk Inspired (Unity)
Paper: Kraft, Chocolate Chip, Brushed Gold, Whisper White
Ink: Basic Brown, Chocolate Chips
Accessories: sparkly gel pens, Sakura clear star gel pen, red satin ribbon, brads, glue dots, gauze

All products used are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.