Rain Rain Go Away!!!!

Well this card is most appropriate for the kind of weather we are experiencing here.  It's raining Cats 'n Dogs!!!  It's raining so hard that there are puddles of water forming everywhere and that's hard to do since most of Kamloops is developed on the mountainside.  Around here you only ride your bike if you are in really really good shape.

Today's card is my interpretation of the Get Sketchy #10!  I wanted to try something a little different and was then inspired to make an umbrella from an Oval.  What do you think? I cut the oval from my old Fiskars Shape Cutter and used my SU! 1/2" circle punch to make the scallops.  I then sponged the umbrella with Bashful Blue and doodled the sentiment.  The inside is doodled with "Hope you feel better"

The embossed panels were made over a year ago when I had my craft pals Maureen and Melisa over for coffee.  Maureen was showing off her cuttlebug and I got to practice embossing on some of my scraps.  Yes Moe, it's taken me this long to use it.  Ideally, I had wanted to make something that would portray rain but I was having a hard time coming up with anything so I settled for snowflakes.  Any ideas? There's silver fibre paper and bashful blue paper in the background.

The card isn't quite as polished as I would liked but it was the follow through of the vision that I cared about the most.  I wanted to see if I could make at umbrella.  Thanks so much for taking a look and I hope I've inspired to you to follow your vision regardless of the results.  Have a fabulous Wednesday!

Sweet Sunday Wishes

Hello and Good Afternoon!  Thanks for stopping by to take a peek at my latest.  This is the card a created for Karen's recent Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge.  I decided to make something a little more general that will do for birthday's, congratulations, or good luck.  I wanted it to be as fun as the sketch and something that could be given to the male gender. This was my result.

This paper uses the Razzleberry Lemonade dp and Crushed curry card stock.  To give it some interest I used the tole technique for the punch up stars.  The middle star has 3 layers and the corner stars have 2.  I used a simple Best Wishes sentiment from the sincere salutations stamp set, added my last scrap of Pumpkin Pie stripped grosgrain ribbon and added a couple more stars on the left just to give the card some balance.  Unfortunately my two year old got a hold of the card after I finished taking the pictures so it all has to be redone and I have no more of that ribbon!  Oh well at least it was after the pictures were taken.

I think I achieved what I was looking for (although I don't know how men feel about purple but it will do in a pinch.  What do you think?  Hope you are all having a lovely day.  Have a terrific Tuesday.

Accessories:  Large and small star punch, 3/4 circle punch and stripped pumpkin pie grosgrain ribbon.

A Sketch Girl Christmas

Good morning everyone!  Yes, I'm managing to post two days in a row and this afternoon I will have a yet another one for the Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #40 so please check back later.  I had a very creative and productive day on Sunday.

This is my entry for the Sketch Girl Challenge #7 .  Last week I was inspired by Ann over at Creative Antics to take part in the Challenge and at the end of it I was the lucky winner and I am patiently awaiting my parcel.  I'll share when it gets here.  Thanks ladies and thanks Ann.

So here's the deal about this card, it was the last one I made on Sunday and it was getting late.  I didn't want to pull out my stamps and I wanted to use this designer paper with the matching die cuts.  When I saw the Merry Christmas paper I realized I didn't have to stamp anything.  Nothing on this card is SU! (what kind of demonstrator am I??) In the end, I have to use what inspires me.  I just cut, punched, glued and pasted then added some bling to fancy it up a bit.  It's simple but it works and it only to 10 minutes to put together.

Hope you are all enjoying your Tuesday.  I'll hopefully be enjoying some nice warm sunny weather.  Thanks for stopping by.

Simply Said - Not Simply Made

Good Morning Friends!  How are you?  Weather around here is still dreary but it looks like the sun is trying to get through.

Here's my efforts in making Mercy's Tuesday Sketch.  I used the cottage wall dp for this one two because I already had everything pulled out from my last card and I was still feeling in a razzleberry, butterfly type of mood.  As I started making this card (and I really had no idea where it was going to take me) I just wasn't feeling it.  I knew I wanted to make grass and stamp flowers.  I started with the inside panels and decided to use my sewing machine to paper pierce giving it an extra something.  Then I stamped the inside panel using the flowers in For All You Do stamp set.  I love getting two different colours from the same ink pad just by not re-inking every time I stamp the image.  I added the grass (made using just scissors) and adhered the center panel but it seemed to be lacking something and then I found bling that went very nicely inside the flowers.  Still missing something.  Butterflies!!! I punched those and added a little more bling and voila!  It turns out to be one of my favourite cards yet.  Thanks Mercy for this Challenge!!!  There are so many possibilities with this sketch.

Thanks for looking and hope you are all have a fine Monday morning.  I'm off to take my son to swimming lessons and then I should probably get some chores done.  Laundry here I come!

Paper: Cottage Wall dp, Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive

Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, Orchid Opulence

Accessories:  Bling, Butterfly punch, sewing machine.

Stamps:  For all You do, Simply Said

Birthday Butterflies

I don't know about you but for the last 2 days we've had nothing but rain here in Kamloops.  So much for our nice, beautiful weather.  The sun has come out from the clouds here and there this afternoon and it is warm out there but it's wet, wet, and wetter.  With all the dreary weather I decided to make something bright and beautiful.  And butterflies are beautiful so I pulled out my beautiful butterflies dies and my cottage wall dp and got to work making my Mojo Monday 108 card.  I also took the time to paper pierce a pattern in the top right hand corner and practiced my french knots on the sentiment. (See close up below)  The white panel seems to be missing something but I didn't touch it because I didn't want to make it too busy.  And I suppose the butterfly could have used some embellishment but I'm so worried about over doing it and then have to start all over again.  In the end I really like it.  There's isn't a lot of stamping but I enjoy playing with paper more than I do stamps.

For any of you Rich Razzleberry fans, the floss I used was DMC 3803.  It seems to be the best match that I've found (so far) although it may not be quite dark enough.

Anyhow I hope all of you have had a wonderful weekend whatever weather you're having.  I'll chat again tomorrow until then, have a fabulous day ;-)

Paper:  Cottage Wall dp, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White, Old Olive, Orchid Opulence

Ink: Old Olive

Stamps:  Sincere Salutations

Accessories:  SU! Beautiful butteflies die, SU Designer Latte buttons, paper piercer, floss, dimensionals

Christmas is Coming - Really?

You wouldn't know it with this beautiful sunny day here in Kamloops, BC with slightly warmer weather and less wind.  It's suppose to be like this throughout the weekend so here's hoping.  My husband will most likely go chop some wood for our new woodstove insert (which warms the house beautifully). Chopping wood day is really neat because everyone gets involved even the two year old.  DH takes one of the kids out to the bush and then when they come home we all work for an hour or so piling the wood while dad splits it.  The amazing thing is that all three kids work so well together. The drawback is that wood doesn't burn as clean as gas but I find if we light the fire for only 5 hours in the evening the gas furnace doesn't even kick in all night.

The wood fire last night put me in the mood to make Christmas cards using the Get Sketchy Challenge #9.  I  can't believe it's been nine weeks of challenges already!  Time flies! and to prove that the Christmas Holidays will soon be knocking on our door.  I had a lot of fun last night using some new, inspiring designer paper and chipboard embelishments.  This collection works wonderfully with SU! colours Soft Sky, Rich Razzleberry, Pretty in Pink, and Olive Green.  Ruby Red also works well but wasn't used in either of these cards.

Thanks for taking a peek and hope you are all doing fabulously.

Merry Christmas

Paper:  Whisper White, Pretty In Pink, Soft Sky, NSU dp

Ink:  Soft Sky, Rich Razzleberry

Accessories:  NSU chipboard santa, Rhinestones

Stamps:  Snow Swirled,  Season of Joy (sentiment)

Merry and Bright

Paper:  Soft Sky, Old Olive, Whisper White, Pretty in Pink, NSU dp

Ink:  Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive

Accessories:  NSU chipboard sentiment, gold glitter glue

Stamps:  Season of Joy  

A Simple Hello

With these cards I had every intention of posting them for the Sweet Sassy Sketch challenge but I just ran out of time to take the pictures and post them in time.  It also took two tries to get this card looking the way I wanted.  The bottom card is my first try.  I couldn't bring myself to post it without posting something better.  I wanted to use my new Flower dies and I figured the sentiment would work well using the letters from the SU! Billboard die.  That die is an excellent letter solution without spending a lot of money.   There's also a strip die called Naturally Serif for a different font solution.  You get both upper case and lower case letters.

Now I learned a few things the first go around.  Firstly, working with felt is difficult when your hands are really dry. Secondly, for small die cut letters it's best to apply envelope glue and then die cut when dry.  It makes less of a mess.  Thirdly, too many prints (whether stamped or embossed or on paper) can make it look too busy.  There was just too much going on in my first card.

My final attempt leaned towards the other spectrum, to very simple.  I even simplified my hello.  There is no print but there are a couple things that add some texture.  There's the felt flower layer, the embossed swirls and the Kiwi Kiss textured paper.  The bling always seems to add a little something extra and I've been wanting to work with this colour combo for quite a while but just never found a layout that could bring all those colours together.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed this post and learned something from my experiences.  My favourite parts are the colours and the die cut letters.  What's yours?  Have a fabulous day and you're likely to hear from me again today as I have a couple of Christmas cards to share with you for the Get Sketchy challenge.

HI
Paper: Barely Banana, Kiwi Kiss, Not Quite Navy, Bashful Blue, Pumpkin Pie
Accessories:  SU! Billboard decorative strip die, Flower Layer original die, scallop edge punch, embossing folder, blue felt, rhinestones