Stretch Your Stamps: Day 5

Last Friday was day 5 for the SYS online card class and I wasn't able to play along until Sunday (my birthday) because of a wedding. My brother gave me one of the greatest gifts: a new sister (in-law) and as a bonus two more sisters and two more newphews (one of her sisters has two boys close in age to my two). His new bride has an amazing family and we all get together often. Ok, back to SYS. The focus for day 5 was all about sentiments. I LOVE playing with senitments and having them play off of the colors and/or images on the cards. In fact, just recently I even used two sentiments and pieced them together to great a new one with a hidden on highlighted (you can see the card here). That being said I really wanted to try something different and one is even new to me.

Left card: This is the card where I tried something new to me. I used images from three different sets for an equation: sun (+) rain cloud (=) rainbows. I colored in the sun and rainbow with my copics and then coated them with glossy accent. (I messed up the first time and so created it again for a piece that I could pop up from the base covering my mistake in the process, lol) Underneath the last image I added only the first part of a sentiment from a fourth stampset and completed the sentiment on the inside. Both the picture equation and the split inside/outside sentiment is new to me. I really liked how this turned out too. I can see me doing this more too (in fact in my next post you will see that I did, lol). This sketch is from the CAS sketch challenge.

Right card: I am loving this new My Island stamp set from WMS and couldn't wait to make another card with it. With the beach theme I decided to use sentiments from LOTS of different stamp sets from at least three different stamp companies that delt with saying hello to create a sentiment collage. I have done this one or two ther times but this is the first time I really like how it turned out. All of the sentiments were stamped in the same color except from "hello sunshine". I wanted that sentient to stand out so I masked it with a darker color. I sponged the edges to give the middle part a sort of sun glow effect. This is such a fun technique with sentiments to create a fun background for a card. The sketch is from WMS's sketch challenge and I thought the strip that goes accross the middle would look great for the water. To achieve it I sponged several shades of blue onto white c/s and then flicked water on it. I stamped the sun rays from the My Island set and then embossed in black a frame over it on the angled piece to really work with my theme. To make sure the ray reached the edges (b/c it was a little short) I sponged the edges. The focal frame was embossed in black and then sponged it to continue my little island theme. I black embossed the trees onto white c/s and then cut it out. Once cut out I sponged it the same way I did the center frame. As I was pieceing the card together I thought it looked a littel empty so I embossed Aloha (since it is Hawaiian for hello) from the stamp set. I am also putting this card in for the Moxie Fab Stamp it: Hello challenge.

Stretch Your Stamps: Day 4

Day 4 and I am still keeping up. This isn't the norm for me when I takes classes like these. Usually I start falling behind by day 2, lol. Today's class was all about graphic style stamps. Up to and including today I have been using stamps that I already own and not what they taught with. I figured the idea was to stretch the stamps I all ready own instead of buying a whole bunch on new sets. That being said I did order (and am currently waiting for delivery) of 6 of the 11 stamps they are teaching with. The reason I bought those six was because 4 of them I wasn't sure if I had the style in my collection. The other two I got becuase I just wanted them (and those two were from Day 1 & 4). Today's cards were created with PTI's Mod Squad and Gracious Vases (for the sentiments). I chose this set because I consider to be my only "graphic" set, and because every time I see it I can only of think of the 70's. Since this class is all about stretching our stamps I thought I would give it a try. I love how I was able to create two completely different cards and neither look 70ish to me :)

Left Card: This is a very simple 4.25 x 4.25 card using the smaller border graphic along the bottom and a sentiment just above it. Both were stamped with Shomky Shadow ink from PTI. Since I used a grey color I soften then card a little by just rounding the corners. Jennifer McGuire used a Paper Smooches set to create some flowers for her card and when I pulled out this set I thought I could do something similar.

Right Card: I wanted to keep with the CAS style but also wanted to make something a little more elegant and in a different size (this is 6x3). This is a style I have never considered before with this set. In fact, up until today I really only thought it would be good for retro 70's inspired cards. I used two different graphic images to create the petals and the leaves. The petals is the reservse stamp of the image I used for the leaves. I stamped each "petal" a second time so that I could curve them and give the petals some depth. I added the bling in the center to cover where everything meets up to give the flower a finished look. The flower looked to stark against the white for my liking so I pulled a frame from a WMS set called Vintage Labels 1 to frame the flower. I stamped it in a light grey and used the same ink for the sentiment. For a finishing touch I added a strip of 1/8" score tape and then covered it in glitter. Simple yet elegant. What I really like about this card is that even with the depth and curved petals it is flat enough to send through regular postage :)