Stretch Your Stamps: Day 7

Day 7 is all about flowers. Something I have very few of in my stamp collection. However, one of my first floral stamps I bought was PTI's Friends Till The End. I have one (maybe two) other flowery stamps but this tends to be my go to one (however, I did finally cave and order the PTI annv set this year as I have seen so many cards that uses the flowers from it that I would really use it and their newest set Life is Sweet). Even though I have the dies for them I went the old-fashioned way and fussy cut them out as I didn't want a border around them like the die would have given. It was great seeing the different techniques used with them flowers as some I had forgotten about.

Left card: So many new to me things going on here. I have seen several of the sample cards use the watercolor paper ink splotches (where the ink is on a craft mat and then sprayed with water before placing watercolor over it) that I thought I would finally give it a try. Once it dried I thought it looked really bright, almost neon-y, so I went with it. I took Distress Ink's Picked Raspberry, Squeezed Lemonade, and Salty Ocean and rubbed them over white c/s cut to size for my layout (from Mojo Monday). I heat embossed in black the banners and used my copic black multi-liner to draw the lines on the blue piece as well as the long pink one. For my tag I took one of my many charms from Tim Holtz's collection and did the faux frosted glass technique using the smaller flower in the FTTE set. Then I decided that I needed a sentiment so I went with hello and embossed it in black on the from. I thought it would be a fun card for the Hello Stamp It challenge over at Moxie Fab too.

Right card: and now for not my fav card. I love the flower and the sentiment but the rest of the card is just blah to me. It is missing something and I just can't figure it out. The layout is from CPS's current sketch challenge and the idea for the front of the card being cut off a little came from Jennier McGuire (I think) in an earlier class over at SYS. I thought the sketch lended itself to the idea quite well. I white embossed the flower from FTTE onto watercolor paper and then inked it up with shades of yellow and orange brefore spraying it gernerously with Perfect Peral Perfect Peral Mist. Love how it blended the colors together and gave the flower a nice shine. Once it was cut out I popped it up for some depth. For the sentiment I played around with the idea of stretching my sentiments and seeing just how many I could use together from this set. I ended up using 8 of the sentiments and I think they all read well together. For the blue strip I masked off the bottom part I wanted to keep white and rubbed some blue ink accross the top part. When the inked dried I then stamped the polka dots in Fresh Snow.

I am now 2 days behind in the SYS class but now that my VBS project I waited to the last minute is done and my pieced metal tutorail is done (this should be posted in the next couple of days) I am hoping to start catching up tomorrow. My goal is to have all of my cards from this class (total of maybe 11 days) done and posted by Sunday. It is a goal I think I can make, even if I just do one lesson a day.

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.

Hello You

I have so many ideas for the Stamp It! challenges over at the Moxie Fab blog that I am glad to know I have a month (almost) to get them all done. I did manage to whip these cards up last night for the Hello Stamp It! challenge though. I wanted to play along with the Mojo Monday sketch challenge and thought it would be a good time to use my Trendy Trees from PTI. The sketch was for either a circle or square card and I chose the square b/c I could get a second card out of it. I cut the c/s for a normal A2 base, folded it, and cut it down to the square. This left me with a scrap card left.

 
For the square card I used some old Basic Grey paper (I am so trying to use up my paper stash before i buy more) for the pattern strip. I stamped the tree trunck and top onto white c/s and mounted it onto some olive green paper. I thought this would be a fun card to have the sentiment come through a window on the front. To achieve this I but everything together with removeable tape and used a circle die to cut/emboss the opening. With all of the layers it didn't cut through even after severl passings but the embossed circle made it super easy to then complete the cutting for each individual piece. The sentiment (from the same stamp set) was stamped onto white c/s that was mounted onto kraft c/s that I sponged to get it the same color as the trunk. Love how it peeks through. To soften it a little I rounded the corners of card base. I am so digging those circles too (which is perfect for the CAS-Friday challenge).

With the scrap piece I had I decided to try creating a cute little scrap card (it is the 1.25 width of the above card). I wanted it to match the bigger card so I used the stamp tree top from Trendy Trees but this time stamped the tree off the edge some. The sentiment was placed above the card and this time I decided to try for the ground and sky so I sponged them on. LOVE how this one came together and super fast. This would look great attached to a gift.