Art Soul

Welcome back!  This is my second post today and I've had the idea for this card in my head since I saw the cue word at CASology this week.  I had to get it out of my head and onto a card so I could actually concentrate on making DT cards today :)

As soon as I saw the cue word of Art, I thought of this wood-mounted stamp I have that is one of my oldest stamps.  I love this saying and knew I had to make a card using it.  I used the Color Throwdown colors and some ink blending to put together this card.

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."  What a wonderful and true saying.

I used the Tim Holtz splatter stencil and sponged Wilted Violet, Festive Berries, Picked Raspberry and Scattered Straw ink over it.  NB:  When I saw the colors, I thought the peach color was a yellow, so apologies to the CTD team, but with the ink blending, it sort of came out peachy anyway!  I went back and forth several times to get a good blend of colors.  Once I was happy with that, I stamped the sentiment.  And, being a wood-mounted stamp, I couldn't use my Misti :(  I hadn't realised how much I relied on that tool for my sentiment stamping.  In the end, I didn't want to ruin the sponging, so I dug out my Stampamajig and used that.  I wasn't game to ink and re-stamp though, so it only got one stamping.

I finished the card with some rainstones which add a bit of dimension but don't detract from the image and sentiment.

Because I just love these colors so much, I'm also entering this in Virginia's View challenge.

Thanks for visiting.

Products used:

Stamps:  Art Soul (Hampton Arts)

Ink:  Archival Black, Scattered Straw, Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries, Wilted Violet

Cardstock:  White

Accessories:  Splatters Stencil (Tim Holtz), Rainstones (PTI)

Cheers

Karren

Edited to Add:  This card got a shout out at CASology.

Four Pears

It's Sunday night here and time to get ready for another working week!  I did take some time today though to make a card using this week's colors from ColourQ.

When I saw these colors, I immediately thought of pears for some reason, so I hunted through my pear stamps for something suitable.  This stamp from Hampton Art Stamps was perfect and I decided to go for a loosely watercolored look.

I white embossed the pears stamp onto watercolor paper then spritzed liberally with water.  I then loosely colored the pears using Summer Starfruit ink.  Once that dried, I re-spritzed and colored with Cool Caribbean ink.  As some of the starfruit ink had run into the background, I decided to spread some starfruit ink across the whole background to give a greenish tint.  

I spent more time trying to decide how to finish the card that coloring it!  I didn't want to cover up the image so I kept it very simple, using a sentiment from PTI's Meadow Greens set.

I'm also linking this up at the Linky Party at Seize the Birthday.

Thanks for looking.

Products used:

Stamps:  Four Pears (Hampton Art Stamps), Meadow Greens (PTI)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Summer Starfruit, Cool Caribbean
Cardstock:  Crumb Cake, Basic Black, Tim Holtz Watercolor Paper, Xpress-it
Accessories:  1 1/4" circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, aquapainter

Cheers
Karren

The Dust of Everyday Life

After a bit of a stressful week, I made it into my craft room today to make a couple of cards.  This card uses the fab colors from Color Throwdown and the cue word "Paint" from CASology.  I'm also linking this up to Stampin' Royalty as it's a CAS card.

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life"  I love this saying.  This stamp is very old and made by Hampton Art Stamps.  I stamped it in Memento Tuxedo Black onto Whisper White and then over-stamped the paint splatter images from Grunge Me in both Tangerine Tango and So Saffron.  I layered that panel onto a piece of Tangerine Tango after rounding the top left corner.

The inside mimics the front:

Thanks for looking.

Products used:

Stamps:  Art Soul (Hampton Art Stamps), Grunge Me (PTI)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Tangerine Tango, So Saffron
Cardstock:  Whisper White, Tangerine Tango
Accessories:  Corner Chomper

Edited to Add:  This card got a shout out at Color Throwdown.

Cheers
Karren

Fossil Butterflies

Welcome back to another Freshly Made Sketch Challenge!  This week, the lovely Narelle has given us a wonderful sketch that allows so much freedom.  Check this out:

I need a birthday card for my mother and as my mother introduced me to stamping all those years ago, I'm sure you can appreciate I feel some pressure to make a pretty special card for her!

This is what I come up with after an inordinately long time!  My mum loves butterfly and dragonfly stamps.

The background panel is a piece of glossy white which was colored using the Fossil Stone technique.  I used Pool Party, Marina Mist, Wisteria Wonder and Elegant Eggplant inks for this technique.  Once that dried, I stamped over it with Hampton Art Stamps 'Mariposa' stamp.  A dry-embossed piece of vellum was laid over top and stuck down under the pearls.  The butterfly comes from Best of Butterflies and was colored using blue and purple Copic markers before being cut out.

The sentiment is from Birthday Bash Sentiments and at the last hurdle, I put a tiny smudge of black ink in the bottom right corner, hence the random pearls!

Here's a shot of the inside so you can see the Fossil Stone without the vellum layer.

Happy Birthday, Mum!  Love ya!

I hope you have a chance to make a card using Narelle's sketch.  In the meantime, check out the rest of the Design Team inspiration.

Products used:

Stamps:  Hampton Art Stamps, Best of Butterflies (SU), Happiest of Birthdays (SU)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Pool Party, Wisteria Wonder, Marina Mist, Elegant Eggplant
Cardstock:  Glossy White, Whisper White, Xpress-it, Basic Black, Vellum Cardstock
Accessories:  Plastic Folder, Elegant Lines EF, Basic Pearls, Copic Markers

Cheers
Karren

Neutral Collage

Today I'm submitting a card for a new-to-me challenge called Mod Squad Challenge.  I loved the Mod Squad TV show when I was a kid, so how could I not enter this challenge :)  

(In the interests of not appearing too old, I would like to point out that in New Zealand, we got TV shows years after they screened in the US.... LOL)

The challenge is to find a designer that you like and case one of their cards.  I chose Jen Mitchell, whose stamping style I really admire.  Finding a card to case involved a pleasant visit to her blog, where I found this card from November last year.

I decided to case the colors and the collage style of Jen's card.  My card is quite a bit different in layout but I hope you can see where the inspiration came from:

This is a one-layer card and uses many stamps from Stampers Anonymous and Hampton Art Stamps.  I masked off an area of my card base and randomly stamped images using Always Artichoke, Sahara Sand and Crumb Cake ink.  The sentiment is a Penny Black stamp and was stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I stamped a star in Crumb Cake and cut it out before lightly sponging the edges.  I thought I'd randomly placed some Candy Dots, but looking at the photo, I can see I ended up with a near perfect triangle :)

The inside was finished in a similar manner:

Thanks for looking.  Go check out the new challenge.  It looks like it's going to be fun.

Products used:

Stamps:  Stampers Anonymous, Hampton Art Stamps, Collections, Penny Black, Seeing Stars (SU)
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Sahara Sand, Crumb Cake, Memento Tuxedo Black
Cardstock:  Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Neutrals Candy Dots

Cheers
Karren