Scrappy Sweet Creations: Hello

Showing posts with label Hello. Show all posts

Hello and Happy Tuesday!
My post is a little late, but we are excited to start a new challenge today at Tuesday Throwdown! Our theme for this week is Glimmer and Shine and our wonderful sponsor is Studio Katia!!!

I was able to get a few new products from Studio Katia for this challenge and I'm thankful for that! This peony is so breathtaking!! And I can tell that the Mandala stencil will be getting a lot of use from me!

To start my card, I did some really simple washy watercoloring on a piece of watercolor paper and set that aside to dry. I really wanted it to be soft and fade off at the edges so I made sure to concentrate my color in one area and then add lots of water around the edges to keep it moving so it would fade.

Once the watercolor was dry, I took the Mandala stencil and applied some Glass Bead Glitter Gel through it right over top of my watercolor. This gel dries clear but gives tons of sparkle so I knew my watercolored background would show through it. Set that aside to dry and worked on my peony from the Japanese Peony set.

I used some Daniel Smith watercolors for the flower and did some really simple painting on it. I thought about doing more detail, but I was running out of time and really just wanted it to be a simple flower.

After everything was dry, I adhered it all together. Foam tape behind the flower with a simple white embossed sentiment and everything is framed with a black mat.

I hope you'll stop by Tuesday Throwdown and join in this fun challenge for your chance to win an awesome prize from Studio Katia!!

Thanks so much for visiting! <3 read more →

Hello hello and Happy Monday!
Welcome back to a new challenge at Inky Paws!!
We have a gorgeous spring color palette for you to use for this challenge! Perfect to go with all those super cute little flowers poking up in some of your yards :)

For my card today, I stuck with a simple design, only using the adorable little kitty from Newton's Costume Party. But to start my card, I first created that circle in the background by doing an acrylic pour! I'm still learning how to do this, and I'm not entirely that good at it...but I've been practicing for awhile and trying to find ways to use this technique on my cards. So this card design felt like a good way to use it. I mixed some blue, yellow, and white paints in a cup and them poured them onto my circle die cut....and they all mixed massively together to make green! You can see a little bit of the other colors behind the kitty...but the green really took over.

So while that dried, I cut out a couple layers of vellum with a Hugs word die and also a simple white background for some extra fun detail. I stamped and colored up my kitty image and then trimmed him out.

When the circle die was finally dry...it took forever!! I adhered everything together onto my die cut background and added a few clear nuvo drops for a little extra shine.

I hope you'll join us for this fun color challenge!!!

Thanks so much for stopping by!!! <3 read more →

Hey!! Happy Monday!
Have you had the chance to check out the newest sketch challenge at Inky Paws??
I say this ever time, sketches are a great way to kick-start your creativity if you are struggling to come up with an idea. And this sketch is fabulous!

For my card this week, I pulled out the adorable Newton's Birdbath stamp set. I colored this sweet image up with my copics and then trimmed it all out so I could layer the image onto a little scene.

Then I created my background by blending a couple of distress oxide colors together and used the Radiating Rays stencil from MFT Stamps for some extra detail. I splattered the whole background with water and perfect pearls and set that aside to dry before cutting it out using the scallop frame from the Flags and Frames die set.

I layered my scallop framed oval onto the background and embossed my sentiment onto some vellum banners that I tucked behind everything.

I hope you'll give this sketch a try! Can't wait to see what you come up with!!

Thanks for stopping by! <3 read more →

Hello and Happy Monday!
We're continuing our Baby Theme this week over at Inky Paws! I hope you've had the chance to join in or at least stop by and check out the inspiration teams awesome creations!

For my reminder card this week, I used the super adorable set Newton's Sweetheart. I started by using the Tumbling Hearts stencil and dry embossing my background for some fun heart texture.

Then I stamped and colored up my image before fussy cutting these cuties out and layering them onto some grassy hills on a vellum circle.

I took out the Furr-ever Friends stamp set and using the paw print heart, I selected a few varying sized prints and stamped three of them out to look like the mom, dad, and baby prints.

Finished the card off with simple sentiment banner!

Thanks so much for stopping by! <3 read more →

Hey! Happy Monday!
Just dropping in to remind you of our current Inky Paws sketch challenge!
You have one more week to enter!

For my card today, I chose to work with the Cocktail Mixer set. I started by white heat embossing the marble background from My Favorite Things, and then ink blending over top of it with several shades of blue.

I layered a piece of vellum over that to layer my details onto. The Hello is die cut from some paper that I colored the same blue as the background. I colored up a few of the cocktail drinks, cut them out and layered them onto a plain white heart to help separate them from the busy background. I also added some star dust stickles to the drinks to give them shine.

Thank you so much for stopping by! <3 read more →

Hi Hi!! Happy Monday!!
We have a fabulous new challenge for you starting today at Inky Paws!! It's an awesome new sketch! I love working with sketches...they help to jump start the creativity. So I hope to see lots of your creations using this fun sketch!

For my card, I started by stamping some stripes across the background with a really light grey ink and then trimmed that panel out with a stitched rectangle.

On a black die cut rectangle, I used the new Tropical Leaves Stencil and inked it up with some Distress Oxide inks. Oxide's work great on black paper because they have a pigment property, so they sit on top of the paper and hold their color better. While the stencil was still in place, I misted it with some shimmer mist so that the leaves have a bit of sparkle to them.

While the leaves dried, I stamped and colored up my images from the Toucan Party stamp set. I loves these sweet toucans cuddled up next to each other! Their so adorable!! I fussy cut them out along with a few extra leaves and layered them onto a circle die cut that I had added a few really soft blended clouds to.

I flagged both ends of my little banner strip and stamped a simple Hi sentiment on each end, then layered that behind my images and placed that onto my leaf panel.

I hope you'll join us for this challenge! Just remember to use some Newton's Nook products on your projects!!

Thanks for visiting! <3 read more →

Hello hello!!
Welcome back! Have you joined our Polka Dot Inky Paws challenge yet??? You totally should!

How about a little inspiration?

This card...was quite the process to make! I had the idea in my head and it turned out pretty close to that vision...but it was a lot of steps to get it done!

I started by cutting a piece of heat resistant acetate to use as my front panel. Then applied some embossing paste through a zig zag polka dot stencil and coated that with some gold embossing powder. While that dried, I worked on my leaves.

To get some gorgeous coloring on those leaves, I did a washy watery background with some oxide inks, layering up a bunch of colors and splattering it with some water. Once that was all dry, I clear embossed some leaves from the Falling for Autumn set. I wanted to preserve all that fun oxide coloring but still add a bit of extra detail. So clear embossing them worked out well.

Once I had them cut out, I did a little rock and rolling with the leaf stamps again in some Versamark ink so that just the edges were inked up and I could add some gold embossing powder. They are so stunning! The multi colored tone they have with the gold flecking around the outside...stunners!

I cut out my sentiment and gold embossed that as well as embossed the acetate panel that had now dried. Assembled everything together with a black card base. So gorgeous!!!

I hope you'll join us! You only have a few days left so don't wait!!!

Thanks for visiting! <3

Happy Friday!
I hope everyone has had a fabulous week and is ready for the weekend!!
We went and saw Spiderman Homecoming last night and Oh-My-Gosh! Go See It!! I might be biased since we are a Spiderman loving family....but it was so darn good! Don't get me wrong, I have loved all of the Spiderman movies that have come out in the past. But there was something super special about this one. I'm not sure what it was...maybe it was the meaning behind its title - Homecoming. With Spiderman finally joining the Marvel/Avengers universe, it felt like he had finally made it home in this movie...I don't know. Now I'm rambling about nerd stuff :) Just go see it :)

So for today! We have an adorable new release for you from Sami Stamps! And we're starting a new Anything Goes challenge!!

This release is called Little Bumbles and I've used the Whiskers and Stingers image, which is so cute!
I actually took the time to create a card for a few challenges! It's been so long since I've done anything like that and I kind of missed joining in on some of my favorites.

So I followed the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches and threw a sweet shimmery sunset in for the challenge at Simon Says Stamp.

I started with some yellow dotted patterned paper and used a sun ray stencil to add a little bit of Fossilized Amber to the rays as well as some Lemon Sorbet Nuvo Mousse.

Cut and colored a few little hills and then colored up my kitty with some Copics. I layered him onto a vellum cut oval just to give a little frame around him from the scene behind him and then stamped a super cute sentiment from Newton's Nook.

I added a few Nuvo clear drops and that was it! Super simple card and still so adorable!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Addicted to Stamps and More #249-CAS
Freshly Made Sketches #295

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday-Summer Sunshine

I hope you will join us this month for our Anything Goes challenge! Just be sure to use a Sami Stamps image! <3

Hello everyone and happy monday!
I'm so excited!! Today is my first challenge post as a member of Newton's Nook's Inky Paws Inspiration Team!! AAHHAHHAH!!!!

Can you tell I'm excited for this? I love this company, I love Jennifer, and I never tire of using their products, so I can't wait to bring you tons of inspiration for the next 6 months on this team!

The challenge for the next 2 weeks is a color challenge. Here is what I created:

And here is the inspiration/color theme for the challenge:

This is such a nice summer color combo! There are so many ways you can use these colors and I know the rest of the ladies on this new inspiration team have created some incredibly awesome projects for you to gaze in awe at! Be sure to check each of them out on the Newton's Nook Inky Paws page.

For my card, I decided to make a bright and fun background with these colors. Since I just got the first collection of Distress Oxide inks in the mail, I wanted to give them a try. I loved all the examples showing how these inks could layer on top of each other and not muddy out. That would have been a huge problem trying to use the yellow and purple together since those colors combined just make brown...but if they could stay true with the oxides..well why not try! So I did a couple of tests and then worked on the final background. And it turned out gorgeous! I actually did the first layer with just the pink and purple. Then went back in with the yellow for the second layer and dabbed it into the places I wanted it. This allowed for the yellow to be a true color instead of mixing in weird ways with the other inks.

Once the background was done and dry, I used some Nuvo Embellishment Mousse through a stencil to get a really shimmery swirl background over top of all the colorful ink. It really glitzed this card up and made it so sparkly and gorgeous!

Because of all that shimmer, I wanted to keep the other details soft and simple. So I used more oxide inks and stamped out some of the leaves from Falling into Autumn onto some watercolor paper so I could do a little blending and shading with them before cutting them out and arranging them onto my card front around a dark grey frame.

I also stamped out and white embossed some butterflies from Beautiful Wings onto some vellum and trimmed those out to scatter around my card and over the leaves.

I white heat embossed my sentiment right onto the card front and then mounted it all onto a dark grey frame. I also added some glossy accent dots here and there around the details...but I learned something interesting....embossing mousse creates a slick surface. So the glossy accents just slide around on it...and end up moving into places you don't want it....keep that in mind if you ever use any sort of liquid over this mousse. It will move a little bit!

Fortunately mine didn't move too far and still looked nice on the card :)

Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you find this card inspiring and will join us at Inky Paws for our color challenge! You have 2 weeks to enter! Just remember to also use a Newton's Nook product!! <3

Happy Friday!
We have a super gorgeous release for you today from Sami Stamps as well as the start of a new challenge!

This release features some spectacular flowery mermaids that are just perfect to glitz up and put on a card!

I tried some new-to-me products on this card to try and make my mermaid all fancy and sparkly. I used the Spectrum Noir sparkle pens. Now, I've used the clear sparkle pen for quite some time and I love it, but I just picked up a bunch of the colored pens and wanted to give them a try. There weren't many color options with the bunch that I picked up (no green) so I tried blending some of the colors together to get what I wanted. It sort of worked...but I think maybe I need to use different paper to get them to blend better. Regular card stock just doesn't allow things to mix well.

But she turned out gorgeous anyhow and full of sparkle!

I added her to a washy watercolored card front with an oval cut piece of vellum to help her stand out a little bit. Then paired her with a fitting sentiment and a few clear droplets.

Our challenge this month is to Add Flowers!! We'd love for you to join us! Just be sure to use a Sami Stamps image!

Thanks for visiting! <3

Whoops...Totally forgot to post my card for this weeks Tuesday Throwdown challenge! Life has been a bit crazy lately...with releasing my new In Motion interactive card line last week, prepping for vacation, and trying to get a ton of stock ready for my first craft show of the year later this month...I've hardly had time to come up for air!

But, for this week at Tuesday Throwdown, we have a sketch for you!! I always work better with a sketch...it just helps to ignite the inspiration! And our fabulous sponsor is Kitty Bee Designs!

I used their Cat image and colored her up really simply with my markers. Layered her onto a background I created by blending a few blue inks together, then laying a stencil over top and misting the whole thing with water. The water reacted with the ink and lightened it up just a little bit so you can see the fun design.

I paired this with a sweet little strip of bee themed paper and an embossed Hi sentiment.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Check out the Tuesday Throwdown blog for more inspiration!! <3

Hello and Happy Friday!
Time for a super adorable new Sami Stamps release!!
Our release today is all about April the Giraffe!!! These images are just the cutest!! Sami always gets it right!

For my card, I have used the Shy Flower Giraffe image. I started by coloring the whole image with my markers to get a nice base color. Then came back in with my pencils and added all the shading and details. I love this combo of coloring mediums. I have terrible control with my markers, but pencils work great...getting a nice even blend on larger areas can be challenging with the pencils though. So having that solid base layer with the markers makes the blending out easier since the whole image is already colored.

Our new challenge for this month is to Emboss. So I used a stencil and some embossing paste for my background. I tried to be really loose and messy with it so that the edges were kind of rough and uneven...but I'm too clean and neat for that and it didn't totally turn out how I imagined. But I still love it. The soft texture is just enough detail to make the white on white background pop.

I finished off the card very simply with a couple sentiments from HoneyBee Stamps. The Hello was black embossed onto vellum and trimmed out so that the Lovely flag could be tucked behind it.

I added a black glitter strip and a pinkish/red patterned paper under the sentiments and then a few black enamel dots for fun.

Be sure to stop by Sami Stamps to see this fun release and all the DT's great projects! Then join in our Embossing challenge! Just be sure to use a Sami Stamps image!!

Thanks for visiting! <3

Hello everyone! Happy Friday!
It was quite the surprise to wake up to snow on the ground this morning...wasn't really expecting that. But it's been cold enough here that it is a welcome sight. Somehow snow always makes the cold more tolerable.

We are starting a new challenge today at Sami Stamps! This month we want to see you use Circles on your card!

I'll admit...I got everything put on this card and was working on the sentiment before I remembered that we had a challenge...so I had to rework the sentiment a little bit. But it ended up being perfect to put it on a circle and turn it into it's own little embellishment.

To start the card, I embossed the background with the Simon Says Stamp Zig Zag stencil. You need to have one of those rubber embossing mats in order to do this so that the rubber squishes the paper into the stencil. I had to add a few paper shims to get the right pressure, but it turned out perfect!

The 3 little strips are cut with the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles dies and then I did a really light swipe with some blue watercolor to get a brush stroke look for the background.

The images are Love Butterfly and Pretty Flower. I joined them together on my computer and then resized them to fit on those little die cut stripes. Once they were printed, I used some distress inks and watercolored them in, trying to make the flower appear white. I haven't quite figured out how to do that, but I think this one turned out pretty good. Adding a super dark shade to the shadow areas really made the white feeling pop.

I stamped my Hello sentiment onto a 1" circle and then clear embossed the entire thing with a double layer of Ultra Thick Embossing Powder. Finished the whole thing off with a few Sparkling Clear Sequins for just a touch more shine.

I hope you will join us this month for our Circles challenge! Just remember to use a Sami Stamps image!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Addicted to Stamps and More #227-Make Your Mark
    Freshly Made Sketches #273

Word Art Wednesday #268-Anything Goes

Thanks for visiting! Have a fabulous weekend! <3

Hello!!
Happy Thursday!

Today I want to share a little bit of info on how to really make your stamped images pop!
It's a technique that I've played around with a bit in the past, but it's also easy to forget how much of an impact it really makes on your cards.

For this project, I am using the Feathers and Florals stamp set from WPlus9.

These images are so gorgeous, but unless you have really stellar inks, it may be hard to get a good crisp stamped image. To help fix the splotchy stamping, I used pencils!

I know a lot of people will use their copic markers first and then add all the detail with pencils. I just don't have any copics, and I have much more control using pencils anyhow that it was easy for me to skip the marker coloring all together.

To start, you need to stamp your images. I like to stamp the image off on scratch paper a few times and then do my official stamping. This seems to help prime my stamp, even after it's been used a few times. Since most of my ink is super old Stampin Up pads, it takes a few tries to be sure the stamp is fully covered, and then I get pretty decent stamped images.

After stamping everything out, I die cut them all with the coordinating dies. I probably could have waited until I was done coloring, but I was just excited that I actually have the coordinating dies for this set, and let the joy of playing around mess up the process. But it still worked! The images were just a little more tricky to hold on to :)

To add the detail and depth, I pulled out my new Prismacolor pencils! These pencils are amazing! So soft and creamy...easy to break! But learning how to handle them gently just takes practice!

I selected 3 pencils in each color family that I stamped to work on my images with. The lightest should match the color used to stamp your image so that you get a nice solid even blend. Once you have them selected, start coloring the way you normally would! I usually start with my darkest first, so I colored in the "shadows" of the flowers in the centers and around the edges of each "petal." Then blended that softly with my medium color, and finally smoothed it all out with my lightest.

To help pull out a highlight, you can use a white pencil and just do simple little flicks in the highlight area to brighten it up! And voila! Gorgeousness!
Here is a comparison of the large flower with and without the pencil detailing:

As I said before, they are gorgeous left as is when stamped...but to add that little bit of punch, try doing some shading! It will add a whole new level to your card!

To finish off the card, I used a stencil to emboss the background and then layered that onto a woodgrain stamped panel. I used a few stamps from HoneyBee Stamps Beautiful Life stamp set and did a multi colored embossed sentiment onto a strip of vellum.

Just realizing now that I've done 2 "Beautiful Day" cards in a row...whoops! Must be a good sentiment right now :)

For the red border frame, I took the darkest red pencil that I used for the shadows and colored the edge of my panel. Then blended it out smooth with some Gamsol. Simple and now it matches perfectly to my card!

Thank you so much for stopping by! I hope this will help you to look at your solid stamps a little differently, and see how much you can change those images with a little extra added detail! <3

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Crafting When We Can #135-Anything Goes
Fusion Card Challenge-3rd Anniversary

Happy Tuesday!
Time to get rolling again with a new challenge at Tuesday Throwdown - Snowflakes! We're supposed to get a little snow here today...not sure if that will happen or not. Christmas break was lovely since we had snow the entire time! Granted it was only a dusting of it...but our porch stayed covered the whole time so every time we left the house, we saw snow :)

Our fabulous sponsor this week is the lovely A Day for Daisies, and they've provided us with gorgeous images to use on our projects.

I decided to use Little Cats Christmas for my card. After a pretty tough emotional weekend, it was nice to sit back and color these cuties up. I kept my card relatively simple, with a light ombre grey background using Hickory Smoke.

The sentiment strip was colored with some Prismacolor pencils and blended out with some gamsol to get the nice gradient color to it and then I white heat embossed the sentiment from Altenew's Beautiful Day stamp set.

I added a few vellum die cut snowflakes around the card, and put little tiny sequins in the middles.

The finishing touch was glossy accents on the little blue lights!

I hope you will join us for this challenge!

Thanks so much for stopping by! <3

Heelllooooooooooo!!!
It's been a little while! My absence these last few weeks has been because we took a vacation! We had a couple of weddings in Michigan to attend, so we made it our full vacation for this year! We went to the beach, spent lots of time with friends. We even went the Michigan's Adventure and had a total blast! I love vacations and doing all the things that we enjoyed as a kid :)

But now we are home and life has to return to normal. And what better way to come back than with a brand new Sami Stamps release! This one pairs perfectly with our Getting Stronger release from a couple weeks ago because this times it's all about the ladies!

My card features the Strong image. I love her! She's classy and feminine but also isn't afraid to hold her own. Such a perfect image!

To highlight this beauty, I did some fun watercolor washing for the background, mixing together a pink, purple, and green. While that was still wet, I splattered some glitter paint around it as well so it has some sparkle.

It's super hard to see, but the white card front has actually been dry embossed. I created my own custom stencil with my Silhouette by repeating the word "Strong" in an area that would fit my card front, and ran it through my embossing machine to get the design embossed on the paper. It's a perfect subtle detail for the card.

The image was colored with my pencils. The layout was inspired by the sketch at Case this Sketch, though it doesn't follow their design exactly. I liked the idea of having the details through the center of the card with the sentiment across the middle area.

For my sentiment, I knew I wanted it to be on vellum but I didn't have any stamps that said what I wanted them to. So I printed it off onto some white cardstock, and then traced it onto the vellum! Super simple and it's exactly what I want!

Everything is finished off with a few Sparkling Clear sequins from Pretty Pink Posh!

Stop by Sami Stamps to see this awesome release, and then join in our Anything Goes challenge!!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
CAS(E) This Sketch #183

Incy Wincy Designs-Anything Goes
Word Art Wednesday #242-Anything Goes

Thanks for visiting! <3

Hello!!!
I hope you are ready for another fun challenge at Tuesday Throwdown! This week we want to see your birthday themed cards!! And we have an awesome sponsor for you - Winnie & Walter!!! They have provided us with some uber amazing products for this challenge so be sure to stop by the Tuesday Throwdown blog to see lots of inspiration!

For my card, I have used the Scenery: Stripes stamp set and the In A Word: Hello Cutaway die. I have been dying to get my hands on a stripe stamp set for some time now, but they were always sold out or I opted to go with something else...so when the opportunity came to get this set from Winnie & Walter, I didn't hesitate :)

I figure you can never go wrong with having a good stripe set in your collection. There are a million things you can use it for!!

So I used one of the solid stripes in the set to stamp some blue and yellow stripes for my background. Originally I was just going to do an opening with the word die hung across it...but then decided it would look better as a shaker card! So I filled it with some fun Pretty Pink Posh sequins that coordinated well with the background. Then added a solid black frame around the oval and adhered my Hello word across the front.

The final detail I added was a few scattered sequins around the outside and some little black dots. Honestly, the card could have gone without these...I'm not super fond of them. But it's too late to remove them now, so oh well :)

Thanks so much for stopping by!! <3

Happy Friday!
Any fun plans for this weekend? The sun will be shining here so it will be nice and warm! Hoping to get a little yard work done with Matthew...but I foresee a lot of just relaxing :)

So today is another super cute release from Sami Stamps! This one is called Man's Best Friend and is full of super sweet little puppy images! I'm always a sucker for Sami's kitty images, but her pups are just as adorable!

For my card, I chose to use Moving:

We're also starting a new challenge for this month. We want to see some stripes on your projects!

Now I'm sure most of you have seen the fabulous video by Jennifer McQuire on how she makes multiple colored stripes on a card base. I adored that technique! It's one I've done in the past several times, but it does take a lot of work moving masks around and trying not to mess up your design. I thought it would go perfect with this image and challenge, so I gave it another shot today.

And wouldn't you know, I totally screwed up my first attempt. Had the whole panel nearly done when I tore right down the middle of it removing some masking tape....fortunately I had planned on that happening and had another card front ready to go to start right in on. The second time worked better, but I did tear it a little. Fortunately it was in a place I knew would be covered by the image so I didn't mind :)

I think the key with making this background is to remove some of the stickiness from your tape. This makes sure that it doesn't adhere too strongly to your paper.

The second key thing to keep in mind is that wet paper will tear easier. So if you want to completely prevent that, dry your paper between each color. I didn't dry it until I had the whole first layer down, but removing some of the stickiness helped keep everything from ripping too much for me.

Once the stripes were done, I went back over top of the design with a really thin striped stencil and added embossing paste. This helped give it great texture and sort of muted a lot of the colors. So even though I only used 4 colors on the background, it looks like there are a lot of different shades. Love it!

While the embossing paste dried, I worked on getting my image colored up. I started by adding a solid coat of marker to each part of the image. Then went back over top with my pencils to add all the shading and details. I absolutely love this technique! I have so much more control with pencils but having the base of color from the marker means the image will be a solid color even if my pencil lines are a bit streaky.

I wrapped everything up with a little vellum panel and a sentiment from Create with TLC! Oh and a few fun black glittery stars :)

Hope you will stop by Sami Stamps to see this fun release, and then join in our challenge!
And give yourself a gold star if you made it to the end! That is one giant wall of text here...but I wanted to explain everything I did so that you can give this fun technique a try!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
Crafting When We Can #120-Add Stars
    Incy Wincy Designs-Touchy Feely
    Paper Play Sketches #9
    Simon Says Stamp Wednesday-Mask It (I masked off each stripe for the background)
    The Crazy Challenge #223-Your Fav Color (blue!)

Thanks for visiting! <3

Hello everyone!!
Today is a huge day for me. Today I released my very first line of greeting cards! This may not seem huge to some people, but this is something I have been working on for months.

The purpose of this was I wanted to have a line of cards that would stick around in my shop. Something that I could replicate relatively easily and always have it available for purchase. I love doing one of a kind cards, but those aren't always as appealing as a set of cards at a lower cost.

The details of this release (which can be found on Etsy):
~There are 10 new designs!!
     ~5 of these designs are available as packs of 6
     ~5 of these designs are special occasion cards available for single card purchase, but can be
          purchased in multiples if desired

~Each design has multiple color options for you to choose from!
     ~I tried to keep all the colors close to the same from card to card so there wasn't a huge difference
       in each one

~You have 6 basic sentiments to choose from!!! This is perfect for your grab and go, or need a card
   quick type of situation
     ~Sentiments available:
           ~Congrats!
           ~Get Well
           ~Happy Birthday
           ~Hello!
           ~Thank You
           ~Thinking of You

~All the cards are blank inside unless you want a custom sentiment added. I do this so that you can write whatever you want without being limited on space

~Envelopes are always included

~The card packs are shipped in clear boxes within the shipping box to ensure they are protected while in transit, and you have something to keep them stored in until use.

This release was really spurred by one huge event for me though....
My application was accepted by Amazon Handmade!!! I am still working on getting that shop set up, but in the next few days you will be able to purchase everything I just released on Amazon! How cool is that!?

And because of Amazon, Scrappy Sweet Creations is now an official business!! I can't believe the huge steps forward this has taken, from just being something to keep me busy to my actual business! I love my job! :)

This whole process of getting the business running to putting together the card line has been a huge undertaking for me. It's something I've never really done before and it's been a lot of hard work figuring out the designs I wanted to release, making sure they had some sort of flow to them, and then putting physical products together so I knew what production time would be like and had something to photograph and post....it's been a good 3 months of working on this, but I'm so glad it all came together.

And I'm thankful to you...each and every one of you...for sticking by my side, showing your support and giving me the little boosts I needed to keep pushing forward. I love you all!!

So, after all that are you ready to see the release?? I'm only going to show you a few cards...you have to go to my Etsy shop (or Amazon when that is set up) to see the full release!

I'm so excited! And I hope with this greeting card release, you will see something you really want to have. That's what I'm here for, to provide you with handmade greeting cards that are perfect for every situation. Everyone loves to receive handmade cards and I hope that you will think of me when you need one :)

Thank you so much!!! <3 read more →

Hi Everyone!! Happy Tuesday!
Are you ready for another fun challenge at Tuesday Throwdown!?
This week we have an amazing color challenge for you! I fell in love with the colors in the image as soon as it was shared with me! I know you are going to absolutely love it as well! But first, let me share my card with you.

I tried a new technique on this card...can't say it turned out exactly the way I wanted it, but it was still pretty. It's a technique that Jennifer McGuire shared a few weeks ago called Watercolor Lifting. Now, I didn't use watercolors for my card (shocking, I know!) but I used distress inks and blended them onto my watercolor cardstock. Once they were blended the way I wanted them, I clear embossed some gorgeous flowers from the Hero Arts Flower Garden set around my panel, making sure to fill the whole space.

After heat setting those images, I took a baby wipe and wiped away some of the color, but the clear embossing helped protect the ink underneath so those areas stayed nice and dark. It's a gorgeous technique and I know I will give it another shot someday, I'm just not sure it totally worked on this card. Maybe I didn't fill enough space with the images so the washed out background takes over too much? I'm not sure...

But to help pull it all together, I blended the same blue I used on the background around my sentiment and then mounted that onto a scallop cut black frame. I lined the back of that with some fun foam and then did a little silver string nest underneath before securing it to the card front.

Since there is so much clear embossing on this panel, I decided not to add any more embellishments since I feel it would have over cluttered the card. I mounted all of this onto a black panel and the card was done.

I hope you will join us at Tuesday Throwdown for this fun challenge using these colors and neutrals: