You're Sweet

Happy Saturday, peeps!  It's going to be another rainy weekend here in PA....I am beginning to feel like a mushroom, although we did have a couple of nice days during the week...I just wish the weekends would get the message!  I have a fun little card today for three challenges:  Festive Friday is looking for stripes; Time Out wants playful, and CAS Watercolour wants a card for a child:

This tower of ice cream cones has always been one of my favorites, especially for children; I stamped it on some SU watercolor paper and colored it with various yummy ice cream shades, then coated it with some Wink of Stella and fussy-cut it out, mounting it on another piece of watercolor paper I painted with Balmy Blue ink:

As much as I like ice cream (make that LOVE ice cream!), I think this much would probably give me a tummyache!  I mounted my panel on a striped piece of DSP, added a few sequins:

and finished it off with a sentiment from the retired set, Sweet Stuff, coloring those itty-bitty letters with some matching ink as well; I die-cut it with a tag punch, added some baker's twine (more stripes), and it's good to go:

Thanks for popping in today---YOU'RE sweet!!  

Cassidy has been wearing shorts and a t-shirt lately; I was surprised when came yesterday morning wearing a Yoda hoodie!!  You can never tell with this girl!

 Enjoy your day and be blessed!  Be sure to come back tomorrow for a new Paper Players challenge too!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Sweet Stuff (ret), All Smiles (Unity)
Card stock & Papers	Whisper White, Watercolor, French Flea Market DSP (Photo Play)
Ink	Stazon, Balmy Blue, Misc Reinkers
Accessories	Sequins from my Stash, Baker's Twine (Avery Elle)
Tools	Big Shot, Stitched Rectangle Die, Stitched Tag Dies (Pretty Pink Posh), Aquapainter

RRCB98 Harvest Delight

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  It's time for this October's last Retro Rubber Challenge, and here is our prompt:

Isn't that pretty?  SO many inspirations here!  I chose the basket and the pumpkins, and thought I would try my hand at the October CAS Watercolor challenge of orange, green and brown as well:

I've had this Close to My Heart fall set since 2016 but in my research, I think it came out around 2011!  Before stamping, I loosely colored some watercolor paper with Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive and Granny Apple Green inks, drying it between colors with my heat tool.  I then stamped the image with Soft Suede and Versamark inks, using my Stamparatus to stamp the brown ink first, then after cleaning the stamp but leaving it on the plate, inking and stamping with Versamark.  I then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder.   

I added some more color in certain areas, to give it depth, and I actually took my finger and rubbed the ink around the edges for texture!  That really brought out the grain of the watercolor paper and gave it an organic look!

I added a banner with a sentiment, some green perle cotton, then matted it with some Early Espresso and popped it up on a Crumb Cake mat that was embossed with the Basketweave EF:

Although my fingers were green and orange when I finished, it was a fun card to make!  I hope you'll get some inspiration from our pretty photo and play along with us this week at Retro Rubber!  Remember, your stamps have to be at least a year old and you must tell us how old they are!  Check out the other samples at our blog and share yours too!  Give those older stamps some love!

So one of our friends and church members is a farm manager at The Farm at Doe Run, which is a lovely farm near us; Josh kindly lent us the farm's apple press where everyone got in the act of making cider at the Harvest Party on Saturday!  Even our dear friend John, the one-armed man (cancer) could toss the big apples into the press:

As Josh cranked the wheel, the apples, seeds, cores and skin, all got mashed up and the juices started to flow:

Then he took off the grinder and set up the press; his son Avery got first dibs at turning the crank, which in turn, pressed the apples down even harder!  If you look closely, you can see the juice flowing out into the bowl at the bottom:

(Cassidy was not in the least bit interested in this, so you won't see her anywhere!  She was busy teaching two of her little friends her latest karate moves!!!)  Anyway, the kids who wanted to, all got a chance to turn the press:

I can honestly say it was the best cider I ever drank!  There was even enough left over for Sunday School fellowship time!  Yum!  Thanks for popping in today...enjoy it and be blessed!

Crushing on Curry

Happy Friday, peeps!  I had a bit of a rough day yesterday so I hunkered down in my craft room last night for a bit of stamping therapy!  Neither is stellar but at least I got inky!  They both use Crushed Curry ink, too!  The first is for CAS(E) this Sketch:

I pulled out some stamps that hadn't seen ink for a long time!  A plaid background from Unity (Gurnsey Gingham) and a little thumbprint set from Clearly  Besotted (In Print) seemed like a fun match:

This little kitty is stamped in Crushed Curry and Soft Suede on Very Vanilla cardstock.  I used a MFT die and some retired SU burlap ribbon:

He just makes me smile!   My second one is for the Happy Little Stampers challenge of Diecuts as well as the CAS Watercolour Card Challenge for August, which is sunflowers:

      

I diecut two flowers from some watercolor paper, using a MFT Stitched Flowers die, then watercolored them with Crushed Curry and Soft Suede inks, since I already had them on my desk!  I layered them together, then I added some Old Olive leaves and stem, and mounted them on a Whisper White card that had been embossed with a Lil'Inker Stitched Rectangle die:

The sentiment is from SU's Beautiful Bouquet!  This card was partly inspired by Bonnie's birthday card to me; this picture doesn't do it justice, it is even prettier IRL!

And here's another floral beauty from my friend Linda H:

And this beauty is from my Paper Players teammate Jaydee:

Thank you ladies, for my beautiful cards!  More coming in the next few days!

Cassidy has been saving her money to buy a skateboard, and I thought it might be a good idea to get her one at a yard sale to try out  first!  We hit a fabulous yardsale right around the corner from our house and managed to score a Penny skateboard, two helmets, a boogie board and a plastic toboggan, all for $1 each!!  Look at the look on her face:

So far this is the only way she's been able to ride on it, LOL!

Give her time!

Enjoy your day and be blessed!

AYSI173 Just Sitting Here

Happy Friday, peeps!  It's time for another As You See It challenge; this week it's a sketch, with lots of room for interpretation:

First, before I share my card, I must confess that I CASEd this idea from Loll at  CAS Watercolour Challenge!  Their challenge this month is "bird", and I just loved her card with the little bird diecut against that beautiful watercolored background!

 I thought it would work well with our sketch challenge, so I just had to make my own: 

My own background was a happy accident!  I love to watercolor WITHIN the lines, but doing a random background like this makes me very nervous!  I started out by embossing the big fuzzy image from Touches of Texture twice in Versamark and clear embossing powder; I positioned it once on my Stamparatus, then turned my watercolor paper and stamped it again.  After heat-embossing the image, I just began filling in the area around it with various shades of green ink.  Imagine my surprise when it ended up looking like a big white hydrangea (at least that's what it looks like to me!)!!!  

I added some stamped leaves from Blooms and Wishes to continue to floral look, then diecut a bird  from a scrap of watercolor paper using the Birds and Blooms framelits. I watercolored it in some wren-ish colors and positioned him atop the edge of the blossom, and then added a sentiment from Sitting Here, stamped in Basic Black:

I didn't punch out the diecut areas of the bird, but left them intact by putting a little piece of tape on the back to hold the wing and the eye in place.  I mounted my watercolor piece on a card of Thick White Cardstock and I really love how it feels like a little piece of art!  

I hope you will play along with our sketch at As You See It this week!  Everyone really rocked the color challenge we had, so let's keep the mojo going!  You can check the samples from the DT here, and share yours with us as well!

So apparently this was the year for unusual egg dying! Not only did Cassidy tie-dye eggs, she painted some:

and she even dyed some with rice....the rice and the dye go into a baggie, then the egg gets shaken in the baggie, and the dye is transferred to the egg!

And big kid Wayne even got in on the action!

Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Touches of Texture, Sitting Here, Blooms and Wishes
Card stock & Papers	Watercolor, Thick White
Ink	Garden Green, Tranquil Tide, Basic Black, Chocolate Chip, Crushed Curry, Versamark
Accessories
Tools	Heat Tool, White Embossing Powder, Big Shot, Birds and Blooms Framelits, Mini Dimensionals, Dimensionals

Epic Celebration Guitar

Happy Wednesday, everyone!  This is my first foray into using Brushos!  A few months ago I had no clue what they even were, but now SU is selling some so I thought I would give them a try.  There is definitely a learning curve and I have found lots of help on the internet, but there are several different ways to use them!  So I am in practice mode right now!  I am happy that SU has come out with some masculine stamp sets this spring and I thought the guitar from the SAB set Epic Celebration would be perfect to use with the CAS Watercolour Challenge for January, which is Birthday!

I started out with some cheapie watercolor paper, since as I said, I was in "practice" mode, and I was pretty happy with my first one...I made two, they're very similar but of course, with any watercoloring, no two are ever alike! So here we go with the first one: 

I stamped my image and sentiment with Versamark and black ink together, then heat-embossed them with clear embossing powder; I used an aquapainter to lay down some water around the images, then sprinkled on blue and yellow Brusho and tilted the paper a bit, "helping" the color spread with my aquapainter.  It looks pretty "epic"!!  The sentiment was punched out with a circle punch and matted with Basic Black cardstock diecut with the Scalloped Layering Framelit.  The card base was Crushed Curry:

Same technique, card base is Dapper Denim:

You can see how different each one is, depending on how much Brusho you use and how it blends!  Definitely need more practice!  

 Cassidy went to a birthday party before Christmas...the little boy's mom and Dana went to Sunday School together and now their children are too!  In the background, you can see my great-nephew Jameson as well!  It's a family affair!

Enjoy your day and be blessed!

CAS Butterfly for July

Hello peeps!  I am bravely attempting another watercolored creation for the CAS Watercolour challenge for July, which is butterfly!

I began by heat embossing the butterfly from Butterfly Basics on some watercolor paper with Versamark and clear embossing powder, then loosely watercoloring all around it with some Flirty Flamingo and Calypso Coral inks:

I ran it through the Big Shot with the Butterflies die, only cutting it to just shy of the center, then turning it and cutting it again, so that there was still an uncut portion in the center.  I folded up the wings and added a layer of Dazzling Diamonds gimmer paper underneath; can you see it peeking through?

And then I added a scalloped mat of Calypso Coral; the sentiment is from Paper Pumpkin.  I mounted everything on a Very Vanilla card.  With a generic sentiment like "hello", it could be used for most any occasion!  I might go back and add a couple of sequins, but for now, I'll just leave it as it is! 

Dana's gift to me for Mother's Day was one of those painting classes....a bunch of people get together and they all paint the same picture!  I had myself pretty convinced that I could not do this....I am no artist! But the teacher explained everything and it was pretty fun!

 I chose a sunflower!  Dana's is on the left, mine is on the right!

It's funny how everyone starts with the same "ingredients" and yet the end result is a unique creation!  Thanks for popping in today!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Butterfly Basics, Itty Bitty Backgrounds (ret), Paper Pumpkin (Hello Sunshine)
Card stock & Papers	Very Vanilla, Watercolor, Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer, Calypso Coral
Ink	Versamark, Calypso Coral, Flirty Flamingo
Accessories
Tools	Big Shot, Butterflies Thinlets, Layering Squares Frameliets, Aquapainter