Digital challenge

My card making group is having another week of challenges and I decided to host one this time, my first.... while trying to decide what to do, my hubby said I could use one of his pictures if I would like.  The original picture was drawn on I think 9 1/2 by 13 paper, so he had to shrink it quite a bit, this is a 3 " image that I fussy cut.  I choose this image because he named it Summer Breeze.  I colored it with markers.

Image -- drawn by my hubby, printed out and colored w/markers
Poppy Stamps -- stitched landscapes die
Memory Box -- Bare Saplings die
Taylored Expressions-- Flower box sprigs and flowers dies
Dee Distinctively -- Tree Toppers dies
Stickles -- vintage photo
Pop Dots -- for tree leaves and top of head

I did a little inking of a hill in the background and blue skies and inking on the landscape die and tree leaves.

Hope your enjoying a good weekend.  Although it is cloudy today, they are saying no more rain, so after church we are going to try and tackle the lawn while we have a break from the rain, hope if you have had  a lot of rain lately you are getting a little break too.

Thanks so much for taking the time out to stop by, Love hearing from you,

Connie

Rubber stamp faux mosaic

I think that is the name they gave this technique anyway.  I had seen this technique quite awhile ago but that was before Pinterest, LOL!  So when I had some extra rubber, you know back in the day when you had to cut the stamps out yourself, I saved the rubber to do this technique ..... well as I do I saved it away for when I wanted to try it and then when I came across it much later I thought what was I saving this rubber for, but I continued to save it just in case I remembered, then the other day cardmaker magazine blog had the technique on their blog and I was so excited that I found what to do with my extra rubber that I pinned it and made it the next day.  Well I just went to go get the link for you and it has been taken away.  I will try my best to explain.

I took my left over rubber that I saved.  Found a stamp block that I have never used, it came in a set of stamps I bought at a yard sale, so I just used that to glue my cut up pieces of rubber, leaving a little bit of a gap between the pieces.

You will have a colored picture or any image you have ready the same size as the rubber you have done or smaller.  I then inked up my rubber with Versamark ink or any clear embossing ink you may have, and placed my stamped and colored image on top of my rubber so I could make sure it was lined up correctly, I put another sheet of paper over that and while holding one side down I would rub one half of the image and then do the other half the same way and carefully lifted my image off and then added my clear embossing powder.  Heat set the embossing powder.  Now this is the mistake I made you were suppose to let it cool completely before inking your image but I went right to inking and I think that is why I had a little bit of a blur around the edges.  I believe the girl use a brayer to add ink, but I just took my blending ink tool from Tim Holtz to apply my ink.

Here is my finished card I made for my little brother.

Stampscapes -- Cabin, colored w/markers and used the technique above
Spellbinders -- Labels 29 and A2 matting basics A dies
Hot off the press -- Sarabooks ivory papers and tag
Gina K designs -- tag lines sentiment stamp
Poppystamps -- Leafy sprig die
Button
Twine

I hope if you have some extra rubber lying around and want to try this that my instructions are clear enough for you.

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend,

Connie

Postcard Birthday

 I made this card for my Sister in law.

 I am sharing it over at  Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration.  I really didn't expect Stephanie to have it this week, you see she lost her Grandpa last week and had to travel a long distance to see him for the last time. Continued prayers for you Stephanie that God may bring you peace and only smiles come to your face as you remember your sweet Grandpa.

I have always loved postcards on cards but the stamps were usually quite large and I didn't want it to cover my whole card, then I saw this the other day at my LSS and I decided to buy it.  It has a nice distress feel to it too that I like.  Since my other love is flowers well that had to happen too :)

When cutting out the flower dies I didn't quite like how they were coming together so I did a few extra cuts in the flowers to get them to shape the way I wanted them to look.

Whimsy stamps-- Vintage postcard
K&co. -- Blue Awning paper
Technique Tuesday -- Happy Birthday sentiment stamp set
Spellbinders -- A2matting basics A and Flour bouquet dies
Forever in time -- Pearls
Martha Stewart -- Leaves Punch
EK Success -- little flowers punch
Stickles -- vintage photo for the little flower centers

I hope you all had a nice weekend.  My heart goes out to those people that have been struck by the tornadoes and flooding.  We are thankful that even though we had the tornado warnings all we had was very high winds and pelting rain.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and Have a wonderful week,
Connie

Thumping Technique

My cardmaking group had another challenge to use thumping technique on your card.   I was in need of another sympathy card so I decided to use this technique on that card. You can google and probably find better instructions but the short of it is to take your water based markers and color your stamp, then take another color and just pounce the second color over it and stamp onto your paper, I did the technique on the flowers and the stems using distress markers. The vellum has been heat embossed with white embossing powder.

Unity Stamp Company -- Insightful Meadow, colored w/distress markers
Spellbinders -- Classic Ovals and Floral ovals dies
My Mind's eye -- Indie chic paper
Taylored Expressions -- Care & comfort stamp sentiment
Bazzill -- Brads

I hope we can all take out time tomorrow to think about all the men and woman who gave their life for our freedom, and their families who miss them so much.

Thanks so much for stopping by, look forward to hearing from you,

Connie

Wish Big

I was able to get some time to play yesterday, I decided to go with something quick because I need to make sure I would be able to hand deliver it to a friend at church on Sunday. There are 4 layers on this card, I forgot to get a side picture but I really want to get this posted before everyone starts to wake up.  The images are from Hunkydory, they do some Lovely and whimsical images.  I broke out my Grand dies so this card measures 5 1/2 inches.  Since I won't be mailing it I didn't have to worry about all the layers.

After die cutting the base, the top layer and the tag, all I had to do was stamp the sentiment and add a few gems here and there, of course it needed a butterfly too :)

Hunkydory-- Flutterbye Wishes-- Pink Posies
Spellbinders -- Grand Scalloped Circles dies
Martha Stewart -- Butterfly punch
Taylored Expressions -- Designer Mini tags dies and Many Minis Occasions stamp sentiment
Recollections -- Indesecent gems on flowers in background
Clear gems on butterfly

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.  We have a bit of rain in our forecast once again, thank goodness for a few breaks so we could get the lawn mowed, I am a bit behind on my weeding though. Haven't done any of that while the kids have been home visiting, but they will be leaving this weekend and the next time we have a dry spell I will be a busy girl out there .

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by, I really appreciate you letting me know you visited,

Connie

Happy Day

I am linking this card this morning that I made for my great nephew with Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration .

  I was visiting with my nephew and his wife a couple years ago and their little boy was really into animals big time, planning on working at a zoo when he grew up. He asked me if the next time I made him a card could I put animals on it, I did last year and I did again this year, although when I just saw him at our family reunion he is now into that Minecraft game, I imagine his likes will continue to change as he grows, since I didn't have anything minecraft I went with the animals again :)

On the oval die cut (sentiment) I tried the technique where you add the ink to the outside edge of your spellbinder die, the edge that embosses, then you place it over your image and die cut it, the ink will transfer only to the outside edge, it works pretty good, but sometimes you have to touch it up a bit.  It was one of the techniques I learned while working for Spellbinders a few years back.


My mind's eye -- Lost and found 2 paper
Inky Antics -- Balloon kitties, colored w/markers
Hot off the press -- Dazzles- Black Jewel
Spellbinders -- Classic Circles, Inverted scalloped Circles and Big Scalloped Ovals

I am enjoying a wonderful visit with my Daughter and Son in law this week, I hope to be back in a couple of days with another card, they have some work they need to do, so I will sneak away to my craft room while they are gone.

Hope your enjoying a wonderful week so far,
Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by, Love hearing from you,

Connie

Collage

This card went out to a long time on line cardmaker. She is into mixed media stuff now and so I tried to do a little bit of an artsy look to this card.  Used a couple different stamp sets and some stenciling. Hand cut the flowers.  I used a glitter pen on the butterfly but just couldn't pick that up in my pictures.

Tim Holtz -- Papillon stamp set for Background and butterfly
Hero Arts -- CL426 stamps for Flowers and stem
Tim Holtz-- Dot Fade stencil (added to the background in a couple of places) using Forest moss distress ink and also used that ink around the edges of the card
Pearl pen-- Salmon (centers of the smaller flowers)
Spica pen -- twinkling like stars  on butterfly

My daughter and son in law will be here this afternoon, I am getting very excited to see them.  We are having a bit of rain here this morning so I am hoping that they are not going to hit any bad storms.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I appreciate you letting me know,
Have a great weekend!

Connie

Christmas and piercing

I am back to share a challenge that my cardmaking group has this month.  Make a Christmas card with piercing, With all the new dies coming out now with pierced holes she thought we could break out those dies or if we didn't have them we could pierce on our own, I don't have any pierced dies so I had to do my own piercing.

I just love the look of this flower done with metallic foil paper.  My piercing was on both the image panel and my sentiment panel by just piercing in the scallops.  With the bottom flourish,(next to my sentiment tag) I first embossed a folder onto some scrap paper, then laid that on the bottom of my card and followed the design of the flourish and pierced through to my card base.  If you have a stamp you could stamp onto a scrap piece and lay it over and follow that, or just make up your own design, but I tried that on my first base and didn't like it so I went with this way.

Can you believe no designer paper was used in this card, I know it is hard for me to believe too, I stamped both the flower background and sentiment tag backgrounds.

Here is another picture with a little less shine on the flower.  To give the flower some dimension I used foam adhesive between each 3 layers of the flower and did a little shaping with my stylus tools.

PoppyStamps -- Blooming Poinsettia die
Metallic Foil Board
Stampin up -- pine stamp 1997 (background for flower)
Spellbinders-- Classic Scalloped Sq. Sm and Big Scallooped Circles Lg dies
Darcie -- Flourishes embossing folder (for piercing)
Inkadinkado -- Greetings/Salutations stamp set (sentiment and snowflake background to tag)
Making Memories -- Wreath brad

Every year I am always last minute making Christmas cards, if I can keep up with these challenges I may just have a pretty good head start.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and for letting me know you did, I love hearing from you,

Connie

Cherry Blossoms

Good Morning, so glad you dropped by, I am sharing my post once again over at Stephanie's Roses of Inpsiration , if you get the chance stop by her blog and check out all the great posts.

For the life of me I can't remember the name of the technique I used here, but I tried once again to cut a portion of the image by hand and then add my die to cut the rest of the shape and I still can't get the hang of it, this time I feel it turned out better than last time so maybe I just need more practice.

I layered two of the border dies together and inked through the die to get the color in there.

Stampablities -- Cherry Blossoms, colored w/markers
Rasberry Road Designs-- Love lives here paper
Spellbinders -- Standard circles, Picot edge circles and A2 Scalloped Borders Two dies
Taylored Expressions -- Designer Mini tags die
Technique Tuesday -- Happy Birthday sentiment stamps
Kaiser -- Pearls

After getting many days of rain our grass has just taken off  as well as the weeds so we have a lot of outside work ahead of us today before the next batch of rain comes at the end of the week.  Hope wherever you are you didn't get hit by that bad weather.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and let me know you dropped in,
Have a great week,

Connie

Bunny and Mother's Day

My hubby was able to get the picture off my phone and way too easy too.  We had a strawberry patch planted close to the house and these are some weeds we hadn't cut back yet that the little guy or gal was hiding behind, so tiny, I haven't seen them since but have seen their Momma around a few times.

Isn't that just adorable, I so wanted to see if I could pick them up but I let them alone.

We have been having quite a bit of rain for the past few days but Sunday morning started off so nice and sunny, just Beautiful couldn't have asked for a better morning.  After our church service we headed home and my hubby cooked us steaks on the grill.  Had a lovely hour talk with my daughter on the phone (she will be here in a week )  and then it started getting quite dark out and the rain came back and it is still raining this morning, our ditch out back is flooded but so far isn't coming up into the yard yet.  I hear there are so many people dealing with flooding and snow.

My hubby made me a Mother's day card.  Ever since he started doing these Mosaic type art he has printed off little squares of his artwork he has done in the past and he is adding them to his little mosaic creations.  The one he used on my card is a painting he had done of me taken from a picture he took of me when we were dating, he did a pretty good job of capturing me, I should have looked for the photo to show you.

Because my lighting isn't very good this morning with all the rain you can't see all the sparkle that is on this card.  The framing was done by cutting up a couple background dies and then inlaying the sparkle paper. He framed the picture with more little tiny squares.

Hope you had a nice weekend and that your week is off to a very nice start too!

Thanks so much for stopping by,
Connie

Achievement

My Niece has just finished college, she has 3 boys, teenager, two younger and a very supportive husband,  she decided to go college and she did very well too.  She took on a lot so I wanted to make sure she knows how wonderful I think she is!

I thought this definition worked perfectly for a graduation card. I layered the felt flower diecuts and then stitched french knots to keep the layers together.

Hot off the press -- Cardmaker's card quotes definitions
Chalking and inking on the definition tag
Colorbok -- Homespun paper
Spellbinders -- A2 matting basics A&B and Labels 25 dies
Stamps of life -- Standup4sentiments stamp set
Cuttlebug flower dies from felt

Well I tried getting the picture of that bunny off my phone the way I use to send pictures to myself on my old phone and it isn't working. I don't want to put email on my phone so I don't know if I will be able to share that with you or not, I am sure if I ask my hubby to figure it out but that isn't high on his to do list, LOL!

Hope all you Mother's out there have a wonderful day tomorrow and those of you that are blessed to still have your Mother enjoy that time together!

Thanks so much for stopping by, I really appreciate hearing from you,

Connie

Stamped Background

I decided to do a stamped background and then use an embossing folder over it for this card.  These stamps are all from a bucket of little stamps from Inkadinkado including the sentiment stamp.  I used my stamp a ma jig to line up the stem and leaves with the flower, since these are all red rubber with foam stamps.

I used a gold pen to go around the sentiment die cut so that it stood out from the background, before putting it together I thought I would go around the edges of the card to tie it all in, well as you can see that is hard to do when you have already embossed it, next time I would do the gold pen and then emboss. I was going to try more to feel in but was afraid I would make more of a mess.

One of the girls from my cardmaking group sent me some butterflies that she cut from a sheet of alcohol inks and I thought the colors went pretty with the background, I added some liquid pearls to it.

Innkadinkado -- Florals stamp set
Quickutz -- Vines embossing folder
Spellbinders -- A2 matting basics A&B and Ribbon Tags Trio dies
Distress inks
Recollections -- Iridescent Rhinestones
Martha Stewart -- Butterfly punch
Liquid pearls-- white opal on butterfly
Ribbon

Another HOT one today it looks like, spring temps never seem to last long enough, we have some rain coming in which the garden will appreciate.

Hope your week is going well,
Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by,

Connie

Garden Gate

I know I told myself I didn't need to buy anything more but this garden gate was so pretty and my hubby said I should get it and I didn't want to argue :)

I am sharing my post today at Stephanie's Roses of Inspiration , if you get the time stop by and check it out, there is always something interesting to see.

This is going out to my friend who is away right now helping her son, but she will be coming home soon.

I started out by inking the background with a little green at the bottom and then blue at the top.  I ended up adding a little grass because our grass seems to grow like a weed each week along our fence. You can't tell by the picture very well even the second view I will post that I added a bit of foam adhesive behind the gate so that it appears open just a bit.  The flowers have been shaped.  Hubby says they look like morning glories.

I noticed in the first few pictures I took there was a little speck of something on the left side of the arbor, in this second picture I had seen it and it has been removed :)

Taylored Expressions -- Garden Arbor and Gate , and Arbor Accessories dies
Distress inks -- mowed lawn and tumbled glass
Fiskars -- Grass border punch
Stampendous -- Birthday  Assortment stamp
Stickles -- Diamond on flower centers
Martha Stewart -- butterfly punch
Enamel accents -- white on butterlfies

It has turned quite hot here, high's in the 80's with humidity, the weather girl called it soupy and I would agree with that.  It was hot in the house yesterday but now that we finally can have the windows and doors open I just couldn't close up the house to turn on the air so our ceiling fans were getting a work out and our furbabies laid right under them :)

Hope you are enjoying a great start to your week,
Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and letting me know,

Connie

Masculine sympathy

Sorry to be sharing another sympathy card, I promise my next one will be a birthday card.  Our male friend from church just lost his mother.  They are also retired from the Military so they had a 13 hour trip to get back home for the funeral which is today.  They had a little car trouble on the way, praying they can get it fixed and have a good safe trip back here.

Did some simple stamping on the designer paper, thought this stripped paper would be nice for the background.

Graphic 45 -- Curtain call paper
Spellbinders -- A2 matting basics A&B dies
Inkadinkado -- Garden delight stamp
Stampendous -- Sincere Sentiments stamp
Bazzill -- Brads

Wishing you all a relaxing weekend, with some time to create!!

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and visit,

Connie