Winter Scene

Back to the challenges from my stamping group, one of the ladies had us make a window type card and we were to make layers of the scene, background, and bring it to the front of the card.  I stamped the trees in the background a few different times using my Misti stamping tool.  Added the little snowman, he comes in all these pieces and you put him together, some snow I found at my stamp store (not sure of the pink pieces in it) and then added the fence and the deer on the outside.  I like how this can be a Christmas card or just sending wishes in the winter season. Embossing on the front panel to look like snow.

Cuttlebug -- Swiss dots embossing folder
Spellbinders -- Classic circle lg. die
Inkadinkado -- tree stamp
Taylored Expressions -- Snowman die
Poppy stamps -- Country Fenced die
Memory Box - Valley deer trio

I hope this gives you some ideas to make some little scenes yourself, to make it go quicker you could even use die cuts for the trees in the background.

Thanks so much for all your Anniversary wishes for my hubby and I. and I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by and letting me know you did :)

Have a fantastic week ahead!

Connie

Our Anniversary

My Hubby and I are celebrating our 33rd Wedding Anniversary today.  I have been truly blessed with a wonderful husband.  He gives me so much Love and understanding, and is so encouraging of me, so very thankful!

This is the card I made for him. The frame around the image is part of the stamp, I just colored and cut it out. The background was done by using a leaf border embossing folder and embossing across the cardstock 3 times to get full coverage and then sanding down the raised areas of the cardstock. The sentiment stamp I stamped the you and cut around it, then embossed the second half onto brown cardstock with white embossing powder.

Northwoods Rubber stamps -- White Oak leaves and acorns in Notched square, colored w/markers
Tim Holtz -- Distress collection color core cardstock
Signature collection -- Autumn morning, vine leaf embossing folder
Mama Elephant -- Butterfly kisses stamp set for sentiment
Spellbinders -- Labels trio die


Here is the card my hubby made me, as you can tell he loves ravens, and we usually always do a fall theme to our anniversary cards since we love this time of year :)  I can not tell you all the dies he used, sorry.  And the raven at the bottom was a stamp that he asked me once to show him how to emboss a stamp and this is one of the examples I did for him :) He likes to cut out sayings from magazines and books to use in his artwork so he tries to find words that fit with the piece he is working on.

Here are a couple of pics of him doing what he loves taking pictures :)

Thanks so much for stopping by today, I wish you a most wonderful weekend !!

Connie

Floral Garden

Sharing today another card I made for a friend using the coloring cards for card making.  The black framing is part of the color panel so there isn't much you need to add to these, great for mailing! Colored with markers and I did add some gems that I colored with the same marker I used on the flowers.

Hot off the press -- Floral Garden for colorist, colored w/markers
Wink of Stella clear glitter pen
Craftaroo -- Clear Rhinestones- colored w/markers

Our poor Peanut has been having problems with loose stools for a couple of weeks now but all the test have come back that all is well, but the vet gave her a shot to stop it and has given her some antibiotics and probiotics and this morning is the first morning we have seen an improvement, I am so thankful, she is getting up there in age, 16 years and after losing our two cats in the past couple years I am nervous about every time something happens to her.

We are going to have nice fall weather today but then they are saying we are going to be above normal again for the next week, hitting close to 80 again, so Indian summer is coming on strong here.
Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I hope you are enjoying some wonderful Autumn weather!

Connie

Simple Joys

This is another stamp I had found at the last yard sale at our stamp store, this is a Northwood stamp and they don't put the names of their stamps on them they just give the year, so before posting I always try and look up the name.  Well it is sunset and pine oval, I didn't realize it was suppose to be a sunset so I colored it as being about 10 am, LOL :)

The stamp has that oval frame around it so I just colored it and cut it out and added it to the wavy rectangle for framing. A little wink of stella clear glitter pen on the sun and added the wood leaf. I liked this leaf background paper with this image. The sentiment is stickers and they are silver so I just colored over them with a brown marker.  I love these stamps for masculine cards but I think they would work for anyone that loves the outdoors :)

Northwoods Rubber stamps -- Sunset and Pine Oval 2007, colored w/markers
Spellbinders -- Wavy Rectangles die
Cosmo Cricket -- Fleuriste paper
Recollections -- wooden leaf
Hot off the press -- Dazzles, tiny words and phrases sentiment stickers, colored w/marker

Today is yard day, time to cut back our bushes so they will be already for me to put Christmas lights on in a month, mow the lawn for the last time, well that is what hubby is hoping anyway :) and get our flower beds cleaned up, it is suppose to be the perfect day for it, hope you are able to get out and enjoy the day.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today and let me know, love hearing from you,

Connie

Thankful

We all have those special people in our lives that we want to thank for all they do all year long and Thanksgiving is a great time to send them a little card letting them know that, I made this card for my sister who has been there for me my whole life, but I have especially been thankful ever since my parents passed away for her love and caring for me, I have been truly blessed by her.

There is no better time than fall to use felt on a card and today I have cut my Taylored Expressions Mini leaves die with her wool felt.

*Tip, using wool felt is best with dies, craft felt can be used but it is a bit stringing and sometimes doesn't cut cleanly as the wool.  Also if you have a die that is a little more intricate like the green leaf die at the top use a little wax paper between the die and the felt and that helps, but I would stick with more simple shapes when using felt.

For the background I used an embossing folder after embossing I applied inks directly to the embossed areas.

Check out our wide selection of embossing folders Here.

I wanted a more rustic feel for the framing of my sentiment so I went with the Poppystamps Grand stick frame die, I cut the die twice to give a little more thickness to the frame and then cut out once more to get the center piece for my sentiment, did you know your dies can cut vellum too, there are so many fun things to try with your dies.

Here are the dies I used today

I hope this has given you some inspiration to thank someone for all the mean to you.

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Remember, there is a new inspiration sample shared each and every day of the month

on our Dies R Us Inspiration Blog using a variety of dies from several different companies.

Then of course you'll want to come join us at the Dies R Us Challenge Blog.

There's a new challenge theme offered on the 1st & 15th of each month with

a gift voucher prize to one lucky winner each challenge!

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Thanks for stopping by today!

Butterfly kisses

The flower, butterfly and sentiment are all from the same set. I found new to me markers at my Local stamp store here in town and they were such a great price I thought I would try them out for coloring the flower, 3 markers come in a set for $5.99, I love how these oranges blended together.

I cut the butterfly out and lifted him up on the topside but the part kissing the flower is down on the cardstock.  I added a bit of clear wink of stella to the butterfly, don't know if you can see it in this next picture.

Mama Elephant -- Butterfly kisses, colored w/markers
Spellbinders -- Resplendent Rectangles die
Teresa Collins -- He said she said paper
Sequins -- Iced silver

I am linking my card today to the following Challenges:

The Flower Challenge



Double D's Challenge



Thanks so much for stopping in today, love hearing from you, Have a fantastic weekend, and stop by tomorrow I will have a new Dies R us post to share.

Connie

Ink Sprays

The next challenge I did in our stamp group this week was creating a background with spray inks.  There are many different brands on the market but I haven't invested in them, guess I tend to use designer papers for my backgrounds then to use ones I make myself, but I did have on color of green color wash and a few glimmer mist that I used with it.  We were to spray the colors onto glossy cardstock and then turn the paper to let them run together, I think it would have worked better if I had more ink sprays then the glimmer mists.

This was my results.

It was kind of warped so I set a few heavy acrylic blocks on it over night and it flattened pretty well, so I stamped this silhouette over it and then cut it out with my die. With the paper that was left over I cut out the sentiment also.

Of course I felt it needed a little more and a bit of a fall feel to it, so I added a few more leaves I had used in my other project.  Now I have a confession to make, I am not sure if it is because this is a new stamp or the fact that I was stamping on layers of glimmer mist but I just couldn't get a good solid stamp of the bottom area of the stamp, even using the Misti and stamping 4 times.  I was using Stazon ink, maybe I should have went with a different ink.  I tried adding black marker to it, that looked awful, so I grabbed some of my hubby's black heavy body paint, that ended up giving it a matte look to it and the other part of the stamp has shine, so that is why I went with adding the sentiment there.  I was going to put both leaves at the bottom but my hubby didn't like that he thought I should add just one at the bottom left but it just felt off balance to me so at the last minute I added the one at the top also, how would you have done it?  No leaves at all one or two but somewhere else, would love your opinions on that :)

Well we have been getting hit with big thunderstorms, you know those thunders that shake the house, those always make me a tad nervous but looks like they will be heading out of the area soon, bringing with it cool fall temps once again.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today,

Connie

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are so pretty, I haven't planted them this year, after last year when the rabbits decided to eat them just as they were getting about 3 inches high I got discouraged and didn't try them again, maybe next year I will start them in the house and see how it goes.

I started out with white cardstock and colored the sunflowers with my Spectrum noir markers.  The biggest sunflower in the set has a separate center that I embossed and added to the center of the flower, the smaller ones I colored through the holes in the die to get the brown center. Shaped the flowers and leaves a bit, the embossing in the leaves is part of the die set.

The sentiment tag is out of the same die set as the framing , sponged the center while the paper was still inside the die, and added a bit of bling.

Spellbinders -- Sunflower two set and Resplendent Rectangles dies
Stampendous -- Birthday assortment sentiment stamp set
Queen & co. -- Sunflower yellow gems

Thanks so much for stopping by today and letting me know you did,

Connie

Dotty Challenge

The next challenge I tried in our group was using a stamp or drawing of a bare tree and then adding spots with either a sponge dauber or the end of a pencil eraser to add dots to look like leaves.  I remembered that I had a little round dot in one of my stamp sets so I got that out it is the same size as a pencil eraser.  I used a bare tree stamp, this one has little dots all around it so I tried stamping it using my Spectrum Aqua markers, applying the marker directly to the stamp and then stamping, well as much as I thought I was just getting the trunk and branches I did get a little bit of the dots too.

After stamping all the different colors, it seemed to bright to me so I added some shading with Antique linen distress ink to tone it down a bit. We were to add one more stamp to the image so I picked this bird stamp. I tried for a more masculine look since this is going to my nephew.

Penny Black -- Fantasy stamp (tree) Grounded the tree with marker
Distress inks-- Carved Pumpkin, fossilized amber (leaves)
Memento inks -- Rhubarb stalk and Bamboo leaves (leaves)
Inkadinkado -- Flourishes stamp set (bird)
Taylored Expressions --  many mini occasions sentiment stamp set
Spellbinders -- Lg. Deckled Rectangles die
Mark Richards -- Lime Green Mosiacs

My thoughts and prayers go out to those effected by all the flooding and winds from the past Hurricane here in the states and the other countries.  A group went down to Haiti from our church a few years ago to help the establish a church down there and it was totally destroyed.  We know a building doesn't make a church it's the people, but still it was God's house and I pray for them to be able to rebuild and for all the families who have lost their homes and their towns.

Wishing you all a great week ahead, thanks so much for taking the time not only to stop by but letting me know you did,

Connie

My Challenge

The stamp group I am in is having their week of challenges once again and this is the challenge I put up for everyone to try.

Make your own background, no using designer paper and then stamp onto a piece of acetate or transparency that is the same size as your background.  I used Stazon ink onto a transparency, attached it to my background with brads.  The background was embossed with an embossing folder and then added paints and rubbed in with my fingers to blend.

Paper Studio -- Silkscreen embossing folder
Distress Paints -- Spun sugar, mustard seed
Adirondack -- Lettuce paint
Jenni Bowlin -- Lemon drops paint
Inkadinkado -- Garden flowers stamp set
Brads
Paper studio -- Enamel dots

Here is the tutorial for this challenge

Thanks so much for stopping by today, Hope your enjoying a nice weekend, we are enjoying some nice warm weather!

Connie

Paper Studio -- Silkscreen embossing folder
Distress Paper Studio -- Silkscreen embossing folder

Distress Paints -- Spun sugar, mustard seed

Adirondack -- Lettuce paint

Jenni Bowlin -- Lemon drops paint

Inkadinkado -- Garden flowers stamp set

Brads

Paper studio -- Enamel dotsPaints -- Spun sugar, mustard seed
Adirondack --Paper Studio -- Silkscreen embossing folder

Distress Paints -- Spun sugar, mustard seed

Adirondack -- Lettuce paint

Jenni Bowlin -- Lemon drops paint

Inkadinkado -- Garden flowers stamp set

Brads

Paper studio -- Enamel dots Lettuce paint

Paper Studio -- Silkscreen embossing folder
Distress Paints -- Spun sugar, mustard seed
Adirondack -- Lettuce paint
Jenni Bowlin -- Lemon drops paint
Inkadinkado -- Garden flowers stamp set
Brads

Paper studio -- Enamel dotsJenni Bowlin -- Lemon drops paint
Inkadinkado -- Garden flowers stamp set
Brads
Paper studio -- Enamel dots

Collage of wishes

This stamp set came with a couple different sentiments that you can stamp inside that little banner at the bottom, I thought that was pretty neat. This is all one stamp, even the frame so it has the look of layers but is all flat, great for mailing.

I shaped the little flower by the ribbon with my stylus and cushion mat, and added some scored lines to the leaves to give them some veins.

Penny Black -- collage of wishes, colored w/markers
K&co. -- Patterned and solid cardstock pad
Martha Stewart -- Arch lattice border punch, Flower and leaf punches
Nuvo -- Glitter drops, white blizzard for flower center

Thanks so much for stopping by today, hope you enjoy a most wonderful and fun weekend!

Connie

Sympathy's

I keep saying I need to have some sympathy cards ready for when the need arises but I never do and wish I had so I can get them out in the mail right away. Just before I left for vacation my Son in laws Grandfather passed away. This first card is the one I sent to him.

It is a one layer card, I usually work on a piece of card stock or designer paper that I add to my card base but I thought I would try to do all my stamping onto the white card base. I stamped the leaves once and then moved the stamp and stamped again without reinking the stamp to give it that shadow look.  I used a little wink of stella on the dragonfly.

Inkadinkado-- Garden Delight stamp set
Pebbles Inc. -- thinking of you rub on
Cloud 9 design -- Rain drops
Wink of stella -- clear glitter pen

I also made a card for my son in laws mother, it was her Dad that passed away. I used the same stamp but stamped it in a couple of different colored inks.

Inkadinkado -- Garden Delight stamp set
Taylored Expressions -- Care and comfort II sentiment stamp set
Jute
Paper from my scraps bin

I have been gone once again since October 6 and just arrived home earlier today.  I am way behind once again on your blogs, I will hopefully be caught up very soon.  We went back to Michigan, my oldest brother hosted a siblings get together and we also went to see my hubby's Dad, sister and brother too, and of course we had to take a little drive and stopped at a few Light houses, I will share later if they turned out, haven't even looked at them yet, and I never did get around to sharing any from the Grand Canyon on our last trip.  Well I will have time in the future, this is our last long trips to take for the year, probably until spring :)

Thanks for all your sweet comments, I so appreciate you letting me know you stopped by,

Connie

Fall Splendor

I will have to say I think that fall is my very best season of the year, I love the colors of Autumn, picking out pumpkins and yes the raking of the leaves :) 

I started out cutting the background with the Memory Box Debutante frame using water color paper, I added some Tumbled glass and faded jeans distress inks to my craft mat, misted some water on it and then ran my background through it to get that blue background.

After that I took my sponge applicator and added the Mowed lawn distress ink to the bottom for the grass, I liked how it seemed to blend well with the sky.

I cut the Memory Box Orchard Tree frame from Kraft card stock and colored with my markers.

Then I thought I need some falling leaves in my scene, so I took the scrap from last months alcohol ink project and cut my leaves from that, added some to my tree and had the rest falling and on the ground,  this is why we don't throw away our scraps, LOL!

The following are the dies I used in the project, I just love the little squirrel with his nut :)

Impression Obsession - Squirrel set

Impression Obsession -- pumpkin patch

Impression Obsession - Oak Leaves and Rake

Here is a closeup of the bottom of the scene.

Follow Dies R Us!

 

Click below for:

Store

Challenge Blog

Facebook

Remember, there is a new inspiration sample shared each and every day of the month

on our Dies R Us Inspiration Blog using a variety of dies from several different companies.

Then of course you'll want to come join us at the Dies R Us Challenge Blog.

There's a new challenge theme offered on the 1st & 15th of each month with

a gift voucher prize to one lucky winner each challenge!

OH!  And did you know we have a FB Page and PINTEREST Page?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Connie

Prairie Bouquet

 Power Poppy had a sale a few weekends ago and I bought the set of Digi's they had on sale. This image was my favorite of the four.  Now I printed it out in a soft brown, trying to go for a more no line coloring, and if you have noticed this is like the 3rd or 4th time I have tried this technique on cards, thinking I just need practice, not sure what I am doing wrong but this may be my last try, I just wasn't happy with the results but once again I am running behind and needed to get it out in the mail, so I had to go with it.

I wish when I was in school I would have taken some art classes, maybe that would have helped with my cardmaking, but instead I took cooking (which I don't really like to do) sewing and needlework classes, which I enjoy but I do more cardmaking now.

Power Poppy -- Pure Prairie Bouquet digital stamp, colored w/ pencils and odorless mineral spirits
Spellbinders -- Decorative Labels 28 die
October Afternoon -- 5 & dime paper
Ribbon

Wishing you a wonderful weekend, hope you are enjoying this Autumn season!!

Thanks so much for stopping by today,

Connie

Memories

I had told myself when I was getting so many dies from Dies R Us that I needed to stop all buying from the stores, but last month when I was in Hobby Lobby (and yes that is the last time I was in there)  I saw this die set and just loved it and also had that 40% coupon calling out to me so I got it.

 Wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but decided to sponge on inks and did a little masking to leave some of it white.  Then I went through my stamps to see if any would work with it and came upon this one, so I colored it up with my distress markers, trying to give it a bit of a water color feel.

Just in case you can't read the sentiment going around, it says,

May aging be forgotten when life's memories are remembered.
 The corner treatments are separate from the main die and the leaves on the corners are also extra's so you can place them anyway you chose :)


This is a 5x6 card
Art Impressions -- memories window stamp colored, w/markers
Spellbinders -- Decorative Curved squares die, sponging w/inks
Nuvo -- Crystal drops, Golden Sunset glitter drops.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by today and letting me know you did, love to hear from you,

Connie

Vine Frame

I so love the look of Mega flakes, especially this jar which is called Autumn Blaze, it gives such a beautiful shine to the card and love those colors.

My tips are to start off with a piece of cardstock that is close to the color of the medium you are using, that way if it doesn't have a totally coverage it won't show up as much. Cut your cardstock to the size of the die you are using and that way you won't be using more than needed of the mega flakes, although this stuff goes a very long way.

I will have to make a confession here, I was going to use the Flitterglu you see in the picture with the mega flakes but when I did it, I put too much glue onto the cardstock and when I went to wipe away the access it made a big mess. The end project you see in the next picture was done using scortape over the whole piece of cardstock.  My next tip is to make sure you use every bit of your cardstock cut other dies from the areas that will be normally just thrown away, I cut these all at the same time, I taped it all down with washi tape so it didn't move on me.

As you can see I used those dies in this project too, using glue dots I added them to the base of the frame and added a piece of jute to them too.  I used Spellbinders Labels Eight die to stamp the Paper smooches stamped sentiment from the Happy Birthday set.  I added Wink of Luna gold pen to the sentiment stamp.

Tutti Designs-- Maple Vine Frame

Taylored Expressions -- Mini leaves dies

Follow Dies R Us!

 

Click below for:

Store

Challenge Blog

Facebook

Remember, there is a new inspiration sample shared each and every day of the month

on our Dies R Us Inspiration Blog using a variety of dies from several different companies.

Then of course you'll want to come join us at the Dies R Us Challenge Blog.

There's a new challenge theme offered on the 1st & 15th of each month with

a gift voucher prize to one lucky winner each challenge!

OH!  And did you know we have a FB Page and PINTEREST Page?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Connie

Thoughts and prayers / Canyonlands

Our friend lost his Dad last week and this is the card I made for him, I went with using the coloring cards I bought, thought it would work well for a masculine sympathy card. I just matted it with some brown cardstock and then added it to the background paper, the shine you see in it is this paper has copper embossing in it.

Creative Expressions coloring cards, colored w/markers
DCWV - Natural stack paper

Sharing a few pics from the Canyonlands National park Utah, after we left the Mesa arch area.

In this first I just love how you can see the shadows of the clouds on the rocks, even though it was cloudy you could see forever.

In this next one if you look to the left side you can see the river running through.

Check out this fence using dead Juniper trees, isn't that cool.  Yep that's my hubby ahead of me.  He brought his tripod with him at this stop.  I have never used one, even when he says I should taking pictures of the sunset.

In this next one I was going for getting all the texture in the rocks.

It is kind of hazy looking but that is the sun rays shinning through, that was cool too :)

Can you see the people on the path down on the right side, that gives you a little idea of the size of this place.

I have way too many pictures of these Juniper trees but thought I would share a real twisted one, with the rocks way in the background.

Yes it did rain on us while we were there, in one of the times it was just sprinkling I got out to take a picture of how different the trunks of the Juniper trees look once they get wet, love how it brings them out.

Next we headed for the Grand Canyon.

Thanks for all your sweet comments on my pictures, still learning the camera, I don't remember the technical terms of what I am doing but I am understanding more, LOL.  Hubby is glad that I am enjoying his hobby with him.

Thanks for stopping by,
Connie