Russell

I made this card tonight for the sketch challenge over on A Spoon Full of Sugar. It's sort of a "companion card" to Rosie, which uses the same digital stamp set, Russell and Rosie, and some of the same Basic Grey Bittersweet paper.


Until I went looking for the American Craft Elements buttons that I'd recently bought, I'd forgotten about the Bazzill paper flowers that I also purchased. I really like working with them and wish I'd bought some in other colors.

Supplies: Russell and Rosie digi stamp (Grab A Doodle Do), Basic Grey printed paper, Fiskars Threading Water border punch, Scarlet cs (TAC), Copics, button (American Crafts Elements), Bazzill paper flower, Prima flower (cut to make leaves), Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo (for sponging), Copic markers.

Happy Birthday, Katie!

Today is my niece Katie's birthday. Katie has two dogs, Clyde and Riley, who are her "babies". Here's a picture of Katie and Riley from last Christmas:

He's a big baby who loves to be held. He usually finds plenty of people at family gatherings to oblige. :)

I wanted to use a dog image on her birthday card and knew this image of a dog in a gift box would be perfect!


I have resisted the current trend to decorate the inside of my card. These days I'm lucky to have time to make the outside pretty! ;-) Since this cardstock is rather dark, though, I gave in. It's nothing fancy, but here's the inside of my card:


Supplies: Fudge and Friends digital stamps (Grab A Doodle Do), birthday sentiment (Hero Arts), printed paper from Bo Bunny, swirl embossing folder (Cuttlebug), Raspberry Fizz cs from Papertrey Ink, Copic markers.

Woo hoo! It's official!

You may have noticed a new widget on the right side of my blog. Yes, I am now officially a design team member on Sally-Ann Hancock's new site, DigiStamp Boutique! My friend Diana gave me the link to Sally-Ann's Grab A Doodle Do designs and I was hooked! I love her designs and was thrilled when she accepted my application.

The new site isn't open quite yet, but should be ready for business soon. As soon as it is up and running, I will post an announcement and add the link to my design team logo.

Alfie

My only sibling is a girl. My only two cousins are both girls. My kids are both girls. My dog? Yep, a girl. Besides poor DH, the only known males in my household are the cat (who we originally thought was a girl) and the guinea pig. (The jury's out on the two snakes.)

So, suffice it to say I don't need use many "boy stamps". But I really love the "Alfie - Collection 1" set of digital stamps from Grab A Doodle Do. Most boy stamps are of cutesy, little boys. I like Alfie because he's a little older, a little cooler. I could see myself making a card for my 14 year old nephew with one of these stamps.

Today I used Alfie images on two sketch challenge cards. The first is for a challenge over on Just Christmas and Birthday Cards:


I made a few changes to this sketch, starting with turning it on its side. Since Alfie's definitely not into that girly stuff, I skipped the bow and replaced the flowers with some very masculine antique copper brads. Voila! A perfect birthday card for your favorite young man.

I made this card for a sketch challenge over on Crafts 4 Eternity. Being a dog lover, I'm kind of partial to this image of Alfie with his dog. :-)


OMG, did that little tag ever cause me heartache! The first time I stamped on the shiny side of the tag, so the ink smeared while I was handling it. The second time I fiddled with the twine too much and pulled it through the top of the tag, tearing the tag. The third time, I stamped For You upside down. Ugh! I'm just glad it finally came out right!

I usually wind up playing around too much with my Copics to even attempt to list the colors used, but Alfie was pretty straight forward. I used Skin White, Prussian Blue and Manganese Blue for his jeans, Lime for his shirt, a combination of Sepia and Sand for his hair, Sand for his dog, and Burnt Umber and Sepia for his shoes.

Happy Easter!

As promised in yesterday's post, here's my round up of cards from "time travelling through the holidays"...

First stop - St. Patty's Day. I made this card for the "Yellow and Green" challenge over on Simon Says Challenge, using a "Lily & Milo" stamp from Rachel Anne Miller. I had the *worst* time trying to take a picture of this card. I don't know if all the green threw off my camera's settings or what! I bought this stamp in St. Louis along with the printed paper. I love that paper so much I hated to cover it up, even with Lily. :-)

Next up - Thanksgiving. This card started off as a partially finished project from an SU! stamp club meeting I attended with a friend. I performed some major rehab, adding some printed paper in the process. I almost always include printed paper in my cards now - I think it adds a lot of interest. The original card was also "naked", so I added an American Crafts button tied with Scrappers Floss as an embellishment. Scrappers Floss is great!! It's made from paper and very thin so you can thread it through buttonholes - no needle needed!


Next stop - Christmas. I'm behind in the monthly Christmas Card challenge over on Splitcoast, so I needed to come up with a quick card to help me get caught up. This little cutie is from the Christmas Collection of digi stamps from Grab A Doodle Do. It's hard to see in the photo, but this striped paper is glittered, giving the card a little "extra" without having to add another layer or embellishment. I love sitting in my craft room for hours playing with all my embellies & papers but sometimes you need something cute & quick!


Whew! Like Peter, I did finally arrive back at Easter. Here's the make-n-take we did at the crop yesterday, which uses the Happy Easter set from TAC. I love the collection of coordinating buttons & paper and felt flowers in the "Lemonade" Buttons & Blossoms embellishment boxes! It made it easy for everyone to find a coordinating button & flower.


Happy Easter! Blessed Passover!

Rosie

Isn't she cute? Rosie is a digital stamp that I just purchased from Grab-A-Doodle-Do. What a perfect excuse to use my new Basic Grey Bittersweet paper (love it!) and one of the new "Nursery Collection" Prima roses that I bought today. (I've been seeing similar roses on other cards and was so happy to find some locally!)

For the card, I used this sketch from the DareU2DigiStamp blog. My color inspiration came from two challenges with some similar colors. This week's CopicsColorChallenge was to use some combination of red (Crimson), brown (Light Walnut) and green (Moss) Copic markers. I didn't have any of those exact colors, so I substituted a combination of Sepia/Sand for Light Walnut and Lime for Moss. CuteCardThursday's challenge was to use pink and brown. Now *that* is easy since that's my favorite color combination! :)