Made by *B*

Today’s challenge was to use a song/music for inspiration. Phoebe has a lullaby CD that I always rock her to just before she sleeps. The minute I turn it on she flips her head onto my shoulder and gets ready for her nap. It has James Taylor and others singing-and the 2nd song is Dream a Little Dream-which is when I put her down.

This card will be for one of my former downline who after quite a while of trying is going to be a mommy to a new baby girl-I am so happy for her! Her shower is coming up so I used today to make a card in advance (shocking for me!). I used my SU! markers in Summer Sun, Pixie PInk, and Lovely Lavender to ink up the Sweet One stamp from So Many Scallops, and stamped it twice on white paper. I used a 1 3/8″ punch to cut out the center circle on one, and then cut out the whole image on the other. I used dimensionals to pop it up and added glitter dots around. The stars are from the All-Star sport set!

Each star is dotted lightly with Dazzling Diamonds glitter-in the pic everything looks dusty/mottled, bu I promise in real life the glitter does not look clumpy and the scallop looks crisp and neat! After I took the pic I had to flick off some more of the blue glitter (especially in the corner!) but it looks very sweet!

I just got my new Baroque background stamp and thought it would be perfect for today’s color challenge to use River Rock, Black, and White on a card. The background piece is a piece of Ginger Blossoms paper that is a tone on tone River Rock pattern with blossoms on it. I inked up my background stamp in Versamark and embossed in clear over it. Then I used my brayer inked up with black ink and went over the entire piece, and wiped it off the embossed area when I was done.  Although hard to see in the scan, IRL you can faintly see the River Rock pattern show through.

The sketch itself was from Beate’s weekend sketch challenge, so I needed to add a small square in the corner. I used the friend sentiment from Simply Said (a set I still use all the time!) and stamped a small blossom from Embrace Life over it. I stamped the same type of patterned paper that I used for the background with the blossom, and cut it out and adhered it to the white piece to add some more color to that square.

Corners were done by layering black and river rock pieces cut using my SU! photo corner punch and adding 3 black brads for some texture.

Today’s challenge was to use multiple pieces of designer paper on 1 project. I pulled out my 6×6 prints pack that was available for purchase last year. It includes Celery, Rose, Saffron, and Lavender 6×6 sheets. I pulled off a sheet of Celery, Saffron, and Lavender and cut them into 4 1 1/2″ strips to use as the background. I overstamped each with images from “A Good Egg” which I just mounted.

Look closely-the egg is SPARKLY! I used my Versamarker to color in the egg shell. My pen was a bit frayed and dired out so I took my Versamark re-inker and put a drop on the lid of my paf and picked it up with the Versamarker. After it was done I sprinkled Irridescent Ice ep and embossed-LOVE the little bit of shimmer!

The chickie image is layered onto Black and Guava, and the background strips are layered onto Soft Sky, Black, and then then Guava base. I added wiggly eyes for some whimsy and guava ribbon to “tie” it all together!

This card was made for the Limited Supply Challenge-to create cards with round shapes.

I used the new set called Tart & Tangy which is available to SU! demos now, and on March 1st will be available to everyone. The sketch is from Beate’s Weekend Sketch Challenge and I was happy o be able to get a “two-fer” with this card.

Card Base is Bashful Blue, and the background is done in Only Orange with the orange stamp from Tart & Tangy. The image area is the new designer paper Summer Picnic that coordinates with Tart & Tangy (I have lots of “fruit inspired” hand me downs for Phoebe-so I know I will be using this paper quite a bit in her scrapbook!). The orange polka-dotted and circles piece are the same paper-I just used both sides since it is double-sided.

The main image is again just the orange, and I stamped one more on a scrap piece, cut it out, and raised it on a dimensional. I added Crystal Effects and Dazzling Diamonds glitter to set it off a touch. The cirlces on the side are red polka dotted paper from teh hostess Level 1 prints Pack with a build a brad with circles (punched from the under layer so you cannot see them) on top.

I forgot to order the companion saying set for the fruits, so I  hand wrote the “orange you sweet?” on the bottom corner. I added SU! Tangerine grosgrain ribbon along the bottom edge to highlight the sentiment.

Since today’s theme was circles, I also wanted to share the hat Camden and I made for his 100th day of school. We made a paperclip necklace with 10 colors of clips (in 10 groups of 10) and epoxied 100 pennies onto an old Orioles hat of my husband’s. They held a fashion show and all the Kindergarteners showed off their 100 day fashions-it was so cute!

This card combines 3 challenges:

Limited Supply Challenge to create a V-day card with no hearts and no red; Technique challenge to use the Spray and Smash technique; Beate’s Weekend Sketch Challenge

The main image piece started as glossy white. I sprayed a piece of transparency with water (a large piece) and dropped Creamy Caramel, Taken with Teal, Soft Sky, and Not quite Navy re-inkers on it. I sprayed my glossy white piece with paper as well, and then laid it on the transparency face down. I squished it around a bit and ended up with a large piece that had a mottled stone look. I used my heat gun to dry the piece before I cut it.

I overstamped it with Craft White with the swirl from Baroque Motifs and embossed with clear. I layered onto Caramel and Black, and the background pieces are Teal and Blue Bayou. I added some black eyelets and ribbon, and the rounded photo corners I came up with for the previous card. This will be my hubby’s Valentine’s Day card from me!

 This was a card I did on Saturday, but have been pretty busy so no time to upload until today. It is based on Beate’s weekend sketch which you can see here:

http://beate.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/2008/02/08/weekend-sketch-challenge-34/

I made the bottom image more square but used the idea of a vertical piece and larger bottom image.

The inspiration was from the SU! Inspiration challenge of a bedding set that looked roughly dyed. I embossed the large flower from Fabulous Flowers in clear ep over the top of a piece of Gimger Blossoms DSP (look under the flower and you can see the printed pattern).  Then I brayered over it with Ruby Red ink and wiped off the excess. I think this technique is so fun to do-and works so well with bold images like this flower!

The photo corners were quick and easy. I took a piece of scrap and punched about a quarter of a circle using my 3/4″ circle punch. Then I went back over the same spot and punched out part of a square leaving me with rounded photo corners.  The ribbon is SU! twill ribbon. I lightly dyed it with a Taken with Teal re-inker and Aquapainter. The length took only about 3 or 4 drops total. The “happy day” is a rub-on from the *FREE* SAB set.

I am doing a class in March using the set Embrace Life where everyone gets the set as part of the class fee, plus a 1/2 pack of Ginger Blossoms paper, and makes 5 projects-3 cards, a photo wallet, and a frame. I am still playing around with the layouts for the cards so I am using this set a lot!

(if you want to see my schedule of events you can see my SU! site www.brittastamps.stampinup.net )

For this sketch I used the small blossom buch and long stems from Embrace Life. All were colored in using Aquapainters and re-inkers. After coloring them in lightly, I used an Apricot marker to color in some of the sides to add a bit more depth to the flowers. The horizontal strip that goes along the back is Ginger Blossom paper. I stamped the blossom cluster repeatedly around the bg piece-I love how it makes it look like a background stamp!

The stemmed blossoms had Crystal Effects added on on 2 coats to give them nice thick dimension.

I used the color combo of Apricot Appeal, Ballet Blue, and Real Red for today’s card. I have not really used the single blossom from the Embrace Life set so I made it a personal challenge to use it today.

Each blossom is stamped in StazOn and colored in using my Aquapainter and Real Red and Apricot re-inkers. The blossom in the “joy” is covered with Crystal Effects to give it dimension after being cut out and adhered with a dimensional.

What stamp is the “joy” from? The whole stamp says “enjoy” from the Enjoy Every Moment set, I used a Ballet Blue marker to only color in the word joy. The word tag’s edges looked too sharp to me, so I used my sanding block to tone them down just a touch.

Real Red wide grosgrain and Apricot narrow grosgrain finish it off-I added a thin strip of Ballet Blue just to add some balance to the colors since it was so heavy in the red/apricot pairing.

This card was made for last week’s sketch challenge. I had it done that day, but have been crazy busy so no chance to upload until now.

The big blossom is SU!’s chipboard flower and I attached Bali Breeze paper to it. I traced each petal on the Bali paper and cut out and adhered. Then I used my sanding block to sand the edges down and create a nice thin border around each petal.

It is layered onto more Bali Breeze paper and I used the new SAB rub-ons in each corner to fill in the spaces. 1st time I used them and I love them!

what I used:

I hosted the Demo WOW challenge today and I chose using vellum. I used to use vellum a LOT and have kind of moved away from it-but when I do use it I really like the results. This card uses SU!’s cardstock vellum as its base cut into a 4 1/4″ square. The pic shows both the inside and outside.

The patterned paper is Bali Breeze DSP, and I layered the inside and outside images up so that you only see one when you look at the card from the outside. This is a very simple card to make, and the patterned paper takes center stage.

I like Stampin’ Up!’s cardstock vellum and it is what I recommend to my customers. It does not crinkle as easily as regular vellum, and it handles going through a printer very easily. One of the nice features about vellum is that you can change its color by using a brayer, and also you can emboss on it without using craft inks. Since it has a slicker coating, just stamp on it and quickly add your embossing powder.