Thinking Inking

This and That

I have a couple of things to share with you today!  My stamping buddy Valerie Stangle sent me some super-cute stickers--not paper but a raised slick surface like plastic. I finally had a few minutes to play with these last night after everyone else went to bed.  I certainly didn't come up with anything as cool as Valerie did! But I still had fun with them. Paper is Basic Grey Romani/Gypsy collection. Sentiment is from PaperTrey Green Thumb set. I used my SU cutter to freehand the swirl across the paper, and I zig-zag stitched the layers on my sewing machine. Thanks, Val!

Next I have a Polka Dotted butterfly (Lockhart) which I paired with some Jen Wilson paper from my Sayner excursion a few weeks back. The trail of the butterfly was stamped in Sahara Sand, then pierced. I love Nicole's Little Lady trail as a piercing template!  The "ascend" is run through a label maker and inked with a vanilla craft pad.  The butterfly is colored in Prismacolor pencils (Deco Blue, Blush Pink, and Pink) and dotted with Stardust Stickles. Eyelets are SU Soft Subtles eyelets (Blush). Punch is a Marvy Mega Scalloped Circle.

Speaking of Marvy punches, several of you have asked through the months where to get them since the superstores seem to be out of them frequently. Tomorrow is your chance!  PaperTrey Ink will begin a preorder for all of the Marvy Scalloped shaped punches, even the new shapes, as far as I understand. In SU news, I'm guessing that I'll be up at midnight MST to preorder some new colors and stamps.  Anybody else?

Have a lovely day!

Doodle This for you

Has Doodle This been out for only three months? It seems that I used it so much when it first came out that I haven't been very motivated to pull it out lately. (Reading between the lines: I can't wait to order NEW stamps--woohoo!) Tonight I wanted to use some of my SU Au Chocolate designer paper. I thought I'd start by pairing it with Doodle This and Doodle That.

To stamp the flowers I used a brown permanent ink. To color the flowers I used Copic markers in the following colors: Pink, Dark Pink, Baby Blue, Ice Ocean, and Clear. I then used a glitter pen to highlight all of the greenery as well as the darker pink areas of some of the flowers. I also used a Sakura Clear Glaze Gelly Roll pen to highlight parts of the flowers. It still looked a bit plain, so I added paper piercing to help frame the main image as well as decorate the trim strip.

Large brad is a Making Memories Aged Copper brad, and small one is from the SU Aged Copper Hardly Hardware kit.

I still have houseguests, but I'll post as often as I can. Thanks for your patience!

Chintz Butterfly

It seems like a long time since my last post!  We are still enjoying having several house guests, but I wanted to get a quick post in tonight anyway.  After playing with the Lockhart chintz vase and flower set last week, I wanted to play with the Lockhart chintz butterfly as well. This is another graduation card, though you can't tell it from the front. Would you believe that I do not own any graduation stamps?  The girls on my graduation list typically get regular cards, and the guys get cards with an embossed graduation cap, matted in their school colors. I have even, in a pinch, chopped up the graduation invitation that we received to make a card from, using the school crest matted in the school colors.  (My husband says that the card doesn't matter--only the check inside. He's probably right, but I choose to pretend that he isn't. . .) Background paper is Homespun Collection by Memory Box (also from Ellen's store). Image is colored with Prismacolor pencils and highlighted with a clear Sakura Gelly Roll pen. The outside of the scalloped circle is dotted with the Signo Glo white gel pen that SU carries. Grosgrain and eyelets are also SU.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day!

Summer Poppies

I have been wanting this Stampendous poppy stamp for so long! I looked for it in two stores when we made our Sayner excursion, and I didn't find it.  That's okay; I found it at Eclectic Paperie. . . along with some beautiful Crate Paper Brunch Collection. (I didn't want the stamps to be lonely in that great big old box. . . .)

The first one uses the Crate paper and SU Old Olive and Confetti White card stocks. I tried using reinkers to watercolor (hence the streaks in the Saffron background). For some reason, I just color better with watercolor crayons than I do with reinkers. Reinkers seem to stain the paper more quickly and be a little harder to move around on the surface of the paper. (Or perhaps I'm simply reinker challenged!) The celebrate sentiment is a PaperTrey Little Lady sentiment. 

On card two, I switched to Ivory Naturals and used watercolor crayons. I was able to get a smoother background with the crayons. I think that the ivory card stock coordinated a bit better with the Crate paper as well.

For card three I decided to use my Memory Box Homespun Collection card stock. It required a cleaner, whiter paper, so I used a piece of my new heavier white card stock that I ordered from PaperTrey last week. Let me preface by saying that I love my SU Whisper White for solid stamping; it gives a clean crisp image every time, though drying takes a bit with some ink colors. But when someone mentioned a new sheriff in town--I mean a new white card stock--I figured that I had to try it as a public service. (That falls in the same category as not wanting the previous stamps to be lonely in the box, I confess.) Anyway, the verdict is that I like it. It's not quite as smooth to the initial touch as the Whisper White, but it holds an image nicely, AND I was able to watercolor on it--something that I don't usually try on Whisper White. The surface held up nicely, even to a bit of scrubbing with my aquapainter on the background. I will use both white card stocks. Black brads in card three and black metal picture hanger in card one are from Cindy Lyles' e-Bay store. On all three cards I used a black Sakura gelly roll glaze pen to color the centers of the poppies--that really helped, even though you can't see it in the photograph. So, which one worked best? While I love the Crate paper, I'm leaning toward the Memory Box version. The clean lines of the Memory Box papers seem to work well with the clean lines of this stamp, in my opinion. Variety is the spice of life!

Finally, for those of you who are wondering when I'm getting some new Stampin' Up stamps, I can hardly wait to preorder on June 1! I'll get a few new SU toys then, and wait until July 1 to place a big order. Woohoo!  I have a house full of company for the next nine days, so please excuse me ahead of time if I can't post every day. Thanks!

Folded Flap Card

You know something? I really like toys--maybe almost as well as my seven-year-old does. When Diana Crick e-mailed me to ask if I'd like to try her new Scor-Pal, of course I said yes!  I've had a scoring board for about a year, but I was still eager to try a Scor-Pal and compare both tools for myself.

Diana asked me to write a tutorial on a Roses in Winter card that I had posted several weeks ago. Instead of remaking the same card, I used the same format and made a bit different card. You can find step-by-step directions here, if you'd like. This is a very simple fold and yields a 4-1/4"  square finished card.Papers here are Cosmo Cricket Dutch Girl and SU Real Red and Whisper White. Brad is a Making Memories brad. Flower is made from an Ellison Daisy die.

Have a lovely day!

Flowers in Chintz Card

I thought that I'd better play with Ellen's stamp-of-the-month before the end of the month! I truly enjoy sitting down with my prismacolors or markers and coloring these detailed little Lockhart images. This particular one, Flowers in Chintz, make me think of a bouquet of wildflowers, artfully but casually tossed into an heirloom pitcher to be set on a country supper table.

Card stock is Homespun Collection by Memory Box, SU Whisper White and So Saffron, and one piece from a DCWV mat stack. Mini eyelets are SU Soft Subtles, and gingham is SU as well. Card size is 3-1/4" x 6-1/2", which fits the SU open end tag envelopes. I really like this size and shape--taller than a regular A-2, but more slender and graceful. Since the card is 6-1/2" tall, and the Homespun card stock is only 6" long, I usually put a coordinating band in the middle to bridge the gap. Ha!  Now you know one of my secrets! ;-D 

Have a lovely day!

Flower Fest and More

Flower Fest has definitely been an underused stamp set for me; now that it is on the retirement list, I feel inexplicably compelled to pull it out and use it!  Tonight I used it with Real Red and So Saffron card stock and ink, along with Marigold Morning, Certainly Celery and Always Artichoke ink.  I enhanced the stamped background with a Sakura Stardust pen on the swirly buds trio, and I added a bit of yellow Stickles to the large flowers as well.  Red mini brads hold the ribbon securely in place. (Mini brads and grosgrain are both SU.) Tiny tag is from a retired SU hostess set--Basket of Kindness. I have certainly gotten plenty of use from that tag stamp over the years!

My second card is made with a $1 stamp from Shopko--an Autumn Leaves stamp, I believe. Both cards use the same horizontal layout with a line (card stock or ribbon) 1/3 of the way up the card. On the flower trio image, I used COPIC markers to color the flowers; are these ever fun to shade with!  I have about 24 colors of the Copic Sketch markers, as well as a warm gray, a cool gray, and a clear blender.  Back to the card though: I added a tiny bit of Sakura clear glaze pen to enhance the flower centers. I used two Cuttlebug A-2 embossing folders for the background, which is embossed on Marigold Morning and Pumpkin Pie card stock, edged with a tiny bit of Green Galore card stock. Ribbon is May Arts dotted organdy, and mini brads are SU Bold Brights assortment.

Have a lovely day!

Wild About You Baby Cards

A week or so ago I posted a covered tin that I had made for our niece who is expecting twins.  I also made a package of thank you cards to coordinate with it. Most of the cards were made with the SU Wild About You set, and a few were made with the SU Bundle of Joy set. I used the same patterned paper package that I had used for the tin, in part to coordinate, and in part because I was in a time crunch! (Patterned paper was Basic Grey Oh Baby Girl.) I used basically the same layout on all of the cards, switching off with different papers in the same package. On this particular giraffe card, I used chalk inks to ink the rubber in a bright yellow, then rolled a pumpkin-colored chalk ink on the edges for some shading variation. I made a mask on a Post-It note for the giraffe so that I could overlap the images. The sentiment is PaperTrey Faux Ribbon, and the ribbon is May Arts white dotted organdy.

Baby Cakes

I've been wanting to play with this little Lockhart cupcake for a while now, and I finally made time to do so tonight. Card stock is from a DCWV textured 6" x 6" mat stack that I was given a couple of years ago; I may have to hunt down more when I run out because I love the colors in this stack!

I used watercolor crayons and a fine tip waterbrush to paint the cupcake image, then colored the cherry with red Sakura Gelly Roll ink, and the frosting with Star Dust Stickles.  I used my Marvy Super Jumbo Circle punch for the inner circle and my Marvy Mega Scalloped circle punch for the mat circle.  Ribbon is May Arts dotted pink organdy, and white eyelets are SU. Finished card size is 4-1/4" x 4-1/4".

Cupcake and inside saying "baby cakes" are available from Ellen Hutson.  Thanks for visiting!

Grandmother's Irises

I love irises!  Mine are not anywhere near blooming yet; they are only a few inches out of the ground. While I have several colors and a couple of different varieties, my favorite ones are a deep purple. They are the great, great grandchildren of my Grandmother's irises, and that is why I love them. As I was surfing stamping sites a couple of weeks ago, I saw a link to Impression-Obsession. Curious, I went there and found some gorgeous stamps, this iris being one of them. Within half an hour, I had adopted several flower stamps. . . 

I stamped this image in Black Brilliance ink and watercolored it with my watercolor crayons and aquapainter. The background paper is some Basic Grey Oh Baby Girl. The narrow organdy is an SU ribbon color that retired last year. Hardware is SU Aged Pewter.

I can't wait until my irises look like this!  I think that I need to order some Fun Flock in yellow to make little beards--wouldn't that be fun?

Bodacious meets Blush

Tonight I'm sharing a card that I had submitted for a magazine contest a while back--not one of my winners, but my favorite one of what I had submitted nevertheless. Have I mentioned a time or two how much I love the Basic Grey Blush Collection?  And while I am not initially drawn to the more graphic flowers in the catalog, I have to admit that Bodacious Blossoms is one of my "go-to" stamp sets--you know, the ones that you pull out whenever you have no idea what you want to stamp. It's certainly earned its keep on my stamp shelves!

I used my Coluzzle circle and circle companion for the large circles and the inside Shimmery White circle, and my Marvy Giga Scalloped punch for the Chocolate Chip scalloped circle. Brads are a Making Memories vintage copper brad, and circle clip is from SU's Aged Copper Hardly Hardware. The "authentic" on the bottom is from SU's Stamp of Authenticity. Bling is provided by A Muse twinkle stickers. (Yes, I should have bought stock in these. . . but I've been too busy buying twinkle stickers to be bothered with buying stock.)

Thanks for visiting!

Make a Wish. . .

I know, everybody but me has bought this My Favorite Things stamp set, right?  No kidding--I have seen four blogs in the last two days that used this stamp set! Well, I finally caved. And I'm sure that I will get that coffee one that's coming out in June as well!  I ordered this one directly from Kim at MFT, but I have also seen them at Eclectic Paperie if you happen to be ordering other stamping staples as well. Before you think that I am being an enabler, consider this: I give you links because if I do not, I will need to look up the information anyway in response to comments or e-mails.  That is the main reason that I provide links--not to tempt beyond measure!

I used my Memory Box Sugar Collection for the background papers and my COPIC markers to color in the image. I cheated a tiny bit and went back with a Prismacolor pencil to deepen the background yellow color at the end--not because of the limitations of the COPICs, but because I am still learning how to use them. . . and because I may "need" a few more colors! ;-D  I will tell you more about them as I get more familiar with all they can do. Suffice to say that I love how easily they blend from one shade to the next, even without the blender, though it is quite useful as well. Next I used my Sakura Clear Gelly Roll pen to make the polka dots on the dress shiny, my Liquid Applique to make the frosting puffy, and my Stickles to make the candles gleam--none of these were original ideas, I'm sure, but they were the natural choices nevertheless. Ribbon is double sided May Arts that both Cindy and Lindsey carry. This is a pretty plain card, but  the MFT stamps work well either dressed up or pared down. Fun!