I decided on POOF!

Yesterday I left the card somewhat undone with the decision of BOO! or POOF! to be made.I kept looking at the card and decided it hade to POOF!So I opened up the Silhouette Studio software and whet to my Library and instead of looking for sentiments already made I went to My Fonts. and chose LDI Free Spirit, clicked on the Window icon to get back to my worksheet and the text tool and typed in what I wanted.

Now with the word selected, click on un-group, The word now shows individual letters with individual selection boxes instead of one selection box. Click on the Selection tool  and, voila! you can move each individual letter just the way you want it.

When you have them placed just where you want them then weld them together.

I kept the exclamation point separate because of the fine lines of the ‘F’. As it was the little dot was too little and i lost it so I had to hand cut another dot for the exclamation point.

Almost Headless Horseman…

or a witch who’s spell went bad???? Couldn’t resist that comment ~ I love this design. The cardstock was covered with a page from an old book i sprayed with Tattered Angel’s Patina and Olive Vine then tore it into pieces as the card is 5 1/2 inches square and the paper was not. The center (being covered with the main design, is bare and I left the edges ragged.  The Sassy Cheryl digital stamp was printed on lovely “Pure Silk” watercolor paper which you can get here & here with water color crayons (Neocolor II)  I also embossed the image; had to put it on high quality setting but i finally got it to emboss. I think the air is too dry around here (4000 ft. el.).

And used a couple of Silhouette’s cutting files makes a rather cute card! And being short on black cardstock, i painted white cardstock black with a marker (they do come in so handy!). The sentiment could be ‘Poof!’ or ‘Boo!’.

Circle Heart Scalloped & Web Frame From Silhouette were used for the cutting files. I had to use the old software becasue , for some reason, I couldn't get the image to import into Silhouette Studio. I sized the image in the shape then sized the shape and image to 4.63 x 4.63, printed and emboseed then cut. I love this paper! It is on the expensive side but then watercolor paper of any good quility usually is. And though this is not watercolor paper that a watercolorist would use, it is absolutely wonerful for cardmaking! it comes in 2 wieghts and sizes (12x12 and 8 1/2x11 inches).

cut-ups

I have a shape for you today. These will make lovely little pieces for messages or sentiments and images.

I have been making this shape for years ever since I first bought CorelDraw! 5. That is a fun(!!!) program! And i would combine shapes to come up with other shapes and came up with quite a few.

  

flower (nested_flower_3d_C00365_21585) and text frame (under cutting files in right hand column) were cut on the Silhouette Flower was colored with glimmer mists Tiger Lily and Old Lace. The center is gold mini-micro beads. I cut 6 petal-layers all at different sizes as follows: 1.55x1.77, 1.50x1.72, 1.22x1.39, 1.01x1.15, 0.98x1.13, 0.81x0.93. That’s so you can make sure the flower is the right size for the card. If you are cutting for something else you might want a larger size.

Leaves were stamped on water color paper and painted with water colors then cut out by hand.

Top layer of DP (Scrapper Dashery - IF, 12x12 from frantic stamper) is 3 3/4 x 4 1/2”

Mat layer (Basic Grey’s Kioshi – Plum Blossom, 12x12 from frantic stamper) is 4 1/4 x 5 1/4

Card Base (Bazzill Winter Collection) is cut 11 x 4 1/2 front is 5 1/2 x 4 1/2”

Sentiment is my own (feel free to use) and handwritten. Vintage Photo Distress ink was used with Tim Holtz’s applicator for the mellowing of paper.

Miss Mousie

New stamps in at Paper Garden Projects include the cutest little mice called Cute Companions and designed by Jayne Nestorenko. This is just one set and she has several…some of which are Christmas and Winter designs. I received my order yesterday and I have Celebration Parade  and Wishing Line, both of which have cute little backgrounds and sentiments; they were too cute not to get. And in my order Cathy had packed a couple of paper samples and so I put them together to make….

a card with a gift tag.
The pansy is shaped and all was colored with Distress inks.
For those who need to know certain details the background (or skyline) was stamped on the ‘sky’, white cardstock, then painted, and the bottom of the skyline was stamped and trimmed on the ‘grass’. Also stamped partial image of Miss Mousie on the grass then placed the image (colored on white cardstock - Neenah) over that so the the whiskers and pebbles lined up with the rest.
The card base was cut after placing the basic pieces together (sky, skline and grass – 5 1/2 inches wide the cut at 3 inches wide for main image). Card base measures 3 w. x 8 t. then the edge was punched and the top placed on. Paper is from the Hearts Bloom Paper Kit at Paper Garden Projects.

Scalloped Edge Card

From my card that i did yesterday I took the same cutting file and cut a scalloped edge on a piece of Basic Grey’s Green At Heart Polka-dotted paper and used that + a silhouette edge that I had hanging around just wanting to be used and another piece of Green at Heart paper and added a butterfly!

Then I went through my cutting pattern and picked out a phrase”just because”, cut that out of 65# bristol card and used mono multi glue to glue it to the card. I did let the glue set-up for a couple of minutes before placing it on the card; I find, for me, this works  better because it won’t go sliding around as much. Last, i placed a 1 inch wide strip of paper on the inside of the card for pattern contrast.

simple scalloped edge (listed in right-hand column)

beautiful_butterfly_C00327_201509

diamond_floral_scallop_border_C00220_20387

just_because_C00338_19547

Eggplant, Artichoke and Suede

Those are the beautiful colors in the Color Throwdown Challenge this week and I love those colors.

Those are also the color of Stampin’ Up! papers of which I don’t have but I do have something (as close as i can get it) in dusty purple and a brown inked (it looks almost like suede, just a little darker) paper background and a green that comes near the artichoke green on the leaves of the stamped design. So I thought I could enter this in the challenge.

This has been sitting around for a couple of months waiting for something to pull it together and i love it with the purple.

The design was stamped on paper from the Paper Temptress (Cryogen White – Text weight) then painted with Yasutomo’s Pearlescent paints which took to the paper really well. The stamp from Impression Obsession (Victorian Rose by Leigh Hannon)is one of my favorites. 

                              

The Card from the Tutorial

Cassie’s Brocade makes such a beautiful background and the with the distress inks (Dusty Concord and Antique Linen), I really liked the look. After removing my shapes from the mat i used Old Paper first, the Antique Linen on  both pieces to my liking. the scalloped circle for the mat was painted with Yasutomo’s Pearlescent paints along the edge.

The butterfly is done with the same paints on both layers. It doesn’t show up like I would like it to; the card is really very pretty. The fern that you see was cut on the silhouette but when I went back to check on the website it was no longer there. The rose leaves and the fern were both colored with distress ink Peeled Paint and a cotton ball before taking off the mat (carrier sheet). The rose was colored with Victorian Velvet.

The cutting files used:

• 3_flower_sprig_with_butterfly_C00480_19210
• my rose file listed at right under cutting files
• circle_scallop_MED_1181 altered

Fragrance of Roses

 

This little card is a scrap of cardstock 4 7/8 x 1 7/8 inches wide and covered with distress inks in shabby shutters, tattered roses and victorian violet. The rose (1 1/2 inches) is done with Dick Blick’s Sulphite Drawing paper and covered with victorian violet with a cotton ball. The sentiment is an old PSX stamp that is one of my favorites.

The leaves are a punch and a spray i cut on the Silhouette. I should have stamped the sentiment before i put the leaves on but i didn’t think to do that at the time.

A strip of card board on the back with a bit of ribbon to keep it standing making it an easel card.

the original information on the rose and name of the leaf spray is here and here so you can print and cut by hand and the cutting file for the rose is in the right-hand column. Sorry it is not a real tutorial on the rose; i don’t know if anyone needs to have one. If you are printing and cutting by hand it might be easier to color before you cut them out, loading your cotton ball with some color and starting at the center of each petal layer, in a circular motion, move out to the edge of the petals. If you are cutting on the silhouette you could color before removing from the backing sheet. I do make sure that i color both sides of the bottom and top 2 layers but it would be best to make sure that all are colored on the back.

Fanciful Flower

I have this flower from Fred She Says which is probably my favorite, and did some coloring fun this last weekend. I tried to do a wood rose look to this flower and used Neocolor II water color crayons in #049 raw umber (which has a greenish-brown look to it) and #039 Olive brown for the flower trimmed it with The beautiful Sakura’s gelly roll pen ‘clear star’ glitter on the accent lines. The leaves were colored with the same 2 colors and #025 green ochre and used the same glitter pen on the accent lines.

My inspiration for the card came from a challenge to use white with one color (with accent splashes of another color allowed) and used Impression Obsessions' fantasy berry vine flourish stamped in metallic gold. I don’t know if this really qualifies for that but comes as close as i had materials to match the flower.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with water color crayons, these are really neat color sticks that are like crayons but a softer formula that melt with water. Stampin’ UP! makes them and Dick Blick carries Caran d’Ache of Switzerland. They are not inexpensive and because of the formula will turn out a little bit like transparent gauche paints. Since i like to use Dick Blick’s drawing paper for the flowers i paired it with a water brush and watercolor crayons.

When laying in the color on the flower you want to use a light hand; you would be surprised at how little it takes. And I find the water brush adds just enough water and keeps a flow of that amount; the paper does not wrinkle but it is enough to blend the colors to the paper.
I forgot to mention that i entered this card to the Paper Sundaes challenge, the logo is at top right. Just click on it to go to that site.

My little Birdie

I have this new stamp I saw that was just so cute and cheery I just had to buy him.

and i worked on this card for Mel of Mel Stampz who has not put anything up on her blog for a while so I thought she needed some cheerin’ up; so here it is and if she emails me i will mail it to her.

background paper is Mel’s ‘dream definition’ I downloaded from her blog and printed out.  I used 2/3 of it for the front and the other 1/3 inside covered with some white acrylic paint for the sentiment area. Card stock is Stampin’ Up!’s and the flower is from Fred She Said. I printed the flowers out on Dick Blick’s Sulphite drawing paper and colored directly with water color crayons then went over them with water and brush. This paper works very well as a general purpose craft paper as it accepts water colors better than most papers if you don’t use too wet a brush and shapes so well when water is applied to paper for flowers (although I did not do any ore than jut color the flower and leaves and shape with paper styluses. The Bird is painted with yasutomo’s pearlescent paints. I added some painted accent to the tail and top knot feathers also.

Font used is ‘factory’.

Fred She Said challenge

Well is it really not April anymore but the page is still accepting applicants and while my little card is not very much her it is! So I will be entering that challenge.

I have had a very difficult time with this, not making the card, but getting a photo of it and it still is not very good.

I used Prism Herbal green that i love for the first background, and Neenah for the dotted swiss with faux eyelet edging at the bottom. This was actually re-claimed from a card I was trying to make but didn’t come out of the machine cut correctly; it was a little off for some reason. And while the silhouette store has a scalloped square i could have used, I made my own and then made the card. That is another story though.

Pansies are one of my most favorite flowers and I had just a tiny amount of money to spend so I bought the colored set; both the blue and purple. I just love it! I put this through the Silhouette machine software (which is Craft Robo) printing it out on Neenah Cardstock and then running it through the machine to cut the circle. I had also set in a couple of extra pansies to make this a Paper Tole Project. I made sure that the little pansies were going to be all the same size by sizing a single pansy over the main pansy. Then copy/pasted another image after moving it to the side. My circle was drawn first then the print of the pansy cup was place in the sircle and sized to fit nicley.

Guess i need to get an new camera because mine is not taking a good enough photo of the card and it is hard to see that it is layered. But here it is. I thank you Fred, for the lovely little pansies and all the delightful little flowers on your site.

Card on Shoestring Budget

I found some of the cutest digital paper @ Tracy Ann Digital Art

The set of 12 papers was just so sweet and cute I just had to get it. I found this spot after looking for some paper that Mel Stamps was using for a recent post and will be getting that as well as others.

I did re-size the papers as they are for 12x12 inch scrapbook paper and I was using 8.5 x 11 paper and besides the scale of the design usually comes out better for card making if scaled down some. I used a $9.99 program from Serif to size the papers and print them out.

The cute image came from  Sassy Cheryl’s who has some freebie images on Paper Craft Planet.

The scalloped oval behind the digi-stamp is color matched to the paper with a freebie color picker then cut on the Silhouette (both done in the Craft Robo program that comes with the Silhouette). The the embellishemnt (flower trio) was also silhouette sd cut and colored with a q-tip before taking apart from the rest of the paper with VersaMagic Dew Drop “Malted Mauve” and Distress “Shabby Shutters”.

Waltzing Mouse Challenge

There’s a neat little spot on the web called Waltzing Mouse who will be putting out another new set of stamps I drool over. And iwth it comes a little challenge that inspired me right away.
The challenge is this sketch…
Here is my interpretation of the sketch.
Stamps used (since i don’t have any Waltzing Mouse stamps yet) JustRite, Penny black and Impression Obsession "’Cover-A-Card’ Thick n Thin Stripes
Watercolor pencils and blending solution in a water brush was used on Neenah paper for the daisy and mouse.
Glossy Cardstock was used on the background.
I used the Silhouette SD for cutting my circles and hand cut the daisies.

Mother’s Day

I love Crafty Secrets; She has all these neat little vintage, antique stamps and paper pieces to put together to make lovely little creations. She also, from time-to-time, has little freebies on her site. This time there was a page from a catalog or magazine and a poem for Mothers day. She also has contests like this one.

I made an easel card from these 3 graphics and thought i would share it here.

I covered the catalog page with tissue paper that is from a pattern leaving the wrinkles in but not adding any more. I made up a cutting file for the card including the stand or brace for the back and cut it out and placed the elements  together. The leaves were cut from a file in the Silhouette store and then drew vein lines with an embossing tool the applied some ColorBox fluid Chalk in Dark Moss to the edges.

There is one signature on the card already with 2 more to go…

Birthday Today!

My oldest Granddaughter is 21 today and so, of course, festivities are ensuing. Must have a birthday card !!! That goes without saying. I grabbed a little  stamped and painted image of mice having a blowing out the candle ritual that has been lying around for about a month. So glad that i have some things done ahead of time needed. Had cut out a little doily (a Samantha Walker design for Silhouette) just a little while ago and  thought it would be real cute behind the image so that was the  next piece. I used distress ink to do the background behind the ice and silhouetted the mice, used 3D-DOTS for them and everything was going good at this point. The background paper came next; that was easy! Bittersweet from basic gray had just the perfect paper for this. But then come the sentiment and I had’ to cut that on the Silhouette…I thought it would look just great so I cut that out and the top half of the ‘B” didn’t cut correctly. But i cut another one and that worked out.Now I had to figure out, without a lot of supplies I used to have, i feel a bit hampered. But i had a roll of ‘cheap’ low tack dollar store cellophane tape and thought that would work so i laid out the lettering on my crafty acrylic craft thingy that i lay on top of the Olfa rotary cutting mat that has lines on it for this kind of thing. Adjusted the letters so that they were as straight as i could get them and and carefully laid the cellophane tape over them and lightly pressed it down so i got all the letters on the tape. Whew! i did it. only the exclamation point went haywire but i can do that after i lay down the sentiment on the card.

Then i carefully turned the lettering over and applied mono-multi to the backside of the letters. Now, my eyes are not as good as they used to be i cannot see some details like white glue on white paper, i used too. So some spots got more glue than they should but at least the glue dries clear! The dot to the ‘i’ is somewhere on my table, ah! there it is. So I grabbed my handy-dandy Quick Kutz quicker-picker-upper and picked up the dot and laid a bit of glue on the exposed side and let that sit so that the glue would dry to tacky and placed it in it’s spot and now i have to get everybody to sign the card…Bye! :)

Flourishes Challenge

Flourishes is having a challenge! They are offering, as a prize, the whole set of new stamps set she is releasing this Friday. I can hardly stand it! I would love to have that. I entered this card even though I wasn’t sure that it was really good enough.

I think if i had spritzed the paper first a little, then layed the mask onto the paper and finished spritzing i would have liked it better. I love the flourish, just didn’t want it to be so startlingly white with the other pieces on the card. But two very kind people made a comment about what they liked about the card; so i cheered up. One was on the background.

The challenge was for a twinchy; a little 2-inch square work of art that like to take center stage. I just loved the way she worded that. And I even had a Flourish Stamp set to work with!

So now i am biting my nails…..till Friday. Just joking; I’m not really biting my nails. But i would sure love to win the drawing.

JustRite Part 2

I had a scrap of Basic Grey paper from the Bittersweet collection that when I was playing around with the Tattered angel spray and a silhouette cut pattern i was using for a mask came out so pretty that kept it out on my desk.

And when I was putting this card together I tried it with the image and stamped image it worked so well I went ahead and put it together even though it is not my normal color scheme.

 But trying to photo graph it was a problem. I did finally manage to get a good shot finally so here it is. A little on the grey side but both the stamp and my pretty paper shoe up nicely anyway and lightening it up did not do it any favors.

Butterfly_floral_lace_square_C00500_19210 was used as a stencil through which the Iridescent glimmer spray showed up really nice. The lace border is a take off on the one in the silhouette store; it was not quite what i wanted, though i do have it in my collection, so using the closed spline tool i did the lace. If anyone want the cutting file I can email it to them.

Joyous Easter Everyone!

I am so glad that Jesus came and died for me. Then rose and took the keys of hell away from the devil! We have  a Life in Christ that is so good! No matter what I go through I know that I have a place in heaven with my Savior.

I didn’t have a Lily or a pattern for a lily so i used a blossom from the Nostalgia set by Inkadinkado. Silhouette had a couple of Lillies but I ran out of cash to get them…oh well. Next year.

Birdies Singin’

I think of an enclosed patio filled with ferns, a ficus  tree or two and white Victorian wicker furniture with this little stamped image. The stamp is Impression Obsession’s Birdcages stamp. It shows up better if you click on the photo and get the larger view.

 

I was trying this out to see if I was going to  like it the way I had it in my head. Sometimes those things don’t turn out so good and other times they turn out wonderfully better than expected. So I was using a scrap of Neenah paper and  that wonderful flourish stamp of Time Holtz’s with old paper distress ink and so far so good. The next step was to add the little birdcages that delights me much. And these were going to be stamped and embossed with white embossing powder. So I got out the trusty heat gun and dried the distress ink (or so I thought) and proceeded. Well when i added the embossing powder I noticed that some of the flourish had picked up some of the embossing powder. I applied the heat gun to it anyway and kinda liked what i had on the paper. So then I went ahead and lightly smashed it face down into a bath of distress inks (shabby shutters and tattered roses) and this is what came out.

Neenah paper doesn’t do so well this way but water color paper has a bit of a raised grain to it and when stamping images sometimes ends up with gaps where ink should be. So I went ahead with the Neenah paper and dried it immediately. It didn’t turn out too badly.

This went really well with a piece of Prism Cardstock in Sring Willow Dark and put this on a piece of paper from the Porcelain Collection of basic grey’s. The fancy lattice border is a Silhouette file cut on Dick Blick sulphite drawing paper.

Need a Hug?

No matter what you are going through, maybe you are needing a hug today. Here is one for you from me. I can make that many cards and mail them out to you but you can save the photo and remember every time you look at it that God has a hug for you.

I learned a couple of things this morning. The first is my lovely Canon MP210 (printer) has a setting that can speed up or slow down the drying time of the ink. that makes it nice for embossing digi-stamps.

The other one is really a no-brainer but i messed up. I printed the sentiment onto sticker paper (Avery 4383) and besides the fact that i should have made it a little bit smaller I cut to shape and i should have just pressed it onto the white layer of the tag and trimmed to match the tag.  Instead i shape cut it ( ;) )and the edges are showing, but it isn’t too bad. I did a neat little trick of 2 layers on the ‘hug?’ the bottom layer is gold with an upper layer sized just a little smaller and in colors to match the paper.

Materials

• Basic Grey Sugar Rush 6x6 pad
• Neenah cardstock
• Penny Black ‘Hugs"’ clear stamp set
• Mulberry Street paper flowers
• Puffy Velvet
• Water color pencils
• Dove blender

Card size is 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches. the Shape for the images (with mat cut a little larger) I cut on the silhouette from a shape scanned then imported onto the Robo Master software and then an outline was made from that. After the outline was pasted onto the image I un-grouped it and deleted the background image. I cut the white layer at 2 5/8”  and the mat at 2 7/8”.
The sentiment tag is an SEI file (nameplates_C00011_27011 – keyword: tags, nameplate, label) Silhouette file of 4.
The scroll is a pair of scrolls (rough_swashes_C00138_23067 – keyword: flourish) not joined, done by hero Arts for Silhouette
The leaf stem is branch (branch_C00022_23851 – keyword: leaves) by Donna Downey and would be great for Sunflowers. I cut mine just a smidgeon over 2 inches long or tall on some Dick Blick student drawing paper and did a Tim Holtz technique for coloring with peeled paint Distress Ink. I was trying for a mottled look and did get it on one branch but not this one.
The flower centre is Puffy Velvet and i painted it yellow with water color pencils and used just pain water (I didn’t know how it would react to the dove blending solution)