Wednesday, May 22, 2013

A Little Birdie

I have three great stamp sets that all have the cutest little birdies on them! Lawn Fawn's A Birdie Told Me and Critters on the Savannah and Mama Elephant's Rustic Spring. This week at Dynamic Duos the colors are a very pretty blue and black (Click here for the challenge). Here's the badge for the challenge:

I also noticed that the Lawnscaping Challenge for the week (Click Here for the Challenge) is a clean and simple design with Lawn Fawn products, which I love!


So, here's what I came up with:

The only trick to this card was to stamp the sentiment and the 'talking' birdie first on the card and on a piece of separate cardstock and a piece of masking paper. I stamped the sentiment next and then applied the fussy cut mask to the word bubble. Then I just stamped the other birds randomly to create a background from the three stamp sets and then peeled back the mask and added the birdie that I colored with two Copic markers in B06 and W3. I finished it by adding the birdie with a pop dot and covered him with some glossy accents.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you like my card and have a great day!!
Rachel

Friday, May 17, 2013

Runway Inspired Challenge #35

    It's Friday which means I'm frantically creating a last minute card for the Runway Inspired Challenge Blog!! This weeks challenge (Click here for a link) is based on this photo from the runways of Miu Miu.
   I loved three things about this entire image immediately, the handbag, the dotted scarf, and the yellow dress of the previous model in the background. I decided to grab the closest matching Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade, Worn Lipstick and Tumbled Glass to go with the colors in the photo I also had to find some very tiny polka dot and stripe stamps. I used Technique Tuesday's Passion for Polka and Simon Says Stamp's Like Your Style to fill in the hearts. I also got my shipment from Two Peas in a Bucket yesterday which had my new Lawn Fawn Heart Dies!! I did some clever masking and die cutting and added some washi tape and a bit more Tumbled Glass ink with the help of Mama Elephants Basic Borders stamp and viola! Just a sentiment and heart from Lawn Fawn's A Birdie Told Me and a dash of Distress Marker in Worn Lipstick and I was done.
   I hope you like the card! It was a ton of fun to make and when I was finished I had a Julie Ebersole 'Happy Clapping Monkey' moment. Which was awesome. You can check out her amazing cards here @ PaperTruffles.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Dynamic Duos Challenge

    I've been gathering my inspiration lately from my outfits and the shirt I had on last week had just the right colors and design. Plus I had multiple compliments on it so apparently others agree. So, I noticed that Dynamic Duos (Click here to see the Challenge) is having an anniversary this week and so any past color combo was open for submission! Yay! I filed through all of the color combos that I never got to do because I'm silly and started this blog far too late and found this one:
   These two colors matched my shirt perfectly and I was able to add in some cream as well. Yay! So, I came up with these two cards.


    For the first card, I cut a negative from the background piece with my Slice and adhered it to a standard sized card base in black. Then I added a small strip of black cardstock from my scraps and wrapped it a bit with some American Crafts twine. Then I stamped the Best Wishes sentiment from TPC Studio's Brush Stroke Greetings and matted it on some Bazzil cardstock. It's quite simple but I like it and it's so far removed from everything else I generally do.
    The second card took forever because I was trying too hard to an unhealthy extent. There are about 499 gagillion paper punched and colored with every type of distress ink in Ripe Persimmion and Black Soot flowers all over my craft table that are still orphaned. So, leaving those behind I instead picked up my Dylusions stencil again and inked the leaves in Distress Ink and added glossy accents on a handful of them to add some variation and interest and to match the embossed sentiment which was stamped from Mama Elephant's Nursery Deco set. To recreate this card would take like 6 minutes...the first version however, yikes. But here they are!
    P.S. Apparently, to my camera, red orange just becomes orange...sad.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Runway Inspired Special Challenge

    This week on the Runway Inspired Challenge Blog, they are hosting a baby shower and gave us this picture to pull inspiration from:
    I pulled inspiration from the tiny polka dots on her dress and her little gold shoes all offset with her black leggings for my card.
    I started the card by embossing my Hero Arts Life of the Party Stars stamp on a piece of cardstock in Embossing Tinsel in Gold. Then, I pulled out my Slice Machine and the Nursery Rhymes Cartridge to cut the words from white cardstock. I added Black Soot Distress Ink directly to the cut outs and then went over it again with a Distress Marker. Next, I used my Baby Cartridge and cut out the three stars and the baby shoes. I covered each piece in Tarnished Brass Distress Stain, let them dry and edged them with a Black Soot Distress Marker. Lastly, I punched out a few more stars and left them white but edged with the same marker and added some gemstones to the shoes and tied them to the words with a piece of black thread.
    I hope you like the card and thanks for stopping by!

Mother's Day One Week Early!

    I am usually so very terribly bad at saving everything until the last minute, especially with cards that I have to make for specific people. I want it to become more than it just is - a card. However, every great once in a while I get an idea and I stick to it and I finish it way before the last second. The gift that goes with it is another story...
    So, here's the card I made for mother's day one whole week early!
    Everything on the card came from my Simon Says Stamp May Card Kit which made coordination so very easy. To color the flowers, I used three Distress Markers in Fired Brick, Victorian Velvet and Spun Sugar and my Ranger water brush after I stamped them on watercolor paper with Staz On black ink. The leaves were colored with Shabby Shutters and Forest Moss markers in the same manner and then all the pieces were fussy cut which went rather easy.
    It's hard to see but the sentiment is embossed with Antiquities Antique Gold distress powder and looks so very classy. I love that gold is trending right now. I usually catch myself using silver on every project, so this makes me stretch a bit!
    The only other step to altering the pieces in my kit was to punch the border under the piece of lace which I did with a Martha Stewart border punch. I then used my paper distresser to smooth the edges after punches to better mirror the lace. Then I added Victorian Velvet ink to the bottom and around the base piece of the card. I then finished the card by adhering all the pieces using adhesive, some clever positioning and some pop dots on the smaller flower to make it contrast a bit and not get lost next to the bigger flowers.
    I was really happy with how this turned out and am only sad because I don't have a challenge to submit it to!