splattering paint

 I was playing with my watercolors and trying out splattering them and seeing what I could come up with.

This was what I started with, but then I made the mistake of spraying it with water and messed it all up. I guess I got a little carried away. The piece on the left was from playing around with watercolor wash and blending for a background. But it turned out pretty good when it dried. So, I am saving it for an anniversary card idea. Then I tried the splattering again on another piece of water color paper with blues and reds.

By the time I got to the reds and pinks I figured out a better technique. If I splattered plain water, then I loaded my brush with color and touched the color to the water splatters. It worked so much better. This may or may not make it's way on to a card, that has yet to be seen. But it was fun playing with the water colors. 

..Squirrel..where?

    Have you ever had one of those days when you just can't seem to get anything done because you become distracted from the task at hand? Just like a squirrel... what? Oh, where was I going with that? In honor of the squirrel and the days that we just get distracted and don't get much done here is my card.

Squirrel card

   This is the layout for the My Favorite Things blog sketch # 191. They give you a sketch challenge and you create a card and share it with everyone on their blog. 

   September is just around the corner and fall is on it's way soon. I am looking forward to a little cooler weather. Fall is my favorite time of year, when the air gets crisp and you can have the windows open during the day and snuggle under more blankets at night. Hayrides, changing leaves, and apple cider; fall is such a great time of year. I picked my colors for my card because they remind me of the beginning of fall when the air is cooler and the leaves haven't yet changed. The squirrels seem to be every where gathering their food for winter. This little guy was so cute and went with the acorn printed paper I dug out of my scraps.  I used a white gel pen for my faux stitching on the edge of my banner to dress it up. Then I made my card base from kraft card stock and put the whole thing together. For a finishing touch of a little bit of something shiny I added two gold sequins. 

Zig and a zag

   Here are some of the cards I have been working on. I wanted to focus on doing some fun things on the background. I took tumbled glass distress ink and peacock feathers with the  round blending tool  and  blended them on white card stock to get a gradient look. Then I took my Heidi Swapp background zigzag stamp and inked it up with mowed lawn, peacock feathers, and tumbled glass. After that I misted it with some water and stamped my background. Then I grabbed a floral stamp and my versamark ink. I stamped my flowers and vine with the versamark and added blue raspberry perfect pearl pigments.

  I misted the perfect pearls with water and heat set it with my heat gun. The first picture is straight on of the card and the second is at an angle so you can see the shimmer of the perfect pearls. I kept the pearl look going with my vellum, after die cutting it I stamped a Helen Keller quote on my vellum piece.  Then I added one of my favorite embellishments; glitter tape in lagoon.  For a finishing touch I added a few clear gems. This card is  for the Simon Say Stamp Work it Wednesday Challenge.

  I also did another card with the zig zag stamp then too with the same blues for the background.

 My mind was running up and down like these zig zags. This card was very simple and fun to make. Take a blended background, stamp the black zig zags, mat it on black card stock and mount on a white card base. Then emboss the sentiment on black card stock die cut circle. Put some foam tape on the back of the circle add the sequins. After that cut some glitter tape and notch the end and tuck it under the circle. This card is for the Simon Says Stamp anything goes Challenge. Hope you liked my cards today.

Another Gorjuss girl

Here is another Gorjuss girl. This one is from the new heights set. She is standing on a pile of books, like she doesn't have a care in the world, or maybe she is a book worm like me?  I also think the way she is standing with her arms open wide that she has song running through her mind as she dances up the pile of books while humming a happy tune.

New Heights - Gorjuss Girl 

I was inspired by Debby Hughes. Her blog has featured several cards lately with black outlined images and color splattered on them. The purple ink and card stock is Close to My Heart's smokey plum. I used glossy accents over the dots on her dress and the heart clip in her hair. This is one of the cards I am going to submit for the the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge. Their challenge this week is anything goes, which is good because you can do anything that comes to mind. But then how do you choose which idea you want to create first. : ) It is like going to the store and trying to choose ice cream.

Feminine card with texture paste

  Its is always good to find inspiration from other cards that you see and admire. I was inspired with my embellishments on this card by one of the cards from Stretch Stamps 2 class. It had lovely vellum butterflies. I thought that would be perfect to embellish this dainty and feminine card. This was my first try at texture paste. I made a textured background with the Tim Holtz lace doily stencil. After it dried, I used the tattered rose distress ink all over the background piece with my blending tool. Then I took a tiny scoop of white confetti perfect pearls and mixed with water and painted over the background. The pearl shimmer gave the background an even more feminine touch.

Feminine God bless you card

  All of the different textures give a lot of visual interest. There is texture paste, pink twill, pearl vellum, sequins, and brown paper lace. Perfect for the Lawnscaping texture challenge. I think this is a good challenge, to makes you stretch your creative muscles a little more. I am going to be trying some more texture paste soon.

Gorjuss - I gave you my heart

One of the things I have had on my wish list for a couple month's is some of the adorable stamps that Do Craft puts out. Santoro's gorjuss, is what the packaging say. They are adorable little girl's that I have just fallen in love with.

Gorjuss Girl card

This little girl was my favorite, so I got her first. She is from the I gave you my heart set. My daughter keeps saying she doesn't have a mouth, but I think she is charming in spite of that. These stamps are great for coloring in. I stamped this with Memento black tuxedo ink on water color paper. It was tricky the black kept wanting to run with the water. I will need to find a different black ink to use with water coloring. These would be great to color with Copic markers or even color pencils. (Which I will do as soon as I get some.) I used the Gansai Tambi 36 color set that I got from Mama Elephant. After I stamped the image I wet my paint brush and applied the water to the area I wanted to add colored first. Then picked up the color and added it to the area that had water on it. Then the color will stay just in the area you want it. After I finished the girl, crayons, and book I did a cornflower blue wash on the background. I also distressed the edges with cornflower blue ink from Close to my heart. I put Lawn Fawn sky colored trim on it. Then  applied foam tape on the back of the water color paper and stuck it to the card base.  My oldest sister was on my mind the whole time I was making this card. The picture reminds me of her daughter a little bit too. I think she will love it. I also think it will be great for the Word Art Wednesday challenge, they want lovely uplifting cards for their challenge. So, off to make an envelope for my card and send it to my sister. Hope it makes her day. : )

Love and encouragement

   So, I am at home taking care of my sweet little 2 1/2 year she has fever and isn't feeling good. Right now she is cuddled up on the couch watching Frozen with her favorite baby dolls.  My family are big fans of that movie. One of my favorite parts in that movie is when Olaf is talking about what love is. Love is putting others needs ahead of your own. The love message in the movie is not romantic love, like we see it in so many movies today; but sacrificial love and family love. Love is about being unselfish.
    I discovered a new challenge blog. Word Art Wednesday blog, I really love this blog and will have to add them to my follow list.  They are all about glorifying  God with their creativity and using scripture to uplifting and encourage others. What a blessing it is to know that the art form that you love can be used to uplift, encourage, and brighten someone's day. That is the reason I even make cards.

Triangles Encouragement card

   Today my card was an encouragement card; the colors were inspired by my sister-in-law. I decided to try out the modern look, its a little out side of my comfort zone but I want to become better at what I do, so I should practice the things I am not as comfortable with. Navajo designs have been really catching my eye lately and the triangles kind of reminded me of some those designs. To bad the camera doesn't capture the wink of stella that I used on all of the grey wool triangles or the iridescent shimmer of the golden yellow sequins. For my sentiment I choose this verse in Psalms reminding us that if we give the things that burden us down to the Lord he will take care of us. What a wonderful thing to be able to give our worries and problems to him, and have the peace to know he has got it taken care of.

Maps and birthday candles

Well, I picked up some more supplies yesterday. I had a good time getting away for a little bit with just my son and my husband. I can't wait to try out some of the paper crafting supplies I got yesterday. It's always great to get new things to try.  I started another card for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge for their back to school theme challenge and didn't get the layout figured out or the card put together. It was put aside while I had day away yesterday.  Bits and pieces of the card were calling my name today, so I pulled them out and got to work.

Geography Thank You card

This card made me think of geography, the United States map is from Lawn Fawn's "Wish You Where Here" set. The ruler was so much fun and gave the card texture from my last card that I couldn't help using it on this card too. I was going for an antique map with the colors I choose for the states and I added some tea stain distress ink to the map, tag, ruler, and card base to help with the antique feel. Dry embossing is great way to give texture and feel to your card. It also adds some dimension to your card too. 

Birthday Wishes Candles

I have been wanting to try Perfect Pearls after taking the Stretch Your Stamps 2 class on the Online Card Classes. Lawnscaping Challenge blog has challenge going that is all about texture. What a perfect time for me to try something new with the Perfect Pearls pigments that I have.  This layout for birthday cards is simple and great for a guy or a gal. So, I wanted to dress it up and give my background texture and the flames on my candles some sparkle. The green background I did with mowed lawn distress ink and a blending tool. Then I mixed some green apple Perfect Pearls pigments with water and painted them over the background with a brush and heat set them. The purple background I wanted try something else. So, I took my blending tool and used dusty concord distress ink over it and then used the ink pad itself on the raised areas. After it dried I took a versamark ink pad over the raised areas too. Then applied the blue raspberry Perfect Pearls pigments over it with a brush, after that I brushed away the excess. Using water mist and heat I set it. The purple has almost iridescent pearl shimmer to it. The flames I cut from glitter fun foam. 

I look forward to making cards with my Gorjuss girl stamps, texture paste from ranger, or using my holiday knits Tim Holtz stencil in the future and sharing them with you. 

School is starting again

 It's that time of year again for kids and teachers to go back to school again. For me that means getting ready to teach my daughter Kindergarten.  We decided to homeschool our kids. I can't wait to see how we like this awesome curriculum we chose for Kindergarten this year. It was like Christmas when the books came in the mail this summer. I wanted to dive right into those new books, but I resisted. I love books and have tried to curb buying books that I don't really need and can check out at the library instead. School supplies for the lower grades too are a lot of fun too. Who doesn't like crayons, pencils, color pencils, glue, scissors, paper, and etc? Next, week we take the plunge into Kindergarten. The Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge for this week is of course "school" that is on every ones mind this time of year.

Gold Star Good Job card.

Today's post is short and sweet, there is a lot to cram in today. Tomorrow is a much needed mini getaway. I wish it could be longer than a day, but I will take what I can get. I am looking forward to going to a huge paper crafting garage sale. My sweet husband is taking off of work for the day just to take me. : ) So, I am super excited and hope I find great deals and lots more paper crafting supplies.

Glitter fun foam

   My new favorite thing to cut out with my die cuts is glitter fun foam. I decided to try this out after I got Lawn Fawn's lawn cut set Cole's Abc's for Mother's day this year. I had seen a video that Lawn Fawn had over on their  Pintrest page. They had mentioned you can use  fun foam and felt with your dies. So, after I got the alphabet dies I purchased small pack of the glitter fun foam. Now at most craft stores they have regular fun foam or the kind with the sticky back. I decided I liked the idea of the sticky backing because after you cut it with the die cut you can just peel off the backing and have your own custom sticker. (You also don't have to mess with glue then.) Which is great especially for alphabet stickers. Many times I have had alphabet stickers and run out of vowels or had some random leftover letters that I just didn't know what with them. I always seem to run out of E's. Eleanore's name for example we decided to spell with the silent e on the end. After using regular alphabet stickers for her name  I can't spell anything else that requires an e. The kid have sensory box's that their Mamaw made for them. They loved it when I took and customized their boxes by putting their name on the side in glitter foam.  The fun foam is good for cutting out sentiments  and shapes too. Here is a card I used the glitter fun foam on for the Lawnscaping texture challenge. I used the cloud and umbrella shapes from Lawn Fawn's Hello Baby set. The bushes from the into the woods set where re purposed into clouds too.

Grey Bunny Hello card

It's too bad the picture doesn't do the glitter justice. The glitter fun foam, pearl vellum, and sequins show up so much better in person. Anything shimmery is so hard to capture with just a photograph. Another example of glitter fun foam on a card.

Zebra wild girl birthday card

 My first ever Lawn Fawn stamp set was the Critters on the Savanna. I love the zebra from that set, it was just right for my card. This would be great birthday card for a girl.

Chalkboard teacher thank you card

Teacher thank you card

    I was checking out the My Favorite Things Stamps blog this morning. I have heard of their company but unfortunately haven't had the chance to try their products yet. They had a post from August 13th, where they have a sketch of a card layout and they want to see your creations using this layout. So, I decided to scramble to beat the deadline and this is the card I came up with. 

   Teachers are wonderful people, that help mould us into the people we are. Just like parents they have learned to have great patience with us when we just don't get what they are teach us. Teacher's inspire us to do better, try hard, and to do things we don't always think we are capable of doing. Make sure you take the time to tell the teacher's in your life thank you.

Spotlight on the sponge dauber

 Today I wanted to put the spotlight on a often over looked little tool. The sponge dauber:

It is really a handy little tool. It helps keep your fingers clean and gives you the ability to add a little soft color in a small area. I learned an new way to use this little tool when I was taking the online card classes Stretch Your Stamps 2. It was actually in a class on using floral builder stamps. To shade an image that has a solid area,  you can stamp over it with the same color or a darker shade of ink. But    you only want ink a little bit of the area to get a shaded look. How do you do that? You do that with the sponge dauber! It keeps your fingers clean and gets the ink where you want it.You take the dauber put it on your finger dab it into your ink (darker usually shows up better) and then dab the ink on to the area of the stamp that you want to shade. Then very careful line up your stamp over the already stamped image and stamp. Then you can have a image has shading that and stand out more than just a one color image.

A leaf background on a card using the a sponge dauber to shade.

I tried this on a card background using two different size of leaves. I used just the darker ink towards the bottom of the leaf to shade it. The sea horses on my card from my last post also have been shaded in the same manner if you look closely at them. This shading technique  also looks good on flowers too. So, the sponge dauber is a pretty handy little tool to have.

Summer time!

      The summer has seem to fly so fast. So, many things that I would have like to have done this summer; somethings got accomplished and some unfortunately did not. One of those things that I hoped to do and didn't get to was to go swimming. I am not a person who enjoys swimming, but I do like to go to the pool about four to five times, just to soak in the water when it is hot out. Not having a pool near by makes  this something that has to be planned. With little kids that still need naps that makes it hard to do at times. So, I was reading the Simon Says Stamp blog (one of the many paper crafting blogs that I follow) the other day and they have challenges that they do from their blog and usually it has a theme to make your card along that theme or certain materials. I decide to give it a try. I made a couple of cards to put on the challenge blog and their theme is all about summer time and so I choose to make two cards around an ocean theme. I like love the sound of waves, so relaxing. If we had a beach near by I am sure I would go there a lot, even if it was to just listen to the waves.

My kids love watching Wild Kratts show; its all about animals.
The sea turtle and seahorses were some of our favorite ocean related episodes.

Love these little sea horses and the pun made a great sentiment for this card.

My girls love to craft and create too. My four year was coloring the other day and she talks whenever she is doing anything (just like her daddy) and I started to listen in on what she was saying. She was talking about blending colors, and shimmer things. I am sure that she has picked up these words from the blogs and videos that I read and watch online about card making. She is my little artist in the making she loves to color, paint, and make things. I told her that the blog Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge (I was reading had a challenge where they wanted kids to post the cards that they made. She was excited to get the crafting things out and make something. She was even more excited when I told her she could use my stamps and pick what she wanted to make.

Eleanore's card. 

Of course my two year wanted a piece of the action too, anything that Mama and big sister are doing she wants to be part of too. She had to have a little help since she was to small to be trusted with the paper cutter. She loves the embellishments, of course what little girl that loves jewelry wouldn't be crazy about embellishments when she crafts? : )

Violet's card

Cupcakes....mmm,cupcakes.

   Mama Elephant is one of my new favorite stamp companies. They have lots of cute stamps, dies, and awesome water colors. I love some of their new stamps that they just released. Now after looking at their new stamps all I can think about is cupcakes. Cupcakes are in quite a few stamps, these days. I think I need a cupcake and a cupcake stamp, that way I can have my cupcake and eat it too. : ) One thing I like about this new cupcake set from Mama Elephant is that is also has different toppers for your cupcakes too. Usually you see icing, sprinkles, and cherries; but this stamp has several cute little animals in two sizes that you can put on your cupcakes. MMMmm, cupcakes. It didn't help that I keep seeing cupcakes today. My two year's favorite t-shirt that she wore today has three little cupcakes on it. If I let her she would wear that shirt every day. She also was wearing her cupcake apron at dinner tonight. I would even take one of those orange little cupcakes that Hostess makes with the little white curly q icing one it...hmmm that inspires me for a card idea, man I need a cupcake and a cupcake stamp. : 9

Learning the lesson that mistakes grow creativity

Here is a sympathy card that I was working on the other day. It's funny how projects don't always come out the way that you imagine them to at first, but it isn't always a bad thing. At first I was going to have three rows of lace, (which didn't work because my card stock got stuck in my paper punch, oops.) But then I decided the pearl vellum would be a better way to go since the vellum gave a more delicate look to the card. 

Water color Sympathy card

   I love these water colors. I got them from Mama Elephant stamps after reading Jennifer McGuire's blog, she had made a card and said that they were some of the best she had used. So, I raided my applesauce jar and there were enough quarters in there to buy the 36 color set. They also have a some pearl white  and two gold shades too in the 36 color set. 

My last post I shared with you how graphic stamps were a challenge for me. I didn't give up and decided I was going to work on some more home work for that style to practice and see if I could come up with another card. 

Hugs and hearts graphic shape card

   I am starting to see mistakes in the creative process as a challenge to over come. : ) I mean that in a good way. This card was a good example of that. Making mistakes some times helps your card turn out better in the long run. Valentines is a long way off but I will have a card ready for it when it comes. 

I have had a wonderful time with the Online Card Classes Stretch Your Stamps 2. I have learned about background stamps, alphabet stamps, sentiment stamps, outline stamps, color me stamps, graphic stamps, and floral stamps. I have been learning many different techniques to make the most of my stamps and get many different looks from the same stamps. Thanks Debby for the give away on your blog for free class tuition I have benefited greatly from theses classes. The home work has been more fun than any home work should be. The graphic stamps were quite a challenge since they aren't quite my style. The first attempt was a flop, I hated it, it was scrapped and I saved it to reuse as a card base for a future project.

This was the end result of my second attempt at a card using a graphic stamp. This card was something I could be proud of. The stamp set Close to My Heart stamp set that had flowers on it, I believe it was from the Lucy workshop on the go kit.  (The letters were from a different Close to My Heart set.) The circles are the centers for the flowers on the stamp set. The picture doesn't do it justice, but I can't afford a good camera yet. There are white sequins between some of the dots too. I love adding a touch of sequins since the design was very simple. Tomorrow I will show you a sympathy card that I was working on.

How I got my title?

       Normally, I would consider myself a pretty creative person. But I guess when it comes to blog titles I just don't have what it takes.  So, after trying, trying, and more trying I was ready to forget even trying this whole blog thing. I was very frustrated and wanted to quite. My four almost five year old was sitting here playing with her play-doh. She started singing, "Do you want to build a snowman?" One of the songs from Frozen, her  (and might I add my favorite Disney movie too) and I think to myself why not? I have tried everything else and it has been rejected. : ) So, my daughter is the genius who inspired the title of my blog. = ) What would I do without her?