Oh, Burlap Tree!

In my world, Christmas decorations go up the day after Thanksgiving, so this week's Color My Heart challenge was perfect:  Cranberry and Ponderosa Pine.

All the stamps came from the Art Philosophy Cricut Bundle.  I stamped the "banner" from the swirly stamp set onto Burlap Ribbon with Ponderosa Pine pigment ink, turned it upside down and...voila...Christmas tree.  The tree trunk is the edging of the Burlap Ribbon.  I just tucked it under the tree and used Liquid Glass to adhere both it and the tree.  I also used Liquid Glass to adhere the Cranberry Baker's Twine bow.  The sentiment came from solid stamp set, again in pigment ink. 

Such an easy card.  Wish putting up my real Christmas tree was this fast!

May your Christmas season be filled with light and joy.

Until next time,
Becca

Polar Express

I love the colors for this week's Color Dare, but they make me think of Thanksgiving and I need Christmas cards...a lot of Christmas cards.  Every year I try to whittle down my list, but every year it stays around 75 cards.  I have 15 ready. 

Yeah.

So, I racked my brain until I could find a way to make Smokey Plum, Goldrush and Olive Christmassy.

The background doily is from one of the stamp sets that coordinates with the Artbooking Cricut cartridge.  I stamped it with Versamark ink on Kraft paper.  The rest of the stamps are from Polar Bear Holiday.  The bear and sentiment were stamped in Cocoa pigment ink.  I used clear embossing powder over the bear only because I wanted a barrier to my watercoloring.  The bear himself was colored with Copics, but the sunshine around him is Goldrush ink watered down and painted. 

To get good coverage of the Olive snowflakes on the Kraft, I used pigment ink.  It stays truer to the color when using it on a colored background.

The picture doesn't show it well, but the bear's scarf is a bit of Smokey Plum reinker, Pearl Paint and water.  I dyed the ribbon with Smokey Plum, so I had some leftover dyed water to play with.  The skates and white parts of the hat were painted with the Pearl Paint directly.

When I got done with the main card, I thought I'd add a few sequins.  Well...hmmm.  I couldn't seem to stop.  At all.

Yeah.

Anyway, I think he turned out really cute.  And he will certainly be added to my stash of Christmas cards.  One more down, sixty to go.

Until next time,
Becca

Fresh Muse

My crafting mojo has been missing for days now.  Of course that always seems to be the case when I have deadlines looming in my personal life.  With a list of things to do as long as my arm, I'm staring vacantly into space hoping the craft fairy will come clean up my area and leave me a pile of finished projects.

One of the things on my to do list is to finish making Christmas cards.  I used inspiration from Freshly Made Sketches and Muse to bring you this:

Taking a cue from the design team over at Freshly Made Sketches, I was very loose with my interpretation.  I spritzed pearlized Smokey Plum onto the purple background to follow the sketch.  Then I used my finger to smear silver pigment ink over top.  That left me with too much silver and not enough purple, so I smeared Smokey Plum and Gypsy pigment ink. 

The snowflake followed the same basic inking.  First it was spritzed, patted with Smokey Plum pigment ink, patted with silver pigment, and then toped with some heavier pats with Gypsy pigment.  I have a little silver on my Gypsy ink pad now, but it's not horrible.

The snowflake was cut using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge, and the sentiment is from Stampin' Up.

All supplies listed with italics are CTMH.

Well, off to make dinner. Maybe the kitchen fairy cleaned and left me a delicious, nutritious meal.  Here's to wishful thinking!

Until next time,
Becca

Bit of Green Birthday

Our challenge this week at Color My Heart is Black & White with a pop of Green.  I put this card together for a very musical nephew.

Here's the supply list (everything in italics is CTMH):

• Stamps: Universal Background, Distressed Background, Holiday Tags
• Paper: Pear, Black
• Ink: Black
• Accessories: Artiste (p. 47 - notched paper, p. 36 - sentiment frame), Baker's Twine: Neutral Assortment, black sequins (Hobby Lobby)

Using Cricut Craft Room, I selected the notched paper shape twice.  Before cutting, I selected the sentiment frame shape and positioned it inside one of the notched paper shapes.  I then placed the Pear paper where it would be cut with the sentiment frame opening and placed the Black paper where the second notched shape would cut.  After the Cricut cut, I trimmed the Black paper and glued it along the notched edge.

I stamped the Pear piece with the music from Universal Background then laid it over the white card and stamped the frame from Holiday Tags through the opening.  The beauty of doing a cut out window like this one is, even if you don't get the stamped image lined up perfectly, as long as it's straight and in the vicinity of where you want it, you can adjust the piece with the window.  Love that!

The Pear and Black notched paper shape was adhered with foam tape to add dimension making sure to leave an edge so the large black sequin could be tucked underneath a smidge.  (Such a great word..."smidge") 

Once again, I must give a shout out to my inspiration card which can be found here.  Other than substituting CTMH supplies for the ones she used, my only real changes were the color of the Baker's Twine and stamping the Distressed Background image vertically along the left side of the card as opposed to her horizontal image.

Since I have two musical nephews with birthdays this month, my only real dilemma is deciding which one gets this card and which one get a different one.

Until next time,
Becca

Five-layer Fly Away

I can't believe this is my last post as the October guest designer over at Heart2Heart.  I've had a wonderful time and appreciate the H2H ladies allowing me to crash their party.  This week's challenge is Lots of Layers--at least five. 

I wanted to see if I could stick to what has started to emerge as "my style" and keep the card feeling clean and simple.  I also wanted to highlight a trend I've noticed over the past few months to use off-centered panels.  Using the last card shown on this post as my inspiration, I combined two stamp sets from the new "Holiday From the Heart Gift Guide" to bring you this:

All supplies in italics are CTMH:

• Paper: Sarita (diamond pattern) and Laughing Lola
• Stamps: Lifting Spirits and Lots of Love
• Ink: Slate and Momento Tuxedo Black
• Copic Markers: RV69, V15, V12, RV93, V0000 (airplane); R05, R20, R22 (hearts); BG72, BG10, BG0000 (sky + star and wheel of airplane); W00, W3 (clouds); and 0-Colorless
• Accessories: Studio G Glitter Gel and Liquid Glass

I needed to use Copic markers on the airplane because the purple in Laughing Lola is not in the regular CTMH line...and because I needed to use Copic markers, I needed to use Momento Tuxedo Black ink for the plane so the image didn't blur while coloring.  If you look closely, you will see where the lines of the clouds began to blur when I got too close to them with the Colorless Copic.  I'm not sure why the colored Copic markers didn't bleed the Slate ink but the Colorless one did.  Whatever.  The Momento ink pads have something in them that makes the Copics not bleed them out when coloring (even with the Colorless Copic).  Plus, the black outline of the plane helps it to stand out.

The plane, small cloud,  and one of the larger hearts are all mounted on foam tape, thus creating my fifth layer.  The last three hearts in the trail behind the plane were also stamped a second time, cut out, and glued down.  I painted a little glitter gel over all the hearts, waited for them to dry, then topped them off with a little Liquid Glass to give them more shine an dimension.

What a fun month this has been.  Thanks again, H2H, for this wonderful opportunity. 

Until next time,
Becca

Thanks a Latte

Friends are wonderful things to have!  Since hubby and I started moving all across the country with this Army adventure of ours, we have said goodbye to more than just friends.  We said goodbye to hubby's white coffee supplier.  (No, it's not coffee with lots of cream, it's flash roasted coffee beans the color of sand.)  He loves the stuff.  Has one every morning.  Sometimes has one at night, too. Can't live without it.

And we're almost out.

Enter wonderful friend.  She went to the store (which is forty miles away) to pick up two more 4lb. bags and is mailing them to us.  I promised her a reimbursement check in a cute card.

I used two challenges for this card:

1. Mojo Monday Sketch 316
2. Less is More: String or Twine.

Please notice that knot.  I followed the tutorial on the Less is More blog and managed to make it work.  Quite proud of myself. 

Quite proud of taking a Mojo Monday sketch and giving it a CAS feel so I could submit to Less is More.

Here's the supply list:

• Stamps: Verve Better with You, CTMH Circle Around
• Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black, CTMH Cashmere and Twilight
• Copics: E55, E53, E50, C00, B0000, and 0 (Colorless)
• Pearls: CTMH Mocha
• Paper: CTMH Wonderland

Quite proud of having a friend who loves me enough to send coffee so I don't have to put up with pouting from a caffeine deprived spouse!

Until next time,
Becca

Lace for Christmas

One of the "hot" trends for 2014 is lace, so it's great that Heart2Heart is inspiring us to use it on our projects this week.  Most of the time I glean inspiration and put my own twist on it.  Other times--like this card--are straight copies because the original is positively brilliant.  Here's the card that inspired mine, and here's my card:

All supplies (except as noted) are CTMH.  The word banners were made by stamping Poster Tidings (9/2013 Stamp of the Month) over a page from a book.  (One of the great/not-so-great things about being a writer is getting books to review.  I've received a few I wouldn't even donate to the Goodwill; however, I feel fine about tearing out pages and stamping on them!!)  The ink and paper colors are Hollyhock and New England Ivy.  I wanted it to look Christmassy, but I needed to use Hollyhock to coordinate with the Zipper Lace.  The tone-on-tone stamping was done using All the Details...my new favorite stamp set.

Non-CTMH supplies are as follows: white lace (Hobby Lobby); star punches (Marvy), pearl accents (Hobby Lobby).  The original card uses silver gems.  If I'd had enough on hand, I would have used them, but I think the pearls are a good substitute.  And, if you plan to copy my copy, I highly recommend the two different sizes of gems/pearls.  One size was just okay, the two sizes takes it over the top!

One caution about the sewing, if you use the zipper lace you need to be very, very careful that you don't let your needle hit the zipper teeth.  Three guesses as to why I'm giving you this tidbit of wisdom.  Do you need three?

I can't wait to see your lace creations this week!

Until next time,
Becca