Sunday, September 16, 2012

Boy Cards!

 Hi Friends!

As the Summer moves on, so does my reprieve from making "Boy Cards".  Ughh!!  I'm never caught up with those.  But, this year will be different!  I sat down and did some Pinterest surfing and found some techniques and cards to case and got a bunch done!

The first two I did by using the (now) very trendy "splotching" technique.  I'm sure it has an accurate name, but I can only show you how I did it, don't know the name!!






I wanted to use these dimensional "boy" stickers I picked up from Joann's during a 50% off sale last year.




 I chose coordinating ink colors (Island Indigo, Cherry Cobbler, Crumb Cake) and directly smooshed each of the ink pads down onto my craft sheet. I just pressed part of the ink pad down and I didn't mix the colors doing this.  Then I closed my ink pads and put them away.
 



Next I spritzed the inks with water, several times actually, so that the inks were pretty wet.  At that point, the resulting puddle of wet ink shown here became my ink pallet.





I used the splotch/stain stamp from SUs! Rock Star set, and just pressed it into my very wet ink pallet and then stamped my white card panel.  I stamped my two card panels at the same time.  (Sorry, I never mounted the sticker that should be on the back of this stamp block.)





After I was sure the splotch on my card panel was dry, I attached one of the boy stickers.  Next I stamped a sentiment that sort of went with the sticker (from the Fiskar's clear stamp set of Birthday Quotes). I attached the finished panel to my card base with dimensional foam and they were done!

This next Boy Card was not made using the above techinique!


It started as an embossed Crumb Cake CS panel using a Tim Holtz EF.  I wanted to play around and see how I could make it more grungy and vintage looking.

First I lightly swiped Adirondack Snow Cap ink direct onto the CS from the pad across my embossed panel.  I then alternated swiping some Chocolate Chip, Cherry Cobbler and Island Indigo inks across different areas of the card.  The Snow Cap ink helped to keep the ink colors muted.  I liked that the raised areas caught the colors pretty randomly and afterwards I went back and deliberately added more ink in some areas to bring out the colors.



I attached my sticker from the same sticker set, but it kind of got lost on the background.  So I took a black Copic marker and ran it around the edge of the sticker image so it would stand out a little better. I wrapped a string of twine and added my tag to finish it off.



This last card is a different altogether!     







No real technique to speak of; I just assembled some fun "Technologic" Kaiser Craft die cut shapes onto Vanilla CS.  I stamped a sentiment from Maya Road on the star before adhering it with dimensional foam.



This close up shows the little "Irresistible Resisters" that I wired onto the card.  They are actual tiny electronic resisters you see on the inside of electronic gadgets.  Really cool! I got them from "Sky Blue Pink", a very funky kind of store for crafters when you are looking for some odd, hard to find trinket stuff for creating!  







I hope you enjoyed my "Boy Cards"!

BTW, I just wanted to share with you that I had several cards published in "Papers and Pixels" (see my side bar) this month and also, I just found out I was one of five selected from the Hero Arts Blog this week as a "Heroine" for this card I entered into their challenge last week. I have a new "badge" from HA for my blog!! 

TFL, I'm so glad you stopped by!
 

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Copper Theme

Hi Friends,

In honor of my new blog template in warm brown/blue colors, I created a coordinated card to go with it!!  (Not really, total coincidence!)

Made two cards as entries for Hero Arts "A Blog Named Hero" blog challenge: "Who's the Boss".  This is the first of my two posts for my cards. 



For this card, I went with both dry embossing and heat embossing.

I dry embossed a border on some Cool Caribbean CS with an embossing folder, then heat embossed my sentiment in copper EP.  I added two die cut Spellbinder flowers that I had made earlier to finish it off.  The leaves are DSWV textured CS. (BTW, Both the die cutting and dry embossing were done in my new, awesome-est ever Fiskars Fuse machine!!)






The DP I used for the flower is "Desert Spring" by SEI,  I received it in a card kit and loved that copper foil running through the design so I had to go back and order more.

Check out card #2 in the post below!

TFL, I'm so glad you stopped by!
 

Happy Thoughts

Hi Friends,

Made two cards as entries for Hero Arts "A Blog Named Hero" blog challenge: "Who's the Boss".  This is the second post for my two cards. 

For this one, I cased this card I spotted on Pinterest recently by Cristina Kowalcyzk.  I liked the colors and the simple design. 



The bike (by PSX stamps)  is embossed with white Zing EP.  I glued on Flower soft in "Spring" and "Meadow" to the basket.  The dotted ribbon is PTI and the border was punched with an EK Success border punch.  My sentiment is Hero Arts "Card Messages"



 TFL, I'm so glad you stopped by!
 

Friday, September 7, 2012

French Bird

Hi Friends!

Posting my card for the Inspiration Challenge this weekend.  I'm filling in for Stephanie as host, and so I chose the "French Garden House" website for the challenge this week.

My inspiration piece is this awesome antique 1870s "French Bird Faience" plate. Love.

I used my amazing Fiskars Fuse letterpress system to make this card.  EEEEK!!  (The Fuse was a BD gift from DH.  Can you say "spoiled"??!!) Total surprise, I didn't even drop a single hint!

I inked up my letterpress plate (the round scalloped "Thank You" one that comes with the machine) with SU Island Indigo Ink, ran it through the Fuse and it pressed, stamped, and diecut the card all in one pass.

I added some stamped toile leaves from the retired SU "Toile Blossoms" set and a few "Stream" colored Adirondack Demensional Pearls to complete the design.

Minutes from start to finish!  Happy Anne!!
TFL, I'm so glad you stopped by!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Stamptember!

Hello Friends!


I made this card for the Simon Says Stamptember festivities going on over on the Simon Says Blog this week.  The "Stamp and Show Challenge" this week is "Read All About It" - create a card inspired by "reading".

My inspiration is book pages.  Pretty hot trend these days so not so hard to come up with something!  I used some newsprint patterned paper for the background and SU Stippled Blossoms stamp set. The centers of the flowers are embellished with Adirondack "Raisin" Dimensional Pearls.  I added some swirly bling and a punched butterfly to finish off the design. 

My apologies for the poor photos . . . I have to find a new place for my photo shoots and I'm not having much success just yet!

TFL, I'm so glad you stopped by!