Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Happy Mythical Maiden Birthday!

 Happy Tuesday, everyone! I want to wish my dear friend Beth Norman-Roberts a very happy birthday today! We "met" through the Technique Junkies Newsletter almost 15 years ago and I'm so happy and grateful that we've kept up our online friendship.
💖💖💖
Here's the card I made her this year. I used another image from Gecko Galz' Mythical Maidens Digital Stamp Set, added the sentiment text in PSE, printed it on Springhill Digital card and used my good tube watercolors to paint the detailed image, except for her skin. I used my Zig Clean Color watercolor flesh markers for that. Distress crayons were applied in different colors around the edge and "smooged" them with my finger, then I went all around the outer edge with black chalk ink for definition. I added tiny white die cut Rubbernecker flower buds to the green vine and dotted each with a magenta Viva Decor Pearl Pen.
  
I untubed (decanted? squeezed out?) my watercolors 3 years ago to store them in 2 round Jack Richeson Lockbox Palettes. I remain very happy with this storage. I found charts online and printed out on watercolor paper to make my own palette charts, which I am sharing with a close-up of the focal image so you can see the gorgeous colors I used.
 
I used this Splitcoaststampers sketch for my layout design. Here it is with my card to show how I followed the sketch. 
Since we met through Technique Junkies (who now sells stamps), I used a TJ stamp called Stained Glass for the background of both the front and back of my card. I stamped on white card with Shady Lane Versafine Clair ink and heat-embossed it with clear powder. Then I cut it into 4 sections and arranged on an SU mat. The lighter green card base and focal mat are also SU. Simple but effective look.
Inside the card is a framed sentiment created by me in PSE and printed on Springhill Digital card.
The back of the card has an uncut stamped and heat-embossed panel with a stamped and punched siggie.
Showing the back and the front for continuity check.
And final view. Happy Birthday, Bethie! Thanks for the visit and have a great day. XOX

MY CHALLENGE PLAYLIST:
I've used a Gecko Galz digital stamp image
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Sunday, August 7, 2022

Peace on Earth Home for Christmas

Hello, hope everyone is doing well. Honey and I are dragging. We guess it's been the weather. It has rained and rained and rained the last few days. We have definitely needed it, but it does play havoc with us. Honey's been dizzy and cranky because he's dizzy, poor thing. The barometric pressure changes affect us both negatively, we'll just have to wait it out.
I occupied my time making this Christmas card using an image from Power Poppy's Cuddle in the Cabin Digital set. I colored it with a combination of Distress and Zig Clean Color Markers, colored pencils, various gel pens and Posca paint pens. 6x6 textured blue Bazzill card base, TH Distress silver foil card and some very old Sonburn patchwork patterned Christmas paper that I'd been hoarding for over a decade. I just love these shades of blue, they speak to my soul. The Stamplorations and Papertrey Ink sentiments were stamped with Versamark and white heat-embossed. The 2 dark blue panels were edged with a silver Posca paint pen. I used oval and scalloped oval dies on the focal image that was printed on Springhill Digital card. I added a metallic silver weave ribbon and punched snowflakes dotted with Viva Decor Ice White Pearl Pen. Metallic gel pens and a white Posca paint pen were used to "color" the snow and moon and front porch light. I die cut a Crafters Companion reindeer out of DCWV silver glitter card and backed it with 2 more white layers for strength before adhering.
 
I chose Sweet Sketch Wednesday 2's current challenge sketch #234 for my layout design, but I took some liberties with it to make it work for me, namely flipping it horizontally. Otherwise, I followed it faithfully. Showing sketch and card together here so you can see.
Here's the shine angle shot. This girl's on fire! 😍😊
Papertrey Ink sentiments stamped with Twilight Versafine Clair ink on white card matted inside.
Back of the card shown with the front for continuity check. 
And final view. Thanks so much for visiting and have a good evening and week, xoxo

MY CHALLENGE PLAYLIST:
SSW2 August Challenge Sketch #234
Power Poppy Blossom Challenge: Christmas in July
Focal image is from Cuddle in the Cabin Digital Set
Jingle Belles Challenge JB-22-16: Blue Christmas
4 Season Swap Challenge #59: Patchwork / Quilt
I used blue paper with a patchwork pattern
Passion for Markers Challenge Week 652: Dies or Punches
I colored with Distress and Zig Clean Color Markers. I used an oval, scalloped oval and a reindeer die. 
I also used a snowflake punch.
Splitcoaststampers CCC22APR: Peace on Earth
Crafty Gals Corners Challenge #233: Christmas in July
613 Avenue Create Challenge  #202208: AG
12 Months CC Link Up Challenge #91: ACG
Winter Wonderland August Challenge: Reindeer
CCAYR August Challenge: Reindeer or Deer
CHNCC Challenge #606: ACG Only
Peace on Earth Christmas Challenge #21: ACG
Christmas Craft Creations August Challenge: Patterned Paper
Happy House Vesela Hiska Challenge #33: Squares
Happy Little Stampers August Christmas Challenge: ACG Only
Sweet Stampers Challenge #70: Christmas in July
Colour Crazy Craft Challenge Week 30: AG with Colouring
Critter Crazy Challenge #65: AG Featuring a Critter
Crafty Animals Challenge #64: AG w/an Animal
The Creative Crafters Challenge #54: AG
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Friday, August 5, 2022

Make a Splash, Seas the Day!

 Happy FriYay, everyone. Hope you are all okay. I'm feeling very chatty today, or I should say, more chatty than usual lol, so please bear with this longer than usual post. Today's share is a mash up of multiple challenges that began with a desire to make an ATC and do the Emboss Resist technique again like my card in my previous post, but this time use the ATC on a guy card with a CAS design. I also wanted to use a turquoise green monochrome color scheme and use an embossing folder. LOL There's more, but I'll stop there for now, y'all know I like to mash up challenges when I can. 😊
First, the ATC. I wanted to use the emboss-resist technique on it and needed stamped images that lent themselves well to being heat-embossed and then inked. Do you ever collect certain types of stamps? I have found that I definitely do! For example, I seem to have a sizeable inchie stamp collection. I'm not too proud of it as I think I've only used a few of them once or twice, and what was I thinking, anyway? 😳 Anyway, I thought of them for this. I have an Inkadinkado beach-themed set of 9 inchie stamps that looked masculine enough and they are clear stamps so I could attempt to line 6 of them up decently in the 2.5" x 3.5" space of an ATC. 
I decided to go for it and try. I stamped the inchies and 2 MFT sentiments with Versamark, then heat-embossed with white powder. When cool, I used a blending tool to ink over it with Salvaged Patina on the left and Evergreen Bough Distress Inks on the right, blending together in the middle. Quite satisfied with my ATC, I continued on to make the card.
I do like how it came out too. I think it's a nice guy card. I added 3 Hunkdory jeweled turquoise gems to it on a whim as I thought it needed something. They're manly gems! 😎
 
I chose this Splitcoaststampers CAS sketch for my layout design as the right side's open space could accommodate my embossing folder and this gave me a way to incorporate my ATC into the overall design. When I saw it, I knew. I did decide to combine sketch elements 2 and 4 into one banner flag-shaped piece of card to mat my ATC and I decided to emboss-resist that as well. So I hunted through my background stamps hoping for a repetitive water wave pattern, but found only a thick border I'd have to repeat the stamping with. I didn't feel stable enough right then to do that precisely, so I settled for using an Impression Obsession CAC Sky background, but stamp it upside down. Since only the edges were going to show anyway, why not? Lazy is what Lazy does, Ha! Even funnier, after I did all that, I realized that a sky works at the beach, too, so I didn't have to stamp it upside down after all. Duh! Geez, I'm dense sometimes! 😏
I stamped the banner flag with Versamark and then heat-embossed it with white powder. I used a blending tool to blend Peacock Feathers Distress Ink over it all. I actually do think the upside down cloud lines look like foamy waves, so I hope my recipient (one of my brothers-in-law) sees them that way. 😏
Next step was finding a sheet of card stock to cut the card base from that went with my ink colors, and this presented a problem. I had to use a sheet of DCWV textured white core card stock that isn't thick, but I've made it work with card on both sides of the back to stiffen it up. I really wanted that thin line of color framing on the card front to anchor it.
For the inside of the card, I printed digital sentiments from Gecko Galz Simple Sentiments kit in a frame onto Springhill Digital card and then cut that out, stippled with the Salvage Patina DI and colored the words with a Peacock Feathers Distress Markers.
On back, a white card mat and a very old Karen Foster beachy turquoise scrapbook paper strip from my stash with an off-cut strip of the card base and my stamped and punched siggie.
Close ups of the shine coming off the white embossing and the clarity of contrast achieved with the emboss resist technique. Even using inchies.
And final view. Thanks for making it through all this chit chat. Stay safe and cool and good weekend to you! XOX

MY CHALLENGE PLAYLIST:
Emboss Resist + Stamping + Dry Embossing
I used a Crafters Companion 5x7 EF called Seashell Corner
I was inspired by the beach and sky
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Thursday, August 4, 2022

Mythical Maiden Birthday

 Hello, everyone, hope you're doing well. 
The August theme at Gecko Galz is Myths and Legends. This is a theme that can be widely interpreted and is easy to think of using famous historical figures. But you can also use regular folk or scenes from mythical/legendary times as well, which is my preference here. I received the Mythical Maidens digital stamp set as a prize win some time back and decided to use this image from the set. You might notice the repetitive swirls on the ribbon, the background and in the image -- that was intentional! 😀
 
I used this Splitcoaststampers sketch as my layout design, but I flipped the sketch horizontally and resized in PSE, then decided to put the sketch elements inside a larger framed front, if that makes sense. Here is the sketch with the card to show how I followed it. The yellow framed area is the sketch.
The light lime green A7 card base is SU. The white frame was cut using the largest die in the  Spellbinders A7 Renaissance Jubilee Card Creator set. The computer-generated sentiment was cut with a Spellbinders Fancy Tags Label die from white card. The focal image was colored with Distress Markers and metallic gel pens and the edges were ink-distressed with some Distress Crayon smudging and then edged with black chalk ink.
Thought I'd show the mat layer the focal sits on, with the shiny ribbon that straddles the ink-blended/stamped and emboss-resist halves. The background stamp I used is Technique Junkies' Graphic Swirl.  The outer edge of each half was ink-distressed with the black chalk ink and layered onto yellow card before adding the ribbon and placing on the white frame.
I did a lot of metallic gel pen work on the focal image. You can get some idea of it from this close-up.
Inside, I stamped Hero Arts and Stampendous sentiments with Onyx Versafine ink.
An overhead shot of the back (decorated with leftovers from the front) with the front to show continuity.
And final view. A different look from me, but I was going for a look that complemented the image. I do like how it came out and so did the recipient.

Now, onto Rain's Art and Dinner Date share and I'm wanting to call it The week of Lucky Coincidences, because my planned art and food synched unbelievably well with hers. This week, the Art topic is Lines and Contours. I'd say my emboss resisted background has those and so does the focal image. Also the white frame and the sentiment label. And ribbon, lol. So, what a coincidence!
Rain made several pasta dishes this week and I have a Italian Sausage and Pasta Skillet dish to share! Now, how often does that happen? 😲
We used Tagliatelle pasta and served it with garlic bread and salad. It's one of those comfort foods that taste even better as a leftover and it was gone quick! Honey's the oldest child of a large family and there are 2 things he usually will not eat: frozen bread loaves thawed out and meal leftovers (his rebellion at growing up having to eat both all the time). Well, he ate a total of THREE meals off this. It's that good! Let me know if you try it and what you think.
Thanks for the visit and come back soon.
XOX

MY CHALLENGE PLAYLIST:
I used an image from the GG Mythical Maidens Set
HLS Birthday Challenge: August Anything Birthday Goes
AAA Birthday Challenge #40: Anything Birthday
Dragonfly Dreams July Challenge: Indoor Hobbies
Playing music
Distress Markers and Spellbinder Dies
Inks, Crayons, Markers, Gel Pens, Embossing Powders, Ribbon, Paper 
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