So 'Mush' Love for You

Howdy-Ho! TGIF again...is it just me, or do the weeks wizz by at lightning speed? I have been working on our son-in-love's birthday card for 2 days seems like, and I'm happy to get it finished to share with you. This was one of those cards I had trouble forming a clear plan for. Although I had more latitude (he's a dream, loves everything, quite metrosexual), I wanted it to be a clever, light-hearted message. And mushrooms were the first idea I had! Really? LOL, okay, let's go with it. So it was get an idea, find stamps, come up with a way to do it, wash, rinse, repeat. I guess that's why it took me so long to finish but I did enjoy the process!

Papers/Card Stocks: Kraft card base, solid red paper scraps, DCWV 4.5x6.5 Matt Stax patterned paper

Stamps: Sweet Stamp Shop Alpha Tabs, Lawn Fawn Clark's ABCs, Altenew Love You So Mush mushroom and sentiments, Inkadinkado Snail, Third Coast Stamps Fairy Ring, Chatterbox Botanico mushroom, Stamp Magick Toadily siggie

Inks: Memento, VersaFine Clair

Dies: Spellbinders Classic and Torn Edge Ovals

Other: Embossing powder, Sakura glitter gel pen, Fiskars circle punch

  

I used Crazy 4 Challenges current sketch, resizing it in PSE to 5x7 and printing out. Don't ask me why, but I chose to use oval instead of circle elements. And I like them. :-) 

 I found 2 papers that had the same little circles pattern, one gray beige, one gray brown. So I used both, as mushrooms are usually somewhat grey, somewhat brown.

I used my ProMarkers to color the fairy ring and also this ridiculously cute snail that I fussy cut and placed in the ring.

 Here you see the mushroom patterned paper peeking out on each side. Read on about this paper..

I have absolutely zilch in the way of mushroom patterned paper. So, I made my own! I used the cutest little mushroom stamp, solid with little holes. I marked off my paper to know what would be showing, then I stamped the mushroom in gray ink. Then I went back and stamped over random ones with brown ink and black ink. As for the middle panel, I stamped the fairy ring and sentiment, and I was going to blend some inks on the panel so I cut a mask but ended up not doing that.

I used my Poppy Red ProMarker to color the mushroom holes on my paper. I pulled out some alpha tab stamps and stamped words on the gray beige paper scraps. That's another thing I've been doing the last couple of cards: using my alphabet stamps. Again, no plan to beforehand, just had the urge.

 You can hardly see the stamped mushrooms on the ovals under the sentiments, so this is what they looked like before assembly. Probably should have used a little darker ink...

I really do like my diy patterned paper on this card. The red pops it. There's a lot going on here so the bold red and dark browns help ground the card, I think. I do think it might have helped to have incorporated a little green in my diy paper...they say you should never use a color in just one place.

On the inside of my card, I combined sentiments as per my usual. And I lucked out a bit with the last one. Magic Mushrooms, get it? I stamped the little mushroom from my patterned paper on front very lightly in Memento Desert Sand around the plays on words. Again, a bit darker ink would have been better.

The back of my card features scraps leftover from the front and the siggie I recently began using again when I need a punny one. And, mushrooms are also called toadstools. :-)

HELLO THERE!
So proud of the eye job I did on him, with gel pens, after reading a great tip HERE.

CHALLENGES:

1.  Crazy 4 Challenges C4C498: Sketch - Shown above.

2.  2 Crafty Critter Crazies Challenge #29: AG with a Critter - Snail

3.  The House That Stamps Built Challenge DCC A719: Try a New Technique - I tried the eye tip on my snail. I also tried making my own patterned paper.

4.  The House That Stamps Built Challenge A1419: Tic Tac Toe - I chose Dimension (I popped my sentiment strips and multiple paper layers) + Food (mushrooms and escargot) + Bright Colors (red, green, yellow, brown).   

5.  LTCCB #37: Always AG

6.  Aud Sentiments Challenge #234: Masculine + A Sentiment

7.  Cutie Pie Challenge #138: Fave Color Combo - Love Red and Brown together

8.  Try It On Tuesday: In My Garden There Is... - In my Garden, there's mushrooms and snails. :-)

9.  Moo Mania #198: Letters And/or Numbers - I used my alphabet stamps to make words for my sentiments.

10.  I Love ProMarkers #391: AG with ProMarkers - I used them to color my images.

11. Colour Crazy Challenge Week 31: AG with Colouring

12. Outlawz Festive Friday: Birthday Theme

Thanks so much for allowing me to share my creativity with you! Have a great Friday! XOX

Born To Be Wild

It's me again, with a Tuesday Toodaloo for you, sweet blogging friends! LOL :-)

Well, the Guy card demand just won't leave me alone. I'm blessed that way, which is why it is good for me to practice making them! Honey and I have been blessed to have made long friendships with many of his coworkers. The birthday card I'm sharing today is going to one of those. Earlier in the year, I made his lovely wife a jungle-themed card HERE but not until after I'd planned his card did I realize both cards had a wild vibe going on. Well, they are a wonderfully wild pair! We've definitely made some awesome memories together. He's ridden a bike as long as I've known him, so I used that as the theme and as he is my age he remembers Steppenwolf's song.

 

I made a smaller 5x5 square card this time, doing my usual resizing in PSE and printing out.

Paper/Card Stock Used: Bazzill Textured card base; Basic Grey Archaic pp; orange snippet - stash

Stamps Used: Lawn Fawn Mil ABC's (Born To Be Wild sentiment); Wild Rose Studio (Happy Birthday circle); Artistic Outpost (motorcycle); HOTP, Gerda Steiner, Cas-ual Fridays (inside sentiments) (Sweet Stamp Shop (back siggie).

Inks Used: VersaFine Clair, Memento, clear embossing powder

Dies Used: Spellbinders Postage Stamp Nesties

Misc: Cropadile Corner Chomper

On the inside, I tried to continue the "wild" word play with various sentiments I had. 

On the back, I used a snarky siggie on snippets from the front.

The stamped Born To Be Wild sentiment wasn't heat-emboss, but the circle sentiment and the motorcycle were.

Here's the rest of my pics...

I'm very happy at how this card came out. Honey likes it a lot, so I'm thinking our friend will as well. A Happy Accident: I never noticed how the horizontal lines of the base mat turn up as if to symbolize wind. Seriously, never saw that until I was writing this post, lolol. Love it!

CHALLENGES:
1.  Outlawz Wednesday Sketch August 7-20  - sketch is shown above
2.  CHNPPC August: AG with Patterned Paper
3.  ABMTTC #98: AG Always
4. The Creative Crafters #19: Always AG
5.  TTCRD Anything Goes Challenge August 20

Well, that's it for me. Thanks so much for visiting -- Be Blessed! XOX

Sympathy card for a friend...

Sunday Salutations! Just a few hours left before another work week begins!

I am popping in very quickly to share a sympathy card I've made for a dear friend who lost her husband to cancer last week and I will get it in the mail tomorrow.

I used the current Atlantic Hearts sketch, first opening it in PSE, resizing to 5x7 and then printing out.

Here's are a few close-ups to try to show all the gold sparkly shimmer on this card. Click to enlarge. I sprayed Smooch Spritz in Gold and Pink on a white card through a Stamplorations butterfly stencil and trimmed it down for my first layer on my SU card stock card base.

I rounded the corners of my card base with my Cropadile Corner Chomper. I used some snippets of black-gold Shimmering card stock that were in my stash to die cut a QK Photo Corner and a Spellbinders Basics rectangle to mat behind the focal butterflies. In between, I used a piece of patterned flowery gold foil card stock from SEI's Sunny Day collection.

I used the rest of the SEI paper on the card back, along with some snippets from the front leftovers and an Impression Obsession siggie stamped in VersaMark and heat-embossed with white embossing powder.

I stamped my Pink By Design sentiment on another black-gold snippet with VersaMark and heat-embossed with white embossing powder. The 2 butterflies are Papertrey Ink's Butterfly Kisses stamps and coordinating die. After die cutting them, I stamped with VersaMark and then heat-embossed with detailed gold embossing powder. I adhered them to the paper on their centers with a 1/3-inch glue dot so their wings remained free. I finished off the card with a few sparkly gold enamel dots and tiny punched butterflies using the last of my black-gold snippet.

UPDATE! After posting the card last night, I found this patterned paper in my 12X12 Colorbok Deliliah collection and added it to the inside of the card, along with sentiments stamped in Memento Tuxedo black ink and made by Pink By Design. This leaves room for a handwritten note on the left and signing the card on the right. Note to File: great way to use those larger sized papers with an image in the corner. 

CHALLENGES:
1.  Atlantic Hearts Sketch #329 - Sketch is shown above.
2.  PaperBabe Stamps Challenge #100: Gold - I've used black gold shimmering card stock and I sprayed my butterflies stencil with gold shimmer spray along with pink. I heat-embossed my focal butterflies in Gold embossing powder and added gold enamel dots.
3.  Scrapping 4 Fun #147: Sympathy or Get Well Soon
4.  Moo Mania #197: Butterflies
5.  Take a Word: Butterflies
6.  Stamping Sensations August: Things with Wings
7.  Outlawz Crash Your Stash: Embossing Powders
8.  Stamplorations Summer Mixed Media Challenge: Stencil + AG

9.  Cut It Up #180: Die Cut + Sentiment
10.  Aud Sentiments #233: Animals + A Sentiment
11. 2 Crafty Critter Crazies #29: AG with a Critter

Thanks for visiting! XOX

Last of the Leo Birthdays

Happy Weekend, Artsy Folk! Honey and I helped my brother celebrate his 54th birthday last night with a nice Mexican food dinner and birthday cake, so I'll share the card that I made him, which he loved. He's a devoted Houston Astros baseball fan and as I have baseball stamp sets from Artistic Outpost and Technique Junkies, that became the theme!

As I do for most of my cards, I planned this one with a few different challenges in mind. My brain gets a little tingle when I can do that, but sometimes I get overwhelmed by it, too. My card front is texturally rich, with all the heat embossing and paper layers. Even the orange bottom layer is textured card stock.

 

(Click on the photos to enlarge.) I followed the current Mojo Monday Sketch #520, using a 5x7 (A7) Kraft card stock base. So as usual I resized the sketch in PSE and printed out. I also used DCWV card stock and Tim Holtz distress specialty stamping paper, as well as additional Kraft card stock. I used VersaFine Clair ink and clear embossing powder on the card front and Memento ink on the inside.

I took my piece of Distress Specialty Stamping Paper and stamped Technique Junkies Baseballs background stamp using my stamp platform to get good coverage. I clear-heat-embossed the entire piece. Then on a smaller piece of Kraft, I stamped a grouping of stamped text and embossed that. Then I stamped and embossed the glove and then I went to town coloring and tinting with my Distress Inks. I also used my ProMarkers here and there on the glove to highlight and shade.

  

Here are the baseball stamps I used by Artistic Outpost and Technique Junkies.

I wanted to show my Googled references for getting the Astros color combo right. This last patterned photo using their official colors helped me the most to compare it to my card. I think I got the colors pretty right!

I did use a little piece of white card stock snippet to stamp and emboss the baseball and left it white just for grins but also to lead your eye to the sentiment, as the front is pretty busy and has a lot for the eye to take in. I used an Avery Elle zig zag circle die to cut out the ball. And I used a Spellbinders Classic circle die to mat the glove on, coloring the edge with a ProMarker.

My baseball stamps have several wonderful phrases, so hey, I used almost all of them inside the card on the left hand side. On the right, I used sentiments by Papertrey Ink and Clear Dollar Stamps, leaving plenty of room for a handwritten message to my Bubby. This is his first birthday since our dad died and he always made them special for us so I wanted to try to continue that.

On the back, I used the baseball background again. I had tried the stamp on both surfaces and had the Kraft one leftover. A leftover snippet of orange with an EK Success siggie stamped on it finished the back.

For me, I think I have learned that the key to a good guy's card is honing in on their hobbies/interests, or referencing good times/memories. For my Leos this year I made a tropical beach card for a friend who loves visiting tropical places, a motorcycle card for a friend who loves to ride, a martini card for a friend with whom we have enjoyed more than a few, and this baseball card for an avid fan of the game. In each case, they were all appreciative of the thought put into it, like hey, you really know me and showed me. Only one of my friends is someone I could send anything handmade. Most guys are like, why didn't you just buy me a funny card, but they also know they could spend a week in the card aisle and not find something that individualized. Don't know if I explained that well enough, hope so!

After I took my photos of the finished card, I realized that the exclamation mark on the sentiment was a bit fuzzed (too much ink on it), so I took a gel pen in a matching color and defined it more clearly. Then I hit it with my heat tool for just a few seconds to set it so it wouldn't smear as it was on top of embossing.

I hope you liked my card and aren't wanting to strangle me for making you sit through all these photos and chat! So sorry - I got a little carried away! Thanks for hanging in there through the seventh inning stretch! heeheehee

CHALLENGES:
1.  Mojo Monday Sketch #520 - Sketch shown above.
2.  Outlawz Color Tuesdays: One Color (Beige) + Two Others + My Twist - Kraft Beige + Orange + Blue + Heat Embossing is my Twist, I always LOVE watching the powder melt!

3.  Country View Challenges August: TEXTURE
4.  Colour Crazy Challenge Week 31: AG with Colouring
5.  Di's Digi Challenge: Circles - Baseballs and circle mat behind the glove
6.  Use Your Stuff Challenge #370: Summer Activity
7.  Through the Craft Room Door for Aug. 13-19: AG - The TTCRD design team is celebrating Summer, so I'm celebrating The Boys of Summer! :-) 
8.  Outlawz Crash Your Stash Challenge: Embossing Powders
9.  Love to Craft Challenge #37: August AG
10. Crafty Creations #396: AG
11.  A Bit More Time To Craft #98: Always AG

That's it for me this sunny Saturday. Thanks for sharing it with me! XOX