Progressing on in the Challenge ;- )

     Today's card used the colored digital image provided by Happi Scrappin Doddles for the Progressive Challenge (#12) at Creative Digital Art Center (CDAR) here. This is the last challenge in this round so you can join the next group of challenges for free, so head on over.

     Correction, this is only #11 and it will cost $1 to get in the next round because there is 1 round left before the next group of challenges, but the images are so wonderful, $1 is nothing, for such amazing images. So come and check them out ;- )

     I used the large scalloped oval nestie to cut the image and matted it on blue card stock embossed with Styalized Flowers by Sizzix. The pearlized orange card stock is by Crafter's Companion. The butterfly, flower and leafy element is an SVG from  Images by Heather M. She has many great freebies and you can find her here. I cut it twice to get the butterfly and flowers separate and then added stickles, Pearl Pen and gel ink to the butterfly as well as Me and My Big Ideas gems to the flowers. I also inked the image with Spiced Marmalade distress ink. I plan on sending this card to my aunt in order to just send her a little
cheer ;- )

     I also finished the inside of this card. You may remember, that I was sending it to my friend's daughter and you can find the details on the front here (it's only 2 posts below), but I wanted to share the inside with you.

     I used Print Shop and the border is from that program. The main font is Frazzle and the font in the signature is Black Jack. The doodles are a font called Wendy Doodles which is a freebie and you can find it here. You can check dafont.com for the other two. I've shared a link for Black Jack in a previous post, but dafont should have them both for free. I then colored in the doodles with glitter and gel pens and matted them all and inked with Dusty Concord.

     Thanks for floating by yourselves ;- ) Have a great day and please leave a comment before you go!

It's finally feeling like fall here, and Free PhotoShop Brush links

     It's finally feeling like fall and I can't wait for the next few days when it gets warmer again ;- ) It's suppose to return to the mid to upper 70's maybe even 80, so much nicer, then these lows in the 30's. The weather however, caused me to come up with today's card, which is a Thinking of You card. The papers are from Four Seasons Paper Value Pack by The Paper Studio. I came up with the idea for the card, while lying in bed early one morning. I didn't expect the image to be so big, but then I didn't have the stamps with me, ha ha. Since the image is so large, the card is 8 inches by 5 inches. I used a Hero Arts stamp for the tall pumpkin and a Stampabilities stamp for the rounder one. This is actually the first time that I masked while stamping and also the first time I colored an image by painting it with Distress Inks. The I went over some of the details with a colored pencil and some with a brown glitter gel pen from Sakura. I really liked how it turned out.  The sentiment is stamped with Clear Stamps Greetings and Mementos ink, adding a couple of Hero Arts gems. On the bottom panel, I added some popped up embellishments, that I had left over from when I use to do the Youth bulletin board and don't know whose they are.

     I've made this card for my aunt, whose eyesight has deteriorated due to diabetes, so the digital sentiment on the inside is quite large and I will include a personal letter as well. The font is Lobster Two Bold which was designed by Pablo Impallari and can be found at Font Squirrel for free here. The pumpkin graphic is actually a very cool PhotoShop brush called Fall Preview Sabordes. Which is a free preview that includes 5 brushes designed by Michael Murdock of Sabor Designs, that are actually sketches. You can find them at Brusheesy here. The full set (20 brushes) are available for $5. The leaves are also found at Brusheesy and include 50 brushes (leaves) from hawksmont and you can find them here (also free.) I had some other great finds, but didn't use them here ;- )

     So, it took a bit before I got this posted, because I was trying out some new things and checking out some videos. It's hard to balance actually creating with an end product in mind and creating with just experimenting and trying new techniques, but no actual output achieved, other than getting messy. Sometimes, I just like to get messy and learn something new, but it's not for show, oh, no! It's often for the circular file, ha ha, at least for now.
     Thanks for stopping by and checking out my newest card. Please leave a comment if you have time. Even if it's just to say Hi, I like to know you were here. It energizes me. Have a glorious weekend.

Quick note for a friend

     Well, my friends have been busy taking care of me. Two lunches out, in two days and a check up phone call from another. I almost didn't get this card done for one of them, who changed jobs, kind of, by switching as the librarian of an associated parochial school, since they closed her school this year (not the same one that I made the birthday card for). Now instead of a 5 min. commute, she has a 45 min. commute for the part-time job. So, this was a big decision and change for her (as well as the school being larger, so she has more classes). I wanted to send her a card of support. In between having lunch with her one day and lunch with a neighbor the next, I quickly put together, today's card.

I used my  Cricut Imagine and the Imagine More cart to print and cut all the images. The bird and it's wing are pop dotted. I used all of the layers on the front and added gel and glitter pens to the images to add some extra texture. I used my Fisker's cutter to trim the edge with the scallop decorative blade going back and forth to get a different edge. The sentiment is from Hero Arts and  is stamped in Chipped Sapphire by Ranger.

   The inside, is the first 2 layers from the same image as the front and I left it basically plain, to write my message. On the bottom, I stamped a bird from Hero Arts and a Bible verse from Clear Dollar Stamps, both in Chipped Sapphire.

     What could I have done differently? I should have made the notes on the front larger. I had meant to, but the first one started out small and tentative and then I was stuck >.< I wanted a bit more glitter and sparkle, but my gel pen colors matched better.  Maybe, some other glittery embellishment added on. On the inside, I thought about coloring the bird and I may still, when I write the note.

Thanks for stopping by and spending some time with me. Please, say hi, so that I know you were here. Exercise your creative muscle today!

Card for a friend.

     Today's card is for a friend who had foot surgery. Her son and mine became best friends in middle school and she was one of my son's teachers (part of the parochial school experience.) Her son is one of the college students to whom I send cards. This stamp set is part of the Honey POP sets that you can use the honey comb tissue paper with, though I didn't use the tissue paper cut-out here, because I was going to include a longer message and didn't want a pop-up. The images and the sentiment are all from the Carrot Bunny HoneyPOP Clear Set and you can find them on line at InkyAntics.com  The paper is Summer Song by My Mind's Eye. I really like how this turned out. I would think it was someone else's card, except the ribbon is crocked ;- ) When the Amish make a quilt, they always have a mistake in it, because they believe only God is perfect. I think this is a great way to create ;- ),  esp. since I'm a recovering perfectionist. It's a much less stressful way to live.

     The inside message was created digitally using Print Shop and 2 fonts from Lettering Delights called LD Soccer Mom and LD Wedding.

     What would I do differently? I guess I could have rounded all 4 corners, but I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. Let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by and sharing you thoughts and time with me. Please leave a comment if you have a moment, I'd love to know you were here. Have a blessed weekend!

The Guys Cocoa Packet Cards a Couple of Baptism Cards

     Well, I had a productive day today. I went to lunch with a friend of mine to celebrate my birthday belatedly (my birthday is in December, but we had family medical things going on and it wasn't a good time). After she left, I started some laundry and headed up to the craft room. I worked on the male counter-part of the cocoa pocket card that a posted a few days ago. For this version I used a patterned paper from the DCWV Holiday Collection Christmas Stack. I used the same Inkadinkado Christmas Characters Stamp and colored it to match the paper, with Steadtler Watercolor pencils, Gelly Roll Clear Star for the snowflakes and trails behind the sled and a black glaze pen for the eyes and nose. I also used the same Copics BG10 on the bears and B00 to accent the snow and ground the image. The white rectangle was cut with a nestability. The sentiment was stamped with ink from Color Box's Petal Point Pinwheel collection. I also used the blue from the same collection to ink the sides of the white rectangle.

     Here are the two designs together.

If you'd like the directions for the cocoa pocket card, you can find it on the second post below this one.

     While ink was drying on this I worked on cards that I still needed to make for a gift for the Youth Director at my Church. If you've been following the saga since the beginning, I was making her some cards as a belated Christmas present (part of the December thing). The cards I've already given her are posted earlier on this blog. I asked her what else she could use, thinking I'd make her about 2 more cards and she said baptism, so today that's what I made. I think I might try to make her a couple of birthday cards, also, sometime soon. 

     The 2 cards I made are basically the same except for paper color and ribbon.  For the first one I choose green paper from Paper Studio's Pastel Cardstock Pack, cut a 5 1/4 x 4 inches and embossed it with Sizzix Divine Swirls. Next I added striped vellum cut at 4 3/4 x 3 /12 inches and added silver metallic dots to the corners. The green ribbon was some I picked up at Joanne's. I cut a scalloped oval with a nestie and stamped the wood mounted Stampabilities Ornate Cross on it with Big and Bossy, then embossed it with silver metallic embossing powder. I then added the oval popping it up. The oval was cut with a nestie also and stamped with Clear Stamps Wedding Congratulations in Dark Chocolate by PaperTrey Ink. It was double popped to go over the image. The inside is very basic for me. I just left if for her to write in. The butterflies were cut from some of the scraps with a Martha Stewart punch. 

     You see the yellow is basically the same, only embossed with Swiss dots and stamped with Summer Sunrise ink from PaperTrey. The ribbon is Best Occasions Self-adhesive Ribbon. 

     What would I have done different. The yellow one was actually done first and I realized that the vellum needed to be cut smaller, so I fixed that on the green one. On the green one, I had forgotten to add the ribbon and had to sneak it under after it was glued down, but it worked, phew!  I think the ribbon on the yellow is place to high. I like the placement on the green better. Well, we won't talk about how far the laundry got, but there is always tomorrow.

     Thanks for stopping by today and visiting with me. Leave me a note if you've got a moment more.  I may not be able to post on late Friday/Early Sat. because I will be picking my son up from college for his spring break. It doesn't seem like spring, but that's what the school calendar says. Maybe that's why so many of them go south, to find spring ;- ) Until next time then.

Cocoa Pocket Card

     I have nine college students, who live away from home, that I try to send a little love. I planned for the next card to be a pocket card that would hold a packet of cocoa. (Who knew it would warm up in the midwest.) I looked around the internet, but most of  the ones I found were more box size, or just over size. I really wanted to stay with an A2 card, if I could, so I designed one my self. While choosing my papers, I realized I had 2 designs. One for the males and one for the females. Today, I show you the one I made for the females, since that's the only I've done ;- ) I have three to make for them.

     To start I  cut the paper 5 1/2 inches by 11 inches. Then I scored it at the 2 1/2 inch point and the 6 3/4 inch point. I then rounded the corners. The second photo shows how it will look when it is folded up.

     I then choose a pink paper from Paper Studios Pastel Cardstock Pack for the bottom mat and cut it to 5 1/4 x 4 inches. The next mat is a pattern cardstock with glitter and texture, that came from a JoAnn exclusive, they had the Christmas before last called Peppermint Forest. It was cut at 5 x 3 3/4 inches. I used my nestabilities to cut the large scalloped oval and stamped it, with the sledding polar bears from Inkadinkado's Clear Stamps Christmas Characters and also, the sentiment from the same set. The image was stamped with Papertrey's Enchanted Evening Ink and the sentiment with Colorbox's Enchantment Aqua Ink. I colored the snowflakes and the swirls in the image with Gelly Roll Clear Star. The clothing on the bears and sled were colored with Steadtler  Watercolor Pencils and also some highlights on the scarf with the Gelly Roll and the hat with a White Glaze Pen. The black on the bears (nose and eyes) is a Glaze Pen and a used Copic Markers BG10 to shade the bears and B00 to give some definition to the snow and add a base to the image. I also inked it with Broken China Distress Ink.

     On the in inside, I cut a different piece of glitter, embossed cardstock from Peppermint Forest for the front of the cocoa pocket. I planned the cuts to get the images from the paper. I cut a 1 x 2 1/2  inch rectangle of the pink paper, and rounded the corners. I then used my ATG gun to tape the sides of the pocket up. I used Versamark Dazzle and a small snowflake from the Inkadoo stamp set and randomly stamped the paper, then I stamped it with a sentiment from Hero Arts Big Hugs in Tsunkinako Black Ink. Each one of these cards is a bit different inside, due to the different characters on the paper. I didn't pop up the image on the front, due to the fact that the cocoa, already makes it tight in the envelope, however, on the inside I popped up the sentiment, since it's at the bottom and below the the bulge made from the cocoa. Unfortunately, I was out of 1/16 inch pop dots, but I'm thrifty, so I cut up the surrounding paper and used that. Shown below.

     The sentiment label was inked, except for one. That was the first one I put on when I was scrambling around to find my pop dots and so I forgot to ink that one. I get distracted by one thing and forget what I meant to do, hate that.  I decided I should make tags to go in the pockets with a personal note for each one. I stamped a tag with Big and Bossy using a grouping of snowflakes stamp and filling in with the small snowflake stamp and embossed it with White Embossing Powder. My plan was to spritz it using a mini-mister filled with Turquoise Perfect Pearls, water and Broken China Re-Inker. I found that one of my mini-misters is not a mister but a mini-jet sprayer! Well, that was interesting. I dealt with that and the first tag, which is too dark, but I'll live with it . I filled a new mister and did the other 2 tags and also added Worn Lipstick Distress Ink to the tags and wiped off the excess from the embossed areas.

I added Martha Stewart twine and will write a note on the back of this one and creatively on the front of the others.

     So, there you go, 3 card down and 6 more to go. They will probably be basically the same, but with different papers, but who knows. We will see where creativity leads that day. What would I do differently? Well, I am thinking of looking for snowflake buttons for the front yet or buttons in coordinating colors. With a total of 9 cards I didn't want to get too detailed or difficult.  I think I might have papered the inside of the pockets. I also might have embossed 1 or both of the sentiments, again trying to keep it fast. Thanks for coming back and looking. Drop me a word about how you see things.