Mudpies Jellybeans

Today’s card is for the sketch challenge PTT#12  at Party Time Tuesdays, using a House Mouse stamp so I can also enter it in the House Mouse & Friends Monday challenge #93.

I used a House Mouse stamp called Mudpies Jellybeans, stamped on white with onyx black Versafine, and colored with Prismacolored pencils & goo gone. The jellybeans also have Crystal Lacquer on them, and a corner rounder punch was used on the corners. The image is layered on a square cut piece of blue.

Instead of using ribbon or a strip of paper for the red on the sketch, I chose to use a MS birds on the wire border punch, and punched the birds the same solid blue. The blue polka dot dp is from a DCWV pastel matstack, the circle was cut and embossed with a Nesties circle die, I ran a white gel pen around the inside of the die before removing. The scalloped circle is the same solid blue as the other layers, cut with a a Nestie scalloped circle die, and the white gel pen marked around the inside before removing. The sliver layer on the left of the circle hardly shows, it is from a DCWV stack called Nana’s nursery baby boy, it and the white layer beneath it were just cut to size with a paper cutter. The background dp is from a DCWV fall stack, layered on white with four flower brads at each corner. The base card is the same solid blue as the others.
I think I am really beginning to like not adding sentiments to the front of the card, it gives it a virtually limitless use.
Thanks for looking and I love hearing your comments.

Shower Bunny

Today’s card uses the SCS sketch #328 for a challenge over at Party Time Tuesdays PTT #11 (April Showers).

All of the paper except the white card base is from a DCWV pastel stack. Each polka dot dp has the corresponding solid color with it (except the bunny & the sentiment). The bunny from the SU set New Little Someone was stamped on yellow polka dot dp with onyx black Versafine, then again on the solid green for the bow, and cut out. It was then paper pieced back together. I also stamped the feet on solid yellow for the pads. Before I put the head back on, I used my sewing machine with black thread to stitch over the stitched lines on his belly. I colored over the green ribbon with a clear glitter pen to give it some shimmer. Googly eyes were added after the card was put together. Since I needed four layers, I went with the four different colors in the stack, and this may be dumb, but placed the layers in alphabetical order. Starting with the polka dot blue/solid blue, green polka dot/ green solid, pink polka dot/pink solid and finally the same yellow polka dot as the rabbit/solid yellow. The sentiment is from a CDS set called Designer Label Celebrations, stamped with onyx black Versafine on the solid yellow, then punched with a  circle punch. The bunny and the sentiment were popped with foam dots.

Thanks for looking and I’d love to hear your comments.

DH's Birthday 2011

My DH’s birthday is coming up fast and I didn’t want to wait until the last minute to make him a card. For the past couple of years I have made cards with deer on them, so I switched off this year. I think I'll enter this one over at Party Time Tuesday's also.

He recently built this corner entertainment center for our living room.

  He sat down, figured out what he wanted to do and built it with no plans (other than his own). Our log cabin kit came with a mantle for a fireplace. I don’t know why since we don’t have a fireplace. But the mantle, a hand hewn log, like the rest of the house, laid down in the basement since the roof was put on, so it would be out of the weather. He cut the mantle for the top, it steps up to the corner, that way you can better see all the junk I have on top of it (birdhouses, pictures, candles, knick knacks). Then he bought the lumber to finish the rest of it. The picture has been brightened considerably, so you can see more of the detail. I took the picture right after he finished it and it was loaded down, it was very hard to take a picture of since there are windows on both sides of it. If he wasn’t in there right now, I’d turn all the lights on and try another, but then he would wonder what I was doing.

So for this card I decided to use the SU set Totally Tool. I don’t know if I cased anyone on this idea. I remember seeing pics of tool belts, but not sure about the pegboard. Anyway, as this idea was forming in my head, I stamped the the wrench’s first with versamark on white cardstock, embossed with detail silver ep, colored with prismacolored pencils. Next I stamped the saw, the screwdrivers and the hammer the same way, but I used detail black ep, colored with prismacolored pencils and then cut all of them out. For the pegboard, I had to decide what size I wanted to use, ran that through a Cuttlebug folder Swiss Dots, turned the piece over, so that the dots were away from me and pierced each and every hole with a paper piercing tool, then I decided that the paper should have been heavier for mounting the tools, so I cut a piece of cardboard, attached the brown pegboard piece to it, and had to pierce each and every one of those holes again. I was working my brain on overdrive, trying to figure out what I could use, that would look like those hooks for pegboard, and I came up with wire. The hammer, screwdrivers, and saw have wire to hold them on. For the wrenches I used brads. I had decided to use the Tim Holtz Bricked ef to represent the basement wall, and since pegboard doesn’t work up against a wall, I also used the Tim Holtz Woodgrain ef to make boards up the side, and sponged some walnut stain on them. The pegboard is attached to the boards with silver mini brads. The sentiment isn’t a birthday sentiment, but I can do that inside, thought he’d get a kick out of this one. As an afterthought, I stamped the measuring tape and colored the same as the rest of the tools.

This is his 2010 birthday card.

This is his 2009 birthday card, I cased this one.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’d love to hear your comments.

Bug Catcher

I want to play!! I have the house all to myself, and can play and play all day! It’s miserable looking outside....changing from rainy & foggy, to the sun peeking for a second, to cloudy & real windy, so what better thing to do than stamp???

This  card came about while flipping through  a DCWV The Spring Stack, when I spotted those bugs, out came the Crafty Secrets set Feeling Yucky. I decided to use this week’s sketch challenge over at CPS. I hope it’s ok to enter more than one card. I’m also going to enter it at Use It Tuesday for their challenge to use your hoarded pretty patterned paper…………bugs are not exactly my idea of pretty patterned paper, but the colors are pretty, and it fit so well with the image & sentiment. Those bigger bugs remind me of stink bugs……maybe this card will be stinkin’ cuteJ. Since anything goes this week at Party Time Tuesday’s I’ll go ahead and enter it there too. Maybe I need to get a life?

The main image and the bug in the jar was stamped with versamark on white cardstock, colored with SU markers (red crosses and blue dress) prismacolored pencils & goo gone (skin & hair), black glaze pen (eyes & shoes), black gel pen & waterbrush (bug in jar), then cut out. Before cutting out the bug in the jar, the crystal lacquer had to dry, that was applied to the jar. The sentiment was stamped on yellow with onyx black versafine and punched out with a circle punch. For a backer to the image I chose a green, then a layer of yellow. I wanted bigger circles for this card, and since bigger circles means less background showing…….and I wanted to show off those bugs, I pulled out my Circle Scissor and cut out one layer of the bug dp and a layer of yellow matching the basecard.  Looking back at it, I’m wishing I had cut the bigger circle out of the green instead of the yellow. Behind the circle layers is another layer of the bug dp, then a  layer of green. The corners of the layers were punched with a Southwest corner punch (had to look it up, couldn’t remember the name), and yellow Hippie Hemp (that’s the name on the package) was wrapped around the slits. The nurse is attached with pop dots. I cut around her hand with an exacto knife to insert the jar.

Who knows what I’ll come up with next, ya’ll come back ya hear!

Thanks for looking and I’d love to hear your comments.

Lower Cholesterol

I ran across a new (to me) challenge site today called CPS (Card Positioning System) followed the sketch and made this card to enter for CPS #206. I’m going to enter it in the Use It Tuesday’s challenge USE002 also, because this is a lot prettier dp than the other card I submitted, and I can also submit it to Party Time Tuesday's PTT #4 cause it's anything goes this week.

The main image is an American Art Stamp called High Heels. You can’t clearly read the sentiment because of the card holder, it says : THE DOCTOR TOLD ME TO LOWER MY CHOLESTEROL…SO NO MORE HIGH HEELS! The image was stamped on white with onyx black versafine. I colored the skin with prismacolored pencils and goo gone, the rest of the image was colored with cheap gel pens and a waterbrush, sprayed hairspray on it, then cut it out with a nesties rectangle. I like this technique because it makes the image shimmer. I have a close-up picture below. I just wanted a little frame around it so I trimmed up a piece of the light blue cardstock just to peek out around it. The next layer is a piece of patterned paper, it may not show up in the picture, but it has very light squares on it, cut with a circle nestie, with a light blue layer cut with a scalloped circle nestie, then I used a different patterned paper for the next layer, backed by a piece of red. Both of the patterned paper is from a DCWV Spring Stack. After, I put the layers together,  I did the sewing with three different stitches, then attached the layers to the light blue base card.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I do not have a lot of patience. I bought a Singer Pixie Plus sewing machine a couple of years ago, because I like the looks of some of those cards out there with sewing on them. I finally got it out of the box and managed to make a card back on the 3^rd of this month. Since the third it has mainly been sitting in the floor of my craft room, because the needle came unthreaded, and I broke my needle threader trying to rethread it. I finally got it threaded, and the thread messed up and unthreaded it again, in the middle of making a card, so back in the floor it went until today. I figured I’d give it another try. I’m sure if someone out there had a video camera they could win prizes from America’s Funniest Video, videotaping me with the sewing machine. Because I had fooled around so much with it before, I had to change the thread and bobbin, so I would have thread to work with, had to drag out the book for this, maybe I should have paid more attention to sewing in school, I think I failed this part of home economics which I believe I did mention in another post.  I used three different stitches on this card, as you can see, I need plenty of practice!!  I have yet to figure out how it punches the holes, but skips putting thread in them, as I am sewing along. The good news is, it didn’t come unthreaded and the thread didn’t get all tangled up again. With a little practice, I might get this down somedayJ

As promised here is a close-up of the shimmer that using cheap gel pens and a waterbrush creates.

Thanks for looking, and I’d love to hear your comments.

Just Fuzzy

This card is for a challenge over at Party Time Tuesday’s, since it’s the last of the month anything goes.

To start with I grabbed a bunch of recent cards I have made to decide on what type of sketch I wanted use. Then I picked a piece of dp from a K&Company Hannah Paper Pad. I chose to use a CDS stamp called Fuzzy Ducky. When I picked out this stamp a song from many, many moons ago popped into my head, I only remember a line or two………..little black duck, swimming in the water, little black duck doing what he oughta. I decided to color the image with gel pens and a watercolor brush, after stamping it on white paper with onyx black versafine ink. I was concentrating so hard on how I wanted to put the card together, that I forgot about spraying hairspray on it, until I started cutting it out, and noticed the shimmers on my fingers. It’s not something that has to be done, but I started doing it for images, that are cut out, because I was having more shimmer on my fingers, than on the image by handling it while cutting it out. So after I had some of it cut, I added some more gel pen and watercolored it again, then sprayed hairspray on it, let it dry and finished cutting it out.  My base card is a light pink, then I have a layer of rust, the dp, a darker pink self adhesive ribbon from Darice, two layers cut with nesties labels three, light pink and rust. The sentiment is from a Crafty Secrets set called Feeling Yucky, (I love to mix and match my stamps) stamped on light pink with onyx black versafine.  I made my own label using a MS corner punch, and attached it with brads.

I took several pictures, even with editing the colors just didn't want to cooperate. The ribbon looks like it is two different colors, but it's a pink like under the main image, in most of the pictures it looked rust colored over top of the image. I also tried to get the shimmer to show in a close-up, it shimmers more in real life.

Thanks for looking, and I would love to hear your comments.

Thinking of June

This is my first ever entry to a challenge on Party Time Tuesday’s, it’s for sketch PTT #3. I hope I have it right.

 I used this sketch to make a card for my DH’s Aunt, she is 83 years old, and was still working until a couple of months ago, when she had a stroke.

For this card I chose a pink base card, layered with white, then dp from My Minds Eye Home Photo Mat Pink. I then placed a piece of lace across the center and over that a piece of pink Darice self adhesive ribbon. The main image is from a SU set called A Flower For All Seasons, stamped on white with onyx black versafine ink, colored with gel pens and a waterbrush. The sentiment is from a CDS set called Curved Sentiments, also stamped in onyx black versafine, the white was then cut and embossed with a nesties rectangle die, and layered on a piece of teal colored cardstock cut and embossed with a nestie scalloped rectangle die, then attached to the other layers. The butterflies were punched in red with a MS butterfly punch, the swirls of pink were cut with a Sizzix Sizzlet Scribble Swirl die, attached with glue and the flowers have a brad to hold them in place. The light pink flower is from an artificial stem I tore apart for the blossoms and the darker pink flower under it is a paper flower, from a Paper Flower embellishment jar by Portafolia.

Thanks for looking and I would love to hear your comments.