SEPTEMBER CARD CHAIN CHALLENGE

This month my cards are going to Karren in New Zealand.  Since it is spring in NZ and fall here in NE, I made her two cards.

The colors for this month were chocolate, orange and slate so I used them with my new C & 9th Thankful Leaves turnabout stamp for the fall card.  It is difficult to see but there is "Hello" in raised letters above the little sentiment.  The spring card was made with SSS Even More Spring Flowers and colored with copics - the sketch for the month was used on this card.

It's always fun to send and receive cards from new friends all over the world.  You can sign up for the October CCC here.  You have until 6 October to sign up.

Thanks for stopping by and love to read your kind comments.

A LITTLE CHRISTMAS

Even though our A Blog Named Hero "sparkle and shine" challenge is finished for this month, I decided the Christmas stash needed a few more cards - especially since I just got the new Glimmer Metallic Inks and HAD to play with them.   Hero Arts has eight of these fantastic colors and you're going to want them all!!

I began by just painting a piece of white cardstock with the green ink.  Just played around with it using a wide brush and watering down the ink a bit and then adding more water here and there.  So in the end had a nice variegated piece from which I cut two greenery borders.  Attached these to two creamy metallic card bases, added the sentiments and some red Nuvo drops for berries.  The green ink has a lovely gold metallic shine which I was unable to photograph.

Our next challenge starts tomorrow (15 September) so be on the lookout for it.  

Thanks for dropping by and love to read your kind comments.

HELLO LOVELY

A few weeks ago a friend looked at my Pinterest pages and saw a card that she thought I had made and wanted me to make a card like it.  Talk about a challenge!!!  Norine Borys creates gorgeous cards and I have followed her blog for ages - this is the card I tried to imitate. 

I don't have the stamp she used so chose the Hello Lovely bouquet from Concord and 9th for my attempt and actually made two cards - one with regular watercolors and one with my Zigs (on the right).

I am pretty much of a perfectionist and it's difficult for me to do such loose watercolouring - but now that I've tried it I rather like it.

My friend also wanted a wine label card - hadn't made one in ages and still have quite a few from when that was popular several years ago.

It was kind of a funky label but fun to do - added a few gold sequins to go with gold mat - the card base is a dark navy.

Am also entering the flower card on the left in The Flower Challenge - theme is "anything goes".

Thanks for stopping by today and love to read your kind comments.

WATERCOLOR CLASS

Recently I took a watercolor class from Altenew taught by Jennifer Rzasa.  I was sort of a lazy student and only got three of the homework assignments finished.  Besides making a swatch page for my watercolors, I did manage to make a couple of cards.

For this assignment we were to do a watercolor wash and then overlay a stencil, weight it down and let it dry.  When dry and you removed the stencil, the imprint of it should be visible.  I used the Dahlia stencil but it didn't really show up too much.  So I just stamped over it with the Sketchy Floral stamp and added it to a card base with a little sentiment.

On the next cards we were to put watercolor directly onto a stamp and then stamp.  I used my MISTI with a layered stamp so I could get some variation in colour.  Did some spattering on both cards before adding to a card base.  On all of my cards today, I was using the new Altenew watercolor set.

All the Altenew classes are so good and I've learned so much from their various instructors.  They're worth checking out.

Thanks for stopping by and love to read your kind comments.

AUGUST CCC

This month I sent my Card Chain Challenge card to my friend, Cat.  The challenge colors were a bright pink, bright blue and sort of a lime green.  I loosely followed the colors and used the theme of friendship.

I die cut the rose garden background in white and laid that over a piece of blue watercoloured paper.  Stamped and die cut the flowers and leaves, added some Nuvo drops to the centers and attached the sentiment to a strip of vellum

Thanks for dropping by today and always love to read your kind comments.

SPARKLE AND SHINE

This month our challenge at A Blog Named Hero is "sparkle and shine" - so I made two very sparkly, shiny cards for you today.  But first must tell you a little story about them.

I have two teenage granddaughters who live in England. Since it's easier for me (and I'm sure they like it better), I send my son some money and he buys them gift certificates.  So last Christmas I made two really cute slider cards with room for a gift card to be inserted.  Mailed them on 1 December and between the U.S. mail and the Royal Mail, they never ever arrived!!!  So this year I am trying again - only this time I made them in the beginning of July and gave them to my son while the family was visiting these past few weeks.  Now my only worry is that he'll forget where he put them and can't find them at Christmas!!

This isn't an original idea for making a slider card - you can find out how to make it by viewing this video.  I started by die cutting two ornaments - one from gold glitter paper and the other in silver (saving all the little bits).  (BTW, Hero Arts has a new ornament that would work just as well.) Then cut out a circle and attached on the back of the ornament with lots of tape and fit all the silver bits into the gold ornament and gold into the silver one.  Then I followed Dawn's instructions for making the card slider part.  Die cut a red "K" (for Katie) and an "A" (for Anna) and glued to the center of the ornament.  Added some gold twine to the ornaments and attached to the front of the card per instructions in the video - only attached at the bottom part of folded center part of the slider. You can see what I mean by looking at the photo on the right. Stamped the little sentiment on the inside and also added a little strip of double sided tape above the sentiment so Mike could add the gift card inside.  I put two layers of foam tape on the sides and bottom between the base and slider piece so there'd be room for the g.c.  My explanation is probably clear as mud, but hopefully if you are interested in trying this, the video will help a lot.

I had lot of fun making these sliders for my girls - I tried to figure out a way to detach the ornament so it could be hung on the tree, but nothing seemed to work.  Maybe someone out there has a good idea!

Hope you can create a sparkle and shine card for this month's challenge and enter it here.  There are two gift cards to be won from Hero Arts, so be sure to have a go.

Thanks for visiting today and love to read your kind comments.