Fun with new techniques

I created this card for this week's Off The Wall Craftiness challenge, OTWC11 which is to use brown and robin's egg blue on a card. The inspiration photos included a bird's nest, so I pulled out this bird's next stamp by Impression Obsession. It's stamped with Colorbox Chalk chestnut roan ink, and sponged on the egdes with SU Blue Bliss.

I used a Technique Junkies technique called torn frames to highlight the image. Now, normally, I don't go for distressed anything, but I really like how this came out. I added some silk flowers (sponged with the SU ink) and a little tag. Once I had all that put together, I decided the card needed a little more, so I tried faux stitching -- piercing holes around the edge and connecting them with gel pen. I must say, when you're at just a short distance away, it really does look real.

Neither TJ techniques are "new" -- as in from the latest newsletter -- but I hadn't tried either of them until now, and I am really pleased with what they add to this card.

Sponged dragonflies

Purple and green -- especially pale purple and an olive or celery green -- is one of my favorite color combos. I have a nice stack pack of papers in that combo that got buried in my stamping area and I recently uncovered it. (Someone at SCS refers to this as "shopping in your stash" -- what a great way to put it.) (I should note the base piece photographed much more blue that it is in real life.)

I used the papers to make this sweet and simple card for CPS sketch 170. The dragonfly stamp is an old Stampcraft one, colored with pencils. I added some piercing to give the dragonflies a flight path and sponged Versacolor Petunia ink around the edges. The sketch calls for scallops along a horizontal layer, so I pulled out the rope border punch, which always adds a nice touch.

Impossible Things

This is one of my rare 4-fers -- Off the Wall Craftiness, Etsy-Inspired, SmArt-Word and SCS CAS challenge.

Let's start with Off the Wall Craftiness -- the challenge this week is to do something related to Alice in Wonderland. Since I have no Alice stamps, I thought perhaps something related to a tea party combined with an Alice quote would be good, so I went looking for quotes.

Etsy-Inspired Challenge EIC91 is a shop called howbeadyful, which features absolutely wonderful vintage, fabric covered buttons. I found some adorable tea-cup buttons that gave me the color inspiration.

CAS -- was to use a quote. Since I already had the quote, but a more complex layout in mind, I just simplified the card to make "CAS".

The SmArt Word challenge this month is to use ribbon. I sort of collect ribbon, but probably don't use nearly as much as I should, based on how much I own. For the challenge, I wanted to do a slightly different treatment (than just wrapping a ribbon around the card), so I used a brad that has a "eye" and tied a ribbon through that.

When life gives you lemons

I made this card for Off The Wall Craftiness Challenge 8. The inspiration piece was a variety of shower (as in bridal or baby shower) related pictures. One of the photos was of a nice closeup of lemonade with lemon slices in it -- hence this card.

I used card positioning system sketch CPS168 for it. The stamps are by Flourishes, colored with pencils and OMS. The only embellishment is a few snips of grosgrain ribbon, but I wanted to keep it sunny and light, just like the inspiring lemonade.

Vintage look

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge EIC88 is Creation Designs, an interesting shop that sells a variety of vintage-inspired designs, including windchimes made from spoons and other old items.

I was inspired by this vintage-looking crocheted flower. Creation Designs's flowers are made out of acrylic wool, but several months ago, I crocheted some myself, using linen embroidery thread I scooped up on clearance at Hobby Lobby.

Since the CAS challenge at SCS was to create a shabby chic card, I combined the two challenges. I used an Anna Griffin floral background stamp with Memories Soft Rose ink to create the top panel; the bottom is a piece of printed paper that looks like eyelet lace fabric. The ribbon is a piece of vintage ribbon I got at a yard sale, and I colored with by sponging more soft rose ink on it. For the "shabby" part I sponged the edges with still more Soft Rose ink.

Owl post

This week's Off the Wall Craftiness Challenge #7 was simple and direct -- use a bird on your card. I decided to pair this cute owl (a digi freebie from Pollycraft) with this week's Card Positioning System sketch (CPS167). The sketch called for little do-dads in all the corners, so I added some leaf-shaped brads. Sentiment is from Purple Onion Designs.

The owl is colored with pencils and OMS. (Don't know what it is about owls, but there sure are some cute owl images out there, don't you think?)

(Harry Potter fans out there will recognize the title.)

Poppies

When I saw the "word" for this month's SmART-Words challenge was "flowers" I was already mentally going through my huge array of flower images. I'm going to bet I'm not alone in owning dozens of floral stamps. And I keep looking at more.

I spent part of the weekend playing with the techniques from the newest Technique Junkies Newsletter. They all looked so easy on paper, but I didn't have much success with several. I tried the one called Metallic Parchment a few times, as I've seen lots of cards done with it, and it looks stunning. I was reasonably happy with my second attempt, and decided to use it for this card. To complement it, I turned to this recently acquired poppy digistamp, which I got from Bird's Blog (she does freebies quite frequently). I colored it to match the Metallic Parchment colors (poppy doesn't grow around here, and I've only ever seen red poppies in pictures) so the colors may not be botanically correct. I picked up the gold metallic from the "parchment" with gold ribbon and cording and a very thin border from a gold pen around the main image panel. The button dropped out of the box when I was cleaning up the stamping area and it matched -- it seemed like I just had to incorporate it somehow.