EIC 45 and CPS124

Oh my poor, neglected little blog and all my neglected blog buddies...

It's been a very busy month, what with work, getting my son to and from day camp every day for a week, and VSN, but I have time today to tackle a few challenges.

This card is based on CPS sketch 124, and is also for Etsy Inspired Challenge #45, The Daily Pincushion, which features some truly adorable felt pincushions. (My Mom used to have one shaped like a tomato -- your's probably did, too; I think it came from Woolworth's.) As my inspriation piece, I actually chose a couple of really cute felt tags the shop sells -- I kind of combined design elements of both, and it really fit well into the CPS sketch.

I bought the blue DPs ages ago and stumbled upon them recently, so it was good to finally cut into them. The ribbon (someday I'll learn how to photograph satin ribbon) has a line of tiny beads down the middle, very cool, but a little hard to work with.

The flower stamps are from SU's Heartfelt Thanks. (I bought it at a stamping consignment sale, and this is the first I've used it. The original owner did an absolutely horrid job of trimming and mounting the rubber and I can't line anything up.)

Etsy Inspired #42

This week's Etsy Inspired Challenge #42 focuses on photography by Tony Carlisle. He is a nature photographer and I really enjoyed his work. My inspiration in this photo. Since I've done lots of butterfly cards lately, I used the flower for my inspiration.

This card is done with markers, direct to rubber, then spritzed and stamped on watercolor paper. The flower stamp is by A Country Welcome and it's sort of my go-to stamp when I want something solid and bold. The sentiment is pre-printed vellum.

To me, this card is all about the image and the pretty colors, so I wanted to keep the embellishments simple. (I tried ribbon first, but I didn't like the way it looked, so I decided a few simple pearls and piercing would do the trick.)

A fairy in the great outdoors

This week's Flutterby Wednesday's (FWB63) theme was to put a butterfly or fairy in an outdoor setting. I thought this stamp from Faerie Song was perfect for the theme.

The plant she's playing among looks like dandelion to me (having spent my life fighting them in lawns and gardens I know that leaf formation), so that's how I colored it. Then I thought perhaps it was thistle? I just did an image search, but I couldn't tell for sure. There were a variety of flower forms shown, but I couldn't get a good look at the foliage. Anyone have an opinion?

The card is pretty simple -- the only real embellishment is a little glitter dust on her wings. The image is colored with pencils and OMS.

Etsy Inspired #41

The Etsy Inspired challenge this week is to find inspiration at PotatoPatch, which features clothing for infants and babies. The owner is a stamper at heart -- she carves potatoes and stamps the images on onesies and shirts. I knew I wanted to do something with the cute blue elephant because I had a sticker with a blue elephant. I was thinking about making a bookmark when I wandered over to SCS and found out -- horrors -- they'd had a VSN mini on Friday night and no one told me. One of the VSN challenges was to make a pull-treat box, but the hostess suggested using a bookmark if you didn't have any treats on hand. Was she reading my mind?

I kept everything simple, to meet the VSN time limit and because I'd never made one of these pouches before. I used stickers on the bookmark, pasting them on a pre-cut tag I had. I sponged lots of ice blue Colorbox chalk ink onto the tag to give it some color. The little "treat box" is pretty simple, but I made a bellyband to carry out the Etsy-inspired theme. The saying is spelled out from an Impression-Obsession alpha set, and the little elephant is from a DRS grabbag I bought at a stamp show a few years ago.

SFTW Time of the Season

This week's Stampin for the Weekend Challenge (#3) is based on the titles of a couple of my favorite songs. We were to find inspiration in "Time of the Season" or "Whiter Shade of Pale" (or "Please Mr. Postman," a fun song but not on my personal top 20.) While pondering that, I realized I'd missed a VSN mini at SCS. One of the VSN challenges was to create a card in brown, yellow, white, red and green. Sounds like fall to me. So, I took my inspiration from VSN to create my SFTW card, Time of the Season, for my favorite season, fall.

The main stamped image is from Chapel Road Art Stamps, featuring a Walt Whitman quote about leaves. There's a little glitter on the leaves that you can't see in the photo. I also used a stamped strip I had made earlier (and came across while cleaning up my stamping area.) To make that leafy strip, I colored a maple leaf stamp (All Night Media) with markers, spritzed with water and stamped for a watercolor effect.

To finish it off, I added a maple leaf brad and some piercing.

IC sketches, Flourish Timeless Tuesday

If you look through my stamps, you might think I have a thing about corsets. This is very odd -- I'm not even a fan of Madonna. But I have several stamps featuring corsets and dress forms. One is a wonderful vintage ad for a corset, but unfortunately due to its size (more than 5 inches long), it's really hard to come up with a good design to incorporate it into a card.

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge this week gave me a perfect opportunity to pull out these stamps. The challenge was an inspiration challenge based on posters designed by Kimberly Poloson. and I chose a corset ad. My stamp with the vintage corset ad would have been perfect theme and look-wise, but I decided to use dress forms for ease in size.

For the layout, I used Inspiration Challenge sketch #21.

I went with some vintage-looking paper from My Mind's Eye, as well as browns and tans. Ink is Chestnut Roan Chalk Ink from Colorbox. (Aside, I love the Colorbox Chalk Inks). I used a script-background stamp to creat the strip behind the main image. Note the embellishments -- I've been wanting to use snaps as an embellie for a long time, and they seemed so appropriate for this. I have a bunch of them and, seriously, when was the last time I actually sewed one on something?

CPS 120, SFTW

This card uses the Card Positioning System sketch #120,

It's also for Stampin for the Weekend's challenge to use a digital image -- that cute little turtle is from Whimsie Doodles. So is the saying.

I colored the turtle with pencils and OMS. There's a little piercing under the sentiment.

Ribbon and papers by Marcella K. Faux rhinestons are the final touch.