Flowers, flowers everywhere

     How many floral images do you have? I have no clue how many I have, I just know I am drawn to them and have to remind myself that I have plenty of flower stamps when I see another I like. I also like floral printer paper and flower embellishments, so the Victorine Originals challenge #33, with the theme of '"flowers" seems like it was made for me.
      I started with floral paper for the base card. For the central image, I inked up the flower with Colorbox Chalk ink called Cadmium Yellow and stamped it off once on scrap paper before stamping it, so I got a lighter image. I overstamped with the sentiment in black Memento ink and sponged the edges around it with a greenish color called Bamboo. All the papers are from a Making Memories stack called Sydney.
     For the embellishment, I used  two layers of gauzy flowers under the paper flower both to make it fluffier and so the green of the gauze would be evident.  They are attached with a mini brad.

Frog on Vespa

      My brother's birthday is coming up. As I've said before, it's hard for me to do "guy" cards. Since my brother and I share a similar sense of humor, I decided to go with this fun image from Paper Cupcakes. How can a frog on a Vespa not strike you as funny?
      Frog is colored with pencils and OMS. I used a silver gel pen for the "metal" on the handlebar and hubcabs. I also gave the Vespa a coat of spica pen to give it a sparkly, clear-coat look. (I had a car with metallic blue paint once. It was about that sparkly when it was new.) That's as far as embellishments go for this "guy" card.
      The tickets are also from Paper Cupcakes; I chose a bunch of "have fun" sentiments and left the birthday greetings for inside the card..
      The sketch for this is the current sketch for Card Positioning Systems, CPS 264.

Masculine birthday card

There are lots of birthdays coming up in my family, so this card will go to one of the guys celebrating. I used this week's sketch from the Card Positioning System Blog, CPS262.
The tiger (from Raindrops on Roses) is stamped in Colorbox Chalk chestnut roan ink; I did an out-of-the-box cut and cut it with an oval nestie.  The sentiment is computer generated, and I didn't realize at the time that the font I chose doesn't line up on the bottom of the letters. That probably doesn't bother most people, but I've spent a fair share of my working life making sure type lines up (among many other picky details, of course), and it does bother me.
Papers are all from a ridiculously old pack from DCWV, which until I made this card had been used exactly once.  I must use up old supplies!
The embellishment is baker's twine strung through a spacer bead that sort of vaguely looks African. It's so hard coming up with good embellishments on masculine cards. What sort of embellies do you use on a card for a guy?

Another rose card

The subject of this week's Teapot Tuesday challenge was tattoos.  I prefer my ink on my fingers and my stamps rather than on my body, thank you very much, but I thought a rose would make a nice tattoo, so I created this card.  I used the current Card Patterns sketch (#162) for the layout

The stamp is one I picked up at a stamp show in a bargain bin. It's inked in Memento black and colored with pencils.  The ribbon is from a grab bag of stuff I bought at a stamping consignment sale on Saturday; the ribbon is from Elements, and someone on SCS pointed out it looks kind of thorny.

Instead of the buttons the Card Patterns sketch showed in the lower left corner, I just did a little paper piercing, because I didn't want to clutter the card too much, and I do like this image a lot; didn't want to take attention away from it.

Time to start thinking about Mother's Day

This time of the year is a busy one for birthdays and holidays in our family. I decided to use the Really Reasonable Ribbon Challenge (RRR46) as a jumping off point for a Mother's Day card, since I know I need to make one. The challenge was to make a card with black and white and one accent color. I chose red.

The rose square is from Zim Prints, which I think is a long-gone stamp company. I used to love stopping by their booth at the stamp show, and they haven't been at the show for years. The actual stamp is larger, and I trimmed it down to fit.  Roses were inked in Memento Black and colored with pencils. I added some spica pen accents to give them a little shine because they looked kind of flat.

Sentiment is computer generated and accented by some red gems.  The strips behind the rose images are ribbons -- two strips of a narrow red ribbon and one strip of a wider black and white gingham. They also add a little sparkle and texture to the card.

I'm off to make masculine birthday cards now.

Going International

My house was actually quite bilingual for the last few weeks, as we played host to a German exchange student. He was a very nice boy, and a very talented musician, and it was quite interesting to get to know him.
That's my lead-in to a card honoring France -- it's the best I could do, aside from noting that this week's Teapot Tuesday Challenge was all about France.  I used the current Card Patterns sketch (#158) to create my card, and I ended up making it an odd size, to fit what used to be known as a "letter envelope"  or roughly 6 /14 by 3 1/4 inches.
The Eiffel Tower is black-embossed on white card stock, with blue ink (SU Blue Bliss) sponged pretty heavily around the edges.  The sentiment is also black-embossed.
I had seen a really cool embellie made with a button and twine, looped to look like a flower, on a card at SCS. That inspired my odd little blue and white embellie here -- it's not as nice as the inspiration, but it is an interesting little do-hickey, and it let me get a little blue down at the bottom of the page.

CAS not so simple for me

Clean and simple doesn't normally come naturally to me, at least when it comes to card making. My husband always says I'm a "minimalist" but it doesn't seem to translate to cardmaking, where I agonize over everything.

Not this time, however.  The challenge for There's Magic in the Air was to make a "less is more" or CAS card.  I used the CAS sketch challenge from SCS, and this card came together in record time.

The branch (Autumn Leaves)is stamped in versamark and the sentiment (source unknown) in SU Mauve Mist.  Two of the butterflies were punched from a scrap of printed paper, and the green panel is mounted on the same print. I'm not sure the purple butterfly is the perfect color, but all in all, I'm pretty happy with this quick card.