Showing posts with label stencils. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stencils. Show all posts

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Divine Diva Inspiration Challenge #27




















Welcome to this week's challenge! I found this gorgeous photo at The Inglenook Decor - it had such beautiful colors and textures.

For my card I used the sketch challenge of the week that was posted on Stampin' Connection (for SU demos) - but I did play around with it a bit! I couldn't help myself. The sketch had three cut-out elements so my idea was to make a stenciled lattice with the Big Shot die (going gray sponged on whisper white cardstock) and put butterflies on top of it. I chose the butterfly from Great Friend, and with inspiration from the iridescent butterfly in the photo, I embossed it on basic gray cardstock using iridescent ice EP. The background is a panel of going gray textured cardstock stamped with the Sanded BG stamp in basic gray. Over that I added a panel of paper from A Walk in the Park, a strip of basic gray satin ribbon, and three rhinestone brads. Finally I used a sentiment from the same stamp set with oval punches.

Be sure to check out the cards made by all the Divine Divas for this challenge!

Anne

Chris

Donna

Julie

Kerri

Hope you are inspired to come and play along. Just leave a comment here with a link to your card. We can't wait to see what you create! The keyword for uploading on online forums will be DDIC27. Have fun and look for the next challenge on May 20!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Resurfacing...

I am so sorry I've neglected my blog for so long. First we all came down with a stomach bug. That knocked us out for several days, and it happened in the midst of another project that's been consuming my time. I'm trying to reorganize my stamping space. I've gone through everything and gotten rid of a lot of stuff, and I'm really hoping I will have better organization that will stick and help me keep the space looking nice all the time. I will show you photos when it's ready for public viewing, LOL, but I'm working on it in the middle of getting ready for club, Sarah's birthday, and my mom and stepdad coming from Indiana. I hope in the next week it'll be (at least mostly) done.


For now, though, I do have a card to show you. Our May hostess over at Our Creative Corner, Loretta Lock, gave us a really fun challenge this week: make a Mother's Day card with no flowers. I love a good challenge and this one really got me thinking! I'd seen this card by Vicki Webb and I thought a stencil with a sentiment stamped on top would be super cool, and would give me a place to start that didn't involve flowers.

I chose this stencil from the Elegant Trio set (sigh, remember Carte Postale?) and a monochromatic color scheme of soft suede and very vanilla. I sponged the ink over the stencil with a dauber, very lightly and unevenly to get a vintage look. Then I stamped the sentiment from All Holidays over it. For more vintage style I used the color spritzer and my soft suede marker over the panel. After using the ticket corner punch on both layers, I sponged all the edges for even more shabby goodness.

Early on I thought I wanted to use vanilla satin ribbon. I decided to keep the background simple to allow the image and the bow to shine, so I simply cut a panel of Thoroughly Modern DP to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2", sponged the edges, then wrapped three lengths of ribbon around it before adhering it to the vanilla card base. After I made my bow, I wrapped gold elastic cord around the center, leaving tails to string the Pretties Kit beads. To get the beads to lay flat, I tied the cord in a knot right under the ribbon knot, then strung the beads and knotted the ends of the cord. Tip of the day: Knot the ends of the cord twice or it won't be big enough to hold the beads on. The center of the ribbon didn't look so good with the gold cord wrapped around it, so I just covered that up with one of the larger half pearls from the Pretties Kit.

I have to say, I love how this turned out. I'll be using this for a club card this weekend and I hope my stampers love it, too. All the rest of you, go be inspired by all the other wonderful creations from the OCC team, and thanks for stopping by today!

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Dreams


Today I have a project that represents something I'm doing for the first time - entering the monthly contest at Shelli Gardner's blog. (For those who don't know, Shelli is the CEO of Stampin' Up!) When I saw what this month's contest was, to use stencils, I immediately envisioned what I wanted to do. It took me nearly until the end of the month to find the time, but I'm pleased with the final result. I can see it framed in a shadow box and hanging on my studio wall, but for now this is what I have to show you.

The stencil I used is from the Folk Flower set that's in the mini catalog. This is a fairly large stencil so I imagined putting it onto a 12x12 background of some kind. I used sponge daubers and certainly celery, pretty in pink and rose red inks to create the design on very vanilla cardstock. I used regal rose textured cardstock with the scallop trim punches for the largest layer. I've used Gretchen Barron's tutorial for getting the right size layer to use with these punches, but Gretchen didn't go big enough for me on this project, LOL. So after some tinkering I figured out that a 9" square will work. If I get time I'll see if I can figure out some other large sizes - don't hold your breath on that one! *wink*

Here's a close-up of the flower - it's such a gorgeous image. I accented parts of the flowers with rhinestones from the Eggcellent Eggs kit, and I also used the rhinestone strips for the butterfly centers. My butterflies come from the Beautiful Butterflies die and the Beautiful Wings embosslit.

I wanted to add some kind of quote at the bottom. This stamp from Live Your Dream was perfect, even though it's (sniff) retired. I love the saying - I even have the Decor Elements version - and it fit nicely inside the oval frame die. I finished off with a nice big bow made from rose red stitched grosgrain ribbon. Since this is a large project it can take a serious statement from some wide ribbon, and I was happy to have a chance to make this fabulous bow!

I hope you enjoyed this stencil project. It was truly a joy for me to have time to create it. I really felt like I was making an art piece and I loved every minute that I spent on it.