IB163 Take A Number

Hey everyone!  Happy Thursday!  We have a cute inspiration photo for you today at Inspired By:

And here's the optional sketch:

This challenge came along at just the right time for me, as I needed  a birthday card for special lady at my church who is turning 90!!!  So here we go:

I started with a So Saffron card base and added a mat of pretty floral  DSP  from the SAB Paper Blooms.  I colored in a few of the flowers with my So Saffron marker to complement my palette!  The retired Large Numbers were used to cut "90" from some Misty Moonlight cardstock that had been adhered to a Foam Sheet.  I created my own DSP by stamping some flowers from the retired Blooms & Wishes on a piece of Whisper White cardstock, then matting it with some Night of Navy, diecut with a Stitched So Sweetly die.  A few flowers cut with the Pierced Blooms dies and a banner and sentiment from the retired Number of Years finished it off:

The inside has a few more flowers and this sweet sentiment from the same set:

Our friend is nearly blind but hopefully she'll be able to see this big bold 90!!!  And I hope you'll be able to play with some numbers of your own!  The possibilities are endless!  Check out what the DT created at the Inspired By blog to get some inspiration!

Can you see a little dog in here?  She always snuggles in to get warm:

Enjoy your day and be blessed! 

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	By the Numbers, Blooms & Wishes (both ret)
Card stock & Papers	Whisper White, Night of Navy, So Saffron, Misty Moonlight, Paper Blooms DSP
Ink	So Saffron, Night of Navy
Accessories	Dimensionals, Foam Sheets
Tools	Big Shot, Pierced Blooms Dies, Large Numbers Dies (ret), 1/8" Hole Punch

One Sheet Wonder Sympathy

Happy Saturday, everyone!  Sadly, our family needed two sympathy cards this week.  The In(k)Spire Me challenge had some pretty colors in it:

I decided to make three cards by using the "one-sheet wonder" technique with the challenge colors, doing some random stamping with various floral images on a half-sheet of Whisper White cardstock.  I cut it into two sheets that are 3 1/4" wide and added a piece of Animal Expedition DSP to follow the CAS(E) This Sketch sketch for this week:

So here we go:

I added a piece of silver ribbon and a silver foil scalloped mat under the sentiment from Flourishing Phrases stamped in Balmy Blue:

The remaining piece of stamped cardstock was matted with Soft Sea Foam, and placed atop a piece of embossed Balmy Blue that I already had in my stash! They were both just the right size for the Try Stampin on Tuesday sketch:

And here's the final product:

I diecut a piece of Whisper White with a Stitched Label die and added a sentiment from the same set, then I colored some pearls with a silver Zig Painty Pen to add a little silver accent, and although it's hard to see, a little panel of silver foil along the left side of the stamped piece:

Thanks for popping in today!

Because of the snowstorm, Cassidy spent the night with us on Thursday and had a two-hour delay on Friday, which was John's birthday.  She hid his gift (in his bedroom closet) and wanted to give him clues to help lead him to it, sort of like a scavenger hunt!

He was able to follow the clues from room to room:

upstairs:

downstairs:

and back upstairs where he finally found it!

 She did a great job and it was a lot of fun!  Tonight we'll go out to dinner for a little more fun!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!  And be sure to come back tomorrow for a new Paper Players challenge!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Touches of Texture, Flourishing Phrases, Blooms and Wishes (ret)
Card stock & Papers	Whisper White, Soft Sea Foam, Silver Foil, Balmy Blue, Animal Expedition DSP
Ink	Soft Sea Foam, Gray Granite, Balmy Blue
Accessories	Pearls, Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Stitched Shapes Framelits, Stitched Labels Framelits, Silver Woven Ribbon (ret), Zig Silver Painty Pen, Basketweave EF, Stitched Rectangle Die (Lil'Inkers)

AYSI 176 Sketch Time

Happy Friday, everyone!  I am looking forward to this weekend, although it's going to be a busy one, I'll be with friends and I'll be EATING some yummy meals!  Hope you have something fun planned too!  Today we have a new As You See It challenge, and it's a sketch:

I admit that at first, I had no idea what I was going to do with this sketch! But I had some gorgeous CTMH Chelsea Gardens papers on my desk from another project and I thought how fun it would be to use ALL the pretty patterns from the package on one card!  So that's what I did:

It took me some trial and error to determine exactly what size to cut the shapes, so if you're going to create one yourself, I cut each piece to 7/8" wide, then I cut the rectangles to 1 5/8" and the squares are (obviously!) 7/8".  I was thrilled how this turned out and I can see this sketch being a great one to use up those little scraps of DSP we hate throwing out!  I used a small corner rounder punch to round the opposite corners of each piece of DSP, and for the squares, since they're rather small, I lightly adhered them to a longer piece of scrap paper; that gave me something to hold on to while I positioned the DSP into the punch!

The sentiment was stamped in Basic Gray ink and I stamped a spray from Blooms and Wishes in Sage Shadow ink over top of it.  It was die-cut with the new stitched circle that's in the Stitched Label Framelits dies that are coming out in the new catalog, and matted with a scalloped mat in Smoky Slate:

The corners were embossed with a cross-stitch die that is also in the Stitched Label Framelits....have I mentioned how much I love this die already?!  For the final touch, I added some little silver pearls to the inside corners...aren't these patterns SO pretty?!

 

The design team has come up with some amazing ideas for this sketch...be sure to check them out at the As You See It blog, and play along with us too!

This goofy child:

Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Blooms and Wishes, Mini Tag Sentiments (Our Daily Bread Designs)
Card stock & Papers	Whisper White, Smoky Slate, Chelsea Gardens DSP (Close to My Heart)
Ink	Basic Gray, Sage Shadow
Accessories	Silver Pearls, Dimensionals
Tools	Big Shot, Layering Circles Framelits, Stitched Labels Framelits, Project Life Corner Rounder Punch (ret)

AYSI173 Just Sitting Here

Happy Friday, peeps!  It's time for another As You See It challenge; this week it's a sketch, with lots of room for interpretation:

First, before I share my card, I must confess that I CASEd this idea from Loll at  CAS Watercolour Challenge!  Their challenge this month is "bird", and I just loved her card with the little bird diecut against that beautiful watercolored background!

 I thought it would work well with our sketch challenge, so I just had to make my own: 

My own background was a happy accident!  I love to watercolor WITHIN the lines, but doing a random background like this makes me very nervous!  I started out by embossing the big fuzzy image from Touches of Texture twice in Versamark and clear embossing powder; I positioned it once on my Stamparatus, then turned my watercolor paper and stamped it again.  After heat-embossing the image, I just began filling in the area around it with various shades of green ink.  Imagine my surprise when it ended up looking like a big white hydrangea (at least that's what it looks like to me!)!!!  

I added some stamped leaves from Blooms and Wishes to continue to floral look, then diecut a bird  from a scrap of watercolor paper using the Birds and Blooms framelits. I watercolored it in some wren-ish colors and positioned him atop the edge of the blossom, and then added a sentiment from Sitting Here, stamped in Basic Black:

I didn't punch out the diecut areas of the bird, but left them intact by putting a little piece of tape on the back to hold the wing and the eye in place.  I mounted my watercolor piece on a card of Thick White Cardstock and I really love how it feels like a little piece of art!  

I hope you will play along with our sketch at As You See It this week!  Everyone really rocked the color challenge we had, so let's keep the mojo going!  You can check the samples from the DT here, and share yours with us as well!

So apparently this was the year for unusual egg dying! Not only did Cassidy tie-dye eggs, she painted some:

and she even dyed some with rice....the rice and the dye go into a baggie, then the egg gets shaken in the baggie, and the dye is transferred to the egg!

And big kid Wayne even got in on the action!

Enjoy your day and be blessed!

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Touches of Texture, Sitting Here, Blooms and Wishes
Card stock & Papers	Watercolor, Thick White
Ink	Garden Green, Tranquil Tide, Basic Black, Chocolate Chip, Crushed Curry, Versamark
Accessories
Tools	Heat Tool, White Embossing Powder, Big Shot, Birds and Blooms Framelits, Mini Dimensionals, Dimensionals

March Club Projects

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  I am really draggin' today...of course, the gray skies and snow flurries I see out my window might have something to do with that...and the prediction of another nor'easter on its way tomorrow.  That will be #4 for March 2018!!!  And it's the first day of spring!  Anyway, I wanted to share the projects my club participants did this month; I really enjoyed designing them and my stampers seemed to love them too!

Since once of the SAB promotion items is this lovely Springtime Foil DSP, I thought doing an ombre effect with SU's brayers would be fun:

We brayered layers of Blushing Bride, Flirty Flamingo and Calypso Coral on a pane, then added a flower from Flower Shop and punched out with the Pansy Punch, colored with a SU Blend.  The sentiment is from Basket of Wishes, punched with the Tailored Tag punch, and finally, we added a border diecut with the Flourish Thinlet; to make it easier to adhere, it was backed with some Adhesive Sheet, so all we had to do was peel and stick!  And here are a couple of other samples I showed them using the same technique:

For the second set of projects, I went "old school", using the One-Sheet Wonder technique that I learned a long time ago when I first became a demonstrator!  Basically, you stamp a whole sheet of cardstock (in our case, just a half-sheet) randomly to create your own designer paper.  Then we cut it into smaller pieces and made two full-size cards and one note card with our stamped panel:

The set Blooms and Wishes is perfect for this type of project; we used Pool Party, Sweet Sugarplum, So Saffron, Peekaboo Peach, Wisteria Wonder and Soft Sky for a springy palette; the sentiments from the same set (and an additional one from Beautiful Bouquet) were stamped in Basic Gray and all diecut with the Stitched Shapes Framelits:

You can't see it here, but some of the flowers were embellished with a Wink of Stella pen too!  Finally, they learned how to tie a "One-Hole Bow", which is great for keeping your ribbon from slipping off your card.  I did a tutorial for it and you can see it HERE!  And since there is no DSP on these cards, I am entering these in the No Patterned Paper challenge from Cards in Envy!

Ialso made a little gift for my hostess using the Wood Crate Box and the Seasonal Layers Thinlets; my friend Wendy made some really cute Easter-themed ones (you can see them here), but I didn't have any bunnies or chicks or eggs that were current, so I made a spring one with cherry blossoms and a sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes:

Phew, are you tired of all the photos?!  Thanks for hanging in there with me!  

About fifty family members and friends from church went bowling on Saturday; it's really tough for wee ones to get that ball down the lane without going in the gutter (I struggle with it too!):

Mommy helped with the ball guide, and a few times we put up the bumpers too:

But that scoring is really the hard part...checking out to see how she did:

Enjoy your day and be blessed!

MTS220 Thinking of You

Happy Friday, everyone!  My birthday card stash is running low, so I pulled out some Delightful Daisy DSP and a sweet floral set called Blooms and Wishes to coordinate with the latest Match the Sketch sketch:

I hope I don't offend anyone by saying that although I love most of the patterns in this DSP series, this particular pattern is not my favorite!  But sometimes I like to challenge myself so that's what I did!  I just got the Diagonal Stripe background stamp, so I stamped a little strip in Smoky Slate for the left vertical panel, then stamped the flower in So Saffron and the leaves in Old Olive, stamped off for a lighter look:

I added an Enamel Glimmer Dot for the center, and added another on the sentiment banner:

Finally, I stamped the inside with a sentiment from Beautiful Day, added another stamped strip and continued the florals, which were stamped off for a softer effect:

 

I am hoping this will make the recipient feel like spring is coming....because you certainly could not tell here in SE PA....our weather reporters said we won't have temps above the mid-40s before April!  Brrrrr!  Enjoy your day and be blessed!

A little St Patrick's Viking?????

Project Details—All Products SU! Unless Otherwise Specified
Stamps	Blooms and Wishes, Beautiful Day, Diagonal Stripe
Card stock & Papers	Whisper White, Smoky Slate, Delightful Daisy DSP
Ink	So Saffron, Old Olive, Smoky Slate, Basic Gray
Accessories	Enamel Glimmer Dots
Tools	Big Shot, Stitched Shapes Framelits, Dimensionals