Asian Inspired

Made for an office birthday, new Stampin' Up set:

Because I'm too lazy to photo and scan instead, the colors are wonky. Imagine this card with all the blues in the same color family. Here's the inside:

I've started adding an image or some other decorative element to the insides of cards. I like how it finishes them.

Do the math.

Inside, "You're old. Happy Birthday"

This card was completed for the latest challenge at You Know You Rock. The challenge was to use a background stamp as the focal image on a card. So here's my interpretation.



I scanned this, instead of photographing. The scan distorts the colors just a tad bit; the yellow layer is more goldenrod in real life, not quite so bright yellow. The background stamp is Club Scrap, the sentiment is River City Rubber Works. The background is direct to paper Vivid inks on glossy card stock. I've got the perfect birthday coming up for this card!

A Lame Hello in Metal

The "You Know You Rock" blog challenge this month was to use metal on a project. I hemmed and hawed, and dug through my boxes of embellishments. It was pretty lean pickings, aside from snaps, eyelets, paper clips and brads. I found these metal type-writer key letters which have little pokey things on the back to grab to paper. I used my Flourishes "Poppy" set to make this card:



It qualifies for the challenge, but barely! Again, my stellar photography makes it impossible to see that the keys spell out "hello"!

Wine Country Watercolor

I've been watercoloring images lately, following a summer of Copics. For this card, I used the traditional Adirondack ink pads, the colors which are slightly greyed. This is probably my favorite pallette.

Image is by Stampendous; sentiment is Hero Arts.

I'd enjoy a class of wine right now, if it weren't only 1:30 p.m. ;O

Poppy Prototype

I wanted to use my Flourishes poppy stamps. Each flower, bud and leaf is an individual stamp, allowing you to build your own bouquet. This can be a challenge.
The card started life as a 5 x 5 square, and I cut it down after stamping and masking to about 3.5 x 5. The size of the card is about 5 x 7.

Chocolate Chips

Got this dollar stamp of the little rodent -- hamster? gerbil? prairie dog? -- who loves chocolate chip cookies. I popped him up from the card with some foam tape. Made the giant cookie with my Nestablilities die, and hand-cut the chips.

Inside, the sentiment says "Friends are the chocolate chips in the cookies of life."

Y.ou K.now Y.ou R.ock Challenge

Well, here goes. My stamping friend, Julie Koerber, has a new challenge blog. I am determined to participate, since closure of our local stamp store means no more fun classes. I hesitate only because I've seen the challenge entries already posted, and there is SERIOUS talent in these challenges.

The challenge was to create a card using an "album" cover as the jumping-off point. Being old, I chose an old disc, the Brian Setzer Orchestra's "Dirty Boogie":


After several tries, I came up with this:


I sprayed Radiant Rain (Irish Mist, Sky Blue) on 140-lb hot press watercolor paper, and wiped with a papertowel. I have not perfected the blob-less application of these beautiful glittery sprays, so wiping after applying eliminates those glitches.

The stamps are all Impression Obsession. I went with the drink theme, although I used coffee in this iteration. On the album, the smoke from a cigarette is highlighted with white; I highlighted the steam from the coffee cups with a white gel pen. It's only slightly visible. I topped the card with a Martha Stewart border punch, to add some angularity, and balanced that with the stick-on pearls, which also adds a little more white.

Dog Days

July is traditionally the month during which the "dog days of summer" begin. According to Wikipedia,

[t]he Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true owing to precession of the equinoxes. The ancients sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that that star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.

I am celebrating the dog days by making doggie cards. These will mostly go to a friend, who kindly requests a bundle of cards as a birthday gift. The first card features a dollar stamp set I got at Joanne's:

The same little chihuahua, using a Martha Stewart border punch as a mask:

Finally, a Hero Arts stamp set: