Love you always...

We celebrated our wedding anniversary yesterday.  Quite a few years since the big day!

We enjoyed a nice dinner out, and I made DH a cute card.

 

I had purchased Lil' Inker's It's Today, Right? stamp set awhile ago. I'd used some of the sentiments for wedding cards, but hadn't used the cute lil' stick figures yet. This week's Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge is to use Lil' Inker products, so I paired the stamp set with some goodies from Simon Says Stamp's June 2014 monthly card kit.

Papers are from My Mind's Eye "Mildred" 6x6 pad; enamel dots also MME. I used some thin strips cut from the edge of a Paper Wishes Dazzles gold glitter sticker sheet to define the strips of patterned paper.

The love word is from Close to My Heart's April stamp-of-the-month.

The hearts & arrows washi tape is Lawn Fawn, also from the kit, as are the Kelly Purkey letter stickers.

I coloured the people with Copic markers. Plus a little Stickles for the gem on the ring!  

View showing the circular window.

Make sure to check out the Wednesday challenge at Simon Says Stamp!

Happy crafting, and happy weekend!

Caroline

 

Sad sympathy

The need for a sympathy card always denotes a sad occasion.

While there were a couple of weddings in our circle of friends this past weekend, it also marked the passing of another friend's father.

***

{capture the moment} has a great tutorial every Monday morning, and this card was inspired by Make It Monday #166: Debossed Stamped Images.

Using cutting dies and an embossing pad, you can create some wonderful texture on an otherwise flat/one-layer card.

 Here's the back of the debossed panel.

I used matching stamps and dies from Paper Smooches:  Leafy Greens and Good Gab.

Two colours of Distress markers were used to "paint" the stamp, which was then spritzed with water to help the two colours blend, before stamping.

 Then the loopy leaf die was placed over each stamped leaf, and it was run through the die-cut machine with a rubber embossing mat.

After matting the water-colour panel, I decided to flick some watered down distress ink and some Perfect Pearls solution onto it.

Also added some Pretty Pink Posh flat sequins in Bronze.

Sadly, I can't link this up to the Make It Monday blog, as I didn't use any Papertrey Ink supplies.  However, you can try out the technique; the link is open through Monday morning, June 2nd. Have fun!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Sweet baby...

Hello crafty friends!

Here’s a cute idea found on Papertrey Ink’s blog:  defining a heat-embossed image with repeated “confetti” or cluster stamping.
PTI's samples used circle or star images for “thanks” and “celebrate” cards.  I needed to make a  “welcome baby” card for my husband’s colleague, and thought hearts would be a sweet alternative.
The word “baby” was stamped in Versamark ink with an alpha stamp set from Close to My Heart, then heat-embossed in white.  A selection of  heart images were stamped in cascading arcs, in different coloured inks, over the card panel. They were clustered over the word BABY so that it “appears” in the midst of the hearts.  I wiped a tissue over the word to clean off any stray ink.  A patterned paper mat, wrapping of baker’s twine and little tag completed the card. 
My husband’s admin assistant says he always tries to take credit for making the cards as our initials (added to the back of the card, with the date of creation) are the same...check for inky fingers, I say!

Happy stamping,

Caroline

What's the scoop?!

Hello inky friends,
Here’s another card, made for On-line Card Classes’ Watercolor for Card-Makers.

This time, I “painted in” my stamped image.  Many of the beautiful cards in the class feature flowers. My floral stamp collection was a little thin, so I tried another, more whimsical image.

The cone and ice-cream scoop are stamps from The Stamps of Life.
I stamped the images with Distress ink in Walnut Stain, onto watercolor paper. I moistened the paper with water before adding any color, to allow the paint to flow more.  I scribbled some ink from my Distress markers onto an acrylic block, then picked up the color with a wet paintbrush.
You can build up layers of color, but you have to wait for the first layer to dry or everything kind of mooshes together... Patience is needed for water-coloring! Luckily, all that drippiness looked great on the ice-cream!

This was a lot of fun to make! The color and shading really added depth to the ice-cream cone.  I added a light color wash to the background with Tumbled Glass ink and a “horizon line” with Evergreen Bough.Off to BUY some ice-cream now, at Cow’s Ice-Cream on Prince Edward Island.  Sure sign of summer to come...

Happy painting,

Caroline

Watercolor Flowers with Versatile Vases

 Good Saturday morning, crafty friends!

We are enjoying the first beautiful spring weekend, here in Canada's capitol. Perfect weather for the start of the Tulip Festival. Its been very cool up until now, so the tulips are a little behind. They should all appear over the next ten days. Much better than years when it's been UN-seasonally hot, and we've had "Stem Fest"...

Any-hoo!

A few more cards to share for Online Card Classes' Watercolor for Cardmakers.

These are samples I made for the card workshop I ran this week, at the Rehabilitation Centre where I work. It is a wonderful thing to introduce people to a new handicraft, or to help them realize that they can still make beautiful things, even after a devastating accident, illness or change.

These cards are all variations on a theme,  CASE'd from a design by Jamie Greene for Newton's Nook Designs.

Here are my versions:

 Versatile vases #1: 

Gave the flowers a vase, using the jam-jar stamp; also a big, beautiful die-cut sentiment.

Versatile Vases #2:

Changed up the flowers. Added Liquid Pearl accents to the centre of the flowers.

Versatile Vases #3:

Changed the orientation of the card-base, the flowers and vase; added some Wink of Stella.

I used watercolor pencils for the coloring, after first stamping in Archival Black ink.

LOVE coloring outside the lines...

Hope you get some time for crafting, along with some gardening, maybe? this lovely Mother's Day weekend!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Colonial White CS (CTMH); watercolor paper (Artist's Loft; Michael's)

Smoothie Washi tape and Skylark DP (CTMH)

"Hello" die (Crafter's Workshop)

Versatile Vases stamp set (Newton's Nook Design)

Archival Black ink pad (CTMH)

Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils

paint brush

Corner-rounder (CTMH)

Water-Color-Blocking for Color My Heart #93

 Hello, crafty friends!

I'm Guest Designer this week, over at Color My Heart.

They are playing with a four-color palette:

CRANBERRY

HONEY

JUNIPER &

TWILIGHT

I've been "attending" Online Card Classes' latest offering, Watercolor for Card-Makers. It runs this week and next and is full of tips and techniques to add water-coloring to your bag of crafting tricks. 

I think the thing that's impressed me the most so far, is that you have little-to-no-control with watercolouring! Water just goes where it wants to, as in nature. You have to learn to "embrace the splotch..."

For my Color My Heart project, I tried a technique using my CTMH dye-based inks, a 1" square stamping block and a mister.

I applied the block directly to the ink-pad, misted it (the inked-up block) until the ink started to pool, and stamped onto a piece of watercolor paper, creating a color-block matrix of the four colours.

 The above image is one I tried using Distress Markers instead of ink pads.  Much more flowing and blending of the colours (see what I mean about no control?).

And here is the final card:

If the original squares aren't watery enough, you can go back and stamp over them again, after they've dried. For a final smudgy touch, I flicked some drops of water over the card.

The sentiment was stamped in Archival Black ink; the heart was stamped again on a scrap of paper, given the same watercolor treatment and popped up with foam tape.

Grab your ink-pads and head on over to Color My Heart to see some great creations by the rest of the team. We hope you'll get inky with us this week! Challenge rules are posted on the CMH blog.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

watercolor paper, Michaels

Colonial White cardstock card-base, CTMH

Dye-based ink pads in: Cranberry, Honey, Juniper and Twilight, Archival Black, CTMH

Acrylic stamping block

Mini-mister, Ranger Industries

Stamp set, CTMH

foam tape