Caroline's Creations: The Stamps of Life

Showing posts with label The Stamps of Life. Show all posts

Friday, 6 March 2015

I Love Java...

One last entry for the Spring Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop:

So many excellent entries!

This idea has been PERCOLATING in my brain all week... :)

Song lyric mash-up between Manhattan Transfer and Cole Porter. Can you name those tunes? The ransom alphabet message should help.

Coffee cup stamp and die from The Stamps of Life.

Alpha dies, assorted ones from the stash.

Go pour yourself a cup, and check out the entries. Link-up open until midnight, Pacific time.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Sunday, 21 September 2014

Pop * Slide * Whiz *

You're probably getting a little tired of seeing these birthday candles...

I'm still having fun with them.

Another day, another birthday card!

This one features the colours over at Color Me...!

And because it IS a birthday card, I'll be linking it up over at Seize the Birthday

(although they're probably VERY tired of seeing my name...), where the topping option is "Sweet Treats."

I also tried out a new technique, and made an interactive pop-up slider card.

An apparently flat card. But see that ribbon at the back?

Pull it, and the message is revealed!

Here's a side-view, showing the easel effect.

Kind of fun!

I stamped The Stamps of Life candles4birthday outlines with grey Memento ink, then filled them in with Distress inks, then added some shading with Copics.

Some tone-on-tone stamping to establish the birthday (cupcake) theme, and a little washi tape for accent.

The card was surprisingly easy to construct. I'll be trying the pop/slide/whiz technique for some more of the birthdays coming up in the next few weeks.
**EDITED**
Here is a LINK which demonstrates how to make the pop-up slider card. Just click on the blue PLAY PRODUCT DEMO button.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Sunday, 7 September 2014

More birthday wishes...

What a happy, crafty day!

There's something about creating that is so satisfying. Plus I took the dog on an über-long walk, so he is happy, too...

One last card, for two different challenges:

The One-layer Simplicity Challenge theme for September is "It's Hip to be Square."

And Color Me...! has a monochromatic theme of Daffodil yellow plus neutral.

I went with a square card, and used the giant birthday candles from The Stamps of Life to create a square frame.
The candles are a two-step stamp, using grey (neutral), and I coloured the flames with Copic markers.

Did some doodling to frame it all, and then decided the sentiment in the middle needed a little extra something, so I added some yellow Distress ink (Scattered Straw) over top, with a diagonal stencil from My Favorite Things.
Kinda bright and cheery, and ONLY ONE LAYER (shockers!).

Have a creative week,

Caroline

Seizing the linky frog by the neck...

Second post: creating a new URL so I can link up this B&W card to

Seize the Birthday's challenge:

Black & White is the option this week.

Details on supplies can be found on my previous post HERE.

Love The Stamps of Life for simple, graphic images.

TTFN

Caroline

Seizing some Awesomeness...

Enjoying some crafty time, today, and playing with some new supplies.

Here's the design from Freshly Made Sketches this week. Lots of potential with this one!

I purchased this awesome set from My Favorite Things, along with the matching dies; SO cool! They will come in handy for sending "missing you" cards to my three geeky & cheeky boys this year (Amy Tsuruta, you NEED this set!).

Here's what I made:

And, another birthday card for Seize the Birthday, this time using the "toppings" option of B&W:

Candles4birthdays stamp set from The Stamps of Life.

I thought those polka-dot candles looked awesome in black & white. Like a vintage cartoon. Stamping the sentiment on vellum avoided hiding the flames.

Off to enjoy some time outside on this sunny day!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Awesome card:

Cardstock in Thistle and White Daisy, gold dot washi tape, Smokey Plum ink: CTMH.

Gold paper: Paper Wishes

Vellum: Michael's

Gold enamel dots: My Mind's Eye

Gold Stickles glitter glue: Ranger.

Happy Birthday card:

White Daisy card-stock, Black Archival ink: CTMH

Black textured card-stock: Wausau Paper

Copic markers: C1, C3, C5,C7; atyouSpica pen

Signo-Uniball silver pen

Vellum: Michael's

foam tape

Friday, 5 September 2014

Seize the Birthday {and make a wish!}

Hey crafty peeps. Long time, no blog!

Still adjusting to the empty nest, learning to love my DH all over again, and CLEARING OUT THE MESS left behind by those fledglings...

But! September is a birthday heavy-month for our family, so here's the first of several BD cards.

I'm sending this one in to:

Seize the Birthday's "anything goes" . The actual challenge this week is to use black & white--may try one of those later.

Anyway, today's card uses the awesome technique of water-coloring with embossing folders.

Ink up the embossing folder, spritz with pearlized water, then place your watercolor paper or card-stock inside the folder, and press. I used Distress ink minis for this one, and Paper Wishes' wonderful dandelion embossing folder.

Inked up the edges with some sponged Tumbled Glass and Crushed Olive ink.

The sentiment is a new die set from the Stamps of Life. The set includes the words as well as a shadow die. I used vellum for the shadow, to make the sentiment distinct from the background, but without hiding all that watercolor goodness.

Here's a close-up:

I created perfectly matching letters by inking white card-stock with the Crushed Olive ink.

Final look:

Inside of the card says "make a wish."

Happy weekend!

Caroline

Supplies:

Watercolor paper & vellum--Michael's

Card-stock in Twilight and White Daisy, CTMH

Distress inks in Spiced Marmalade, Wild Honey, Crushed Olive, Forest Moss and Tumbled Glass.

Ranger Perfect Pearls powder; mister
foam tape
Corner-rounder

Liquid Glass

Wink of Stella glitter pen

Sunday, 25 May 2014

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

Saturday, 26 April 2014

One of a Kind...Dynamic Duos #100

Grab your paint-brushes, crafty friends! And your tissues.

It's Triple-Threat week at the Dynamic Duos--THREE colours to play with.

BUT

You may also have noticed the auspicious number of this challenge: #100.

Lesley Croghan and Anne-Marie Hile have decided to close the challenge blog, and this will be our last post :(

Anticipating that sad event may be why I had a little trouble getting geared up for my project this week... I didn't have any cardstock or paper close to Pool Party/aqua in my stash, so I had to improvise. I've signed up for the next Online Card Class: Watercolour for Card Makers. The pre-class homework includes getting in some practice dabbling with different media. So I tried some watered-down dye-ink, colouring in a stamped and heat-embossed image.

and came up with this card.

Wasn't totally satisfied, so I tried again, this time CASEing a design by Laurie Schmidlin.

I stamped the dress-form three times, in Archival ink, then swabbed some diluted dye ink over top, in the three challenge colours.

Laurie had given each of her dresses a cute accessory. I decided to go all out with just one of them, adding a gathered tulle skirt, resin flower and of course, PEARLS. That led naturally to the sentiment...

Please go leave some love for each of my fellow DT team-mates. They'll need the virtual hugs...

AND we really hope all our Dynamic Duos fans will join us for our final challenge! I double-dog-dare you to link up your project!

Finally, a HUGE thank-you to Anne-Marie and Lesley for believing in me and my teamies. We've had an inspiring six months!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Tim Holtz water-colour paper

Cardstock in Black, Juniper, Slate, and White Daisy

Ink: Juniper, Honey, Slate, Archival Black (all CTMH); Versamark; silver embossing powder

Ribbon and bling from the stash (all items CTMH)

Stamp sets: Taylor-made, Home (retired CTMH); sentiment set, The Stamps of Life

Dies: Lil'Inker stitched rectangles die; Spellbinders Labels #2.

Paint-brush and water

Friday, 21 March 2014

Glam-rock card for Simon Says Stamp

Wow-I just realized these colours look very St. Patrick's...

But the reason for this card is all about the glitter!

The Simon Says Stamp blog has a (relatively) new feature--a Wednesday challenge.

This week, Simon says "Glitter It!"

Here's my card, featuring some glitter paper from Close to My Heart, a great word-die from Paper Smooches and some Wink of Stella, of course.

I glued the black scalloped circle to the white panel before die-cutting "celebrate," then mounted it with foam tape over the green glitter paper.

The birthday candles are a stamp from The Stamps of Life, coloured with Copics and glitzed up with Wink of Stella. Not sure if they need some glitter glue, too?

I forgot to photograph the inside of the card--come back tomorrow to see that.
Here's the inside. So as to maximize use of the glitter paper, I die-cut the letters from the panel of glitter paper before gluing it to my card base. The cut-outs are hidden by the white panel on top.

I also went back and added just a titch more glitter with some gold Stickles on top of the candle flames and some Smooch ink on the green candles.

Signing off now to link up the card.

Check out Simon says Stamp!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:
Cardstock in White Daisy, Black, green glitter (CTMH)
Stamp set: The Stamps of Life "cake2build"
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Copic Markers

Birthday Words Dies

*s4-124 Spellbinders SCALLOPED CIRCLE LARGE Scallop 5 Dies Nestabilities

*ZIG Wink of Stella GLITTER CLEAR Brush Tip Marker 025320

InLinkz.com

Saturday, 15 March 2014

On the road....to Dynamic Duos #94

Happy Saturday!

Day of errands, including shopping...

And day for the new Dynamic Duos colour challenge:

Isn't that a delicious colour combo? It reminded me of this cute image which was floating around Facebook a couple of weeks ago:

Which reminded me of my little VW Bug stamp-n-die from The Stamps of Life;

And thus was born this card:

I typed up and printed out the "craftaholic" statement in a bunch of different fonts, chose one and coloured it with a sponge dauber in Honey ink, then cut it into a speech bubble.