Sunshine, Daisies, Butter Mellow...

Hello everyone, today I have exciting news. Well for me it's exciting. Last night I finished my second Halloween card!

I know, I know there are plenty of you out there who LOVE Halloween and make cards every year. For me, I'll be honest my Halloween Movie of Choice is 'Clue.' I don't want to watch 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' or 'Rocky Horror', it's just not my thing. So the fact that I've even made one card is substantial, but two is kind of  a "shout it from the mountains" moment.

There may have had a bit of maniacal laughter going on in my head as I made this card, personally I thought it was really clever, but that's just me. So now that youve put up with my rambling lets see my latest creation.

 How cute is this image? I colored him a little while ago with a very special little boy in mind and really wanted to make a card for him for Halloween. Then as I was assembling the card I had the idea to add the "Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow..." quote from Harry Potter. <this is where the maniacal laughter came into play. ;)

The bear is a little hard to make out, he turned out darker than intended so I ended up using the colorless blender on him. The end result, he looks well loved.

This card with the sketch from Kraftin' Kimmie in mind, I'll post a small pic down below and you can be the judge if it works. After struggling with the colors and layouts of my last two cards I just said 'to heck with it' and 'I am going to use this paper, and it it going to work!' And you know what? It did! I just used what I had in front of me, and got lucky! My favorite part is how the little wizard stands out against the background.

Everything is fairly straight forward on this card, the only 'special' thing that I did was to emboss the stars on his hat and robe with some sparkly gold. 

And that's all I have for today, I hope you liked it!

Items used:

Lili of the Valley - Abracadabra (digi)
Copic Markers

Spellbinders Nestabilities- Labels Twenty-Five
My Mind's Eye - Mischievous (pattern cardstock)

Stampendous - Embossing Powder in Jeweled Gold

EK Star Border Punch (stars punched in gold glitter paper and glued to the card)

Kraftin' Kimmie Sketch -

Challenges entered:

Kraftin' Kimmie - #354 Halloween + Monthly Sketch (ends Oct. 29)

The Crafty Addicts - #27 Anything Goes/Halloween Colors (ends Nov. 8)

City Crafter Challenge - #335 Hallo-ween (ends Oct. 31)
inky chicks - #74 Too cute to spook (ends Nov. 4th)

Kitties for Christmas

Oh my goodness, I've done it! I don't know about you, I'm guessing that I'm in the minority here, but even though I make cards the people in my family hardly ever get them. Scratch that, I almost never have a card to go with a gift.

This year we're trying something new. In my attempts to be done with everything shopping and gift giving before the 1st week of December (ambitious right?), I am adding making cards to the list of things to do. My father owns his own hobby store that I end up helping out in, and I get plenty of last minute 'oh, we need a flyer for such and such event that is happening tomorrow' to fill my time. This year I just want to be done so I can enjoy the season and bake without other obligations.

On that note, Card for brother: Check!
My brother LOVES cats, I do too, but he is a 100% cat person. Sadly he lives in an apartment right now and works long hours which means he can't keep a cat.

A very simple card this time, though trying to figure out what I was doing with this image was a beast! This is another image where I just didn't give myself enough room to use a die cut. I tried out endless combinations with all my different Christmas papers, nothing worked. Finally, I had the idea to do a layered frame, and once I found the red paper with gold embossing I was set. Even better I found some black velvet ribbon that fit perfectly through my buckle die!

The frame was made with Gold embossing that I also used on the die cut and to frame the 'Merry Christmas'. Yes, we have another image from Lili of the Valley. Yes, I do own images from other companies and I will get to using them, I just have a ton of Christmas stamps and digi's from LOTV so why not use them?

Items used:
Memory Box - Ringed Buckle
Comotion - Gold Embossing Powder
Hero Arts - Christmas Messages
Lili of the Valley - Christmas Cats (I think that's the name)
Black Velvet Ribbon

Challenges entered:
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - October Technique 'Embossing' Challenge (ends Oct. 28)
Kraftin Kimmie - Wonderful Wednesday (ends Oct. 25)
The Merry Christmas Challenge - #4 Add a Cat or Dog (ends Oct. 30)
Ellibelle's Creative Moments - Critters and Creatures linky party 8 (ends Oct. 31)
Jingle Belles - While Shepherds Watched Their Flock (ends Nov. 2nd)

Harvest Fairy

Finally done!

Have you ever had a card that just didn't want to come together? For me, this was 'that' card. I hadn't realized when I printed the image that I didn't give myself enough room to die cut, and thus my struggles began. While this isn't the best card that I've ever made, I do like how it turned out and for how hard it was to bring everything together I'm rather proud of how it turned out.

For the first time on a card I tried out using cheese cloth which I placed in between the moon and the circle pumpkin die-cut, I'll have to play with it some more but I think that it worked out. On the base orange layer I used some Distress Ink's and then added in a hand drawn spider web to fill in the empty corner, I also added some Distress Inks to the pumpkin circle to deepen the color.

The green and yellow strip on the bottom was made with Distress Inks, I then took a white gel pen and added a border, then later filled it in with some hand drawn leaves to imitate the ones that I glued to the card.

On the Rose I used a white rose and some of my Distressed Inks applied with a aqua brush to give it some color and match it to my card. For a final touch I used some glossy accents to add some big craft glitter to the rose.

I also used the Zig, Wink of Stella in Glitter Clear to add some shimmer to the darkest parts of the bats and in some random spots on the moon to make it extra shinny

When I started this card I had intended for it to be a Halloween card,in the end I'm not sure if this really counts as strictly a fall card or a Halloween card. It might actually fall somewhere in the middle, but hey that still works!

Items used:
Lili of the Valley - October Fairy (digi)
Copic Markers
Wild Orchid Crafts - Rose
Distress Inks - Shabby Shutters, Peeled Paint, Fossilized Amber, Scattered Straw, Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge, Spiced Marmalade
Dies - Spellbinders: Pumpkin Circles, Cherry-Lynn Designs: One Free Wish
Embossing Powder - Stampendous: Stardust & Clear
Sakura: White Gel Pen, Zig: Wink of Stella-Glitter Clear, Interior Decorating Leaves (found in the floral department of my local craft store)

Challenges entered:
Kraftin' Kimmie - #354 Halloween (ends Oct. 29)
Kitty Bee Designs - #83 Halloween (ends Nov. 4)
Fussy and Fancy Friday Challenge - #175 Shades of Autumn(fall) (ends Nov. 3)
Cute Card Thursday - #448 Halloween (ends Oct 26)
Cardz 4 Galz - #33 Use At Least One Die (ends Oct. 26)
Polkadoodles - #42 Anything Goes (ends Nov. 4)
Patties Creations Design Challenge - #127 Halloween or Autumn (ends Nov. 3)
inky chicks - #74 Too cute to spook (ends Nov. 4th)

Lili of the Valley - Pink Christmas Squirrles

Hello again!

Normally my posts won't be quite so close together, but I finished my first Christmas card just yesterday and thought I would share it.

This card just makes me happy, I originally make it for a friend but I'm going to have a hard time letting it go! The image is Lili of the Valley's - Red Squirrels Christmas Tree Stamp (which may or may not be discontinued). The Image is colored with Copic Markers and has a little bit of sparkle on the snow from a Twinkle pen.

I used Fun Foam to pop up the banner and give it a little more dimension. The flowers are from Wilde Orchid Crafts, I used one of there larger light pink roses and two white/pink cherry blossoms. Behind the flowers is some "bakers twine" with a gold accent. The aqua and white pearls were made with the Ranger liquid pearls, and finally there is a 6" doily placed behind the image.

This is what the inside of the card is going to look like. Most of it is already put together but I haven't found the right sentiment yet so I'm holding off until I have the sentiment and my own message written out.

The Paper is from MME's new Sugar Plum line, and the final two die cuts are from Tim Holtz and Memory Box(the same tree is on the front of the card).

I hope you liked this card, please let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Challenges entered:
Lili of the Valley's October Facebook Challenge (closed)
Kraftin Kimmi Stamps - October Anything Goes (ends Oct 21st)
Crafting With Friends - Challenge 29 'Anything Goes' (ends Oct. 20th)
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - October Theme 'Christmas Critters' Challenge (ends Oct. 21st)
Weekly Christmas Card Challenges - Challenge 45 (ends Oct. 21st?)
Jingle Bells - (Gah!) Pink Christmas (ends Oct. 19th)
AllSorts Challenge Blog - Week 385 Pink October (ends Oct. 21st)

Doll of Color

Hello My Lovelies!

Ok, let's be honest... As this is a first post, all I'm really hearing right now is crickets. But I digress.

Today I'm sharing a card that I made for an exchange at Kit & Clowder.

 This image is one of my original drawings turned painting. If you see this and think 'Russian Nesting Doll' then your right on track as that is the look I was going for, adding my own personal flare. I've made a few of these before but never so small as to fit on a card, thought the end result was really nice and I might try making a few more of these. About 95% of this card was made with Tim Holtz Distress inks, the rest of it is gold and white acrylic paint and some texture past. 

 A second image that hopefully enlarges to show the detail on the face sadly the image doesn't enlarge and I don't have the original to take a close up. The eyelashes, eyebrows and the outline on the eye's and lips was made with a Tim Holtz Marker. And yes the splats on the face were intentional, thought not in placement, I like to splat these images with some of the excess 'paint' colors that I use. 

And thus concludes my first post for this blog. Comments? Questions? Let me know what you think.

Challenges entered:
Creative Artist Challenge Blog - Challenge #19 "Anything Goes Mixed Media" (ends Oct. 30th)