Sunday, December 7, 2014

Happy Christmas


Curtain Call Challenge has Winnie & Walter as a new sponsor!  I love W & W!  I used an image from their Scenery: Rectangled & Triangled to watercolor a little panel in the green and blue from the inspiration image.  You might think that Happy Christmas is an unusual phrase, but it's more common that Merry Christmas in the U.K. (that and the fact that I don't have the Big, the Bold & the Merry yet may be a factor in why I went with Happy).  The blue background paper isn't really that bright IRL, it amazes me how some colors look so different on camera. I'm also putting this in for SSS Wednesday Challenge where the challenge is Christmas/holidays.


                                   Simon Wednesday Challenge Blog

I topped off the watercolors with glossy accents to get more of that clear part of "Clearly Christmas" and the sentiment is embossed with lovely shiny silver EP.  The Christmas stamp is PTI.



Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen

Monday, November 24, 2014

believe




I really like the challenges at CASology and The Card Concept (clean and layered) that end today,  so I made another card last night.  Luckily it also fits in nicely with the challenge that started today at Merry Monday!


                                       


I blended SSS Beanstalk Green across the center of my cardstock then spritzed with Heidi Swapp gold color shine.  It looks muddy in this picture but shimmers nicely IRL.  Then I made a bunch of banners using a PTI Sketched Shapes die.  I stamped the large circle image from the Sketched Shapes stamp set in 2 directions with Antique Linen DI over the kraft flags to get a burlap look then swiped the edges in Frayed Burlap DI.  The letters (Lawn Fawn Clarks ABC's) were stamped with Barn Door DI.  Those are layered onto the red flags using glue dots then mounted across the green (also using glue dots - it looks like it has a lot of dimension in the photo but it is actually quite flat).




Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen


Monday, November 17, 2014

joy & peace





CAS(E) this Sketch  is on sketch #100 and it's a great one!  I stayed pretty true to the sketch layering up both the big solid chevron and the big outline chevron from W&W. 


Supplies:
Stamps: W&W, PTI
Inks: SSS Maliblue, HA Tide Pool, PTI Hawaiian Shores.



Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen

Friday, November 14, 2014

Colorful Christmas Tree!



 
This weeks  MUSE challenge has a great graphic tree. 













CASology's cue card is Festive so it fits in with that too.
 
I love the shape of the tree so I copied it but I wanted to add color in a different way.  For that, I took inspiration from this weeks Make it Monday to stamp an Ombre background.  A submission by Lesley really caught my eye so I CASEd it but used it for my focal point and not the background.  I made the card just 3.5" wide since it's such a skinny tree.  I think it makes for a very non-traditional, but really cute tree!  I put some dots of glossy accents on it to mimic ornaments.

Supplies:
Die - SSS hourglass die
Stamps - PTI
Inks - PTI & Hero Arts
Other - Glossy Accents









I die cut a few of the trees out of the paper I inked up.  Here is another card I made with the rest.







Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen

Mixed Media Tag



Oh, this is so far out of my comfort zone!  I lean to the CAS side of card making so this is a bit of a stretch for me.  I've been following along with Stamping with Loll's  Twelve Tags of Christmas and loving all of them, dreaming that I could force myself to layer things, splatter things, cut things and add things.  This is my attempt.  I first made a very clean version of this about 13 years ago, and it's probably been done to death,  but I think it's so cute and it was something familiar to "add to"





















I was happy to find a gold pop tab in amongst my silver ones to use as Santa's belt buckle!

Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen



Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Ombre for an Hombre


Make It Monday is a fun one this week - Ombre backgrounds 

If you get the colors right they look great and are fairly quick to make.  I used the Sketched Shapes stamps and die with Spring Moss, Simply Chartreuse, Limeade Ice and Harvest Gold inks.  



The bottom of the white panel is pretty mangled, my cutting blade was getting dull and starting to shred my paper.  While changing the blade I sliced my finger on the new one!  I was so distracted with the blood and the band-aid that I forgot to trim another sliver of the bottom.  Oh well, it's going to my brother for his birthday and he probably won't notice.

Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen

Festive Ho Ho Ho


 



I'm lucky enough to be heading to Hawaii in 4 weeks time.  We get home Dec 21st, so I pretty much have to get everything ready and done before we leave!  So, with that desperation in mind, I have a super quick CAS tag today that is bright and festive.  

Challenges:

CASology  where the Cue Card is Festive.
Addicted to CAS where the Code Word is Tag.

ETA - Happy to have an Honorable Mention for my tag on CASology





Supplies:
Stamps - PTI
Ink - distress
die - Paper Smooches


Thanks so much for Looking!
Karen