Inspired by {the Crown Prints}

This week Julie has sent us hunting inside the Crown Prints site which has some of the most adorable pastel animal prints I have ever seen and I came across this Pink Chevy and smiled from ear to ear.

 The Vintage Cadillac is from Prickley Pear but, I figured from the side view it has, it could totally pass for the vintage chevy in the IC shot. ( seen below) I stamped this real quick with some versafine clair nocturne on Solar white and colored it with two shades of pink pencils, one dark grey and a stardust gelly roll pen. The sentiment here is from the lil' Inker designs clean lines for the guys set.
I had earlier in the week thought it would be easy enough to mask off the car to give it a blue sky with some stencil or something. so, instead I gave it a printed paper sliver framing around the rectangle die I had used to trim it. The pink you see here is Stardream rose quartz? ( something like that, it shimmers)

 A closer look at the coloring. We got a new 7 week & 2 day old puppy yesterday and so, this is probably the fastest card I have made in a good long while. It's amazing how fast you can move while your fingers are crossed that the baby will sleep for 5 more minutes ha ha.

You can find this print here in the site and this challenge here in the Inspiration Forum at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

WOYWW # 521 {floor}

Happy desk peeking day, if you'd like to see more spaces or play along 

the link up for this blog hop starts here at our hostess

Miss Julia's Blog.

There is also a new Instagram hashtag of #WOYWW

 

 So, this is an Ahhhh moment. There are no more dvd cases of cling mounted stamps from the dresser needing sorting on the floor in the walkway. There still are a few more boxes of wood mounted stamps I want to pull apart but, I am taking a break from that for the next little while.
I did sort through those ink pads and put them kinda sorta into color rows. and the ones I pulled out are in a pile on top of the file cabinet while I think about if I want to keep any of them.

 what the desk looked like when I got home Tuesday afternoon, messing around cutting those Tim Holtz skinny lace dies on Monday night. ( I did use wax paper) but, it seems that they do not cut the edges of the die so, if when you are carrying it from the machine to your table the die falls of, it will tear the edges of the "lace" and really give it that I am old and fraying thing ha ha.

so, the top two I cut with scissors and the bottom three tore out of the sheets of cardstock and "un raveled" That's about it from me, I totally cannot believe it's Wednesday again already. I would totally love a do-over of a 3 day weekend too. Thanks for stopping by.

Floating Daisy Frames

There is a try a new technique challenge at Splitcoaststampers today that is to create floating die cut frames and I thought okay, it looks do-able and, I actually opened that box of press and seal I "had to have and have since forgotten why box" so, that made it a win-win thing. I didn't really have a clue what I wanted to do going into this but, I am also trying to at least play with some of the things in my studio I "had to have" that have also not been used yet and so, out came this stitched daisy flower die from Simon Says stamp.

I cut a pile of them from Neenah solar white and a scrap of Neenah columns yellow.

You can find the directions Sabrina wrote here in the challenge thread to try this for your self.

The whole time I was pushing around these flowers on the table I was trying to decide if I should cut some leaves too, and finally decided it would be an more CAS design if I did not.

 So the one on the left is the outside of the frame and the one on the right is the inside piece.
these are both finished out at 5 1/2" square. The sheer ribbon is unknown and I "think" that green printed paper is from My Minds Eye. ( I have had it a long time and it came out of a scrap bin)

 This one the pale green mat is Papertrey ink spring moss and was cut with a waffle flower lacy layers square die ( the largest one in the set) and the darker sentiment banner green is Old Olive from Stampin up. and was cut with the My Favorite things stitched sentiment banner die. Each and every one of those flowers is up on foam pop dots. The sentiment is from the SSS CZ good job mama set.

This was the center pieces, and I did pull that whole bloom up and consider using it on the other card but, it disrupted the "frame" shape from the center so, when I put it back on this piece of green printed paper, I think I spun it a little as the petals are not quite spaced how they were originally. I also did pitch a couple of slivers of petals that ended up right on the cut line, there was not enough of them to put foam dots under. So my aperture is a little off.  The sentiment on this one is from the Simon Says Stamp Daisy Bouquet set. One thing I thought of as I was doing this was you should check the Simon blog and see what their challenge was for today and I laughed and laughed to see it was "frame it" so, I decided it was fate and decided to cross link these to that challenge too. Thanks for these challenge ladies, & thanks for stopping by.

A few challenge cards

 A week or two ago there was a sketch challenge that came out around the same time I seen the theme of this months Dirty Dozen Christmas card challenge and I combined them both with this card. The wee on reindeer is from whiff of joy and the sentiment is from Stampin up. This finished out at 6" square in real life.

 This last week the clean and simple challenge was to not use coloring mediums on the project. so, you could use papers or what not that had color on its own. and I had these two newish dies on the table. the wood frame is from Hero Arts and where you see the texture, its a cut line not embossing, so when the frame comes out of the die you can see daylight through it and have to smoosh it all together when gluing. the shirt is the larger size in the set of dress shirt dies from Paper Smooches. the sentiments are from the Mama Elephant Birthday greetings set. These are glued to a hero arts A2 card base.

This week's featured stamper is Joanne who has a beautiful gallery filled with quilts and flowers and really pretty cards. I spent a long time going back and forth with ideas and finally decided on this thinking of you card of hers because, I hardly ever use circles and I started with this double sided carta bella spring market paper and then I realized her card uses a sketch so, I did try really hard to keep it to the lines and I did mix lots of mfg's to build this off of that paper. The sentiments are from the casual fridays tag you're it set done with some versafine clair shady lane ink. the stitched circle is from Memory box, the chain link circle frame is a MFT die, the flowers are all from the Simon Says stamp modern flowers die set. I did embed those and added some prima watercolors and a little pink stickles over the petals. the white dots were done with some White nuvo drops and this one finished out at 6" square in real life.

Inspired by {Ballard Designs}

This week Brenda has directed our attention towards the Ballard Designs store.

Of which I am a past customer and everything I have from them is holding up well and I have had each piece for years now. so, I ended up down the rabbit hole window shopping for my house for a while and eventually clicked on this blanket to see what the texture looked like up close because, I do not think I have ever noticed bamboo linens in a store where I could touch them in person before and my attention was snagged by the print of poppies on the wall in the staged room shot. and I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to get a decent size mug shot of that art... and then I seen the write up in the challenge thread and seen that ha ha they sell that print as art. really, some days it really is that big of a struggle.

 At any rate, what I decided looking at it was that it looked water colored and so, I stamped the SU pleasant poppies background twice masking the first one and off setting the second stamping with some Distress old paper ( it has a greenish tint to it, so its easier to my eyes to see that over the antique linen with plant stamps) and I knew the pencils would cover it up. so, I colored this with some prisma & Polychromos pencils. and the whole time I was coloring I knew there were pale flowers and darker ones and just green, no blue skies or anything else. and I did end up using quite a few darker reds on some of these and when it was done. I had to laugh when I went back to look at the photo as it looks like some are leaning towards burgundy in the daylight. such is life.
The sentiment is from the My Favorite Things lots of hugs set. and this one finished out at A7 in real life.

You can find this print here in the store. and you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers. Thanks for stopping by.

WOYWW #520 {stamp sorting}

Happy desk peeking day, if you'd like to see more spaces or play along 

the link up for this blog hop starts here at our hostess

Miss Julia's Blog.

There is also a new Instagram hashtag of #WOYWW

 

 Happy Anniversary Julia, 10 years is really something :) A few days ago, I tripped going into the closet over what was left of those stamps on the floor. so, I went back to sorting things out again. the determination is to get all those stamps off the floor and sorted out soon.

These are Tuesday after work shots of what I came home to and after that, I ended up pulling about 4 boxes worth of stamps off their blocks and kept going, so... there are still stamps on the floor. but, there was room on the sheets for one or two more stamps so, I went digging in the mounted stamps boxes to look for similar things to stick on these sheets and fill them up kind of a thing.
We will have a 3 day weekend next weekend here in the states for Memorial day so, I am hopeful that I will get a big chunk done and sorted. we shall see. One of the what I thought were peonies that as I added more paint to them and they started to look like carnations to me was finished for last week's inspiration and can be seen here.
oh, and I finally got around to making a post with how the mothers day cards turned out and they can be seen here in the post below this one. Thanks for stopping by

Mother's Day Roses

 So, I had the bright idea when I pulled this stamp set out that, I should do more than one because that would up the chances I would like how one of them turned out in the end. the lack of control with watercolors tends to mess with my brain. and as I was going along I found 4 things big and flat enough to tape to so, I had one that I used to try the colors on and used it like a scrap. and they all turned out OK. (which has to be a small miracle) Those are mission Gold watercolors.

 you can click on these photos to see them larger.

 So, I actually ended up with 5 use able cards in this color range. I did change the sentiment panel colors and one has a pool base and the other 4 all have watercolor paper with a deckle edge.
They are all A7 in real life.

 The sentiment was heat embossed with either SU white powder or Brutus Monroe black powder.

A closer look at one. I had started out with these as a dark pink and then went over the top of that with the blue and purple. ( that is how the purple rosebush I have blooms, it starts out pink and fades to lavender)

Hang in there

 This week's featured stamper is Kerry, who has a gorgeous flower filled gallery with fabulous attention to detail and lots of stitched layers and lace. ( totally yummy in other words) so, after much debate I finally chose this darling hedgehog card of her's because, I knew I had previously colored this one with pencils a while back and I was pretty sure I could cut it into a circle. ( circles are not a normal thing for me) and I really liked that on her card. So, I dug out this lacy circles Spellbinders die to be the mat, and moved the texture from the bloom to one of the background layers here. There are less photo corners, less layers I did go square and there are no real lumps either, the lace is vintage, the ribbon came in an recent Ellen Hutson order. This mod scrap printed paper came in an recent Simon Says stamp kit, so that changed the colors fairly quickly. I did move the sentiment up to the stamped panel too.

A closer look at the coloring, this was done with prisma pencils and a little bit of white gel pen. the sentiment is from the Simon Says Stamp tiny words encouragement set. and this one finished out at 5 1/2" square in real life.

Inspired by {Country Living}

This week I am asking people to take a peek at Country Living. 

They have had their site up and running for years so, as a way to save some time you may want to plug something that you would like to see in the search box. 

I happened across their site because, I was actually searching for Lavender art because, I have a couple of sets that have not seen ink as of yet.

 And then when  was gathering images for the inspiration post I happened across these coral peonies seen below. ( they really do not have a coral tint) but, I have that dark pink variety in my yard, along with the pale pink, red and some two tone ones) so, Peonies are dear to my heart. And I knew I also had this Simon Says Stamp set that is called beautiful flowers two. so, I heat embossed it in white on some Strathmore watercolor paper and as I went along adding some paints (QoR & Prima) to it, I kept thinking these look more like carnations to me than peonies... and I kept going anyways because, I really had over a week into adding paint and letting this dry. I did add some Polychromos pencils over the top into some of the nooks and crannies for shading. I had originally thought I would use that new Hero Arts wood grain frame die with this but, it is sized for an A2 card. and so,
 I was very surprised when I went to cut it down to fit on an A7 card base, this image is longer than that. So, I ended up making one that would fit inside a standard business envelope. This card finished out at 4" X 9" in real life.

You can read about the growing of Peonies here in their site, and find this challenge here to play along with us. Thanks for stopping by.

WOYWW #519 {a timeline}

Happy desk peeking day, if you'd like to see more spaces or play along 

the link up for this blog hop starts here at our hostess

Miss Julia's Blog.

There is also a new Instagram hashtag of #WOYWW

 I had a little time when we got home Sunday to add a first round of color to those flowers.

 My son was home for mothers day this year and on his way home he stopped for flowers and coffee and his coffee shop he goes to gave him a carnation because, he said he was going to see his mom that day.

 Monday brought some happy mail and so, It's become a habit to shoot such things and share. I placed this order to get the wood grain frames from Hero arts and that Mothers day set had just come back into stock so some other things from my wish list joined them for the journey to justify the shipping costs ha ha. ;)

 Tuesday was a crazy long day we had to have ds at the airport at 4:30 am ( and the airport is an hour and a half drive from my house) so, I did this on about 3 hours worth of sleep. ( trying to stay awake to much closer to bed time so, I would sleep all night) (and that worked whew) :)

That bigger box has some QoR watercolors in it and the small one is the decadent pies colors from Prima. 

 So, this is where things stand at the moment. I need to see them in the daylight when I am not dead tired. I think they probably need a little more and I know that when I stop adding watercolors to them I will more than likely end up doing the nooks and crannies with some pencils for shading over the top of the paints. Oh and those ballerina's were finished out and can be seen here and here. That's about it for me this week, thanks for stopping by.

Olivia's birthday {Inspired by Great big Canvas}

 This is my second card also inspired by a Degas print inside the big canvas site this week's Inspiration side and I did deliberately pick this one to do a pink version for Oliva's birthday working on a custom card order for her gpa. I had June call him when I first started doing this to find out what color her hair is and the answer was plain old brown. ( all the grand kids) so, I did give her a more brown hair with her pink gown. the background was done with some alcohol inks and I did squeak in some green but, its pretty subtle and still mostly mauve's and pinks so, I think (cross your fingers here) that Earl will be OK with that. He's pretty firm in the belief that ballerina's wear Pink. The top sentiment is from the Altenew birthday greetings set heat embossed on white with SU powder on a black scrap cut with a Waffle flower A7 rectangle die and the bottom letters were stamped with Versafine on Neenah and cut with scissors.

 Her skin was done with some copic markers that have since been refilled and has a little pencil over that, the skirt is polychromos and prisma pencils. done on some neenah solar white with versafine ink. and as it was blending it did streak a little but, I think that it just gives it a little more depth.

I totally grinned over the pose of this canvas, I stand like this all the time. You can find that here in their store and you can find this challenge here to play along. Thanks for stopping by.

Inspired by {Great big Canvas}

This week Angie has chosen for us to go hunting for inspiration inside the Great Big Canvas site

and I seen so many wonderful things but, I am still working on a custom birthday card order and knowing that I typed in Ballet for the heck of it into the search box and stopped at the Degas print seen below because of the colors and textures of it.

 This gal is from the 49 & Market set called Gabi's Haute Couture She was stamped twice on some Neenah Solar White and colored mainly with pencils, the skin has some copic marker under the pencil shading and there is also some Glitter stardust pen and white gel pen over the pencil also. the sentiment is from the Avery Elle sending you set die cut with a Simon Says Stamp bundle of stitched shapes tag die. It's tied on with some vintage ric rac onto the green tulle.

 Instead of doing multiple dancers I did one colored twice in a similar way, cut one up and popped it up over the first with foam pop dots. The white gel pen dries with a slight texture to it, I had considered taking a gold kyrlon pen and making a puddle and dripping in some gold too but, I ran out of time messing with this. I might still do it later but, usually if I shoot something I tend to call it "good enough"

 The painting has so much texture that for a background I used a gelli print done with acrylic paints on some cream mulberry/handmade paper that was not quite 6" so, I cut in half on the diagonal and pushed it to the corners to peek out around the stamped panel. the stencil used on this one was a Hero Arts wave one that came in a Mermaid kit last year. ( I think they added this to the catalog after)

A peek at the painting I chose for the jump start. ( you can find it here inside the store) and you can find this challenge here at SCS to play along with us. Thanks for stopping by.

WOYWW#518 {watercoloring}

Happy desk peeking day, if you'd like to see more spaces or play along 

the link up for this blog hop starts here at our hostess

Miss Julia's Blog.

There is also a new Instagram hashtag of #WOYWW

 

 So, this was shot Tuesday as for what things looked like Monday night, and it still looks just like this.
(I had stolen some time Sunday to do something similar with a different floral stamp set and some mission gold watercolors for mothers day cards which I will probably get around to blogging after the holiday here) closest to the right is a pile of new stamps that were stamped off with versafine clair inks and are drying so, they will be put in to the I have stolen moments to color with pencils pile.

 The center has some QoR watercolors out with some aqua brushes because, I have been doing this just really simply, I do own real brushes and I was trying to hurry so, I didn't even bring up water dishes.

 Sometime I need to find some more mini clip boards or something for doing this as I tend to be annoyed with drying times so, I find it fairly easy to have more than one going on so, by the time you get back to the first one with what ever you tried, its dried and ready for more. these are some really large Simon Says Stamp flower cluster that looks like peonies (Beautiful Flowers 2 set) and they were heat embossed in white on the watercolor paper and I don't really know what other people do but, I tend to add some color to the outside the lines so I can see the lines. the other thing I do is pick these up in my hand and tilt them to have the lights catch on the embossed lines too.

Ooh, some happy mail came since the last time you were here. Found this photo in my phone. I did not actually use those sentiments for my mothers day cards because, I think they are more geared towards mom's that have young children still at home and I think they will be fun to use for that later but, they also did not fit into the design I did with the huge flowers. I still have one more new mom's day set coming that is not here yet the big floral with the cursive large sentiment from Honey Bee this year. So, it will be a next years card too. My son is home on leave at the moment and so, it's highly likely these flowers will be an ongoing thing for the next week ish or so because, it happens in smaller batches that I have time to come up here. Thanks for stopping by.

Inspired by {Quora}

This week the Inspiration Challenge celebrates its 700th challenge issued.

Julie is hosting and she has found this interesting post at Quora called what is your favorite color...

and all the past and current hosts for this challenge are playing along with samples.  I love most shades of green but, there are others that are pretty high on the list and I enjoyed seeing all the mug shots people posted for their answers and I stopped looking when I found this peaceful scene below.

 

I had recently received this Hero Arts Tree Arch die in the mail and I knew I could do this, I started with a piece of seafoam cardstock and started inking shades of blue distress oxide on it in the center through a My Favorite Things rays of light stencil. and then I kept going with the other colors along the edges trying to draw the eye to the center.
The complete list of inks I used are Distress Oxide tumbled glass, mermaid lagoon, mowed lawn, forest moss, cracked pistachio, pine needles, vintage photo, ground espresso, fossilized amber, & black soot. I did use regular versafine on the sentiment and quickly sprinkled it with some Brutus Monroe power to heat set it. The water is an old Stampscapes stamp called shimmering.
This card finished out at A6 in real life.

This shot can be seen here inside that site. You can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us, thanks for stopping by.

WOYWW #517 {coloring}

Happy desk peeking day, if you'd like to see more spaces or play along 

the link up for this blog hop starts here at our hostess

Miss Julia's Blog.

There is also a new Instagram hashtag of #WOYWW

 So, this is a Monday afternoon happy mail shot.. And I was not really thinking I had any time to play between then and now because, my truck has spent the majority of the day at the Ford dealer. (they finally just ordered a new mirror, they have automatic mirrors that fold in and my drivers side one stopped working all the time last weekend, but on Monday while it was there being looked at they could not find anything wrong and so when I picked it up of course it stopped working for me and I turned around and made another appointment for Tuesday. So, with that thought in mind I instantly stamped off some of that girl image to color in the down times.

 you know hurry up and wait. (and yes, this is a totally staged shot, I did the beginnings of those girls at work during the down times while I was doing the hurry up and wait thing. at work I have one complete second set of polychromos pencils and a few odds and ends duplicate Prisma's (maybe 25 ish of them) so, its like a limited supplies and then when I bring home things I start there I finish them here. The skin has a layer of copic markers under the pencils.

These are cell phone shots so, it has altered the colors a little. The one done in teals and greens I think I am going to pop up the top one over the other one and make it a little more layered but, I think I am going to add some flecks of gold to the skirt a little and I may not do that at all because, I like the hair on the other one better. I also have a order to complete for a man who buys custom birthday cards for his adult grand kids and one of the girls dances Ballet. and so, I had my secretary call him yesterday and ask what color her hair is and he really truly said. Plain Old Brown. and I giggled. and a few years ago I did a ballerina card for Olivia for him and I did a few versions and he picked the pink one as in his mind ballerina's are firmly wearing Pink. so this pink and brown version will end up being personalized for her soon. That's about it from me, thanks for stopping by.