WOYWW # 508 {a view}

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

 Yesterday was hubs birthday, and When I came home from work I had to park my truck on the slope outside those driveway gates and shovel in front of them to open them as the snow was above the bottoms of the gates. so, after I got my truck parked in the garage ( under my feet from this view) I then went back out with a shovel and cleared that entire top of the driveway between the gates and the street and the sidewalk. ( that sidewalk is about 200 feet long ish) and the snow funnels and drifts into that part of the driveway with those fences there so, it was about half way to my knees as I was doing this. I came in with the ends of my hair frozen. ( not kidding, it started snowing monday and did not stop until about 8 pm ish last night, so after that I left the gates open and when hubs got home he got out the tractor and blew the rest of the driveway out.

So, my desk looks like this. I did finish the gold fish card and you can see that here. I don't know if you are all familiar with the fitbit craze? at any rate I have one and I tend to average between 11K & 12K a day. (my biggest amount of steps in one day before yesterday was almost 14K)
last night when I went to bed I was at 20,036.
funny true story my elbows ache.
So, its probable the desk will continue looking like this for a few more days.
Thanks for stopping by.

Stars,Moon & Sea

This week's Featured Stamper is Ankita who has this cool card seen here that I kept coming back to every time I made time to peek at her gallery so, I spent a big portion of the day cleaning my desk so I could play along. 

 To make changes, I flipped mine up to portrait, switched out the cork framing for acrylic paint covered corrugate paper an cut with scissors some of the starfish instead of the sentiment. I also used a piece of the watercolor paper towards the top of the sheet to use the tear off instead of giving it a stitched diecut framing.
The starfish were stamped on the watercolor paper with some memento dessert storm and I used daniel smith and QOR watercolors over the top of that, ( and more once the cut out ones were done so I could cover up the cut lines) I then used a Versafine marker to scribble some spots for the Hero Arts sand embossing powder to stick to.

 

I wanted the corrugate to peek out a little and catch the out of the box starfish legs so, this card finished out at 5" wide and 6 " tall.  I added some of the embossing powder to the starfish also.

I am going to take a black sharpie marker to that sentiment, it was stamped with a hand held block onto the watercolor paper so, ( yes, I do know better but, its been dark and cloudy here all day so, in the spirit of hurry up and get it done so you can shoot it with what ever fragments of day light there are left today this is what happened)
You can find this challenge here to play along, Thanks for stopping by.

Inspired by {Fine Art America}

This week Brenda has directed us to the Fine Art America site and my normal thing I do for any IC site is to find two or three things and save the links because, I tend to create at the last minute. and this particular week, I had taken advantage of the sale at Simon Says Stamp for their anniversary and ordered these Carabella 2 fishes stamps and the third thing I saved inside FAA was this gold fish love painting. And I kinda of laughed out loud when I found it knowing I would have the stamps soon.

  

 They were stamped with Memento dessert storm ink on watercolor paper and colored with Daniel Smith watercolors. the eyes were done with a black sharpie marker and a white gel pen. I did do this card at 4" x 9" to accommodate the size of the stamps.

 A closer look at the colors, when I was on the second round of color I realized that starting this with an aqua brush ( the bristles are crud on those) I really didn't stay in the lines and so, working at the last minute in snatches here and there after work I decided to just keep going with this first try.
all things considered I really think this turned out pretty cute.

The painting colors that inspired my card can be found here in their store but, don't blame me if you find lots of eye candy there and fall deep down the rabbit hole. You can find this challenge here at splitcoaststampers to play along with us. Thanks for stopping by.

WOYWW # 507 {Stamps & Happy Mail}

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

 Sooo last week I caved on a Simon Says Stamp sale and these two stamps came in the mail on tuesday ( these are tuesday evening shots)...
and I instantly opened up the fish to start playing with them.

I bought all these Daniel smith tester sheets of dabs of watercolor paints a long time ago now and just thought they may work well with the fish. ( this is first layers of color) will look at it again when I get home. I probably should have taken the time to grab water dishes and used real brushes but, I was being lazy and since you can see The sorting mess was not picked up first I did just grab an aqua pen.
The sorting continues. I have I think come to the decision that all the sentiments are coming off the blocks. ( however, Amazon has noticed that I have bought the cling foam more than once and has hiked the price each time, this last round is up 10.00 from a few weeks ago so, its sitting on a wish list waiting) and that's OK as there are still boxes of stamps on cling foam already on the floor still to sort.
Its also slowed down because, cutting up one sheet of the stamps with gloves on is time consuming and so, taking them off means I end up with scaly skin again after so, I have been doing less and not touching any of it with rounds of playing in between.
That's about it for me, thanks for stopping by.

A Simple Geese Card

 So, this monday the clean and simple challenge was to use only one third of a one layer card. and the try a new technique is to color something with pencils or markers on kraft cardstock.
so, I grabbed this Inkadinkado flying geese stamp and used the new black versafine claire ink to stamp it and colored it with some polychromos pencils and then added a bit of white gel pen to it. the sentiment is from the Altenew Birthday greetings set.

A closer look at the coloring. I did not blend this and I did make the gel pen streaky to give it a sketched feel. This one finished out at A2 in real life. thanks for stopping by.

Challenge Cards

 This week's featured stamper is  Heejung and I found this card that I kept coming back to. I had originally intended to do a one layer ish card with the woodgrain printed paper but, ( its very thin) and so, I ended up die cutting it and layering scrap cardstock behind the diecut parts. I also kept the stamped panel one piece and tied on the sentiment to dangle instead of counter sinking it. The frame is a poppy stamps double stitched one and it has 3 layers of card under the paper and is up on 1/16 pop dots. That herb background is a really old one from Inkadinkado and the sentiment is from the Papertrey ink garden variety set.

 A closer look at the stamping, I did go very light with the versafine to ink this and then added a bit of color with some zig clean brush markers but, not perfectly more of a loose look to play into the rustic white washed painted on the boards thing.

 Last weekend the featured stamper was Sally who posted this cool card last year during dtgd for my challenge I hosted and I love that ( esp, the rope detail) so, changes were I did not do a chalkboard and I kept the blue belts on the boots and (added some stardust gelly roll pen to the buckle) and I switched out the rope for some blue jeans ribbon. I had bought this set do do something for J with and finally inked it. ( The boots are from the SU country livin set and the sentiment is from Tim Holtz simple sentiments set)

 Now this was an experiment, I see these people who manage to combine challenges for lots of them not just one or two so, last monday I jotted down.
repeat stamping ( cas challenge)
then I made a kind of a sketch of the sketch
then 4 letter word
orange
sky colors
it was not all the challenges but, it was ones I thought I could wrangle into one card. ( as soon as the orange came up I ended up tossing out the repeat stamping but, I did do repeat stickles on the diecut hugs (PTI ) the sketch, I ended up cutting the top paper corner to corner and its really supposed to be higher up the sheet. (it does however have a 4 letter word lol) so, there is just as much sky colors are there are orange and its not mixed media. and I ended up only linking it to the 4 letter word challenge.

The printed papers are from My Minds Eye and there is lace detailing on the stripes so, I chose an old Old Town Crafts battenburg lace butterfly to perch on the word. I did heat emboss this in white on some scrap of very pale blue and then added some blue pen to give it some shading. (its very subtle even in person) The orange stitched paper is from Provocraft ( its very old) and was cut with a memory box stitched circle die.
This card finished out at A6 and since orange is not a go-to color for me I am on the fence about how I feel about it. It will more than likely head to the booth. thanks for stopping by.