WWC176 - Kath's "All About Christmas" Challenge

It's Kath's turn to host a challenge this week and this time it's "All About Christmas".  I love this challenge and have a nice little stash of Christmas cards building up, waiting to be filled out and sent at the end of the year.  Such a "painless" way to do it!

I had the worst time with this card!  Oh, making it was fun and no trouble at all, but getting a decent photograph was such a pain that I almost decided to make a different card.  Why, you ask.  Well, I'll bet you think this is a blue and white card, right?  You would be wrong.  This card is definitely blue.  In fact I've used one of my favourites, the Pacific Point cardstock.  Everything else is silver.  The background to the die-cut oval piece, the scalloped edge around the embossed piece, and the heat-embossed sentiment:  all are silver.  Try as I might, they all photographed white. 

In person this card looks elegant and absolutely gorgeous.

I've used the Sparkle embossing folder.  I've also used the Hometown Greetings Edgelits.  And that sentiment?  That's from the Nature Sings stamp set.  Don't they all work well together?

I hope you'll check out the awesome samples by the other Watercooler Artists over at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge blog.

I'm also entering this card into the CHNC Challenge #391 - Christmas Anything Goes

WWC175 - Marsha's Masculine "Anything Goes" Challenge

I love our Masculine "Anything Goes" Challenge.  It gives me the opportunity to build up a stash of cards to which I can turn when the many men in our family have another birthday or a special event.  This week Marsha is our host for this challenge.

Just a reminder about our Design Team call which will end with this challenge, on June 25th.  I hope to see your card linked up with a DT so that we can consider you for our team.

For this week's challenge, I decided to use the new Sitting Pretty bundle.  Isn't that bulldog adorable?  I love him and the way you can either colour him from "scratch" or use the provided second stamp to colour him.  I decided to use a combination of Soft Suede and Crumb Cake because I have several bulldog friends with those colours.

I wanted an interesting background and so used the embossing framelit in the bundle to create that slate floor upon which he's sitting so pretty.  After doing the embossing, I lightly sponged over the slate with some Smoky Slate ink.  For the brick wall behind him, I used the brick stencil from the Pattern Party Decorative Masks and some of my white Embossing Paste (with a couple of drops of Sahara Sand ink stirred in).

Since this is a birthday card, I embossed the front of my Basic Gray base cardstock using the Polka Dot Basics ef.  The next layer is the beautiful new In-Color, Lovely Lipstick.  I used the Balloon Bouquet punch for my balloons, cutting the large one from a piece of Pineapple Punch and the smaller one from a piece of Lovely Lipstick.  The little heart is cut from Red Foil.

I loved creating the little birthday banner using the Duet Banner punch and the coordinating Thoughtful Banners stamp set.  My inks are, again, the Pineapple Punch and Lovely Lipstick.

I hope you'll check out the wonderful creation by the other Watercooler Artists at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge blog.  I look forward to seeing your creation linked up, too.

I'm also entering my card into the Stinkin' Inkers Challenge - The Guys Have It.

And also in the Try It On Tuesday Challenge - For the Boys.

You're Incredible!

As I continue to sort through my retired stamps, I come across sets which I've kept simply because they work perfectly for kids, especially boys.  One of the sets I came across this morning is the Everyday Hero stamp set.  I love the way you can put the images together to make the card more "girlie" or more"for the boys".  After all, super-heroes should not automatically be boys (or men). 

Using the new Gray Granite to stamp on, I used the Basic Gray to stamp the city scape at the bottom of the piece.  I wanted it to be twilight or dark and this combination worked well.  It also allowed me to stamp the big "expression frame" using the new Lovely Lipstick.  Having that in place, I heat embossed the sentiment "You're incredible!" using White embossing powder, placing it between the city scape and the "frame".  Then I free-handed two "WOW" sentiments using an embossing pen and then heat embossed those using White embossing powder.

My "hero" would fit perfectly into that "expression frame".  The stamps in the set let you mix and match heads, bodies, and capes.  It's such fun because there are almost endless choices.  Mine wound up being a blond guy wearing a blue mask and a blue cape.  His costume is a vivid red and yellow.  Of course I used my Stampin' Blends to do the colouring.  Once I had mounted the super hero using Dimensions, I used a narrow Whisper White matte and then attached the whole piece to my base of Coastal Cabana.

This was a fun card to create.  I've decided to enter it into the TGIF Challenge #tgifc164 - Doodle bug since I've hand drawn the two "wow's" and also drew in some lit up windows in the city scape.

And I'm also entering it into the Try It On Tuesday - For the Boys challenge.

WWC174 - Gail's "All About Occasions" Challenge

Oh what fun!  This week's challenge is hosted by Gail Allen and is "All About Occasions".  I love this challenge because there is such a wealth of occasions to choose from during the year.

I had been playing around with an idea for a while and decided it was time to see  if reality could come close  to my imagining.  It all began with the gorgeous Share What You Love Specialty Designer Paper pack.  Those of you who have it will know exactly what I mean.  This paper is enough to inspire anyone.  And while I absolutely love the weight  of it and the indescribable look of the translucent and pearlized finish on the one side, it is the other side of one of the designs which set me on the road to my design.  The pattern which I used has no addition of shimmer but it makes me think of someone watercolouring the series of small circles.

There are some awesome colours in this particular designer paper and so it was easy to choose the colours I used for both the watercolouring and the mattes.  My mattes are Mint Macaron and Rich Razzleberry.  For the die-cut birthday and the paint "dripping" from it, I used Mint Macaron, Rich Razzleberry, So Saffron, Pear Pizzaz and Grapefruit Grove.  Those colours are all echoed in the background designer paper.

I've been  going through my retired stamps and came across the Talented Trio set (which I've decided to keep) and realized that I hadn't yet stamped with the little artist.  Well this card took care of that omission.  For her I used the Rich Razzleberry and So Saffron for her smock and the Mint Macaron and Rich Razzleberry for her paint brushes.  I really enjoyed using my inks and AquaPainter for this card.

I hope you've enjoyed checking out my card and reading about the materials.  You'll find more when you visit the blogs of the other Watercooler Artists featured in our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge post.  I look forward to seeing your awesome cards linked up to the challenge.

By the way, you'll see we're also having a Design Team call.  Sadly we lost two of our team members because of personal and family responsibilities.  I'm really going to miss Penny Hanuszak and Tenia Nelson.  Now it's time to see who wants to be part of our awesome team.

WWC173 - Tenia's Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge

This week Tenia Nelson is hosting our popular Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge and, of course, you know that I love this particular challenge.  A lot of my stamps are more "girly" than neutral and so I most frequently create cards with a feminine touch.

At the moment I'm going through a huge sorting job.  What am I sorting?  I've decided that I am borderline "hoarder" with my retired stamps and so I have instructed myself to be more realistic and actually keep only those stamp sets which I know I will use.  What good are a whole lot of "oh, but I love it stamps" when they're not being used?

This stamp set which I've used, Indescribable Gift, is one that I'm on the fence about.  In its lifetime with me I've used it perhaps four or five times.  Each time I love it and love colouring it and make promises about using it more often (which I consequently break).  Again, when I used it this time I began to fall in love again.  I think, however, it's with the act of colouring and not necessarily with the stamp set.  And so this is my "goodbye" play with this particular stamp set.

Aren't the blossoms stunning, watercoloured with the gorgeous new Lovely Lipstick ink?  And the leaves, too, with the combination of Tranquil Tide and Granny Apple Green inks?  The new colour refresh which Stampin' Up! introduced with the new Annual Catalogue really is exciting and refreshing.  Certainly, I'll miss several of the retired colours but, oh, how beautiful the new colours are which replaced them!

I've layered the Tranquil Tide with Whisper White for my background.  The fun stamped textures are from the Artisan Textures stamp set and used the Tranquil Tide and Granny Apple Green inks.  For the off-kilter square in which I've stamped my image, I used a matte of Lovely Lipstick.  The textures behind and around the blossom are also from the Artisan Textures set and were stamped with the Balmy Blue (off-stamped once).

So "goodbye" to this lovely stamp set and "hello" to our challenge.  I hope you'll check out the awesome samples created by our wonderful Watercooler Artists at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge blog.