WWC220 - Kath's "All About Occasions" Challenge

This is the time of year when I begin getting a bit sentimental.  So many of my favourite products are retiring.  It's time for one "last fling" before I get all excited about the new products which will be arriving soon.  Except for the cardstock, I've concentrated on retiring products for this card.

I will admit that retirement doesn't mean that I'll be getting rid of the sweet Fairy Celebration stamp set nor the Jar of Love bundle.  I've used those products many, many times and haven't finished with ideas for them yet.  Doesn't the fairy look adorable all fussy cut and sitting on that glass jar?  I love that she's doing her best to arrange the flowers, even though they seem almost too large for her to handle.

I've combined my images with the gorgeous Share What You Love Specialty Designer Series paper.  The flowers on the right side of the card caught more sunlight and, because they have a special pearlized finish, the colour shifted.  This is a card which is fun to hold and turn in the light because it catches and reflects in so many spots.  The fairy's wings, for example, are beautifully shimmery with their top layer of Wink of Stella.

The flowers which are in the jar and which the fairy is holding are all cut from another piece of that beautiful designer paper.  I don't use a lot of designer paper, but this one certainly appealed to me and has seen quite a bit of use.  I just love all the colours, don't you?

I hope you'll check out the wonderful creations by the Watercooler Artists over at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.

I've entered my card into the following challenges:

Addicted to Stamps Challenge #174 - Flowers

Crafting From the Heart Challenge #242 - Always Anything Goes

Lemon Shortbread Challenge #93 - Anything Goes

The Sisterhood of Crafters: It's All About Flowers 

WWC215 - Donna's Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge

I have a confession to make.  I don't always plan ahead.  Lots of times I decide I want to use an image or two or more and I go ahead and stamp them and/or fussy-cut them  and colour them.  And I put them aside.  A week or more may go by while I'm allowing my subconscious to "incubate" ideas.  For me this system works.  Suddenly I'll know what I want to do and it's full steam ahead.  That's what happened while I was creating this card.

I love the sweet images from the Fairy Celebration set.  I've used them in many ways before but I keep coming up with new ideas.  For me, this has definitely been a worthwhile purchase.  Being a glutton for punishment, I stamped the sweet little fairy on a scrap of Whisper White by inking the stamp with my Basic Black Stampin' Marker.  That gave me a chance to eliminate the flower which the fairy is actually holding as well as the other flowers in the image.  I had a different idea in mind.  Since it's the beginning of Spring and I'm just dying to see some daffodils, I wanted her to be holding one.  There was a perfect image in the You're Inspiring stamp set.  Of course that daffodil was one of two on the stamp and so, again, I inked only the one which I wanted.

As if that wasn't enough work, I decided to fussy-cut the images as well.  Have you noticed the detail, especially with the grasses and those little arms and legs?  Besides my little "snips", I had to use my special kraft knife and mat.  But I had an end goal and that was that.  To tell the truth, the hardest part of all was cutting those tiny hands and fingers so that they could curl around the stem of the daffodil.

My base is the Heavy Whisper White.  Then comes a matte of Mossy Meadow.  The next couple of layers actually have ovals cut into them and then the splattered layer was attached under those layers with the base of the fussy-cut Fairy image between.

I decided that I needed a little something to balance the die-cut and stamped sentiment at the right bottom and so I fussy-cut one of the butterflies from the Sale-a-bration Botanical Butterfly DSP.  I think it worked out just right.  It echoes the colours in the fairy and the Floral Romance Specialty DSP.

I hope you'll check out the wonderful creations by the Watercooler Artists over at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.

I've entered my card into the following challenges:

Classic DT Open Challenge #4 - 3rd Birthday Anything Goes

Lemon Shortbread Challenge #90 - Anything Goes

The Creative Crafters Challenge #14 - Anything Goes

WWC190 - Gail's Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge

I love our wonderful feminine challenges and had the best idea for a card.  Of course what I had in mind called for an awful lot of masking and planning, but you know what they say.  Where there's a will, there's a way.

You can see that I've used two of my favourite stamp sets.  I love the fairy from the Fairy Celebration set but didn't want to use the branch which was part of her image.  I also love the dandelion clock with the blowing seeds from the Dandelion Wishes set and wanted my little fairy to be hanging from that; flying along with that, actually.  What I had to do was to cover all the unwanted lines of the branch with Washi tape and then I inked up the stamp, removed the Washi tape and stamped the remains of the fairy where I wanted her.  Then, since the dandelion stamp, like the fairy stamp, was rubber, I couldn't stamp the full dandelion clock.  Again, I covered the unwanted stem with Washi tape, inked the stamp, removed the Washi tape and stamped the clock image approximately where I thought it should go with the fairy holding onto it.

After that it was easy-peasy.  I drew in the remainder of the stem for the dandelion clock, fitting it between the fairy's hands and extending past them.  I stamped several more additional seeds to fly behind and beyond the images.  Then I coloured my images using my Stampin' Markers and watercoloured a soft sky.

My base is the Heavy Whisper White and then I've used a matte of Crushed Curry for the image.  After stamping the sentiment from the Dandelion Wishes set, I cut it out using the Taylored Tag punch.  After trimming it down slightly, I cut a matte from the Mossy Meadow.  My little fairy is, after all, wearing fall colours and her girdle is Mossy Meadow.  I hope you like it as much as I do.

I hope you'll check out the awesome cards by our Watercooler Artists over at ourWatercooler Wednesday Challenge Blog. 

I've also entered my card in the following challenges:

Moving Along with the Times Challenge 81 - Autumn/Fall

Addicted to Stamps & More #312 - Make Your Mark

The House That Stamps Built DCC103 - It's Up In the Air

WWC177 - Charlotte's Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge

Oh, so much happening today.  First of all, Happy Birthday to our neighbours to the south, celebrating their 4th of July.  Second of all, we have a brand new Watercooler Artist who is joining our team this week, Crystal Komara, who many of you may already know from her Super Stamp Girl blog.

Last but definitely not least, Charlotte is hosting our awesome Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge this week.  I'm dying to show you the card I designed!

I'm still sorting through my all-too-horrifically large stash of stamping products.  Of course it's a lot of work but every once in a while it's like striking gold.  (Okay, I'm easily excited.)  This time I found a sheet and a half of some Designer Paper which I absolutely LOVED when it came out and stashed away so that it wouldn't all be used and disappear.  (How sad is that?  Paper should be used.  Right?)

Well this retired paper inspired the entire card which I created.  You can see, it's all about the dandelion seeds in black, floating across the white background.  Simple, yes.  Striking---oh my goodness, yes!  And so I took my Fairy Celebration stamp set and stamped the little fairy sitting on the toadstool, surrounded by flowers.  Once the ink had thoroughly dried, I used my stitched oval framelit to cut it out.  Then I used my scalloped oval framelit to cut out a piece of Basic Black cardstock as a matte.

Because I wanted the card to be predominantly black and white, I coloured only the top of the toadstool and the little fairy, leaving the rest of the image black and white.  Because I'm still in love with the colour pencil/Gamsol technique of colouring, I turned to my set of Derwent Colourself pencils and had a ball bringing the little fairy to life.

For my sentiment I did much the same as I did with the image, using a sentiment from the Beautiful You stamp set matted on a Basic Black scalloped oval.  That pretty coard under the sentiment is black and as shiny as can be.  It's in the new Annual Catalogue and is simply called Black 1/8" Cord.  Its impact is not so  simple.

I hope you'll check out the cards created by the other Watercooler Artists at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge blog.

I've also entered this card in the Just Us Girls Challenge #447 - Anything Goes

And also the Try it on Tuesday Challenge - Things with Wings