Christmas Chickadee

I bought this Penny Black two-piece rubber stamp set in Des Moines in June. I do really like the image and sentiment, but I have found I don't like coloring it! I have stamped twenty of these card fronts, and have completed six of them so far. I have colored them six different ways, I think. For each of them, I added a flat black dot for the eye and a red gem for the dot on the "i" and matted with red cardstock.

This one was colored with Copics.

This one was colored with Prismacolor pencils and Goo Gone.

I think I watercolored this one. Fourteen more to go!

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Birthday Iris

This is the last die-cut corner piece I have left from Des Moines. Yea for me - I used them all up! :)

I stamped the iris (from Penny Black) and colored with Copic markers. As I had the sentiment stamp ready to stamp (Stampin' Up!) it fell off the block and landed on the image panel. Poopy! :( Since it was my last die-cut piece and I liked the way it had turned out, I decided to trim down the right side where the stamp fell. I think it turned out OK, although I think I would have liked it better with the whole panel there. I matted with textured yellow cardstock.

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More Die-Cut Pieces

I've had a little bit of stamping time lately, and it's been wonderful! I'm still working on using up some pieces I die-cut or stamped while I was in Des Moines in June with my stamping friends.

I cut these pieces using a friend's dies. I'm assuming they are from Memory Box, but I don't know for sure. I matted this first one with black. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink, and I matted that with black, also. I cut it out using one of my Stitched Rectangles dies.

I matted this die-cut piece with textured cardstock from Die Cuts With a View. I added the loon (our state bird :)) using a Repeat Impressions stamp with ink to match the matting. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. 

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Another Die Cut Birthday Card

The oval and the branch on this card were cut with a single die. I colored the branch with a Copic marker. The green textured cardstock is on the back of the card front. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. I cut it out with a Memory Box die and mounted it on Pop Dots. (Thanks again, Kris! I think I still have three die cuts left from using your dies in Des Moines.)

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Lime Green and Red Color Swap Birthday

The colors for my stamping group's challenge this month are red and lime green. This is the card I made for it.

I started by cutting the white rectangle with my Memory Box stitched rectangle die. The poppies are from Penny Black. I stamped them with Memento ink. One was stamped on scrap cardstock and then I stamped two of them directly on this piece. I colored them with Copics and carefully cut out the one on the scrap. I added Pop Dots to that one and added it to the other. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. The lime green is textured. I embossed it with a Cuttlebug Anna Griffin folder and lightly sanded it. I matted both pieces with black and added them to the white cardbase.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Die-Cut Birthday

Another die cut that was made using a die from my friend, Kris, when we were in Des Moines in June. 

The die was used on patterned paper. I backed it with shimmery gold and mounted it on Pop Dots. I used an ivory card base. The red piece was embossed with a Darice folder. Another card that could be used for a guy.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Masculine Birthday

I finally took some time this morning to make a card. That was fun! Seems like it's been forever. I'll post another card very soon - as soon as it arrives at its destination - but I made it a few weeks ago.

I have some envelopes that are non-standard card size. I thought I would use one of them for a card. The card is 3.5 x 6.5 inches. I started by cutting a piece of patterned paper from The Paper Studio to completely cover the card front. Then I took a scrap of ivory cardstock and stamped the wheat on it. I matted that with brown. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. I had previously cut the stamp into two pieces. I stamped the "birthday" first and it was nice and straight. However, the "HAPPY" I stamped crooked:( No worries - I just stamped it again on another scrap, cut it out, and popped it up over the crooked one! This one still looks a little crooked, but I fixed it after seeing the picture. :)

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Subtle Sympathy

I got this branch stamp by Rubbernecker from my friend, Kris, at our Group Gathering in Des Moines last month. Here is how this card "came to be."

The stamp was sitting on my table, waiting to be used. The card base was also sitting on my table. It had "THANK YOU" stamped on it. Time to use them! I want to make use of my Stitched Rectangle dies, so I cut a piece of ivory (to match the card base) with the largest one. That was big enough to cover the previously-stamped sentiment. OK. How could I use this branch? Well, on a sponged background, of course:) So, I cut an oval out of a piece of scratch paper. I used distress ink to sponge around the inside of the oval. Then I left the mask on and stamped the branch three times. I couldn't have had them line up this well if I had tried - really hard! The first time I stamped was the image on the right. The second time I stamped was the center branch. It didn't reach the bottom, but I would figure out what to do about that soon. The third time I randomly stamped the branch, it lined up perfectly over the center one. How awesome was that! I finshed the card by stamping with a darker brown (my favorite, Soft Suede) using a stamp from Kaisercraft. And that is the story of this card!

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Thinking of You

Another card using some beautiful paper from a matstack by The Paper Studio. And another example of letting the paper "do the work." I simply trimmed down the paper to 3 7/8 x 5 1/8 inches and then cut the mat 1/8th inch bigger than that. I stamped the sentiment (from Stampin' Up!) and added the butterfly, which was cut using a Memory Box die.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Blue Foil Butterflies - Sympathy

I kind of feel like I "repeat" some cards, but I'm going to share with you, anyway. I wanted to use this butterfly die from Memory Box again, and I also wanted to use some dies on my foil cardstock. So, this is the one I used. I tried adding black pearls to the flower centers, but they were totally lost in the blue. So, I changed to white pearls. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Another Sparkly Birthday

Another die cut from my Group Gathering in Des Moines. I added bluish-green sparkly cardstock behind the die cut. The flower is from Penny Black - I bought the set in Des Moines. I colored it with Spectrum Noir markers, carefully cut it out, and added Wink of Stella for shimmer. I cut a piece of fun foam to add under the flower. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink. I hope you can see some of the twinkles in this picture.

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Blue Christmas

When I was doing a little organizing in my stamping room last week, I found out I only had six Christmas cards done for this year! Oh my, I have some catching up to do. My calendars have been lagging behind, also. Just too much "stuff" going on.

I cut this die cut (two of them, actually) when I was in Des Moines. I finished them quite simply like this and now I have eight cards done. :) The sentiment is from My Favorite Things. Edited to add: This die is from Memory Box. It's from a set called Distressed Holiday Collage.

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Happy Anniversary, Vicki and Gary!

Happy Anniversary to my friend, Vicki, and her husband, Gary!

I stamped this image from Penny Black onto water color paper and used an Aquapainter and Distress inks to color it. The sentiment is from Hero Arts. I matted with matching purple cardstock. I also added Wink of Stella to the flowers. Enjoy your day, Vicki!

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

Friends We Will Always Be

I haven't spent much time in my stamping room lately. And the time I have spent in here has mostly been spent sitting and looking around at my stuff, taking out some things and playing with them, and then leaving a bigger mess than when I came in. No motivation or creative energy at all. There's been a "bug" going around our family the past couple of weeks and it caught me on Wednesday. That hasn't helped at all:( However, I finally got a little energy back yesterday and I spent some time putting things in order. And today I finally finished a card. It felt good!

I die-cut this background piece when I was in Des Moines last month. Since it looks like honeycomb, I was thinking "bees" and yellow and black. The first step was putting yellow textured cardstock behind the die-cut and then matting with black. Then I went to look for my bee stamps, but I had tried selling most of my Stampin' Up! sets at a garage sale a few weeks ago (not much success) and they were all out of order, so I had to sort them out. (I had also packaged up about a hundred of my finished cards and brought those to the garage sale, so I had the left-overs sitting on my table. I needed to sort those out, too, and put them back in the boxes.) Anyway, I came across this set called "Bees 'N Blossoms." That one works. I stamped the flower image on a scrap, colored with markers, and cut it out with a Memory Box Stitched Rectangle die. I mounted it on fun foam. It took me a while to figure out the "right" layout and I finally arrived at this one. The sentiment is from the same set. I added a touch of Star Dust Stickles to the bees.

I hope everyone is having a nice Independence Day weekend. Ours will be very quiet, due to just getting over our sickness. I think we will spend part of Monday with our son and his family.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!

July Calendar Page

I cut these pieces on my Cameo Silhouette. The text is a stamp from a dollar Studio G set from ages ago. I used markers to color.

If you would like to make your own calendars using my files, you can find the files on a separate page of my blog. The links are under the blog header.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!