The sun is shining.....

....so I am making Christmas cards!!!!! What is wrong with me????? Well... next week is our monthly Christmas card class so I do have an excuse for this bizarre behaviour..lol! I used two of the Splitcoast challenges for inspiration. The first was to use colours which are opposite each other on the colour wheel, so of course, red and green came to mind immediately, (although I also made a very pretty birthday card for my sister in purple and yellow.) I used the faux silk technique for the background...it's a great way to use up all that white tissue paper that stores package things in. The second was a sketch challenge and when I saw the three boxes at the bottom of the card, I immediately thought of the Martha Stewart snowflake punch I won at the CHA event I attended in March. So there we go...hope you are enjoying this fabulous weather, and please don't blame me if it starts to snow..LOL!

Another great watercolour class...

Linda will be back on Saturday May 28th to teach her fabulous watercolour technique using Ranger Distress inks. Only 5 spaces are available to allow for individual attention. You will make the two cards pictured here and the cost is just $15 plus tax. Please call ASAP to register.

Just playing....

This morning I thought I'd check out the daily challenge on Splitcoast Stampers. Today's challenge is called "Fine Tune" and we were asked to create something with a musical theme. As luck would have it, yesterday I'd been doing a bit of cleaning up and sorting out sample cards and stamped images that I hadn't found a use for...yet! I had left out an image of stamped sheet music that I had used the "burnt paper" technique on, so I thought I may as well do the challenge. As often happens when I start "playing" I decided to try a few other techniques, so I incorporated the cracked glass technique and also made a metal flower embellishment, which was a tutorial posted on the home page of Splitcoast this week. I've made the flowers before, but I've never been totally happy with the way they turned out. This time I used Pearl metal and cut it out using Tim Holtz Tattered florals die. Then I ran the flowers throught the cuttlebug using the Music embossing folder. After sanding and curling the petals, I assembled them with a brad and a little jewellry finding from my stash. I haven't used the cracked glass technique for years, but I had great fun with it here. You need ultra thick embossing powder to do this technique (I have some in stock)and it's a bit too time consuming to do in a class setting, but if you ever want to see a demo...just let me know. I looked through my stamps for a suitable sentiment, but ended up printing a quote from the computer. Music is a big part of my life, so this was a great challenge to play with. I could get addicted to the metal flowers, but they definitely don't work for cards you need to mail! OK....the sun just came out....I think I need to run outside and soak up a few rays before it vanishes again. Hope it's shining on you right now:)

Blogger issues!

Sorry for not posting earlier but I've been having a few issues with my blog program. It's been acting even more strange than usual and to be honest I didn't have the patience to fuss with it till now. So far everything seems to be working so fingers crossed that this post gets uploaded properly. Here are the first two cards for class this week. I thought we'd try a vertical criss cross card for a change of pace. No stamping on this one, but you do need to be extra careful with the measuring and cutting (if you look carefully you'll see I wasn't as careful as I should have been..LOL) I think this layout would work really well for an invitation or special announcement. The paper is from Crate Paper and I added a little strip to the insert along with a small scalloped circle, cut in half for the top. I've been dying to try out the new line of Core'dinations cardstock from Tim Holtz. There are 36 colours to choose from (one for each of his distress inks!) and here I've used Tumbled Glass, which is one of my favourites. I dry embossed the upper portion using the Cuttlebug "Floral Fantasy" folder, then lightly sanded it to allow the core colour to show. The image and sentiment are from Crafty Secrets "Bird Notes" stamp set. First I stamped it in Rich Cocoa Memento ink then cut it out using a nestability die. I sponged Tumbled Glass distress ink while the image was still inside the die to create the ivory border. Finally I mounted it on another nestabilty die cut...this time a petite scalloped circle in chocolate brown. A little satin ribbon to emphasize the embossing and the whole thing was mounted to a chocolate brown card base. I'm loving these colours....what do you think? It's birding season and I've had quite few birding enthusiasts in the store over the past week, so this one is dedicated to them. I sure hope the weather improves for them (and the rest of us) soon.

Last one....

Last one for today that is.... lol! I changed the colours on this card and I like it much better than the original card I made. I'm not a big purple fan but I kinda like this combo. Added diamond stickles to the buttefly (Nestability)and here and there on the dandelion. Now what to do about the purple fingers???????

More class cards

Once again I'm late posting samples for this week's class. I've already done two classes, but I'm re-working the third card, so I'll post a photo of it later. The seahorses are coloured with markers directly onto the stamp and stamped on glossy cardstock. I love this technique, because you can literally scribble colours anywhere and stamp a beautiful image every time (my kinda colouring...lol) I thought this would be nice for Mother's day, but left it without a sentiment as it could be used for other occasions too. The second card was so quick and easy, because of the beautiful patterned paper from "3 bugs in a rug." Once again I used a nestabilities die as a stencil to sponge distress ink around the sentiment and I love the soft look it creates. We'll be using the emboss resist on card number 3 and it's also suitable for Mother's day card. Check back tomorrow for a photo. Have a great day!