Friend

I was playing around with a CTMH stamp set I had sitting around for almost a year, but never used, and made this card. it's just one layer, plus the flower.  I doublestamped the sentiment on purpose, with the hopes it would give a drop shadow effect.

CTMH stamps don't work well with a lot of dye inks other than their own, but they are very good with Tim Holtz distress inks.

Challenges:
Kreative Stempelfreunde - old-fashioned
Heart Song Inspirations - brad (in flower)
Incy Wincy - flower
Bunny Zoe's Crafts - photo inspiration
Touch Twin - colors

Traditional Valentine

To me, this is the basic traditional valentine.

Two kinds of punches, fussy cutting, folding and a little stamping, embossing and beautiful paper - it really isn't as simple as it looks.

Challenges:
Crafts 4 Eternity - CAS
Lily Pad - patterned paper
Polka Doodle - template (scalloped edge around the heart)
Simply Create Too - Love is in the air
Stempelsonne - Valentine

Valentine treat boxes

A girlfriend of mine who works for Hallmark came over today.  I always tease her that my cards are better than hers.  She brought with her a bunch of leftover envelopes, and we made bag-alopes.

This are made from pink envelopes.  We embossed them with an embossing folder my mother gave me years back, and ran red ink over them.  a heart punch was used to make little tags, and we closed them by folding over the top, punching two holes, and running ribbon through.  These were practically free to make, as we didn't pay for the envelopes, and the tags were punched from scraps (after making so many valentines, I have a few red scraps!)

Challenges:
Fairy Fun Fridays - anything but a card
Mami Doodles - for a loved one
Poodles Parlor - valentine
Stamping for the Weekend - embossing
Crafty Creations - valentine for a kid/not a card

Wiggly eyed cats

The best thing about stamping with friends is the ideas they suggest.  My girlfriend suggested the wiggle eyes and the ball of yarn on this card.

I spent ten minutes after I glued the eyes on just shaking the card to make the eyes move.  I've half a mind to make an animation!

Challenges:
Charisma Cardz - Pretty in Pink
Craft Us Crazy - love + animals
Hanna and Friends - pink and gray
Fab n Funky - eyes
Little Darlings - polka dots

EDIT:

Yes, I love Paint Shop Pro.

Year of the Dragon

I love dragons, so I had to do at least one Year of the Dragon card.

The metallic gold part is from a box of chocolates.  Everything else is from the pile on my desk.

Challenges:

Clear It Out - scraps

Cards and Things - sketch

CCEE Stampers - Lunar New Year

Rainbow Lady - Year of the dragon

Bling it on - new beginnings

Cat valentine

This card features two things that I've had for a ridiculously long time but never used.  the first is this adorable stamp from My Paper Moon.  It was just so cute, I had to have it, but for some reason, I have never inked it before now.  The second is this little cat-shaped tag.  I don't even remember where I got the tags, but it seemed horribly important to have them at the time.

  My little "friends" stamp just barely fits!  It's not strongly valentine-ish; I suppose I could use it at other times of the year.

Challenges:
Cupcake Craft - all you need is love
Nettie G - pastels/spring colors
PanPastel UK - two of something
The Paper Players - CAS with a tag
The Squirrel and the Fox - critters

Shabby sympathy card

I was tasked to create a sympathy card for the ladies in my bowling league to sign - one of our members lost her sister.  Since I had the Shabby Vintage paper handy, I decided to use it for a background.

The Certainly Celery cardstock picks up the Peeled Paint color in the background.  the paper in the center rectangle is the reverse side of the larger background piece.  The stamp is an old TAC stamp - I always like to use butterflies on sympathy cards, or dragonflies if it is for a man - they are so symbolic of death as rebirth, a very uplifting thought when one loses someone special.

Challenges:
Dream Valley Challenges - animal
Fashionable Stamping - butterflies
2 Sisters - embossing
So Artful - colors
Twisted Sketches - sketch (and this is the first time I've used the blue in this paper stack)

Swallow Valentine

I bought some dies from AMuse recently, and thought I would try them out.  One is the swallow, which comes in a set of two (the other swallow is small enough to fit on an inchie!), and the sentiment is stamped on one of the vintage labels set.

The paper is the same Tim Holtz Shabby Vintage, only this is the design on the back of the paper I used yesterday. The stamp is out of the dollar bins at Joann.  those acrylic stamps don't hold ink well but if you tap them in Versamark before the regular ink, they work okay.  The ink is the Fired Brick distress ink, which really warms up the cool colors of the Shabby Vintage.

Challenges:
Craft Us Crazy - valentines
Crop Stop - vintage/shabby chic
Delightful Sketches - vintage/distressed
Moving along with the Times - things with wings
The Craft Garden - monochrome
Cardabilities - sketch

Shabby Vintage valentine

I love the Tim Holtz paper lines.  I love the colors and the designs, but what I hate about them is that they are such beautiful, strong, assertive designs, I can hardly bring myself to cover them up.  I bought this Shabby Vintage paper pack almost 2 years ago, then despaired of using it, and stuck it in the back of my scrapbook paper file, where I had forgotten it until I was searching for valentine paper.   I don't want to make a card that is just a background paper and a sentiment, but what else to put?

I punched the heart from white, then dry embossed it with a cuttlebug folder I had forgotten I had.  I used the reverse, so the fleurs des lis would stay white, then lightly distressed heart with distress and gold metallic inks, a red heart offset helps it stand out. The sentiment was a leftover from when I was testing my new stamp earlier this week; I got the fancy cut on the ends by weaseling it into a corner punch.  a little gold organza ribbon seemed to tie the whole thing together.  None of it is bold enough to outshine the Tim Holtz paper, though.

Challenges:
 Scrapbook Sisters - sweet Valentine
Gingersnap Creations - Favorite paper
Truly Scrumptious - something forgotten
Alota Rubber Stamps - heart
Artistic Stamper - vintage

Punchart Valentine

I occasionally try to submit my cards to "Clean and Simple" challenges, but they always get rejected, because I always do too much.  Even if it's a single layer card, I do too much coloring and embellishing.  For this card, I really tried to rein it in.

Except for the sentiment, there is no ink on this card.  All the design is punching, or in the case of the scallops, hand cutting (AMuse has a die that makes a big scallop like this, it's on my wish list).  The heart was first punched out of red cardstock, then I punched a flower out of the heart, and then I punched a swirl to make the stem.  I cut the scallops out of the card base and punched the holes (I punched a hole in red for the flower center; I glued a strip of red to the inside of the card.  So there you have it - three pieces of cardstock (four if you count the flower center), no coloring, no embellishments.  If this isn't clean and simple, I give up.

Challenges:
Crafty Bloggers Network - monochrome
Lollipop Crafts - no embellishments
Penny Black - love and hearts
CAS-ual Fridays - scallops
The Stamp Man - red

Phone book flower Valentine

I'm determined to make these valentines - if only there were people that I love. (just kidding)

I'm really loving this color palette.  It is so much more elegant than almost anything with pink.

 I used old telephone book pages for the flower and under the ribbon.  I did the faux stitching to pick up on the real stitching on the ribbon.  I can believe that with all the border punches I own, I hand cut the scallops.  I did punch the heart with a new heart punch, though.  The word on the heart is from a stamp that has "Happy Valentines Day"; I only needed the one word.

Challenges:
Crafty Catz - Something new (heart punch)
Fun with Shapes and more - no black lines
Polka Doodles - vintage
Phindy's Place - Embossing, ribbon, sewing
Paper Play - stitches

Pink valentine

It's so hard to make a pink card!  It gets sticky sweet very quickly.  The glittery background paper is from a pack of baby girl papers, and the pink heart was cut freehand from some pink handmade paper.  the white ruffle was added to offset all the pink, and the word was strategically cut from a "Thank you" diecut.

What it lacks in elegance, it makes up in texture.

Challenges:
Art Impressions Stamps - pink
Pixie Dust Studio - heart
Southern Girls - sparkle
Do You Stack Up - pink
Paper Pretties - sentiment as focal point

Red flower valentine

I was feeling the urge to work on some valentines, and started poking through my patterned paper to see if I had any that I forgot about.   This paper is one of those that I have had forever.  I love the vintage fabric look to it, but I keep forgetting I have it.  It happened to be very close in color to this punched flower I had lying on my desk, a leftover from my son's art project (his girlfriend doesn't like florist flowers because they are treated with so many chemicals; he made her paper ones).  The rest of the card just came together.

 It's a little squished in the scanner, but it would get squished in an envelope, so I guess it is better to see how it will look to a recipient.  The little heart on the vellum tag is punched from a scrap of the same painted paper - I love painting paper rather than using colored cardstock for a lot of things, but I have both on here.  The sentiment is from a CTMH stamp set I bought several years ago - I have used the doodles in the set, but the words don't often see ink.  it was the only "friends" stamp that was mall enough to fit on the tag, though.  The only thing new on this tag really is the baker's twine.  Well, it really isn't new; I just haven't used it before today.

Challenges:
Aud Sentiments - use your scraps
Color Create - red, cream, sage
Gingersnap Creations - ribbon
Heart2Heart - stamp on tag
Incy Wincy Designs - vintage

S card

The Milliande challenge issued was to create a piece featuring words that were meaningful to us beginning with the letter S. Her example was text-heavy and shapeless, so I tried to think of another way to put words on a card other than in a list. I don't know why the idea of a playing card came to me, but I ran with it.

This is, of course, an ATC, which is the same size as a playing card.  It feels unfinished, but I am stuck - I am at that point where adding more doesn't feel like an improvement, but I know it isn't the best it could be, either.   This is the reaction of a woman who has ruined a few cards by putting too much on them.

Anyway, the words are things that are important to me, and the images are too.  Hatter, artist, bowler, that's me.  Card player, too.  None of those words start with S, though.

Doodles Unleashed assignment 1

I was intending to do the Strathmore series last year, but got sidetracked.  Fortunately, I was still on their mailing list, and signed up to do the new series this year.  This workshop is called "Doodles Unlimited", taught by Traci Bautista, and is about using mixed media.  for the first lesson, Traci basically encouraged us to use every art product we own on a nice base of fancy Strathmore watercolor paper (did I mention Strathmore is sponsoring this free workshop).  I own a lot of different media, and I didn't feel like using all of them, but I will tell you what I did use, and what I learned in the process.  I might still do more to this, but I just got tired of looking at it.

The first step was stenciling with colorwash sprays.  I happen to have a few bottles of the Adirondack colorwash sprays, so no problem there.  Actually, it was a problem.  the problem is that the Adirondack sprays need to be heat set - which I forgot about.  So, when I started adding acrylic paint, the spray ink started to mix with the paint, and I got some interesting effects, but I also had to cut my painting short, or the whole thing would have turned to mud.  Lesson learned.

Thwarted in my painting, I went on to the next step, which was adding subtle color and texture with alcohol markers.   I was still worried about the colorwash running, so I didn't use my good Copics, I whipped out my Bics.  I have to admit, I was not impressed with Traci's big graphic flowers, so I went my own way with geometric doodling.  I wasn't liking it - it was just getting cluttered, not pretty, and I didn't see how there was going to be a focal point to it.  I looked out the widow to the trees in my back yard, and decided that I needed a tree on my painting, so I went back to my acrylic paints, figuring that the colorwash couldn't do too much to brown and black, and started making branches.  I I made the thinner branches with the markers and also with pens.

It is way too busy - I needed more paint in the background, and a lot less doodling.  a little white highlighting would be good, too, but seriously - I am so sick of looking at those branches it isn't funny.

EDIT:

I added white, in the form of snow (white gel pen, correction fluid, and paint).  I thought it would add more contrast.  I'm not convinced that it helped.  I am thinking about splattering white droplets to create a snowstorm, but part of me thinks that it is a destructive impulse, and not something that will really improve the piece.

Vessel

Milliande's prompt for today is to think of ourselves as a vessel for seeds of creativity, or something like that (I'm not deep enough to really get it, I think).  I experimented a little with using Copic markers over acrylic paint, which worked out well, and then I detailed it a bit with my Uniball micro.  I like how well the Uniball micro works over other media, and I especially like that it is waterproof, but it is not Copic proof.  using the Copic markers over the Uniball ink caused the ink to smear and the markers to pick up black.  Yuck! (Please learn from my mistakes!)  So I finished with ballpoint pens, which are pretty good, but dry slowly on things other than regular paper.

The woman on this ATC is up to her eyebrows in dirt, but in the dirt are nuggets of silver and gold.  She is able to see the good in her life and find inspiration to create.

These exercises are so therapeutic!
 

Rose Hip

Last year I made a stab at art journaling with Milliande.  I wasn't planning on doing that series again, but the prompt for the first day showed up in my inbox yesterday, and I got sucked in.  The theme this year is "Seeds of Creativity", and the prompt for yesterday is "be the seed".  Don't ask me why, but rose hips immediately popped into my head.  It is a negative thought (negative thoughts were the reason I dropped out last year).   I didn't want to lock my negative thought into a journal, so I did a little ATC instead.

 Roses don't really propagate through their seeds; they are a plant for cutting.  The first time I saw rose hips on a rose, I thought they were tumors, and that the plant was diseased.  It might as well be.  The petals are gone, and the plant is a mess. Rose hips are good for their vitamin C, so they are more for eating rather than planting.  I guess the critters in my yard will enjoy them.

I feel like a rose hip.  I am a swollen, ugly thing, the remnant of lost beauty, just waiting to be devoured.

Silver paint plus ballpoint pen

When I was using silver paint on my inchie yesterday, I had a lot left on my palette, even though I only squeezed out one drop.  I wiped it off onto an ATC blank, imaging that it might make a nice start to a background.  After it dried, I looked at it, and grabbed a nearby ballpoint pen, and started doodling around the silver.

It was fun following the color around, and seeing what manifested itself.

Challenges:

Stampalot - monochromatic

2 Sisters - white and silver

Hiding in my Craft Room - freestyle

Fairy Tale - something easy

Sisterhood of Crafters - black, white, and one other color