PTI March Blog Hop

Thanks for stopping by! I had a lot of fun making backgrounds but things got super busy and I was only able to convert one of my sheets of background into cards. I have lots more to share later using Guidelines 2 but that’s for another day. For my cards tonight I started with a sheet of shimmery cardstock that I’ve had in my stash. I applied Aqua Mist, Sweet Blush and Plum Pudding direct to paper in diagonal stripes. Then I stamped over it with Polka Dot Basics in Fresh Snow. It’s a little tricky to stamp on this shimmery cardstock with such a juicy ink like Fresh Snow but it turned out pretty well.

Edited to add: I made my diagonal stripes by using a piece of scrap cardstock as a guide. I start in one corner and put the cardstock down where I want my first color break to be. Then I take a Palette ink cube and run it down the cardstock, holding it against the scrap paper to guide it. This ink transfers beautifully to shimmery paper. Depending on how wide you want the stripes to be you may have to make a couple of passes to cover the area. Then I move the scrap paper to where I want the next color break. If you wanted to be really careful you can cover the edge of your previous stripe with some eclipse tape or another piece of cardstock but I just use the "eye-ball" method. ;) I also did not pre-measure my stripes but that's just me. I think you'll like this technique if you give it a try. If you do, please send me a picture, I'd love to see your creations!


For the focal image on both I used tulips from Wishing You and a Happy Easter sentiment from Limitless Labels.

I can wait to see what everyone else cooked up!

Supplies include: Stamps: Wishing You, Limitless Labels, Polka Dot Basics. Paper: Shimmery cardstock, PTI White, Aqua Mist, Sweet Blush and Plum Pudding. Ink: Aqua Mist, Sweet Blush, Plum Pudding, New Leaf and Fresh Snow. Accessories: Nestabilities, white gel pen, Vintage buttons, Ocean Tides twill,Plum Pudding ribbon Spica glitter pen

Golden Oldies

As I mentioned in my last post, this past Saturday was my FIL's birthday. Tradition in the family is to give out plenty of funny, sarcastic cards so I made one for him this year in addition to the nice one that I showed you in my last post. The card is very simple but fun. I used one of my Golden Oldies stamps from Art Impressions. If you haven't seen these, you should check them out here.
I really love their funny oldies stamps and have several. I don't use them often enough. My Dad is such a joker I've been meaning to make him a set of cards he can give to his buddies on their birthdays. I must do that. Anyway, for now here's my FIL's card. I paper pieced grandpa's shirt because I had this great plaid paper. For some details I added Diamond Glaze to the cake icing and Grandma has some purty blue eyeshadow highlighted with my Spica glitter pen and sparkly gold frames for her glasses. Inside the card reads "I'm not surprised, they say the sense of humor is the first thing to go!"

Supplies: Stamps: Art Impressions. Paper: Blue Bayou, Certainly Celery, White, Taken with Teal. Ink: Palette Noir. Accessories: Copic markers, Diamond Glaze, Spica glitter pens, ribbon, corner round punch.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Birthday Pa!

Yesterday was my Father-in-law's birthday and we all went out to our family favorite restaurant for dinner. We're a big bunch and we always have plenty of fun, conversation and good food! My FIL is a super guy. As sweet, generous and caring a person as you'll ever meet. I wanted to make him a really special card. My DH loved the card I made for him last year and said it would be hard to top. I don't know if I topped it but overall I like this way this turned out.

I LOVE my new Labels One die set from Nestabilities. I have most of the other standard shapes but this is the first labels set I bought. I waited a long time to get it but finally did and I'm really glad. I also figured out how to do the embossing on the dies. It wasn't hard, I just never took the time do it before. While the cardstock was still in the die I sponged on the ink for the grass and the sky. When the die was removed it left this really nice cream border. Also while the die was in place I stamped over the entire scened with my SU! Linen background stamp in Antique Linen to soften it up a little. The layer behind the center image was run through my Cuttlebug and then I used a new PTI background stamp to creat the background and pierced holes in the centers of all the little "x's" and around the Nestabilities frame. The piercing is kind of hard to see in the photo but irl it's a nice little extra.

Later this week I'll share a photo of the funny card I made him. It's a family tradition to give the birthday guy or gal really sarcastic cards so I went ahead and made one this year.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: Ann-ticipations, Graphis Rubber Stamps, Linen background, PTI Retro backgrounds. Paper: PTI Kraft, Spring Moss, Dark Chocolate and Vintage Cream; SU! Old Olive. Ink: Ranger Walnut Stain, Antique Linen and Frayed Burlap; Adirondack Aqua, Stream, Denim, Lettuce, Meadow and Pesto. Accessories: Cuttlebug embossing, ribbon, button, Nestabilities, piercing, white gel pen.

Flower Gardens - Pt 2

I have flowers on the brain! Today was an awesome day. It was 70 degrees here and my DH took the DD all day and let me work in the garden. It was absolute heaven. My poor muscles don't know what's going on; I worked them hard today! It was nice to get my fingers in the soil and get reacquainted with my garden. There's signs of Spring everywhere and plenty of projects to be done. :)

After I was done outside for the day, I spent the evening in my stamping space. I had some extra stamped images from my preparations for the February PTI Blog Hop and decided to go ahead and make them into cards. No sense letting them go to waste when I am always in need of cards. Instead of making my FIL's b'day card, which I absolutely should have been doing, here's what I did instead!Supplies: Stamps: Beautiful Blooms, Wise Owl, Simple Little Things Background Basics Stars and Retro. Paper: Melon Berry, White, Dark Chocolate, Kraft. Ink: Melon Berry, New Leaf, Chocolate Chip, Antique Linen, Palette Noir. Accessories: Copic markers, Melon Berry satin ribbon, hemp, button.

This first card has a nice warm feeling. I like how the Melon Berry ink is just slightly darker than the cardstock so the background stamped images show up well but then again they don't overpower the main image. This was the first time I've inked up my Background Basics Stars. I love all of the background sets from PTI and I will definitely be experimenting with this one some more. Note to self --punch the notch in the card before you layer the two pieces of cs together. My poor punch could quite cut it and I had to finish cutting it by hand.

The next card is brighter and more "Spring-y". I'm not that adventurous when it comes to color combinations. This was a little outside my usual comfort zone but I was sifting through my scraps of PTI cs and found these and thought they looked pretty together. This is Plum Pudding with New Leaf cardstock and some Melon Berry accents thrown in. One of my favorite things about PTI is how many ways you can use the stamps from each set. I went searching through my sets for a perfect center for my flowers. The flowers are from Beautiful Blooms and the center is from the Paper Tray set. I love it!
Supplies: Stamps: Beautiful Blooms, Wise Owl, Paper Tray, Just Hatched, Retro Backgrounds. Paper: Plum Pudding, New Leaf, White, Bitty Dots dp. Ink: Melon Berry, New Leaf, Chocolate Chip, Palette Noir. Accessories: Melon Berry satin ribbon, button, hemp.



And this is a photo of the inside of the card. There's an interesting thread on the PTI forum right now about whether you stamp inside your cards or not. I always do for Birthday cards, even if it's just "Happy Birthday". For general note cards and Thank You notes, I typically leave those blank so I can write more inside. I don't get that elaborate for the interior but I do think it adds a special touch to have something that coordinates on the inside, even if it's just one of an image stamped in Versa Mark or coordinating ink. This is about as fancy as I get for the inside LOL and in this case I already had these pieces of cardstock lying around from other projects. I'll try to show you more of my interiors in the future. For the first card above in Melon Berry, on the inside I just added a white panel, sponged around the edges with Antique Linen distress ink and stamped one row of the Background Basics stars stamp in Melon Berry along the bottom.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Crazy birthday card

Today we went to a birthday card for a friend's 2 year old little boy. We had a great time! Isabella enjoyed playing with all the other kids and Zach's toys and greatly enjoyed the cake. I was going to make just a "simple little card" for Zach but when I looked through my stack of pre-stamped images from WishRAK, I had an idea and simple went right out the window! I decided to finally try a stairstep fold card. I've been wanting to do one for a while now. So here's the final result. I really liked it and so did my DH but then he said "you made that for a 2 year old, are you nuts?" or words to that effect. :) Maybe it was silly to do such an elaborate card but I enjoyed making it and I hope Zach and his parents enjoy the card. Having a soon to be 2 year old myself, I understand that it's likely it didn't even survive the day intact but that's life!

The animals are from High Hopes and the leaves are from a Stampendous Changito monkey clear set I have. The balloon is from a little Fiskars clear set. Happy Birthday by Printworks and I spelled the birthday boy's name with PTI's Fresh Alphabet set.

I definitely need to make more of these cards. There are so many possibilities. I hope you had a great weekend. For me it's back to the office tomorrow. Good night!

Supplies: Stamps: High Hopes, PTI, Print Works, Stampendous, Judith. Paper: PTI white and New Leaf. SU! Real Red and Close to Cocoa. Ink: Palette Noir. Accessories: Cuttlebug, white gel pen, Nestabilities, Copic markers, Spica glitter pen.