Shasta Trailer - winter edition

Two words that should never be in the same sentence are winter and camping.  Seriously, who would want to camp when it's -20? Anyway, this is as close as I get to winter camping.

The kit is, of course, from my favorite website SVGCuts.com  you can see the it here.

I cut the pieces at 200% of the original size and added a trailer hitch and propane tanks to the front. The paper I used was from the Bo Bunny Altitude collection.

I used some distress inks in Seedless Preserves and Evergreen Bough to compliment the paper and a beautiful stamp from Indigo Blu on the top panel. The snowflakes were stamped with the same ink colors. They are from an older set I have, however I can't remember the name of the company.

I even made my own texture paste for the faux snow. I happened upon this great talented lady's blog Pamellia Johnson's "my little craft things" . I followed the recipe Pamellia shared. She has some wonderful tutorials, including the texture paste recipe post, which you can check out here

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed my winter camping experience.

12 Days (or so) of Christmas Cards

Hi, 

So I was inspired by the bokeh look of some pictures I saw on Pinterest. I wanted to try and replicate them.

I used the Tim Holtz snowflake and embossing folder set (love it!) along with his snowflake stamp set.

I then dug DEEP into my stash of stamps and found some circles and starbursts. 

I used milled lavender, faded jeans and white Stayz on inks

I am really happy with the result. Thanks for looking, see you next time.

Mid Summer's night blog blitz - Day 2

I came up with this name while sitting in the back room at work at 3:30 in the morning. I work in an inner city emergency department (no I am not a nurse). It's summer and I have been working a lot of night shifts this month covering off holidays and vacant positions. I'm not complaining, I like night shifts for the most part, however the complete lack of sleep and mixed up schedule has left me with a lot of play time in my art room. 

It's my passion to create tropical and nautical projects, so I wanted to do a blog blitz, showing off my creations. I will see how many I can come up with in the next little while

Yesterday I posted my dream vintage Shasta trailer, today I have a tropical card to show you.

The main part of the card is a Silhouette cut file. I love the outline of the hibiscus. I had a vision of a tropical sunset in the backgroud (which is another cut file) everything was cut from white cardstock and 

Colored with Distress Inks (festive berries,picked raspberry and spun sugar)

The pic below shows the frosted film I covered the background with. That allowed me to go in and color the flower with Shinhan markers.

Thanks for looking, I will be back with another project tomorrow.

Mid Summer's Night Dream

Hello again,

I wanted to share a really fun project with you today. It's one of my favorite cut files from SVGCuts.com. Mary's kits are amazing and they cut perfectly every time.  I love making 3D items with my Silhouette machine. I usually cut the pieces out of white cardstock and add my own color with distress inks or copic markers (and rubber stamps of course.)

This vintage Shasta trailer is so cute. I want one in real life, especially if it was parked on the white sandy beaches of some exotic tropical place. A rogue traveller can only dream...

Simon Says Stamp is featuring a summer challenge this week. You can check out the link here:

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/mondaychallenge/?p=1767

I inked all the bottom panels with Picked Raspberry and  Mustard Seed distress inks. I love how the two colors combine to create a juicy orange color. Then I stamped over top with a great funky flower patten from Indigo Blue. 

The green strip is inked with Mowed Lawn D.I. The same colors were inked on the umbrella and chairs to give a cohesive look to my "glamping" scene.

The top panels were embossed with the notebook embossing folder from Sizzix.

After i uploaded this picture, I noticed my "brake light" fell off. LOL

I made a couple of propane tanks and a front hitch for my little Shasta. I used a piece of cardboard tube and wrapped it with paper. I think they turned out pretty great.

Thanks for looking today, hope you enjoyed my mid summer's night dream trailer.

Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge

Hi everybody,

Great news! Linda Ledbetter is hosting the 3rd Compendium of Curiosities challenges. I want to play along this time. She has some great sponsors and a wonderful team to showcase each biweekly challenge taken from Tim Holtz' latest book.

This time it is sponsored by Imagination Emporium. You can check out the details here...
http://lindaledbetter.com/2014/04/cc3c01.html

Paint Marbling. Love this technique. So fun and messy and you get different results every time.
It's no secret that I am obsessed with tropical and nautical stuff, so of course, I used my new Nautical Blueprints stamps on my challenge piece. Hope you like it as much as I do.

I made 2 separate marbled sheets, one "water" one "sand".

Life is Good - Enjoy the Journey

Hi again,

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week is "Journey"  This is one of my favorite themes, whether it's travel or learning, we are always on a journey to be better, to do better.

See how others incorporated the theme here:

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/mondaychallenge/?p=1236

So a little back story...our manager is retiring at the end of May. She has been a wonderful boss and we are going to miss her dearly. I wanted to make a retirement card for her to reflect a new journey in her lfe. After all, life is good.  It's all about perspective right?

Supplies used

Bo Bunny paper (Key Lime collection) 6x6

White textured cardstock 12x12

Glossy cardstock 12x12

Window plastic

Silhouette machine 

Plumeria print and cut file sized to 1 inch

Porthole SVG file (free download!) from SVGCuts.com sized to 51/2 inches

Ranger Archival Ink Black

Tim Holtz Distress Paint:  Weathered wood

                                       Brushed pewter

                                       Tarnished Brass

                                       Black soot

Tim Holtz Distress Inks:   Lemonade

                                       Broken China

                                       Stormy Sky

                                       Mowed Lawn

                                       Vintage Photo

                                       Walnut Stain

                                       Black Soot

Vivid inks by Clearsnap:  Apricot Ice

                                       Orange

                                       Bermuda Blue

Stampscapes palm with huts 094G

Tim Holtz stamps. simple sayings CMS155

                             Wallpaper and wood CMS126

What I love most about this is the fact that everything started out as white cardstock (except fot the teal background paper) it's all ink and paint and a fabulous stamp from Stampscapes. I love using Stampscapes and blending ink colors. Make sure you use glossy paper for vibrant results and blendability.

12 Tags of 2014 - March

Hi everyone,

I was looking at the calendar today and realized I had better post my March tag for the Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of 2014.

It started off as a tag, which I did complete, but after I thought, "oh I have another idea". Does that happen to you? I always look at something and think what I could have done. I drive myself crazy sometimes...

You can check out the post that Tim did here:

http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2014-march/

I didn't have the new bird stamps so I decided to make a "love letter" tag

I really like the word stamp. It inspired me the think about days gone by when people used to actually write letters. No email, no text messages, just pen and paper.

Which then led me to parchment and quills and ink. I made a foam stamp from the writing desk die. You can see it in the picture above. I also made my own pen nib out of foil and wrote "love" on the backside to add dimension. These are the elements I used for the card.

Here it is all put together.

And here's the two projects side by side

Hope you enjoyed my love letter projects, thank for stopping by.

12 days of Christmas Cards - day 6

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love of paper gave me : a six panel card featuring Graphic 45 stamps and paper.

The panels are 4 x 6 inches and taped together with washi tape. So far, I've only done half of the 12 days of Christmas panels because, well, frankly, I got bored. (Hehehehe) but it is day 6 of my posts and I thought it was rather clever to include this one.

I started with double thick white cardstock, stamped and embossed images from Graphic 45.

Next I swirled on various colors of Distress Inks. Once the panels were inked to my liking, I ironed off the embossing powder between some scrap newsprint.  I love this technique, so soft and subtle.

Lastly, I fussy cut images from the 12 Days of Christmas line from Graphic 45 and adhered them with foam tape for dimension.

Thanks for dropping in today, half way there. 

See you tomorrow.

My Favorite Ink Pad challenge - Lilacs in Bloom

Hi again,

I'm playing catch up with my blog posts this week, it's been a long and crazy few days at my job that pays the mortgage. Sometimes I just wanna stay home and play in my studio. Unfortunately, work is a necessary evil. 

The challenge this week over at Simon Says Stamp and Show is "your favorite ink pad".  Well that's a no-brainer for me.  It's Seedless Preserves distress ink.  But my favourite color in general is PURPLE! I love purple, I am obsessed with purple. The fact that lilacs are purple and start blooming at the end of May around here made me want to create a "thinking of you" card as a tribute to my Mom.  My Mom had this HUGE lilac tree in her backyard.  I've never seen anything like it.  When that tree was in full flower, the fragrance was unforgettable.

I dry embossed the cardstock with the Winterberries folder by Tim Holtz, added a wee bit of colour with distress markers.

Next, I coloured some white paper with Seedless Preserves distress ink and added some shaded lilac for a cooler tone. Then I went to town punching out the flowers using the Martha Stewart hydrangea punch.  I shaped them and adhered them with glossy accents.  you can see the dimension I got in the 2nd picture.  I stained the crinkle ribbon and added a sentiment on a die cut ticket.

                                   Here you can get a better view of the layers of flowers

http://simonsaysstampandshow.blogspot.ca/2013/05/challenge-favorite-ink.html

Happy New Year

Hi again, I got so spoiled this Christmas by the sweet man. I hope you all had a fun and joyful week as well.

I wanted to ring in the New Year with an elegant "timely" card. I pulled out my weathered clock die and the clock embossing folder for this card to create a tone on tone layered piece. For the first card, I used the Iced Spruce distress ink and stain. Loved it. Then I wanted to make the same card with pink and purple tones so I used shaded lilac with the LSG starburst sprays.

After assembling, I threw on some sprigs punched with the Martha Stewart punch.( Man, that punch has paid for itself 100 times over already- BEST PUNCH EVERRRR!)

Happy New Year everyone, now go and enjoy your day.

A "Jack" frost card

Hi! I wanted to share the card I made for the SM (sweet man) this Christmas. As you can tell from my profile pic, we have two awesome Jack Russells. They are a source of constant entertainment and love, every single day.

When I saw the patterned paper from FabScraps, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I 3D'd the Jack Russell image and put it behind the Tim Holtz bell jar die cut. I added some festive greenery and a few sprigs of cedar with the Martha Stewart punch. This little punch has been my "go to" tool of the season. It's awesome - one of my faves. I mounted the showpiece on an embossed piece of cream cardstock (I used the Holly Branch one from Tim Holtz) and added a slight bit of color with distress inks just to make the background pop.

Enjoy. Now go play.

My Favorite Stamp

Do you have a stamp that you keep coming back to year after year?  I do.  This particular stamp distributed by "Stampa Rosa" years ago, is my all time favourite. There is something magical about it that pulls me back every Christmas season. I use it on some of my cards without fail.

I tried a technique that Shelly Hickox posted on her blog a while back called "Tarnished Silver" you can check out the link here....http://shellyhickox.blogspot.ca/2012/10/new-tutorial-on-splitcoast.html
I loved the effect, very cool, thanks Shelly!

I made five of these cards to give away, so without further taunting, here's what I did...

I made the frames with the "Tarnished Silver" however I used silver ink and Platinum EP. I didn't have the small Baroque die so I had to hand cut the inside to make a frame.

 I then stamped my image on Specialty Stamping paper from Ranger and cut the shape out on both the paper and on the packaging that we don't throw away. Right?!

 Add colour with distress markers and distress inks to give it a vintage feel

 add denim and silver alcohol inks around the plastic to create a Mercury glass feel

spray background paper with Heidi Swapp spray and emboss with  texture fade
add some silver ink and embossed lines to highlight.