Mother's Day Hot Mess=Success Card

 Last weekend I had a few hours of crafty time, so I tackled a card that was showcased in the recent Crop & Create Delivered Cardmaking event.  The virtual classes were held on March 19-21 and it was a blast to attend, and making it even more fun were my friends Barb and Jeanette who also attended!  We texted and shared photos throughout and it was great.

This card was taught by Libby Hickson using products from Hero Arts.  I knew that I would not be able to keep up during the actual class, so I saved it for when I could work at my own pace.  (Tutorials are available online for those who register).  

Here is the finished card:

The Hot Mess part:

This "direct-to-paper" technique was new to me, and thus it was intimidating.  But it actually was fun, and easier than I thought.  

Do yourself a favor and use slightly glossy card stock, stock with a super smooth finish.  The colors will transfer nicely.  Yes, I had brightly colored finger tips for a few hours!

Next I tackled the layered hummingbird stamps. 
This is the set from Hero Arts:

Using the same stamp pad, you select different greens to layer the image and finish with black ink that outlines the bird.

Libby provided excellent instructions and I successfully produced three hummingbirds!

Then the flowers, two layers, using the same stamp pad.

After letting everything dry, the matching set of dies were used to cut the flowers and hummingbird.  The black panel for the card front was die cut with Hero Arts' "Through the Woods Window Fancy Die".  Since I wanted more than one card from this effort, I positioned the black panel and chose where to cut the variegated panel prepared at the start.

Then it was LOL - Laboring Over Layout! Eventually ending up with the placement for sentiment, hummingbird and flowers.

Eventually I cut off some of the flower stems and tucked them behind the black leaves to give it some interest.  Slight amounts of glitter from a clear Wink of Stella Pen accented the bird's wings and some of the flower petals. 

It's finished off with a bright green interior panel with a Happy Mother's Day sentiment.  All in all, I felt successful and enjoyed making these cards.

 Now I'm off to these blogs to admire the Hot Mess Successes created by my friends:

Kelly

Jeanette

Barb

Terry

Carol

Do yourself a favor and see what they've created!

Thanks for stopping by!

Dueling with Tuesday Morning Sketch # 567

 It's the 15th and that means it's time for the Classy Card Ladies to duel it out.  Laura Jean (LJ) and I are hosting this round and we challenged everyone to use sketch #567 from Tuesday Morning Sketch!  LJ asked and was granted permission for us to use the sketch.

If you're not familiar with them, pop on over to their website and take a look:

                    http://tuesdaymorningsketches.blogspot.com/

Here's the link to our specific sketch:

Sketch 567

...And here's my card:

Image and sentiment from "Exercise Grumplings" by Taylored Expressions.

Floral paper from Love Nicole's "Floral Doodles" pad.

Candy dots are from Stampin' Up and the fun washi tape is from some strange place online, hahahaha!  The writing on the spools is Sanskrit so I have no clue.

The Grumpling and sentiment are colored with Spectrum Noir markers.

Here's a closer look at the washi tape to show how glittery it is:

And here is the actual sketch:

Be sure to visit the blogs and galleries of the Pearls and Diamonds (our 2 teams) and admire their creative take on the sketch.  

Have a great day!

Classy Card Ladies March Duel

 It's the 15th of March and the Classy Card Ladies (CCLs) are posting their cards for the March Duel.  Hostess of the Pearls for this round is Tracie and the Hostess of the Diamonds this month is Barb.  They chose "Butterflies" as the theme.  

Tracie wrote, "As I write this note to you it is -2 degrees outside with a wind chill of -21..."  YIKES!  Hence the cheerful spring theme.

Here is the front of my card:

I used SU's Early Esspresso as the card base.  All other papers were included in Tracie's kit.  They are "Simple Village Botanicals" and "Simple Vintage Garden" in the Simple Stories collection.  Aren't they gorgeous?

Little flowers by Recollections, the Wooden Butterfly (colored with a marker) is from Tracie's stash and I suspect that she hand made the butterfly in the upper corner.  It's so pretty

The sentiment and image are from the set "Garden Mice" by Newtons Nook.  I colored the sentiment with one of my markers.

Not wanting to cover up any of the lovely papers, I put the adorable mouse image on the inside and used more of the designer papers on the opposite panel:

It looks like the strip behind the Doodlebug Mini Doily is crooked, but it's my lack of photography skills at work, LOL.  

It's been spitting rain/hail/snow mixtures on and off all day here in the Pacific NW, so thinking of Spring and warmer weather and playing with this kit was the perfect way to spend my time.  

Thanks Tracie for a wonderful duel this month!  I'm off to visit blogs and galleries of the other CCLs to admire their work.  Links to each are on my left sidebar, hop around and leave them some love.

Classy Card Ladies - February Duel

 It's the 15th and time to show off our creations for the Classy Card Ladies Monthly Duel! 

I'm a member of the Pearls and Debby is our February host.  For this month's challenge she picked an image from Impression Obsession and received permission from Mitra at IO to share the image for our duel.  (Many thanks Mitra!  Now I think I need to buy this stamp!)

Here's what I came up with:

It isn't obvious from this photo, but the bottom of the image with the 2 potted cacti and surrounding rocks, earth etc. is fussy cut and popped up a bit onto the panel.

The lovely papers are all from the Paper Studio: "Floral Cactus" and Floral Clusters with Leaves".  The papers were so beautiful that I decided to make an easel card to show them off:

The image is colored with Castle Premium Soft Touch pencils. The image was stamped on Paper Studio white card stock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I used the little pink flowers from the Paper Studio to hold the easel card's front panel.  Enamel dots are from Eyelet Outlet and I really like them because they're flatter than most and that makes this card easier to mail!

Here's a bit of a side view to show more of a dimensional aspect of the card:

You can get a peek at the popped up portion of the main image.

Aren't those papers gorgeous?  

Debby, you sent us such a fantastic kit that it was easy to create a pretty card!  Be sure to check the blogs and galleries of the other Classy Card Ladies, which are listed with links in my left side bar.

Mini Winter Stamp Camp: Barb's Class

Some dear friends and I are holding a virtual Mini Stamp Camp - Winter Version this week. Barb was our instructor for Monday and she posted a great tutorial on Strip Cards.  Check it out here:

http://inkingintoretirement.blogspot.com/

Here are her lovely cards:

The technique is to cut strips of matching card stock in various widths and adhere them to a panel.  Die cut several sentiments and glue them on top of each other to get some depth.  Then mount the sentiment to the front of the panel.  Pretty cool, huh?

Here's my take on her challenge:

Papers are from Stampin' Up's Bird Ballad collection and the ruffled ribbon is also Stampin' Up, Coastal Cabana color.  

The die is "Thank You Cursive" by Savvy Stamps.  I cut 4 layers and glued them together to get some depth since the die is so delicate.  Here's a side view:

This was a really fun card to make and it has a lot of potential, limited only by one's imagination.

Thanks Barb for a super start to our camp week!  I need detention from you, as I am tardy with completing your assignment <wink>

Here are our blogs and the days we are the camp counselor:

Monday, January 25 ~  Barb @ inkingintoretirement

Tuesday, January 26 ~ Darlene (me!) @ Accordingtobijou

Wednesday, January 27 ~ Kelly @ Sandcastlestamper

Thursday January 28 ~ Jeanette @ Creativeplay

Hop on over to their blogs and admire their take on each day's challenge!  Join in the fun and play along.  We'd love to see your work.

Stamping Sisters Mini Winter Camp - Day 2

Welcome to the Stamping Sisters Mini Winter Camp 2021.  Last year our first Stamping Sisters Mini Card Camp occurred June, thanks to our dear friend Kelly.  Once Kelly set up all of the details, the rest of us just couldn't resist joining in!  

We all had such a good time last summer that Barb stepped right up and agreed to  organize another round which is set for this week. Thanks Barb!

Here are our blogs and the days we are going to be the camp counselor:

Monday, January 25 ~  Barb @ inkingintoretirement

Tuesday, January 26 ~ Darlene (me!) @ Accordingtobijou

Wednesday, January 27 ~ Kelly @ Sandcastlestamper

Thursday January 28 ~ Jeanette @ Creativeplay

OK...my class, along with my "tutorial" is "Reflection Technique".  Why do I have "tutorial" in quotes???  Because my card is a lesson in what went wrong!  Hahahahaha!  I can't wait to see what you all can do RIGHT!  I do hope that you  play along and have fun in our winter virtual stamp camp!

  So...My idea was to watercolor a landscape with sky, earth and lake.  Then create silhouettes of trees using SU's timeless classic "Lovely as a Tree" set.

For this project I decided to use pencils and a rough water color paper because the texture would add to the landscape.  I used a very fine brush so that I could control the water and blending.  Didn't want my sky to turn green if blue and yellow mixed!

Here is the background panel...before I decided that the lake needed colors from the sky reflected in it.  You might NOT want to do this hahaha.

Here you can see the SU watercolor pencils and tiny paintbrush that I used to limit the amount of water while blending.

After the blending was (sort of) done, I trimmed the panel to match the CS that would frame it on the card stock.

Then the real "lessons learned" began!

As you all know by this picture, I masked off portions of the long stamp in the set which has multiple trees, picking and choosing which trees I wanted in the landscape.

DON'T DO THIS!  Why? Well, in order to make the reflection in the water you need to stamp it upside down from the initial image.  Which meant that I needed to carefully remove ink from the stamp and try to line it up under the original image...some of the trees are overlapping on the stamp, making it difficult at best.

Oh! Another thing that I would not do again is include so much of the yellow and coral reflection colors in the lake.  I think it is too distracting.  

Here's another big lesson: I used Memento Tuxedo Black and it's too light on the original set of trees and even lighter after stamping it off once to make the reflected image.  Use a darker, more juicy ink because the watercolor paper absorbs so much of the ink.  But remember to stamp off the reflected image first before applying it to your panel.

I read that you could stamp your image onto an acrylic block, then use the acrylic block to apply the reflected image to your panel.  Here's me trying to line up the acrylic block so that I can stamp the trees and use the block to then stamp the reflection.

DON'T DO THIS.  Hahaha

Epic fail. I ended up with a bunch of black smudges in my lake.  

Which is why I added the sky colors to help cover it.  Sigh.

What I ended up doing was painstakingly inking and wiping off areas of the stamp that I didn't want to make individual tree reflections. If I just stamped the whole panel without mixing up the trees, I would not have had to do this for the reflection.

Back in 2012 (really that long ago?) I posted a reflection card using vellum with the reflected and colored image.  

Flip the vellum over and you have an instant reflection of the original image.  This time I wanted to try the reflection technique without vellum and using watercolors and a silhouette image...I still think it's possible. 

I have every confidence that Jeanette, Barb and Kelly will prove me right!  Please visit their blogs and see how they apply my lessons learned and create great reflection cards!

I can't wait to see your lovely Reflection Cards and learn from you!  Hopefully my tips and lessons learned help you make a masterpiece.

Classy Card Ladies' January Duel!

A group of friends on Split Coast Stampers have been "dueling" on the 15th of the month for years. This year we did a refresh, changed our name and team names and Bang! We're off for a fun year of dueling again!

This month "The Pearls" (my team) hosted by the lovely Jeanette, and "The Diamonds",  hosted by the effervescent Kelly chose "Winter Fun" as the theme.

Here's my card with Jeanette's great kit:

I folded the card off-center by about an inch to give me a panel on the right and die cut 3 hearts from the pretty papers that Jeanette included.

The image is colored with Stampin' Up Blenders and the snowball and ground are accented with Stickles.

Here's the opened card where I cut apart the sentiment and stair-stepped it.

Kit contents included:

CC Designs "Snowball Heidi" and sentiment by Close To My Heart's "Flakey Friends" collection.

All designer papers are from Recollections "Fa La La" paper pad.

Red snowflake ribbon is from Joann's and the teal ribbon is Offray.

Jeanette's generous kit also included rhinestones, sequins, a wooden snowflake (that I really wanted to use but couldn't work it in) and a charm with a snowflake brad.  I'm thinking another card is in order to feature these goodies!

Time for me to run over to my folks' house and get their dinner ready, but when I get back home today I'll finish this post with the names of everyone on the Pearls and the Diamonds.  I will also update my side bar with links to their galleries or blogs to make it easy for you to visit and admire their cards.

Good bye for now!