watercolor lily (hair gel again!)

I love this technique so much I look for ways to use it as often as I can. Here, I used the fern image from Butterfly Basics as well as one of the circle dies to create my "pond". I don't really know how to explain how I did that. I first stamped on the ferns and then chose a circle as a guide to kinda make an approximately accurate fussy-cut window. Or puddle. Or pond. Or whatever that is when you chop an opening into the face of a card! My little zip-lock of slightly tinted (with pool party reinker) hair gel went between two layers. Beneath the gel is my water-colored image of a water lily sort of flower from Remarkable You.

Have YOU tried this method of a neat li'l squishy squashy card? My little 5-year-old friend loves it as much as I do!

elegant friendship (PCCCS#168)

The Paper Craft Crew  challenges us with this sketch (above). I love this sketch. Really anything with flourishes speaks to my sense of creativity.
I used an image from Remarkable You again, the flourish from Everything Eleanor and a leetle teeny part of a sentiment from Sheltering Tree. Amazing what you can pull together from myriad stamp sets, isn't it?

wedding card for FMS210 (Freshly Made Sketches)

For whatever reason, and maybe because I love love LOVE creating distressed and vintage cards, these challenges from FMS always push me out of my comfort zone. One other thing, they always seem more formal so I end up thinking "wedding; sympathy; that sort of thing". So here we are with a wedding card and I got to use my Remarkable You stamp set as well as my Softly Falling TIEF in a way so totally unlike snow, don't you agree? It kinda reminds me of confetti or baby's breath or pearls...or what else is used at weddings? 
To check out this challenge just click on this link: FMS210
 

grateful triple challenge entry

Wow! I surprised myself with this card. I receive email updates when new challenges are posted on other sites and as I perused three different challenges, I kept forgetting which one I was creating this card for and would you believe it??!! In the end it works to enter it into THREE different challenges!

CYCI#92  is the first one. From "CanYouCaseIt".

 Here's the second:

And this one comes from Paper Craft Crew Challenges PCCCS#167.

And here's the third challenge: SU Only Challenges with this challenge being "Thankyou Very Much" using ONLY Stampin' Up products, which I can proudly say I did just that!

I still can't believe my good luck, although it would be fun to make three separate cards for the three different challenges, this just was too good to be true!

faithful trio (Christmas Series)

No these cards aren't very clear in this picture; sorry! But if you can look closely, you'll see they have a lot of similarities as well as a lot of differences.  I made all of them with the All Ye Faithful stamp set and I embossed each image in gold on vellum, coloring them from the back with my Stampin' Write markers, but after that, I tried a different look for each.

Sometimes I like using totally unexpected colors for my Christmas cards. Here I used mostly coral, since Mary's robe is coral. 

For the shepherd, I went with earthy and natural tones and textures.

While I think of the wisemen as probably wearing dark rich jewel tones, I lightened it up a bunch, while at the same time keeping this card elegant with softer colors. .

star of hope

This card intrigued me as it took shape. I liked the idea of the town being right in the center of that Star of Hope, not just in its rays but right inside it! An intricate part of it. Get what I mean?
Now I'd like to make several of these using different monochromatic schemes. I can see it in blues, greens, charcoal, reds, even coral and teal. See? Another set of cards in the making!

silent night through the trees

 

I've seen various versions of this card several different times so decided to give it a try myself. There's something about looking up through the trees at the stars that inspires awe. 

I used masking and emboss resist techniques on this one.

o come all ye faithful (card set)

These three cards are all done with the All Ye Faithful stamp set, using various background techniques and circle framing.

hello wren

Michelle Zindorf made a beautiful card using the wren image from "An Open Heart"  and I'm convinced it's the prettiest card I've ever seen using that set. While I love the wren image I've had a terrible time coming up with anything that really inspired me. Ms. Zindorf cut off the legs of the wren and perched it in a tree. But you know what? Those legs are just hidden, really, right? So I tried her little tip and now I know I can make cute cards with the little birdy, too! Those legs just didn't work for me! Ha!
And then I used the Woodland TIEFolder which is a MUST HAVE! It's one of the best folders SU has ever come up with. Like EVER!!!