OLW140 Borders

I was able to spend some time stamping today, and made these two cards for Heather's OLW140 Borders challenge!

The above card uses Papertrey's Text Style border with key words highlighted with a light gray marker (Marvy). The Thinking of You sentiment is from Hero Arts Sending Smiles set.

The second card uses a stamp from Faux Ribbon (Papertrey) stamped three times, and a sentiment from a limited edition Clear and Simple Stamps set called Thinking of You. I added random turquoise rhinestones!

I hope you're all having a lovely weekend and have time to play along with OLW140!

Riffing on Card Creations: Inspired by Kalyn Kepner

Yet another gorgeous card from Card Creations, Vol 11 inspired me to make a variation. This one was a bit complicated to adapt to my style, so I took a few photos of the process to share with you.

First up, Kalyn Kepner's fabulous card uses K & Company stickers in an amazingly pretty CAS layout that shows off a lot of white space.

The incredible detail and coloring of the stickers would be pretty much impossible for me to duplicate with stamps (plus, I'm not doing that much fussy cutting for all the coffee in South and Central America combined). My original intention was to keep Kalyn's colors of olive, purple, and blue and to stay as true to her layout as possible. Everything else was up for simplification.

I used Gina K's Hello Sunshine set for the flowers and leaves in my first attempt, and Brilliance inks. Instead of fussy cutting, I punched variously sized circles to arrange in roughly the same layout, thinking the stylized block stamps would look great on circles. Here's the first mock-up attempt.

Two things struck me as deeply wrong here. First, and most noticeably, the olive ink is too harsh for the blues and greens on white card stock. The Brilliance olive is a weird color anyway, but the leaves also look too busy and strange punched in circles. Secondly, there needs to be more variation in the size of the circles...these are all too close in size, even though I used three different punches.

So I ditched the olive altogether for a more harmonious analogous color scheme (colors adjacent on the color wheel...blue, lavender, purple). Then I pulled out Beautiful Butterfly from Papertrey and stamped a large and two small butterflies. This gave a bit more variation in the circle sizes, and everything fits into its circle nicely. This keeps the busyness of the design more visually logical.

The numbers are more pleasing, too. Rather than two of everything, we have one dark-blue flower, two purple flowers, and three lavender butterflies. The arrangement is not quite right yet, but it's getting closer.

And here's the finished card.

After I'd stuck everything down, I realized it was just a bit too low on the card...maybe a quarter inch too low. Too late to fix that, but a single rounded corner helped. So did adding bling to the butterflies.

Bling makes everything better.

What I love about both cards is how they show up the value of a good, solid layout. A good layout can be the basis for any kind of style!

Supplies
stamps: Gina K, Papertrey
ink: Brilliance
paper: Papertrey
accessories: assorted circle punches, dimensionals, ribbon, corner rounder, rhinestones

Time

Well, the fact my son coughed in my face Monday is bearing fruit today. I've lost my voice, which usually happens once a year because God wants to remind me to shut up occasionally. So tonight I'll just do a quick post of a quick card.

I really, truly love these spirograph flowers from Uniko. The biggest is nice and big...big enough to carry a one-layer card with nothing more than a sentiment and giant rhinestone. I rounded the corners because the image is round and having four pointy corners looked...wrong.

Supplies
stamps: Uniko Time
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey
accessories: rhinestone, corner rounder

Riffing on Card Creations: Rachel Narens Izakowicz

While reading through the latest issue of Card Creations, I found an adorable card by Rachel Narens Izakowics (and I thought MY last name was hard!). Isn't this just perfectly inspiring? I'm smitten!

Card Creations Vol 11, page 86

Of course I had to riff on it because, well, it wasn't optional. It's such a great design! Rachel used lots of special touches, like the stitching around each square and the fab mixing and matching of colorful patterned paper combined with a gray sentiment. But that little heart by the sentiment...brilliant!

I've never been able to combine patterned paper so skillfully, so I, obviously, CASified (if you're new, that means Clean-And-Simplified). I pulled out my new Uniko Time set and used that fabulous spirograph flower...the smallest in the set. Still, it was big enough that I had to use a standard 5.5" x 4.25" card rather than the 5" square Rachel used.

I picked six bright, cheerful colors, stamped them onto punched squares, and colored clear bling with Sharpies to match. Then I used gray for the sentiment as she did, although I didn't add an embellishment next to the sentiment...it didn't need it given 1) how clean the card is and 2) the altered proportions of the card.

The wonderful thing about Rachel's classic design is that you can CASify it or complicate it...it will work with almost any style you want to throw at it. Shabby chic? No problem. Country-cutesy? Sure! Collage? It's practically begging for ephemera on inchies!

Thank you, Rachel, for making such an inspiring card!!

Why don't you give it a try this weekend?

For now, however, skip on over to Heather's blog for this week's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge: Borders. That's what I'm going to work on for Thursday!!!

Supplies
stamps: Uniko Time
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey
accessories: assorted Sharpies, clear rhinestones, dimensionals, square punch (I think 1 1/4")

Em-PHA-sis

Today's card is an experiment in em-PHA-sis. My sister and I sometimes deliberately mispronounce the word emphasis, as in, "He put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LABLE."

Silly, yes, but we're sisters.

Anyway, I wanted to stamp the flower from Flower Power #1 (Uniko) multiple times in pale ink and once in dark ink to reinforce the sentiment "I'm here for you." Here's how the experiment turned out.

I'm on the fence. I don't really like the green I used for the dark stem (too dark and not enough yellow in it to flow with the pear tart of the other stems). On the other hand, I really like the layout and idea of the card.

Although...looking at it now on screen, I think I'll add a couple of small light pink blings to the light flowers. Hmm. That might help the balance and distract from the odd green combo.

I'll let you know if it works.

I've been at home for the past two days with sick children: Bloody noses and pink eye and tummy troubles, oh my! Seriously, Monday, Jack took a shower and I went in to check on him after he had a chance to dry off. His bathroom looked like a set for a horror movie. Nekkid 10-year-old with blood literally pooling in his belly button! It took forever to get his nose to stop and then another forever to clean up all the mess. Daisy helped, though: she licked the blood off the floor. Ewww.

If I come through this without getting sick myself, it'll be a miracle.

May you all stay healthy and may your noses not gush blood.

Amen.

Supplies
stamps: Uniko Flower Power #1
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey
accessories: rhinestone

Pretty in Pink Conditioning

I wanted to experiment with the lovely tree from Waltzingmouse's Blessed by You set. It sorta kinda worked and shows the importance of conditioning clear stamps before use with dye inks.

I inked up the whole image in a pale brown from Memento and then used a Pretty in Pink marker from StampinUp to color the leaves. I was going for the blooming tree effect I was seeing all over town that was making me happy and sneezy at the same time.

The light brown was light enough to be covered by the pink nicely, but as you can see if you click on the image to see it bigger, it's a bit blotchy.

This is why it's important to condition stamps before using them. Fresh from manufacture, both clear and rubber stamps can have a film on them that makes ink pool, like water pools on your freshly waxed car. To strip off this film, you can use either a soft emery board or a white eraser. Then clean the stamp well, and it's good to go.

Some people like to ink their clear stamps with VersaMark ink (which is colorless and clear) first, then dye inks, to prevent pooling.  This works, but I've always found it annoyingly two-step. VersaMark and other sticky inks (VersaMagic, VersaColor, Brilliance, pigment, etc.) rarely if ever pool. Runnier inks like SU classic, Memento, and Memories are much more likely to pool.

Some people like the distressed look of pooling ink. Generally, I'm not one of them. But this time, I make an exception. It's a sweet and dreamy look on this particular card.

But you can bet I conditioned this stamp after I made the card.

That's the kind of neat-freak I am!

Supplies
stamps: Waltzingmouse Blessed by You
ink: Memento and SU marker
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: ribbon, half pearls

When Sentiments Don't Fit

I started off making this card as one layer, but the "scene" was a tad too low on the card front and looked odd.

No worries. Cut it out and pop it up all nice and centered, and like magic, it looks great!

But there's no room for a sentiment. Where would I put it? You wouldn't believe how I hemmed and hawed and fretted for probably twenty minutes. Anyone who says Clean and Simple is also easy LIES. Like a rug.

A bad rug.

Or a comb-over.

Whatever. They're lying.

I wanted to use these Uniko stamps to make a collage of pink and red and love how it turned out. Wouldn't this be a great thank-you card for Christmas? The flower in red looks poinsettia-ish. It's a great design, and the sentiments that come with the set are almost all really useful. This is my first time using Uniko stamps, and it won't be the last.

And no, Uniko isn't paying me in any way. I bought two sets (Time and Flower Power #1) and fell hard in love with them. So much fun new stuff to play with! Also, I'm in the US and Uniko is in the UK, but I got my goods quickly and easily.

I hope no one minds my enthusiasm for new companies. I know how irritating it can be when DT members gush over stamps day in and day out, and I hope my, um, unaffiliated and uncompensated status makes this fun and not annoying.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are mothers!

Supplies
stamps: Uniko Flower Power #1
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, dimensionals