More CAS14 Cards

Here are a few more cards for the CAS14 Rock and Roll Challenge. It's a fun one, so I encourage you to check it out!





This card is a bit different for me, but it turned out really nice, mainly because of that scruptious gemstone brad. I adore those things, and with a little scrap of ribbon tucked into it, it's such a simple way to dress up a card. (Sorry for the strange angle of the card...definitely not done on purpose!)



This card is quite different (at least in stamp style) from what I normally make, even though it's a one-layer card. When I first started stamping seven years ago, I loved natural-looking images. Now, I lean more toward stylized or geometric images (like Papertrey's), so this was a trip back in time for me. I love how it turned out and may start using some more of these older stamps in a CAS way.



Isn't this a cheery card? Summer sun is a powerful, eye-watering color if used in large doses, but with a lot of white around it, it's just so happy! The bling makes this card, I think.

So which one of these three cards is your favorite? Inquiring minds want to know.

Supplies: I'm lazy today. If you really want to know more, check out my gallery at SCS. Thanks!

Clean and Simple Challenge #14

This week's CAS challenge will be announced shortly. Here's one of my cards for it. The challenge is quite versatile, so over the next few days, I'll be posting other cards that look quite different from this one. I really tried to stretch out of my usual comfort zone on a few of them. Can't wait to see what you think of the results!

This card is well within my comfort zone, though. It's one layer, with the scene grounded by a fun Hero Arts shadow stamp. It looks a tad nekkid in the upper right for some reason, but every time I tried to add anything, the rest of the card looked odd. I decided to leave well enough alone, and really like it. Hope you do, too!

Supplies: stamps: Papertrey Father Knows Best and Hero Arts shadow; cardstock: Papertrey white; inks: various chalk inks; dimensionals.

Dude!

Making guy cards is hard. At least for me. It seems most paper crafting products are designed to appeal to estrogen producers rather than testosterone producers. Yet we women have men in our lives who don't really appreciate flowers or pink or yummy satin ribbon on their cards. This hormone divide is pronounced in my house, given that my DH spent years flying bombers in USAF and then started doing Ironman triathlons because he's, well, insane.

Here's a conversation between DH and me last night.

Me: I'm taking care of my Mother's Day present. You can just get me a card.

DH: [relieved] Okay. Can I make your card?

Me: As long as you don't use the B-1 stamp again.

DH: Come on! That's the perfect stamp for Mother's Day.

Me: No.

See what I mean?

This card makes me happy because I think I hit "dude" right on the money. It's got dude colors, dude embellishments, and a non-flowery main image. I combined three sets here: the main image is from Trendy Trees by SU!, the sentiment is from Floral Frenzy by PTI, and the leaves on the rectangular panel are from Father Knows Best, also by PTI. I cut the ovals with Creative Memories oval cutter system (love it!). The inks are chalk (either Versamagic or Colorbox, can't remember 'cause I use both interchangeably) and I used the Rock and Roll technique to ink the leaves on the main image. The background leaves are stamped in certainly celery on SU celery cs. The dark green cs is always artichoke and the kraft cs is from PTI.

Hope you like it!

Wedding Thank You

This card was made possible by the kindness and crochet talents of kstamper. She sent me a packet of her very own crocheted flowers, and I finally parted with three of them to make this card, which was actually inspired by this card kstamper herself posted on SCS.

Thank you, Karen, for such a wonderful, inspiring gift!

For the card, I scored two lines across the bottom to create a border (hard to see in photo, lovely irl!). The sentiment is embossed in silver to match the frames of the pearl brads at the center of the flowers.

Supplies: crocheted flowers by Karen, aka kstamper; PTI white cs; Scorpal; pearl brads; sentiment by Anna Griffin; silver colorbox pigment ink; silver embossing powder.

Clean and Simple Challenge #13

The CAS13 Challenge at SCS is AWESOME, and this week's challenge made me sooo happy. It's a sketch challenge based on jpardoe's card HERE. Isn't it wonderful? The card above is particularly satisfying to me because I actually used Form and Function (SU background stamp) on a card that makes me happy! Yeah! I love office supply stuff but sometimes struggle with using it on cards. Here, I punched out circles from an image of Form and Function and used them for my two rows.

Simplicity Tip: Punch a hole in your card and tie a ribbon knot over it. This allows you to wrap around one side of cs and not have to go all the way across to the other side.

I've made a bunch of cards off this sketch , and here are two more.

This one uses PTI's Quilter's Sampler...without having to color in the image. I blogged earlier about avoiding coloring by stamping outline images in color rather than standard black. It worked beautifully here. I also switched the shape from circles to squares...sometimes it's hip to be square!

(I'm sorry about that pun...I'll try not to let it happen again.)

I love hearts, especially now that I have PTI's Heart Prints set and the coordinating punches. This was just such an easy card to make, and I love the lime and amethyst colors on a white background. Very clean, don't you think?

Supplies: Posted on my scs gallery. It's getting late and I'm tired, LOL!

Birthday Card Inspiration

My sister's birthday is today! Her Word of the Year is LESS, as in less stuff, less clutter, less spending, less eating, less running around like a chicken with her head cut off.

She's doing pretty well with LESS, so for her birthday, I didn't want to add to all the stuff she's trying to purge. I gave her a check to put toward her camera gadget fund and found this pack of dish towels at Target as a little something useful to add color to her summer. Now she can get rid of some drab and stained dish towels and have pretty ones, instead. Net gain of "stuff": ZERO!

Of course I had to make a card to match, and I immediately thought of this card from CAS11. I have a tough time with more than three colors on a card...who am I kidding? I have a tough time with more than two colors on a card! The CAS11 quilt-inspired card worked perfectly to use all the colors of the towels.

Yeah Me!

And Happy Birthday, Lisa. You are the best sister EVER!

Amazing Blog Candy

Steph has some AWESOME blog candy! Check it out! And while you're there, check out the rest of her blog. I was particularly taken with her simple scrapbook layout on this post. Wow! I gotta start scrapping again, and this is some wonderful inspiration.