Christmas in Halloween Colors

WeCraftCards.com had a challenge last week to make any card using Halloween colors, but 1 card per color.  I decided to do Christmas cards.  As I don’t have 1/2 my normal amount, yet.  They aren’t all getting done, so I’m having to cut my list down significantly, but I did get these done:

I used the MFT Wednesday Sketch challenge for the week on all of them, too.  I’m only entering the black one, as I don’t have time to do 4 separate blog posts.  Used a Darice embossing folder, the snow for 3 of them, and leaves for the orange one.  After that, brushed Nuvo mousse in the color needed, covering the top.  It’s lighter in places and darkest on the raised edges of the embossing.  Heat embossed the sentiment from the MFT Seasonal Sentiments (retired) set, using Sparkle n’ Sprinkle (now Glitter Galore, I think) embossing powder for all but the orange, which is Hero Arts Copper.  Added either some ribbon, rhinestones, or both in the correct color.

Not too difficult, or time consuming, and got 4 more Christmas cards done, in fun colors that actually work for Christmas, or Thanksgiving for the orange one, though Christmas would have worked for that, too.

Thanks for spending some of your valuable time with me today!

Busy, busy week!

This was an exceedingly busy week, besides all the normal stuff like work, doctors appointments, etc., my daughter graduated from college last night, we had my in-laws over tonight for an early Mothers Day, and we’re off to my folks for lunch tomorrow after church. Spent 4+ hours doing the food for tomorrow and tonight during the day today.  I am wiped out.  However, I did get these three cards done this week and wanted to share them with you.

 

This one is for my daughter, when she finally gets her first full-time job (hopefully very soon).  The flowers and leaves were done using the A Year of Flowers stamp set (Gina K.), the sentiment is from the Lovely Labels 2 set (Gina K.) and the fence was made with the Woodgrain Fence Die-namic (MFT).  I used Pizzazz Pink embossing powder (Sparkle n’ Sprinkle) to do the flowers on black paper. While I was making it, my daughter was talking to me and asked who the pretty card was for. I told her it was for someone special and she said she hoped it was for her. I am entering this in this weeks MFP SpeedyTV Friends of Speedy TV challenge for a new job.

 

This one was made using black sparkle paper with pink elements on a light pink base.  Fun to do, and quite easy.

 

This one is being entered in the MFP SpeedyTV Sketch With a Twist challenge this week, as well as ScrapZee’s CAS challenge. It was made using 1/8 inch “Tearrific Tape” (tear-able double sided tape from Sparkle N’ Sprinkle), some pink glitter, some paper scraps and a beautiful sentiment (Heartfelt Creations).  Quick and easy (I did it today after the food and before my in-laws) but pretty cute.

Whew!  Now, I need to get a lot of work done on other things before Tuesday.  Is it possible?

Thanks for spending some time with me today!

Fun Times in the Peterson Household

When I went to the CKC (Creating Keepsakes Convention) a few weeks ago, I bought 3 embossing powders from the Sparkle N Sprinkle booth.  I don’t do a huge amount of heat embossing, but I loved all the different colors and that they have glitter in them.  I picked my two favorites, which took a while, and I had to get some of the glow-in-the-dark, just because it sounded like so much fun.

Tuesday I made a couple cards using the two glitter kinds.

On this one, I embossed the sentiment with the “Tinsel” embossing powder.  You can’t see too much of the sparkle in the picture, but it turned out quite nicely.

This one was a ton of fun to make.  The large butterflies are made with the “Aqua Shimmer”, the small butterflies were just stamped and the hippo was stamped in glue and I used turquoise glitter on it.  You can see the shine a bit on some of the large butterflies.  The sentiment seems kind of mean when you see the hippo among all the butterflies, but hippos are my mom’s favorite animal, so I thought it would work for her and not be taken wrong.

I took the embossing powders outside to take the picture, so you would be able to see the sparkle, but when I brought them in, I picked up my mop to put it away as it was dry and was amazed to see the glow-in-the-dark really glowing.  When my husband came home from work, I told him to wait in the closet and ran the powder outside again, then took it in and turned off the light.  I thought it was fantastic and he started laughing because I was so thrilled by it.  Fun times in the Peterson household!  I can’t wait to use that one.

On Monday, the Paper Crafts Creations blog started a competition called Gallery Idol (taken off the American Idol show).  Go check it out!  You can enter any encouragement card.  It is fun to see all the different encouraging cards people come up with, even if you don’t want to enter one of your own.

Don’t forget, next Wednesday, May 16, 2012, the CardSwap “Time to Shine” Crop kicks off with a fun blog hop.  Check out the hop and the crop!

Thanks for spending some time with me today!

Glue and Glitter

I was inspired to try stamping with glue and adding glitter last weekend.  Here was an attempt:

On this one, I started by cutting out my pieces.  I made my card base, then cut a dark blue piece 1/8″ smaller (on both sides), then a white piece 1/8″ smaller than that (on both sides).  Then I used some of the dark blue and white and stamped my sentiment in a dark blue on the white and used a Spellbinder’s scalloped oval to cut it out, as well as a blue piece using the same die.  I just wanted a small blue edge, so I chose to use the same die for both pieces and trim the white piece right along the embossed edge.

No, my cutting wasn’t perfect, but you can’t really tell.

After that, I stamped a fireworks stamp on the background using glue.  To do this, I took an empty stamp pad and rubbed glue all over it.  I’m not too thrilled with the Martha Steward glue I used, but it works fairly well.  Then I dumped glitter on it before it dried.  I started with blue, then stamped some more and used a yellow gold glitter, then went to red.  When I put the glitter on the stamped images, I sprinkled the glitter on the piece over a stretched out coffee filter.  Then poured the extra glitter from the coffee filter back into the glitter container.  Easy enough, and I saved most of my extra glitter.

When I was finished adding all the glitter to this piece, I sprayed it with hairspray to keep the glitter attached.  I’m not sure if the glue wasn’t good enough, or maybe it was my inexpensive hairspray, but it didn’t hold the glitter as well as I had hoped.  I’m sure there are plenty of products out there that would do an excellent job of permanent adhesion, but I don’t do enough of this to invest in anything else.  After giving the hairspray a few minutes to dry, I used some adhesive to put everything together, adding a couple of rhinestone stars to my sentiment.  I did use Scotch 3D mounting tape to add my sentiment to give it a bit of lift/dimension.

This was a fun technique to try and I will definitely do it again.  It would be nice to know if you have found anything that will work better than hairspray to keep the glitter adhered.  My husband wasn’t too thrilled I used glitter as it tends to go everywhere and stick around for a while, but the card turned out nice and sparkly.

Thanks for spending some time with me today!

Get Inspired

Two weeks ago, the kids and I went to the zoo and met my mom and niece and nephew there.  We got there late, so we only got to see a few things, one of which was the Green and Black Poison Dart Frogs.  They were all over in this enclosure and I mentioned to my niece that I would have to make a card like that for Grandma since they were her favorite color.  These frogs were all black with patches of teal/turquoise on them.  Last weekend I took my kids back to the zoo to get a picture of these frogs.  When I drug them to the exhibit twice and the frogs still weren’t out and about, I went with the kids’ suggestion and got pictures online.

Unfortunately, these are not the actual frogs that inspired me, but here’s a picture of the type of frog that inspired me.

 

 

 

 

This has a lot more green on it than the ones I saw at the zoo.

 

 

 

 

The color on the ones I saw was a bright turquoise/teal rather than this more green color, too.

 

 

Anyway, to start I took some Black Licorice paper (Lasting Impressions) and dry embossed a frog (Lasting Impressions S807) on it twice.

The one on the left I used TomBow Mono Multi Liquid Glue with the pen tip and the one on the right I used the Martha Stewart fine-tip glue pen to highlight the spots, eyes and lips.  I let that dry overnight (until I got home from work the next day), though it usually only takes an hour or so.  Then on the one on the left I used some Tonertex Foil sheets in a teal color on top of the glue, rubbed and lifted it off.  The frog on the right, I used Tonertex glitter and just rubbed it on.  I was much more impressed with the way the foil came out than the glitter.  However, it may have been that the glue was a bit neater on the left one than the right.

After that, I used some leaf stamps from the Gina K. Designs Hope Grows set by Theresa Momber and stamped around my card base.  As they are tree frogs, I figured the leaves were appropriate.

Then, I cut out very closely around my frogs and used some Scotch 3D tape to pop them up a bit.  Before I adhered the frogs, I laid them out where I wanted them and wrote in my sentiment.

And there you have my inspiration and what comes of it.  Not always, but you never know when something will catch your eye and get you to stop and think about a fun way to make something.

Thanks for spending some time with me today!

I have to tell you, my daughter kept saying, “Can’t you be inspired by zebras?”  Insert every animal we came to after the frogs weren’t there the first time.  It was rather annoying, and I just wasn’t inspired like I was by the frogs.  However, I took several pictures, so you may see some more zoo inspired cards in the future.

Enjoy your day!