Home Sweet Home

A new friend of mine just closed on a new house last Friday, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to check a new stamp set by PTI I purchased a while back and was meaning to use – just didn’t got the chance.

So I stamped the house on a SSS! shiny yellow cardstock. I heat embossed Wow glitter clear embossing powder on a lipstick red cardstock by SSS and cut both pieces with the coordinating dies. For the door – I used a double side adhesive and rubbed Martha Stewart glitter until it shined (..and all the glitter stopped flying everywhere…). By the time I adhered the door to the house I needed sun-glasses because of all that shine and glitter… LOL

For the background, on a watercolor paper I stamped with Archival ink (jet black) the sentiment from the PTI stamp set. I took the bird and the branch from the Hero Art Fanciful swirl alphabet stamp set and the flowers and ladybug from the Hero Art Adorable baby girl stamp set. I masked the flowers, bird and ladybug so I could freely paint the background. I used watercolor pencils as these are by far more comfortable to work with.
Once everything was dry, I added glossy accent and couple of hearts to give it some more interest. I popped up the house and the entire panel and placed it all on a 3.5″X5″ base card used from the same watercolor paper.

And finally, some Jewish people believe in the hand-against evil eye – and since I have a stamp like this, why not use it ? So I added the Hamsa to the inside of the card 🙂

Of course, I couldn’t let all that glitter and shine go without being noticed, so thank you SSS! Wednesday challenge for all the glitter on my craft room floor hahahah!

All in all – I’m pretty pleased with the result. I would have been VERY happy if I didn’t smeared the archival ink… 😦

Think Out of the Rectangle

Wait, what !?

A year ago I found a Hero Arts geometric die set that had different sizes of pentagrams in it. I really wanted to do something with it, and the first thing that came to my mind was a soccer ball. Big beautiful shiny (okay, not shiny) soccer ball that would make some awesome boy’s card. My temporary problem was that a soccer ball is ROUND… and cards I usually make are RECTANGELS… ugggggh…. And so this project was left aside. When SSS! challenged this week to use “anything but rectangles” cards, I just knew this was the opportunity I was waiting for. What I’d do with the card was a whole different story, but we’ll cross the bridge when we get to it.

I used my biggest circle Sizzix die (measured at 4¼”) and placed it on a top-folding base leaving some of the folded part of it outside the die, basically creating partially rounded top folding card. I marked the center of the circle and cut 7 black and 12 white pentagrams positioning the first black pentagram in the middle of the card. Once I finished my pentagram puzzle, I used the Sizzix die again to cut off all the access. I added a cute sentiment and added Mod Podge extreme glitter seal and once it dried I covered it with some glossy accent to pop it out.

But then I looked back at all the awesome creations that others have already uploaded, and a lot of the cards were circle shaped cards. So I had to think harder outside the box (or rectangle in this case) to create something unique that I didn’t see yet. I started to look through all my super-old dies and then it hit me! I found a Sizzix bigs scroll die. I thought that would be a great congratulation card for someone who just finished school or college. I know… summer vacation is almost over here in the States, so this card would have to sit patiently in my card box for a year (hopefully I won’t forget it’s there LOL). Just like I did with the soccer ball card, I die cut a top-folding card leaving some of the top part out. I used a WOW scribble stamp as a background and gave it some shading with ink-blending tool and distress inks. Once everything was dried, I heat embossed the sentiments. I thought of adding something to it, but then decided that less is more, and left it as it.

That’s it. Two none rectangular cards that I would probably would have NEVER created if it weren’t for the Wednesday challenge. I like these challenges. They make me stretch it to good creative place 🙂

Happy Birthday from a Furry Friend

Hello!

This week’s SSS! Wednesday challenge was Furry Friends. When referring to a ‘furry friend’ most people assume a dog or a cat or any other pet, and when I browsed through the wonderful creations others have uploaded, most of the cards indeed showcased those animals.

So I decided to be different. My furry friend is going to be an owl. Yes – Owls can be friends! I thought this might really distinguished my card from the others (and, of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that I went through my entire stamp collection, only to realized I do not have ANY dogs or cats stamps…:)).

Using distress inks and masking I created the sky background with the sun. I colored the owl with water-colored pencils and added glossy accent to its eyes and heart. I heat embossed the word ‘Happy’ using some pink embossing powder and die cut the word ‘Birthday’ out of black shiny cardstock. Even though I embossed the owl to make sure I won’t paint outside the lines, my 3-year-old painting skills made me smudge, smear and splotch everything. To cover that I sprinkled some more distress ink on the background and added some sequins. Most of it got covered 😉

Until next time. Stay crafty!

Dots and Sunshine

Howdy!

Today’s card was inspired by Laura Bassen’s card. When I first saw her video I thought to myself ‘ho boy…This lady’s got the patience of a saint!’ but I liked it so much I felt I had to give it a try. I’ll confess – I don’t have Laura’s patience and I don’t have Copic markers. I was toying with the idea of water coloring, but finally decided to be lazy and take the easy way out – designer paper! 🙂

And so I used the Simon Say Stamp medium dot die (from the March card kit) on a Doodlebug designer paper (from the June card kit). I also used the die on a yellow cardstock that I sprayed with Ranger’s perfect pearls gold spray to give it a little shine and interest.

Here is the tricky part – I wanted to pop each of the dots but only had a foam tape. So MacGyver here (Remember him???) took a piece of the foam tape (I added an old backing to the sticky side) and used my ¼” circle punch and created little foam circles that matched perfectly. Using tweezers (because the damn thing was so little and kept sticking to my hands) I placed my little foam circled on the die cuts. This part took forever (not really, but maybe good 15 minutes that definitely felt like forever) but it was worth it.

I used the negative side of the die to place all the dots on a regular A2 card. After doing so, the card still looked pretty empty to me, so I added a yellow happy sun and a sentiment using yellow pigment ink (Memento) and cleared embossed it (did you really think I’ll let this sucker go without being embossed !? no way.. lol!).

Here’s a little secret. I did not plan to add the googly eyes. I originally put black liquid enamel dots, but the liquid went all over the place and smeared my entire sun. After recovering from the shock, I put my MacGyver hat again and thought what will be big enough to cover my booboos. And that’s how the googly eyes joined my party 🙂

Bet I made you go back to the picture and look for the black smudges under those eyes. Haha!