Fright Night

Happy Thursday! Today's card is one I made with the new Fright Night set by The Cat's Pajamas. It's a pretty simple layout, but ended up being one of my favorite cards I made with the new releases. This frog just cracks me up!

I started by stamping the frog two times side by side and coloring with Copic markers. Next I stamped the frog again, colored in pink, cut out and popped out as the leader of the frog posse. Girl power! :) The vertical strip is embossed on both edges with the dots from the With Love Cuttlebug Embossing Borders set. I stamped the Fright Night sentiment at the bottom, then glued everything to a textured green Prism card base that reminded me of frog skin. LOL! I finished off with a black grosgrain knotted bow and some teeny tiny rhinestones and Stardust Stickles on the frogs, as well as some bigger rhinestones to accent the sentiment..

I'm on 3 year old nephew duty today, so that's all I have time for. Hope you have a fantastic day!

OCC Vintage Verve

Hello All! I'm hosting a little mid-week challenge with a prize over on the OCC this week. The challenge is to use one of my favorite techniques called Vintage Values. Be sure to hop on over and see the vintage beauties the OCC crew came up with!

Vintage Values How-To: Requires 2-3 shades of the same color of ink and a craft sponge. Starting with your lightest shade of ink, use a craft sponge to sweep ink from the outer edges of your cardstock inward as far as you want your glow to touch. Repeat with your next shade of ink, but only sweep about 2/3 as far in (so some of the lighter color still shows in the inner sections). Repeat with the darkest shade of ink (if desired), sweeping with short strokes, only about 1/3 of the way in.

To play along, upload your creation to your blog or gallery, then leave a comment on the original challenge post on the OCC Blog linking to your project so we can check it out. If you upload to SCS, remember to use keyword: OCCC. On Friday, October 31 at noon EST, we'll be choosing one random participant to receive their choice of any Verve Stamps set. If you don't have Verve stamps, feel free to play along with stamps from any company. We never met a stamp we didn't love!

Now, I usually do this technique with browns, but in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I decided to go pink. The three shades I chose to work with are Pink Pirouette, Pretty in Pink and Regal Rose. I started by embossing a couple pieces of Classic Cream cardstock with the Snowflakes Cuttlebug folder, then sponging the edges using the Vintage Values technique. I cut a circle with my Classic Circles Nestabilities, stamped the snowflake from Winter Wonder Remixed in Pretty in Pink and then sponged the edges with the 3 shades of ink. Next I cut a coordinating Basic Gray and Pink Pirouette circle and scalloped circle to mat behind it, and inked up the edges of the scallops. I used the Martha Stewart Fern Branch punch and punched about 10 shapes out of Classic Cream, and then randomly inked the edges with the three different shades of pink ink. I finished off with some Petal Pink liquid pearl accents, some teeny tiny rhinestones on the scallops and some Basic Gray taffeta ribbon.

Mojo Madness Winners and Slide Show

Congrats to October's Mojo Madness winners:

Maria of Scraps by M with this mojolicious card. I absolutely adore the snowflake embellishment and the crisp red bird on white with some good old kraft thrown into the background. Makes me just want to burst into song.... brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few of my favorite things!

Pat of Stamp, Paper and Ink with this fabulous little wintery cottage scene. Can't you just hear the Christmas carols in the background as the snow falls silently all around? Love the glitter, the snowflakes, the swiss dot embossing on the stamped panel and all the sparkle! Just gorgeous, Pat!



Congrats Maria and Pat!
Email me your mailing address and your choice of any Verve stamp set and I'll get your prizes in the mail.

Okay, before you go, be sure to check out all 103 of this week's mojoriffic entries in the slideshow below.


NOTE: If you get a message that says no photos found, please hit the refresh button on your browser or the F5 function key on your keyboard, and hopefully it will reload with the pictures!

Mojo Monday Week #57

Happy Monday Everyone! Are you ready to kickstart another week of creativity? This week I thought I'd give y'all a rest from circles. It seems they've been the trend in a lot of sketches lately, so I thought I'd get back to basics and give those circle cutters and punches a break. I hope you have fun with it!

To play along, just make a card using the provided sketch and leave a comment on this post with a link to a photo of your creation. There is no time limit - you can play any week at any time. If you happen to upload to SCS, please use keyword Mojo57 so we can see everyone's mojoliciousness all in one happy place.

And if you're like me, and finding yourself behind on keeping up with all the fabulous sketches, you still have until Noon today to get your entries from last week's Mojo Madness sketch in. Tune in tomorrow for the winners announcement plus a slideshow of all the mojolicious entries.

My sample card uses the new Fairy Christmas set from The Cat's Pajamas. I started by stamping the fairy on pearlized cardstock and then colored with Copic markers. I painted her wings and the trim on her coat with Pearlescent watercolors. Love the shimmer these paints have! I sketched a little border around the frame, drew in a little shadow at her feet and then matted with French Roast cardstock. I stamped the sentiment and one of the small holly images and cut with a Nestabilities Classic Squares die. The snowflake is a Martha Stewart punch of aqua Prism paper which I painted with pearlescent paints for shimmer and added a large flatback pearl to the center. I used the Martha Stewart doily lace punch for the bottom of the horizontal strip and added some metallic silver ribbon from Michael's. The background is embossed with the Snow Dots Cuttlebug folder.

Getting Sketchy with the OCC

Happy Saturday! This week, Lynda Benden, our October Our Creative Corner hostess with the mostess gave us a fab sketch to play with. Some of the gals from the Jacksonbelle DT are guest hosting this week, and there's a $20 gift certificate to Jacksonbelle Embellishments up for grabs for participating, so be sure to check out the sketch and all the details on the OCC Blog. And you won't want to miss the fabulicious creations from the OCC Crew: Amy, Cindy, Dawn, Denise, Jennifer, Laurie and Lynda.

My card uses the new Fairy Christmas set by The Cat's Pajamas. I stamped the dreamer stamp and colored with Copics, then sketched a little wavy border around her and colored in the border with a Copic marker. The next panel is embossed with the D'Vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder and then I painted over the swirls with a waterbrush and Pearlescent Watercolor Paints for some yummy shimmer. On the pink layer, I stamped the Christmas is for Sugarplum Dreams sentiment and then stamped a little holly leaf beside it. Each layer is matted with a french roast cardstock, and then I wrapped some cozy American Crafts ruffled ribbon around the side. I finished off with some diamond glaze and glitter and a few teeny tiny rhinestones for sparkle.

Hope y'all have a fantastic weekend and find a little happy stamping time to play with this fun sketch!

Project Parade Shadow Box

Hey Everyone! Happy Friday! The October Project Parade is going on right now, and the Verve Divas are really cranking out some incredible projects. It's an easy one this month, so if you have some time this weekend, be sure to play along! This month's focus is on embossing, so that's where I started with my card for today. My color combo came from this week's SCS color challenge {CC188}.

I don't heat emboss very often, mainly because I'm a perfectionist and even the tiniest little fleck out of place drives me batty. But I finally invested in a new Embossing Buddy, since mine was bought at a stamp convention over 10 years ago and had lost most of it's magic dust, so I needed to test it out. I embossed the cupcake from Cupcake Affair in detail black and then colored with a mixture of Pink Pirouette reinker, Crystal Effects and glitter. Well, there were still a few stray specks that ended up embossed on my paper, so I decided to cut out the cupcake. Since it was so sparkly after painting it with the mixture, I thought it would be cool if I could somehow suspend it partially on my card. So I decided to make a shadowbox card, with the intent of just placing the cupcake on pop dots on the back layer.

For the shadowbox part, I took a 4.25 x 5.5" piece of pink pirouette and white cardstock and scored each piece at 1/2" and 1" from either end. Next I cut a circle in the center of the pink piece with a Nestabilities Classic Circle and then cut a smaller circle out of black cardstock and used the negative to frame the inside of the pink circle. I randomly stamped the snowflakes from Winter Wonder in Pink Pirouette and then embossed with Iridescent Ice for a sparkly look. Next I folded along the lines of both scored pieces and then took a 5.5" x 3" strip of acetate and used sticky strip to adhere it to the two outer edges of the white piece. I then layered the pink piece over the top and secured just on the outer edges with sticky strip to form my shadow box. Next I laid everything flat and adhered my cupcake with pop dots to the center of the acetate still showing through the hole in the shadowbox.

Then, all I had left was adding some fun embellishments. I tied a bow with this yummy swiss dot American Crafts ribbon and secured both the bow and the tails with Crystal Effects so that the ribbon would stay in place just so. I added three little pink primas, with mini brads through the center and then added stardust stickles to make the flowers look all wintery. I finished off with some Petal Pink Liquid Pearls accents and 6 sparkly faux brads I made the night before. They're just 1/4" hole punches that I ran through my Xyron create-a-sticker machine to make one side sticky and make them easy to hold in place. Then I covered each hole with Black Diamond Stickles and allowed to dry overnight. This morning I just lifted them off the sticky sheet and put them on the card.

Because I Care

Happy Thursday! Yesterday I had the urge to buy new stamps, because I just wasn't feeling inspired with the ones I had. This is really silly because I have SO MANY stamps, even ones that have been left completely uninked. So I told myself to buckle down and just use what I had, then if I still wanted new stuff I could buy some without feeling guilty about "impulse" buying. LOL!

So I pulled out my most recent SU! purchases and decided to give them a little more loving. I love the look of Eastern Blooms, but I think it's a real pain that the flowers aren't a separate stamp. I want pink flowers and brown branches, but don't want to sit there with my markers all day long to make it so. So I've been snubbing this stamp since I first used it. I had embossing on my mind because of the Verve Project Parade Challenge, so I decided to emboss the stamp in clear embossing powder on white cardstock and then brayered over it with Baja Breeze. Next I cut a Basic Gray mat from a Long Rectangles Nestabilities die. (To make it the right size, I just cut four scallops out of the middle of the rectangle and then taped the two remaining ends together). For the background I randomly stamped one of the single flowers in Pink Pirouette on the same color of cardstock. I tied a Basic Gray taffeta knotted bow across this panel and then stamped the just because I care sentiment from Best Yet in Basic Gray ink in the bottom corner.

To finish off, I added petal pink Liquid Pearls to the centers of all the flowers. Several of you have asked about my liquid pearls technique. I don't know that there's really a trick to it, but here's what I do. I always start out with a dallop on scratch paper. The first squeeze will always be uneven, so it's best to do it on scratch paper. I let up enough that the flow stops, but never entirely release pressure on the bottle (this keeps extra air from getting in the flow of the liquid). Then I just squeeze a little drop out and release the pressure a little. Make sure the flow stops before moving on. Then go to the next and repeat, always keeping the bottle pretty close to the paper. You want light squeezes and small movements.

Well, if any of you were wondering... my plan didn't work! I still felt like buying new stamps, and since Lindsey (Jacksonbelle) had the new holiday papers from BasicGrey and Fancy Pants in stock, I just had to order up some of those pretty Inkadinkado fairies and a few other stamps to make sure I got free shipping! :)

Celebrating Amy!

Happy Wednesday! Today's card is one I've been meaning to make for a while now, but vacation and sickness got in the way of my stamping plans. This month one of the original Verve Divas leaves us. Amy Westerman is such a fabulous designer and has a special talent for combining color and pattern in a way that constantly surprises me. She has stepped down from the team to focus on her family and will be very missed in Verveland. Last week Shannan issued a special challenge on the Verve forum to celebrate Amy's time on our team. The challenge was to make a bright, colorful, cheerful card.

One thing I've learned from following Amy's blog for close to 2 years now is to not be afraid to use that patterned paper you love. So I put the focus of my card on the paper and kept the stamping simple. This gorgeous paper is from the Daily Grind collection by Fancy Pants. Isn't it beautiful? I pulled out Fluttering By because it always make me feel cheerful and stamped the butterfly in black directly on the patterned paper and then added the sentiment, "Always look on the bright side of life." Next I stamped the butterfly once more in Riding Hood Red on white cardstock, then stamped over it in Versamark ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder for a glossy look. (This also fits with this month's Project Parade challenge that kicked off today! Check out the Verve Blog for details.) I then stamped the butterfly one last time on some soft blue paper from the Daily Grind collection. Then I cut out the embossed butterfly and just the inner wings of the soft blue butterfly and layered on dimensionals over the stamped butterfly on my patterned paper. I added some dots to the blue wings with a Ruby Red marker, a few red rhinestones for the body, and some random Stickles to the flower centers in the paper for a little sparkle. Then I finished by grounding the piece with a thin black mat and placing on a Pacific Point card base.

Thanks for all your hard work, Amy! You're such an inspiring stamper and friend.