Pink Snowflakes and White Space

Hi friends! I'm popping in again today with a couple more quick Christmas cards I made this weekend before packing all the Christmas goodies away again.  The snowflakes are printed using the Snowflake Tidings Printable that comes with purchase of the Snowflake Tidings Die Set.

I colored the snowflakes with  a watercolor pencil and blended with a clear wink of stella glitter pen, then cut with the coordinating Snowflake Tidings Die Set.  I layered the two sizes of snowflakes together and accented with a fun rhinestone embellishment.

For the layouts, I just played around with scraps of paper and a Lacey Trim Duo die cut that were on my desk until I got something I liked. The silent night sentiment is from the Winter Peace DIGITAL Set and the let the earth rejoice sentiment is from the Christmas Blessings DIGITAL Set.

I embossed each background with a different embossing folder to add a little texture to the white space.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Enabler's List
Stamps: Winter Peace DIGITAL Set, Christmas Blessings DIGITAL Set, Snowflake Tidings Printable (Verve)
Paper: Sugar Plum (My Mind's Eye), riding hood red (SU!), white
Ink: Julie Nutting watercolor pencils (American Crafts), laser printer, wink of stella clear glitter pen (Zig)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings Die Set, Lacey Trim Duo Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), rhinestones, circle and rectangle dies (Cottage Cutz), snowflake embossing folder (Tim Holtz), polka dot embossing folder (Park Lane)

Three Cheers

Hi friends! Three cheers for a new card.  Last Friday, I uploaded a few new and new-ish digital sets to the shop.  A couple that had been on my calendar to reintroduce/redesign, and one that partially came from a set I had designed to release in stamp form, before plans changed.

That set is the  Land of Liberty DIGITAL Set, which I used today. I pulled out some patriotic papers and started layering until I had a layout I liked.  Then I added the cup, which I colored with Arteza real brush markers. I forgot to pint on smooth bristol, so the blending with the markers was terrible.  But I was snuggled up on the couch with a sick boy while coloring, so didn't bother to reprint.  I did eventually pull out some copic markers to help even out the coloring a bit and it turned out okay in the end. The sentiment is also from Land of Liberty and I cut it out with the Rounded Rectangle Die. I finished with a border cut with the Lacey Trim Duo Die Set and a couple rhinestone stars to accent the mug.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. The sickness Kellan caught seems to be taking over the family one person at a time. :(  The boys graduate Kindergarten one week from today, and I'm thinking there might not be much school for them between now and then!

If you haven't already, click on over to Verve and check out our final new digital sets.

Enabler's List
Stamps: Land of Liberty DIGITAL Set (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Yankee Doodles (WRMK), white
Ink: laser printer, real brush markers (Arteza), wink of stella glitter pen (Zig), Copic makers)
Accessories: Rounded Rectangle Die, Lacey Trim Duo Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), rhinestone stars

Instant Mom Coffee Lovers

Hi friends! The Spring/Summer Coffee Lover's Blog Hop is here and I'm so excited to see all the fabulous coffee creations over the coming week! This morning the boys have their Kindergarten field day at school, so I got up early to write my post while I drink my morning cup of joe. Hopefully I can write this quickly, but I do have a surprise to share with you!

There are two new limited edition stamp sets in the shop today! Hooray! We have limited quantities of these sets on hand and they're only available while supplies last, so if you see a MUST have, snatch it up, quick!  Verve is a Super Sponsor, so there's a chance to win these sets by linking up a new spring/summer coffee/tea or cocoa creation to the official Spring/Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop post.

Today I'm sharing with you my first card using the Living on Coffee set. The sentiment Instant Mom, just add coffee is how I feel most mornings, so I started with that. I had almost given up on ever getting my Zig clean color real brush markers to blend when I watched one last video on them.  I've been hearing that paper matters with these markers, but figured high end watercolor paper would do the trick. This time I really listened and decided to get some Canson Smooth Bristol paper, and guess what?  The paper REALLY matters! LOL  The blending on this paper is pretty magical and I colored all the stamped florals from this set while watching NBA playoffs with my boys.  Win win.

The blending was done with the markers and a clear Wink of Stella pen. I love the shimmery look it gave. The flowers were so fun to color, then I finished off with fussy cutting them all. I recently snatched up the fabulous Girl Power set by Sweet N Sassy Stamps, and thought one of the girls would make the perfect match for the sentiment. I colored her in, drew in a little v-neck and some arms and then accented her hair with one of the blooms.

I used one of the dies from the Lacey Frame Duo die set for a little accent and then found pretty much the ONLY papers in my stash that matched the colors I picked to color with!  Haha. I'm a really slow learner! Or just too giddy about jumping in and coloring!

Limited Edition Living on Coffee clear stamp set

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you were inspired and have lots of fun along the hop this week!

Enabler's List
Stamps: Living on Coffee (Verve Stamps), Girl Power (Sweet 'N Sassy Stamps)
Paper: dp (BoBunny), black, smooth bristol (Canson)
Ink: intense black (Hero Arts), clean color real brush markers (Zig Kuretake), wink of stella clear glitter pen, white gel pen
Accessories: Lacey Trim Duo Die Set (A Cut aBove by VERVE), stitched rectangles, stitched circles (MFT) morning dew drops (Nuvo)

Blessed by Your Love

Hi friends! I'm popping in to share another card I made for the May Diva Inspirations challenge. For this one, I coated a piece of heavy white cardstock with gesso. Next I sponged on picked raspberry, worn lipstick and seedless preserves distress oxides and spritzed and dried and spritzed some more.  Then I dipped a baby wipe in some funky fuchsia paint and dabbed on, repeating until I got the depth I wanted.

The sentiment and flower are printed from the Favorite Mom DIGITAL Set and I colored the flowers and leaves with Cipics, then fussy cut and added some white gel pen accents.  I framed the sentiment with a doily die cut, then added both of the die cuts from the Lacey Trim Duo die set to the bottom to tie it all together.

I had some heavy cardstock scraps I wanted to use up from 12 x 12 paper I had cut down to 8.5 x 11, so the finished card measures 3.5 x 5.5". I love this size, as it still fits in a regular A2 envelope.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you have a wonderfully creative weekend. And if you're celebrating Mother's Day, I hope you have a fabulous time with your loved ones. Yesterday was Muffins for Mom in both of my boys' classrooms. Kellan had so much fun giving me lessons on some of his favorite practical life work items... chair washing, coffee grinding (a VERY important skill to have), liquid pouring, and baby washing!  Unfortunately, the baby sat on the table with the mess from the coffee grinding while Kellan was preparing the bath, so it was DEFINITELY in need of a good cleaning! Haha.

Trevor's favorite thing to do is play sports and luckily his teacher strongly believes that any sugary treat like muffins or cookies should be followed by a good long outside recess. Smart woman! So Trevor was over the moon excited to get to play basketball with me. He and his buddy won 80 something to my measly 52 points. Somehow their baskets all counted as 3 pointers and mine were just 2 pointers! LOL

Enabler's List
Stamps: Favorite Mom DIGITAL Set (Verve - now from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps)
Paper: white
Ink: laser printer, copic markers, picked raspberry, worn lipstick and seedless preserves distress inks, funky fuchsia dylusions paint (Ranger), white gel pen
Accessories: Lacey Trim Duo die set (A Cut Above by VERVE), stitched circle die (MFT), doily die (Lifestyle Crafts), corner rounder, gesso

Lifted Spirits Viva la Verve

Hi friends! It's the first Fri-yay of a new month and that means it's time for me to host a new sketch challenge over at Viva la Verve! This week's sketch has lots of layers, but you can dress it up or dress it down as you like. I hope you can play along with us! I love seeing the linky fill up with so many lovely cards to take a peek at throughout the month.

My sample card is also a sneaky peek at a new set we'll be releasing on April 10th. Our new release spotlight blog hops start tomorrow (4/7), so be sure to tune in for a chance to win some shiny new Verve! And for some early peeks, click on over today to the Viva la Verve blog to see a bunch of sneaky peek samples from the Divas using the April VLV sketch.

For my card, I started with the butterfly from the new Hope Lifts stamp set. It's similar, but a bit larger than the butterfly in our previously released Sparkly Dreams set (which was briefly retired due to a lost artwork file, but I'm happy to say the lost has been found and it's back among our offerings!). I embossed the butterfly in white once on white cardstock and once on vellum. Next I colored with watercolor pencils and blended with a wink of stella pen.  Then I cut the white cardstock butterfly out with the coordinating Lifted Hope Die Set. The vellum butterfly was cut with the butterfly die that has no antennae from the Butterfly Dreams Die Set. The image in Hope Lifts is larger than this previously released die, so it cuts off parts of the stamped image, but it makes for a perfect layered dimension to this image. I then cut the antennae from the same Butterfly Dreams die set out of smoky slate and then layered together with some grey pearls.

Next I worked on the sentiment panel, using a cereal box stencil I made with a smaller circle die to mask off a circle die cut and then do a watercolor wash with some Prima color bloom spray.  Once this was dry, I embossed the sentiment from Hope Lifts in white over the watercolor.  This is matted on a big pinking circle from so saffron. I liked how this gave the look of a sun, so added some embossed clouds to the background panel, then some embossed stripes for the rounded square panel.

The vertical panel is embossed with polka dots, then I used the same spray ink for the background and added on a new border die from the Lacey Trim Duo die set.

Alright, there you have it! Thanks so much for stopping by today! It's sure to be a busy weekend for me with daily blog hops and the boys' first ever flag football practice and game on Saturday. They're totally pumped for it, though. I'm just praying for no injuries! {grin}

Enabler's List
Stamps: Hope Lifts (Verve Stamps)
Paper: smoky slate, so saffron (SU!), white (Neenah), vellum
Ink: dragonfly blue color bloom spray, Scenic Route watercolor pencils (Prima), wink of stella glitter pen, versamark
Accessories: Lifted Hope Die Set, Butterfly Dreams Die Set, Lacey Trim Duo Die Set (A Cut Above by VERVE), clouds, stripe and polka dot embossing folders, pinking circles, classic circles nestabilities (Spellbinders), corner rounder, pearls