Archive for the ‘Cards’ Category

My Wordpress blog got a virus last July and I spent two months working with my then hosting provider to resolve the situation. They finally washed their hands of the situation and said I needed to get help from the Wordpress forum. Well that did not go anywhere either. So, my blog sat stagnant for the fourth quarter of 2009 while I mustered the energy to rebuild.

From September through December I was working on a contract basis doing strategic marketing for GoAnyware which left me with very little spare time. They are giving me a break in January and I expect it to pick back up in February. So, I decided January would be the month to rebuild my blog (post by post and picture by picture…ugh) and launch my website. I’ll also go ahead and backdate some posts with work I shared on Facebook during my technical difficulties.

I used a great little application called “Artisteer” to create my Wordpress theme. It was very easy. I’d highly recommend it.

I also decided to try using Joomla for my main site. Call me brave or call me naive. It has been a bit more challenging so if you go to my main domain (please don’t) then you will see a mess right now. I’ll be getting back to that next. I might even get started this afternoon!

I’m thrilled to be able to get back to blogging in 2010….Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our house to yours…these are just mailing today!

The kit is a collaboration between Catherine Designs and Bisontine.

I’ve got “digi” on the brain and so naturally I turned to my computer stash to make my husband’s Father’s Day card. I am hoping to get my fingers a little dirty with some paints and distress inks soon though!

He really liked all three cards we made him. I may just have to photograph the other two as well! Danielle kind out-did me on bolstering Neal’s ego, she wrote that she liked his “musls” (translate muscles) and lifting “wayts” (weights) with him.

My husband is a man of many talents, and I wanted him to know that I appreciate everything he does for us girls and our house!

Product Credits:

Castle/grass/ladder/frame/orange wood heart/stacked boxes-New Life Dreams (NLD), heart 1/heart2/heart3-On designs, paper-Holly Designs, stitching-Christina Renee, tiny heart-MK Designs, alpha1-JBullock, alpha2 Tracy Ann (TADA)

My daughter’s Kindergarten class is called the “Giraffes.” Their mascot is George the Giraffe. Last fall they all took turns being the “Star Student”, and got to take him home for the weekend. We had a great time with George, and this year with her teacher.

This is Teacher Appreciation week and today they were supposed to take a flower with a Thank-You card. I suppose I should have let her make a card, but I forgot about it until after her bedtime! So, I stayed up until 1:00 working on it, and then she forgot to put it in her backpack after proudly carrying it around all morning!

It was too cute not to share.

The giraffe painting is from a very old book. A couple of months ago I found it on a website where people shared art that is now copyright free. I didn’t know what I’d do with it at the time but I figured I would make something for Mrs. Green before the year was over.

The picture on the front of the card was taken on Easter. I loved the way the wind caught her hair, and figured it was a cute picture for Mrs. Green to remember our favorite Kindergartner by!

I created it digitally in Photoshop CS3 with materials from the following:

• White and Brown “Kraft” Papers: Amanda Rockwell
• Watercolor landscape paper, heart, and roses: Tracy Ann Graphics
• Pink photo wraps: Katie Pertiet
• Starry sky bling: Christina Renee
• Star frame: Ruth Davis
• Flourish: Rhonna Farrer
• Frame mask: Lynn Grieveson

I printed the front side on a piece of white card stock and ran the paper back through to print the back. The tricky part is positioning the 5 x 7 card on an 8.5 x 11 canvas in Photoshop and then turning the paper the correct way while printing the second side!

The suburb that I live in has a wonderful herb festival every spring and last year I bought this pretty handmade paper with flower seeds embedded in it. I had intended to make my mom and MIL Mother’s Day cards but forgot I had it! So, I made my MIL a card with it for her birthday.

She liked it so much that she brought it to work to show it off! So, if you have a “green” mom or friend you might want to look into this paper! Here are some sites I found with similar paper:

• http://www.custompaper.com/paper.html
• http://www.greenfieldpaper.com/asccustompages/products.asp?categoryid=11
• http://www.botanicalpaperworks.com/category/Plantable+Seed+Paper+and+Envelopes/7/

If I remember correctly this paper will grow sunflowers! I designed the card so that she could keep the front intact and just plant the inside panel. The flowers on the front of the card are from Tim Holtz’s grungeboard collection. I had a lot of fun with his paints and distress inks while making this card, I just stayed loose and messy. The chipboard tag was painted with his crackle paint and then distressed with a variety of products. But, the birthday sentiment is not showing up too well in this photo! Thanks to Neal for coming up with the creative inside verse!

A couple of weeks ago I was headed to the library with my 3 year old thinking about what stamp I wanted to do next and I thought about doing a penguin with a heart snowman. When I got there a children’s nature magazine jumped off the shelf at me because of the penguin feature. When I flipped to the article there was a penguin in this pose and I thought, there THAT is my next stamp.

So I borrowed a pencil from the librarian and sketched his pose then re-drew it with my Wacom tablet later when my daughter was napping. Ephesians 3:8 immediately came to mind as the perfect verse. I think this stamp would be great for Valentines day, Easter, encouragement, or a simple I love you.

The blue snow and brown hounds-tooth papers are Basic Grey and the white embossed swirly paper was sold by the sheet at Michaels. I bought it for my Hawaii album and will have to go grab a few more sheets.

Coloring this stamp was more of a challenge for me than drawing it! Black and white subjects like Penguins and snow are not the easiest thing to master. I printed the stamp 4 up and played with each element until I achieved a look I was happy with then brought it all together in the final illustration. I used Copics and only have one “000? color, so everything was too saturated and too hard to blend out to white. So, I used a technique I learned from Marianne in my Copic certification class. I have a water brush filled with Copic’s blending solution and I used sort of a water color technique, blending my colors on a Ranger craft mat. This is how I did the hearts, wind, sky, rocks and snow.

For the penguin I used all 5 grey markers. On the wings I “flicked” feather like strokes starting with the lightest grey and working my way up going darker as I went. Then I colored black onto my Ranger mat and used the blender solution water brush to dilute it. I was pleased with the feathery edge that it produced as long as I kept my brush as dry as possible while still loaded with color.

The wind is accented with Adirondack Pearl paint and I swirled stickles on the heart snowman. Finally, I distressed the edge of all the layers with Tim Holtz’s Old Paper Distress Ink. Then I used his Black soot on the very edges so that the black from the drawing was carried through.

This is a continuation of my Song of Solomon Valentines digital stamp creations. There are three now, so I guess I can call it a “digital stamp set.” While I was drawing the Trapeze artists I was not sure what verse I would use, but when I read Song of Solomon 3:4 I knew it was meant to be!

I wanted the card to have an antiqued and distressed feel and chose a subdued and earthy palette of Copic markers. I made every attempt to make it as masculine as possible. After distressing the artwork with Tim Hotz’s “Old Paper” ink I inked the edge with “Walnut Stain” and then applied Walnut Stain Distress Stickles! Wow, what a fun way to add bling in a manly fashion!

Deciding on an embellishment to add some dimension was a little more challenging. My husband suggested that I restrain myself from the urge to add flowers when I was showing him some Grungeboard flowers. So I settled on Grungeboard initials. Cricut users can get the same effect by cutting letters out of chipboard. I painted the “n” and “h” with Antique Bronze Distress Crackle Paint. After it dried I stamped a zebra pattern on the letters with Fired Brick Distress Crackle paint. I like that it sort of looks like flames. The ampersand was painted with Tarnished Brass Distress Crackle Paint then I stamped it with a Cheetah pattern. After distressing the letters with Walnut Stain I applied Scattered Straw Distress Stickles to the ampersand.

I think the animal prints tied very nicely with the Circus themed illustration. I was striving for a sensually romantic feel in the illustration and was happy to achieve sort of an underlying “wild at heart” theme for the musclebound lover.

The striped paper is from Creative Memories 2007 Limited Edition Valentines kit. It has a beautiful distessed brown pallet accented by peach, mauve and white. Read on if you’d like to win this paper kit.

I’d like to see how some other people would use this digital stamp in a Valentines (or other romantic) card. So, I decided to host an impromptu single event design team. If you like this design and would like to be considered for participation then leave me a comment. I will pick up to 5 people, who respond here or to my message on the Cricut board, to be on my special Valentines event team.

You will have 5 days to design a card and post it on your blog with a link back to my site mentioning the contest.

TERMS:

1. You can use the digital stamp to make your own cards as long as it is not for commercial gain
2. And you cannot enter anything using my pre-release stamp design into another contest or publication.
3. You will not email it or make it otherwise electronically available to anyone else.
4. You must have a blog to participate.
5. If you post your card on a messageboard you must link back to my blog and mention the contest.
6. I will have the right to use your card design in the event I decide to promote my stamp commercially, linking to your blog as the card designer.

The chosen 5 will “win” my first pre-release stamp. And one of the 5 will be selected as the winner of my contest. The winner will receive the beautiful special edition Creative Memories Valentines 8?  kit and very cute set of acrylic valentines stamps. I will be getting my friends and family to give me input on who to choose.

PLUS, I will pick a winner from the volunteers to receive a second set of valentines stamps. So everyone who expresses interest has a chance to win a prize, even if you are not chosen for the design team.

Thanks to those who have already expressed interest, I’m hoping to get a little more awareness now that I’ve created my own version of the card. I plan to pick the team late Monday.

With Valentines day around the corner I’m kind of on a heart kick with one more idea sketched. Like the first one, this is inspired by a Song of Solomon verse. Knowing a little about the Bible’s “love chapter” I’m interpreting this verse as being about “getting in the mood.”   

My illustration goes along with the literal meaning of the verse with a heart sunset symbolising the passionate mood.

We just drove through the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas and I took several pictures of windmills, one of which I used for this sketch. My landscape is colored to look like the desert foothills as you enter New Mexico. But, it could just as easily be colored in greens with grassy terrain. I thought the red dirt look would lend itself well to a masculine card.

I distressed the torn edges of my artwork with “old paper” Distress Ink by Tim Holtz and the rest was distressed with “walnut stain.” Then I liberally spread his antique linen Distress Stickles around the edges. I think the distress stickles were a great choice for the masculine look I was after.

The flowers are cream Primas which I colored with Copics to match the illustration. I used Glossy Accents to adhere buttons to the center and set them off with a felt leaf.

Keep your eye out for the next installment of my valentines digital stamps, hopefully by the end of the weekend.

This is the first of (hopefully) a few digital stamps I’m making for Valentines day. As you may know, Song of Solomon is a love story and it is full of allegories. Think of this verse as a description of the passion between King Solomon and his new bride. I’ll let your imagination take it from there.

I added a little whimsy with the turtle shell in place of the wing and the fun girlish font.

It was stamped in Photoshop on a digital distressed white “paper” and then printed out on cardstock. I then colored it with Copics.

Next I cut a frame with my Cricut, using a design from Stretch Your Imagination. I used Coredinations cardstock, distressed it, then backed it with a Basic Grey distressed white (which matches the digital paper in the illustration.)

I would love to hear feedback on my first digital stamp design!

For my IRL (In Real Life) friends that have already sent us Christmas cards….we are LOVING seeing new pictures of your family and hearing what you’ve been up to in 2008. Ours has not been sent yet because we wanted to have a professional photo taken on the slopes at Angel Fire. We went with Neal’s whole family this past week and drove home on Christmas Eve.

I ended up using a photo taken with my camera because it was just too far for me to drag an uncooperative Raeleigh and for Danielle and Neal to walk in their snow boots. Thanks to Brandy for getting Raeleigh to smile, this was the best shot we could manage. I’m sure those who have been through the three year old stage can relate!

The paper and design elements are mostly from Designer Digitals, except for the tag which is from Two Peas in a Bucket. The green polka dot paper was a freebie at Designer Digitals.

• Festive Song Solids Paperie
• Posted Santa Postage Stamps
• Crystalized Postage Frames
• Postmarked Holidays Brushes and Stamps No. 02
• Chance of Flurries: Glittered
• Glitter Thread Stitches No. 02
• Tia Bennet Holiday Journalling (tag)

I really enjoyed digitally designing our card this year! It was all done in Photoshop. It was nice to not be limited to the designs that Moto Photo had to choose from. I actually designed our card in 2005 when Raeleigh was born because Moto Photo didn’t have a “Pink Christmas” birth announcement/Christmas combo. But I didn’t know about the whole world of online digital scrapbook shopping and scanned in my paper choices! This was much easier!

Kudos to those of you that actually handcraft your cards! I’d never finish that many of them and am happy to be sending these off to WalMart to be printed today!

Oh, and by the way, in case you didn’t know it, Santa snowboards and Mrs. Claus skis! Danielle met Santa while she was skiing, he gave her a candy cane!

I had seen the keys in Tim Holtz’s Idea-ology collection but didn’t realize they were about to be such a trendy embellishment! With Valentines day just around the corner the opportunity to use keys are endless. This month’s issue of Paper Crafts magazine has a ton of really cute ideas to get your juices flowing! I love the idea of combining the “travel” concept with a “love” theme.

I found this quotes/poems site and tweaked a couple of their verses just a little to get you thinking:

You’re a very special person
Always destined to go far
I hope your friends and family
Know how lucky they are

Or I was picturing a car with a heart peeking out of the trunk with this verse which could also work for a male birthday. Just hang your key embellishment from a bow.

My heart has travelled to be with you
May all that is good come your way
On this very special day

Cornish Heritage farms has some fabulous old car stamps and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this set of “Chevy Font” sentiments:

Cricut has a great old fashioned key on Happily Ever After and car keys on Going Places and Locker Talk. If you don’t have those cartridges the Paper Crafts article lists 6 to 8 products from various manufacturers including Bazzill, Prima, and 7 Gypsies.

Think about opening doors to someone’s future (graduation) or a house warming card. Or, for an encouraging inspirational card use a key with “FAITH” word art.

Who knew how versitile a key could be?!