Thinking of You Yellow Roses

Good Morning, and thanks for joining me.

Please help me welcome a new follower, Darlene of Dar's Crafty Creations. We met over at the Snippets Playground and do give yourself a treat by checking out her wonderful cards. Additionally, if you've joined recently as a follower, and I didn't give you a welcome here on a blog post, please do contact me via a comment. I would like to add all of my new followers to the data base that I will soon be using to gift some blog candy. If I don't know you are following, then I can't include you in the count, and we surely wouldn't want that!!! 

Today's card has been received by the recipient, so thought I'd share it with my sweet blogging buddies. Here goes:

This is an old wooden stamp and one that I used a lot when I was learning to shade with copics. I still have a difficult time leaving 'white space' on an image, and apparently my eye doesn't like to see strong contrast. (which is what makes an image appear much more dimensional..I tend to color in a more subtle fashion. Then have to look at what I've done, try to go back and do some darker shading. Sometimes it works, sometimes not!). This is one of my favorite rose images though.

- S/B beaded oval to cut the image, a light Distress Ink green for the outer shading.

- Elizabeth Craft die sentiment - cut several layers for dimension, with the top layer being cut from a snippet of glitter gold.

SU embossing border on each side, and some pretty lace for the top trim.

Hope you like this one. Have a super nice day. Warm hugs & thanks for popping in.

Christmas Card Club - Challenge #2 - The Real Reason for the Season

Happy Sunshine Sunday. We've had 3 glorious days of beautiful sunshine with temperatures hovering near 60F. So thankful to have this kind of lovely weather after all the gloomy gray days last week.

Today is 2015's Challenge #2 at our Christmas Card Club. Our challenge theme of The Real Reason for the Season, was chosen by our dear Christine.  We had received a very pretty Nativity card some years ago. When I saw this week's theme, I knew exactly the card to recycle for this challenge. The card had quite a glossy finish, so was a bit hard to photograph. Each photo had reflective glare under the lights. Here goes with the best of the lot:

- S/Binders Majestic Labels 25 die cut the aperture from the white card base.

- Sizzix EF (657981) Holiday Frame was inked with Delicata Gold and embossed. (the gold doesn't show in the photo, but is quite pretty IRL).

- trimmed motif from a recycled card front, used 1/8" Scor-tape to adhere to card base. Fussy cut the star from the motif and glued on the outer portion of the card base.

- MB Blooming Poinsettia Die (small one) to create the flowers. (a portion of the recycled card's sentiment showed. In order to get the main motif visible in the aperture, only the top half of the sentiment was displayed. Die cut 5 sets of poinsettias from a white snippet, colored with copics to compliment the red & gold image. Placed the flowers to obscure the visible bits of the sentiment).

Left the poinsettias flat, keeping in mind extra postage required for next year's mailing. A seasonal sentiment will only be placed on the inside verse.

Hope you will check out the other Christmas Card Club members' ideas on this theme. Each member's blog is listed on the right hand side bar.

Thanks for joining me today, and have a super wonderful Sunday. Big Hugs to all.

It's also Week 160 over at the Snippets Playground, and this card does have some snippets, so off I go to see Little Parsnip! C'mon with me, won't you???

DeeDee's Digis - Happy Brrrr Day

HiYa! Hope this evening finds all my sweet friends doing swell. I am happy to say I have a new follower, the number of faces went to 298. However, I can't determine just who it is, & I would be so happy if whomever just signed on, would leave a comment as to your name & blog link - if you have a blog. I try to add all the 'faces' to my spreadsheet to be counted when doing Blog Candy - which is getting closer, folks!

Today is a card I enjoyed making and it has NBUS & snippets - YAY! I've been trying so hard to get a chance to play at Darnell's first NBUS challenge for 2015. Additionally there was a really cute DeeDee's Digi image that I wanted to use for a specific birthday card (it will be going to New England - where the temps have certainly been Brrrrr!). Here goes:

 

 

Fussy cut Happy Brrr-Day (non European version), did a bit of shading, some WoS on the metal of the skates.

 

NBUS items: S/B Decagon die cut out the 140# water color paper. Spritzed the die with some pearlized spray, a scant spray of water and {gulp} sprinkled 2 colors of my Brusho crystals that I got last October. Today I had a nice email from my friend Pixie {Miss, or Diane--she has a lot of aliases!} with a tip about using the Brusho-s. I confess I've been quite intimidated by them, have watched lots of videos. Pixie's email was just the spur I needed to get brave, thinking this could be my NBUS, & would make a nice background for this sweet little girl skater. It did, and I was fascinated watching the bits of color spread on the wet background. I wasn't certain at first if I had used too much water to wet the paper. Used Cobalt & Prussian blue to sprinkle one at a time. Had the Purple out, but decided to not use it.

 

- NBUS - Avery Elle Custom Panels Die - curved hill (this set has some angle dies in it too). Used a white snippet to die cut, covered the snippet with SnS brushable glue, and sprinkled some SnS Twinkling Clouds over & let it dry. Adhered to the decagon shape, tucking the snippets of glittering trees in behind this snowy layer. (IO Treescape - DIE027-P - which I think is also a NBUS, as I can't remember using it before)

 

Then realized the scene would look better if some more snow was added at the bottom (gosh, I hated to cover up the Brusho background though!), so tore another white snippet, got the Decagon back out, and cut that to fit what I wanted to cover up. Repeated the glue & Twinkling Clouds. Let me just say this product makes THE best snow! For a couple places where I didn't have good glue coverage, I added in some Crystal Stickles.

 

- Sentiment is from the Happy Brr Day set, printed & changed the font color to blue, smooshed the handcut fishtail through some blue ink, added some more stickles over the letters using my finger.

 

- the mesh texture silver card front was embossed with a Snowflake die. Another sentiment from the digi set will be used inside.

  

This one will be linked to Darnell's 2015 NBUS Challenge and also over at the Snippet's Playground Week 159. It also is a part of my DeeDee's Digis Design Team commitment, and was a fun card to make. The final result was not what I planned, it sort of evolved, with the plan to use this particular digi, and experiment with the Brusho products. It was fun!

 

Hope you'll check DeeDee's Digis Shop and perhaps join in the current challenge that is open until February 1. There is a delightful free digi this month called Ice Fishing. This cute set could be used for many different occasions..so don't miss out.

 

Ya'll stay warm, and come again when you have time. Big Hugs. God Bless.

 

DeeDee's Digis - From the Heart

Good Afternoon from drizzly, gray & damp South Carolina. First order of business is to welcome some lovely new followers:

Tiziana Biagioli of Sweet and Colored

Viv of Viv's Visuals

Barbara C of BJ Crafty 

NanaConnie of Grammy's Attic 

Kath B of Handmade by Kath

Margaret M of Em's Paperdaze 

Janis of Her Peaceful Garden

 Oh my goodness, do I love having new friends to get to know, and thanks so much to all of you for becoming followers here.
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The latest goal of 300 followers is drawing near. I'm excited enough to share a picture of the Blog Candy that will be going out when that face pops into the Followers list with 300 above it!  If you should follow via Bloglovin, but are not in the 'Followers List' at the top of the blog, please do join there as well. I don't have a way (er...know how ...) to track Bloglovin followers. When new faces appear, that follower's name and blog(if I can find one)  is added to my data base and that's what is used for the Random Generator when Blog Candy is given away.

 

Win requirements will be: (1)regular follower of this blog** (2) Share the Candy picture on your own blog with a link back to this blog (3)There will be 3 winners when the Random drawing is done and announcement will be made when this is to be done.

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In the Cards by Friends section, shared some more of the wonderful Christmas cards we were blessed to receive this past Christmas; please do take a few minutes to enjoy those too.

Today's card uses a DeeDee's Digi image - From the Heart (currently on sale for $1.00). Papers, sentiment and image are all from this set. I think it made a cute (and Easy!) Valentine card. There's so much more that could be done with the set, but I just wanted to get a fast card made to do a post. DeeDee's has a new DT member, Faith Anderson of Daffodil Cards, and Faith does some awesome work in Photo Shop using these digis. The beauty of these designs (at least in my opinion) is that you can jazz them up as desired, or use as is, and still have a delightful card.

 

 

- Image fussy cut, and portions of a 2nd image were used to add a little dimension. Minimal shading on the chocolate heart done with copics. Glossy accents added on the bow in Bunny's hair.

 

- S/B Oval Bliss cut the oval mat, Large Petite Scalloped Oval for the sentiment, and MS heart punch did the border. Two little punchout hearts had a drop of G.Accents added. That's it...card is DONE and ready for mailing. Couldn't have been easier.

 

Thanks for visitin' this afternoon, and please do pop round to my new friends - say a big Howdy, and let them know I sent you if you would. Additionally, check out the pretty cards being added to the Friends' Cards section. The Blog Candy will be in the sidebar shortly. I hope it will make you drool a bit!! Big Hugs, stay warm. God Bless.

**Please don't become a follower just to be eligible for the Blog Candy. I hope all of my followers enjoy what I post, and come to visit as their time permits. Thank you.