Birthday - Tattered Lace Gold Rose on Blue

Welcome and good afternoon. Hope that you all had a grand weekend. Ours was very quiet & mostly relaxing. Did some reading, worked on some cards...alas, no cleaning or housework (well aside from laundering sheets to change the bed. No biggie).

Recently I got some lovely Tattered Lace dies and here's a card with one die that I like very much.

- Tattered Lace Rose die which cut like a dream, even with all the intricacy. I did roll it back n forth a couple of times to be sure all the bits cut out well. Used some gold pearlized paper with a swirl pattern in it (think it is The Paper Studio brand - and from the snippet box). Tried different mat colors to see what made this gorgeous rose pop, and the royal blue glitter paper worked best. (It was a snippet left from removing the interior portion to get a mat for another card). This had been cut out with one of the S/B Card Creator dies.

- glittered black faux mat from the same S/B die that had cut the blue glitter paper.

-  background created using sprays and water coloring (Daler Rowney Pearlescent blue), but I wanted this rose to be the focal point. Decided to cut the background into 4 sections, but the rose wouldn't fit on a horizontal card, so this configuration had to be used. Used a Couture Creations vine EF to emboss the sprayed background prior to snipping apart.

-  Brilliance Galaxy Gold inked up an embossing folder and embossed smooth black c/which covers the card base with the same Couture Creations vine EF. The gold inking shows up quite nicely IRL.

- Starform gold sticker sentiment. The sticker sheet also had the tiny gold flowers so decided to add one on each of the sprayed pieces.

I'm taking this one over to the Snippet Playground for Week 144 and give my little buddy Parsnip a big hug! Won't you bring some of your snippety cards over to play along with us?  You will definitely see plenty to inspire you, and meet some very lovely Snippeteers as well. Lots of fun to be had, and some prizes too.

Thanks for joining me. Hope you've got a wonderful week ahead of you. Come again soon. Big Hugs

Sunflower Wreath

Welcome, and good afternoon.

I need to add a warning note about using the soda can metal, and will edit my last post to reflect this warning. Normally I don't sand the edges of the soda can die cuts but the edges can be sharp. On a small die cut that is adhered to the card base, I don't worry so much that the recipient will cut themselves. For the larger background on the gold/red Christmas tree,  all edges  & corners were sanded with a thick emory board just to insure safe handling by the recipient.

Now onto today's card:

- Northwoods image stamped with Memento Espresso Truffle, colored with copics, WoS. A second image was stamped to get extra flowers to be colored & popped up on the wreath. Mixed flowersoft in shades of Autumn (a mixture), Nut Brown, yellow and Gold Diamonds (very fine). Sunflowers centers are not all brown so tried to get some shading with the mixture. I'm not great with the flowersoft, & used a light hand applying this product.

- S/B scalloped circle die to cut out the image, used DI Scattered Straw around the edges.

- Impression Obsession clear sentiment stamped in the center.

- Cheery Lynn lattice die from a snippet. This was a center portion where something had been cut from opposite ends, so there was missing bits on tiny places of the lattice. The Sweet Cuts Elegant leaf flourish die (snippets) and the added sunflowers (from white c/s snippets from a punch, colored & 2 layers) cover the missing areas.

- Card base was textured cream card stock.

That's it folks. Have a wonderful Saturday afternoon and hope it's pleasant wherever you are. Thanks for joining me & big hugs.

Christmas Trees for Rudolph Day

Good afternoon & thanks for stopping to visit. Today is a Rudolph Day post. In case you don't know about this challenge, it's hosted by Sarn over at Stamping for Pleasure on the 25th of each month. The rules are very simple - just submit 2 Christmas cards. These rules are posted on a tab at the top of Sarn's blog.

First a little blah-blah. We've had to get our router replaced. Evidently someone had hacked into our home network. About 2 years ago we got a Smart tv, and spent a good deal of coins having the technician experts install the necessary electronics. In the course of adding the capabilities for Netflix, our router needed replacing as apparently there was a bad port. Eventually this new router was bypassed with a ?Ethernet connection? directly to the tv so as to get a stronger, faster streaming -  but we just discovered that there was a DNS port left enabled on the new router that should have been set to closed. We got a notification from our internet provider last week, which we couldn't really determine was for 'real'. That took a couple of days calling to finally get someone at the company to verify it was a REAL email - not a phish to get us to click on embedded links. (if you don't already know, be VERY wary of doing that).  Got our computer expert out to fix this - as I hadn't a clue. Decided we needed a newer, updated router - which is supposed to be the state of the art secure. Of course then all the wireless devices on the network had to be reconfigured. However, now I have to try to think everywhere that I've set up user ids and passwords, go reset them. Apparently keystrokes can be stolen with this type of breach. It's NOT a virus, but actually someone can take over your network. The way our provider found it (and apparently we were not the only victims)...they pinged the router when they saw lots of traffic being generated by it. So that's why I've had a low profile here lately.

OK..now let me welcome a new follower: Miss Sarah of Craft Nerd Creates.  Sarah has just recently added the Google Followers' Gadget to her blog, and would love to have you pop in to say hello and perhaps add some new faces to populate her following list. Plus she has a delicious pumpkin pie recipe on a project that you might enjoy trying. You'll enjoy scrolling through her card posts I promise!

Now onto the Rudolph cards:

 

- PB Slapstick Cling Tannenbaum image - stamped on black with Versamark, covered with gold Perfect pearls. This gold PP has a rather 'greenish' tinge to it, but it IS gold! Used red WoLuna to color the ornaments. Recolored using red Smooch. Die cut with a Grand Oval. Used a WOW embossing pen around the edges, then Ranger Queen's Gold EP was embossed. The sentiment is a Starform sticker.

 

- Background is soda can metal*, colored with alcohol inks - a rather largish snippet.  Then embossed with a Darice EF. Wasn't sure how the metal would take the embossing, but it worked well.  The downside is that since the metal was shaped into a can originally, it wants to curl. Have been sort of bending it back, but as you can see, that also affects the oval - you can see some 'cracking' on the black image. Oh well, we'll call it 'rustic'. Red bow, red rhinestone topper.

 

Edit: warning note about using the soda can metal.  Normally I don't sand the edges of the soda can die cuts but the edges can be sharp. On a small die cut that is adhered to the card base, I don't worry so much that the recipient will cut themselves. For the larger background on the gold/red Christmas tree,  all edges  & corners were sanded with a thick emory board just to insure safe handling by the recipient.

 

 

 

 

 

 - same image, dusted with Pearl perfect pearls, blue WoLuna, then covered with blue smooch. The Pearl color had a silver cast, but it's the Pearl color. Sentiment is a silver Starform sticker.

 

- background was created by using #98 Canson paper; wet slightly, spread water colors from a water color set in a pallete. After this dried, used some Daler Rowney Pearlescent blue (a new product purchased from Joggles - fast shipping too); diluted it with water on a craft mat, and spread over the first water color, let it dry. (this was a play session). Continued to add 2 more coats of the Daler Rowney Pearlescent blue to get this result. Embossed using a new 8x8 Embossalicious folders. Because of the size, the Grand Calibur had to be hauled out, videos viewed to see the sandwich requirements. This did emboss beautifully I'm happy to report.

 

- the silver ribbon has a velvety texture, and a blue rhinestone topper finished this one.

 

Ok, I'm off to link up at Rudolph Day for September 2014  and also at the Snippets Playground Week 143.  These are two of my favorite challenge places - with such lovely people to chat with, and marvelous inspiration to enjoy. I really miss these folks when I don't have the time to go visit! So please come along and have some fun with us.

 

Happy weekend, and God Bless. Hugs

 

 

Birthday - Fall Leaves

Good morning - welcome - and I hope your weekend was wonderful. We needed a birthday card fast, nothing in the stash was just what I wanted to use, & there were some gold outline stickers by Starform handy on the desk. Those leaves were the jump off for this card.

-Colored the outlines and innards with a set of pens I've had for years, forgot I had them. They were specifically marketed to color stickers, but I think they could be used for other products too. The colors are quite bright, and I combined some of them to make different shades. Tried to use a Copic gray to tone down the brightness, but the alcohol marker removed the color. Ooops.  Once colored, the outline pieces were removed and placed on black card stock. Then very tediously (especially on the acorn caps) the other bits were removed and placed in their proper places. It got a little tricky where the maple leaf covers the oak leaf, as I started placing the maple bits in first. Had to rethink, lift up some pieces, and put in the oak pieces first. I guess I could have just left those bits out, as the maple leaf would have covered. But...I couldn't do that!!! (dunno why - OCD I expect!)
Don't know what those white specs are on the black...can't see them on the card.

- corners snipped with a punch, added tiny yellow rhinestones, plus one in the center of the oaf leaf.

- copper pearl paper trimmed for the mat, then some of the Paper Studio fall motif paper to cover the top fold card base.

- sentiment is also a very old sheet of stickers. This one needs to go in the mail today!!!

Ya'll have a great day, thanks for visiting & big cyber hugs.