Hero Arts Velveteen Florals

Good afternoon...hope it's as pretty where you are this afternoon as 'tis here in Upstate SC. Back from running a few errands, having some lunch. Just got a call from some fella who's supposed to fix the bathroom floor...he's on his way. YAY!

Recently a blog buddy (Donna of Creative Smiles) had a post with a request for cheering cards for her BIL who is battling brain cancer. He's now under Hospice care, and it would be awfully wonderful for anyone who feels they could send a little cheer for Jerry & his family just now. If you'll check on Donna's Blog, there is a contact form. If you let Donna know that you're willing to send along a card, she'll provide you with the snail addy info. I know how generous bloggers are, so if you feel able to send an uplifting card, that would be so generous. Donna has the specifics of what should be on the card...so please read her post. I thank you. Donna thanks you too!

Here's one that we just put in the mail:

Some years ago, I had seen a card done with a "Velveteen technique"; did one myself, but didn't remember per'zackly how it was done. Sunday afternoon I spotted a link to the blogger** whom I remembered having done the card, then spent most of the afternoon browsing her posts to find it.

**EDIT: Went back and searched up the link- if you read the post, see her card, Sue (Sue's Inky Fingers) has a link to a video showing how to do this technique.

{Even if you don't try this technique, enjoy browsing Sue's Inky Fingers blog..some fab inspiration there.}

Basically what you do: stamp the first layer with a good quality coverage white ink & let it dry well (used Hero Arts Unicorn white). Then you stamp other colors over the top of this white layer, and although you can't really see the effect in the  photo, it's quite pretty (yes, it looks like velveteen!)

- Hero Arts Luscious Floral Background (cling) inked and stamped with Unicorn white. Allowed to dry well.

- unmarked wooden floral (probably $1 Michael's stamp) inked and stamped with HA Tidal Pool shadow ink.

- other flowers from clear floral sets inked with HArts shadow inks (this shadow ink gives a softer look without stamping off). Used HA ombre ink in blues to ink & stamp a butterfly from Wplus9 Flora & Fauna 1. Finished off with an HLS Butterfly Birthday sentiment stamped in HA Wet Cement. Did not trim the cardfront to add a border or anything else. I liked it just as it is.

On the inside, stamped the butterfly again on one side, with a simple verse on the opposite side. I hope Jerry will enjoy this.

Thanks so much for buzzing by for an afternoon visit. Big hugs.

Thinking of You - with Flowers

Good evening. Happy to report that DH is safely back in the house again, after a nice time away. Said it was very productive, with lots of projects started & finished, and some fun times going to big flea markets, estate sales, eating some yummy New England foods. Not great news to report on the bathroom project: what little that had been done, had to come out. (floor pan had been installed - then the greenboard drywall, and marble folks had shown up to replace the walls). I noticed something that I questioned. Contractor said "can work with this". Repeated what he said to the marble fellas who were to install the walls, and they started shaking their heads "No you can't do it that way". So after a conversation with all concerned parties...decision was made to remove what had been done, do the floor in that area first - so things will fit. Not happy at all, BUT glad that it was caught before walls had to be removed again..

DH asked me to do a card for a family bereavement for the folks in New England, so here's today's card.

 

 

- Hero Arts You're So Lovely clear stamp set - inked with HA ombre inks, and Memento inks. Stamped foliage using the Mini Misti. Flowers cut out, applied with dimensional tape. (didn't want to bother with masking, so that's why the flowers were just hand cut).

 

- upper corner was an old Stampscape branch inked with Memento greens.

 

- HLS Thinking of You stamped with Memento Northern Pine ink, using the Mini Misti 

 

- purchased card base stamped with IO Cover a Card Diagonal Lines, inked with Memento green.

 

Card is in the mail...pretty easy to stamp and assemble. I LIKE easy.

 

Thanks for joining me this afternoon. Hope your weekend has been great. Quiet around here, but nice to have things somewhat back to normal. Hugs & Blessings.

 

HLS Christmas Challenge - June - Twine

Welcome to the June HLS Christmas Challenge, and this month our challenge theme is:

Our Sponsor is Happy Little Stampers:

 

Recently had a play with a NBUS SU Woodland EF after being inspired by its use on many blogs and Pinterest. Used several different inks in the process, and it's amazing what different looks can be created. There's an earlier post, using a tan cardstock which turned out nicely, but here are 2 cards made for the HLS Christmas Twine challenge.

 

 

 

- SU Woodland Texture EF inked with Memento Sky Blue. Added some gray shading on the trees using a dauber. This was the 2nd effort, after inking the trees at first, then realizing it's the background that is meant to be inked. It looks good to me, done either way, just depends on the look you're going for.

 

- MBox birds cut from white snippet, then colored with copic reds, Black spica pen to create the birds' masks, with Orange Spica for the beaks.

 

- HLS Mixed Christmas Sentiments  stamped with Memento Love Bug red, heat embossed with Rangers Clear EP. Hand cut the fish tail tag. Added some bakers twine, red mat and called it done.

 

Actually this was the first effort at embossing the Woodland folder, and I inked up the trees using Hero Arts Unicorn Pigment ink instead of the background. The c/s is a mottled pale blue gray - very old stash. It's not showing well in the photo since there is less contrast because of the lighter c/s. IRL, this looks very much like heavy snow flurries among a grove of these trees. The cardinals stand out beautifully if they are about in such weather. Added some SnS Twinkling Clouds over all this, to create some dimensional & sparkling snow flakes, ---again, it's not showing well in the photo.

 

MBox birds die cut from a white snippet, colored with red copics, Black spica.

 

- HLS Mixed Christmas Sentiments stamped with Memento Nautical Blue ink, then heat embossed with a Silver Pearl EP, which created some shimmer over the ink. Punched with an EK Success punch, edged with the Nautical blue, then added clear rhinestones. 

 

- Recollections dark gray mat, over a SU Marina Mist mat, adhered to white card base. Blue Twine, and done!

 

 

 

- Green & yellow Brusho crystals sprinkled on dry w/c weight cardstock. Sprayed with Dylusions in green & yellow. Let the blooming and puddling take effect, used a Ranger Spritzer tool to move some of the puddles. Then dropped some Colorburst Gold Metallic (this is a liquid) in spots, dragged that around with a paintbrush. After drying, used a Jenny Bowlin leaf stencil and Gold BoBunny Glitter embossing paste to create some bling.  Let this dry overnight, then die cut with a S/B Astoria Die.

 

- JRL Design old wooden Feather Christmas tree image - colored with copics. Stamped the base of the tree on pattern paper that looks like burlap, and paper pieced that portion. Stars punched from glitter paper. Die cut with a S/B deckled rectangle, DI Antique linen to distress the edges, creating a white border. A matching size S/B long rectangle traced to create the faux mat from green snippet, inked edges with Memento Northern Pine to create a darker green for more contrast. .

 

Added some gold & natural bakers twine, used HLS Mixed Christmas Sentiments  heat embossed with Ranger Detail Gold - stamped over another background created using the 'mop up' from the brusho-o and Dylusions sprays. Edged with Northern Pine. Adhered to a purchased kraft card base. 

 

 

 

 

- MBox Trees Trio sponged with SU Suede, then smudged with Hero Arts Unicorn White (pigment ink). A 2nd layer of white was added behind the first layer, offset slightly. This was popped up with dimensional foam once the gold-natural twine was added.

 

- background created with SU Suede, Unicorn White, them embossed with a snowflake EF, which had been inked with the Unicorn white.

 

- Martha Stewart punched branches (from the snippets stash), Fiskars punch for the red bow, which started as a tiny white snippet.

 

- Paper Studio copper tape (found on 50% sale recently), then Wplus9 die sentiment from green paper snippet, colored with copics to darken the green. Backed with a white cardstock layer from a small snippet. This was one of the easiest cards I think I've done...and the idea came from a card I'd seen on Pinterest. 

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This will be my last post on the HLS Christmas Design Team for now. It was such a pleasure to be on the team, with lots of extremely talented crafters, and I'm grateful to Kylie for giving me this opportunity. Many thanks, Kylie. We have things going on just now at home and within the family, that necessitated my stepping away from this fun team. Pssst... you might want to check out the DT call that is open. While you're there, do please see what my fellow HLS Christmas team mates have shared to inspire you, and perhaps add your own linkup using something with twine. You could win a nice prize!!!

 

PLEASE REMEMBER YOU DO NOT HAVE TO USE HLS STAMPS TO ENTER OUR CHALLENGES

 

As always, thanks for stopping in and come again when you can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A is for Apricot & Aperture Butterfly Challenge

Hello & welcome on a lovely sunny Wednesday. I hope that all who celebrated this past weekend as a holiday, had a safe & wonderful time.  DH has been visiting in New England with our best buddy, and is on his way home. They got many projects done & had some fun visiting estate sales, and the famous Brimfield Flea Market. Since someone had to be here to wait on worker folks, I stayed put. For all that's gotten accomplished, I could just as well have gone along. Oh well.

Mrs. A's Butterfly Challenge this time around has the theme of A is for Apricot & Aperture. Since I was a lucky winner of a pretty butterfly die recently, I wanted to be sure to join in with this one. I really struggled with Apricot though! I'd think I had an apricot color and then when I'd really look at it in different lights, was either too orangey or too pinky. Finally decided to try my hand at creating apricot. Did some sponging with some Distress Inks using Iced Lemonade, Abandoned Coral, Spiced Marmalade. Looked ok at first, then it appeared too orange the next time I looked at it. Bought some small Prima paper packs (on sale of course!) that had what looked 'apricot' to my eyes- at first. My final try was to use Koi watercolors and do a wash with a pale orange, with lots of water.

Now my first card was going pretty good...I was pleased with the aperture effect, had the butterfly ready to go, had used Mrs. A's butterfly die cut. Then when the right edge needed to be trimmed just a smidge, disaster struck.

 

 

where the tiny butterflies are placed - the narrow edge of the card tore as I was even-ing up that edge. There's a good amount of adhesive in the layers (the base card, the image in the aperture, the gold frame and the top frame- and it was quite a narrow edge between the cutout & card edge. Yikes, as the rotary blade was cutting, it was shredding & tearing. (Blade had a build up of adhesive from other cuts, which I cleaned after this happened). What to do? Still had all the little bits of the butterflies from the bottom trim, so started adding them at strategic places. Well, it looks sort of dumb, and this card will probably never see an envelope, but there you have it.

 

Striped border is a Simon Says clear stamp, meant for Christmas candy cane stripes. Inked with Delicata Gold, heat embossed with a Silver Pearl, and I think that looks quite nice as a gold striped border! The underlayer of the larger butterflies was the one I'd created trying for apricot. Yeah, it looks way too orange-y when it dried. As I was doing it, my eyes were seeing a nice apricot. Hmph! The overlayer was from a brusho background - and up against the card front, oh my, definitely looks orange!!! The border cut out is from my recent Butterfly win...Thanks Mrs. A.

 

OK...needed to try again, so here's the final card, and I screwed up the first attempt at stamping the flowers...AND was using the mini Misti. Was beginning to think I was not meant to do an Apricot and Aperture card!

 



A created background, with a watercolor wash using Koi w/colors. While still wet, sprinkled Paper Artsy Golden Sands Infusion crystals (much like Brusho crystals). Spritzed some water, and let the piece dry.

- Avery Elle Sweet Scallops oval die cut for the aperture. SU What I Love set to create the layered flowers using Memento inks. (this was my 2nd try...first time the blues I selected were much too dark & also didn't have them placed as well as could be). Tucked in some previously punched Martha Stewart branches.

- MBox butterflies created from the earlier apricot sponging attempt. The overlay was cut with a gold holographic glitter paper. This paper has a plastic backing, which cut nicely with the new metal plate. In fact, I had 2 layers of the paper without realizing, and both layers cut very well.

Was going to leave the sentiment off, but a Brushstroke Hello die (Julie Ebersole, Essentials by Ellen) was waiting to be put in storage. Used that to diecut the greeting from the 1st messup attempt at stamping the flowers. After it was adhered, wondered if this was 'too busy'....but it is what it is, as they say!

I'm off to link up with Challenge #55 Butterflies + A is for Apricot and/or Aperture! Dang! I just realized: didn't have to do BOTH apricot and aperture! Well, I had some adventures anyway!

Thanks for joining me today, and hope that your afternoon goes great. Hugs