The Flower Challenge #60

 

Hello my friends - thanks for dropping by!

It may be generally known that I'm not a fan of the color blue - but the blue-green family is quite pleasing to my eye!  Turquoise is such a gorgeous color, it deserves to be celebrated for our 60th at The Flower Challenge!

I started by Googling turquoise, and was brought to a gorgeous photo of the actual stone in its natural state which showed the many depths of its color.  Which is what I've attempted to capture in my Copic coloring today, using a few of  the BG family of Copics.

Pinkfresh Studio: Miss Your Smile - stamped in CP Twilight ink; fussy cut

Embellished with PF Jewels

Adhered to a panel embossed with my Stampin' Up Subtle Texture

There are so many ways to use the featured color: water coloring, card stock, pencil coloring - the list is endless!  Just be sure it is a flower you're featuring on your card!  Let's go see all the beautiful examples at The Flower Challenge blog - my teammates always make such gorgeous samples!  Bonus to have a wonderful guest, Kailash!  @kailashcrafts on IG!  You won't want to miss a single one of her fabulous creations!  See you in the gallery?  

=]  Michele

Playing Cards with Friends August 2021

I am so happy to announce my playmate for August!  Lisa Elton from My Paper Tales!  You all know her gorgeous style, but she also is a wonderful friend.  We're very happy to include our friendship with our 'best guys' who have their love of photography to keep them busy when we all get together.  Which is a nice way of saying we get some crafty alone time!

It's been over a year since we've been able to share a weekend, so it's extra fun to have a little bloggy crafty time with Lisa today!

Okay - are you ready for our assignment?  If you didn't know it already, today is August 20th which is National Lemonade Day - yeah, there is a day for that!!  So with that in mind:

·         Must use Lemons, or Lemon Yellow

·         A die-cut sentiment, or tag with sentiment

·         Copic, or water coloring

Easy peasy, LEMON squeezy!   Here is how my card came to be - with a wonderful background stamp [I borrowed from another sweet friend!] from Pinkfresh Studios, and stamped with a CP Melon Ice ink to do a little no-line coloring with a gazillion Copics!  Here is a closeup so you can read that teensy sentiment strip!

My fun die-cut sentiment is from SSS, cut from a snippet of aqua card stock, and layered onto a shadow layer of vellum.

Yes, Lisa, I really do - love and miss you guys tons, but so happy that we got to Play Cards this Summer after all!

Now, I cannot wait another single second... let's go see Lisa's card!

=]  Michele

Christmas Kickstart Challenge #53

 

By now I've figured out what most inspires me to make a card: a photo inspiration!  I'm so loving all the bits of inspiration I found in Christmas Kickstart's Challenge #53 photo inspiration ... here's a closeup of it:

Right down there in the bottom right corner... that shaggy stool just called out for my Pinkfresh Studio Festive Llama!  complete with his colorful poms!  I'm so surprised they pulled this one from their product line.

I also had an impromptu play date with my friend Cat!! 

Thanks for being so willing to answer my video-call, my friend! 

As Cat and I chatted, I showed her my 'what do I do with it now?' bin of wonderful

snippets - I found this fun white-on-white heat-embossed panel!  

Kismet, I think!  It's an after-Christmas 2020 purchase from 

SSS called Outline Merry.

I'm going to get this card into the Christmas Kickstart Challenge link, and then I'm going to see if Cat has her card posted - why not come along?  Hey, and play along, too!!

=]  Michele

Pinkfresh Studio May 2021 Challenge - take two!

 

Hello my friends!  I'm seeing some wonderful cards in the Pinkfresh Studio May 2021 Challenge gallery!  One more attempt on my part couldn't hurt - my wish-list is very long!

I've used the fabulous Miss Your Smile stamps, and layering stencils once again - honestly I've used them MANY times since they arrived - this one combines the lovely colors from the PF Challenge combination again ... hope they like it!

I wanted to share a discovery - one that you may already have learned - about Distress Oxide inks.  Using an ink like Versa Clair for the outline stamping can be affected by the oxide inks, leaving them rather chalky looking ... here's a look at how I conquered the chalky look:

Before look:  after stamping with Versa Clair, and layering oxide inks:

Do you see the 'chalky' look of the outlines?  After applying TH Distress Micro Glaze ...  there's a visible difference to me!

I was then happy enough to complete my card... highlighting another of the Perfect Sentiments and that genius one-piece die, as I did with my first card, with one of the Braided Tags dies!  

OH have you heard the fabulous news???  Pinkfresh now sells their fabulous jewels in refill packs so you can pick your favorites, or refill those little jars!!  Now the next trick is finding them in stock!  Here's a link to those among my favorites!  I love the kraft stamping and layering with these colors - do you?

Thanks for dropping by - I'd love to know if you already knew about that glaze!

=]  Michele

Christmas Kickstart #50 - Santa and friends!

I have fallen WAY behind on my goals for my Christmas cards - thank goodness that I have the Christmas Kickstart Challenge to help me out!  I really find it hard to believe it's their 50th challenge - another reason to get a card made [or two].

Before I share my card, I want to give a shoutout to all the Scrapbookers out there - I jumped right into card making and really didn't know about the scrap-booking industry before that.  Very Big rock, and I was under it, I guess.  The reason I mention it, is that I hopped along at Instagram with Pinkfresh Studio yesterday and ogled all the gorgeous pages/layouts their team members, and guests made!  WOWZERS!  Scrapbooking has come a very long way!

I got out a few older sets of Pinkfresh design papers to push myself away from CAS design today - it is HARD!  But here is my card...  Santa has a new ride...

I'm quite sure these sets are no longer available, which is a shame because they are so fun!  In the original set, Santa is sitting on a bar stool - which I stamped and then promptly snipped it off, which left Santa in the perfect side-saddle position!  lol

A few layers of papers [December Days, and Felicity] cut with my stand-by PF Braided Tags dies - one snipped short - and it sits side-saddle, too!

I'd better get this over to Christmas Kickstart - and you should play, too!  We have 10 more days to get a card made and in the gallery here.   Plenty of time!

=]  Michele

Pinkfresh:  

Simple Joy stamps and dies  [I did find a few on ebay]

Festive Llama stamps and dies 

Braided Tags

Altenew Speech Bubble dies

Inspired By #175 - hello baby flowers

No babies in our future, so I took liberties with the punctuation to read:

Hello, baby flowers!  Who doesn't love Spring and the baby flowers that are blooming?

Who wouldn't love them cascading like this:

Another PinkFresh Studio stencil borrowed from Marcia!

Hanging Garden layering stencils

And who wouldn't love to read these words?
SSS You are Loved die

I'll tell you what else we'd love - to see YOU playing along!

Let's go see all the inspiration from the IB team, shall we?

Thanks for stopping by!

=]  Michele

Oxides used today:

So I could join in the fun at Pinkfresh Studio's May 2021 Challenge!

Just another Friday Fun-day!

I'm not going to lie, my friends - this has been a lost week, since my second vaccine on Wednesday!  But today, I'm feeling a bit better, and very, very glad that I had so much fun on Monday & Tuesday to share here on Friday! 

Here are the first makes since I received my first order from PinkFresh Studios' Washi release... first time out of the package, just the way it was intended, by adhering my Anemone Magic washi to cardstock [I cut mine 4 x 9"] and die-cutting with the amazing die that cuts ALL of the images at once!  I love the water-colored look of these washi tapes!

Next up, stamped and Copic colored using the coordinating Anemone Magic stamp set...

It's quite subtle but look closely and you'll see that I've used one of the 

PinkFresh Studio Argyle stencils to emboss my card panel.  Then added a little smooshed leftover Distress ink, a few splatters, and their wonderful jewels for interest.  My sentiment comes from 

PinkFresh Studio's Floral Notes - more on that beauty another day.

Here is a little trick that was shared recently on one of the PFS LIVEs...

using the LID of my MISTI to pick up those really big stamps works

great - but be sure to anchor it well, so you can re-stamp if necessary.

Color Hues is asking for black and white this week -  I've chosen

my favorite Black Licorice ink for stamping, and added interest

with another of their wonderful stand-alone dies - Braided Tags.

I popped my black & white Anemones onto two layered tags.  

By the way, there's nothing that says one cannot partially die cut

with that big ol' die!

Okay, my friends - that was a lengthy post for my foggy brain!  Thanks for hanging in there with me!!  Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

=]  Michele

I know someone is going to ask about the magnets in my photo: Amazon