Think Spring Sketch Challenge Card

This is another card I made for the Taylored Expression's Blog, Card Sketch. I find that I do more and more things with sketches. They're a great way to take some of the stress out of coming up with a card. Since it almost always takes me at least an hour to come up with a card, sketches seem like a good start to me.

This card used left over pieces of paper from the Mother's Day card my Create a Bunch at Lunch girls are going to do next month. You'll have to tune back in around April 20th to see that one.

The patterned paper is Making Memories that I found available in single sheets at Jo-Ann fabrics. The stamp set is Want to Fly from The Angel Company's Serendipity magalogue, and the sentiment is from Tag Tidbits. I punched some butterflies out and some flowers and used them to give the vine some added dimension, and I gave the design a little more interest by going over some of the vines with a green colored pencil and/or the Sakura Clear Glitter Pen. I also used Crystal Stickles to brighten the centers of the flowers and butterflies.

When it rains it pours!

O.K., so the stamp isn't quite the Morton Salt girl, it's the Rainy Day set from Hanna Stamps. (I heard there was some rumor about Hanna Stamps being out of business, and I don't know whether it's true or not, but as of today, this set is available at Addicted To Rubber Stamps, which is where I purchased it originally.)

The layout came from Taylored Expressions' Friday's Cupcake Challenge. I love sketch challenges, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it in this card, but somehow it didn't turn out quite like I expected.

I'm thinking of using this as one of the cards for my Create A Bunch at Lunch group in April, but I haven't decided yet.



The image is colored with Copic Markers BG09, BG13, Y15 and RV19. The hair, skin and umbrella handle are Skin Tones pencils. The yellow DCWV paper is embossed with the Spots and Dots Cuttlebug embossing folder, and the patterned paper is from the DCWV Holiday Collection - The Christmas Stack that I had leftover from the holidays. There are also some very faint blue rain drops on the image panel, but it looks like they didn't show up on the scan.

Birthday Candles and Cake

These are the birthday cards my Create-A-Bunch girls made on Tuesday. The combination of these cards plus the Easter cards I posted on Monday night took us just a hair over our lunch hour because I didn't time them out when I made them like I usually do (I created this one at the DeKalb Crop and cut all the pieces while I was there, and wasn't even thinking about the timing issue) All the same, the cards were a hit, and it's a testament to my new stampers that they could make these two cards plus to of the Easter card without going drastically over time. When we started in December, there would have been no way that could have happened.

The inspiration for this card initially came from the February 26th Cupcake Challenge posted on the Taylored Expressions blog, and while it follows the sketch dead-on, it's a little hard to see, because I used the candles as the left-hand panel.

The background used the Happy Birthday Cuttlebug embossing folder, the candles are cut from another Cuttlebug die, Birthday Wishes. The "happy" on the candles is from The Angel Company's "Family is Forever" stamp set, the "birthday" is from the "Marvelous Mottos" set, and the cake is from the retired "Let's Party" set.

I used Copic markers BG45, Y11 and Y15. The flames on all the candles are accented with Crystal Stickles, which all the girls go nuts over. They even added them to the Easter eggs on the Easter card, even though I didn't use them in the sample.

Easter Card

Tomorrow is my Create a Bunch at Lunch card group. We're making two cards, an Easter card and a birthday card. This is the Easter card we'll be doing.



We're making the backgrounds ourselves with paper scored with the Scor-Pal on a diagonal and dots using pencil erasers and VersaMagic Inks: Pink Grapefruit, Aquatic Splash, Spring Pansy and Key Lime. The yellow is DCWV and the pattern is part of a spring collection of double-sided paper by Heidi Swap I believe. The eggs were cut with the From My Kitchen cartridge of the Cricut and the sentiment is from The Angel Company's Trendy Greetings stamp set. The original image has the word Happy above Easter, but since they're cling mounted stamps, I was easily able to cut between the words so that I could use them lengthwise next to each other this way.

This card is also available in my Shop Handmade store.

To see or not to see

Today I have some cards to share, but I can't post them on my blog. I was asked to design samples for The Angel Company's March Stamp of the Month "Snail Mail". I made up 8 samples that I sent into the company, and they have been posted on The Angel Company website under the promotions tab. I'm not supposed to upload the pictures on my blog, but I can give you a link to the Stamp of the Month site and you can check them out that way.

Link to March, Stamp of the Month "Snail Mail"

Of course, if you don't click the link during the month of March, 2010, you'll get whatever The Angel Company's current stamp of the month is for that month and the samples others have created for it.

Pot of Gold

This is the St. Patrick's Day card my Create a Bunch girls made last month. It was super simple to put together, but finding the pot was a bit of a challenge.



The background on the front of the card uses the retired set Mini Sampler set from The Angel Company. Inside is the "Happy St. Patrick's Day" from Trendy Greetings.

I never though it would be as difficult to find a die-cut pot as it was. You would think someone would have one for St. Pat's and Halloween, but I couldn't find one in the stores, or at any scrapbook store the had die-cuts you could use on the premises. I was finally able to get a die-cut that looked like a pot in the From My Kitchen Cricut cartridge. It's the shadow for the sieve. We placed plastic gold coins that I found in Jo-Ann's dollar section in the pot for some dimension.