Delight in Life - birthday scallops

This is a 4.25x4.25" card. Mostly, I just wanted to play with some things I hadn't used in a while. I made two of these cards because the white scrap I stamped using the Stampin' Up sell-a-bration set, Delight in Life, made enough for two white centers. I figure that if I'm taking the time to make a card, I've been trying to make at least two and take advantage of everything already being out.

The gold-ish dots are from my Sakura glitter pen. Sorry for the weird shot, but I wanted to show that the sparkly dots are there.

Oh! and after I took the picture, I took off the mustard circle behind the scalloped pieces because it was distracting to me.

A love like "no udder"

I think I'm in love with this card. I try not to pat myself on the back too much, but boy, oh boy, do I LOVE this card. Love the colors, love the cute cows, love the ribbon and the spiral clip.

Everything.

The paisley background is an Ellison texture plate that I ran through the Cuttlebug, then I rubbed the Cranberry Crisp cardstock with its matchin ink to highlight the paisleys. The strip that the cows are on is sponged in brown at the bottom and blue at the top, then dotted with the fine end of my Chocolate Chip marker, to make it look more like the ground. The cows were made by masking the cows off so that they have some perspective and looking like they're in front of and behind one another. The cows are colored in using markers. Their little nostrils got lost after being colored in, so I dotted them back on using my white gel pen.

You can click on the photo above for a much larger view. I hope you enjoy this card, and that maybe it even inspires you to get stamping!

Shiny Blossom

Another Big Blossom card. Imagine that!

The embossed flower and yellow background piece had been glued together and had been sitting on my desktop for about a week, and I knew it had potential, but I sure wasn't having any luck bringing it out! Finally, I just started placing card-size pieces of cardstock behind them, trying to find a color that coordinated well. I knew I was trying for something soft, so I was avoiding contrasting colors and colors that were too dark. As soon as I slid the Certainly Celery behind, I felt like I was on the right track. Then I decided to use the Word by Word background stamp because it was mounted, and I'd had it for quite a while now, but hadn't ever used it.

The flower was embossed on Stampin' Up's Designer Series Double-Sided paper in the Spring Flowers pack. I used Versamark and ultra thick embossing powder then cut the flower out. The yellow polka-dotted paper behind the flower is the reverse of the pink paper (so they're designed to match each other) and it has extra, smaller dots drawn over the existing dots with my white gel pen, then has dots of Crystal Effects over that. The background stamp was stamped on Certainly Celery cardstock in Certainly Celery ink, then traced over (very loosely) with the white gel pen. I got the idea for the tracing in white because I thought the Celery ink looked a little stark as a background. The button's ribbon knot is actually threaded through the buttonholes and the button is attached to the card front using a big glue dot which raised the button up a bit.

Sunday stamping session - Sample #1

I spent Sunday afternoon working on some samples at Jeanine's house, and I'm pretty pleased with what I've come up with. The following samples feature sets from both the winter mini and sell-a-bration catalogs.

This color combination was created with the help of the Color Coach. I love the bright, springtime feeling of this card! The background stamp is "Dotted", the main image is the sell-a-bration stamp "Big Blossom" with the cute stamp from "So Very" which is also a sell-a-bration set. The small flowers were cut out from stamped images from "Big Pieces" which is featured in the current winter mini catalog.

I''ll post more of my samples later!