Two best friends

These little guys showed up at my house this week. They have other buddies with them that I'll have to ink up soon because I think they're super cute. These pups are based on my friend Maggie's two dogs who are yellow and chocolate labs. They're the same stamp, stamped twice and cut out. The hydrant is also cut out and all are mounted on dimensionals, as are the torn pieces of brown cardstock in front of them.

The trees behind (from the set Branch Out) were stamped in Chocolate Chip and then loosely outlined with the Creamy Caramel marker for some definition. The dogs and hydrant were stamped in Sahara Sand where I was going to place the item, again for definition. Finally, the sky was lightly watercolored with Bordering Blue because the white cardstock was just TOO white. I love that the gray-blue color gives the card a little bit of a fall look with the bare trees.

Noses and eyes were colored in with a Chocolate Chip marker, and then the noses were touched with some Crystal Effects for shine - you want them to have a healthy look! :)

I'm off to Lynn's stamp party today! We're getting together with some of her friends and we'll make 3 cards together. We're using glitter, dimensionals, ribbon, watercoloring ... LOTS of good and fun stuff. A great way for a group of friends to spend some time together on a Saturday. I'm so looking forward to meeting everyone and getting some stamps inky.

Relaxing in the garden

I have a weakness for tree sets, I think. This is a combination of "dry" stamping and watercoloring. I stamped some on the dry paper, spritzed it with water, markered on a little, then spritzed again with water and stamped from the ink pad onto the damp paper.

The little flowers are just dotted on with markers and then watercolored over top. I like where my little sentiment flag is, but really, it's serving to cover up a 'blurp' of color at the top of my little boots. Also, the tension was off on my sewing machine, but since this card is a little raggedy in nature, I just let it go and finished my path around.

The words used on this stamp came FREE with my qualifying purchase during Sale-a-bration. You can get free goodies, too, through Stampin' Up's promotion. Want to order through me? You can order online through my demonstrator website(http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/melissakulesa/), or if you have questions, please drop me a line. Hurry though, you only have through the end of March.

Copy-cat birds

I'm showing you my "AFTER" card (above) and my "BEFORE" card (below).

I was fiddling with this card, trying to get it to look just right, and I wanted to include some grass, but thought it wouldn't match to have green where there wasn't green anywhere else on the card. But after I added it, I think it looks great. Before it was just too plain, and I was having trouble tying together the reds and oranges, but with the addition of the flowers, I got to add more red, and a little green which I felt gave me permission to add my green grass. I also doodled in a horizon line to ground my little birds, and now I'm super happy with my results.

I saw this card in blues and greens on Scrapnextra's blog. I don't have the paper she used. Hmph.

I was considering doing this card on the cheap (ha! cheep, cheep) for a workshop, meaning I needed to stretch my designer paper for a larger quantity of cards. If possible, because the designer paper comes in 12x12 sheets, I like to use even increments so that all the paper gets used as fully as possible, with minimal tiny scraps/waste and as many pieces as possible. So for this card, I split the papers I used. I used Riding Hood Red DSP Patterns paper in a 4x2 piece and Washington Apple paper in a 4x3 piece. There's a small overlap of the two behind the focal point, covered with some Tango Tangerine striped ribbon.

Just like in my inspiration piece, I stamped the birds twice. Once on the main piece of watercolor paper and another time on a scrap of watercolor paper. I colored in the "scrap" birds, cut out just their bodies and then popped them up on dimensionals over the plain bodies for some more interest.

Finally inked my skull

Another VSN challenge card. Challenged to use a set you don't like, I knew I'd go for Just Jawing. I earned this set a couple months ago, and while I'd mounted it, I never expected to use it. Looking for a color inspiration, I saw the stitched Regal Rose ribbon, and I was off! I'm not sure you can see it in this picture, but the skull is mounted on dimensionals over the crossed bones behind. I watercolored the skull in pink for pop and so that I had the option of coloring in a little more dimension. This ribbon usually is also stitched across the top, but it was too wide for where I'd (ahem) slapped on my sentiment. A couple brads for a more industrial/heavier feel.

I'm really pleased with this card, because it came out much better than expected. I'm thinking I may make my neice's birthday card using this set. She'll be 12 this year, and I've been wondering what to do for her card.

Punchy puppy

This is another VSN challenge w/ the 45 minute timeframe included. This was my first challenge card of the night, and I think it turned out fairly cute! The criteria for this card was to represent something you love. I'd seen a cute puppy done with punches on Mercedes' blog, so that was my inspiration because after my husband, my dogs are closest to my heart. You had to make a standard size card and include a large circle, large heart and a piece of paper/cardstock that was a 1/2" smaller than the card base.

To make my circles look purposeful, I used the dotted paper and punched out my sentiment using more circles. The heart is just hand drawn and then cut out. Over top of the heart I sponged on some chocolate ink, then covered it in Versamark ink and Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel. The embossing isn't a very smooth coverage, but I wanted it that way. It reminds me of a dog's wet nose. :) Finally, for a little detail, I added brads in the corner and a quick strip of wide ribbon for more texture.