busy stamping

Hi my friends. Yes, I stamped today. I made three cards. Thursday evening was another Gina K release party on Stamp TV, and there are always challenges with random drawings for free stamps, so I like to play along. You never know when your name might get picked. I didn't get a chance to create anything yesterday, because I was out of town attending a funeral for one of my aunts. Even though the occasion was a sad one, it was nice to get together with cousins that I hadn't seen in years.

So to make up for getting nothing done yesterday, I got busy today and did all three of the challenges. I combined the sketch challenge with the inspiration challenge on SCS. I chose this wheat illustration as my inspiration. I love the look of wheat, so I used silhouette grass (hero arts) as a background - stamped off once prior to stamping on my vanilla card base in more mustard ink.

I decided to use one of my sizzix (tim holtz) on the edge dies (ornate) for the first time. I've had these since... ahem.... well, you get the idea. I cut a piece of vanilla (yes, it was) with the die and then sponged vintage photo distress ink on it rather heavily and completely changed the color. That wasn't what I was planning, but as I was sponging along the edge, I kinda messed up, so I had to cover that up and just kept on going. Then I inked up houndstooth embossing folder with the same ink and embossed it. I love how that turned out -- so much texture.

For the main image, I die cut a partial oval with nestabilities classic ovals (spellbinders) and then stamped the flowers from signs of autumn (Gina K) with tuxedo black memento and colored them with copic markers. All of the edges are sponged with vintage photo ink. I also black marker to define the edge of the layers a bit more.

I stamped the hero arts sentiment on top of the wheat in black.

I decided to use on of the flowers from the bouquet for the accent piece, so I stamped that portion again and colored with copics and cut it out. I used a martha stewart leaf punch and punched a few from old olive cardstock. I added some vein lines and sponged the edges with always artichoke. The flower and leaves were popped up on dimensional tape.

My second card is for Theresa's challenge That's Odd - meaning that we were required to use an odd number of design elements on our cards (& one didn't count). So I used three -- three leaves & three brads.

Everything on this card is stamped in jet black stazon. The bare tree is a penny black stamp. The leaves are part of signs of autumn (gkd). I colored them with sponges, using summer sun, old olive and tangerine tango ink. Each leaf is attached with dimensional tape. I sponged around the edges with chocolate chip ink and added some faux stitching and added some black brads.

I stamped autumn (SU - season by season) on a piece of old olive and attached some chocolate grosgrain ribbon and a corduroy button with black crochet cotton. This piece is also raised on dimensional tape.

My third card is for Lee's Non-traditional Holiday Colors challenge -- no red, green or blue. So I decided to go with chocolate, because what's Christmas without chocolate?

I die cut, embossed and sponged create a flake one (spellbinders), using vanilla cardstock and creamy caramel & chocolate chip ink. I made two sets (one of each color) and then layered them, alternating the colors. I put them together so that both sides are fronts, so that you will see a finished snowflake from the inside of the card also.

The hole is made with spellbinders classic circles and classic scallop circles nestabiliites and is through all of the layers on the card front. The snowflake is suspended between the layers with white thread.

The sentiment is from hugs and wishes (SU).

Thanks so very much for visiting today. I hope you're having a wonder-filled weekend.