I stamped and I stamped

Good morning. This is the 2nd day in a row we have frost on the ground. I may have to turn on the heat. Of course, that means my offspring will need to close their bedroom windows.

Yesterday was World Card Making Day and SCS had special challenges throughout the day. I did all but the last one and plan to get to that one today. I also managed to fit in 3 challenge cards for the Gina K release party and a card for the inspiration challenge on SCS. I'm just going to share a few of them, since they are all posted in my SCS gallery.

When I saw the inspiration challenge, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I loved the black tee shirt with the blue flowers in the sample. I thought a tee-shaped card would be fun, but how would I get the blue to show up on the black. Then I remembered the black magic technique. *grin*

I used some scrap paper and played around with it until I had a tee shape that I liked and then traced it on the back of folded black card stock and cut it out, leaving the fold at the shoulders. Then I stamped all the flowers in white craft ink, heat set them to dry and colored over them with prismacolor pencils. I added some rhinestones in the flower centers and was done. It's just a single layer card and I love the way it turned out.

supplies:
stamps: island blossoms, fabulous flowers
ink: white craft
paper: black
other: prismacolor pencils, rhinestones, heat gun


For my WCMD cards, here's a sketch challenge. The background is embossed with my Swiss Dots cuttlebug folder and each of the pieces of dp are embossed with one of my new embossing sets (sorry I don't remember the name). The bigger flowers are punched with my SU trio flower punch and attached with flower brads.

supplies
stamps: eastern blooms
ink: elegant eggplant
paper: elegant eggplant, very vanilla, dp (?)
other: cuttlebug, cb embossing folders, flower brads, bluebird grosgrain ribbon, foam tape



For the inspiration challenge, I tried to make mine as close as possible to the original. I used Rubbernecker's pine bough and stamped it repeatedly in versamark and then embossed in copper. The leaves are inked with markers, spritzed with water and stamped on yoyo yellow card stock, then cut out. I sponged some wild wasabi on two of them. I think it's fun to see how closely you can duplicate a photograph with stamps and ink. Even the dew drops are there in the form of crystal effects, although they don't show up much in the photo.

The verse stamp has the author on it, but I didn't want to cover the leaves, so I left it off. I stamped the verse on vanilla, but it was way too bright, so I sponged over it with ruby red ink.

For the final touch, I added faux brads with black marker and white gel pen.

supplies:
stamps: autumn leaf prints (SU), pine bough (Rubbernecker), sentiment (Verses Rubber Stamps)
ink: versamark, summer sun, ruby red, old olive, chocolate chip, wild wasabi, basic black
paper: ruby red, basic black, yoyo yellow, very vanilla
other: copper ep, heat gun, crystal effects, white gel pen, mat pack, sponge, foam tape

My last card is using a technique that is new to me - nested flowers. There is a tutorial posted with the challenge that tells how to make these. They can be made from a number of materials, including fabric, designer paper, ribbon, etc., but I only used fabric on mine. Since I am a quilter, I have lots of fabric -- really LOTS. This would actually have been much harder for me, because I have a difficult time making decisions and I could have spent an hour deciding which fabrics to use. But since I didn't want that to happen, I just grabbed some scraps that were laying around and made myself use them. I pressed them first with an iron, although the wrinkles would have simply added character to the flowers. Since I have a number of graduated circles cut from cereal box chipboard, it was easy to grab those and trace around them on the back of the fabric. To simplify, I traced one, layered a second fabric underneath and cut out two at once. When I had used each fabric at least once, I decided it was good enough. I used my sewing machine to tack the layers together and added a button in the center of each.

For the rest of the card, I made faux stitching lines for the stems, punched ovals for the leaves and added vein lines and stamped bloom between the stems.

Although these are a bit large for a card, I can see lots of possibilities for this type of flower embellishment. It's been awhile since I've played with fabric, and now with the weather turning chilly, I may need to dig into my stash.

supplies:
stamps: bloomin' beautiful
ink: basic black
paper: chocolate chip, certainly celery, old olive
other: fabric, buttons, black crochet cotton, small oval punch, distressing tool

Thanks for stopping by today. Be blessed.