An assortment...

Well, I haven't posted in a week...I think that's the longest I've ever been away from blog-land! I have a few cards to post, related to different challenges and things, so I'll put them all here.

The current Created by Hand challenge is to use French. The current One Powerful Hour challenge is to use numbers, and this week's Theme Thursday challenge is time. I created this card to send to some friends we'll be travelling with this fall...to Paris! (We're also travelling to Nice and Rome...SO looking forward to the trip!) The stamps are from Suzanne's beautiful calligraphy at Quietfire Design and I picked up this cute plastic ribbon with the clocks at a local paper crafting shop, the Cutting Garden. They have a brand new blog if you'd like to look! I just joined their design team, so I'm looking forward to spending lots of time there! The Fleur de Lis punch is by EK Success.

The current craft challenge over at Charisma Cardz is an open theme, so I'm posting other cards I created yesterday as samples for the Cutting Garden. I LOVE stitching and beading and 3-d work. It's time consuming, but a nice thing to do sitting on the patio during "garden appreciation moments" in the sumertime (lol). This first card uses beautiful green velvet flocked paper by Making Memories, and Kaisercraft flat backed pearls, available at the Cutting Garden.

This baby girl card uses a template from Stampington and stamps from My Mind's Eye (Laundry Line) stamped and embossed on vellum. Everything I used for this card came from the Cutting Garden, including the Nestabilities and the Swiss Dots embossing folder for the Cuttlebug. Here's a link to the "Darling Dress Template" if you'd like to make one of these cards.

This next card is just a simple stitched and beaded Happy Birthday card, with the sentiment computer generated for cutting with Nestabilities Labels Four dies, a little scrap of gold mirrored cardstock, and a silk flower from...yep...the Cutting Garden!

This last card is for a special little boy, and meets the challenge over at Cute Card Thursday, which is "Wheely Good Fun." I used a new stitching pattern for this one, and I didn't place the pattern properly, so it ended up to be kind of crooked, but I sent it anyway; I think he'll like it. Ben is the seven year old son of a friend. He was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago, was being treated successfully, but came out of remission recently, and is very ill. He's on the list for a bone marrow match, which is his only hope of survival now. If you're interested in creating a card to send him some cheer, please e-mail me for his postal address. I've posted this on several card making sites, and we're hoping to fill his mailbox with happiness...such a small gesture, but so uplifting for this little guy. If you can spare a card or two, you can reach me at this e-mail address: CardsforBen@live.ca. I'd be happy to forward the postal address.

Thanks for taking the time to visit today.

Impression Obsession Designers' Challenge!

The Impression Designer Obsession designers' challenge today was to use no patterned paper in our creations. One of my favourite ways to create special cards is to use stitching and beading, so I decided to use that to highlight some of the wonderful IO sentiment stamps. This card uses one of the sentiment stamps from the "Anytime Sentiments" set. After stitching the corner flourish with metallic variegated thread, I stamped it with Versamark, then thermal embossed with Ranger Seafoam White embossing powder, and added a border peel-off and several pink crystals from Kaisercraft.The current Craft Challenge over at Charisma Cardz is "Diamonds are a girl's best friend," so I've used crystal;s on several of these cards to meet that challenge. The "Theme Thursday" challenge is "beautiful," and I suppose that's open to subjective interpretation. I really enjoy using beautiful metallic threads when I stitch and bead, so I hope these cards meet that criteria! ;) The current "Created by Hand" challenge is an open theme...so I'm meeting that one too.

This card uses one of the "Birthday Wishes" stamps. There are eleven stamps in this clear acrylic set...what a great value! After stitching and beading the netted design on the right side, I added a gold foil peel-off around the oval border, then decoupaged a 3-d pansy in the centre. Then I stamped the sentiment in the lower left corner with Versamark, and thermal embossed it wth Top Boss Black embossing powder.

The next card uses a tiny Happy Birthday stamp on the bottom right corner from the same set, along with more stitching and some Kaisercraft flat backed pearls. I also used some butterfly stamps (from Crafty Individuals), thermal embossed on vellum and pop-dotted. Over at the Flourishes blog, the Timeless Tuesday challenge is to get inspired by a Kim Polson poster. I used this one as the inspiration for this card.

This next card is for a very special person who's about to celebrate a wonderful event in her life. My sister Katherine retired from a decades long career in teaching three years ago, returned to university, graduated last month with a degree in divinity studies from McGill University in Montreal, and will be ordained as a Presbyterian minister this summer, starting her new career in her sixtieth year! We think she ROCKS! (lol) The stamp I used here is from the Impression Obsession Birthday Greetings set. The white pearl beads are hand stitched onto the card, the crystals are flat-backed, and glued on.

This last card has no stitching, but I needed a new home card for some friends, so I used one of my very favourite Gary Robertson stamps from Impression Obsession. This one is called "Window Box." For colouring, I used Prismacolour Premier Pencils, Tombow watercolours and some of the new Clearsnap Smooch paints. The top piece is punched with one of Stampin' Up's border punches. I added flowersoft and crystals to some of the flowers for a little more dimension. Impression Obsession has FABULOUS new stamps from Gary Robertson...such FUN to use! There are several beautifully detailed window and door stamps, the seasonal bird houses are a MUST-see, and the outhouses...well...I just LOVE them!

I hope you'll take the time to see the beautiful work posted by the other Impression Obsession designers today. You can find direct links to their blogs on my sidebar, to your right. Thanks so much for stopping by today!
Hope your weekend is delightful!

Thank you card

I find myself needing several thank you cards these days, so I look to blog challenges for inspiration. This card uses one of my own photos and follows the current Ismaki challenge sketch. As an avid gardener, I think these colourful tulips are positively YUMMY, which is the challenge over at Charisma Cardz Thursday Challenge. The Thank You stamp is from Impression Obsessions (CL 48: Greetings Galore; I really like how we can gently form unmounted stamps to follow a curve like this...); the butterfly is from my very favourite and utterly fabulous butterfly set from Crafty Individuals, and the flowers are Hero Arts; all the white you see is stamped with Top Boss embossing ink and thermal embossed with Ranger Seafoam White embossing powder, with the flowers and the butterfly on vellum. Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Thank you card

I had a special thank you card to create this weekend, so I scoped out a few challenges to do it: this week's Gothic Arches challenge is to use black and yellow; Our Creative Corner wants to see border punches; Theme Thursday's challenge is to use flourishes; the ScorPals Yahoo group challenge is to do a gatefold card, and the current Cute Cards challenge is to use quotations. I used a quotation stamp from Quietfire Design, and some old K & Co flocked paper from my scrap box. Thanks for stopping by!

Fashion personified!

Here she is, Miss Marilyn. I created this card this morning to meet four challenges. It's a wet, rainy day in Nova Scotia, and such a PERFECT guilt free day to play in my stamp-messy room. My gardens are being watered beautifully, and I didn't have to do it! (lol)

So, the challenge at Wednesday Stamper is fashion...and I think Marilyn fits that so well. Cardvaarks wants depth perception, so I did a tri-fold card with little Spellbinders peep-hole windows for them, created with my favourite crafting tool of all time, my trusty Cuttlebug.

The Cuttlebug challenge is movies, and the Cinema Saturday challenge is the particular movie "Some Like it Hot..." with Marilyn Monroe of course! Marilyn's image is one I created as a silhouette in Photoshop from a picture I found surfing the web.

The stamps are Stampin'Up, stamped and embossed on the outside of the card with black embossing powder on white cardstock and on the centre fold with white embossing powder on black cardstock. The inside red polka dot panel is embossed paper. As an afterthought, when I re-read the requirements for the Cinema Saturday challenge, I added a little bit of flower lace to border the inside panel image, then I added a punched cardstock heart.

It was difficult figuring out how to present this card so you'd have an idea of the three panels, so I scanned the outside and centre panels, then snapped a pic of the card opened up. There's actually only one image of Marilyn on the card, and that's on the third, inside panel. The other scans show the third panel through windows. Make sense?

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Hope you're having fun doing whatever you LOVE!

Father's Day

I created this simple Father's Day card for my grandson to give to his Dad. I used a Silhouette SD electronic cutter to cut the frame and all the letters. The current challenge over at Created by Hand is Father's Day; at Crazy Amigo it's transportation; at Timeless Tuesday, it's using designer papers. This card uses a train stamp from Rubber Cottage and a sentiment stamp from Quietfire Design, paired with papers from Daisy D's and Basic Grey. "You're the best" is something the boys say often to their parents, so I know my son-in-law will chuckle when he sees this. The family recently enjoyed a day at a train museum in Ottawa, and sent me some wonderful photos of their fun; hopefully this card will bring some happy memories.

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by!

Dreaming...

It's a cool, rainy day here in beautiful Nova Scotia...a perfect time for a guilt-free day away from gardening! I really enjoy sitting with a cuppa on a Saturday morning, browsing all the wonderful blog challenges, and creating a card that combines several of them. Over at Our Creative Corner, we were given a sketch to work with. I turned the sketch sideways for this card. The sweet image came from Art Creations. Over at TGIF, the theme is "dreams," while Saturday Surprise challenges us to create art about "adventure." The "dreams" stamp on the photo and the beautiful embossed paper are from Quietfire Design. The folks at Secret Crafters want us to use bling, so I added three crystals to my card. Finally, the Thursday craft challenge over at Charizma Cardz is to use pink and brown together. I used pink and black, but I added a brown vintage ink to the edges of the photograph to meet their challenge. So here's my card. I hope you enjoy a wonderful, art filled weekend, wherever you are!

Lacy things!

The challenge over at Caroline's "One Powerful Hour" is lace! Here are my cards. This one uses a Rubbernecker image stamp and a Hero Arts sentiment stamp. I stamped the gorgeous fifties gal several times on plain, coloured, and patterned papers, then paper pieced her. At the bottom edge of her skirt, I used a wee piece of lace I dyed with Nova Scotia weeds in my microwave oven. The theme over at Theme Thursday is people with hats, so she fits here too.

For this one, I used a Martha Stewart paper lace border punch paired with one of my favourite Crafty Individuals postcard stamps and a Stampin'Up sentiment stamp:

This one used a lace border stamp from Paper Bag Studios, paired with an old paper-pieced Anna Griffin hydrangea image.

Thanks so much for visiting today!

Impression Obsession...

So it's blog hop time again for the Impression Obsession designers, and this time, the theme is red-white-and-blue. My take on this one is a soft, nautical themed card, using this lighthouse stamp, stamped with Ancient Page Coal Black ink and lightly shaded with Pan Pastel colours. I used a Spellbinders Nestability frame, gold-inked the inside and outside borders, and shaded the embossed areas as well. Inside the card, I used this wonderful sentiment stamp, called Quiet Time, and punched the bottom edge of the stamped panel to reflect the swirls on the front of the card.

I hope you'll take the time to visit the other designers' blogs for inspiration! Here's a little secret..ONE of the designers has blog candy...go find her! You'll find the links to all their delightful blogs on the sidebar to your right.

Enjoy your day!