Holy buckets, it's CRAZY over here!

It's finally starting to wind down though! :)
This month has been a whirlwind of activity. There have been three different family visits (a niece, SIL/BIL/nieces AND aunt/uncle/cousin) all within a couple of weeks. Not to mention the shopping trips (well, aren't family visits the best reason to shop? I blame it on those crazy SIL's of mine!) and the get-togethers. Then we had a family reunion of sorts - people I haven't seen in at least a decade! Not to mention my birthday, my best friend's birthday (we've known each other 20 years!), two upcoming baby showers AND my little man started swimming classes.
Whew!
No wonder I haven't touched ink to paper in almost two weeks!
I thought I'd drop by for a minute and post the card & gift I made for my friend's birthday. The card was actually a sketch from SCS, but I can't remember which one! Maybe when I get some extra time (ha-ha!) I'll head over there and try to figure it out.
I think the biggest inspiration was the lotus stamp. I found it at Michael's a while ago - it's a Studio G stamp (from the Soloz line) so I think it was only a $1. I really love the size & the lines. For this one I stamped the flower several times on watercolor paper & colored it with a water brush and Distress Ink. Once they were all dry I cut out the petals & popped them up on a base image. The center was actually a piece of sticky back canvas that I also colored with a water brush & DI. In order to give it dimension in the center I stuffed two 'heads' of q-tip cotton under the canvas before I glued all the petals down. I *love* how it came out! Obviously, you can't see the glimmer, but I wouldn't be me if I hadn't added some Spica pen to the petals and outline. ;)
Here's a nice close look at the flower - I just love how the color came out. Mostly I used Chipped Sapphire - but there's also a touch of Dusty Concord. The center is mostly Scattered Straw with some shading of Tattered Rose. Oh, the sentiment is also from Tim. :D
This next thing was totally CASE'd from the cover of (Stamp & Scrap???) a magazine earlier this year. Honestly, I can't remember which one right now. Assuming that I ever get some down time (riiiiight, I'll do this right after I figure out which sketch challenge I used!) I'll have to find the original magazine & update this post. I remember being stunned by how beautiful it was - must be why it stuck in my head! :)
To start I stamped & clear embossed a lot of black paper. I used a 1 inch punch to cut out the pieces for the background, then dipped the edges into more clear ep (using my melting pot). The background is actually the velvet backboard for a shadow box that I picked up at Mike's with a coupon. After spacing the squares out & gluing them down, I ignored this project for way too long! (which ended up in a total panic when I realized just how close her birthday was!)
To do the butterflies I colored both sides of a white paper with distress inks & stamped a little bit with water/glimmer mist. After it dried I used a couple of Martha Stewart punches to get the 3 different sizes of butterfly. I glued them down with glossy accents after deciding on an arrangement (which was harder than I thought it would be).
Once more my love of bling surfaced & I added Rock Candy stickles to all the butterflies. Since that didn't seem quite enough, I added Diamond stickles to some of them too! :) I totally bums me out that you can't see any sparkle in the picture - you'll just have to believe me!
You'll also have to take my word for it that it looked about twice as cool *inside* the shadow box. I'm not certain why - but it bumped up to another level when it was all put together. Enough so that DH was feeling a bit covetous! :D
Thanks for dropping by! :)

Cleaning day!

This morning I uttered the most dreaded words known to husband: we need to clean the bathroom. Oy! I'm sure his heart sank into his toes! :D So, yes, we did clean. Both bathrooms and the horrible pit of despair that is the laundry room. Now it (practically) sparkles!
Of course that meant that I couldn't be crafty today. I would much prefer stamping to cleaning - but I sure do love the feeling of having a clean(er) house. Perhaps I got into the cleaning groove because of this card? As I've said before, I have some hispanic roots, and let me tell you - my abuela could have put Mr. Clean to shame!
This certainly reminds me of the style of colors you often find in Mexico. Lots of bright blue with touches of orange & pink. While I don't often create with this color palette I find it almost soothing in a way. Not that you're likely to see me *wearing* this combo! :D
The base card was stamped with a circle stamp from Recollections using Brilliance gold ink. The two background pieces are from Basic Grey and the main image is from Inkadinkado. Both pieces from BG were roughed up around the edges and then inked. The brown piece was inked with blue and the white with green (both colors were used on the flower as well).
The flower was stamped on regular white cardstock with VersaColor ink (in Pinecone?) then colored using Distress Inks and a water brush. Once it was dry I trimmed it out and added some glossy accents to the underside to give dimension. (I added GA to the tips of the petals, the stem & at the base of the leaves. The best part of doing this is that you can vary the height of the GA while you apply it. Once dry you get a more natural, gradual dimension which I find works well with things like flowers. Also, it's almost impossible to tear the finer pieces once the glue is dry! After it dries, just add a little bit more GA, position it on your paper and let it dry a second time - it should only take a minute or two.)
I really felt that this needed a little more sparkle (shocking, right?) so I went over all of the brown ink with my clear Spica pen. I loved the effect so much that I had to take a close up picture! If you look closely at the brown parts of the image you can see what looks like little flecks of white -that's not dust! It's a little more pronounced than glimmer mist, but not as 'in your face' as a glitter pen. I really like this in between sparkle.
Finally I finished off with the sentiment in Brilliance gold and some brown dew drops to ground the background panel.
Although this isn't my usual style, I love how it came together in the end. And, to be honest, it makes me feel a teensy, tiny bit like home.
Hope you like it too....
Thanks for stopping by!

Very nearly the same card...

I must have been in a very nautical mood! Although I admit, I do love this stamp but it rarely sees the light of day. I can't even think of why!
The stamped panel had the same treatment as the last card (lots of dripping glimmer mist) - actually were both cut from the larger sheet I made in the beginning. As you can see, I used black Versafine instead of blue, and there was no stenciling.
The really cool thing about this one was the punch shape. I saw a tutorial on Amazing Paper Grace (3 parts) on punching with the MS corner punches to make awesome shapes. As soon as I saw this one I knew it was perfect for this card - it looks so much like a compass or ships wheel! There was a little extra glimmer added to them after they were punched, honestly I loved them either way. On the right side you can see the edge punch that goes with the corner punch I used. The only other thing I really used is the 'black' (hah! those are NOT black) dew drops. Perfect for this particular card, but a really disappointing color in general. Just sayin'.
I hope you had a fabulous 4th of July with lots of food, family, fireworks and SAFETY! :)
Thanks for dropping by!