My best friend's birthday and a sad day

Everything seems to conspire at once, doesn't it?  Almost immediately after my last post I found out that a friend from high school had passed away.  It seems so strange - here we're not even 40 yet and already death has visited. :(  I guess we try to prepare ourselves for the deaths of our (older) loved ones, but it rarely crosses our minds to prepare for it to happen to someone our own age (or younger).  Rest in peace, Tricia.
In much happier news, my best friend (born a mere 6 days after me) came over to celebrate our birthdays with me last weekend.  She is a true delight!  Smart, funny, honest - I could go on for hours! :)
Here's the card I made for her:

I got the idea from a card at Archivers that I saw recently.  They used a different Pixie stamp but didn't have it in stock.  This is Paisley Pixie from Stamping Bella - isn't she cute?  My girlfriend has brown curly hair (well, me too just not as dark) which is why I chose to color her with dark hair. :)  I stamped Paisley on a piece of nice white card stock and masked the flowers.  After blending in a little DI in the center I removed the mask and colored the flowers and pixie with a mix of Copics, Smooch, colored pencil, Perfect Pearls mist, Stickles and Spica pen.  Whew!
Once the image was fully colored I used the TJ technique called Out of the Box to cut her out with my Nesties and Cuttlebug.  If you'd like to see a tutorial on this technique you can find it here on SCS.  After it was cut out I edged it with more DI (being very careful not to bend the overhanging pieces).  Paisley was popped up over a piece of Basic Grey paper and a simple white ribbon (which I added some stickles to!).
Here's a close up look at Paisley - you can get a good idea of the shine IRL:

Thanks for dropping by!  Hopefully the card I'm working on now will come together in the next day or so - posting twice in one week, can you imagine?? :D

I think I'm getting better?

Hmm, possibly the mojo is trickling back?  Dunno for sure, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed! :)
This card came out of nowhere... no plan, no idea of what I was doing!  I (finally) inked up this gorgeous stamp from Stampers Anonymous that my very best friend gave me.  I've wanted this stamp for some time - the girlfriends always come through, don't they?

First I brayered some Ranger dye ink onto glossy paper (Hydrangea, I think) then stamped the angel in black VersaFine & clear embossed it.  Once it had cooled I painted the angel with bleach - several coats in some places.  It dried blotchy (the glossy paper, I think) but I thought it still looked cool enough to use.  I painted some Glimmer Glaze (in Sugarcane) on the flesh parts since I didn't like the blotches on her face and a bit of white Smooch on her wings (although, as usual, you can't see it in the pic).  Finally I trimmed her out as closely as I could and added a light coat of Perfect Pearl mist - which shows up as lighter, splotchy looking color especially in the purple areas near the top.
I stamped the border along the edges of the card base and embossed in clear again.  After cooling, I masked them off and colored them with a Q-tip and 3 - 4 colors of Opalite ink to match the dye background.  I also dotted some smooch and glimmer glaze to tie the two parts together.  The embroidery floss was added (although I still question the gold strand - yes, it's actually a muted gold IRL) then popped up the stamped panel over them.
On a completely different subject, I also learned how to make the picture much, much bigger.  I haven't tried it before, so I don't know if the size will interfere with sidebars, etc when posted.  Do let me know if it takes a long time to load, or if it looks wonky - *please*?  Thank you! :D
Thanks for dropping by!

Thinking of You

Well, technically, thinking of *me*! :)
We finally had to put our kitty down, it was past time. She was starting to really suffer - but it's a hard thing to do. Once I finished my 'day of crying' I sat down at my table and started working on a new card. The Hero Arts contest was for masking (so that decided the technique) and I haven't used my big flower stamp in a while (there was my stamp!) so it was pretty easy to pull it all together.
Originally I intended to have the flowers build from the bottom right. Heh. That's what I get for not double checking the orientation of the card after masking it! :D If you look very closely you can tell that when I stamped the text inside the flowers I did the *same* thing over again (what can I say? It just never occurred to me to check that!)
So, anyway, I stamped the main flower then masked the outside of the image and stamped the text inside. Then I masked the inside of the flower and stamped the 'parts' on the space that was left. Then I masked the large flower & the outside of each partial flower & stamped the text in those. Shew! That was a *lot* of masking!
Then I used a couple of different Copic markers to color the blues and the shadows (and the very light violet). I also used a new white pencil to add highlights to the flower petals - it's a pastel in pencil form. (It's a lot brighter than the usual white pencil, but it smudges a lot so you're seeing two or three layers here.)
Somehow, this sentiment seems like it was made for this card... so I didn't even try to resist! What you can't see is the sparkle I added to the sentiment, the inner score line and some of the petal lines. Which is a bummer - it's very different looking IRL. I'm still not sure about the ribbon - this is the *third* thing I tried! I guess I like it enough to leave it there for now... maybe I'll find another option later. *sigh*
Thanks for stopping by!