Hog wild?!?

I picked up this pig stamp set from one of those shopping apps where everything is super cheap and takes forever to arrive. But it was totally worth it for these adorable images. There were maybe 7 or so images in the set but these three seemed like they could pull off some party hats and help a little boy celebrate in a hog wild sort of way...

I wanted them to be more birthday themed so I used this old set from A Muse studio Go Hog Wild, for the party hats, balloon and the grass tufts and flowers. I also pulled the sentiments from the set as well. 

A little masking helped me get those party hats in the right spots on those adorable pigs.

I used a die from Avery Elle to create the grassy border. I wanted it to appear there were rolling meadows for these critters so once I die cut the grass, I masked and sponged in an additional hill behind for the pigs to be on and it created additional depth. 

The grass was sponged with distress inks, twisted citron and mowed lawn. The balloon was a complete afterthought. once I had the card almost 100% complete I thought that pig needed something to hold. And the A Muse set had this balloon in it. It is a solid image stamp so you use colored ink to stamp it. The style wasn't the same as the stamped pigs so I used colored ink to stamp the balloon and then outlined the balloon to create a more cohesive look. This gave that pig a reason to be looking all crazy too... I added glossy accents to the balloon, pigs' eyes and to the one pig's teeth. 

As I almost always do, I finished the inside of the card with a sentiment.

I also stamped a smaller pig image and colored it to match the main images. 

I hope the little boy receiving this card thinks it is as fun as I do. 

I'm Late

Color throwdown day again, I am really loving this challenge. It makes me push myself to be creative. Check out the challenge here: CTD442

When I saw the colors for this week, I knew this was the stamp I wanted to use. It is this tiny set by Avery Elle called I'm Late and it is made up of three little stamps. The snail with the balloon and two sentiment lines, Happy Birthday and Sorry I'm Late...


And since this was such a simple little stamp set I wanted to make a simple little card. I chose a one layer, clean and simple card. I actually colored on the card base y'all!!! <---seriously don't know where the y'all came from because I'm from the Midwest.

I embossed a wonky stitched rectangle on the front of the card base and I loved how that looked. I stamped the image and sentiment in Lawn Fawn Jet Black ink and colored with my Copics. You can see the colors this week are a pale aqua, pale beige, pale grey and pale yellow. I used three greys, N0, N2, & N4 for the snail. I used Y0000, Y11, Y13 & Y21 for the balloon ( I probably could have skipped the Y11 it really didn't even show up). I used BG0000 & BG32 for the background aqua color  and E000 & E40 for the beige color. I blended the backgrounds out with the colorless blender 0 marker. I also added some texture to the ground with the 0 marker. A simple highlight with the white gel pen on the snail, darkened his eyes with a black glaze pen and then some spectrum noir sparkle pen and glossy accents on the balloon and the party hat and the card front was complete.

I finished the inside of the card with the remaining half of the sentiment, Happy Birthday and stamped the snail in an aqua ink. That finished the card for today.

Sketched Mother's Day

I pulled out one of my new favorite stamp sets to make a Mother's Day card and sample for the 4H kids project for the week.

I used the sketched ranunculus set and heat embossed the flowers and leaves onto some Bristol Smooth Cardstock. I used Versafine onyx black ink and clear embossing powder. You still get the crisp black embossing but not the stray black powder bits black embossing powder can sometimes leave.

Then I used my Zig clean color real brush markers and added a little color to each image and pulling it out with my water brush. I only used one shade of red and one shade of green for each image. I really like the variation in color you get by pulling it out with the water. I set that aside to dry and then die cut a panel of bristol card stock with this rectangle die from the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Shapes set.

 I used the MFT hybrid ink in a neutral shade to stamp a Stampabilities medallion onto the corner of the panel. I wanted this to be very subtle. With a little distress ink and a blending pad I blended in some blue from the corner.

I heat embossed a sentiment from Avery Elle in Antique Gold Embossing Powder from Simon Says Stamp and then fussy cut the images out. These were simple shapes so they were easy and took no time at all. I used some foam tape to pop up the main flower and then adhered the remaining flowers flat using Tombo Mono Multi adhesive. Once the flowers were placed I added my leaves.

I mounted the panel on a piece of black cardstock and that finished my card.

Happy Easter from Bunny Boy

I had the opportunity to color a few images and create some cards during nap time and this happens to be my favorite of the day. I used this "new to me" image from C.C. Designs called Bunny Boy and isn't he adorable?

And I used the new Doodlebug Design paper pad Easter Express that everyone is raving about. I thought these papers worked well with this whimsical image.

I wanted to create a scene with the card but didn't want to fussy cut the image out. I was being completely lazy and I guess I'm in love with what lazy did for me today.

I picked up the Avery Elle picket fence die set a few weeks back because I wanted the fence die but I used the grass and cloud dies from it for this card.

I added clouds to the background but overlapped the main image panel using foam tape. The sentiment is from a Gerda Steiner Design stamp set called Nerdy Easter Bunny. I stamped that in Versafine Onyx Black Ink so it would show up on the hand cut banner. 

I finished the inside with a little scene similar to the one on the front of the card using left over scraps and left the inside blank. 

The card base is a piece of MFT's Lemon Chiffon 100# Prestige card stock.  And I finally opened the pack of Nina 80# white that I wanted to try for Copic coloring. I do like it so far. It might be my new go-to for Copic coloring, we will see. 

Here is a sneak peek at two other cards I made when I had my paper and markers out.