Happy 10th Blogiversary Jenn!

My good friend Jenn Shurkus is celebrating her 10th year of blogging! Isn't that amazing? I'm so excited to be a party guest at this celebration! If you you didn't get here from there, go visit her HERE. We aren't celebrating alone, be sure to check out the other party guests and even join in the fun too! Plenty of fun prizes to be had! And some pretty awesome sponsors too.

Jenn was one of the first crafters to really encourage me with her kind words and helpful comments. I love visiting her page and seeing what new project she is working on.

So we are all going to CASE a card from Jenn. I chose these guys since they are so much fun. Anyone who follows me on instagram (Littleyellowbirdy118) you saw a preview a week ago.

I just love Jenn's bright colors. I hope I did OK! What do YOU think?

My Card:

I used Tim Holtz Crazy Birds, Distress Ink in Dusty Concord & Simon Says Stamp Sketchy Banner Greetings.

See my card on BRI for all supply details and information.

You Gnome It!

Details on the Butterfly Reflections, Ink. website!

Snail Mail - LawnScaping No. 103

Not the best picture, but I adore this card. Made using the new Lawn Fawn into the Garden set. I made this to enter into the new Lawnscaping challegene so it has a ton of dimension! I mean I normally use a bunch of 3m tape but this thing has layers ontop of layers. The sky background is the bottom layer which is popped up, the white frame layer is popped up with two layers from that layer, the white clouds are one layer sitting between the background and the frame along with the flowers. The humming bird and snail are also popped up from the frame along with the snail mail banner.

100th Challenge - Lawnscaping

Big congrats to Lawnscaping on their 100th challenge! 

Perfect time for me to get back into blogging.
I used the Hippo from Lawn Fawn's year four mini stamp set.
The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp sketchy banners.

I made the background using picked raspberry & wild honey distress inks & black distress paint.

The sequins are from Pretty Pink Poshin my favorite colors:
Marigold, Pink Peone & Sparkling Clear.

Oh Happy Watercoloring!

I have a new card today featuring some of my new favorite additions. First is the Hello Sunshine stamp set from Lawn Fawn which is what I used for the clouds, the sentiment and the water drops.

I also used Distress Inks from Tim Holtz (don't I always?!) in Peacock Feathers, Picked Raspberry and Spiced Marmalade. I smooshed the inks onto a clear block and just used them like water colors and used a wet paint brush to brush on large washes of the colors and then blended them together. I then lightly misted this with water.

Once that dried I stamped on the clouds in grey shadow ink. I stamped the raindrops with the same peacock feathers but since I didn't mist them they show darker. I used some gold embossing for the sentiment because it just contrasts so lovely with the colors.

I looked at the card and decided it wasn't balanced so I decided to add some embossing paste. I will admit I am slightly obsessed since picking this up. Its so fantastic! I colored the paste a tiny bit with some of the Picked Raspberry ink. I just smooshed the ink onto a scrap paper and plopped a dollop of the embossing paste on top and mixed it together.

Entry for:

Challenge: Paste

With Simon Says Stamp!

Water Blooms - Mama Elephant stamps

I just got my new stamp set from Mama Elephant, Water Blooms! I love this stamp set, so many options. I also got the border dies, Femme Frames, as well; my penpal sent me a card using them and I fell in love! Hope you like!

A new penpal project

So I don't know about anyone else, but I have horrible handwriting. When I see someone like Kristina Werner for example, with this fantastic handwriting I get all kind of jealous. I HATE writing in my own cards because of this. They say practice makes perfect, and I know I hardly get any practice!! So in light of that, I have gotten a new card exchanging friend, Nicole! This was the first card I sent out. I wish the photo did it better justice. The background is distress inks with feathers from Mama Elephant's Fair Feathers that have been embossed in a clear shimmery embossing powder. Anyways, hope she liked it!!

Entered in:

1st Card of the Year!

Today I made a new baby card. It seems a lot of my friends are expecting this year!

The animation shows the steps of my card but I thought I would add some additional information.

I use these Shake IT pouches for my shaker cards. I get them from my local craft store but you can find them in many placed. I find they work the best with the least amount of work. You may need to use a dryer sheet to remove any static before you place the pouches over the sequins. I usually drop a few sequins in to see how much static they have before I attach it.

Also important is where you place your shaker over your image. You want your main image/words to be just above center with a lot of dead space below. This is so when the sequins are sitting they do not cover anything important and you can see the image/words. Ask me how I know ;)  Lastly, using one layer & masking is the only way to go if you don't want sequins getting stuck.

I made the background using the Bokeh technique I saw in one of the Lawn Fawn videos Here. Basically you ink your stamp and then stamp your paper several times (I did three) before you re-ink your stamp.

So that's it, I hope you enjoyed my card.

Entry for Simon Says... Something New

Hello Everyone, Welcome to My Stop on the LawnScaping Winter Blog Hop!  

You should have arrived here from Thinking Stamps; if not, be sure to check out her page & all the rest!

Lost on the hop? No problem, start at Lawnscaping and don't miss a thing!

There will be lots of fun prizes to win so be sure to leave a comment here & on all the other blog hop pages as well! All the specific information about the sponsors and prizes can be found on the Lawnscaping home page. Everyone will have until Sunday, 12/15 at 11:59PM EST to leave comments to be eligible for a prize.

So the theme was winter & this is what I created!

I started this card with the background. I first masked the edges of a 5in x 11in piece of white 100lb cardstock with some washie tape. Next I took tumbled glass distress ink and using an ink blending tool filled in the center and lower portion of the frame. Next I brought in some peacock feathers along the center and upper portion. Near the top I used a bit of faded jeans & a very tiny bit of black soot. I then lightly misted the card stock with some water & heat set.
I then scored the card evenly (just under two inches & 4 inches on each side) and made sure they lined up in the center. I added some of Lawn Fawn's adorable Critters in the Snow. I just love this set & have been using it a lot this year. I also used the sentiment from the Winter Fox mini set & the banners from Bannerific. Lastly I used some snowflake sequins. I left some space over the pengins to write a message.

Keep Hopping! 

The next stop on the hop is: Creative Palette 

Lost on the hop? No problem, start at Lawnscaping and don't miss a thing!

Its not very often I have found myself making a design over and over, but this tag has won hands down; I think I have 10 tags all similar to this one. I adore this stamp set, Winter Sparrows. I used distress ink to water color all the birds & then some distress stickles in Rock Candy on some of the details just for fun. The background paper is 100 lb weight and I used a wood grain embossing folder. I have found the heavier paper stands up better for some of my embossing folders. Lastly I used some snowflakes from the lawn fawn sequins to finish it off. (You can sorta see the reflection of my camera in the silver one).

This is my entry for:

Stuff I used:

Frosty Polka Dots

 

 I am playing along with this weeks Lawnscaping Challenge. 

This theme is one of my favorites since I LOVE polka dots! 

I use polka dots in a ton of cards.

So I have a new card today, all decked out for winter. I haven't done many winter themed cards yet this year. Lots and lots of christmas, but not to many winter. That is going to change shortly since I have so many adorable winter stamps. I have used Frosty Friends for this card, along with some snow from the Let It Snow stamp set.

Stamps used:
 

**Woohoo! small edit to add that I got a new badge for this card from Lawnscaping Challenge. If you love Lawnfawn and haven't played along yet, go check them out!

So I broke down and bought some distress paints after watching everyone having fun with them. I am NOT disappointed. I cannot stop playing with them. I didn't have all the colors so the green & purple were just mixed using the other colors. Leaves were cut out using the stitched leaves lawncuts.

Fall - Fall - Fall card

Normally I don't use card sketches - I get an idea in mind and go for it, but when I saw the card sketch (below) and the inspiration cards they really lit a spark. I love all the new patterns in the new Lawn Fawn collection for fall so I decided to try a little paper piecing.

I know mine didn't end up exactly as the sketch shows but with my card and all the patterns it felt really heavy if the back piece didn't go all the way across.

This card was inspired by:

&

"Big Foot" Card

So I couldn't resist having a different twist on the "Yeti" stamp set from Lawn Fawn. I think he makes a very adorable "Big Foot" type creature. =) I did the background coloring with distress inks. I smeared all the colors on my craft sheet used my water brush to pick up the colors instead of coloring on the paper directly and then getting it wet. I used water color paper for this as well. Just the normal pad you can pick up at any craft store, I cut them into what ever size I need. The papers are from the new into the woods set from Lawn Fawn. The water color paper is on foam squares & the orange patterned paper is on a double layer to pop it out more.

Products Used:


If you want to play along too, be sure to visit Lawnscaping Challenge Blog.

Hoppy Halloween!

Hello! I am happy that its soon going to be my favorite time of year, fall! Halloween has always sorta been a big deal around here. We are all a little crazy about it! When I saw this super cute stamp set from Lawn Fawn I had to get it.

I made the background for this card with Distress Inks by Tim Holtz. I am super crazy about distress inks, but you have to not mind getting dirty! I used regular make-up sponges to do some blending. For the green grass I put a post-it down to block the top two thirds of the card and blended mowed lawn distress ink downwards. Then I removed the mask and flipped it around to mask the green (I left a very thin strip of green still visible to blend the sky into so no white would show) I used tumbled glass and then faded jeans and finally black soot. I started off the paper with the black soot so it wouldn't be to heavy or streaky. Also, I should mention I used some water color paper to do this on. I find it works better for me when blending & coloring. I then stamped the star from this set in stazon ink in jet black. I took a wet paint brush and dabbed the middle of the stars with water. I then blotted this with a cloth to remove some of the ink. This allowed me to go back over it with some faded marigold (I used a distress marker this time).

The bunny has a tiny bit of copic coloring in grey just to outline him so he had a bit more dimension. I used C1 - cool grey to outline him. The cloak and pendent are more distress markers as well as the carrot, moon & clouds. I coated his cloak in distress stickles in clear rock candy for a little sparkle. The background paper is Halloween parade by doodle bug! Love this paper, so cute!

Products Used:
 

Stitched Leaves Cards

1.  

 2.  

 3.

The cards above all have one thing in common, they all used the stitched leaves dies from Lawn Fawn. I adore the entire new release (can't ya tell?). I got all the fall releases and a few of the winter releases including all the paper.

The leaves in card 1 & 2 I cut out in plain white card stock. Then I took a bunch of my shadow & distress inks and started blending. I would choose 2 inks, one light shade and one darker. I would go around the edges first with the light color blending towards the center. Then I took the darker color around the edges but staying away from the bottom and center of the leaves. Then I took black soot distress ink and very lightly flicked the edges. You can see a very good tutorial that I used in this video from Lawn Fawn. Warning - this is very messy and not recommended if you hate having ink on your fingers!

For the backgrounds on card 2 & 3 I used the wood grain stamp from Lawn Fawn. On card 2 I stamped it out on a light craft colored card stock with antique linen. I then cut it into strips and inked the edges so it looked like a fence. Card 2 & 3 also feature another die from Lawn Fawn stitched journaling card. I think it makes just the perfect layering piece. The last card I chose to do unconventional colors. I happen to love turquoise & teal colors. I first die cut the leaves in turquoise and then lightly inked the edges in black soot distress ink. I did a lot of these because its very easy to go to dark. If I make this card again I may pop a few of the leaves up with foam tape, but I wanted to make this one easy to mail out.

Materials Used: