Wishing You

So how was your weekend? Ours was very nice. Had a cook out on Saturday for some friends and had a nice visit with them.
Today after doing a bit of cleaning up from last night I was able to get in some crafty time so I have a card  to share with you tonight.

 Viva La Verve Sketch Challenge AUG Week 4 was used for the design

 I decided to flip the sketch on it's side just because. ;)
The colors of the card came from the fabulous inspiration photo at Moxie Fab World's Tuesday Trigger:

Isn't that cup and saucer delightful! I was so hoping that I would have time to play along this week because I just love all those beautiful colors of the flowers and saucer.

I wanted to capture the translucent color of the saucer.The only way I could think of getting that look was by  using vellum. I inked a piece of vellum with Tumbled Glass distress inks and inking tool and adhered it to white cardstock before running  both through the Cuttlebug with an embossing folder. It is really hard to capture the color of the vellum with the camera. It is so very pale.

 It took me a while to figure out what colors to use for what elements. I had so many options but I eventually worked it out. The papers are from DCWV Matstack Citrus. I love how subtle some of the pattern paper is from that stack.

 

The flower stamp is from an Heidi Grace set called Paradise. I stamped it with StazOn, Blazing Red ink and cut it out adhering it with a pop up dot. The sentiment is from the Verve stamp set "Wishing You". I backed all the elements with red pattern paper to help each one stand out a bit more.

And since I used vellum I thought I might as well enter this card in A Blog Named Hero's #30 Victorious Vellum Challenge:

All you need to do is use vellum on your project. Stop by their blog and check out the amazing  projects of their Design Team. You will be wowed!

Thanks for dropping by.

Teresa

Nautical Tuesday Trigger and Viva La Verve Sketch Combo

Happy weekend to you all! It has been a busy but fun weekend with friends. It started Friday when we invited a couple over for dinner and I made a fresh peach pie for dessert. It was a big hit. After a long dinner (long because we were having a great conversation) outside on the patio we came inside and played our favorite board game, Sequence. Guys against the gals. Sorry gals the guys eventually ended up with more wins. Now today our friend from Arizona is going to be with us tonight for dinner and stay overnight. It's always great to visit with old friends.
Anyway onto the reason for this post.
Here is my rustic card for today:

 

It really makes me happy not because it is the best card I've ever made. That it is surely not, but I was able to use lots of different stamp sets together and some were really old and some were my most recent stamp 

 purchases and recycled packaging all in one card.

To help jump start this card I used the Viva La Verve Sketch AUG week 1: 

...and I combined the sketch with this weeks Tuesday Trigger, Craving Navy over at the Moxie Fab World.

Now I don't know about you but when I saw the colors and the stripes I immediately thought nautical. So I reached for my new Verve "Strong Anchor" stamp set and die then paired it with a sailboat from a Hero Arts stamp set and an old double rope frame stamp from Posh Impressions (the date on the stamp says 1997) and the sentiment is from another HA set.
I knew I wanted to incorporate the blue and white stripes but didn't have any stripped pattern paper so I used blue cardstock and an old Close to My Hearts Stripe Stencil which was still in it's original packaging unused. Next I got out my molding paste from Golden to use with the stencil to make white stripes on the blue cardstock. I wanted it to be round to add some texture so I used a foam brush to apply the molding paste instead of a credit card.

I love how fast the molding paste dries because I don't have a lot of patience for drying times when I am in a creative mood. I have to admit though once I had the stripes done I was at a loss at what to do next with the two diagonal pieces. It was late so I decided to go to bed and maybe something would come to me. Sure enough before I fell asleep I thought of using twine. First thing in the morning I grabbed my twine but it was too thin and was really lost on the card. Not daunted I remembered my ball of jute that is much thicker. It worked perfectly. I think the jute makes it look a bit rustic don't you think?

Next I worked on the focal image. I have to tell you how about the background. It is from a tea box I had emptied and was breaking down to put in the recycle bin when I noticed how pretty the inside was. I thought it looked similar to the rug in the Tuesday Trigger so I used it to stamp my images on. Thanks Tazo for making such a pretty design on the inside of your boxes of tea!
The rope circle frame is from Verve and sailboat from HA and both are stamped in Faded Jeans distress ink.

I stamped the sentiment on a blue fishtail banner with VersaMark WaterMark ink and embossed with white embossing powder. The anchor die is also from Verve and I wrapped some twine from The Twinery.

I needed to add something on the right side of the sentiment to balance out the anchor and thought gold gemstones would work with the nautical theme. The outside rope frame is stamped on white cardstock with Faded Jeans and cut it out with a craft knife.

So that is the story behind the card. It's great to have a masculine card on hand. I am always short on those.

Thanks so much for visiting and leaving a comment or two!

Teresa

Tuesday Trigger + A Verve Sketch

Happy Thursday morning to you all!
The card I have to share with you today was inspired by this weeks beautiful Tuesday Trigger over at the Moxie Fab World and the Viva La Verve Sketch week 1.
Here is the card I whipped up last night merging these two challenges together:

Here is the Viva La Verve sketch...

 ...and the beautiful Tuesday Trigger.

 Tangerine Scene

I am just in love with those soft colors. When I was looking for colors to match up with the Trigger I kept I kept coming up with blue mixed in with the colors I wanted. Then I noticed that If you look closely  at the Trigger you will see just a smidgen of blue rickrack.

Not only was I inspired by the colors from the Trigger but also by the chipboard that the rickrack is wrapped around. I remembered some cute embossed chipboard that I had and pulled out a bird shaped piece. 

Now I had tried to use this bird before and messed it up but didn't throw it away, it was just too cute. Now I am glad I didn't. I just flipped it over and embossed it using Versamark Watermark ink and white embossing powder. I love it when I try a new technique and it works! I also love that you can still see the detail of the dry embossing on the bird. I wish I could remember who's blog I found this technique on. Sorry :(

After adding all the design elements to the card and the bird I thought the card still looked bare so I added the tree to the top banner stamping it a bit off to the side and embossed it with white embossing powder.

I found the yellow pattern paper border scrap and used it along with the sentiment which I stamped with Broken China distress ink.

 

Thinking that I was done and ready to clean up  my desk something was still nagging at me. It still needed something.

So I stamped a couple of leaves in Shabby Shutter, cut them out and added them around the bird. Aah, much better.

 So this morning when I took the photo to post it here on my blog I still had this nagging feeling that it still looked a little on the bare side. Now I am a CAS kind of gal but I still felt something was missing. 

So out came the pearls and a bit of Shabby Shutters ink around the edges of the card and that did the trick.

 I now was satisfied with the card and I could finally take my photos. The card really did come together really quick. Just had to make a few minor adjustments.

 Here is how I finished off the inside by using the tree stamp again and using bits of paper I had to trim off for the front of the card. I stamped the tree, which by the way is from Hero Arts, in Shabby Shutters Distress ink.

I really am in love with the colors...so soft and pretty.
I will be linking this to Tuesday Trigger and Viva La Verve Sketch Challenge June Week 1
So why don't you head on over and join the fun!
Thanks so much for the visit and have a great Thursday!

Teresa

Vintage Vagabond Birthday Wishes

I am so glad that we had two weeks for the current Tuesday Trigger Vintage Vagabond over at Moxie Fab World. I loved the picture inspiration Cath provided us with:

 Pretty cool, but I didn't think I had anything close to what was in the photo until last night. I was going through my stash looking for an embellishment for the card I was currently working on when I came across these brads:

 I knew they were perfect for the Trigger. I had forgotten all about these beauties.

I paired the Tuesday Trigger with this simple sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch

And here is my card:

 I knew that the papers had to be vintage so I toned down both of the pattern papers with Walnut Stain distress ink.

After adhering the papers and attaching the brads all I had to do was stamp the sentiment in Timber Brown Memento ink.

Here is a peek at the inside of the card:

Thanks for dropping by!

Teresa

All Sweetness and Light

This will be quick as I need to get this done in time to meet a deadline. Sorry the photos is so bad. I can't believe that there was too much light to get a good photo.

 I used the Deconstructed Sketch 104 

 and Tuesday Trigger: All Sweetness and Light for color inspiration

I love the three banners layered together.

 I used an embossing folder on the gray cardstock.

So sorry for the horrible photos and short post.
Teresa

Butterflies and Stars

This first card is inspired from this sketch FTL187 from Clean and Simple Stamping:

Here is the link if you would like to join in the fun and see what others have created: http://cleanandsimplestamping.blogspot.com/2012/04/ftl187-just-note.html

 I am disappointed in how the card turned out. I worked hard and long on it and thought about scrapping it altogether but after all the time I had put into it I felt I needed to keep the card.  After all just because I don't like it someone else might really like it. I think it is the gingham paper that just isn't working. And the stars I made didn't turn out quite like I thought they would. I had to turn the sketch so I could fit in the stars. I added a white star gemstone to the center of the big star. That seemed to help a bit.

And instead of a straight end of the gingham paper I cut it into a ribbon on the bottom and I embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder. The stars are die cut and embossed with Spellbinder dies out of watercolor paper and I used three different blue distress inks and three different red distress inks. I used the direct to paper method of inking them then spritzed them with Perfect Pearls to blend the colors. I had enough stars left to make two more cards.

For my second card I used this color blocked sketch from I Spy Sketch Challenge:

And oh boy you should see the cute cards the Secret Agents created! Here is the link: http://ispysketches.blogspot.com/2012/04/issc13-with-dawn-mercedes.html

Now for my card:

 This is my favorite of the three cards! There for a while I thought I had lost my mojo and almost gave up after the first card. I am also entering this card in the Tuesday Trigger Challenge over at the Moxie Fab World where every Tuesday Cath puts up an image to inspire us. This was a two weeker thank goodness as I didn't get around to making something for it last week. Here is the image:

Look at all those beautiful water color butterflies! Check out the Tuesday Trigger yourself here: http://www.moxiefabworld.com/2012/04/tueday-trigger-watercolor-butterflies.html 

Instead of butterflies I went with stars since I have been working on Patriotic cards. I used a different embossed cardstock for each of the color blocks. The white cardstock was already embossed and is from DCWV. The other two are embossed with Cuttlebug embossing folders.



This time I layered the three stars together and put a clear gemstone star on the top. It took me a while to figure out where to put the star. I finally decided to turn the sketch on its side and add the two rows of scalloped borders and wrapped a ribbon around the the whole thing.







I stamped the sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on red cs and matted that with a scrap leftover from the white embossed paper. I decided the layered star looked better on the border instead of in one of the blocks and put the sentiment under the star in the navy block.

For my third and final card for this week I used sketch #48 from The Deconstructed Sketch:

I thought this was a unique sketch and here is my take on it:

 I had one lonely blue star left to use! I stayed pretty true to the sketch. I just added a punched star border and after I was done with the card I kept thinking it just didn't look quite right so I got out my trusty corner rounder that seems to be just the thing to fix things like this. And once again it did the trick.

 I used  three rows of Michael's Craft Tape and after I stamped the word happy I thought it needed a little bit more of a punch so I got out a black Glaze pen and went over it. You can see how it now

has a shine to it as well as just a bit of dimension. Those Glaze pens are my new found must have craft item. I think I need more colors now that I have used them a bit.

Hope you play along with some of these sketches and challenges.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!