Squeeeee! I won!

My two humble renditions of Tosha Leyendekker's tag are now being featured on the Waltzingmouse Stamps blog as winner of the CASE (Copy and Share Everything) competition! My original (now winning!) post can be seen here! What did I win? Fame and glory! My tags will be posted on some of the WMS designers' blogs. 

Thanks to the WMS design team for choosing my project. How on earth do they choose? There were so many worthy entrants. What an honour!

WMS Sketch Challenge #72

Christmas will soon be here! I made a triptych card for the current Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge.

My inspiration for this project comes from a wonderful Valentine's project by Sharon Johnson that you can see here. I didn't follow her instructions because I didn't have them at hand. I just went from memory. The Labels Fourteen frames and plum pudding are WMS stamps. I used Brilliance Ink in Rocket Red to stamp everything. The letters are die cut. So are the Spellbinders Labels Fourteen, the white center circle and the scalloped red one. I am thankful for my Cuttlebug! The rest is coordinating design papers and ribbon. I accented the plum pudding with a paper-pieced bottom to coordinate with the designer paper and three Swarovski crystal "berries." Noel!

WMS SOAP CASE Competition

The Waltzingmouse Design Team has been showing off old and new stamps in an homage to Christmas.  There have been so many lovelies in the SOAP (Stamp of Approval Parade), and we've been invited to CASE (Copy and Share Everything) one of our favourite designs in the challenge on the WMS blog.

 Tosha Leyendekker's fabulous vintage tag is above. I was smitten by this. Details on how she made it are here. I decided to have a go and ended up with two tags.

This first one gave me a chance to play with my new WMS stamps and Spellbinders 2011 ornament dies. The teal glitter snowflake was negative cut from the dp using a Memory Box die called Bianca Snowflake. I used Martha Stewart glitter and layered a small Spellbinders snowflake over top. I centered a teal Swarovski crystal in the small hole. I stitched all around the edge.

What drew me to Tosh's tag was the vintage feel and creamy colours she used. I decided to try again to see if I could hit closer to the mark. I used some champagne Ritz glitter for the burnished velvet snowflake. I didn't have any paper featuring subtle postal marks and scrolls, so I grabbed some stamps and Antique Linen Distress Ink and tried my best to create my own. Cranberry Adirondack Ink was a good match for the striped dp so I stamped some ornaments with that and hung them with red and white baker's twine. I quite like both tags, even though they are quite different. I have not decided if these will be used as tags or if they will become a feature on a card. Plenty of time before I have to choose!

More Birthday Cards

Really, can you ever have too many birthday cards on hand? In fact, I probably should invest a lot more in birthday stamps and cut back on all the Christmas stamp purchases, given that birthdays are year 'round cardmaking occasions compared to Christmas. (I just can't resist a good yuletide stamp, though!)

This may be the first time I have inked up this Gina K houndstooth label stamp (coordinates with Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels Eight), though I think I have had it for a year. I used Tim Holtz's new autumnal colour Seedless Preserves distress ink to stamp the label and the sentiment.  The background is some gorgeous 6X6 Prima Fairy Flora designer paper that I got from Quietfire Design. I die cut the flowers and leaves and distressed them with more of Timmy's inks. 

Hi, Cupcake! I used a Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge design for this card, but I didn't use any WMS stamps on it so didn't enter it in the weekly challenge. I'm pleased with how it turned out, though. This was a bit of a twofer - I had the materials out and made the first card, and then used the leftovers to make a second card. Gotta strike while the iron's hot!

Birthday Cards Galore

Lest you think all I make are Christmas cards, I thought I would post some of the birthday cards I have been commissioned by my daughter to make of late. She has a number of friends who were born in November and December. These first two feature a resist technique of layering Adirondack dye inks on glossy paper, from the Nancy Curry book "Texture Effects for Rubber Stamping."

For this one (below) I relied on two Cuttlebug embossing folders from the Once Upon a Princess set of four to do the heavy lifting. The card sketch came from a past issue of Stamper's Sampler.

Rhinestones embellish the next card. The flower is a Hero Arts stamp and the Spellbinders fancy tag is highlighted by the crystals in the Nestabling sticker.

I have two more birthday cards to share... that will have to wait until tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by.

Sweet Greetings

The October challenge on the Waltzingmouse Forum was to use food in your cards. I don't have any of Claire's newest stamps featuring large candy canes and the candy jar, but I remembered what I did last year with the Bountiful Baskets Additions stamps featuring these gingerbread men and that got the wheels spinning. Where else could those gingerbread men be found? I decided to place them in the star and heirloom ornaments.

This first one is my favourite; I like the blue against the textured Cuttlebug embossed snowflakes panel.

For these ones, I pieced together "Sweet Greetings" from the sentiments in the Nutcracker Sweet stamp set, also from Waltzingmouse Stamps.