ATTN: Silhouette Cameo and Portrait Owners

If you own one of these machines, you will want to read the notice on the Silhouette America support web page and check your power adapter to ensure it is not displaying a counterfeit "UL" symbol. You can read about it here: http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/media/docs/public-notice-20130917.pdf

Now that I have passed on that bit of news, please enjoy this little project:

These are Martha Stewart wedding favour boxes that I dressed up with some Quietfire Design stamps. Thanks for visiting today!

Shhhhh... it's a secret....

Exciting things going on today, but not here.

Today I am featured as a

Friend of Waltzingmouse Stamps

over on the Waltzingmouse Makes blog!

Please take a moment to visit - I hope you like what you find!

Thanks for stopping by!

Two Challenges - One Card

This is a card based on the Mojo Monday sketch this week, using a few of the colours from the current Waltzingmouse Fanatics Challenge.

The "My Kind of Man" stamp set is a recent purchase, and this is my first try using it. I think it will take a little more time to get comfortable with it, but I really like the brogue pattern and can envision using it a number of ways. I used my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine to cut some of the pieces.

Thanks for stopping by today!

FFC17 - Colour Challenge

The current Festive Friday Challenge is a colour scheme, per:

Those felted acorns are adorable! I used this as an opportunity to try the Bordered Sentiment tutorial at Splitcoaststampers.

Stamps: Waltzingmouse Stamps

This card measures 5.25 X 7 inches. The sentiment was stamped in Versafine Majestic Blue and the snowflakes were stamped in StazOn Metallic Silver. I'll also enter this in the WMS Christmas Card Challenge for October which is rumoured to be a one-layer card. That's all she wrote!

SCS Inspiration Challenge

Over at Splitcoaststampers the Saturday Inspiration Challenge (IC406) is to look at the Williams-Sonoma online catalogue, choose a photo to inspire your card, and upload the results. I think this is the first time I have played in this challenge. The item I chose was this La Med Melamine Serving Bowl:

Williams-Sonoma La Med Melamine Serving Bowl

I knew the perfect stamp set to work with, the Waltzingmouse Stamps Folk Art Medallion set. This is a "build an image" set with various options to layer to create the medallion. Here is my card:

I stamped the motifs on white Neenah cardstock after cutting the outlines on my Silhouette Cameo. I found it easiest to stamp onto the medallion shape while it was still on the sticky Cameo mat.

I easily created an offset cut file for the large medallion so I could have a perfectly matching yellow background layer. This is one of the marvelous things about an electronic "die" cutter. You can get a shadow layer for any image and you can decide how thick or thin the border will be! Here is a closer look:

It is way past my bedtime so I will sign off. Thanks for checking up on me today!

Autumn Challenge

Can you feel Autumn coming on? We are enjoying an extended summer, with temperatures in the high 20's Celsius currently. But the Mountain Ash are starting to blaze yellow and the leaves are beginning to descend, and it won't be long now.

I am entering this card for the Artistic Stamper Creative Team Blog challenge for September, which is "Autumn" and I could not be closer to the mark! This Albert Camus quote is a favourite of mine - the stamp is Stampendous N222 Autumn Flower stamped in Adirondack Raisin dye ink on tan cardstock. The background is Polished Stone created with an assortment of Ranger alcohol inks, and I embossed various leaves (old Hero Arts and PSX stamps) over top with pearly metallic embossing powders. I used a Krylon Gold Leafing Marker to edge the three panels. Thanks for visiting my blog today!

WMS Fanatics Blog Challenge #1

There's a new card challenge in the blogosphere, the Waltzingmouse Fanatics Challenge. Look for their vibrant blog banner:

This is the inaugural challenge, and they go for 12 days so you have plenty of time to join in. You just need to use one WMS product in your creation, and if you don't have any, there are free digis in the WMS store so you can play, too. This time it is a sketch challenge. Here is the sketch:

WMSFC #1

I used my new set of matroyshka doll stamps (You're A Doll) from Waltzingmouse. The background papers are Memory Box Brioche and I took my colour cues from them. Coloured the gals with Copic markers.

The Folk Art Labels No. 25 frame and sentiment make this card eligible for the Seize the Birthday Challenge, too!

Dreamweaver Stencil Autumnal Card

Today I am doing a little happy dance. I randomly won the Dreamweavers Dream it Up! blog challenge for "Christmas in August" simply by entering an ornament I had made using one of their fabby stencils. Each month they have these challenges and I am hoping to do more of them as I am just learning about using stencils. The challenges motivate me. I encourage you to play along. You do not need a blog to play - you can email a photo to Lynell and she will include it in the running. The winners are drawn randomly so even newbies like me have a chance to win stencils! Of course the hard part is deciding which one I want!

This month the challenge is "Awesome Autumn" and I have a card to share using this Dreamweavers Bare Trees Stencil LJ 849 that I won in another Dreamweavers blog contest:

The trees are the metal part - picture silver metal trees against black paper. The black shows through the openings in the stencil. Here's my card:

Card measures 4.25 X 5.5 inches. The sentiment is a
Waltzingmouse stamp on a Spellbinders Labels 14 die cut.

You might be wondering how I got the trees black when I used white cardstock for my base. I coated the entire stencil with black pigment ink, then ran it through my Cuttlebug machine to ink and embed the tree silhouettes into the white cardstock. After removing the stencil, I quickly sprinkled clear embossing powder on the ink and heat embossed the trees and border. The trees were now shiny. Then I used strips of low tack tape masks to section out "rays" in the background to sponge on Distress Inks. The embossed trees resisted the inks. I used the same inks to colour the die cut label while the cardstock was still in the die, leaving the white border. I mounted it on a barely visible bright lime green card front - which you might question, but looks smashing in real life! 

Check out the Dreamweavers Blog (right now they are showing fun techniques with glitter) and enter the Awesome Autumn challenge. You, too, could be a winner!