Loads of Love

I have a Special Delivery of Hugs for you today from Stampendous and House Mouse Stamps. One of my favorite New stamps from Stampendous Stamps is this stamp called "Gifts Galore". I have a special kind of love for the little House Mouse stamps, and usually add one or more to my collection every year. I purchased this one before Christmas, but didn't get around to using it until after the holidays. I thought it would make a wonderful Valentine's Day stamp in beautiful pinks and reds. 

I started off by stamping it on a white card stock base with tuxedo black Memento Ink. I then colored it in with Copic markers, and some Smooch Inks. The Smooch inks are pearlized, and give a soft and shiny look to the boxes and bows.  I also punched out several red card stock hearts with my Fiskars small heart punch, and then highlighted them with my clear Wink of Stella glitter marker.  The sentiment, "Special Delivery" comes from one of the Pure Innocence stamp sets from My Favorite Things.

A very quick and simple card to stamp, color,  and send, if you need a quick card for someone you love. And as I always say, "Keep On Stampin"!  Until we visit again,

Mindy

Shake A Leg . . . . . Go Find an Egg!

 "Spring is here,
 So shake a leg. . .
Hurry up! Hop to it!
Go find an egg!"

I love the sentiment on this card, it came with the bunny stamps on the Inky Antics clear set titled,
"Bunny #2". In fact, all of the stamping on the card today came from that set.

I started out by stamping the bunny and his basket on white card stock, and coloring him with my copic markers. When I started fussy cutting him out, I noticed there were a lot of details that I could not cut around, such as the shaking of his leg, and a loose egg or two. So I decided to stamp the bunny again on another piece of white card stock that was 3 3/4"x 5". I then stamped the egg and polka dot background stamp across the top of it, along with the saying stamp. After I colored in all of the eggs in the background, there was a lot of white space left that I really didn't care for. I got out my Smooch Ink spray in the Gingerbread color and spritzed the background here and there. I then trimmed down both sides of the background with the EK Success Scalloped Scallop edge punch, and added three gold Dazzles swirls along the sides. I used some foam tape to raise the bunny cut-out for dimension, and then adhered it to the front of the card base.  I tied a lavender sparkly ribbon on the left side in a knot and the card was finished.

I hope you have enjoyed my Easter cards this year. I have to get a few of them in the mail so they will reach their destinations before Easter Sunday. If I have any more wonderful card ideas for Easter,  I will share them with you. I have a few birthday cards I need to make for the first few days of  April, so my mind won't be in bunny or egg mode much longer. Have a great week, and I will share with you again soon.

Happy Easter

Greetings, Fellow Papercrafters!  Today's post is an Easter card, since Easter is so close to St. Patrick's Day this year. Two weeks separates the holidays, so there is not much time to get Easter cards done if you want to send them out.

This card features my favorites, Tilda from Magnolia Stamps, and Hero Arts. The little girl is Fancy Romantic Tilda, and the stamp has her holding an umbrella.  I cut off the umbrella after stamping the design on white card stock, and added the basket of eggs from an Inky Antics clear stamp set. I colored all of the stamped images with my copic markers, along with the two flowers and leaves from the Hero Arts "Blossom" set.

After all of the images were colored, I set them aside, and got out my pink card stock background and a piece of pink vertical striped paper and stamped the sentiment Happy Easter in Rose bud Memento ink. I believe the Happy Easter was from an assorted holiday stamp set from Fiskars.  To give it just a bit of twinkle, I added a few pink faceted stones for the middles of the flowers and attached them to the card front, using foam squares to pop up Tilda just a bit, so she would stand out on the card.  As a last thought, I used some Smooch ink on the edges of the flowers, just so they would sparkle just a little.

I will try to post a few more Easter cards this week, that are fairly easy to complete. Then if you are like me and running behind in getting your cards done, you will still have time to finish them and get them in the mail by next week.  Take care, and Stamp Happy!  See you again soon.

More Tags on Thursday!

Hello everyone!
It must look like I am posting the same things over and over every day.  But I'm not! Here are three more tags for the Holiday Tree that I am helping to decorate.

I finally started playing
with my Christmas stamps, and hope to find a theme to use as my Christmas cards this year. Every year I play around with my stamps, weeks in advance, trying out different stamps and designs in effort to find something I can live with for the holidays on my cards.

I see so many different designs online from all the blogs I frequent, that I get so confused I don't know which ones I like the most.  This year since I will be making these tags in advance of the holidays, maybe I will find one grouping that I will love to send out as cards to my relatives and friends for the holidays. I have completed half of the tags needed from me, and hope I will be able to really buckle down this weekend to get the rest done, so I can deliver them early next week.

While looking through my millions of stamps today, I found many Christmas stamps I haven't stamped in ages, if ever!  You know they always say, ". . . the one with the most toys, wins!"  When it comes to stamps, "I WIN!"

Have a great day doing whatever your heart desires, and take time to stop and smell the Roses!

Tags on Tuesday!

Hello friends,
Three more tags for the Holiday Tree we are decorating.  I really am enjoying making these tags. I can try new techniques, and use a lot of my copic colored images that I have stamped out and colored. I have a whole booklet of images I have stamped and colored while learning to use the copic markers. I save them, and then when I need a small image to use in one of my art pieces, I can just add it in without a problem. Many of the images I color in different color schemes, that way I have a variety to choose from in my booklet.  As you can probably see, I love coloring roses of all shapes and sizes.
I love to practice the shading on the petals, and trying color combinations that might occur in real life gardens. The rose stamp on the first tag on the left, is my favorite rose stamp, and I don't know how many times I have stamped it out to color.

This is a great project to use my sample snippets on, I can combine several on a tag. I don't have too many Christmas samples in my book, but guess I will have to start stamping out a few so some of my tags will have a Christmas holiday theme.
There is not too much technique in putting together these tags, but if you have any questions, feel free to comment on this post, and I will get back to you as soon as possible with the answers.

Have a good week, and keep on stamping!

Holiday Tags

Hello fellow stampers,
It's already November, and I am trying to start a holiday decorating project with a friend.
We are decorating a holiday tree for a group of needy families in our area, and are using decorative hand-stamped tags as gift card holders to decorate the tree.

I wanted to share some of the tags with you that I have made. They are a small fun project that can be used for ornaments, place cards for Thanksgiving, tags for hand-delivered gifts, or regular old gift tags with presents.

I used 21/2" X 5" manila tags for these, and cut a heavy piece of scrapbook paper into 5" X 5" squares and scored them down the middle to make a gift card. Then when my tag was complete, I adhered it to the gift card to make it more sturdy. I will try to show several each day, I have 25 to make before Thanksgiving.

I hope you will all be able to try and design some tags of your own during this holiday season. They are just as much fun to make as cards are for me, and can be used for many different purposes.  Have a nice Veterans Day weekend, and thank a soldier for their service, it's the nicest thing you can do!

Let Your Dreams FLY!

Happy Friday Everyone!
Today's card is the last in the series of Melange Women that I made on World Card Making Day last weekend. This is Cassandra.

Cassandra is one of four Melange Women cling mounted rubber stamps from Paper Wings Productions. To check out these and other wonderful stamps, click here.

I started the background for this card as a 4" X6" piece of watercolor paper. I then edged the paper with grape and peach Gelato pigment sticks from Faber Castell. These Gelatos are so much fun to work with, they are like an oil pastel stick in a chap-stick tube, that are water-based instead of oil-based. You just draw with them like a crayon and then either blend them with your fingers, a baby wipe, or a water brush like watercolors. I just scribbled through the middle of the watercolor paper, and then blended it together somewhat. When it was dry, I used purple Smooch ink to swirl over the top and make more swirls and squiggles. I then put the background aside to completely dry before moving on.

Next I stamped Cassandra in Wild Honey Distressed Ink and colored her with my Copic markers. I had a saying in my computer about "catching a star that lets your dreams fly" so I printed it out and trimmed around its edges. Before putting the card together, I assembled a felt flower with three layers and adhered a pearl embellishment in it's center.

I trimmed the background to fit an A2 size card blank and adhered all the layers to the card front. Cassandra was adhered with foam tape to give the card dimension. The felt flower is very soft, so it will smash down when mailing the card.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I am attending a Halloween Card Making class, given by a friend of mine, and we will be using stamps from the House Mouse line of stamps. I think they are one of my favorite categories of stamps.  So, have a stampin' good time this weekend, I know I will be.