Easter Tulips: Stained Glass Window

Hello Everyone!  I have another Easter/Spring card for you today.  This one is made from hand tracing a metal stencil of the Tulips Stained Glass Window on white card stock. I traced it twice, once for the background, and another time just for the frame around the window. It is hard to see in this photo, but after coloring the tulips, leaves, frames, and background with my copic markers, I trimmed the gray frame off the second stamping and used clear foam tape to pop it up around the image.

I also stamped a dangling banner from the Lawn Fawn's Bannerific stamp set with Memento ink, and then colored it with copic markers. I used the Pixie Antique Alphabet set to stamp the phrase "Happy Easter" and then used foam dots placed inside the frame to pop the banner just a bit higher than the frame. I need to mail this card, and I don't want it to be so dimensional in the envelope that it will cost extra to mail.

To assemble the card, I took a gray sheet of card  stock and trimmed it to 3 3/4" x 5" and ran it through the Cuttlebug machine with the Dotted Swiss embossing folder. I then mounted the colored image to the embossed stock, and trimmed the top left corner to match the design image and added three pink acrylic stones to the right corner for accent. I left the "grout lines" of the image white on this card, because it looked better. I used the image I cut from the framed pieced and colored in the grout lines with black, gray, and a light gold, just to see how it would look, but I didn't like the look at all. I guess the white worked better with the light colors I colored the image with. Maybe if you colored the image with darker colors the darker grout lines would look OK.

Thank you for stopping by and visiting today. I hope you have enjoyed my card, and will try to stamp a few cards for your family and friends. See you soon.

Winter Wonderland Card

Happy Wintertime fellow stampers!
Today was another one of those dreary days here in So. Texas where I live. The only good things about this dreary weather is that we really do need the rain that we get, plus it gives me lots to time to work on cards.

Today's card is another winter themed card with papers from the Graphic 45 line," A Place in Time." The colors for the January embellishments and papers are in shades of teal, so I used some strips of the teal printed pages attached to the card base as my background. I punched a 3 1/2" circle from white card stock and used a new metal stencil I got with  club kit I belong to. Paper Wishes/Hot off the Press has a monthly club kit that features metal stencils. Each month you get a kit with 2 metal stencils and a newsletter with lots of ideas for using the stencils, on cards, tags, scrapbook pages and the like.  They also discuss how to use different techniques and products with the stencils to help you with your projects.  When I used to work at Stamp Antonio Arts, here in San Antonio, we sold a lot of the metal stencils. I just never learned how to use them, and never seemed to have the time to take any of the classes offered.

With this stencil of the ice skates, I first traced around the inside of the stencil with a Pigma Micron .005 fine tip permanent marker. I then removed the stencil, and went over the laces and shoestrings with a heavier tip .08 fine tip permanent black marker.I also traced around the boot and heel with the larger tipped marker. The next step was to color the boot, and I used my Copic markers in Aqua shades to color them. Finally, I colored the bow with streamers and the metal blades of the skates with Ice Blue Stickles. The instructions suggested Silver Stickles, but I thought the light blue would bring the card together, especially since I was using so much of the teal blue. To complete the card I cut a tag and stamped "Winter Wonderland" on it, and shaded the edges with Ocean Water Distressed Ink and tied some Caribbean blue twine around the whole card vertically and knotted it.

This time of the year when so many people are feeling depressed and blue, I like to suggest trying something new like stamping or card making to help lift your spirits. Just trying one thing new each day will help you boost your self esteem and help you feel like you really have accomplished something. So get out there and try a new technique, or even use new colors in your stamping that you have never used before. Then share it with a friend, and make someone else HAPPY!  See you soon.