All the Birthday Wishes

Today I'm highlighting a bold Birthday Wishes die from Stamplorations. I've had this awhile and I keep die cutting it from a variety of papers and materials. I love it because it's bold and it's all connected and not too dainty. 

There are some word dies that have delicate lines that get bent easily but this isn't one of them. Looks like this die is on sale right now too, if you want one. I'm not an affiliate link, I just like the store and die.

For this first card, I framed a beautiful patterned paper from Altenew with a gold cardstock frame I cut with an oval and then used black foam to die cut the greeting. I added gold Uniball pen dots to the foam and it worked great.

This card uses a mermaid stamp and die plus a spiral stencil from Hero Arts. The sentiment is die cut from some ink sprayed cardstock. When I create with new materials, it's not always with a project in mind but I've found cutting the artsy pieces for backgrounds and sentiments works great.

This one uses alcohol ink experiments for the background and the sentiment. I added glossy accents to the paints for a little dimension.

 

For this last one, the background is Distress Ink watercolored and the sentiment is cut from more yupo with alcohol ink. I don't think I'm finished with this card yet. It might get some black spatter, sequins or enamel dots...maybe even a flower in the right lower corner. I guess we'll have to see!

Do you have any dies you love to use? psst! I just got a new set of pizza dies from MFT and I've been cutting up a storm...I can feel a post about to written about those dies soon.

Happy Friday!

Chark

Masculine Thank You Card

I'm a huge glitter fan (duh) and although some guys might like glitter, lots of my family do not. So I try to control myself when I send cards to them...and let me tell you, it's hard for me. But, Paper Smooches has fun challenge up, School/Words, so I added the challenge of making a card without glittery bits.

I don't have any "school" themed Paper Smooches, but I have the Spookalicious Halloween set with an owl, so he got star billing. I added the sentiment from this set and watercolored the owl with Distress inks. After adding washi tape, I mounted the panel on kraft and stopped myself from decorating the owl with some Stickles. But I did sneak in some shiny Chrome pen dots.

You have a couple of days left to join me in the challenge, hope you will!

p.s. finally joined the bitmoji bandwagon, but I think my bitmoji is cooler than me!

Happy Wednesday! 

Chark

Coffee, Tea or Bunnies?

I got this adorable stamp set from Memory Box in preparation for the Spring Coffee Lovers Blog Hop but never got them inked up in time.

I did, however, recently stamp a million and then painted and colored them one night. I spent the next night trimming them out. The following week, I found the matching dies on sale for half off. So, I bought them...after hand trimming this bunch.

 

It was lots of work but I do love these little guys. I adhered one of them to a panel I had embossed with the Hero Arts Nesting Ovals and then inked up with Distress Inks followed by some Distress Oxide Inks. 

He's so cute! I know I'm going to be using this set lots. And I'll use the matching dies next go-round.

Here's a card from Monday that was over at the a2z Scrapbooking Blog. I was forgetful and didn't post on Monday. I used one of the watercolor panels that I made and blogged about here. I love this Floral Border Die at a2z. So pretty and makes such a big statement with little time or effort. You have until the end of the month to join in our card challenge using your favorite Hero Arts inks, stamps, dies or digis. You could win $25 to the store, so hop over and link up!

Don't forget, my readers get a 15% discount on their $25+cart at a2z Scrapbooking just by using CHARK15 as their coupon code, on clearance or brand-new items!

Happy Wednesday!

Chark

Distress Oxide Inks for Easter

I've had playing around with the new Distress Oxide Inks and have posts here and here about them. And I used them with oval infinity dies on this a2z Scrapbooking post to make Easter eggs. 

Today I'm using the Hero Arts Floral Border die in white Bristol paper. 

1. I swiped the Oxide inks in Worn Lipstick, Cracked Pistachio and Blueprint Sketch onto a nonstick craft sheet and sprayed with water.

2. I dragged the paper through the ink and made sure it was fully covered with the ink. Then I let it air dry. The inks were a pretty smooth covering on the paper and as it dried, the shading happened on its own.

3. While it dried, I took some regular (not Oxide) Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade, Picked Raspberry and Salted Ocean and swiped those on a nonstick sheet and sprayed those with water. Same process, different types of ink. I dragged the paper through the ink and let it dry too.

4. I die cut the dried and Oxide-inked paper. Then I mounted it to the Distress Inks colored paper. I made sure the blues and pinks were placed opposite to each other.

5. I wrote Love You in white Uniball pen, outlined it in blue pencil and made a card with it. I like how the Oxide inks automatically get some marbling/textured look while the Distress inks just merge and meld together. You can see the difference between the background and the die cut parts here.

If you have some last-minute Easter or coloring needs, you can head to the free digi stamps section of Simply Cards and Papercrafts page. It's where I got this cute guy.

Happy Friday and Happy Easter!

Chark

Distress Inks and Sunsets

One of my favorite times of day to be out driving is when the sun is setting and the sky turns the coolest colors. Turns out it happens at sunrise too...but it is not my favorite time to be out or even up, so even though I do see some when taking the kid to school, I'd rather not! lol

At any rate, the black of the trees and buildings silhouetted against the colorful sky makes me happy. In anticipation of creating something similar, I've made some sunset sky papers.

I used my Distress Inks (not the Oxides) on a non-stick craft sheet, sprayed with a lot of water. I dragged paper through the inks and let them dry. Here's how they came out.

All three use Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade, Abandoned Coral, Picked Raspberry, Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon and Blueprint Sketch.

I just swiped the ink onto the mat, spritzed and dragged Bristol paper through the ink. I didn't do a lot of tilting or anything, just let the water do its magic.

This second one is Bristol paper again. I dragged it through once, let it dry and then dragged it again through newly applied inks. You can see it's much more brilliant with two coats.

The last one is regular cardstock and after it was somewhat dried, I swiped the ink pads directly on the paper. It's definitely brighter, but with more separation of colors. I used my fingers to drag some of the color around a bit before it dried. 

Here they all are together...again, same inks and same swishing through the ink puddles but with a little more ink added to the two on the ends.

I'm looking forward to using all three in some projects. And this will be my inspiration. A sunrise pic I took in my neighborhood March 20 this year. I guess I can't complain when I have to get up when I can see this beauty.

I'll post the finished projects when I decide what I'm making with my backgrounds. Sometimes, it's just fun to play with color, am I right?!

Happy Monday!

Chark

Altenew Peony Bouquet Redux

Visiting the Peony Bouquet stamp again in this post. You gotta admit, it's a good one. It comes with outline stamps, which are great for coloring and then you get the layered stamps too, you get blossoms, leaves and berries. What more could you want?

This one uses the outline stamp and then I watercolored with Tombows.

For this, I stamped the outline in Distress Inks so that when I used the Tombow markers and water, the outline would become part of the paint. I added white Uniball white pen for some highlights.

I love how the Altenew floral color layering stamps make me feel like an artist! 

Next, I want to try color layering stamps with one color, like in this Jennifer McGuire's video. Seriously, this woman is crazy talented...idea after idea and her technical skills in creating makes her a rock star.

Happy Friday!

Chark

Altenew Peony Project

I love my Altenew Peony stamp and use it way more than I should—I think my other stamps are jealous! I tried using it with different media like watercolors, markers and colored pencil and now I'm trying it on different media. Here it is on wood. 

This is a little wood tag from a Mason jar set of different sized wood tags, presumably to decorate your Mason jars, but I thought they were the perfect size for keychains and maybe even a bracelet, if you use the smaller piece. So, here it is in keychain form.

I started with Copics, knowing they would bleed a bit, and they did. I didn't color too closely to the stamped image for just that reason. And then I worried I'd hurt my nib, so I switched to Distress Inks and a dauber.

After I got the color where I wanted it, I used colored pencils to sharpen the dark and light areas. You can see the white pencil in the close-up.

And it took me all of 20 minutes to get this look. These would be lovely and fast little gifts, once you attach the keychain fob.

Do you ever stamp on anything other than paper? It's fun!

Happy Monday!
Chark

Crafty Friends Are The Best

Just wanted to share two cards I received recently from two talented ladies. The first is from my sister-in-law, Donna, who is pretty new to cardmaking, though she has always been crafty. It's my birthday card with some money in the pocket. I wonder what I should get? I'm thinking I should head to Jo Ann's and see what needs to come home with me! Love how cute this is!

The second card is a thank you from Karen, who's a frequent commenter here on the blog, which I totally appreciate! She won a little blog candy and sent this beautiful card. Love, love the gold ink on the background and the front panel. And the bird looks so cool on the die cut. Thanks for the thank you, Karen!

And here are the the bird stamps I won from Karen awhile back...which I didn't send a thank you for...but am so glad I won. Aren't they the cutest? I watercolored them with Distress Inks. Now I have to decide what to do with them. I've also used them on envelopes to dress them up.

Also, if you're looking for some fun new stamps, the Hero Arts summer catalog release is now in at a2z Scrapbooking, so hop over and check it out. Here are a couple of fun ones to tempt you. And don't forget, if you use CHARK15 as your coupon code, you'll get 15% off your total purchase of $25 or more before shipping. New stamps and inks at a discount--my favorite combination!

Happy Wednesday!

Chark

Coffee, Tea Or Prizes

I'm linking up my first project for the Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop today. I've been part of this fun group since the beginning and it's always a blast. I'm a tea drinker and though I love the smell of coffee, I just don't drink it. But I am a die-hard-gotta-have-my-cuppa so I fit in this group just fine :)

I'm using the fun digital kit from Hero Arts called Caffeine Fix and I just printed three sizes together so I could use this sentiment stamp that I won from Jennifer at Caffeinated Papercuts at one of these hops! She also gave me the striped newspaper paper in the background in a set of 6x6 papers from Prima called Coffee Break.

If you want to join in the hop anytime between now and October 2, 2015, you can create a coffee, tea or cocoa project and link it up here to try to win! If you need some stamps, you can always buy these digis from a2z Scrapbooking and get started instantly. They're here and they're just $6.99 for the digi set of 12. I'm not a huge digi girl, but I do buy some stamps so I can color and size them any way I want.

Hope you join in! Just keep to the fall theme and the coffee/tea/cocoa theme and you're good. I tried to mimic the sky with distress inks here in Ohio during September, it's absolutely gorgeous. Not cloudy, not washed out by the sun, just clear, beautiful blue. I made the cups some of the autumn leaf colors that we see here too, with my Prismacolor pencils.

Happy Friday,
Chark

p.s. I wanted to thank everyone for their kind comments, so I've added some blog candy to this hop. If you've left me a comment on any of the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop posts, you're entered to win a $15 gift certificate to Pretty Little Studios, one of my favorite crafty stores. They have the most adorable vintage images and some beautiful printed vellum and sequin mixes you've gotta have. 

I'll announce a winner on Monday, October 5, so you have until 8 am EDT on Monday October 5th to leave a comment on any of the 2015 coffee posts. Good luck! Check out PLS to see what you could get with $15--hint, it's a lot!! Plus, there are tons of sales and freebies too with your order. 

It's All About The Pinkfresh

I used my Pinkfresh Studio supplies to make some cards to enter in their National Scrapbook Day Challenges with Winne & Walter Stamps. They have some cool ones (8) to try and you have until the 9th to enter, so I hope you'll join in.

Here's a card using the hot pink, gold and aqua...a fab color combo imo!

I went light on the aqua, which is weird for me, cuz it's one of my favorite colors. That stencil, though, isn't it so wonderful? Small but fun and it came out so crisp with Distress Inks in Picked Raspberry. I used my new Pistachio as the aqua...it leans a little green, but I like it with the raspberry. The paint swish die cut and the hugs and kisses card are also Pinkfresh. The gold paper is DCWV gold cardstock. I think I may need to add some round bling too, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for the inspiration, Pinkfresh, I know I'll use it again!
Happy Friday!
Chark

Easter Cuteness

If you're a scrapper, you probably have older pictures that need scrapped...or maybe you don't. I had these from 2008 (don't judge) and finally got them on a page. The Doodlebug Easter Parade paper and stickers I got were just too cute to leave on the shelf. 

The series of pics are of my son completely missing an egg and it was kinda cracking me up...wait, crack, egg...I made a pun! Still, it was funny because it was like he assumed it would just appear if he kept looking in the same place. And our daughter immediately starting eating her candy before her brother even finished finding his. Kids!

I made these journaling cards out of the paper and added some washi and the little critter stickers. For the background, I started with a white page, sponged on some Distress Inks in random order (Picked Raspberry, Lemonade, Peacock Blue)  around the outer edge of the paper and added more Doodlebug patterned paper. It was actually a really quick page and that's saying something for me. I'm definitely a slow scrapper.

Happy Easter!
Chark

Blueberry Pancakes For Everyone!

Today is National Blueberry Pancake Day and I feel that should include some kind of freebie pancakes for me...I don't think I'm going to get that, so I may have to make my own. If you're looking for a good recipe, here's one from All Recipes that are called My-Hop Pancakes. 

Just add a few room temperature blueberries to the batter right before frying. I like to use some berries from a box of blueberry muffin mix, cuz they're little and tasty and they don't have to be in season at the grocery.

Maybe I should just go to Bob Evans. I love their pancakes...and crepes. Okay, I'm finished drooling for now.

Here's another card I made for the nursing home residents in my home town. I used a Hero Arts rose stamp, colored them with Distress Inks and Copics and then trimmed them. I also used Perfect Pearls and water to spray and give them a shimmer. If I left off the shimmer and rhinestones, it might be a good masculine card too, since some men like gardening and the color palette is darker.

It's also my last entry in the challenge at Craft Stamper Magazine. If you haven't joined you still have a few hours! Hope you'll join me! 

Happy Wednesday...off to Bob Evans for pancakes!
Chark