Last day of SketchFest with Caardvarks & a Little Sneak Peek

This is it, the last card for the Caardvarks week long challenge. Heidi Van Laar created the sketch for this card. The thank you stamp is from Pink Persimmon and the calendar sheer is Maya Road.

Here is a little Freehand Scraps Teaser for you! The kit will be for sale on October 1st.

#3 for Cardvaarks

Here it is, card # 3 for the Caardvarks week long challenge!

Look at my big girl, makes me sad when I think about her growing up and I think about it entirely too much.

Love them.

A Very Simple Way to Color

When it comes to stamping, I don't do a lot of coloring. I stamp on patterned paper and cut. However there are some stamps that have to be colored to truly enjoy their beauty. I thought I would show you a quick and easy way to acheive this. Here are the supplies that I used. that is a water brush pen, you can fill it up with water. They can be found in your arts and crafts stores. Stamp your image with dye ink, I like to stamp a few in case I make a smudge or want to make an extra card.

Color in with the watercolor pencil, use light strokes, unless you want a lot of pigment.

Go over your coloring with the water brush. Make sure the bristles are just a bit damp, not dripping wet or dry.

Repeat with another color.

You can also use the water brush directly on the pencil. Just swipe the brush over the color and apply to image.

Between colors you should always wipe your water brush off to clean off the pigment. I think a paper towel works best.

See, I told you this would be easy. If you have any questions please ask. If this tutorial was helpful, please let me know, should I do more?

Glitter Girl

Love glitter, yes I do. Funny, when I taught kindergarten, I dreaded glitter. I would only drag it out on very special occasions. I do think I was the only teacher in the school that would even use it! It's messy and when the custodian only cruises in one or two times a week, you really think about what kind of a mess you want to clean up. Now that I am a scrapoholic (husband's label for me), I have to use glitter on a regular basis. I NEED it. I glittered up these Thickers to make em extra pretty and I used the same Martha Stewart crystal glitter on the outer edge of the Bobunny dots paper. I bought at least 2 sheets each of the dots paper in every color. Love it. Both pink papers are Bobunny as well. The sheer is Maya Road.

Mojo Fun

Made this card with the great sketch from Mojo Monday.

Happy First Birthday to ....

Pink Persimmon!! The maker of my most favorite Banner stamps ever is turning one! They posted a challenge ....make something with pink and orange....so I made them a birthday card. 2 days in a row of playing with glitter. I am so happy...sigh. They have just released some new stamps and I won't be able to resist.....

Yellowbird in the House

I just finished up my June assignments for my local store Yellowbird. I turned in one project before photographing it , so I will have to share that later...this first pic is a mini I am working on, beyond the cover I only have the first page completed. This cute paper is from 3 bugs in a rug and Coco has the whole line in stock. When I saw these funny little birds perched on a wire, I knew that I had to do something with them and when I took a look at the matching papers, I knew I needed to do a mini. More of it later when it is finished.

I made this card from the scraps of the layout below. I am really into hand stitching these days and Mari from Yellowbird told me that needed to try out the Bazzill stitching templates. Well she was right ... I have the borders and alphas and now I am hooked. I want to get back in to Yellowbird and take a closer look at all the other templates available.

Yellowbird has a huge rounder full of these new MY Mind's Eye papers. They are from the Breaking Free series. Mari assigned this pattern to me and this is what I came up with. We were just at this little waterpark and Emma really enjoyed herself. Lily decided to just stand back and watch her big sister run around the shooting water streams.

Let Me Count the Ways

I just love October Afternoon paper. The colors and designs make me so happy. I like how the different lines from different seasons match each other, love the vintagey look to them and I also enjoy the splash of whimsy here and there.

Over on the October Afternoon blog, there are 3 fresh and simple card sketches to help you boost your card supply~I always need a few more. There are also lovely examples to feast your eyes on made from {Cherry Hill}. I am ordering the whole line tonight!

Head on over to Purple Cows, 3 design team members were just introduced, Tanisha Long, Robin Gibson and Cristal Hobbs .

There is also an amazing sale on the rotary blades for the trimmers over on scrapbook.com! Right now my favorite fancy blade is the postage stamp edge.

My Monday Mojo

I always have fun with the sketches over at Mojo Monday. The papers here are K and Co. I also used some diecuts from that line. The sparkly crown is Maya Road dusted with Pink Paislee glitter. I LOVE GLITTER!

CPS 116, All Sass

This card was made with the lovely sketch over at CPS. The designers there have some fabulous examples up I just love the one by Kandis Smith. A few weeks ago at Reflections 2009, I purchased these stamps from Sassafras {Quack, Quack}. The Sassafras gals were very generous and gave me this little pack of paper, it's called a "Wee Bundle", it's 6x6 and perfect for cardmaking. This line is Sunshine Lollipops, isn't that sweet? It's hard to see, but the scallop stamp is from Studio Calico, my always generous friend Katie gave it to me.

Sew Fun

Yeah, I am still stuck on the wood grain stamp, I am just breaking it in baby. And this week's obsession looks like it is going to be hand stitching. Made this little card from the sketch over at CPS, the weekly sketches are well done and they have a great design team with amazing examples. That cute paper is from My Little Shoebox, I had just enough of a scrap to make this. My Little Shoebox also makes those versatile mini alphas that I just can't stop using, I really need to get some more colors.

Julie is a talented sketch maker over at 52 Sketches, 52 weeks, I have made a couple of lay outs with her sketches and I find them challenging and fun to complete, plus I am getting my photos scrapped! This LO was made with this week's sketch and a bunch of October Afternoon paper, I can't get enough of those colors together. The 3 rectangles of text to the left of the photo are from an old children's book-and I stamped over them with the woodgrain.

Best Stamp Ever

This is the best stamp ever!!! At least for the month of May 2009. Hero Arts is the maker of this giant wooden block, named "Designer Woodgrain". I made this card for the challenge over at Caardvarks. I stamped the woodgrain onto a bingo card with sepia Archival ink by Ranger. I folded a couple of inches of baby pink tulle and tucked it behind the sentiment tag. Pom pom trim is Maya Road, paper and die cuts are K and Co's "Cut n Paste". The sentiment stamp is from Close to My Heart.

CPS Weekly challenge & Something for Lily

Last week at Reflections 2009, I walked around and checked out all the amazing make n takes. There were a couple of ladies hosting a fun project that involved layering these colorful paper flowers and making a small bouquet. Later, I bought a Sassafras stamp set from them in the vendor area. I have wanted this set for months and it was just released. I 'll show it to you later. After we left the event, Katie informed me that those ladies were the owners of Sassafras! They were incredibly kind and generous with freebies. They were so young too!

I had a large scrap left over of this cute My Little Shoebox paper , so I made this sweet banner for Lily's room. The colors are perfect. I am going to try to take a picture of it in her room, it would be so much cuter in there, but the light is always poor. I used Spellbinders ovals on this and Maya Road chipboard letters. The pretty glitter is Pink Paislee.