Ingenious Inkling

Suzy Snowflake

This week's Jingle Belles prompt was suggested by Marie Bingaman of Another Cardmaking Blog?, who thought we could all find inspiration with a snowy theme in which we can incorporate snowmen, snowscapes, sledding, etc, as well as decorative snowflakes... basically ALL of those things celebrated in the (very charming!) rosemary clooney song Suzy Snowflake (see lyrics below).

I pulled out a vintage (2006) Northwoods Rubber Stamp image of snowflake ornaments & stamped in in Versamark on white glossy paper and then clear embossed.  I used a sponge with blue and purple Distress inks to provide the resist, and then sprayed with Shimmer Spritz for all-over sparkle

The layout is September's Sassy Lil' Sketch.  I added a wrap of cool blue ribbon, an SRM Sticker Sentiment, and a few silver snowflakes with pearl embellishments to finish the design.

This card also works for the NO Coloring Allowed Challenge at Shopping our Stash ... love emboss resist.

Can't wait to see what snowy wonders you create.

Suzy Snowflake

Here comes Suzy Snowflake

Dressed in a snow-white gown 
Tap, tap, tappin' at your windowpane
To tell you she's in town.

Here comes Suzy Snowflake
Soon you will hear her say
Come out ev'ryone and play with me
I haven't long to stay.

If you want to make a snowman
I'll help you make it, one, two, three.
If you want to take a sleigh ride
Whee! The ride's on me.

Here comes Suzy Snowflake
Look at her tumblin' down
Bringing joy to ev'ry girl and boy
Suzy's come to town.

If you want to make a snowman
I'll help you make it, one, two, three
If you want to take a sleigh ride
Whee! The ride's on me.

Here comes Suzy Snowflake
Look at her tumblin' down
Bringing joy to ev'ry girl and boy
Suzy's come to town.

Thursday Link Love

Another fun week of web discoveries:

• A good reminder ... 12 Things Happy People Do Differently.
• I love beans ... and I particularly love them in bean salads ... here's a list of 10 Bean Salads perfect for work lunches.
• Something I've always wondered when buying ingredients for Italian Sodas ... what are the differences between types of sparkling waters.
• A starburst flower tutorial
• Tutorial for felted balls that even kiddos would enjoy trying.
• An adorable dollhouse made from cabinet doors.
• Art created with texty pages never ceases to make me smile.
• And more texty book-art from Lisa Occhipinti (shown).
• I want to try these Peanut Butter Cereal Treats with Halloween M&Ms.
• These Saladette Tomatoes look so good ... wish I could find them here.
• Love these cute little Ghost Bottles
• This Advent Calendar is fabulous ... it would be fun to do one for the office.
• How fun are these Candid Canisters from Jonathan Adler ... I love the one that says "Carbs" ... and who doesn't need more "Disco Biscuits" in their life?

Have a fantastic Thursday.

You Deserve The Best

I loved the color combination at {Embellish Magazine} this month.  The theme is Mists or Paint, and since it's been a while since I got my fingers inky, I thought it was time to play.  

I started with a flourish mask lightly adhered to a piece of ivory cardstock.  I spritzed repeatedly with Dragonfly Glimmer Mist.  It achieve the same stamped color for my bouquet of blooms from Rogue Redhead Designs' Floriculture plate, I inked with Aquamarine Chalk ink and then with Ocean.  You can see the combination of the colors in the center of the largest bloom.

I finished with an EAD sentiment rub-on and a tiny punched butterfly in grey with ivory pearls.

The sketch is this week's Card Patterns.

 

EAD Designs ~ Random Sayings rub-ons	Rogue Redhead ~ Floriculture	Glimmer Mist ~ Dragonfly	ColorBox Chalk Ink ~ Misty Meadow
Kaiser Champagne Pearls

InLinkz.com

 

Mr. & Mrs.

Tonight I needed wedding cards ... and as I've mentioned before ... I have virtually no wedding stamps in my stash (note to self ... find some ... do you have any sets you love?).  So I did what any wise stamping gall would do ... I stopped by my friend Laura's house & raided her wedding stamp stash.  I decided to go with two classic stamps from Amuse that never go out of style.

To me wedding cards mean fancy paper & embossing.  The wedding colors are grey and blue, so I made the focal point this fancy piece of grey & silver flocked paper.  I stamped both images in Iris Blue & clear embossed.  The sketch is from Stamping 411 (but I realized after I created the cards that they only allow cards using Stampin' Up to link to their site) ... oh well, great sketch any way.

Here's a second version of the card using a bit more grey.

I'll be linking these cards up for the "Anything Goes" Challenge this week at Less is more.

Let's Party

Another quick & oh-so-fun card using EAD Designs Stickerz & Rub-ons ... I can't get enough of Birthday Monstahs.

I added a few extra cupcakes, because one is never enough.

Layout is from {Freshly Made} Sketches.

And colors are from Just Us Girls.

Wanna Play?

EAD Designs is hosting this week's CPS Sketch, so I had to break out some Arcade Stickerz and play along.

This card is for my sister Darcy ... we have an inside Pacman joke that always makes us laugh (explaining it to anyone else would not be funny ... one of those "you had to be there" moments).

I tried ot mimic the feel of the game with the black background and dots for texture.

Bad Witch?

I wanted to play along with the EAD Designs Color Challenge, which was perfect for my EAD Hocus Pocus Stickers.

I used this week's Deconstructed Sketch together with Glowing Papers from Authentique.

I offset my purple panel slightly, so I could add a flying witch to go with my classy shoe.

InLinkz.com

So Precious

I was excited to see I won the Sketch Challenge prize at Authentique Papers ... so I jumped right in and made a card for September's Color Challenge.

I thought the three colors would work perfect with the Hero Arts Sketch at Lily Pad Cards.

For some reason, the color combination reminded me of babies, so I went with a baby shower card.  I used scraps from three different Authentique collections (Uncommon, Blissful & Journey) for my base, and then paper-pieced my Hero Arts stroller from the same yellow checked paper & added a sentiment.  I added a little blue opalescent bling to the wheels.

As I kept working on the layout and orientation of my design, I kept shrinking my card base.  I ended-up with a little card just under 3 7/8", which was perfect for the CAS-ual Friday Challenge to make a card smaller than 4" square.  

Cake Academy Hello

This week's SCS Inspiration Challenge comes from the magnificent cupcake stylings of The Creative Cake Academy.  I chose the top center cupcake in this box of Flower Garden Cupcakes to inspire my design.

 
I began by stamping Hero Arts Delecate Blossoms on green cardstock and then a second time on a piece of purple designer paper.  I cut the flowers out of my designer paper and adhered them to the base before using a circle cutter to create my design ... if I had it to do over, I would cut first, and then adhere, because there were tiny bits of tearing along the edge of the thinner paper.  Thankfully it wasn't anything a little colored pencil accents & distressing couldn't fix.

I added some darker green pencil to the stems and a sentiment from Hero Arts Essential Messages.  I finished with a butterfly punched from two different shades of coral cardstock, layered with a glue dot for dimension, and embellished with adhesive purple pearls.

I hope you find inspiration.

InLinkz.com

Happy Hybrid Holidays

This week we're excited to have our first Digital / Hybrid prompt at Jingle Belles sponsored by Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More.  She provided Lauren & I with some great stamps to use on our cards ... and she's also providing a free digital stamp (their wonderful Christmas Bell) for all Jingle Belles participants this week, so you have no excuse not to give it a try.  

All you have to do is e-mail [email protected] and request your free Jingle Belles Digital Image. We're thrilled they're offering this opportunity for everyone to try a digital stamp.

And ... it gets even better ... Robyn's Fetish Digital Stamps and More will award one randomly selected Jingle Belles cardmaker a choice of either 5 digital stamps or 4 digital stamps & 1 paper pack.

 

I decided to go with digital paper piecing on my fun images ... Corner Holly & Home for the Holidays. (here's a link to my prior tutorial, which also links to Kristina's video tutorial ... and here's a link to another tutorial from Allison).

I used a variety of papers (most from Vera Lim) and a sentiment sticker from EAD Designs.  To get the slightly white color for my snowman, I found a piece of paper with texture I liked and then removed the color from it in PhotoShop.  I repeated various papers to help tie it all together (the green in the scarf, birdhouse, and holly leaves ... the organge in the carrot nose, shoulder bag, and birdhouse).

When I was finished, I positioned my images in Word to printout my card design and added an EAD Designs Stickerz Sentiment.  The great thing about digital paper piecing is that once I'm finished, I can easily print out lots of these for mass production if needed.