Ingenious Inkling

All Better Now Thank You

I love the cute little stamps in Lawn Fawn's Get Well Soon set ... and this week I added the coordinating Lawn Cuts dies to my collection, which makes them even more fun to use.

This week's Lawnscaping Challenge is texture, which I added by adding Lattice Embossing to my designer paper ... and using foam tape to make my cute little elements pop off the page.

The Thank You Chit Chat is also from Lawn Fawn (with coordinating Lawn Cuts Dies).

And with all of my cute little die cuts, I'm also joining the Cutting Edge Blog Hop.

The layout and colors come from this week's Poppy Sketch.

Sheep Thank You

Today's card request was to make a Sheep-Themed Thank You card, so I started with an adorable 3-D sheep sticker and built my design around him.  

First I chose this week's CAS(E) this Sketch as my layout, which also works for the Clean & Simple Challenge at Addicted to Stamping.

Next I wanted to incorporate an Ombre Color Palette for the Keep It Simple! Challenge.  I started with white ink at the bottom of my Hero Arts Looped Flower Background and used various shades of Gray to work my way to Black at the top.  I finished with Stampotique Thank You.

I'm also joining Sentimental Sundays where they are featuring Monochromatic Designs this week.

Winter Peace

At Jingle Belles, we're still making cards to send out to those who don't necessarily celebrate Christmas.  My go-to theme for those cards is Peace.

I started with a gorgeous Starry Night sticker from Penny Black and used this week's Retro Sketch to assemble my design.  I really loved this sketch, and I used several of the elements included like the binder punch border and double twine bow.

I finished with a bold Peace sentiment sticker from SRM Stickers.

Thursday Link Love

Another week of fabulous finds from blogland:

• How to make & die your own silk ribbon
• A tutorial for a cute Shark Patchwork Pencil Case (with a zipper for teeth)
• I must try a Salted S'More
• Tutorial for cool Map Covered Letters (shown)
• Cucumber Corn Salad sounds so refreshing ... as does this Corn Tomato Salad
• How cute is this Washi Tape Dispenser by Shimelle
• Resistance Band Exercises you can do anywhere
• Paper Crowns for Paper Queens
• Free Vintage Ephemera Cards
• 9 Alternative Uses for a Banana Peel 

Have a terrific Thursday.

Graphic Ombre

When I was rummaging through my stash today, I found another graphic stamp set (My Favorite Things Trendy Triangles), so I decided to give my Stretch Your Stamps Class another try.

My dream was to do an Ombre Repeat Stamping like Kristina Werner, but I realized after stamping my first three rows, that I would be stamping well into tomorrow before I got an entire card done without a mis-stamp.  So instead, I decided to combine her design with a modificaiton of Kelly Rasmussen's Border Stamping to cover my card front.

I stamped my ombre row two at a time, and then attached the four borders to cover the front of my card.  You can clearly see that I struggle to get my stamping straight even with a ruler and lined blocks, but I still love the effect.  I finished with an SRM Summer Sticker Sentiment which provides just the right contrast to the stamped background.

With my triangles I'm also joining the Geometric Challenge at Addicted to CAS, as well as the Ombre Challenge at A Blog Named Hero.

It's Your Special Day

I wanted to join in the SRM Sticker Challenge for August.

I combined the color challenge with the sketch for a masculine birthday card design.

I started with my focal image sticker from Birthday Stickers by the Dozen.  I attached it to a 1 3/4" white circle and then to a larger scalloped circle. I added embossed orange cardstock and yellow banners.  I finished with another sticker from Sentiment/Happy Birthday and a few yellow brad tops.

Plus One Birthday

I just can't put away the fun Plus One papers from Amy Tangerine (featuring the gorgeous handwriting of Kal Barteski).  This time I used them with My Favorite things Weekly Sketch Challenge.

I paired them with the brand new Spotlight Sentiment stamp from MFT (I ordered it the day of the new release last week, and already had it on Friday ... such great service).  I also added another tiny clothes pin for the Paper Crafts & Scrapbooking August Gallery Challenge.  I finished with a piece of deer flair from my stash.

I flipped the sketch 90 degrees to work with my elements.

Random Guitar Picks

My plan for the evening was to catch-up on some of my homework from the Stretch Your Stamps 2 Class. This year, I had decided not to buy any of the stamps the artists were using in the classes, since the purpose was to learn new ways to use stamps I already had.

Unfortunately, the graphic stamping classes used a small solid image, and all of my graphic images were too large for the techniques I wanted to try.  After hunting through my stash, I finally found an Inkdadinkado Guitar Pick that I thought would do the trick.

The first challenge was finding an ink that gave the coverage I wanted (I finally settled on Colorbox Chalk Inks).  The next hurdle was finding a color palette in those inks that moved through the shades of light to dark.  Then I had to get the *random* positioning to work with the card size & my larger Super Script Sentiment from Alt E New.

This is the finished result after filling my trash can with many, many do-overs (likely the reason I have failed to purchase any stamps like this for my stash).  I still don't love it, but I'm calling it good enough for tonight's learning experience.  

It truly made me appreciate talent of Debby Hughes when I see how flawless her finished designs appear.

ColourQ Birthday

I've been working to restock my birthday card stash, especially with masculine designs.  This card combines colors from this week's ColourQ Challenge.

I also wanted to make another Clean & Simple Design for the Impression Obsession Challenge, so these Bithday Wishes Squares were perfect (I punched them out using a 1 3/8" square punch to leave a small white border).

I tried adding some brads or other embellishments, but in the end I decided to stick with the clean square design.

Also excited to see I was in the Top 3 at The Cutting Edge Challenge.

Together, Whatever ...

I was looking through the list of challenges I had saved, and I realized it's been a long time since I showed any love to my Stampotique stamps (other than using a thank you stamp it was February 2013 to be exact).  Stampotique currently has two challenges ... 1) Bows and 2) Music as Inspiration.  I decided to go with Music.

I looked through my stamp collection and found my *whatever* stamp, which immediately had me singing the lyrics from the Captain & Tennille (probably the first album I ever memorized when I was in grade school ... together with my own choreographed dance moves).

You better stop, 'cause I really love you
Stop, I've been thinkin' of you
Look in my heart
And let love keep us together, whatever
I will, I will, I will, I will
(yes you can thank me for getting that ear worm stuck in your head)

Since I used to sing this song with my girlfriends, I used Beauties by Janet Klein as my focal image.

And, as if my card idea wasn't already weird enough ... I threw in the Moxie Fab World Fabulous Friday Challenge to make a Triangle Card (not was easy as one might think ... especially since I remember very little from high school geometry class) ... as well as the palette from the Color Me ... Striking!  Challenge.

I have absolutely no idea for what occasion I would ever give this card ... so let me know in the comments (together with an e-mail address where I can contact you) if you'd like this card to come live with you and I'll send it your way.