Saturday, March 23, 2024

Stampfest at Lynette's March 22, 2024

Lynette and I had a great time visiting and stamping on Friday, March 22, 2024. I finally remembered to have Don take a photo of us. 

We found plenty of inspiration online. This time we decided to try inkblending within a circle "mask" and a birdhouse card. 

This is Lynette's card. We were inspired by Gina K's YouTube tutorial,
...except I forgot to bring my masking magic to do the strips like Gina did. We decided to just blend the colors together. 

We cut out a circle mask with cardstock and taped it down carefully putting the tape on my sleeve first to make it less sticky for easy removal. 

The blue is on the bottom to kind of resemble the ocean/water as Gina did in the striped circle she created...see 52:30 on the video for the stripes.

Here is my card. I'm wondering if I used a different cardstock which made it easier to get darker colors. I used the same ink blending brushes and ink that Lynette used. We started with the orange and worked our way toward the blue like Gina did in the first part of that YouTube video.
We used the same Gina K ink colors shown in the first part of the video: 
Sweet Mango
Passionate Pink
Wild Lilac
Tranquil Teal
Then Blue Denim over the arc of the edge of the circle mask.

Images stamped with Versafine onyx black. The palm tree stamp is from Lynette's stash. The birds are from a Tim Holtz set.

Our birdhouse card was inspired by Leonie Schroeder's birdhouse card on her Stamp A Latte blog. I worked on figuring out the shape, based on Leonie's dimensions, which were in metric. I used a scrap of paper the size of our cards, which when folded is 4-1/4 x 5-1/2 inches to make a template of sorts. I se that mine isn't perfectly symetrical though! 

We found some Stampin' Up! early espresso cardstock for the card base. And a piece of greyish blue cardstock  for the layer on top. At first we ran the cardstock throught the cuttlebug with a woodgrain embossing folder, but that made it difficult to cut the 1-1/2 inch circle in the center. Lynette used her Circle Custom Cutting System from Creative Memories. It didn't want to cut after the cardstock was dry embossed. The easy fix was to just cut the circle before dry embossing which worked well. 

I used Distress Brushed Corduroy ink to the edges of the birdhouse. 

Lynette colored the stamped birds with colored pencils. Then she fussy cut them. The bird inside is from Stampin' Up!'s set, Nature Walk.  The stamp on the outside is from a set that Lynette bought at Dollar Tree.  I stamped the sprig of leaves, from Altenew's Wildflower Garden.  But I see now that I should have added some brown ink to the branch part so that white did not show! Next time!

Lynette added the circle cut out to the back of the blue layer after positioning the bird inside. We had a lot of fun making this birdhouse card! I love using birds on my card now that it's spring! 

Thank you so much for visiting.
Peace and all good

Monday, March 18, 2024

Stampfest at Lynette's January 31, 2024

Time flies...can't believe it's been almost 7 weeks since our Stampfest on Jan. 31! Finally have these cards up on the blog. Sorry for the delay! 


Used Gina K's Powder Blue mini inkpad to swipe the paper directly with ink for the background. Then used Gina K's Water Droplet stencil and a blending brush with the same Powder Blue ink.

Flowers and leaves are from a Stampin Up! clear set called What I love. They are stamped in Gina K's Blue Denim ink.


Lynette also wanted to make a sprig card like my Christmas thank you cards. I found inspiration for those here: Jackie Bolhuis' cards which she posted on her blog and YouTube.

Used the 3 different sprigs and the sentiment from Gina K's Perfect Poinsettia set. The pinecone is from Stampin' Up!'s Fantastic Foliage set. I forget which stamp set had the cute little group of 3 berries...

Used Gina K's You Have My Heart set for the guitar. I think the musical notes and sentiment are from Lynette's stash. Not sure which brown and blue inks were used.

I used Stampin Up's Little Shapes set, from 2000 instead of creating my own blocks with fun foam, though it would be fun to try!
Gina K inks: powder blue, dusty rose and peach bellini 
The flowers are from Lynette's stash: Time Well Spent by Stampin Up!
Ink Colors: Gina K's Key Lime, Sweet Corn and kept the Powder Blue.


Thank you so much for visiting!
Peace and all good.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Direct to Paper, Swiping then Stamping

Thank you, Melanie Muenchinger for sharing your very cool technique to make this fun and easy card! Check out Melanie's YouTube from January 26, 2020 called, "Direct to Paper Technique: Embroidered Denim Flowers". This was a quick and easy and very fun card to make!

I used Gina K Powder Blue ink to swipe the layer. Then used Gina K's Water Droplets stencil with the Powder Blue ink, just on the left side of the layer.  The flowers and leaves stamps are from Stampin Up's clear stamp set called, What I Love. The sentiment is from Altenew's Wildflower Garden stamp set. I stamped the flowers and the sentiment in Gina K's Blue Denim. Used an old Spellbinders Nestabilities Lables Four die.

I would like to try this technique in other colors. It's so quick and easy and I love the look that it creates.

Thanks you for visiting!
Peace and all good!