Surprise and Delight!

 Hello Stampers,

It's time for the October edition of Woodblock Wednesday. I love being prompted to "shop" my fairly large stash of wood mounted rubber stamps, at least once a month, to participate in Amy's challenge. I missed September's due to being on vacation, but I'm ready to play today.

I decided on making a holiday card for my little 4 y/o friend, Oliver who lives in Brooklyn, NY, and I knew just the stamp I wanted to use. 

This little ice skating bear is stamped with black ink and colored with copies. I cut him out using a Spellbinders square die and layered the panel onto some SU Holiday DSP.

The sentiment is also a wood mounted rubber stamp. Both it and the bear stamp are from 1992, so they've been in my drawer for many years. I've used them many times over those years, as they are favorites. The bear stamp is from PSX. The sentiment stamp logo is very hard to read. I can only make out 1992 and Annette on the side of the stamp. There is more, but it's unreadable.

Thanks for stopping by. I love looking through the gallery each month to see what folks are making.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Ice Skating Bear by PXS and sentiment by Annette (?)

Paper: SU Basic White Thick card stock and Holiday  DSP, Gina K Designs Layering Weight White card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx, Red Velvet and Copic Markers

Other: Spellbinders Square die, Waffleflower A2 rectangle die set

JOY

 TGIF Peeps!

It's a very Fall day today. Very foggy, (thick marine layer) and cool. Perfect excuse for staying in my craft room (although I really don't need any excuse for that).

Today's card works for two challenges. I've combined the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches with the stencil challenge from Just Us Girls.

I've used the Simon Says Stamp Layered Holiday Grid stencil for the images and the greetings on the front and inside are from the SSS Christmas Blessing Sentiment set with coordinating dies. For a little texture I used the TE Falling Snow EF and for a little sparkle, some Frozen rhinestones from GKD.

Here's the inside. I used the holly leaves stencil to make the package bows.

Enjoy your Friday!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Christmas Blessings Sentiments set by Simon Says Stamp

Paper: Gina K Designs card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Layered Holiday Grid stencil by Simon Says Stamp, Falling Snow embossing folder by Taylored Expressions, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1 dies, blending brushes, Gina K Designs Frozen rhinestones, Connect liquid glue

Let It Snow, Peace On Earth, Happy Holidays: Tag You're It!

 Hi all,

LeAnne is hostess for Clean & Simple week at the Paper Players. The added parameter is to make a tag. I went round and round in my mind with different ideas and then I couldn't decide if I wanted to make just tags or make a card featuring a tag. In the end, I decided on just tags, because I can always use them for gift wrapping.

I made three graphic style tags using a cute Gina K Designs stamp set from last year.

The tag die is also from Gina K Designs. There are three sizes in the set and I've used the middle size here. After stamping the words, I used Masking Magic strips to create areas to blend inks for the graphic design part. The strips come in half inch, quarter inch and eighth inch widths, and I used all of them.

The backs of all three are finished exactly the same:

Here are pictures of the individual tag fronts.

I quite like the way these turned out. 

TGIF tomorrow. 

Enjoy!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Winter Wishes, Festive Phrases, and Merry Sentiment Strips sets by Gina K Designs

Paper: Gina K Designs Layering Weight White and SU Basic White Thick card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs and Copic Markers

Other: Tag Trio Die set by GKD, Masking Magic Strips by GKD, various twine from my stash, Connect liquid glue

A Birthday Wish For You

Happy Hump Day Peeps,

I've been finishing up Halloween/Fall cards so could get them in the mail. I also had some birthday cards to make for friends (twins) who have their birthday on 10/31. Once I finished those, I decided to see what I could do with the current Color Hues challenge colors. 

I decided I was in the mood for some stitching and pulled out the Lawn Fawn embroidery hoop dies that I have.. Here's the finished card. It's a traditional gatefold style card.

The background 3D embossing folder is from Simon Says Stamp and it sure has great detail. Before running the card stock through, I spritzed it on both sides with a small amount of water. After, I used the same shade of Mustard ink as the card stock to highlight some of the raised areas, then trimmed the panels to fit the front of the gatefold.

Here is another picture of the card front and then the inside.

All of the birthday sentiments are from Gina K Designs.

Thanks for stopping in,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Gina K Designs

Paper: SU More Mustard and Old Olive, Gina K Designs Silver

Ink: Gina K Designs Black Onyx and SU More Mustard

Other: SSS 3D embossing folder, Lawn Fawn Flower Embroidery Hoop die, SU button, Gold floss, SU enamel dots, Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1 dies, SU Dimensionals, Connect glue

Happy Haunting

Happy Monday Peeps,

I'm squeaking in my Freshly Made Sketches challenge card this morning before the link closes. I made this card with some older Lawn Fawn sets and dies.

I thought this frame die set would make some fun haunted mirrors using some holographic card stock. It was a little difficult to get a good picture without some weird colors in the background though. The little ghosts are stamped on vellum and fussy cut as this older set doesn't have dies.

For added spookiness, I outlined the frames with black Stickles and added some very old spider, frog and bat brads.

The inside uses more images from the same set.

Have a great week,

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Happy Haunting and Flirty Frames sets by Lawn Fawn

Paper: Gina K Designs Black Onyx and Layering Weight White card stock, The Apothecary Emporium paper pack by Echo Park patterned paper, SU Vellum, SSS Holographic card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs

Other: Gina K Designs Master Layouts 12 die, Black Stickles, Halloween brads, SU dimensionals, 

Thankful For You

Happy Monday,

I sat down after dinner last night and made this card for Joanne's color challenge at the Paper Players. She has a fun, seasonal palette, shades of brown and orange. 

For my card, I've used the September 2024 SCT's Let's Stamp Together kit. This kit is from LDRS Creative. Each Let's Stamp Together kit comes with a stamp set, coordinating dies and a stencil. In this case, the stencil is for coloring the stamped images. 

The background is made with the SSS Basketweave 3D embossing folder. After embossing I used an old Color Box gold ink pad to highlight some of the raised pattern.

Recently, Gina K. did a video on faux no-line coloring and I used her process to add color to the flower image after stamping. It is a fun technique. If you want to learn more, view her Stamp and Chat video on YouTube here. I used GKD orange shades of Sweet Mango, Coral Reef and Tomato Soup for the flowers and the Color Box gold for the leaves using medium blending brushes for the shading and small blending brushes to add ink to specific areas on the stamp for the line details. These are added after the coloring/shading is done using a coordinating color, so inking of the stamp must be done with a sponge dauber or blending brush. 

I added a little more metallic with gold strips on the sides of the embossed panel and gold dot embellishments.

The stamp set has a few more images that I've used on the inside, however there is only one sentiment stamp so I pulled out the another LDRS Creative set for my inside greeting.

A fun color challenge with many possibilities. I just may use it again for some of my other card ideas. Have a great week!

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: LDRS Creative Forever Thankful and My Wish For You sets

Paper: Gina K Designs Layering Weight Vanilla, Charcoal Brown and Gold card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Charcoal Brown, Kraft, Sweet Mango, Coral Reef, and Tomato Soup. Color Box Gold 

Other: Simon Says Stamp Basketweave 3D embossing folder, Gina K Designs gold pearl embellishments, blending brushes

Holiday Cheer!

 Hello all,

We arrived home from our European River Cruise vacation Friday, late afternoon. It was a FABULOUS trip. 

On Saturday, after unpacking, doing laundry, getting everything put away, going through the mail and a few other chores, I headed to my craft room to see what challenges awaited, I was anxious to get back to card making. I settled on the Freshly Made Sketches challenge, hosted this week by Karen. What a fun layout! I've used all GKD products to make this holiday card. This cute mouse set is the alternate mini free set for the month of September at GKD, and it's called Christmas Friends.

The top section is made using a new layering stencil called Modern Poinsettia. The bottom section is dry embossed using the Holiday Flora embossing folder. I used the middle sized tag from Gina's Stitched tag die set, cutting it from Layering Weight White card stock. The images, with the exception of the greeting, are one stamp, and are colored with Copics. I also added some background stenciling with light gray ink.

For the inside, I used the left over stenciled paper and added a greeting from another GKD mini set called Two Step Holiday Greeting.

Thanks for looking in today, and have a great week.

Colleen

Supplies

Stamps: Gina K Designs Christmas Friends and Two Step Holiday Mini stamp sets

Paper: Gina K Designs Cherry Red, Christmas Pine, Layering Weight White and Gold card stock

Ink: Gina K Designs Lipstick, Cherry Red, Jelly Bean Green, Christmas Pine, Soft Stone and Black Onyx

Other: All GKD, Holiday Flora embossing folder, Modern Poinsettia Layering stencils, blending brushes, Stitched tag dies, Master Layouts 2 dies, Connect glue, foam squares, and gold ribbon from my ribbon stash