No Buttons or Bows - Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Guest Designer

Several weeks ago I received an email from Betty Wright asking if I would like to be this week's guest host at Flourishes Timeless Tuesday.  Would I....humm, let me see...only in my wildest dreams - LOL!!!  Of course, my fingers were shaking on the keyboard when I typed my acceptance!

And now it is time for Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge (FTTC90)!  It is the last Tuesday of the month when they have a guest challenge host.  This month's guest is YOURS TRULY!!!  I am challenging you to Anything Goes But Buttons and Bows.  There are so many wonderful embellishments to use for accents on our paper crafts, but all too often we fall back on our old favorites.  This week, let's stretch ourselves and see how creative we can be embellishing our cards.  We want to see what you can do without using buttons or bows.  Keep in mind that ribbon is still allowed along with lace and twine.  It's the bows and the buttons that are not.  We'd love to see what you create!

Flourishes has so many gorgeous stamps, but I am very partial to their fruit stamps.  I chose to work with the largest bunch of cherries from the Cherries and Peaches set.  In keeping with my autumn mindset, I kept the colors dark, rich earth tones.  And of course, I made it in my signature style - distressed vintage!  My main panel, layered over several pieces of K&Co. DP, is Flourishes Classic White cardstock, which I love for coloring with Copics.  The image was stamped in Memento ink and colored with  Copic markers. Then it was masked and a script stamp was overstamped in Old Paper DI.   I randomly embossed a mixture of UTEE/Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls to give it just a hit of gold tone.  All of my main embellishments were cut with dies from Flourishes Classic Ivory cardstock, sponged with Antique Linen DI and then double embossed with clear UTEE.  I was going for sort of a country enamel look, which I think I achieved.  The flower was handmade and dyed with several colors of inks to try to match the cherries.  The jewely end caps were squashed into a Versamark pad and then gold embossed.   

Inside Panel With Space To Write

The inside panel has also been finished off leaving a blank panel to write a special message.  I stamped the cherries again in Antique Linen and the script very lightly with Old Paper. 

I hope you will stop by the Flourishes blog as well as the other designers personal blogs.  I'm so excited to be working with this elite group of designers this week! 

Dee

Silke

Maki

Betty

Barbara

Cindy

Thanks for stopping by to share my little bit of excitement this morning.  Have a great day!

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

Sentimental Sundays - Distressing with a sentiment on the front

Charisma Cards - Vintage

Alphabet Challenge - Z is for Zig Zags

Frosted Designs - Let's See Your Die Cuts

Peachy Sweet

Good morning and happy Saturday to you! And if you are in the U. S., I hope your holiday weekend is off to a great start as we prepare to celebrate our country's birthday.

This week at Our Creative Corner we have a sketch challenge for you. I flipped it and took some liberties with the two stars on the end. I really wanted to use this Flourishes set and make a card for Flourishes' Timeless Tuesday challenge which is fruit inspired this week. This stamp is from the Peaches & Cherries set, which I absolutely LOVE! I have used the cherries stamp, but this is the first run for the peaches. I colored it with my Copics and I really like the way it colored up. The DP is from K&Co. and the CS is SU - Old Olive and Chocolate Chip. I used a Fiskar's boarder punch, some bead caps and peach colored shabby seam binding. It felt great making my favorite kind of card - shabby chic!

That's pretty much all the details for this card. Now I hope you will hop on over to Our Creative Corner to see the other beautiful work by our design team.

♥Wendy Jensen♥Dana Grothaus♥Diane Gilbert♥Jennifer Meyer

♥Julie LeBlanc♥Sarah Gough♥Lori Rider♥

Thanks so much for starting your weekend off with me! I sincerely appreciate your comments and encouragement.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges Entered:

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - Fruit Inspired

City Crafter Challenge Blog - Shades of Green (hope it's green enough!)

Charisma Cardz Challenge - Metal Mikey

Cute Card Thursday - Let's Get Fruity

Crafty Catz Weekly Challenge - Distressing

One Stop Craft Challenge - Distressing

Quirky Crafts - Ribbons

Sentimental Sundays - Encouragement and Support - Must include sentiment

Lazy Beach Days

Whoohoo!! Summer's here in all its glory and it's time to hit the beach! So this week at Creative Inspirations Wednesday Challenge Blog we are challenging you to make a beach inspired card. Can't wait to see all the wonderful entries that will be rolling in!

I used two Flourishes sets to make my DT card: Seaside Life and Beach Life. I really love both of these sets!! The shells were stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black on Flourishes card stock and colored with Copics. They were trimmed out and coated with Crystal Effects. I also used the shells to stamp around the perimeter of the Soft Suede layer in Versamark and then clear embossed them for texture. The DP is from the K&Co. Sea Glass stack. I bought it a year ago and hardly used it. Now I've used it twice in the past couple of weeks - great DP!!

I layered the Soft Suede and the DP together, stitched around the edge and then cut a window with the Labels 1 Spellbinders die. Then a frame was cut by taping the die used to cut the window and the next larger size together, being very careful to make sure the gap was equi-distant all the way around. This configuration was used to cut a frame in the Soft Suede.

I used Dusty Durango for the outer shell and the inside window because I thought it mimicked the firey ocean sunset. I cut a piece larger than the window and embossed it with the Cuttlebug Moroccan Screen EF and layered the serene ocean scene over it. The beach sign was made with some Cosmo Cricket DP that looked like wood. I stamped the sentiment in Vintage Photo Distress Ink and mounted in on a toothpick (coated with Vintage Photo distress ink too).

So, what do you think? I told the other designers on the team that I couldn't decide if I liked it or if it was an over-the-top mess. But is was a lot of fun to make so I guess that redeems it no matter what anyone else thinks - right?

Now it's time to hurry on over to the Creative Inspirations Wednesday Challenge blog to see the other wonderful creations from the design team members.

Thanks so much for stopping by to see what I made for Creative Inspirations this week. I love to know who is visiting so leave me a little comment if you have time.

Update: A reader asked about the fishing net - did I purchase it or make it. I made it - LOL! I looked all over for one to buy, couldn't find one and resorted to tying string together to make one. And wouldn't you know it. I was in Marshall's yesterday and they had a little bundle of shells all tied up in a pretty little net for $1.99. Of course, I snatched it up so I'm set for next time! Thanks for asking.

Blessings & hugs,

Challenges entered:

Chrisma Cardz Challenge - Going Around in Circles

Whimsical Wednesdays - The Diedrich Dare - Summer Inspiration

Everybody Art Challenge - Summer

Papertake Weekly - Fun, Fun, Fun

Tuesday Taggers - Touchy, feely texture

Pixie Cottage - Use metal and/or sketch (mine has metal)

The Pink Elephant - Gotta Wear Shades (bright colors)

Cupcake Craft Challenge - Summer Inspired

Faux Buttons - My New Technique

I am the host for the month of February over at Our Creative Corner. That means I get to set the challenge - whoohoo!! This week I decided to challenge everyone to learn a new technique. There are so many wonderful papercrafting techniques, but I am guilty of never slowing down enough to stop and learn something new. I'm sure many of you have the same M.O. So this week, let's see what we can learn. If you are stumped for a technique to try, check out the Resources page on Splitcoast Stampers or the Tutorials page at PaperCraft Planet.

I fiddled around with several new techniques this week, but settled on faux buttons. There are several tutorials available. One is Stamping with Sheryl and here's a video tutorial by Linda Lloyd. I followed the step-by-step instructions from Linda Lloyd's video, but instead of punching the circles out, I cut them with my circle Nesties. I wanted the embossed ring around the inside of the top circle to simulate a button look. I thought it was cool that I could have "buttons" that matched the images on my card.

I finally broke down and purchased the set Peaches and Cherries from Flourishes a few weeks back. I have wanted it since it came out last summer and this is the fist time I have used it. I'm not real happy with the Copic work I did on that panel. I got a little bleeding around some of the edges. I haven't really mastered Copic coloring yet. I don't do it enough to get really good at it.

I LOVE this paper from Webster's Paper. I got the 6x6" pad with some Christmas money and this is the first time I have had it out. I started to use one of the papers with a cute retro cooking image on it and that's when I decided on the recipe card as an embellishment. But later I decided that I was covering up too much of the cook image so I sent it aside for a later card and used this beautiful red starred paper instead. But I still stuck with the recipe card. I pulled this card out of my recipe file. It's called Recipe for Home and the ingredients are things like friendship, thoughtfulness, tenderness, loyalty, faith, etc. It's my grandmother's handwriting and she wrote it for me when I was in high school (back in the '60s) so it is almost 50 years old. No I didn't rip and distress my grandmother's gift. I photocopied it onto white cardstock and tucked the original back into my recipe file. I also made up the sentiment and seal on my computer and printed it onto the card before I cut the card out. Not too many details on this card, but if you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section or email me privately.

Now it's time to scoot on over to Our Creative Corner and check out what the rest of the design team learned and used on their samples this week. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Challenges Entered:

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - FTTC54 - All About Me (use what you love and makes you happy. For me, it's vintage/collage with lots of distressing, but you know that, don't you, LOL??)

Stamp & Scrap - Hybrid challenge - use a digital image on your traditional paper layout

CCEE Stampers - Sweet Challenge

Sending Warm Wishes from Sunny Florida

Here's my Design Team card for this week's Pile it On Challenge. The theme this week is Warm Wishes, which you can interpret any way you please. A couple of weeks ago when I first found out what this week's challenge was I was thinking hot chocolate! It had been in the mid-30's here in Miami. One morning I had to scrape ICE off my windshield before I could drive my SUV. As an aside, I found out that credit cards make great ice scrapers in a pinch - LOL!! But now it's warmed up to normal seasonal temperatures - high 70's to low 80's during the day. So I discarded my idea of doing something with hot chocolate for this challenge and decided to send ya'all some of our warm beachy weather.

The stamp sets used are from Flourishes - Beach Life and Seaside Life - both timeless sets that I get a lot of use out of. The designer paper is from the K&Co. Sea Glass collection with Baja Breeze card stock from SU. Coloring is with Copics, jumbo eyelets and twine from SU.

Here are the challenges I have Piled On for this card:

• CCEE Stampers - Sketch
• Stampin B's Design Team - Make a nautical card
• Flourishes Timelss Tuesday Challenge (FTTC#50) - Scene It
• Scrap and Stamp - Use your stash
• Quixotic Challenge #10 - Ink up an old stamp
• ABC Challenge - M is for masking
• Gingersnap Creations #39 - Color Challenge - Metallic
• Oh la la Creations - Create a Scene

Be sure to hop on over to Pile it On and get yourself warm with our warmest wishes for a wonderful Sunday! And while you are there, check out the blogs of our talented design team. Some of us are new to the design team so this is a great time to get to know us!

UPDATE: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

Bon Voyage

From The Funkie Junkie

Purely for the love of crafting, I have created what I think of as a wonderful retro study of a South Seas vacation. Sit back, close your eyes, let your body relax. Breathe deep. Can you smell that tang of salt in the air, maybe laced with a little pineapple smell? I deeply enjoyed making this card. The farthest south I have ever been is to the Caribbean, but this card carried me off on a little vacation. I could just feel the balmy sea air. I could envision packing my trunks...they had a little musty smell when I opened them the first time...then I pictured myself flying off in a propeller airplane, not a jet...sending a postcard back home, wishing someone special was there to enjoy it with me.

Okay, back to reality, but don't you just love these wonderful beach images from Flourishes and the travel icons from

Stampin' Up? Working with vintage and retro just satisfies some sort of creative yearning I have inside me. So I don't know if anyone will actually like this card, but I sure had a wonderful time making it!!

I am entering this card into two challenges:

Stamp Something - a card that recalls your summer vacation

Cute Card Thursday - At the Beach!

The base cardstock layers are Baja Blue (one of last year's SU In-Colors) and Creamy Caramel. On the Creamy Caramel, in Close to Cocoa ink, I stamped a montage of every travel stamp I owned. Then I stamped a selection of travel stamps over the montage with black ink and Versamark. Then I clear embossed them. I created a scene with the Flourishes Beach Life set and turned it into a vintage postcard by deckle cutting the edges and then sponging them with Creamy Caramel, my favorite distressing ink. Of course, I "damaged" it by folding over a corner and then ripping off a piece. Then I gave the damaged corner some extra sponging with Creamy Caramel. I stamped the three travel stamps on the left, cut them out and popped them up on craft foam. The "Beach Cottage" sign is a Melissa Francis sticker, sponged with Creamy Caramel, of course.

For the interior panels, I did the montage and embossed overlay thing and then added the sentiment from the Flourishes stamp - a beautiful, uplifting quote from Victor Hugo. For the blank panel to write a special message, I created another vintage post card style. So, there is a super lot going on with this card. Please let me know what you think about it. I am curious to see if it appeals to anyone besides me - LOL!

Card Recipe:

Stamps: Flourishes Beach Life, SU Travel Post, World Tour, Balmy Breezes, Aged to Perfection, Crafty Secrets Clear Art Stamps
Paper: Creamy Caramel, Baja Breezes, Very Vanilla, Neenah Solar White Ink: Versamark, Stewart Superior India Ink, Memento Tuxedo Black, Summer Sun, Really Rust, Copic Markers for coloring

Accessories: Clear EP, Silver EP, swing machine

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week

Sweet Strawberry Girl

After my last card missed the challenges by a mile, I set out to create a card that would hit several. I believe this one will hit:

Flourishes Timeless Tuesday - use hardware (red diamond brads between the flowers)

Three Clovers Designs -Tootie Fruitie

Cute Card Thursday - fruit

Cuttlebug Spot - use your favorite CB embossing folder and spot 3 of their blinkies on other blogs

Dutch Dare - use lace

Daring Cardmakers - Bejeweled bliss

This is the first time these stamps (Whiff of Joy and Flourishes) have seen ink. I have quite a few Whiff of Joy and Sarah Kay stamps that I still have not used (so many stamps, so little time - sigh). The new Flourishes Strawberries set is fabulous and I have been planning on using it so these fruit challenges were very timely. But oh, what to use for DSP? I wanted a crisp white for the dotted swiss but any rich red DPS I owned had a cream color rather than white in the pattern. So off I went again in search of the perfect DSP via a digital download. I found just what I was craving at Raspberry Road Designs. Their Flour Sack paper pack really appeals to me and it had a couple of papers with strawberry patterns. And so this card was born.

The coloring was done with Copic markers and I had a shock when my colorless blender pen ran out of ink. I have only had these pens since May. Luckily I had purchased a refill canister and a bottle of the colorless blender fluid. It was a pretty quick and easy task to refill it with the assistance of this four-part tutorial. I was fortunate that I had the refill on hand and I think next time I order supplies, I should start ordering a couple of refill colors each time I order - especially the colors I am using the most like skin tones, hair colors, basket colors, etc. I would hate to have a marker run dry in the middle of a project!!

~Card Recipe~

Stamps: Flourishes Strawberries, Whiff of Joy Willow With Basket

Paper: SU Real Red and Whisper White, Neenah Solar White for coloring with Copics, Raspberry Road Flour Sack DSP

Ink: Momento Tuxedo Black, Copics

Accessories: Martha Stewart border punch, Cuttlebug and Swiss Dots embossing folder, Nestabilities Labels Four, Stickles, lace from Jo--Ann's, sewing machine, Prima Say it With Crystals

Beach Hideaway

I've been having fun entering challenges lately. Usually I check to see what kind of challenges are going on at the moment and then make a card that will hit a few of them. But I was seized by the need to create this card and just went for it without trying to match it up with any challenge. I spent about an hour this afternoon surfing the challenge blogs, but nothing seemed to match up. So here's my card, all lonesome with no challenge to play in.

Oh well, I really did enjoy making this. I love the soft beachy feel to it. Sort of like weathered driftwood or cushions on a wicker chair that are faded by the coastal elements of sun and salt.

I started the card with digital download paper by Debbie Knorr at Scrapbook-Bytes. I actually went blog surfing looking for some digital paper that gave me the feel I was looking for for this card. This Casual Villa paper pack really hit the nail on the head! It was exactly what I was looking for. I am pretty new to all the digital paper and elements, but I plunged in and printed my own paper on my home printer. I did go out and buy some heavier weight paper to print on to give my card a more substantial feel to it.

I stamped the images with Chocolate Chip in. I deliberately did not color them in to continue the faded feel of the card. All the edges were scissor distressed and sponged with Creamy Caramel ink. The Coconut Hill element is a Melissa Francis sticker that I popped up on craft foam after distressing it by sponging it heavily with Creamy Caramel ink and scratching it up a bit using a Tim Holtz distressing tool. I added a strip cut with a MS edge punch and a few Prima flowers, buttons, ribbon and hemp. The beautiful inspiration saying on the inside of the card is a stamp from Rubbernecker. All other stamps are from the Flourishes Beach Life set. I really gave Spellbinders a workout with this card, using the following Nestabilities: Scalloped Circles, Scalloped Long Rectangles and Scalloped Squares.

I am really in love with this Flourishes stamp set. I made my last card with it, have just finished this card using it and have one more in the works using it. After making three cards in a row, I will probably put it into retirement for quite a while - LOL!!

Update: This card was featured on Card of the Week.

Happiness Shared

This was a tough week for mojo!! I have been trying to make a card for The Next Level challenge all week, but couldn't come up with just the right thing. I actually thought I had one ready earlier in the week, but then I realized it was not just a 3-D card, but also a SKETCH!! So I was back to Square One. Now I finally have my entry finished, but I think I missed the challenge deadline which is Sunday, 9:00 p.m. British time (6 hrs. ahead of EDT??).

But all is not lost. I have several other challenges I am entering it in. Here are the challenges I am entering this card into:

The Next Level - Sketch plus three dimensional

The Cuttlebug Spot - Decorate the inside too

Our Creative Corner OCC Challenge - Tripple Play - use at least three different embellishments

Stampin' for the Weekend - Rock & Roll 70's Music Inspirations - I selected Bob Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue

Dutch Dare - use dies or punches

Creative Inspirations - Stitching, Real or Faux

Crafty Goings Ons - Color an image (winner wins set of 72 Copics!!!)

Card Recipe:

Stamps: Sweet Pea - Flourishes

Paper: Whisper White base, SU Bella's Birds DSP, Night of Navy, Neenah Solar White for stamped images

Ink: Mememto Tuxedo Black, More Mustard and Creamy Caramel for sponging, Copics for coloring images, sentiments stamped with Night of Navy

Accessories: Beaded brad flower - K&Co., KaiserCraft half pearls, Prima flowers, Cuttlebug, Floral Fantsey embossing folder, Nestabilities Ovals, Spellbinders tag die, lace from Lace Heaven, sewing machine.

Life & Lemons

I was out of town most of last week vacationing so it has been a full week since I finished and posted a card. I was definitely having crafting and blogging withdrawal - LOL!! We are leaving again on Wednesday for another short 5-day get-away so this will be the only card for this week. Hope to be back at full steam in a week or so.

This card will be entered in multiple challenges including:

The Next Level - Buttons & Bows

Cute Card Thursday - A Stitch in Time

Charisma Cardz - Buttons

Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - 3 ribbons

Pile it On - 3 different embellishments and enterd in at least one other challenge

Creative Card Crew - add ribbons

Plus a summer citrus challenge for a private group I am in.
This is a new set from Flourishes called Life, Love & Lemons. Normally I probably wouldn't buy such a limited use set, but I needed something for my papercrafters' group's summer citrus challenge. I am really happy that I made the investment. This card was so much fun to make. It was colored with Copic markers. Flourishes' blog has a great tutorial this week on coloring these lemons with Copics.

Here is the card recipe:

Stamps: Flourishes Love, Live & Lemons, SU Script

Paper: SU Patterns DSP in Always Artichoke, Barely Banana, Neenah Solar White, SU Parisian Summer DSP

Ink: Copics, More Mustard, Creamy Caramel, Tim Holtz Vintage Photo, Memento Tuxedo Black

Accessories: Cuttlebug, Rectangle Nestabilities, Sizzix Top Note die, Martha Stewart edge punch, ribbon, SU button, sewing machine

Have a wonderful week!