What is it?

What the heck, right?!?

 I recently found this stamp at the bottom of a box. I thought it was a frog when I bought it a decade ago rummaging through a pile of unmounted rubber stamps, but after stamping it for the first time I'm fairly sure it's an ostrich. Yes?

 

 This ostrich was IN OUR CAR while at a drive-thru wildlife park in Texas. Looks pretty similar.

 Regardless, it's ugly, and a little disturbing. I fell in love with the cat Mandi stamped in a quirky blue for the Less is More challenge to use

Blue & Green

and thought I would try something a little quirky too. Maybe not the best card to give Grandma, but perfect for a dear girlfriend who gets your humor.

[Diane, if you happen to see this, you know what's going to be in your mailbox in January]


Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

Supplies used:

stamps:  unknown, Martha Stewart backgrounds, Michael's swak, American Crafts chevron

Watercolors

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Dawn McVey has a great tutorial on watercoloring with your ink pads. I wanted to play, but don't have great, open stamp image to play with. So I picked a scrap piece of embossed circles paper on my desk and tried it out.

I liked how it turned out, so I adhered the scrap to a base, stamped a sentiment, and called it a night. I love quick projects!

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Supplies used:stamps:  PTI Think Big Sentiments
impression plates: PTI circles

What Goes Up and Never Comes Down?

I loved making paper airplanes as a kid (and decorating them!) and as I was thinking about the CAS-ual Fridays challenge to feature things you'd see in the sky, I thought it would be fun to make a paper airplane again. Only a mini one this time. Add a riddled sentiment and you've got a birthday card for just about anyone.

 

The roof's edge is cut longer so when it's resting it takes the shape of a roof.

Then when you open it, you get the answer to the riddle. Hahaha. The answer is suspended with thread so it hangs vertically as you open the roof. I made wide fringe for the roof tiles, snipped the corners for a little dimension, and used the woodgrain impression plate.

Thanks for looking!
-Kelly

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI Movers and Shakers: Sentiments, Martha Stewart Backgrounds

impression plates: PTI Woodgrain

other: thread, baker's twine

Love Birds

 Aww, love birds. Just what you need for an anniversary card!

This came about from a couple challenges:

 

 

 

I masked the vertical sentiment ("anniversary" is under the word "happy" on the actual stamp) to be horizontal so they would show through the pair of love birds.

Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI fillable frames
dies:  Memory Box bird
other: heart punch

A Month In Photos [July 2012]

I'm not thrilled that I lost momentum on Project Life (only complete through mid-February) and Month In Photos (again, stopped after February). But since the Month In Photos project is relatively quick to complete, I decided to pick it up again this month. Glad I did.

Here are the highlights:

- watching the moon rise over Lake Michigan while waiting for fireworks and playing in the sand at Summerfest (so relaxing, except for the police helicopter with the roving searchlight),

- over-the-moon excited to be at the Craft and Hobby Association trade show for the first time,

- happy that the boys still play with each other, and are into simple things like playing dress up,

- spending hours in the sand pit at the pool, and meeting friends while working on a common project, like digging a river that ends at my feet for a spa. Or burying someone in the sand.

- loving our routine of doing swim lessons, eating at Wendy's (20 nuggets with ranch, a large fry, and a crispy chicken Cesar wrap is $8.92), and relaxing at the pool the rest of the day with friends.

- RAINBOW ICE CREAM! a Taste of Chicago favorite. Jackson doesn't drip all over his shirt this year!

- treating the kids to ice cream on the beach after hanging out in Lincoln Park all day with friends. our order was large enough that we had to figure out the total and change for the ice cream guy.

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Rebecca at Simple as That has posted a free template for you to create your own Month in Photos and is hosting a link party for everyone to share their progress. 

A Little Bleach, a Little Ink

Well I did make it into the laundry room this week ... to grab some bleach for some good, clean card making! Nichole shared a technique to stamp with bleach and then stamp with ink on top.

Chrissie and Mandi may get sick of seeing me, but it's their fault for having such a versatile sketch for us to use this week! This time I at least flipped it over.

I'm short on larger solid stamps, so I turned to Mehndi Medallion to try this technique out. Since I'm only using one stamp for this, I needed to over-saturate this finely detailed stamp with bleach so it bleeds on the paper. This way when I stamp again with orange ink, there will be a larger white area underneath acting as an outline for all the detail.

 The third time I stamped the medallion is in raspberry on the card base. I intentionally rotated the raspberry medallion so it didn't line up with the bleached/orange medallion. When they lined up it seemed to blend in too much.

Interesting to note that when I bleached the PTI raspberry paper it didn't turn color at all. So I grabbed a cheap, thin raspberry paper and the bleach immediately turned the paper to white.


Thanks for looking!

Supplies used:

stamps:  PTI Mehndi Medallion, Martha Stewart Invitations

dies:  PTI Wonderful Words

ink: PTI Raspberry Fizz, True Black, Colorbox Tangerine

Blue Velvet

Anytime I look at this ribbon I think of David Lynch's movie Blue Velvet from the 80's. What an odd story. Anyway, here's a Hello card for the CAS-ual Friday color challenge.

 And the LIM sketch challenge.

 

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

Supplies used:

stamps:  Inkadinkadoo Hello
impression plates: PTI Simple Stripes
other: watercolor pencil, AC stamping marker, velvet ribbon, circle punch