Prickley Pear Cardinals

For Christmas, Mom gave me this Clearly Beautiful set and matching Cardinal die from Prickley Pear Rubber Stamps, and I just can't get enough of them. So I couldn't resist using them for this month's Prickley Pear Sketch Challenge.

I used the last of a lovely vintage-style, music-themed DP from Paper Pizazz. I stamped the cardinals onto the same paper with Tim Holtz distress inks, and added detail to the eyes & beaks with colored pencils. I hand-cut the cardinals out, but I used the Cardinal die to cut the mats from TH glassine paper.

I love glassine paper, even though it's not the easiest to adhere. I used it for about everything on this card! The rosette was cut using my TH die, but I scaled it down a bit and used a flower from the MS border punch for the center. The little flowers were made from  flower & starburst punches and put together with Recollections brads. I colored the brads & gemstones with Copics (YG25, YR12, R27).

I had lots of fun making the ribbon with three separate stamps!

The sentiment is from a Stampendous set, but all the other stamps are from Pickley Pear's Clearly Beautiful Cardinal Set.

Prickley Pear

This is my first card for the December Holidays...sure am getting a jump on it this year!


Challenges/Inspiration:

Christmas Card Challenge Week #13: Music

Prickley Pear Challenge: February Sketch

Feeling peaceful with Glitterbabe

This week's Dudetime Doodles December Holiday Spirit Challenge is being sponsored by Glitterbabe's Digis, so as a way to advertise both I made this simple card featuring GlitterBabe's Dove digi stamp (thank you!). I've included instructions & tips on how to heat-emboss digi stamps, just scroll down. I was also inspired by the first of the 2012 Christmas Card Challenges (oh my!): One Layer Christmas Card.

I made a border the circle around the digi stamp, and heat-embossed it. Then I stamped & heat-embossed Peace in the middle. It's nearly impossible to see in this photo, but I painted the dove's body with Granite Tattered Angels glimmer mist. I added - • - • - borders on the front with a Sharpie white paint pen and on the inside with an Elmer's glitter gel pen.

There are plenty of great tutorials out there on how to heat-emboss digi stamps (e.g., Digital Delights, Mel Stampz), but here's how I do it:

1. I finally broke down & bought an "embossing-buddy", a little cotton bag filled with cornstarch that you rub over your paper before heat-embossing so that excess powder doesn't stick. Oh my goodness it was worth every penny! If you have one, rub it over the paper before printing.
2. I use coated cardstock from Recollections' Metallics line (available at Michael's). Using photo paper also works, but you have to worry about the coating bubbling up. If you use photo paper, you want to print it at "high quality", but I find that with the Recollections paper it works best to print it at normal quality, but run it through the printer twice (quick, like a bunny!)
3. Immediately pour on the embossing powder; I like to give it a moment to stick, then I knock off the excess & heat it up. Easy-peasy!

Fun with Stampin' Dymonz and Friends

First off, I want to let ya'll know about the Buttons, Charms 'n' Bling Giveaway at Romina's Creative Crafts, running through August 15. Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'd do if I won, it's so incredible! I don't do a lot of blog candy contests (relatively speaking), but I do like how we find new blogs that way. So check out the blog candy badges on my left sidebar, plus my needs-to-be-updated link list on the bottom of my site.

On to the crafting: I spent a few hours this weekend at Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack in Baltimore, and it was too much fun. I even got to meet TerryO, which was pretty momentous for me (I'm such a groupie). As soon as I got home I signed up for two upcoming crops! I was too busy chatting most of the time to do any actual crafting, but I did color one of her stamps, this Cardinal-and-Poinsettia beauty (I think from Stampin' Up?). I stamped it twice, and used the second piece to pop the cardinal, and for the poinsettias on the inside (see below).

For the card design I used the great sketch at Sparkle Creations' Christmas Card Challenges.

I decided to play with some more shrink plastic, so I took a cue from the Use a Tag theme at the SDSS Christmas Card Club and made a tag from it. I used a border punch for the bottom. The tag is stamped with red StazOn and colored with green Copics after shrinking, but I used stamp markers for the buttons (on left). I sewed them on with green thread.

I ran across Jeannie's wildly beautiful shrink plastic projects, and boy! has she outdone herself yet again. Check out the little ring at the bottom of her post. And for all you members of the SDSS Off the Page Group, let this be a little hint for an upcoming project!
I hadn't originally realized that the Poinsettia stamp I wanted to pair this with was also from Stampin' Up, but it certainly worked out nicely. The sentiment is from a Lili of the Valley set I'm "saving" for Mom. The circle borders are hand-stamped; I love my Fiskars Dots border set!
Dymonz also introduced me to "medium round" nibs for Copic markers, which I like a lot but not as much as I thought. I thought I was going to want to throw out all my brush nibs, but I'm so used to them. I replaced a few of my chisel nibs with these; I only use the chisel for edging but I do love it for that.

Little Miracles

I'm super tickled that the "ticket corners" trick Mom & I shared at Top Tip Tuesday last week won their Top Tipper prize! We're such a great team (and we look & sound so alike). We're gonna have to figure out a way to share the prize, which is 3 digis from Karen's Doodles. I couldn't wait to hear back from Karen, though, and bought her First Taste of Snow to use for a Christmas card along with a ticket sentiment from When the Scrap Hits the Fun (Marion's blog). Her tickets helped inspire our "ticket corners" tip, so this card is sort of a celebration. It has lots of ticket corners!

Marion recently posted the loveliest Christmas-themed ticket -- please take a moment to check out her incredible shaker card -- and I totally lucked out that this week's colourQ combo includes the purple of the ticket. I was blown away by Julia's decidedly nontraditional Christmas card, and decided to use the bright colourQ combo as a cue for the Xmas in July challenge at Creative Inspirations. I'm also entering this into the Faith theme at the 2011 Christmas Card Challenge, and used the fab circle-and-rectangles sketch from Paper Cupcakes Magic Monday.

I kinda started this story at the end, because my first thought for this card came from Helen's Make your Own Backing Papers (BP) trigger for the Christmas/Holiday Card Club at Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack. I took the super-easy route of stamping & heat-embossing a snowflake to create my papers: I used white powder on the white paper, transparent yellow powder on the yellow, and clear powder on the green. The inside green piece isn't heat-embossed, just stamped with watermark ink. It's difficult to see the embossing in the photo on the right but if you click on it, it will enlarge & you can see more detail.

I had terrible fun coloring the image, and it just screamed for textural embellishment. First, I used my heat-activated Marvy Snow pen for the snowflakes. Then I used my glue pen to add some color-matched flocking: white on the snow, green on the cuffs, yellow on the collar, and purple on the ear-muff.

The boots are coated with Glossy Accents. The doily was sprayed with Tattered Angels glimmer mist, because I wouldn't bring myself to just leave it white! Everything is edged with a Copic marker (G07 / Nile Green).

Inspiration:
Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack Christmas Card Club: Make Your Own BP
Creative Inspirations Challenge #64: Xmas in July
2011 Christmas Card Challenge Week #33: Faith
Paper Cupcakes Magic Monday: Sketch
colourQ challenge #94: Tangerine Tango, Green Galore, Daffodil Delight, Rich Razzleberry + white

Stamps: First Taste of Snow by Karen's Doodles, Xmas Ticket by When the Scrap Hits the Fun, stash
Tools: Marvy heat tool, Fiskars papercutter, Tim Holtz scissors, HP printer & ink, Adobe InDesign, awl, hole punch
Other: ZipDry glue, ZIG glue pen, Marvy snow pen, Elmer's gel pen, Versamark watermark ink, Glossy Accents, doily from stash, Tattered Angels glitter mist, bakers twine from stash, embossing powders from Stampendous & Hero Arts, flocking from Martha Stewart, Recollections, & Stampendous
Copic markers: b0000, yr01, e11, e13, rv02, e37, e17, v06, v17, bv00, y06, y17, yr04, yr09, yg03, g07