Paige

I made this card for my new Grand-Niece who arrived into the world yesterday! Congrats to her wonderful parents and Welcome to your life!

Watercolor: Blue Hand-Painted Flowers

I thought these came out pretty well for my first water-color flowers!! Using cheap ($3) watercolors, I worked for two hours on these. Time flies when you're immersed!! A friend told me this would make a pretty fabric. I think she's right. She also gave me a great idea: Use these for my Easter cards. Pics of that later! Thanks Bethany!

More Art Journal: Hand-painted flowers

This is really more of a scrapbook page, but I decided to include it in my art journal. I painted the flowers with acrylic paints on grey paper. Then cut them out, stamped all over the page, punched out the little red flowers and stamped them, then covered the whole page with Mod Podge to protect it. These are the flowers that turned out. Most of them were awful!!

Art Journal Page Background

I started an Art Journal and have been playing around with new techniques. This was the weirdest thing...I made a cup of tea using a Cranberry Zinger tea bag which is VERY red when steeped. After it cooled I dripped it down the page thinking the red color would transfer - but NO! Instead it turned grey or actually kind of clear because the paper is grey. Then I mixed an acrylic paint with water in a spritzer bottle to get the blue splashes of color. Even without the red I thought it came out pretty cool!



2012 Christmas Cards

For the top card I used a package stamp and used colored pencil to color the ribbons. For the bottom card, I created the swirl background with the Cuttlebug "swirl" embossing folder on shimmering gold card stock. There was a blue version, too. This was a big hit this year!

Blue Birthday Card

I recently purchased some watercolor pencils and began using them to color in my stamped images. The image was stamped in black and I used Light and Dark Blue pencils to color it in. The border was created with a Corner/Border Punch combo. The textured background was created with a Cuttlebug embossing machine/folder. I miss my cardmaking! I can't wait to get back to doing this more frequently!

Starburst Technique

I learned this from Cardmaker Magazine. Place a sticky-note in the center of a white piece of cardstock. Dab a cotton ball into an ink pad. Place the cotton ball in the center of the sticky-note and pull away from the center over the card stock. Repeat in another color, then remove the sticky-note. Add embellishments or a stamped image as I did on this card. The butterfly is stamped on white card stock, then layered with a dark purple paper. The white area around the purple is the white space where the stick-note used to be.

Hand-painted background and a simple card

I hand-painted the background using acrylic paints on white card stock. Just dip a foam brush in the paint and lightly draw it across the card stock alternating colors. The flowers are stamped with versamark ink, then embossed with fine white embossing powder. The center is made from two circles. I sliced the edges off to create the straight edges.

A great way to use up scraps.

More Cuttlebug Creations

I used the Cuttlebug to create the floral background and to die-cut the larger of the two flowers on all three cards.

Love the Cuttlebug!

A couple of weeks ago my husband convinced me to buy a "Cuttlebug" embossing/die-cutting maching. It's amazing. I made this card using one of the embossing folders. I took a simple blue ink pad (dye ink) and gently swiped it across the raised pattern. I then used a second (purple) ink pad - this one had a foam base -and swiped it across the raised pattern directly over the blue ink. Because of the soft foam base of this ink pad it sank into the non-embossed areas. I distressed the edges of the white card stock for a more tattered look. Amazing tool!