Uplifting Thoughts

I wanted to make some cards for friends and family who need a little cheering up. Sometimes people feel down for no particular reason and life seems a hard. I chose to use this set from Simon Says Stamp! Uplifting Thoughts. I used my Misti  and scattered the sayings over some water color paper. Using the Misti allowed me to get a good impression by stamping 2 or 3 times. I used Versifine Onyx black ink and clear embossing powder so that he watercolor wouldn't make a mess. I did make 3 cards this one with my Peerless water colors, another with Mijello Mission that I used soft pastel colors and the other with Gansi Tambi Starry Colors (this one didn't photograph well so I won't post it but it's gorgeous in real life.  I wanted this one to be bold so I started with yellow so I could get the sun and the flower and that led to the diagonal design. I just chose other colors that blended well with the yellow. I matted it with black and chose a bright yellow card base. To add texture I pulled out my embossing folders (which I haven't used in way to long) and sine I wanted the sentiments to be front and center I kept it subtle.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Balloons

There is no such thing as too many balloons. They are such a happy thing to have, to see or to play with especially water balloons.  These are just filled with air (at least if they were real they would be).
So many balloon sets are available now and more are coming so let's just enjoy some happy thoughts.

Baby Cards

One of the occasions that I make cards for is the gift packets I give to family and friends at Christmas. Well between Christmas 2014 and Christmas 2015 I went from one great nephew to 3 great nephews and a great niece. All of whom are absolutely the most beautiful children on the face of this Earth. ( no I'm not biased at all.) So I was informed that I needed to make more baby cards and this is the design I came up with for the cards.  My Favorite Things came out with a Baby's Bib die just in time for me to make these cards. I went through all of my stamp sets and pulled out any small images that could go on the front of the bibs. I also pulled out some patterned paper to cut out the bibs. I love how they turned out and I hope you do also. Thanks for stopping by.

Decorating the Tree

I never got around to posting any of the Christmas cards I made this past Christmas. As a matter of fact I didn't send out that many cards either, too much going on at the time. This is a digital image from Maurie Manning. I have had this image printed out for over a year, along with a whole bunch of other images that I wanted to color. finally pulled some of them out and got busy.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Penguins in Paradise

This is one of the sweetest stamp sets by Birdie Brown at My Favorite Things. The Penguins in a tropical setting is just so cute you can't help but have fun making cards with them. Stamping on kraft card stock makes coloring so simple that it's almost too easy. Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Happy Fourth of July

I needed to make my 4th of July cards quickly, so I needed a simple design. Hah, it looks simple but boy howdy did I fool myself. First I went looking for sentiments and I found a Papertrey Ink mini stamp set Birthday Classics: July. I had the 4th of July stamp. Then I wanted red white and blue as a color scheme of course so it meant a white card base. I then pulled out my MFT Die-namics Blueprints 26 for the happy die. I then went to my stencils and found Starry Night, well stars are stars right?  I used Delicata gold ink pad to create the starry background, that was the hardest part of the card making, my hand hurt after doing 12 of these babies. The rest of the card was easy.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Less is More

My favorite kind of card making is a simple one. Usually that means a lot of white space but then again I think one can work with color and keep the elements simple. I loved this rainbow pattern paper (can't for the life of me find what paper pack it came from) and thought that the dies from Papertrey Ink's Trendy Tree Tops die collection. There is a coordinating stamp set but I chose to stay with a plain white tree and let that little bird be a focal point but I did use a sentiment form the set, love the font.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

You Are My Sunshine

Simon Says Stamp! offers sets of water color card designs by Suzy Plantamura. I've bought all of them but this was the first set that I've colored. When I found out that the theme for my great niece Grace's first birthday party was to be you are my sunshine well this card was meant. I decided to color it in an ombre fashion, of course in sunshine shades. I was very happy with the results and I'm sure Grace loved it also, I know her Mommy did.

Sunflower Bouquet

I totally adore this set. It is such a beautiful image and coloring these flowers and pitcher is an absolute joy. Papertrey Ink has sent this set to the vault so it's expensive to get now but it is such a versatile set that if you want to invest then it is worth it, I'm just glad I got it when it came out.  There is another set that has similar images in a smaller size that is still available so that is another option.

 Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

A card for Reese

My sister Ann is a Nanny to several adorable girls, the youngest, Reese, often asks when the mail comes is there anything for her. Sadly up until this card, the answer was no.  Ann said she loved it.  I used Blue Prints 28 die set from MFT stamps to die cut the card front from MFT's Plaid Pattern paper pack and the chevrons and dots from coordinating card stock. The stamped image is from Silly Monsters by Your NextStamp, you can find them on the Simon Says Stamp! web site.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

Treescape

Since I've become fascinated with water coloring I decided to try my hand at free hand coloring. I like how it turned out but I don't think I'm a threat to any artists out there. Thanks for stopping by.

At the Beach

Art Impressions has a wonderful series of tri-fold cards and stamp sets. This one is a favorite. Coloring it just makes you happy and want to dip your toes in the water. Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by,

Let's Chill

This card was a hoot to make. The window die is either from My Favorite Things or Ellen Hutson, I haven't been able to find it on line. The stamp is from another Birdie Brown set Penguins in Paradise.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

A Beary Birthday

My Favorite Things has a line of stamps designed by Birdie Brown that are impossible to resist. Birthday Bears was the first set I bought and it is such a fun set to color and make cards with.
Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.

What Now and Results

I have not posted cards on a regular basis in a long time. I've been making cards all along just haven't time to edit them and post but I'm determined to get back into the swing of it.  I've been working on water coloring quite a bit in several different mediums and Starry Colors by Gansai Tambi just dazzled me. I saw them on several web sites Prairie Paper and Ink and Jennifer McGuire.
I started to play with them on some scrap black card stock (top picture) and the colors are fabulous. There are six shades of gold paint, blue gold, red gold, yellow gold, champagne gold, light gold and white gold. Holy cow they are just gorgeous in person. After I finished play time I couldn't just throw them out so I set them up and looked at them for a couple of days and thought about what I wanted to do with them and the bottom picture is part of the result. the card with the ragged edge was the result of pulling off the tape I used to hold down the card stock to keep it from warping. Since it is not water color paper I had to be careful about how much water I used.
Hope you like them and thanks for stopping by.

Happy Mother's Day

I woke up last Monday morning and realized I had not made my Mother's day cards to mail out that day. I quickly looked through my stamp sets and settled on a Gina K Design set designed by Melanie Muenchinger called Spring Basket that had been lolling around in my bin of sets for way too long. I also had just gotten a sentiment stamp set Celebration Scripty Sayings by Lawn Fawn from Simon Says Stamp. I used white card bases with dark brown card stock for matting (Papertrey Ink). Once all the elements were organized I stamped the images with Memento Rich Cocoa and colored with Copics. I should have masked the flowers before stamping the basket but I was in a hurry and not thinking so I did the best I could.  I pretty much used elements from all my favorite sites. Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by.  P. S I got them in the mail the next day so I hope they arrived by yesterday.