FFC04, CFC94 - If you can't beat them.....

This card is for this week's Festive Friday Trigger challenge - Merry.

And for this week's CASual Friday challenge - no stamps.

I spent a day reminding myself why I don't use my Cricut very often (sorry, Anita!). My recycling bin is full but in the end, I'm very happy with this. The "Merry" is from the Simply Sweet font cartridge. I cut 3 of them out of Whisper White and used the negative die cut over strips of Lucky Limeade and Real Red that had been run through the cuttlebug with my grosgrain texture plate.  The ends of the strips overhang the card slightly, to add a little interest. The card is 4.25 x 4.25 so it will fit into a standard envelope, even with the little overhangs, no problem.

As for today's post's title - it's STILL looking a lot like Christmas around here, so I figured I may as well embrace it and be Merry! lol!

Stained Glass

On my own, today. No challenges, just an idea that has been in my head ever since I bought this background stamp from Paper Smooches. And then when I found this photo of a stained glass door made of tiny panels of colours on Pinterest:

I knew exactly what I was going to do!

I went with silver instead of black for the frame (I HATE embossing with black embossing powder - it's almost impossible to do it without little black flecks showing up everywhere!). And when I coloured the back of the vellum with copics, I chose just 5 spingtime colours rather than the whole spectrum. I think it's quite pretty, but I felt like it just wasn't as cool as the inspiration, so I went back and braved the black embossing powder:

If you click, you'll see the little black flecks where there shouldn't be embossing powder, PLUS you'll see little white flecks in the black, where some kind of mixing has gone on, but overall, better than I had anticipated (just don't ask me how many sheets of vellum I went through.....)

Supplies:
Stamps: Paper Smooches
Paper: Vellum, Whisper White, Silver Mirror Card, Basic Black
Ink: Versamark
Accessories: Silver embossing powder, Black embossing powder copic markers

Cut-out Circles

My hubby and I were watching a rom-com the other night ("How do you Know") and all I came away with was the design for this masculine card from the cushions on the couch of one of the guys:

Yeah, it (the film) was not one of my all time faves, but I am happy with this card, which will go to one of the many men I am still making cards for.

Then I saw this week's Less is More challenge. Turns out, now that I've read it again, that these cards, which  have more than one layer, don't actually qualify, but I like them and they wouldn't have ended up as one-layer anyway! (note to self: read the instructions!!)

I do think that they qualify for the other requirement - which is stripes, although not in a straight-stripey way.

First I did this:

I cut out various rings using circle nestabilities, glued them together and cut the result in half, and then one half into quarters. I love the colours together and I get a broadcasting  (as in sending warm thoughts) kind of feeling from it.

It also reminded me of a sunset, so I used half of the circle to come up with this:

Which I love! 

I think it's sunny and happy and makes me feel warm. And there's room to stamp a sentiment when I decide who to send this to.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:

"Happy Birthday"

Stamps: Waltzingmouse

Paper: Basic Black, Basic Grey, Gina K 120 lb

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Accessories: Circle nestabilities, black diamond stickles

"Sending love"

Stamps: none

Paper: Whisper White, Poppy Parade, Tangerine Tango, Pumpkin Pie, Daffodil Delight, Gina K Pure Luxury 120 lb

Ink: none

Accessories: Circle nestabilities, stardust stickles

"Abstract Sunset"

Stamps: none

Paper: Whisper White, Poppy Parade, Tangerine Tango, Pumpkin Pie, Daffodil Delight, Soft Sky, Baja Breeze, Gina K Pure Luxury 120 lb

Ink: none

Accessories: Circle Nestabilities, stardust stickles

Miscellaneous

I've been busy this week - I've made a lot of cards that don't really fit into the various challenges I've been entering, so I thought I'd just deliver you the mish-mash of 'everything else' for the week. I hope you enjoy it!
(I'm not going to post supplies for every card - if you would like to know what I've used, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you). Click to enlarge any of the photos:

Featured Stamper 260 - Wannabcre8tive

Each Sunday, Splitcoaststampers hosts a "Featured Stamper" challenge. We are supposed to pick one card from the Featured Stamper's gallery and CASE it. As I looked through Shirley's gallery, I couldn't narrow it down to one - I found four!

Here's the first one of Shirley's:

Love the crisp navy and white colour combination, the square card, the big circular flower. Here's my CASE:

Wouldn't it be fun to make a set of these in different colours?

The second one of Shirley's I chose because I absolutely love these colours on the craft background!  The white pops and I'm always a sucker for a snowflake:

 I would have loved to just remake her card exactly the way it was, but that's not really the point of the challenge:

The next two are Christmas cards from Shirley's gallery:

The first reminded me of an idea I had after Christmas. Every year, I make and donate the Christmas cards that our Church sends to members. The layout of this card had been rattling around in my mind for the 2012 cards, but with the word 'believe'. You often see that sentiment under Santa, but it applies equally, maybe even more, to baby Jesus. When I saw Shirley's card:

I knew it was time to put this idea onto paper:

I love the clean colour combination of silver, white and red. I think it echoes the simplicity of the message.

Finally, the Christmas star. Here's Shirley's starry sky on navy:

And here's mine:

Shirley - thank you so much for all the inspiration! I feel like I've got a head start on next Christmas already!

Supplies:
Navy Flower:
Stamps: Stampin' Up (Pick a petal), small  solid circle
Paper: Whisper White, Night of Navy
Ink: Night of Navy
Accessories: Stickles (to hide smudges!!) and circle punch for flower centre


Cherry Blossom tree:
Stamps: Stamin' Up (Season of Friendship, Little Pieces)
Paper: Sahara Sand, Whisper White
Ink: Soft Suede, Versamark
Accessories: White Embossing Powder, Red Copic marker


Believe:
Stamps: Stampabilities, Papertrey Ink (Fresh Alphabet)
Paper: Whisper White, Cherry Cobbler
Ink: Versamark
Accessories: Silver Embossing Powder


O Holy Night:
Stamps: Inkadinkado (corner stars), Stampabilities (sentiment)
Paper: Whisper White, Gold Shimmer, Night of Navy, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Night of Navy, Versamark
Accessories: Egyptian Gold Embossing Powder, Dark Blue Stickles, Champagne Stickles

What was I thinking?

Damasklove is a blog I love to look at. Amber's style is clean and her eye is amazing. She has challenged us to take a card we made in the past, and redo it in our current style.

I started stamping in January 2006, after attending a Stampin' Up party hosted by my cousin. In my normal obsessive style, I immediately bought everything I could buy (embellishments, ribbon, inks, papers, tools) and learned every technique I could. And like many new converts, whether it be to religion or a new hobby or whatever, my fervour was high. Every card I made had to have everything I knew included in it! By Christmas of 2006, I was thinking I would make cards for the teachers' gifts. Better yet, I would make them sets of cards, in a unifying colour scheme. I made 4 or 5 different designs - I'm going to save the rest for the next "What was I thinking Challenge". Here is just one of these lovely creations:

What was I thinking?! The colour combination, the random, overdone stickles (and this is one of the cleaner ones in the sets). Ugh! And these poor women were so gracious and every one of them assured me that she loved the cards. That just makes me appreciate them even more!

But I love that flower and I wanted to make it a challenge, so I forced myself to remake this card with the same colours and stamps. I figured since I hated the colour combination so much, the best way to deal with it was to minimize the amount of colour used, and have lots of white space. Here it is:

 But a practically white card felt a bit like cheating, so I made another one. Same colours, different stamps:

I used a technique I learned on the damasklove blog  and shaded the stamped flowers with copic markers to give some more depth. My original intent was for this to be a portrait orientation, but I couldn't find the best 'fit' for the sentiment, which really wanted to fit right where it is. So landscape it is.

I like these cards so much better - what a fun challenge!

Supplies:
Live, Love, Laugh:
Stamps: Stampin' Up! Both Way Blossoms, Inkadinkado Alphabet
Paper: Whisper White, Certainly Celery, Gina K Pure Luxury
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Cool Caribbean
Accessories: Copic Markers, Fruit Punch Stickles


Little Baby:
Stamps: All Stampin' Up! solid flowers from various sets, Papertrey Ink (leaf)
Paper: Whisper White, Regal Rose
Ink: Memento London Fog, Certainly Celery, Always Apricot, Regal Rose
Accessories: Copic Markers

Inspiration Sources

While I love looking at the blogs of other cardmakers and also Splitcoaststampers.com, I've been trying to look in other places for inspiration, to avoid inadvertently 'stealing' other people's ideas. A couple of years ago, there was a tv show I enjoyed called Sarah's House. Sarah Richardson is a popular Canadian interior designer - I love her style - especially her calming colour palettes. The series followed her renovation of her own farmhouse. Similarly, Sarah's Cottage... well, you get the idea (although the cottage is on a private island - what a tough construction/renovation that must have been!)

The logo for Sarah's House is:

I still love the simplicity of the image and the cool colour scheme.

When my sister and her family moved into her long-awaited dream house, I shamelessly cased Sarah's logo for my own purposes:

I've been looking in unusual places for inspiration - I can't wait to show you some of the results!

Supplies:

Stamps: Parfait Alphabet - My Sentiments Exactly!

Paper: Brocade Blue, Old Olive, Gina K Pure Luxury White

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Accessories: Cricut Expressions cutter

One inspiration, multiple cards

I love jewellery (I hear laughs from those who how much of an understatement this is!) and I love bright colours - in order, otherwise known as 'rainbow'. I found a photo  of a simple gold chain with brightly coloured tear-drop stones. I also loved the rainbow found in the RIC Challenge at http://runwayinspired.blogspot.com/ (although I admit I thought the bag just put it over the top! LOL!).  The necklace was photographed in a spiral and literally spoke to me (it said "BUY ME"). But I really have enough jewellery, so I did the next best thing - I made it into some cards. I started with this one:

It made me happy. Loved the white space and the bright colours (used copics to add dimension to the tips and a small spot of stardust stickles for shine (forgetting of course that you can't apply stickles to Stampin' Up reds or pinks without them changing colour!).

But I couldn't really connect it to the gold necklace. So I made this one:

And it made me happier. Yes, there is less white space, but the smaller darker portion inside each shape  makes it feel groovy to me. I'm going to use this for my Mother-in-law's birthday which is next week. But I still hadn't included the spiral that was in the original...... so I took another shot and here's the result:

I'm less happy with this one - it's my favourite layout (circle on a square) but I left out a couple of the colours and it just doesn't sing to me as well as the others.

Which one do you like best?

Supplies: 
Stamps: Papertrey Ink (Modern Basics), Stamps of Life
Paper: Whisper White, Perfect Plum, Basic Black, Gold Mirror, Night of Navy, Silver Mirror
Ink: Stampin' Up!  Perfect Plum, Pacific Point, Real Red, Morning Marigold, Summer Sun, Melon Mambo, Lucky Limeade, Pumpkin Pie, Crushed Concord, Night of Navy, Cherry Cobbler, Tangerine Tango,  Rose Red, Always Artichoke
Accessories: Cuttlebug and Nestablities, Gold embossing powder, stickles