A Sprinkle of Salt

Nichole and the design team shared 2 different salt techniques.  I tried both.  First, I decided to color some watercolor paper with my Kool-Aid dyes from the Tea Stain challenge and then sprinkle sea salt over the paper to make splotches (very technical stamping term, I'm sure).  Once the paper was done, it really didn't need much to make a card!  Here it is:

I mounted the watercolored paper onto a Berry Sorbet card base and added a sentiment from Sending You Sunshine on a Half and Half die cut.  Somehow (okay-- I know it's my bad photography skills) the harvest gold paper looks brighter than in real life, and the yellow in the bottom corner of the card is hardly showing in this photo.  In reality, they work together really well.  

I also tried the glue and table salt dots with reinker.  I decided to use my SU Because I Care set with a sentiment from Happy Trails.  Here's the card:

I tried to use the combination of the salt/ Scarlet Jewel ink and a Copic that was a little more blue to mimic the hydrangeas my grandma had on her bushes this summer.  She had a couple bushes that had flowers like this -- some parts more blue and some more  pink/purple.   

Thanks for looking!

Amy 

Rolled Dough Designs

I had never worked with paper clay before.  It's a nice option to have around when I want a custom embellishment.  First, I rolled out the regular paper clay -- probably more messy than I want to get on a regular basis, but I did like the results.  Here is the ornamet that I made with it, the filigree border die, and that wonderful "smile" stamp.  Really, I promise I didn't use that one on everything I've made this weekend.

Then I turned to the Delight paperclay.  That was a lot less messy and die cut well.  I decided to try several dies.  First, I tried the Trendy Tree Tops:

I colored the tree, trunk and heart with Copic markers.  If I had this one to do over again, I'd die cut the trunk out of the top so I could piece it together and wouldn't have to layer.

Then I started with buttons.  I had colored some clay with my old SU Blue Bayou ink refill and had put glitter into another batch.  I cut buttons from all of it.  When I chose the patterned paper (My Mind's Eye -- The Sweetest Thing) I was going to use for the card, I colored some buttons a darker blue with Copics and stamped the white glitter ones with Kraft ink (SU Crumbcake) and BB Text Style to get the right colors.  Here is the card:

After affixing the buttons to the card, I covered each one in Diamond Glaze.    I love the glazed look for these.    The sentiment is from Quilled Elegance -- another set with sentiments I could use over and over and over...

Thanks for looking!

Tea Staining Techniques

I was really drawn to Betsy's "tea" staining with Kool-Aid, so I decided to go that route with my dying.  I cut some bookmarks and tags from watercolor paper and some ice cream toppers (from Sweet As Can Be dies) and flowers from cream felt.    I took a cue from Nichole and stamped a couple of my bookmarks and tags with Mehndi Medallion and Versamark ink and embossed with clear embossing powder to get a resist.  After everything was dry, I put my card together using another sketch "recipe" from this morning:

Here's the card:

I couldn't resist using that "Smile" from the new Stamp-a-faire set again.   I added a scoop of harvest gold felt to the two scoops I had dyed and a few sprinkles of SU glass glitter to top them off.

I haven't used all of the pieces that I dyed yet, but I did put the bookmarks together.  Since they were not very strong and were a bit warped after being wet, I backed the bookmarks with some rustic white card stock.

Here are the bookmarks!

I played around using a paintbrush like Erin did with the coffee and with dipping like Betsy did in her video.  And what do you know?  There's that "Smile" again.  :)  I'll save the tags and flowers to use later on.

Thanks for looking!

Amy

Mixing Mists to Match

This afternoon, Nichole shared a recipe for mixing our own spray mists using Papertrey ink refills.  The ink refill included in my Stamp-a-faire box was Scarlet Jewel, so that's the color I mixed.  Since Scarlet Jewel is not one of my go-to colors, I decided to use another of this morning's color recipe cards.  This is the one I chose:

And here is my card:

I cut the hexagon cover plate with my Big Kick and used it as a mask over Kraft card stock.  I used the special Stamp-a-faire exclusive Reasons to Smile stamp set and my Fabulous Frames dies for the focal point.  

Thanks for looking!

Amy

Breakfast Bake and Take

The first challenge for Stamp-a-faire is a great one to get me warmed up.  We had a choice of color combinations and sketches to combine to create a great card recipe.  

Here is the color combo I chose:

And her is the sketch I chose:

And here is my card:

Maybe it's a little spring-y for late August, but it's a gorgeous day outside, so it works for me.  

In addition to the colors listed above, I used Framed Out #1 stamp set and dies and the Sweet Spring stamp set and Copic markers to color.   

Thanks for looking!

Amy

Stamp-a-faire 2013

This has been a crazy first week back at work for me, so I am beyond thrilled to be spending all day today at my craft desk doing what I love.  I admit that I didn't start at 7am as the posts and challenges on Nichole's blog began to roll out.  I've decided that I'll pretend I'm on Pacific time today -- mostly because I wanted to sleep late.  But I've cleaned my desk (mostly) and completed the first challenge (post to come) and am rolling right along.  

Happy to be crafting with PTI fans from around the world today!

Amy

End of camp cards!

I did it!  A weekend cramming session has helped me have a card for each day of Summer Camp!  
The challenge for Week 3, Day 4 was to do something that is out of the ordinary for me.  I was inspired by Heather's card where she used the epoxy circles to embellish her card.  It occurred to me that I have 4 (not 1, mind you -- 4!) unopened packages of Making Memories Page Pebbles.  I didn't buy them -- they were in my goodie bag at Stamp-a-Faire a couple summers ago.  So I've had them for 2 years unopened.  Maybe that's what I need to use.    I kept with the color combination of the week and sketch #1.

I chose Papertrey's Gracious Vases set.  For my Page Pebble embellishments, I stamped each flower onto Winter Wisteria card stock.   Then I used my pebbles to highlight one section of each flower and trimmed each to the size of the pebble.

Week 3, Day 5 brought another selection of color combos!  I chose this one:

This is such a happy combination, I wanted to make a really fun card.  I decided Polka Dot Basics would help highlight the colors.  

For the sentiment, I turned again to Wonderful Words:  Birthday.  I repeated the "happy" in the colors of my color combination.  Then I used the trick from Week 1 of layering die cuts to help "birthday" stand up off the page.