More HYCCT Challenge Cards

This is going to be short and sweet... I just wanted to update my blog with what I have been doing lately... I have been playing along with the Hope You Can Cling To challenges at splitcoast.  We are halfway through the month and the challenges are great...  Here are the rest of the cards I have done so far.  Can you believe I am actually caught up and done all of the challenges?  Me either but I plan to do them all this year...  :-)  So here they are:

This is the step card that I was teaching at the Santa Clara scrapbook expo.  I thought it was perfect to put together for this "step" challenge..

This is for the Bind It All challenge.  To make our card look bound like a book or binder or such.  I used the top note die and some ribbon for my binding...

This card had to be friend associated.  An image, sentiment, etc.  I chose one of my favorite friend sentiments from Stampin Up's All Holiday set...

Something's Missing... Yup, my heart in the card front.  I punched my main heart and tied the twine through it.  All the other hearts were punched out and placed.  I also place DSP inside my card as well

Use music on your card... Sure no problem when you have this gorgeous music sheet background stamp.  I chose to emboss the background for a more dimensional look...

Quilts are nice and warm and cozy right?  Because that is what I was thinking when I was doing this card...  And these are some of my favorite colors...  :-)

Warm fuzzies.. What isn't warm about sharing a cup of coffee with a friend?  And a coffee that has a coffee cozy on it?  

No stamps? No problem..  I am in love with the inlaid die cute technique... So much fun and such an amazing look when its used...  This card makes me want to make a dozen more....

So that's it for today... Hope you enjoyed my cards.  Stay tuned for more the rest of the month...

Inky Hugs!!!

HYCCT- First 5 cards

For those of you that don't know what HYCCT is, it's Hope You Can Cling To.  They are a month long daily challenge for the month of October for Breast Cancer Awareness.  I try to play along as much as possible because my mom is a breast cancer survivor and I know how hard a road it is and just how much a person's spirits can be lifted with a simple card.  I am not going to go into great details about these cards but I will post them for you to see....

This challenge is Paper Tole (3-d).  I stamped and punched my flowers and then used my paper tool kit to give them dimension.  I rounded the larger flower petals and bent them so they would look as much like a real flower as possible. I then layered a smaller flower on top and also added dimension by lifting the petals.  I added an enamel dot (that I made at home) to each flower center for even more dimension.  Below you can see the actual flowers and how I have layered them and given them the dimension that you see.






As you can see from the photo I have done several layers for my flowers.  I added some twine and a cut out sentiment to finish my card off.  This is a super simple card with very little but so much
dimension just makes it pop...





My next card is for the Shine On challenge.  We had to
have a light source somewhere on our card.  I chose to
stamp this adorable light from Sparkle N Sprinkle.  I added
a pearl to the center of my lamp for the bulb.  My main
image and sentiment are both embossed and the border
is drawn with a Soft Sky Stampin' Write marker.  I added
a few pearls to the corners and some twine and a button across the lower portion of my card to finish this one off..





                                                                               

Next up is my card for the Hope Floats challenge.  We had to have something that floated.  Well balloons float right?  So I decided to stamp my awareness ribbons in 3 shades of pink and fussy cut them out.  I tied a matching color of twine around each one of them to create balloons.  I ran my background through my clouds embossing folder to make the balloons look like they are in the sky ( yes a pink sky)  I tied all of my twine strings together and added a cute sentiment across the bottom and over the strings.  So here we have it "Hope Floats"...




So we are getting there... Slowly but surely..  And these are only the first 5.  These challenges go all month long.  So this next card is for the Two by Two, Side by Side challenge.  We had to use pink and purple on our card and somethng had to be in two's.  Of course you can see I have 2 butterflies here...  I love the gorgeous grunge stamp set and it made this card so easy to create.  I did a little sponging around my white edge and also around the word hope.  I am super pleased with how this card ended up...  So let me show you my last one for the day....  I saved the best for last....  (I think!)





Okay... So I really think this card is just too adorable...  I love everything about this card and how it all came together.  The stamp set is from Stampin Up and it's called Create-A-Cupcake... And you do just that... The best part is there is a matching punch to punch out all of the elements...  So cute!!!...  I made the hearts into enamel dots, (Super simple) and added them to my border.  I then used the ruched ribbon technique to create this gorgeous border and added my bow...   The final touch was a small amount of Bronze Splendor glitter added to the cupcake frosting to look like sprinkles...  Really happy with this one...


Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and see what I have created.  Stay tuned for more as this month of challenges continues.  Please join us over at splitcoast and see what great ideas you can come up with...  Until next time...

Inky Hugs!!!!

Live Simply

So real quick post today before I head off to work...  This is my card for today's sketch challenge... What a cool sketch today...  I decided immediately that I wanted to use either flowers or butterflies and well since I can't put down my new sets Flower Shop and Petite Petals, I decided to pull out my butterflies...

There really isn't much to this card today.  I threaded some lt pink organdy ribbon through the top of my lace and tied a bow, cut out my oval with nestabilities, stamped my butterflies and punched them and then added some beautiful red pearls.  So very super simple today...  I hope you like what I have done with this challenge..  Please let me know what you think.  I love to hear your comments...  Until next time...

Inky Hugs!!!

Thank you Sketch

          I was a little intimidated when I saw today's sketch over at splitcoast.   I had a hard time wrapping my head around it, so I walked away, got some coffee, make school lunches, walked my kiddos to the bus stop and then eventually came back.  After having time to process the sketch more ideas started to pop into my head and I ended up making a card that I really like...

So this is the card that I came up with for this sketch.  Even though it stumped me at first, I think it ended up turning out pretty darn cute if I may say...


I bought this cute tag/banner die set at 50% off but I haven't used it yet.  Mostly because I tried cutting out the polka dots one time and they wouldn't punch out... I did finally decide to play with it a little bit and to my surprise they cut perfectly...  And they are so dang cute...  The background for all banners is white with a lighter and darker purple layer on top..  The sentiment is stamped on Neenah Solar White cardstock and matted onto a scalloped circle.  I finished my card off with my new favorite and extremely inexpensive HOMEMADE enamel dots...  I love getting things cheap or making them myself.. Makes me feel like I got a great bargain..  Thank you so much for stopping by.  I would love to know what you think...

Happy Stamping!!!

Watercolor Flowers

I had fun putting this card together today...

 I wanted to play around with some watercoloring since I really like it but never think to do it...  So much fun and so easy using this technique.  I embossed my image with black ep and then spritzed the entire sheet gerenously with water.  Then use a paint brush and your re-inker to apply a small amount of color the the image and watch it just spread through the water...  You won't get too much bleeding outside your embossed image as long as you don't overdue the amount of water spritzed.  You can always add more if needed but can't really take the water away...  I chose to fussy cut my image when I was done and did some cute offset mounting to give my card a little more dimension.  All of my cards as of late have been super simple and I really want to get back to my stamping style.

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  Please take the time to let me know what you think...

Happy Stamping!!!

Button Love

I am so excited that I was able to stamp 2 cards for today's
 splitcoast challenge.. We had to use a button on our card...

 I love embellishments so I have a ton of buttons in my craft room...  The hard part is picking the size and color.. LOL...  Thank you so much for taking the time to look.  I would love to know what you think...

Happy Inking

Woven Love

This my card for yesterday's challenge to use scraps. I tried to upload it a couple times yesterday but the gallery kept experiencing technical difficulties so I decided to wait until today to try again... The challenge was to use scraps that we had lying around our desk (or floor for some of us) from projects that we made earlier in the week. I had the pink cardstock still on my floor (neatly in a pile to put away) so I chose to use that. I cut the scraps into 1/2" strips and weaved them together. I then cut them out with my nestabilities to create my frame. I wanted to leave this card pretty simple so that my woven frame was the featured item. I am actually hoping that this can get into one of the challenges upcoming... I love the look of this background and I will definitely be using more of my scraps to create this look again... At a mere 1/2" strip it seems there is no need to throw away even the smallest of scraps anymore... :) (Not that I really threw them out before!) Happy Stamping!!!