So as we all know it is March, and for my family that means college basketball (I know, I know I’ve mentioned it before).  And this morning I totally am crashing with a weekend of adrenaline overload.

I mean all those last second baskets to win a game, the jumping for joy, or screaming out in defeat.  It has been like that all weekend.  And this morning, there just isn’t enough coffee to keep me going.  (Please note that my team is advancing to the sweet 16).  I kept crafting and arting all weekend while the games were on (making it hands down one great weekend), and twice leapt from my seat and knocked paint over onto my project, and once spilt water everywhere (and I mean everywhere).  Whoops.  Oh well.

I think the kids are happy to be back at school.  They do not think the basketball drama is nearly as exciting as my husband and I do, so they have avoided us most of the weekend.  Needless to say the bedrooms are a toy mess.  Again Oh well…I guess that’s what’s next for me, picking up children’s toys while I grumble to myself.

But first the cards….

---

 

Up first today we have a color challenge from the gurus of color over at Color Throwdown.  This week they were searching for cards using lavender, red, and green.  It is a strange color combination.  It isn’t one I would have thought of naturally on my own, and yet, the three colors are really pretty together.

So I have been playing with Dylusions paint lately (my husband, being the sweet dear he is picked my up some as an ‘I love you and I know you want to play with these, but you don’t

spoil yourself much’ gift).  So when I work with acrylic, I like two types of paint.  I like it either full heavy bodied where you can see every stroke of the brush and peaks are left behind, or I like it so runny it is almost transparent and it runs off your piece.  I always seem to be using one or the other, and this dylusions paint is so thin it is perfect for paper crafting.  I don’t know what it will do yet on a canvas, but I’ll give you my opinion when I get there.  Well, since I am elbow deep in new product, I thought, why not.  I also didn’t know how this paint looked on black card stock so I pulled out a stencil and pressed the paint through the stencil making red flowers and green leaves.  (By the way, the paint looks amazing on black card stock).  I then die cut the piece with a Sizzix die.   I pulled a piece of lavender paper that showed two shades of the purple color.  I started assembling the card (I originally planned on leaving the center section out, but I didn’t like it so I put it back in flush the the card) making sure that the large die cut was applied with dimensional tape.  I die cut a little ‘thanks’ from Little B out of the lavender paper and added some red sequins the center of the flowers.  In all intensive purposes this card should not work.  The colors should not work.  And yet, it does.  Go figure.

 

---

Next up, there is a clean and simple sketch challenge from the designers over at Freshly Made Sketches.  This is one of those sketches that looks relatively simple, but frankly could become extremely difficult do to its actual simplicity.

I decided to go with a large circular flower shape inside the area of the sketch’s circle.  I pulled out my Spectrum Aqua markers that don’t get enough use in my crafting world

(surprisingly gets a lot of use in my mix media world, go figure) and colored two shades of natural colors onto the flower stamp from Stampendous.   I sprayed the stamp with a fine mist of water and stamped it out, and like a dolt, did it on plan card stock.  Luckily it worked.  Then I pulled the sentiment from the package and added black watercolor maker to it, sprayed it with the water mist, and stamped that too, leaving the ‘thank you’ a little blurry, which I liked.  I added a pretty piece of blue paper under the card stock and left the card at that liking the simplicity of it.

---

The queens of color over at Color Q extended this week another (difficult if you ask me) color challenge that only used one color, but in four different shades.  They asked us to use always artichoke, gumball green, old olive, kiwi kiss, and white.  Knocking out a project with four different shades of one color is always hard, so this one had me a little puzzled.  That and looking at the inspiration picture, I totally kind

of wanted the dress.

I took my inspiration from the dress and decided to use a layering stamp from Hero Arts.  I, still in a watercolor marker kick, pulled out two different green shades of Spectrum Aqua maker (olive for the kiwi kiss color and moss for the gumball green).  To round out the colors I pulled out two Distress Inks (crushed olive for old olive and forest moss for always artichoke) and started layering the bird stamp with lightest to darkest.  Then I did the same for the branch and the leaves, except I used the darkest green for the actual branch.  I added a sentiment.  Then I just added a piece of paper under the watercolor paper that sort of looked like an old olive shade and called it a day on that card.  I missed the mark on the eye of the bird, but otherwise I love how the bird came out.  I would never have stamped out this bird in shades of green normally, so I am glad to find out it worked.

---

Next up in our line up of cards today, we have a weekly sketch challenge from the stamp and crafting company My Favorite Things.  They handed out a sketch with lots of layers making thing fun and interesting.

What was not interesting to discover, that while I have lots of MFT stamps and a bunch of dies, I mostly have stamps from Pure Innocent stamp line, and that was not

ideal for this challenge.  Guess I am going to have to save my pennies so I can get a few more stamp sets (cause that is such a hardship right?)  So just like last week I pulled out my Forget Me Not stamp set and started stamping out the floral and leaf images onto watercolor paper using my Spectrum Aqua markers.  I worked with natural colors and wanted just little bits of color here and there.  I arrange all the die cut images and die cut them out (using press and seal plastic wrap to hold everything together, totally stole this technique from somewhere, but for the life of me I can’t remember where I saw it) with a circle die.  I layered some printed papers in muted neutral colors over some black card stock and added the floral and leafs with dimensional dots.  I embossed a sentiment in white embossing powder and called it a day.  The colors don’t work, but I love the look of the florals.

---

Finally today we have a Christmas challenge from the designers over at Jingle Belles Rock.  This week they asked us to make a christmas card in a vintage style.  I figured since today when ever we get holiday cards, most of the time it is some kind of family photo or picture of the kids, I would make a vintage looking card using this modern twist.  I pulled out my Tim Holtz Idea-olgy Found Reliatives and pulled a fun picture of some kids.  I grabbed some holiday paper and distressed everything with a little vintage photo distress ink.  I added some ribbons and embossed a Christmas sentiment in garnet embossing powder.  Yes, I keep everything pretty simple, but I think the whole effect was fun.

---

That’s all the cards for today.  I am off to clean bedrooms and go right the house after the effects of having kids h0me all weekend.  Hope your week is starting off right, and that everyone can stand the very long wait till basketball picks up once again on Thursday (oh, do we really have to wait that long).

In the mean time do something arty, and enjoy yourself.  Happy Monday everyone.