Yeah, it is Friday and I’m so excited.  Happy Good Friday to those of you who observe.  Happy Easter in a few days to you all as well.  I am very much looking forward to this weekend.  I like Easter.  I have always liked Easter.  It is a family and faith day.  I am sad that we don’t have any blood family here, but we have a very extended made family, and that is always almost as good.

And of course there is basketball tonight.  My team, Indiana University, plays tonight, and two teams I follow closely, the Wisconsin Badgers, and the Gonzaga Bulldogs, also play this evening.  All three are the under dogs, so go under dogs.  Just know that if all three teams lose, I will be cranky tomorrow.

And for the moment, I have your friendly crafting reminder.  I was playing with my alcohol ink on some Yupo, and I wanted to run it through my Big shot to die cute out a circle, so I snagged my heat gun to make sure the dark spots were dry, and well…DON’T add heat to Yupo paper.  I forgot.  I forgot that Yupo paper curls and crinkles and sort of burns with heat.  Of course after I ruined my work, I needless to say had way too much fun turning the Yupo paper into a skull like sculpture.

Sadly, I may be doing this again cause it sort of cool if that is what you are going for.  Word of warning, there is no real way to control what the paper does when you heat it.

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Up first in our list of challenges today is a sketch challenge from the designing sleuths over at Can You Case It.  This week they handed out a very layered sketch with lots of fun options.

I went with paper piecing.  I know that is not my normal

approach to anything, but I needed a fun bright birthday card for a fun bright person, so I went with it.  I die cut the oval out of an intricate My Favorite Things die and trimmed out three other papers to match the sketch and adhered them.  I pulled out a Ellen Hutson Essentials stamp and stamped out both the cake and the sentiment in some Memento rhubarb stalk ink.  I snagged my gel sparkle pen and traced the sentiment and the cake.  Finally I added a few sequins to finish off the sketch.  Again, not my normal kind of card, but absolutely what I needed.

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Next up we have a clean and simple inspiration challenge from the designers of The Paper Players.  This week they wanted us to celebrate spring with our CAS card.

I often have trouble working clean and simple.  I am a lot too

grungy for these kind of challenges, so this kind of card is really a challenge.  I figured however, it is Easter weekend so an Easter card was in order.  I stamped out an Easter scene from a Poppy stamp set, masking lots of things that there was a nice over lay.  I then colored in the scene with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers and totally messed up the bunny.  It came out alright in the end, sort of, but it took a loot of work to fix him.  I die cut out the scene and added some printed easter paper under it.  I stamped out a sentiment from the same stamp pack.  I don’t know.  I missing something here.  The card just doesn’t feel finished, but I just can’t figure out what it is.  Maybe it is a smudge of grunge somewhere.

 

 

 

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Swinging into our weekly dose of premature Christmas spirit, we have a card challenge from the designers over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown with a challenge to make a holiday card using a funny sentiment.

I have several great funny holiday sentiment from

Funny Bones, so my biggest challenge this week was deciding which one to use.  I settled on the one that said “Dear Santa, I’ve been good all year!  Okay, most of the time.  Once in awhile.  Forget it.  I will buy my own present.  I embossed the sentiment onto black card stock with red embossing powder.  Then I added green and red shimmer watercolor paint from Yasutomo Pearlescent.  I stamped out a little old lady from Art Impression in Archival Jet Black Ink and colored her in with the Pearlescent watercolors as well.  I trimmed the black card stock out into strips and added them onto the card purposely trying to keep things a little off center and wonky.  I am a big fan of non traditional Christmas cards, and this one at the moment might just be my favorite.

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Next, I’m trying out a new challenge that was suggest to me by a friend.  This group focuses solely on Mix Media Cards, and being that I work in mix media when I am on canvas it seemed like a good idea to change a try with the group.  The challenge group, The Mix Media Card Challenge, this week challenged there crew to make a mix media card that had a tree theme with an optional element of birds.

I ended up make two, but really didn’t like the first card front, so I abandoned ship.  Needless to say later, I actually really like what I did.  Funny, right?  My friendly reminder not to give up on something too soon.

However, my next attempt I also really liked and I actually finished that one.

I pulled out a leaf stencil and stenciled two different shades of paint through the stencil, moving things so that they leaves where a little off from each other.  Then I mixed up so mix media paste with the same darker green paint and pushed that through another stencil.  Then on a pieces of scrap watercolor paper I embossed a Dina Wakley stamp in white embossing powder.  I then water colored in the birds with my Daniel Smith Primatek water colors.  I added a bit of a sentiment from Stampendous with some black ink that said ‘I’m willing to risk the Cooties if you are’.  Finally I assembled everything adding a three different shades of twine.  I should have probably added a shade of green watercolor behind the birds instead of blue, but otherwise, I like how things came out in the end.

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Finally today, we have a two in one, something I rarely do.  I missed the link up on the first one, but Inspired by All The Little Things is what got the ball rolling for me on this card.  They had a spring picture that made me want to use this new digi stamp I was trying out.

Now I’ve never used digital stamps, but I got a chance to try one free from Craftin’ Desert Divas.  They had a  color challenge going on, so I worked the two together.

I printed out the digi girl with umbrella and colored her in with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers.  Then snagging a piece of white card stock I embossed tulips using an embossing folder through my Big Shot.  Finally I added some printed paper under everything.  I stamped out a spring sentiment from Inky Antics onto another scrap of white card stock and cut a banner into the end of it.

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That’s it for today.  I am going to have a bonus weekend post so look for it (my week my have gotten a little away from me this week).  And as for tonight, go Hoosiers.