Friday, September 30, 2011

It's World Card Making Day!

Happy World Card Making Day!



I'm excited to be part of this fun day. We all share a love for this wonderful hobby, and I think it's really neat that we can celebrate together, by participating in this special blog hop! I am planning on hopping to as many blogs as possible, to see what everyone has created. I'm also hoping to make lots more cards today.

I have two Christmas cards to share with you here. For this one, I used one of my favorite Hero Arts stamps from last year. It's called Happy Holiday Trees.


I stamped the trees in Peeled Paint distress ink, then again, using a gold Paint Dabber, mixed with perfect pearl water. I added a darker green color underneath some of the branches by painting with a mix of water and forest moss distress ink. The edges were framed using the same Paint Dabber mix, and the same ink. The script in the background is also a Hero Arts stamp called, Old Letter Writing.

For this next card, I kept it very simple. This new Hero Arts stamp is called, Happy Holiday Snowman. Isn't he cute?


I colored the image with Markers and used some Christmas patterned paper for a festive look. So easy. Just add some sparkly pearls for the buttons, a gem for the pom, pom and a couple of little, twine bows, to help this cute guy hold up his happy greeting.

I'm so glad you stopped by - thank you! There are many other talented card makers participating in this event today. You can check out the list here. Have fun hopping! :)

Fun Background Technique

Happy Friday!

Do you know about the wonderful blog called The Classroom with Ellen Hutson? It's one of my favorites for learning techniques and tips. There are always fun ideas with tutorials, and my card today uses the color-bleed technique. Click on the link above and you'll see Julia Stainton sharing this technique.

I saw another Flickr friend, Teresa, use the same technique. You can see her gorgeous set of cards here.

Julia used small sqaures, colored with Copics for her beautiful card. I instead, decided to create some grass and a sky with my Copics, before adding the dots with the Copic blending solution. Here's how it turned out.



This is a fun way to make a unique and effective background. The card base was embossed with a new folder I picked up recently. The flowers are from the Hero Arts/Basic Grey, Indie Bloom collection, called, Butterflies and Wildflowers and the sentiment is also Hero Arts.

Thanks for your visit today! I'm heading to work, then have tomorrow off. I'm looking forward to another 90-minute scramble over in the Hero Arts Flickr pool! Arlene is hosting and you can read all about it here. If you've never played in a scramble, why don't you give it a try? It is so much fun!

Have a fun and happy weekend! :)

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

CAS-ual Fridays

For some reason, I am loving snowflakes right now and for those of you who know me well, this may sound strange. You know how much I dislike the real thing and how I am not looking forward to winter coming. I guess it's okay to love the flakes if they come from a stamp. :)

Over on the
CAS-ual Fridays blog, the challenge is to make a mostly monochromatic card with a bit of brown. Out came the Hero Arts, Decorate Your Holidays, clear set again. This set not only has beautiful ornaments, it also has some lovely snowflakes.

CAS-ual Friday's by bdengler4 (Barb)



I used a navy blue card base, stamped the Magical Background (hard to see) with Stormy Sky distress ink, then stamped the snowflakes, using Color Box Frost white ink. They did not come out as white as I thought they would, which is a good thing, because we are to use three different shades of the same color. A lighter looking blue shows through the white ink.

But I did want to make a couple of them real white, so I decided to take a bit of Perfect Pearl powder, pour it onto my craft sheet, add a bit of water and carefully paint over two of the larger flakes.

The edges were frosted over using the pearl colored paint dabber and I added the bit of brown with the little button and Hero Arts twine.

Hope you don't mind if you continue to see more snowflake cards from me. Maybe if I play with the stamped kind, the real thing won't happen for a long while. . .I can hope! :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Another Christmas card

Hey everyone!

Just s short post tonight. I'm not sure why I'm making so many Christmas cards lately. Must be having new stamps to play with.

I love this Hero Arts, ornament set! The snowflakes are from the same set. So fun to use with emboss resist! I thought it would be fun to hang one of the ornaments from the pinecone wreath, also from Hero Arts.

Another Christmas card by bdengler4 (Barb)


Hope you all have a good week and thank you for stopping by! :)