Mojo Monday 248 and Another Color Dare #7

I've had some time to play today so I combined a wonderful sketch by Mojo Monday with the Color Dare #7 challenge of using secondary colors orange, green and purple. The Close to My Heart colors I've chosen are Petal, Pansy Purple, Juniper and Taffy. the stamp sets I've used are: 4 My Friend, A Blossom, Just for You and Love Life. The patterned paper is from Paper Garden a retired CTMH paper featuring the color Petal. Opaque adhesive gems make up the small flower centers.

I've had fun challenging myself to use these three colors together and follow this inspiring sketch also. Thanks for looking and thanks to those involved in hosting these challenges!

CTMH Color Dare Challenge #5 using Art Philosophy Cartridge

Have you heard about the new Cricut cartridge called "Art Philosophy" available from Close To My Heart yet? It's just fantastic--I've had the original cricut for years yet only used it once. Now I can't stop playing with it! This special cartridge also comes with 3 coordinating stamp sets and 3 sets of Dimensional Elements. Check it out on page 13 of the new catalog here.

The other day I was just having fun cutting out shapes using the new cricut cartridge and then I thought I could use the shapes in a challenge. As I perused the consultant bulletin board I came across a new challenge series that interested me. It is called "CTMH Color Challenge" and can be found here. I probably would not have chosen to put these colors together yet I enjoyed the challenge. Diana's challenge for this week was to use these CTMH colors: Pansy Purple, Garden Green, Holiday Red, Amethyst, and Black. I liked that I could use as many of these colors as I wanted and did not have to use all of them.

My card was made using all but 1 of the listed colors--I forgot about black when I was designing the card yet it didn't matter. The patterned paper was from very old CTMH Pansy Purple B&T paper which I colored with Garden Green and Amethyst markers. The shapes cut from Art Philosophy were 2 3/4" Garden Green Circle1, 2 1/2" White Circle1, 2 3/4" B&T Circle3 Layer, and 1 1/2" B&T Banner2 Card. The greeting is from the Salutation Seals set and was stamped in Pansy Purple Ink and then clear embossed. the inside circles of the scalloped circle was colored with Pansy Purple Ink and then Liquid Glass dots were applied. I used Garden Green Ink to stamp the swirl stamp from the You and Me stamp set. (That swirl is my new favorite background stamp!) Hope you like it.

There is a special birthday coming up this week so I used the same sketch I came up with in different colors and AP cricut cut numbers. I also used my Cuttlebug embossing folders to texturize the papers. Thanks for stopping by to take a look. Have a great week!

Clean and Simple Challenge FTL 123

This is the first time that I am participating in this challenge.  I was drawn to the simplicity of the design and have 2 entries to share.

All products are from Close To My Heart^®.  The cardstock base is Juniper.  The butterfly paper stripe is from the new Wings Paper Pack.  The maroon paper stripe is Vineyard Berry CS. The rose flower is from a new set called Rosy Regards B1369.  It is a 2 step stamp.  The solid part of the rose was stamped with Blush ink onto Blush CS.  The outline stamp was stamped with Vineyard Berry Ink.  The sympathy greeting is from a new set called Card Chatter--Sympathy D1476 and was stamped with Vineyard Berry Ink. (This set won't be available until the new catalog goes live on February 1.)

 This second card uses Amethyst CS and Purple Pansy Ink. The flower and greeting are both from the new CTMH set called Dreams Come True D1470. The holographic stripe is from a gift bag that fell apart and I just had to find a way to use it!  Here is the sketch provided by Clean and Simple:

It was fun to create these cards using this sketch--why not try it yourself? 

Happy Halloween!

These cards were so much fun to make!  I couldn't decide which one to enter in the H2H challenge this week so I'm posting all of my 2010 Halloween cards here. All of these cards were made with Close To My Heart "Thriller" stamp set which was the September Stamp of the Month set.  The first card uses Grey Wool and Vineyard Berry Ink.  The skull was stamped on white with Versamark ink and then chalked with vineyard berry chalk.

The second card has a clear window.  The outside frame was stamped using black Stazon ink on a piece of Xyron laminate.  The inside was stamped in Grey Flannel Ink and the pumpkin colored in with Sunset Marker.  The polka dot print is from the Olivia Level 2 Paper Set. The Happy Haunting greeting was stamped with Gypsy Ink.

The next card features a Clear Card and a bleaching technique to achieve the white skull face.  First a piece of white paper was brayered with Pear Ink and then embossed with Black embossing powder.  I used a Q-tip and some bleach to remove the green color from the skull face.  This element was then sponged with black ink. This is mounted on the outside of the clear card while the randomly stamped images and eyeball ribbon trim are on the inside of the card.  Red sparkles and cream opaques accent the card.

The final card uses Pear, Sunset and Pansy Purple Inks and Pansy Purple embossing powder.  I sponged white photo mounting corners with Pansy Purple Ink to frame the skull.  Pansy Purple and Sunset cardstock paper was used. The green polka dot print is from the Olivia Paper Set.

Wishing you all a spooky and spectacular Halloween filled with lots of fun! 

Flourished Blessings with Clear Embossing Technique

Here are two cards that I made using a clear embossing technique over Splendor paper.  First I stamped the leaf image (D1379 Flourished Blessings) onto the patterned paper with Versamark Ink.  Next I applied CTMH Clear Embossing Powder and heat set with our craft heater. After that I used a sponge dauber with either Chocolate stamp pad or Topiary stamp pad to rub ink into the grooves of the stamped image and around the stamped image to provide contrast from the original paper print which shows in the leaf image.  The first card uses Colonial White as the base with Goldrush and Pansy Purple cardstock and Chocolate ink.  The second card uses Colonial White as the base with Garden Green and Autumn Terracotta cardstock and Topiary Ink.  Close To My Heart has such beautiful patterned papers that this technique can be used with--let your imagination run free with this easy yet stunning technique!