MelJen’s Designs Challenge #145-Inchies

My friend Barb is hostess of the current challenge on the MelJen’s Designs Challenge Blog and I thought I’d surprise her a bit and participate for a change. *Ü* And I got to wander around the store and find an image I thought might work well for the challenge of using inchies on the card.

Here’s what I came up with:

I really like this button flower that I found. It’s called Little Layered Flowers Button Daisy. There is a whole set you can buy, or you can pick and chose the items that most appeal to you. For now, I just picked up this flower. It was fun to color with Prismacolor pencils and odorless mineral spirits. I like the Spring time colors in the Doodlebug 6x6 paper stack. And I tried to do something a little different by angling the larger square like a diamond. It’s a little big, though. Sigh. Still I think it looks okay. I like the clean and simple lines. The inchie squares are popped up with foam dots. I like the texture of the polka dots, too. It was fun playing along, if nothing else. You might want to try it, too. Who knows…maybe you could win a digital image!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a SUPER start to your weekend.

Little Teenie Card Challenge #144

A week or so ago, my good friend, Barb, really wanted me to enter a Meljen’s Designs card challenge using the Windswept Diva card I made. Let me just say, she made sure I entered. LOL  Lo and behold, my card was selected to win a free digital image from Meljen’s Designs!! How fun is that?! Thanks, Barb! *Ü*

I decided to choose Little Teenie, a new image, because it was different from her other designs. Here’s what I came up with…

As Barb explained to me, she was inspired by a character from The Borrowers movie. One I haven’t seen since I didn’t pick up on why she has  the fork. I admit I’m clueless about some things. We are not a big movie watching family. We watch a lot of tv, though. LOL  Anyway, I thought she was a cute little thing. Then Barb told me that the current challenge is to use a square on the card. So, I thought what the heck, I’ll try entering again.

I’ve colored her with my trusty Prismacolor pencils and odorless mineral spirits. The papers are from Pebbles, Inc.’s new paper pad called Family Ties. And just in case you didn’t get the whole “square” challenge, I added the embossed strip that uses squares. Gotta cover my bases. LOL Nah, I wanted to add a little texture and thought this would be a fun way to do it. Oh and I added mini brads (Michaels Recollections brand) instead of gems. She’s not such a girly girl, right? Don’t you love the needle sword??

Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope you are having a happy day. *Ü*

**Edited to add the challenge number and to also say, I guess I haven’t read The Borrowers, either. **

Windswept Diva Card

My friend, Barb, has inspired me yet again with a card she made here. Like Barb, I’m really liking these lovely diva images from Meljen’s Designs. I was really taken with the glittery goodness of Barb’s diva. I almost copied her idea, but when I saw what the “base” color I used looked like after coloring, I didn’t want to cover it up, so I opted for some glittery outlining instead along with a glitter sash and sparkly shoes.

This image was coloring with colored pencils and blended with odorless mineral spirits.  I added some shiny gems to enhance the image. And I tried for a monochromatic white look. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the final result.

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope your week gets off to a great start!

Frosty Winter Cupcake Card

Oh golly, in my last post I completely forgot to tell you that if you are interested in Meljen’s  images, there’s currently a 20% off sale going on right now! So, hop, skip and jump on over to her site and check out all the adorable images over at Meljen’s Designs. 

And for your viewing pleasure, I give you Frosty Winter Cupcake card, which is a fun digi image from Meljen’s Designs.

  This card is colored with something brand new to me…American Crafts Chromatix alcohol markers! I recently acquired some and am trying to figure out how to color with them. You can find them at Michaels in 3 marker packs. They aren’t meant to replace the ever popular Copics, but for someone like me(who will probably never be able to afford Copics), they may help me learn how to color with markers as a technique to add to my set of cardmaking skills. So be gentle and understanding when you look at the image.

As you can see, I’ve added some glittery goodness with that Stardust Glitter Gel pen. I like how sparkly the snowman turned out. The image is matted on some pattern paper from Close To My Heart, another sneak peek of Chantilly that will be available in February. The cardstock, which is also CTMH, is called Pear (I think) was run through my Cuttlebug using a snowflake embossing folder. I used pop dots to lift the matted image a bit. The blue cardstock is more Dutch Blue from CTMH.

Fun, fun, fun!

Cozy Winter Owl Card

I’ve been a busy gal today! Had a strong hankering to color and nothing pressing on the calendar, so I sat myself down and colored and played some time away. Jessica and Amy wanted to color too, so we had sort of a color fest! Wheeee!

Here’s the first card I completed:

This image is from Meljen’s Designs and is called Cozy Winter Owl.  It’s printed on Georgia Pacific cardstock, which I purchased at Walmart. I print on the “fine” setting on my printer and I never have issues with smearing. It’s colored with a combination of Koh-i-Noor pencils and Prismacolor Pencils and blended with odorless mineral spirits.

I sure had fun coloring this little guy (gal?) and while I wanted to add more “schtuff” to the card, in the end, I think it looks best as is.

I’m learning a lot of fun little techniques to add details to my cards from my friend, Barb over at The Buzz blog. She is so good about adding little things that really make her cards spectacular and she shares little tidbits on her posts. She is on the Meljen’s Design Team and has inspired a few of my recent purchases.  I’ve added some sparkle with a Stardust glitter pen (but it’s hard to see in the photo) and also some gems. I also added a few glittery brads (from Hobby Lobby) on the Martha Stewart snowflake pattern paper (it’s from the holiday paper pad that was sale this past holiday season). I also sponged some Tim Holtz Tumbled Glass distress ink around the edges while my image piece was still in the Spellbinders die. The scalloped mat is Dutch Blue cardstock from Close To My Heart (a color that  is retired, I think).

Because Live Writer is giving me fits about publishing with more than a photo or two, I’m going to post each card separately. Hope this isn’t too much of a pain.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope your weekend is off to a grand start.

Birthday Cards

I thought I’d share the birthday cards I made for the gifts I gave on Sunday.

My friend and her daughter have their birthdays 5 days apart, so for now they celebrate together.

For our Hello Kitty loving girl, her mom loaned me her Hello Kitty Sizzix die.

The pattern paper is Sweet Nectar from K & Co. As you can see I added some Martha Stewart glitter. The sentiment is from CTMH.  

You may or may not remember the Angry Bird cupcake holder I made for a friend’s birthday back in September.  Well, our Hello Kitty friend is his sister and when she saw his Angry Bird cupcake holder, she wondered why she never got something like that. Well, that comment was noted and remembered and this is my finagled Hello Kitty-ish version of the cupcake holder (from the Sweet Tooth Boxes Cricut cartridge). I reduced the size by an inch or so. Inside we put a package of pink Tic Tacs (which were found by Jessica at the checkout counter. She has always had eagle eyes. Hee, hee.  Our friend seemed very happy with her own personal kitty. Yay!

And for her mom? I was inspired by a card made by my friend Barb here at The Buzz. In fact, I am the very, very lucky recipient of the card she shared in that post. It’s even better looking in person, I must say!

Anyway, Barb has been so kind and sweet to answer my many questions recently and with her  tips I was able to complete this card:

I learned how she adds the ink (Tim Holtz distress ink) to the image before taking it out of the Nestability. The ink I used is Antique Linen, I believe. And you can certainly tell that I spritzed the card with Shimmer (maybe I overdid it just a tad?  Nah…) The image is from Meljen Designs and is colored with Prismacolor and Koh-i-Noor pencils and odorless mineral spirits. The paper is from DCWV matstack, Autumn Splendor from last year. It’s the paper stack, not the cardstock stack.

Here’s another angle where you can see the glitter I added better. You can find the image here at Meljen’s Designs. They are so fun!

Thanks for stopping by!