fresh & fun

I am trying very hard to get my mojo back. Every since Christmas vacation I have no drive to stamp. I have to get back to working on SCS’s daily challenges. I love those.

Today’s challenge is a card sketch and can be found here

I got this set to make samples for the Leadership boards. I was very excited when I got it. I love it for scrapbooking. It makes great backgrounds.

I love to paper pierce the dots on the background swirl.

The flower is colored in with aqua painter and watercolor wonder crayons. The word Sweet is from this years Sell-A-Bration set “So Very”. Of course I had to use the background stamp “Linen” again. I don’t even put that stamp away anymore. It is a permanent fixture on my stamping table.

When I write tutorials, I like to write several tutorials with about one product. I wrote several tutorials on embossing together, then I wrote five on Pearl ex and now it’s time to explore all the possibilities of Bleaching. The tutorial next week will be on using bleach to Bleach out images you stamped. Here is the card I used to write the tutorial:

I wanted a soft look for it so I started out stamping my buggy image with versamark on pretty in pink and embossing it with clear ink. Then I dipped a watercolor brush in bleach and “colored” the image inside the embossed lines.

You will now have to let your image sit and dry or you can use your heat gun to speed up the process. That’s it already!

I embossed my brads with white embossing powder. The circle is stamped with a stamp from Circle of Friendship. The paper is from the Spring Mini designer Paper Loves Me. I love that paper!

You can create a whole different look by embossing your images with black embossing powder, bleaching it out and after it’s dried, coloring it back in.

My next bleach tutorial will be bleach overstamping. After that, I think I will give bleach a rest and start on something else.

I am having serious stampers block lately. I just can’t get myself to stamp. Every morning I tell myself I will do it, and every day I blow it off. This last Thursday I finally got myself together. The “Ways to use it challenge” was using backgrounds. That’s easy enough. I use them all the time anyway.

I had a magazine ask me if I could make 10-15 samples of Burned Batik for an article. I have to be honest. I only made one card with that technique…and that was for the tutorial way back when. With my stampin’ Mojo gone, I told the lady there was no way I could come up with 15 samples for this technique. Not when I wouldn’t get compensated. Too much stress for nothing. But after thinking about the technique for so long while dreading to make all those samples, I decided to try my hand on just one more card with it.

I stamped the flower from Big pieces and several stamps of “Seeing spots” on white cardstock with Versamark and embossed them. Then I placed a sheet of copy paper over it and ironed over it to overheat the images. I then stamped the Big Blossom SAB stamp over it and watercolored over the entire cardstock with Marigold reinker. I then cut the flower out, layered it on chocolate chip cardstock and cut that out again.

The center of the flower is a Stamp from Seeing spots again. Stamped in Versamark, embossed in clear and punched out with our 1 1/4″ circle punch. I added a 3/4″ cool caribbean cardstock circle over that and topped it off with a Marigold embossed smaller circle from Seeing spots.

I liked how retro the card looked when it was done.

Stamping with Bleach was the tutorial last week I wrote for Splitcoast. After it was published we got a lot of question on if it would harm the stamps. I have used bleach with my stamps several times and never had any problems. I just spray Stampin’ Mist directly on the stamp and then scrub it really well on my Stampin’ Scrub. Other members suggested to ink the stamp up with versamark before adding bleach to it.

I made this card with Sketch layout SC105. I love having circular shapes on cards.

Again I used the paisley background. What can I say? Paisley, Linen and Print pattern have to be my favorite background stamps.

I cut the half circles with my coluzzle. Then inked up the big Paisley stamp from the stamp set “Polka Dots & Paisley” in the make shift bleach pad I made. To see the step by step tutorial I wrote, go HERE. 

I love this new set. It will be available to purchase starting March first. It’s in our new Spring mini catalog. Stampin’ Up! send it to all demonstrators as a special Christmas gift. I love this company!!!!

I had seen StamperSharon use faux stitching lines as stems for the flowers. I loved the look and had to try it out on one of my cards.

I got a wonderful New Years card from  my downline Christi White. She used three photos of her family instead of the froggies. I loved the layout and decided to use it for the Sell-A-Bration set Very Punny. The card size is 8 1/2″ x 4″.

I used the background stamp Paisley in Classic Artichoke on Artichoke cardstock.

The froggies were colored with artichoke and celery watercolor crayons and the aqua painter.

 The pattern on the celery cardstock is made with one of the stamps in the Background sampler set.

My brads were pretty in pink. I dipped them in pixie pink craft ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. I repeated this three times to get the bright pixie pink color.I really like how this card turned out. It fits in a regular legal size envelope.

…..in my first uploads I misspelled copyright. I know, but I used the program paint and I can’t change it. Sorry about that! I can always blame it on English being my second language.

I love this Sell-A-Bration set. Making great cards is easy with it. Here is a card I made using layout challenge SC92.

I am very much into Pixie pink in the moment. I don’t know why. Usually I have a hard time using Bold and Brights. But right now I keep on grabbing that color.