*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles

March AJ Page-FLY

Hello friends! Officially Spring has sprung, but I’m seeing some possible snow still in the forecast! BLAH! I sure how as we finish up this month, that April will be a little kinder to us over here. With all of this weird weather in all different directions, I do hope that you’re staying safe and enjoying some craft time!

Speaking of craft time- If you’re not familiar, I post an AJ page each month along with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), as we get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles! We use a prompt each month and post them. I know she will have wonderful inspiration to share, so please check out her blog for an AJ page too! Here’s my AJ page for this month with the “SMASH OUR STASH” March prompt of “Find something/anything GREEN to use on your page” :

Thinking that I was REALLY in the mood to start seeing some green, I started digging through my stash and found SO MANY green things! I didn’t realize that all you really need is a color to have so many different items to pull from! I’m happy with all of the green items I found as I used several of them for my layout here. I’ve got green paint, texture paste, metallic spray, flowers, lace, button, butterfly ephemera and green glitter Stickles! I’m thinking I don’t use green enough, so I went with a monochromatic page.

For the background: I started with some printed vellum attached with collage medium and went over top with a soft green layer. I used an old stencil and went over the two corners with green paste. I then sprayed some green metallic over those two colors and moved it around with water until dry. I splattered some white ink over top and set to dry.

Vicki-AJpageMar-Flybottom

I added green lace on the right bottom along with my scallop chipboard square that I painted white and added some papers behind it. I used those same papers to die cut a tag at the top and glued the fairy along with butterfly wings behind her over it. I added the sentiment sticker that was lined out with a black marker and button over it and attached a string to the hole. This was popped up with foam tape as well as the “FLY” die cut letters inside the white frame. The ripped sentiment was computer generated and sponged with grey ink and tucked behind the white frame. I added some green Stickles glitter to each scallop and tucked some green flowers with gold enamel dots in the center. I also tucked more of those behind the fairy too.

Vicki-AJpageMar-Flytop

I covered the butterfly wings with a glitter brush pen and then splattered some grey ink over top of the wings before attaching them to the page with glue and foam tape… and before attaching the butterflies to the page, I covered up the fairy with a piece of scrap paper and used some gold paint to splatter over the page…and I called it done!

I enjoyed making this page with all of those GREEN things from my stash! I hope you’ve enjoyed it too! Thanks so much for dropping in and have a great weekend!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Anything Goes Art Journal
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media
Challenge Up Your Life – Monochrome
Beyond the Blue – Green
Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
A Place to Start – Anything Goes
Through the Purple Haze – Anything Goes

March 25, 2023March 24, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles25 Comments

Party Pandas

Hello friends! I had another birthday card to make and this person likes panda bears, so I thought I’d go through my stash and see what I had for that. Here’s what I came up with:

So I found this cute little guy that I believe was a “freebie” a few years back for your birthday month from Lawn Fawn called “Party Panda” and the extra was that “Happy birthday” sentiment as well. There was also a set of coordinating dies with it that cut out the panda as well as the tiny cupcake.

So to make it a good party, you need more than one panda, so I stamped him out three times and stamped out some “party elements” as well from the Lawn Fawn Party Animals stamp set, colored and cut everything out with the coordinating dies. These little guys turned out so cute with their party hats on and holding their birthday items to celebrate with another panda friend, of course!

I thought it would be fun to create a green colored frame with the Watercolor Wishes paper cut out with the Outside In Stitched Rectangle and the Reversed Stitched Scallop Rectangle dies to create a frame. I had some additional metallic gold polka dotted papers for the background behind it that were also a freebie with one of my orders. Before attaching it to the back of the green frame, I also added a piece of Noble Fir cardstock cut from the Grassy Border die. Attaching this border to the frame only gave me some room to tuck the pandas behind the grass.

I stamped the sentiment in black, cut it out with my scissors to make a banner and sponged some green ink around it before attaching to the card. Lastly, I added some gold sequins and placed it over an A2 sized top-folding white card base. I decided to create my own envelope with more of that green Watercolor Wishes paper to mail it in.

Well the green and grass have me thinking of Spring coming and I think I might party like a panda myself when it finally arrives!! 😆🎈 I’m sure ready to be outdoors!

Hope that you’ve enjoyed my card today and have been inspired! I’ll be back Saturday for this month’s Art Journal Page and hope to see you then! Thanks for dropping in!

Challenges:

Creative Knockouts – Add a Sentiment
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2311 Anything Goes
Lawn Fawnatics – Inspired by Book/Movie/Song (My book inspiration came from Xander’s Panda Party by Linda Sue Park)
The Corrosive – Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles17 Comments

Going CAS at Sparkles Monthly

Hello friends and happy Wednesday! Today starts a new challenge over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog and this time we would like to see your CAS (or “clean and simple”) creations! I hope you will hop on over to see the inspiration from the team and consider joining in the fun with us!

Here’s the DT creation that I’ve made for it:

Sometimes I feel that CAS can actually be even more difficult than regular cards and I struggle with thinking I’ve added too much or it doesn’t look right. I think it’s more of me over-thinking something, though!

It was my son’s birthday yesterday and I thought this would be a great opportunity to make a card for him. He’s a postal carrier, so I thought this cute owl from the Lawn Fawn Special Delivery would work great for this. I started with the LF Stitched Cloud Backdrop and the LF Stitched Rectangle Frames dies to create the main focal panel. I lightly blended some blue ink in a circle before adding the Copic colored postal owl popped up with foam.

Over some red cardstock, I white heat embossed the sentiment. (I don’t remember which LF stamp set it came from) I die cut it with a banner die and popped it up over the cloud panel. I also had an extra die cut heart lying on my table, so I thought it would be great to add with the owl.

Thanks so much for stopping in today! Hope you’ve enjoyed my CAS card and have been inspired to join us this month with your take on the challenge too!

Challenges:

Country View – Birthday card for a man
Love to Scrap – Anything Goes
613 Avenue Create – Anything Goes optional: CAS
Lawn Fawnatics – All things birthday
Sunday Stamps – SSC304 sketch

March 15, 2023March 13, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles25 Comments

Rainbow Bridge

Hello friends! Welcome to March! Although it’s still cold and even some snow coming in our forecast, I know that warmer weather is coming soon along with those pretty flowers! I have a full weekend of crafting coming, so I’m prepared to get through this cold snap!

So I have unfortunately had to make and send a couple of pet sympathy cards as I didn’t have any on hand. I decided that I needed to pull out a card kit from My Favorite Things called “Rainbow Bridge“, I think. It’s no longer available, but I know they have a few things in pet sympathy. I wanted to make sure that I still had some of these on hand when needed because I feel like these can be hard to make.

This card was made and sent out in January for someone who lost their precious fur friend. I thought the silhouette looked a similar shape to the photos I saw. I’ve used the stencil and dies that came with the kit along with some of the papers included in the kit with the paw prints. I’ve also used the same papers as a liner for the inside of the envelope that you can see in the photo.

I’ve ink blended some rainbow colors and then used the die set in the kit to make the rainbow bridge and added some hearts around the silhouette pup which was popped up over the rainbow bridge.

I also needed to make a kitty one and then just decided that I was going to use this card kit to make several of these different pet sympathy cards so that I had some on hand when needed. I thought that was a clever card kit and knew it would be very useful to create lots of pet sympathy cards with.

These are all in the gallery below, so if you’re on my website, just click on each photo to enlarge the size so you can see the details:

Sometimes it’s just good to sit down and craft to have some cards on hand that you know you’ll probably need at some point, but don’t want to hurry to try and put something together because you need it.

Hope you’ve gotten some inspiration in my post today or found some inspiration with it. Thanks so much for stopping in today!

Challenges:

Allsorts – Anything Goes optional 4-legged Friends
Crafty Animals – Anything Goes + animal
Critter Crazy – Anything Goes + Featured Creature
Pearly Sparkles – Include Sentiment/Verse
The Diva’s That Cut Paper – Anything Goes
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes Using Paper
Love to Craft – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes

March 9, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles23 Comments

February AJ Page-Relaxation

Hello friends! It seems like this month went by really fast! Hope you’re having a great and productive month! It’s now time for this month’s Art Journal page…really fun one today!

If you’re not familiar, I post an AJ page each month along with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), as we get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles! We use a prompt each month and post them. I know she will have some great inspiration, so please check out her blog for an AJ page too! Here’s my AJ page for this month with the “SMASH OUR STASH” February prompt of “Wooden Pieces/Chipboard” :

Do you have tons of chipboard pieces laying around? I have several stacks of them that have been around for quite a while and I thought that I would just pull them out to start using some up here with this month’s prompt. These are old Stampin’ Up! chipboard pieces that they used to sell and I was taught that you don’t throw any of them away…well I think they meant that you should use them, though!😆

For the background: I started with my usual 6″x9″ watercolor paper with the holes pre-punched at the top. I used some torn pieces of scraps and vellum that I had laying around and randomly covered the blank page using collage medium. I took the chipboard pieces and glued them in random areas too. I then covered it over with some white gesso paint that was slightly watered down so that some of the background elements still showed through.

The next step was to add some colors with some Finnebair Impasto paint in Mediterranean and Lemon Peel. When these two colors mix together, they make a beautiful green. They are actually really bright colors, so I toned it down a bit with more white paint until I got the look I wanted. I finished it with black paint splattering.

Here’s a closer view of the top of the page with the collage and chipboard texture. After painting up the background, I also took a few pieces of chipboard along with a wooden butterfly and painted those elements in red. I thought it would be fun to give the page a pop of bright red to contrast the muted background. The red painted elements were added after the background was finished.

The sentiment at the top was computer generated and sponged over with some Pumice Stone Distress Oxide ink and layered over a piece of black cardstock and then attached to the page.

Then here’s a closer view of the bottom of the page. The “Reserved” is from a Tim Holtz sticker book.

Behind the red chipboard ‘R’, I added some black string. You will also notice that I’ve used some Finnebair Aged Gold metallic wax to go around the edges of the raised up edges to give them a bit of dimension. I finished it up with a few red enamel dots.

I had fun with this one and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well! Thanks for dropping in today!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Seeing Red
Country View – Sentiment/Inspiring Words
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media
Try it On Tuesday – Let’s Get Messy (painting)
Arty Divas – Anything Goes

February 25, 2023February 24, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles27 Comments

New DT for Sparkles Monthly Challenge!

Hello friends! Hope that you’ve had a wonderful Valentine’s Day and a great start to this new week in February!

I’m really excited to share that I’ve just been invited as a new design team member over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog! I really like the fact that it has fun monthly themes to get you thinking and also that I can use up my never-ending piles of my own craft stash! This fits perfectly well with me and something I can handle!😉 So I hope you’ll stop by and follow along to play with us each month! You can find a new one on the 15th of each month.

Today starts a new monthly challenge theme which is #161 “Men Only“…so anything masculine will do! With having sons in my family, I’m always in need of masculine style cards for sure! Here’s my card for this month’s challenge:

Oh yes…tools! This always seems to be a favorite in my craft supply when creating a masculine card for sure! I made this one for my husband who’s a very handy guy, and he likes the color blue. I always like to add lots of textures, distressing and layers when making a masculine card. This also helps for using more of those craft supplies!

I’ve had these stamps and dies from My Favorite Things for quite a while now and only used them a couple of times. I die cut the background panel in the pegboard cover die and stitched rectangle dies, plus, layered with a couple of different blue panels that were stapled together. A die cut circle in woodgrain and blue papers were attached and cut off at the edge before attaching to the top folding white A2 card base.

I’ve added the die cut tool elements over top of the circle using some silver mirror and blue colored cardstocks to cut them out. I added some sponged ink over some places and topped it with a ripped strip of silver embossed screw heads, a strip of dark blue and the stamped sentiment stapled together and placed it over top with a piece of “messy” thread. Lastly, I added the dark blue die cut hearts and covered them with a glitter brush pen.

I hope that you will stop by the Sparkles Monthly Challenge Blog to check out the challenge and inspiration from the creative design team! I look forward to seeing what everyone creates!

Thanks so much for stopping in and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges:

Creative Inspirations – Anything Goes
Pearly Sparkles – Anything Goes
The Paper Funday – Anything Goes optional: Lots of Layers
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
Allsorts – Anything Goes optional: hearts
The Corrosive – Anything Goes

February 15, 2023February 12, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles26 Comments

Lots of Love and Commissioned Wolves

Happy weekend friends! It’s almost time for Valentine’s Day which means we share our appreciation to those that we love! I like to make cards that are great for any time of year and hearts are versatile enough to do this without being specifically Valentines. Here are a few cards that I’ve made with this in mind:

I actually participated in last week’s Craft Roulette #149 and the perimeters were: 1. tissue/vellum 2. collage 3. far away 4. three pops of red. So…while watching, I had decided that I was going for the Tim Holtz Postale Tissue Wrap that was already collaged with images. I decided because of the collage images, that I was going to find an airplane image to use with it and my thoughts turned to an older Simon Says Stamp card kit I had with the “Home Sweet Home” stamp set. I white heat embossed the airplane, the long building strip and the sentiment over black cardstock. It seemed to lend itself to a slimline card design, so that’s what I went with and used collage medium to attach the tissue to the background. Once it dried, I glued the die cut buildings strip and went around it with a Big Brush marker that I smudged to create the shadow effect.

I made a banner with the sentiment and attached a white string to the back and tied a bow with it to the airplane and popped up the plane with foam tape. The collage background panel was layered over a black piece that was attached to a standard slimline top folding card base.

Here’s a closer view of the details so that you can see them a bit better. My “three pops of red” came from 3 hearts that I cut out with red cardstock. The die was from the coordinating set with the stamps. I attached them around the airplane and covered them with a glitter brush pen.

If you’re interested in seeing what the Craft Roulette is all about, you can check them out live every Friday night around 6:00 pm CST. I will be doing this tonight as well! It’s just something fun to get your crafting thinking and I love that I can pull out my stash and use it up!

And of course I couldn’t help but follow along with the Lawn Fawn Create With Us “Wood You Be Mine?” class! There’s a little inside joke about Woodchucks chuckin’ wood with my son and I couldn’t resist sending him one of these cards. (CLICK ON THE PHOTOS ABOVE TO SEE THEM LARGER IF YOU’RE ON MY WEBSITE)

I just pretty much followed along with the same design as they shared in class with the exception of the background stencil. I didn’t have the same one they used, so I pulled out one from Taylored Expressions that is no longer available. but if you’d like to follow along with the class, you can check it out here.

And lastly, I wanted to share a commissioned card that I made for someone that requested a card to give to their partner. Not really too specific other than they liked wolves and the “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong lyrics somewhere displayed on the design. So here’s what I came up with:

I did not own any stamps with wolves on them, so I turned to my Cricut machine to cut out a silhouette wolf and then I flipped it to cut another one so that they faced each other. I wanted to give the appearance of the wolf couple howling together. LOL I also had some digital map paper that I could print out to use for the hearts as well as making an envelope with it too.

The background was ink blended with the center being lighter toned in blue and then I splattered some white over top for a night sky or an “outer space” looking sky…however you’d like to interpret it, I suppose. I cut a large heart with the map paper and arranged the two wolves over it so that, although it’s the same image flipped, I can make them look like different wolves and then cut off the bottom portions. I popped up the large heart with foam. I also used the same papers to cut smaller hearts above them and added some glitter and covered them with crystal effects to make them shinny. I printed out the lyrics on my computer and cut it out in a banner shape to attach below the wolves.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my “love” creations today and have been inspired in some way! Thanks for stopping by!

Challenges:

Sweet Stampin’– LOVE (Beavers)
Simon Says Stamp Monday – Love is in the Air (slimline)
Everybody Art – #529 Heart/Love
Cardz 4 Guyz – Valentine for a Guy (wolves)
Try it On Tuesday – All You Need is Love
Fab ‘N’ Funky – Valentines or Hearts
Little Red Wagon – Somebody to Love
The Sisterhood of Crafters – Hearts
Crafty Gals Corner – Add a Heart

February 10, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles32 Comments

Playing with Roulette and Colors

Hello friends! Hope your week is getting off to a great start. I can’t believe that January is over and we’re starting a new winter month already, but at the same time I’m already feeling like this cold weather can move along faster to Spring!

Today I have a couple of creations that I’ve made using those Inky Stamper products and playing a little “Craft Roulette” too! Chelsea was on Craft Roulette and if you’ve never seen it play out in action, take a look at the You Tube channel to see what it’s about! She was on episode #146 and here’s my card that I’ve made with her perimeters:

I had so much fun with this and I’ve never made a tag shaped accordion card before, but it was stuck in my head to give it a try and pull out the Inky Stamper Craft Room set to create it. The “Roulette Wheel” spun on: Double Tags, shelf/shelves, 2 shades of green and something in the background.

The two shades of green were easy with using the Doodlebug Paper Packs and adding in a few other greens to the coloring. I’ve also made two tags and placed them inside the pocket area in the middle of the accordion design. I used a stencil in the background of the other two panels and of course I added some crafty goodies to the shelves in Rosie’s craft room! The accordion card was easier than I had anticipated and just made a mini slim line size design by cutting off the edges to create the tag shape. The hole and reinforcers were made using punches and dies. You can see that I’ve colored up, cut out “Rosie” in her craft room where she is cutting her design going through her creative head!

When it’s all folded up and closed, this is what the card looks like. I could always add a sentiment on the back, but I thought this would be fun to send to a fellow crafter for sure! I just wish my shelves looked this organized! And I always try to use another thing from my stash as I pulled out lots of twine that gets thrown in a bin, so it was nice to use for the tops of each tag area. (Maybe on the back of the card, the crafter can add items to use up on their next project and display it! LOL)

And here’s another card that I’ve done for the January challenge on the Inky Stamper Inkspiration FB Group which was to use: Black, white plus one other color:

I decided to pull out the Grasshopper set and make everything in the background black and white, but just color the grasshopper in green. All of the elements including the sentiment came from the same stamp set. I splattered some black paint over the background and the images were colored with some cool gray Copic markers. I white heat embossed the sentiment over black and cut it out with a banner die.

Behind the white panel, I took a piece of the black floral paper from the Doodlebug Floral & Graph Paper Pad and attached that to a white top folding A2 card base. It was a fun and easy card to put together!

Thanks so much for “hopping” over here today! Hope you’ve been inspired or smiled!😊

Challenges:

Cardz 4 Galz – Shaped Card (top card-tag shaped)
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Passion for Markers – use die cuts (both cards use dies and are colored with Copics)
Creatalicious – Anything Goes optional love &/or hearts (top card has hearts)
Papercraft – Anything Goes
Sparkles Monthly – Friendship (both cards evoke friendship to me!)

February 1, 2023January 31, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles26 Comments

Jan 2023 Art Journal Page-TIME

Hello there friends! Hope that you’ve been having a great month so far to start off your year! I’m so relieved that I’ve gotten my sound up and running on the computer now! Also…today I’m very happy to be continuing on with making my monthly art journal pages (plus using my stash!) and to be continuing the partnership with my sweet crafty friend, Carol! I always love to see how each of us interprets the monthly stash themes.

If you’re not familiar, I post an AJ page each month along with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper), as we get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles! We use a prompt each month and post them. I know she will have some great inspiration, so please check out her blog for an AJ page too! Here’s my first Art Journal inspiration for 2023 with the “SMASH OUR STASH” January prompt of “Sprays/Stains/Paints” :

So this one is a bit different for me, but I wanted to try out a “minimalistic” style and very soft with the colors that’s almost pale. Not sure I achieved what I was thinking, but fun to try anyway.

Background: With the prompt in mind, I had no problem pulling out a few Distress Spray Stains that I have so many of but hardly use. So I started the background with a stencil and added some texture paste to the two opposite corners over a gesso painted 6″x9″ 140# cold press paper pre-punched with holes for book. I then took the spray stains and went over the two opposite corners with them.

I found a cool photo online of the eye with the clock. The outside of the eye has repetitive “tick tock” wording over it. Before attaching this photo and the wording elements, I stamped a very large pocket watch image (Whimsy Stamps retired) with Speckled Egg Distress Oxide ink. Since the sprays and ink are water based media, I covered the page with Distress Micro Glaze to make it permanent before adding some collage medium to attach the other elements. I also used a Big Brush marker to go around the edges for shadows. The pocket watch detail is a laser cut chipboard that was sprayed with black distress spray.

I took some more paint to add to the colored sprayed edges along with some black and white paints to randomly splatter over the entire page. Lastly I took some silver metallic rub to go over the raised areas and make them stand out a bit. The page has a sheen to it because I went over it with a coat of collage medium.

I hope you’ve gotten some inspiration today and thank you for stopping in!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Use a photo (eyeball)
More Than Words – It’s About Time
Country View – Time
Love to Craft – Anything Goes
Love to Scrap – Anything Goes
Arty Divas – Anything Goes

January 28, 2023January 27, 2023

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles21 Comments

Warm Wishes & Christmas too!

Hello friends! Gosh, it’s been a few minutes since my last posting, but I’ve not been with a computer for a while and I haven’t been able to post or see what’s been going on in blog world. I’m still without sound, but hopefully I’ll be fixed with that soon as well. After you get used to a computer, it’s time consuming trying to set everything back up on a new one and make sure you have all of your stored photos/files too! I’m getting there though!

Everything was a bit busy at the end of last year and I was not able to get around to participating in some classes that I’ve been wanting to do. Unfortunately with no sound, I couldn’t hear the videos, but I managed to easily figure things out anyway along with an instruction print out. So I was happy to get these Christmas/Winter cards finished:

I absolutely fell in love with the Lawn Fawn Ugly and Bright stamp set and I wanted to play with it and participate in their “Create with Us” class using it. I colored the stamped pieces similar to the class, but I didn’t have the same snowflake stencil for the background, so I pulled out my Taylored Expressions Let it Snow stencil (retired) to use for it.

The critters as well as the letters were popped up with foam tape and I’ve added some loose glitter to the speech bubbles, and hats. I used some LF chunky glitter to the bottom section of the letters. The letters were die cut from the LF Henry’s ABCs and colored with Copic markers.

And this one was also from the class using the same products as above, except the large sentiment came from the LF Giant Merry Christmas die and this time it was ink blended and sprayed with a shimmer spray. This was also popped up with foam tape along with the speech bubble and Santa hat. I was happy about the colors on this one and thought it was fun to put together and color.

For this last card, it was not apart of the class above, but I still wanted to play a bit more with the set and I had an extra deer critter cut out and colored and ready to be clothed! For this one I decided to keep it as just a wintry theme so it could be used for Christmas OR non-Holiday-ish. I pulled out the Lawn Fawn Snow Flurries Backdrop die to cut out a frame over top of a piece of the LF Knit Picky Winter Paper Pack that was ink blended along the edges and attached to an A2 top folding card base.

Thought that the deer looked a bit plain with no “grounding”, so I die cut a piece from some silver cardstock for him to stand on. (retired MFT die set) Added some glitter to his hat and sweater and popped him up with foam tape. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add some sequins, dots or other snowflakes to it, so I left for now.

Really sorry if you’re over with anything Christmas, but I am just happy to have finished the class and hopefully it won’t take me as long to get to the next one…which has already been out and I haven’t gotten to yet!🤨

Thanks so much for stopping in today and hope that you’ve been inspired in some way! I will be doing my monthly AJ page Saturday, so I hope you’ll come back to see this month’s inspiration.

Challenges: