Whimsy Stamps September New Digital Release is Here

Hello friends!  I’m excited to be sharing with you my creation for one of the newly released images for this month from Whimsy Stamps!  Yay!

Every first of the month Whimsy Stamps will come out with a new release and the 1st day of the month begins with their digital release and the products become available for purchase as soon as they’re announced!  You may have seen my creation on the Whimsy Stamps Inspirations Blog along with all of the newly released images and inspiration from the rest of the design team!

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Now what a cute and clever idea from Crissy Armstrong to come up with a Christmas Mermaid image, don’t you think?!  I love all the different possibilities with this one!  I thought it was a good place to start with the amazing release this month!

I kept her very soft and feminine with the pink and teal colors.  Not sure if you can be underwater with snowflakes…but it seemed like the perfect accent to add and I’m pretty sure that’s why the little critters have a surprised face! LOL!

For the image, I have used an oval die and cut around the areas that didn’t fit inside the shape.  I think it makes her look like she’s in a bubble of sorts!  I also layered her onto another teal glitter oval shape, and I have also die cut a sentiment that went perfectly with the image.  I’ve paired her with the Whimsy Stamps Christmas So Soft digital papers and some mint-colored cardstock.  They seemed to go well with the coloring I did on the image.  I popped the oval image panel up with some craft foam and added some fun tinsel ribbon in the strip behind her.  Then attached some snowflake sequins.

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Here’s a closer view of the coloring I did on the image.  I kept the colors softer with pink and mint/teal.  I’ve used a gold gel pen to color in her gold bells and belt buckle.  I’ve also added some Nuvo clear Crystal drops on the “holly berries” the critters are holding and then went over all of the fur trimmings with a shimmer brush pen.

To get the “texture” in the mermaid’s tail area, I just took my “0” Copic blender and dotted it which also helped to blend in the colors.  Super cute and fun image to color!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today!  Thanks so much for dropping in!

Challenges:

  1.  My Time to Craft – Christmas in August
  2. The Holly & Ivy Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas Goes
  3. QKR Stampede – Anything Goes (Challenge#311)

It’s Magical at Cute Card Thursday

Hello friends and happy Thursday to you!  Tomorrow is Friday and we are about to get started on the weekend!  I am ready for it too!

We have another brand new challenge up for you this week at Cute Card Thursday and the theme is “Magical“.  This will be fun to see how you interpret this one! 🙂  Here’s the card that I made for the challenge:

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I have used one of the sponsor’s images this week from Oddball Stamps which is Kawaii Big Eye Unicorn (with and without ornaments) Twinkles.  I have used the image without the ornaments on him, but it comes with both!  I think it’s adorable!

I printed out the image and used a wonky stitch rectangle die to cut out the panel with the image in the bottom right corner.  I printed it out a second time so that I can cut it out with some masking paper.  I placed the cut out masked paper unicorn over my card panel unicorn and stenciled the colorful cloudy background.  I colored the unicorn and the grass he’s sitting on with Copic markers.  Lastly, I stamped a sentiment from a My Favorite Things stamp set at the top with black ink.

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So looking at the unicorn from a different angle, you can see that I’ve added tons of shimmer and glitter to it.  I used a glitter brush pen for the muzzle, the hooves, the inside ears and around the eyes.  I’ve also went around the unicorn on the grass for a bit more shimmer too.  I took some clear dazzling diamonds glitter to add to the rainbow horn and tail using liquid glue.   Of course, there’s even more sparkle with the sequins.  I had a couple of heart sequins to add around the unicorn as well.

Thanks for stopping in today!

Challenges:

  1.  Papercraft Challenges – animals
  2. Addicted to Stamps & More! – Make Your Mark (stencil and Copics)
  3. Crafty Gals Corner – Anything Goes

Crafting Retreat Hang-over Plus ICAD Week 7

Hello friends!  Oh no…It’s been a week since my last posting!  I have a “crafting hang-over” if there is such a thing! LOL!  There were so many things to get done after my 3 day crafting stint and I just couldn’t get it all in!  I ran out of steam!

For my 3 day crafting event, it was a local friend who puts together 3 days full of classes, prizes and food! I am still a true blue stamper to the end, but since it was mostly painting, I brought my painting supplies with me and not my stamping supplies.  Here’s a mixed media sample I helped teach for a class:

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I had a Jack Daniels bottle to alter and went with that for my sample.  The advantage that I had compared to everyone else is that I had four flat sides which made it a tad bit easier to attached items to it.  These girls were creative and made it work and had fun!  The window that I put on even glows in the dark with some special glow-in-the-dark embossing powder!  I then covered it with some glossy effects for a “window” look.  They are all so cool looking and I loved seeing all the different results!

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A closer look at the bottle and turned to the other side, you can see all of the texture that I attached to the bottle with the flowers, embossing paste, gears, bats, etc.  I was going for a steam punk look for the bottle portion (which is why I went over the texture with just a gold metallic texture paste.)  and I thought it would be cool to make the green goo coming out at the top, so that was fun to paint with a metallic green.  There were lots of little tips and tricks everyone learned along the way.  It was funny because everyone didn’t understand why they were painting over everything they worked so hard putting onto the bottle.  LOL!  After the texture paste, there was the excitement!

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This is just another side view of the bottle with the added texture I’ve put on it.  I was able to collect some unique items for everyone’s bottle through my husband’s work in a manufacturing setting that had little metal pieces…no idea what they are, but it was something fun and unique to add texture to the bottle.  And of course I had gears, buttons, stencils with embossing paste, flowers, etc.  The windows and bats were all cut out with some dies that I had.  That window die is actually from Lawn Fawn!  The tiny bone sticking out on the window is of course Tim Holtz.

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Here are some of the girls having fun with their bottles in class.  They are very intently working on getting their bottles just right! 🙂  Of course it’s hard to get everyone together at one time in a photo, but there were a couple more people there including myself not shown.

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Here’s a look at the bottles from class!  I think everyone enjoyed this concept and I even had an additional bottle that I made they really enjoyed the other sample that I made too.  So I made a different theme on this one:

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For those that are not Halloween fans, I showed them a completely different look with the bottle.  This is my “Mermaid bottle” that I’ve made with Patina Effect Texture Pastes and copper metallic paints.  I used some sea shells that I have along with some rope, beads, texture paste, cheese cloth and lots of other little tid bits I had on hand.  I  got a cork and used it for the top of the bottle and added a gem on top.  I really like how texturized the paste made the bottle look.

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Turning the bottle around, you can see more detail on the bottle along with the charm and tiny jar I have hanging down around the cork at the top.  I painted a silver mermaid charm with some Mermaid Sparkle metallic paint of course and then touched up the edges of it some copper texture paste.  For the bottle, I had a package of tiny bottles and I filled one with some blue sequins and made this tiny tiny label over vellum and attached it to the bottle.  It says “Mermaid Tears”.

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On the back side of the bottle, you can see that I’ve made a little “path” for the beads and sea shells to flow all the way around it.  I have taken a mermaid die cut and cut it out several times to create a dimensional look by adding several layers of cardstock together.  I had her sitting on top of one of the stone pieces I’ve attached to the bottle along with some gems above her for a “bubble” affect.  This mermaid die along with some of the stones, gems, pebbles, mermaid charm and the gem on top of the cork all came from a past card kit.

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And here is just another angle of the bottle before we come back to the front of it.  It just gives you a better idea of what all the dimension is on the bottle and how I’ve highlighted it with copper metallic paint.  I even had a little toy compass to attach to the front.  I had a piece of decorative paper from an older paper collection that I cut of piece of to attach to the front of the bottle and then wrapped the rope around it.  I gave it a bit of a white wash over it with paint so it fit with the theme of the bottle….old looking.

And finally, yes, when I got home I realized that I was behind on chores around the house as well as my ICAD challenge!  So I sat down yesterday to try and catch up with those so that I don’t get too far behind!  I’m happy to say that I’m all caught up and there is not many left to go either!  Another 2 weeks and it will be complete!

So here are the results of Week 7 ICAD:

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With the theme and prompts given this last week, I didn’t expect mine to be as colorful as they are, but some of them turned out very colorful!  I also enjoyed playing with some things I rarely get out to play with!

So now you know what I’ve been busy with this past week and maybe you’ll excuse me not being around so much! 🙂  Hope you’ve enjoyed my mixed media projects.  I’d love to know what you think!  Have you ever tried mixed media?  Do you like the concept of it?  Just curious how many of you out there enjoy it!  Thanks for stopping in!

Challenges I’d like to enter my bottle(s) for:

  1.  A Inky Mess – Just For Fun (mixed media)
  2. Creative Artiste – Anything Mixed Media Goes
  3. Altered Eclectics – Anything Mixed Media Goes (no cards)

Shello

Hello friends!  Hope you had a great weekend!  I’m so tired!  I forgot how much work it takes to put together a garage sale!  We had a nice day for it and it was a great turn out!  We are happy to have gotten rid of those big items in our way around the house.  We ended up donating the rest that did not sell.  Thinking of this, I probably need to go through my craft stash and do the same…but somehow, it’s just so much harder to decide what to keep and what not to…the pile ends up changing eventually! LOL!

If you remember, I have also been participating in the ICAD 2018 challenge which I have been going into my craft studio each day and creating at least once a day.  I can share with you the results of that each week as go, so be looking for that soon!

Today I have some fun “underwater” items to share:

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Along with a fun painting retreat that I had went to in April this year…it was all the kick start I needed and then came the inspiration to blog again!  I am happy that I did as I missed sharing my art and communicating with my fellow crafty friends here! 🙂

For the card above, I wanted most of the card to look underwater and that’s where I’ve used vellum and die cut out a wave at the top of it.  I stamped the shoe image from above, the fish and underwater background stamp and colored with Copics.  I added the sentiment banner and the awesome two toned pearls over the top.  The edges of the vellum were sponged with blue ink and I added some blue sparkle on the waves.

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Next, I have this really cool Jumbo Tag that I’ve decorated with contents from this same kit!  I’ve used this cover die and instead of die cutting with it, I’ve used it for embossing.  Before I used the die, I covered the background with some distress inks and splashed some water droplets over it.  I colored the images with my Copic markers, fussy cut them out and attached to the background.

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Here’s closer view of the images colored up.  Hard to see in the photos, but I have covered the mermaid’s eyes as well as the fisheyes with some glossy accents.  You can also see how cool looking those fish scale flat backs are…love the different shimmery colors in it!  And to give you an idea of the size of the tag, it’s 4″ x 8″!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my underwater creations today and I’ll see you again with more of what I’ve been crafting!  Have a great day!

I would like to enter mermaid tag in following challenge(s):

  1.  Hand Stamped Sentiments (HSSIC291)– inspirational photo:

2.  Cupcake Inspiration Challenge (CIC447) – Magical Creatures