Winter Animals for Sparkles Monthly Challenge

Hello friends! I hope you’ve had a great start to your November so far! It’s been a few minutes since I’ve posted, but I have to say that I’ve been pretty busy in the background! Hoping to share what I’ve been up to soon!

Today begins a new challenge over at the Sparkles Monthly Challenge! This month, we’re looking to see some WINTER ANIMALS! I hope you can join in the fun with us! A reminder that this will be the final challenge for the year as we’ll be on Holiday break until January. Here’s my take on the theme:

My first thought of a winter animal is a penguin of course! I’m a huge fan of them and have so many in my collection…including other than stamp related! These guys are really enjoying winter on this scene! I’m using the My Favorite Things Playful Penguins stamp set and I started with a stencil from MFT that has “pond” shapes and lightly stenciled the soft blue for a place for my “ice platform” to be.

After creating the “ice pond”, I used some tape to mask off the bottom portion so that I could ink blend a sky at the top. I used some White Opaque Copic and splattered it over the sky area. I then used another MFT stencil to create some snow drifts in the background.

The two penguins, igloo, ice pad and sign were stamped, colored with Copic markers and die cut out to be placed over the scene. I added the flattened penguin to the ice pad and then had the igloo in the background while the sign and penguin are waiting at the side of the pond. I used a pen and wrote “FREE RIDES” on the sign.

I finished it off with a glitter pen over the “ice pad” and igloo and then used some Stardust Stickles over the snow on the sign. I thought it needed some more snow falling down, so I took some sequins and added it to the scene.

If I were on that scene, I would probably be more like the flattened penguin on the “ice pad”!😆 How about you? Do you like the snow?

Thanks so much for joining me here! I hope you like my penguin card and will sharing your favorite winter animal in the challenge too! Have a great day!

Challenges I’d like to enter this card for:

Pearly Sparkles – #90 Christmas/Winter
Craft Rocket – #109 Wintertime (No Christmas)
Crafty Animals – Anything Goes with animal(s)
Critter Crazy – Anything Goes featuring a critter(s)
Love to Scrap – #164 Anything Goes
Crafty Calendar – Anything Goes
Creative Moments – Winter
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes

Sports Reminder for {Cupcake Inspirations} Challenge

Hello friends! Stopping by with a reminder today that there are still a few days left to join our “Sports” themed challenge over at the {Cupcake Inspirations} blog! Hope you will join in the fun with us!

It’s that time of the year over here in the U.S. for Fall football season and I have some male family members that enjoy watching it along with having birthdays around this time which brings me to making these type of cards for them! So this challenge has worked out really well for that! So here’s my second card for this challenge:

I’ve pulled out this older Stampin’ Up! stamp set that I refused to part with just for this reason because I knew that I would be using it down the line…which is the “Great Sport” stamp set. (I think it’s maybe circa 2013?)

I think the embossing folder is just as old if not older than the stamp sets that I’ve used as it has that pattern on it that would remind you of the football texture. (pigskin leather as the guys say) I’ve recently picked up some sport themed decorative papers and thought I would use a strip down the center of my design and then I’ve also used the same pattern to stamp the wings and football images over that were all fussy cut out with scissors.

For the navy banner in the background, I’ve used a die cut to cut it out with and then stamped some stars with white ink over it and then sponged around the edged of it as well. I took another strip of orange colored cardstock and stamped a fun birthday greeting over it and then added some stars around it that were punched out from navy cardstock. All of these layered were attached over an A2 sized top folding navy card base.

Really thought it would be fun to add an interactive detail to this card as well by adding a wobbler to the back of the football image. So when you put your finger along the side of the ball, it will wobble.🏈😂 (something fun for the birthday guy to play with!)

For the decorative papers I’ve used, I took a sand block to distress the edges a bit and smooth out the edges of my fussy cutting details.

Hope this will help bring a smile!

Thanks so much for dropping in today and I’ll be seeing you soon friends!

Challenges:

Watercooler Wednesday – WWC291 5th Week Anything Goes

2. Krafty Chicks – #527 Stamp Act

3. Love to Craft – LTCCB51 October Anything Goes

Sports🎾 for {Cupcake Inspirations}

Hello friends! It’s been a week since my last post, but I’ve been busy cleaning up around my house to get prepared for the cooler weather ahead of us shortly and it’s starting this week to be very cold in the evening…so it’s just one of those things that need to get done is all. I actually love all things Fall including that! (Yes, I’m weird! LOL!)

Today starts up a brand new challenge over at {Cupcake Inspirations} and the theme is….

SPORTS!!!⚽⚾🥎🏀🏐🏈🏉🎱🎳⛳⛸

That is also something else that I enjoy in the Fall season! I like to watch football with my hubby and since I have had boys that played in several different sports along with my husband liking all things sports, I’m always involved in it in someway!🏈 I thought I’d try something a bit different with this theme that is something I like to do for myself….

Although this card may look a bit simple in style, I did spend some time putting it all together.

I’ve used this darling image from All Dressed Up Stamps called “And Relax” that I’ve fussy cut out after printing and then I created a separate plain panel with just the words enlarged a bit more than what the image was printed.

The printed words panel was die cut with a stitched rectangle die and then I masked off the Kramer stencil from Brutus Monroe and covered it with some glitter glaze (unknown color) that was lurking in my stash and it turned out so pretty when dried! I popped up the colored image with foam tape, added sequins filled with some Nuvo Emerald City Glitter Drops which seemed to match up with the glitter glaze nicely. I layered the front image panel over a stitched rectangle Raven cardstock layer and attached these layers over an A2 sized top folding white card base.

Here’s a closer view of the coloring I’ve done on the image using Copic markers. Since it’s an image with really tiny details and small areas, I kept the coloring light and simple. I’ve only added dots to her cheeks with a white gel pen.

I’ve used a craft knife to cut in the areas and I left a white border around her so that all the details showed up with her hair strands and neck line.

You can also see how pretty that sparkle looks from the glitter glaze over the stencil too! The Nuvo Glitter Drops matched up nicely with it!