circles – Stamped Smiles

Cute Card Thursday is Going in Circles!

Hello friends! I hope you’re having a great week so far! Today is Thursday and it’s time to start a new challenge over at Cute Card Thursday! This week we are looking for your “Circles” on your creations! So here’s what I’ve made for the challenge:

Vicki-CCT594-ADU

We are being sponsored by All Dressed Up Stamps and I’ve used this adorable “Girl On a Bike” image for my card.

I’ve colored her up and cut her out with a circle die that I commonly reach for which is the Hero Arts Infinity Circle dies and then I cut out a black cardstock circle to layer behind her as well as the sentiment circle. I happen to find some papers that, for me, mimicked the bike wheels, so I cut that out in a circle as well for the design. For each circle, I took my ink foam blending tool and went around the edges with the same ink color that I’ve used for the cloud background.

Now that I had all the circles cut out for my design, I used a cloud stencil to ink up background which I cut out with a stitched rectangle die along with the pattern paper circle and then wrapped some black ribbon around it before attaching it to a black cardstock layer that was then mounted over a white A2 sized card base.

I added the circle image and cut off the right edge that was sticking out along the side. I took the sentiment circle and popped it up over the design with a foam circle and then I added some clear sparkling sequins in various places.

Here’s a closer look at the image and how I’ve got her colored up with Copic markers. I used a white gel pen for the flowers in her hair along with a gold gel pen for the centers of each of the flowers and her shoes and shirt waist band. I’ve used a silver gel pen for the bike wheels, petals and end handles.

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I hope that you enjoyed my card today and inspired you to pull out some circles to play along with us this week! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with! CLICK HERE to go to the Cute Card Thursday challenge to enter!

Thanks so much for dropping in today! I appreciate each and every single comment and I look forward to sharing more with you soon!

I’d like to enter the following challenges:

All Dressed Up Stamps – July Challenge
Just Us Girls – Summer
Crafty Calendar – August Anything Goes
Always Fun – Use Stencils
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP1931 Anything Goes
Get Creative – Anything Goes/no twist
Papercraft – Summer Fun
Papercraft Business – August Anything Goes with optional use a circle

August 8, 2019August 8, 2019

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles32 Comments

Sending Smiles Mermaid Style

Hello friends! Well it feels nice to get back into the swing of things here again! I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the awesome welcome back I recieved from you guys! Wish I could reach out through the screen and give you all a big hug! 🙂

Today is August 1st AND it’s on a Thursday too, so I wanted to share the card I made for the Whimsy Stamps August Digital new release as well as a brand new Cute Card Thursday Challenge too!! Whimsy Stamps is our sponsor this week and it’s an easy “Anything Goes“, so please be sure to stop by the blog to see the wonderful inspiration from the rest of the design team and play along with us!! We look forward to seeing what you’re working on!

Vicki-WSGoldie-Aug1

Oh aren’t these Sylvia Zet images just as cute as can be?! I so enjoyed coloring her up! (See the close up photo and details below.) This is the DIGITAL version of “Goldie” just released from Whimsy Stamps this month. You can still also purchase the rubber cling stamp HERE, but now it’s nice to be able to have the option to choose either one!

Since her name is “Goldie“, I had to use the orangish color palette for her! When looking at the image, I immediately saw “bubbles”, so I thought it would be fun to make a circle easel card design with her! This actually turned out to be a “non-traditional” circle easel card with the circled image going askew from the main area…which makes it seem more like several bubbles underwater!

I have cut several different sizes of circles, one for the main circle card base and several others with some old SU! bokeh looking papers from my stash. I used a stitched scallop circle die set to cut out the layers behind the circles. I sponged all circles with some blue ink for more depth. I’ve added a strip of blue glitter cardstock on the main card front layer as well as some ribbon to attach to the front. I arranged the circles where I wanted them and added some foam tape here and there to pop up the layers.

To hold up the card front, the inside of the easel card has another strip of that blue glitter cardstock and I stamped an anchor image over one of the circle panels using an older Whimsy Stamps clear set. I used some foam tape to pop that up so that the front card panel would prop up.

I’ve taken the Whimsy Stamps Everyday Mini Sentiments stamp set to stamp the sentiment under the image panel with black ink. For the accents on the card, I’ve used some clear acrylic bubbles randomly and glued them in places. For the fish, it was a wood veneer from my stash that I heat embossed with some cool orange metallic embossing powder.

Vicki-WSGoldie-Aug1-side

Here you can see the details from the side view of the easel design and how it’s propped up with that anchor circle holding the front card panel in place. to mail this card, you just unfold it and lay it flat as shown in the last photo below.

Here’s a closer look at this really sweet image. Below are the list of Copics I’ve used to color her in with:

Click on the numbers to purchase from Whimsy Stamps.

Fins, flowers, Bubbles – Y38, Y35, Y32, BG000
Hair – C8, C5, C3, C1
Skin – E21, E11, E02, E00, E000, R20
Snail – W5, W3, W1, E33, E31, R20

Wink of Stella used for mermaid body, clear glitter and 2-way glue pen used for the bubbles. I used a black gel pen to dot the center of flowers.

Vicki-WSGoldie-Aug1-front

Here’s what the folded and closed circle card looks like. She will not quie fit into a regular A2 sized envelope because I arranged the circles differently, but a nice 5×5 size would work great. I do have an envelope creator which is handy for those odd shaped designs that I can custom make.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today! Please be sure to check out the full August Digital Release over at Whimsy Stamps and don’t forget to play along with us this week over at Cute Card Thursday for your chance to win a nice prize from our sponsor, Whimsy Stamps too!!

Here are the products and affiliate links to the products I’ve used today:

Challenges I’d like to enter this card for:

Sweet Stampers – Summer (digi and stamp used)
QKR Stampede – #358 Anything Goes
Addicted to Stamps & More – #352 Make Your Mark
Little Red Wagon – Digital Stamps
Crafty Gals Corner – 3+ layers

August 1, 2019August 1, 2019

*Vicki* from Stamped Smiles22 Comments

Bubble Bath Beauty

Hello friends! Yes, I’m still here! I was hoping to share some photos with you of my crafty retreat and what I was teaching, but when I got home I had some other troubles to deal with and didn’t get a chance to make a post for it, but I will hopefully get to it this week so you can see what was happening! LOTS of fun stuff!! 🙂

Today, I have a silly kitty card to share with you today:

Vicki-Bath Cat-May7

Oh my, that face just really cracks me up!! It’s been several years since I have ever had to give a cat a bath, but I believe that’s pretty much how they feel about water in general. I have used this Whimsy Stamps digital image called Bath Cat by Crissy Armstong. (It was preciously released as a rubber cling stamp, but now you can also get it in digital format if you prefer that!)

I started out my card with a piece of white cardstock and clear heat embossed several of the solid circle images from the Whimsy Stamps Circles Circles Circles clear stamp set. I then took a few of the distress ink colors and blended them over the heat embossed circles. The ink resisted those and then I spritzed it with some water and dapped it with a paper towel for water dropplets. I heat embossed the sentiment with white EP and cut it out in a banner to attach over my background.

The circle inked background was corner chomped on two of the corners and then I placed it over a blue A2 sized top folding card base which I also corner chomped the same two corners on that as well. I then added the image panel and popped it up over some craft foam to attach to the front of the card. I then cut off the edge of the circle with my scissors and lastly added some clear sequins to the design.

Here’s a closer look at the coloring I’ve done on the kitty. I’ve used the following Copics to color him in with: (You can purchase Copic markers at Whimsy Stamps by Clicking HERE.)

Kitty – W7, W5, W3, W1, R11, R00
Bathtub – B24, B21
Bubbles – BG000
Duckie – Y17, Y15, Y13

After I cut the image out with a circle die, I sponged around the edges of it with some of the distress ink I used on the background. I used a Wink of Stella glitter pen on some of the bubbles and then used some Nuvo White Blizzard Glitter Drops on the water drops.

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