Pretty Purple Tatiana

Happy Monday!!! I'm posting later than usual today because life got in the way this morning. We were away this weekend and Shadow (our mini schnauzer) was staying at his usual place...well he came home a little under the weather so we spent the morning at the vet. Turns out he picked up kennel cough at the groomers last week (not where he stayed on the weekend) but now I feel awful that he was staying at my friend's house with her seven dogs. Yikes!!! I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed that they don't all get sick because of my little guy!!

But you came here for a card, right? I stamped this one this morning while waiting to go to our vet appointment. I decided to use the Weekend Sketch Challenge, WSC104, for the layout and as I was reading Beate's post I realized the Ways To Use It challenge on Splitcoast, WT242, is to use purple, so I combined the sketch and the purple challenge.

I think I'm one of the few people who likes using purple. I can't say it's my favourite colour, but I really like how the purple copics blend and I love how vibrant they can be. So for my card I pulled out my favourite paper with purple in it, My Mind's Eye Penny Lane. I stamped Tatiana Ketto from Stamping Bella with Memento Tuxedo Black onto Bella's Bestest Paper and coloured her with copics. Nothing fancy here, but I did add a lemonade Bauble to the center of the flower. The image is cut out with circle Nestabilities and layered onto a scallop circle of Eggplant.

I started with a standard size white card base then I layered some Prism Frosted Kiwi and some Prism Intense Teal, which I ran through my D'vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder. The rest is just three strips of paper and I tucked a scalloped strip of Eggplant near the right edge. There's a little sparkle from two medium lilac Glitter Dots.

Don't forget about this week's Bellarific Challenge...it's a Christmas/Winter theme. Email your entries to Em by Thursday, November 5th to be included in her Bellarific Friday post on November 6th and you might just win a $20 gift certificate to Stamping Bella! Click here for all the details.

Thanks for stopping by!

Karen

Stella's Half Flower

I made this card as a thank you to one of my neighbours. Not sure I can give it away though, it's really pretty! Is she card-worthy? I did make it to coordinate with her home decor though. I guess I can always make another one, right?  :)

So it all started when I read the Thursday "ways to use it" challenge on Splitcoast...to use just half an image. My first thought was, that's bizarre, how will half an image look? So I decided on a flower, cause it's pretty symetrical and you can imagine what the other half of the image will look like. But, the half I do work on needs to be pretty nice to stand on it's own...right?

This beautiful flower is from the set "A Year of Flowers" from Gina K. I thought the detail and layers of the image were absolutely perfect for layers and layers of petals. 

I stamped the flower three times with Memento ink onto Gina K pure luxury cardstock. I imagined the layers going from darkest on the bottom to lightest on top. So I coloured the three images with various copic colours. Don't be scared away by all the colours I used...I just kept layering and blending until I got the shades I wanted but I'm sure you could get the same effect with far fewer colours. 

Once they were coloured, I cropped the darkest flower in half for my base. Then I cut out the petals on the other two flowers and layered them, bending the petals upward for dimension and to show the colours. I offset the petals of each layer too so it didn't just look like a stack. Oh, and I painted the middle layer with Angel Wings Shimmerz, so there's a little shimmer peeking between the top petals. 

The patterned paper is Basic Grey Stella Ruby, which I layered onto SU chocolate then pierced around the edges. The three panels are attached with dimensionals to Artichoke cardstock, then onto a Kraft card base. The ribbon is SU Kraft Taffeta and the pearls are from Stamping Bella, String of Pearls. LOVE those pearls!!!

This is one of my favourite 'grown up' cards in quite some time.

Thanks for stopping by!

Karen

Happy Frog

I've been dying to use my new 'A Flower for All Seasons' set from Stampin' Up! Those who know me know that I was drawn to it because there's a bird in the set. I can't help it...I love birds! BUT, instead of using the bird stamp first, I decided to use this cute little frog. Truth is, I got to use that bird stamp at my friend Joanne's stamp class back in September. LOL!

As I was blurfing around today I stopped on Taylor's site and saw the sketch for her Cupcake Challenge #44. Right away I knew this set was perfect for the challenge. I dug into my stash, ok my giant stash of patterned paper and pulled out this sparkly polka-dotted one by My Minds Eye. You can't really see it in the photo, but trust me, all the green dots are super sparkly.

The card base is a 5x5 square of SU's Garden Green (hmmm...when was the last time I used Garden Green...but it matches perfectly with my sparkly paper!). The chocolate square is 3.25 x 3.25 and the polka dot squares are 1 5/8 x 1 5/8. The im

age was stamped with Memento black onto Gina K white cardstock, cut out with nesties and coloured with copics. I LOVE my copics. I know a few people are chuckling at that comment cause I was adamant that I didn't need

them (or nesties for that matter and we can see how that worked out!).   :)

A little paper piercing here, some sparkly gems there, attach some ribbon at the bottom and voila! When I was all done, I also realized that the expensive sparkly paper qualifies my card for the 'Ways to Use It' challenge #182 over at Splitcoaststampers. Yay! 

Isn't she just the cutest little frog ever! I look at the image and think she just leaped up onto someone's potting table to look at the flowers. I know she's a girl frog, because no boy frog would ever admire flowers like that. grin!

Thanks for stopping by!

Karen