Tranquility NOW, Dangit

Y'all, I'm having a bad hair day.  Last night Ryan closed out my internet browser and I'm like excuse me child I had 37 tabs open because I NEED THEM and I wasn't able to recover the tabs, so now I need to redo the hour and a half of research on summer camps for him and this morning Daphne chewed up some stuff in my craft room while I was in the shower and then had the gall to try to cute her way out of being in trouble.  And I'm literally having a bad hair day, I don't even know what is up with my hair today but I put it up on pigtails so that has to make it better.  Couldn't get worse than whatever it was doing before.

Grumpy grumpy grump grump grumpety.

Okay, I have a cheery card today so let's see if it helps me out.

I just looked through all of my SU! stamps over the weekend and pulled out around 200 sets that I set aside to possibly sell and I still have a huge collection and also since Daphne ate my occasions catalog (I do keep those for inspiration forever) I had to do an order this morning and I did buy one new stamp set and die bundle but anyway.  While I was looking through the stamps I found a lot of sets that made me think hey, I wanna make something with that, so I brought out Tranquil Tulips and Part of My Story for today and surprise, there are no bunnies in sight this time.

Check out the Retro Rubber challenge:

I went down the center with die cut - flowers - gems.  Tranquil Tulips is the same age as Ryan, so 8 years old; Part of My Story is a bit younger at 6 years old, but still retro in stamp years.

Next up is this week's CASE-ing Tuesday Sketch:

Once again I don't have the dies shown, but I found one in the Thoughtful Expressions dies that was a similar shape so I think it works.  And I switched my sentiment to the left side because my tulip stems were in a tangle.

I chose tulips for the Color Throwdown:

I used Soft Succulent, Daffodil Delight, and Calypso Coral for my colors.

And now it's time for me to go make a cuppa tea and grab some M&Ms, I need the big guns to get out of this grumpy mood while I redo all my summer camp research.  Check you later, kids.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Tranquil Tulips, Part of My Story
Ink:  Soft Succulent, Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Basic White, Gingham Gala DSP Stack
Accessories:  Thoughtful Expressions dies, Ornate Frames dies, Dimensionals, In Color Gems

Spring Sunflower Mosaic

Confession:  I have no idea what time of year sunflowers bloom.  And I know that generally they don't have pinkish centers, but two of the fabulous things about stamping are that a.) you can have flowers anytime you want and b.) they can be any COLOR you want too :)  So here's my spring sunflowers!

I started with this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

The first thought that popped in my head was to do a larger image and then cut it up to form the nine squares on the sketch, so that's what I did.  Then it took me a ridiculously long time to figure out how the squares fit together again because I'm silly like that.

I used the springy color palette from Global Design Project:

And that was it.  Pretty simple, really--stamps and ink, a couple sponges, and a paper trimmer.  And a bit of adhesive, but that's it.  I know who needs this card too, so I hope to get it in the mail before the end of the week.

Gotta run--cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Painted Harvest, Part of My Story
Ink:  Grapefruit Grove, Lemon Lime Twist, Daffodil Delight
Paper:  Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  none

Inspiration is Messy

Hey, y'all!  Have you ever started making something and it just WOULD NOT cooperate with you?  That was my first try at this card.  I chucked it in the trash and that's when the kid started making noise like he was done with naptime, so it took me two days to get this card made.  But, in the end, I'm fairly pleased with it.  And my fingers are multicolored.

All hail watercolor paper for the background!  I tried doing a rainbow effect with sponges and that part was kinda sorta okay, but then I tried embossing some flowers on it and that part was NOT okay, hence my trashing it.  So here's how I made the background on this card:

1.  Tried something different, hated it, wished I could tell it that it was a disgrace to the Empire in Klingon but my Klingon is rudimentary at best.*
2.  Start over with watercolor paper.
3.  Smoosh an acrylic ink block onto an ink pad (I started with the Melon Mambo I think), spritz it with water, and then smoosh it on the watercolor paper.
4.  Speed up drying time with a heat tool.
5.  Repeat ink-spritz-smoosh with the remaining colors, drying the paper in between.  The colors blend a little bit where they overlap, but don't get too muddy.  I did do the Pineapple Punch twice though, it got overwhelmed by the darker colors at first so I smooshed it a second time and that worked nicely.

*I'm not sure this step is necessary, but just in case it really is integral to the process...there you go.  Note to self:  take classes in Klingon.

Okay!  So then I had my rainbow-y background done, and of course the paper was a little wrinkly from being wet so many times, so I sat on it for a while.  Sounds weird, but I do this a lot.  I have an old pillow on top of my chair in my craft room, so sometimes I put a piece of cardstock under my leg and sit on it.  Helps flatten out slightly wrinkled paper, helps remind a card base that it's actually supposed to fold, and in this case it also helped make sure the adhesive was really good and strong holding the watercolor paper on the card base.  I put a LOT of Tombow on it because I didn't want it to go anywhere ;)

All that to say, yay rainbow inspiration!  And my inspiration came from the Global Design Project challenge this week:

Obviously I was inspired by the rainbow-type background, and my sentiment is also white on black.

I paired that with the Sunday Stamps sketch challenge:

Typically I scribble down challenges that I want to do in a little notebook and take that into my craft room with me; I craft sans computer.  So sometimes the finer details of a sketch get a little forgotten while I'm working--like my strip goes all the way to the right edge, and I put my flowers in different places, but I think the spirit of the sketch is still there.

And finally, don't forget the SUO Challenges floral challenge is still open:

If I made a card every day using a different current SU! flower stamp set, it would take me probably a month.  If I included all my retired stamps too...well, we'd be seeing flowers forever!

That's it for me today. y'all.  Cheers!  And don't worry about the ink on your fingers, it will wash off.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Bouquet, Part of My Story
Ink:  Pineapple Punch, Coastal Cabana, Melon Mambo, Gorgeous Grape, Whisper White
Paper:  Pineapple Punch, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, watercolor paper, How Sweet It Is DSP
Accessories:  Tailored Tag punch, Bouquet Thinlits, Dimensionals, white baker's twine, glitter enamel dots, white EP

Frosty & Peter and a Bit of News

Mornin', y'all!  GUESS WHAT.  I'm now a member of the Design Team over at SUO Challenges!  How's that for a fun way to start the year :)  So today is my first day as a DT member and our challenge is to make a winter project.  Of course the first thing that popped in my head was the snowman from Seasonal Chums...

I've decided this is Frosty the Snowman and his friend Peter Cottontail.  I stamped the snowflakes on a white card base in varying intensities of ink, and then sponged on a bit of Coastal Cabana just for fun.  Frosty and Peter are colored in with Blendabilities and regular markers and I decided on the combination of Coastal Cabana, Real Red, and Flirty Flamingo because as I was running at the Y track last Friday, I saw three coats hanging up and they were those colors and I liked how they looked together.  The sentiment is from the brand new Sale-a-Bration set Part of My Story, which has some great sentiments in it.

So that's it for me, kids.  I hope you'll head over to the SUO Challenges blog and play along in our winter challenge!  In the meantime, have a great day and stay frosty, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Seasonal Chums, Colorful Seasons, Part of My Story
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Coastal Cabana, Flirty Flamingo, Stampin' Blends in Real Red, Smoky Slate, Mossy Meadow, Mango Melody, and Crumb Cake
Paper:  Thick Whisper White, Coastal Cabana, Real Red
Accessories:  Seasonal Tags Framelits, Mini Dimensionals