Time Flies...in Pink and Brown and Gold and Cream!

 This post finishes off the last of the 2011 Stampendous Challenges, with the December challenge colorway of pink, brown, gold, and/or cream. I sort of went with a New Year's theme...threw in some music and some time, and the reminder that time flies...Tempus Fugit! I used two of my favorites of the October released Perfectly Clear sets, Time Flies and Vintage Piano. The wings were stamped and embossed on acetate with Shabby Pink Embossing Enamel. The pocket watch was stamped, embossed with Aged Gold Embossing Enamel, and cut out to be popped up with the wings. The pink panel features the music notes and vintage piano, with the sentiment embossed with Vintage Mahogany Tinsel...one of my faves as it has this rich, subtle glitter in it with a lovely chocolate color. Along with the chocolate is a gorgeous bow from May Arts ribbon. Remember, you have until January 5th to link your own creations with this color scheme for the opportunity to win the Perfectly Clear Amore Frame set! For more inspiration, visit these team member blogs:

Stampendous Impressions Blog

Wendy Jordan

Kristine Reynolds

Janelle Stolfus

Jennie Black

Wendy Price

Stephanie Lee

Jennifer Ingle

A New Recipe for the New Year

 It's my week to design the Gourmet Rubber Stamps' Weekly Recipe as seen above. For my version, I chose to use the December Diner's Club "Let's Celebrate", embossed the bells and sentiment  in silver, popping the violet cardstock against the more subtle gray and black patterned papers. Come play along with us this week and post your own version on the Gourmet Rubber Stamps' Facebook page.

Take advantage of the great sale going on now...

Gearing Up for the New Year!

Are you ready for 2012 yet? Well, Dreamweaver Stencils has seriously been "gearing" up for it. We just added three new extremely talented members to the Dream Team as was announced last week on the Dream It Up! post. We plan on making a few changes with the challenges and posting that the team does regularly, and we're super excited! Be sure to visit the Dream Team next week for the latest news, and especially, how YOU can win prizes by playing along!
Our challenge this week was to create with a New Year's/Celebrate theme. Since I don't happen to have specific New Year's stencils, I took a different look at what I do have. New Year's Eve is all about midnight celebrations. Midnight is a time. Time is clocks. Clocks have gears. See where my mind went? Scary, isn't it? Lol. I added a mirror silver cardstock panel of embossed Gears to my teal card, plus a black panel embossed and reversed (photo doesn't show this very well...), and then I embossed the Kaleidoscope stencil on the mirror silver to represent the "clock". Recently, my Dream Team Secret Santa, Georgia, gave me some Tim Holtz Sprocket Gears, so I used a couple of these for the center of the clock between the minute and hour hands. To really highlight the midnight theme, I paste-embossed in Matte Black the 12 on the punched circle, covered with black glitter, and popped it higher on the card. The sentiment was also paste-embossed and covered in glitter. I had to add the bling for New Year's!
Now be sure to visit the rest of the Dream Team to see how they are celebrating the end of 2011, and the beginning of a promising 2012!

Getting Romantic at the Diner's Club!

Done with Christmas? Yep. Me, too. I'm thinking I'll skip directly to Valentine's Day now. Well, maybe not completely, but at least for today. Today is preview day of the January Gourmet Rubber Stamps' Diner's Club set, "Sealed With a Kiss"...obviously aimed at the romantics in the world. My creation features three images from the set...the script background, the carved heart, and one of the great sentiments in the set. This set, like most of the Diner's Club sets in the Lizzie Anne Designs' line, have a mix of the cute, the pretty, and the fun, as you can see at left. Plan on seeing several more creations featuring this set! The project for today's post, is quite CAS. Both the card and box were created from Dotted Swiss Bazzill cardstock...the box with a C-Thru Take Out Box Template. Using this pretty marbled ivory cardstock, I stamped the script background over several strips and adhered them to the box and card. The carved hearts were stamped in the same Rhubarb Stalk Memento ink, with the hearts cut out in order to thread this yummy matching ribbon through into a bow. I created a tag using the sentiment for the top of the box. Visit the Gourmet Rubber Stamps blog as well as treats from the team listed at right for more inspiration. 

 

Thankful for a Wonderful Holiday?

Did you have a nice Christmas holiday? Unwrap plenty of goodies? Okay...now it's thank you time! The Woodware UK team is providing lots of great ideas for thank yous this week. Since I still had one set of Christmas images from Woodware that I hadn't used, I thought why not create a thank you for a Christmas gift with Christmas themed images? This set is called, "Snowglobe Magic", and has several cute critters and snow-themed items to place inside your snow globe. For mine, I chose the cute penguin (love penguins!), colored quickly with markers, and cut out to fit inside. The snow globe was stamped and embossed in Stampendous white embossing powder on acetate, and adhered over the top of the penguin atop panel of glitter paper. The background of the card was a panel of blue cardstock machine-embossed with the Dreamweaver Stencils' "Snow Splatter",  and the white card machine-embossed  with the Dreamweaver Stencils' "Snowflakes". The sentiment at the bottom comes from a fantastic Woodware Clear Magic set, "Tiny Phrases". I love this set as it has just about every sentiment for every occasion and the just because kind as well! Great to have on hand. Be sure to visit the rest of the team blogs as we rotate through the week for more thank you suggestions. Each day you can find the links on the Woodware UK blog.

It's Christmas Eve! Are You Feeling Challenged?

 If you actually have time to visit blogs on Christmas Eve, I guess I better provide some real eye candy...one of my favorite projects created for the Stampendous October catalog. Fortunately,  it happens to fit in with the December color challenge to use three of these four colors...pink, cream, brown, and gold. On the card, I paper pieced the Cling Rose Corset, embossing with Vintage Mahogany Embossing Tinsel. For the background I adhered and stitched bands of ribbons and trims, some vintage, some May Arts. The sentiment is from the Rose Branch Border Perfectly Clear set. Plenty of frou frou in the form of tulle, ribbon, paper roses, and tiny pearls help to create the perfect card for someone special. Then add a small decorated paper mache box to match. The perfect gift to hold a special treasure, or chocolates...or both! Since I was slightly less chatty today, it leaves you time to check out the other team posts, as well as the Stampendous blog:

Stampendous Impressions

Janelle Stolfus

Taylor Usry

Kristine Reynolds

Pam Hornschu (me)

Don't forget...if you play along with us this month, and link your creation(s) on the Stampendous blog InLinkz, you can have an opportunity to win the fabulous Perfectly Clear Amore Frame...perfect for creating Valentines and wedding cards, or smoochy cards for that special someone...just because.

Wondering who won the blog candy from my post last week? It was:

Jan Garber

 Congratulations, Jan! Please send me an email with your address to: phornschu@hotmail.com,

and your Perfectly Clear Happy Messages will be on their way!

To everyone else, hope you have a wonderful Christmas holiday with those you love near!

A Colorway and a Big Announcement!

       Okay. I promise. This is my last Christmas card post for the year. I can't help it! I love Dreamweaver Stencils' holiday designs. This Pine Cones stencil is one of my faves, and I hadn't had a chance to make a card with it this year...so this week's colorway challenge was my final opportunity! Burgundy and gold is such an elegant combination for holiday cards. I kept it simple by inking the Pine Cones stencil with Gold ColorBox pigment ink and running my Core'dinations cardstock panel through my Big Shot to transfer the gold ink to the panel and emboss the image at the same time. I covered the transferred ink with Stampendous Pirate Gold embossing powder. I love how this turned out...the embossed pine cones against the textured gold shine...really pretty. The panel was layered over another panel wrapped with gold cord, and adhered to a metallic gold card. I added a Class A' Peel Star Greeting sentiment for the final touch.
     You are welcome to play along with all of us on the team this week, and link your creation to the Dream It Up! blog. You don't have to do a holiday card, just something in burgundy in gold. Need more inspiration? Check out the rest of the team blogs as listed at right.
     Dreamweaver Stencils has an exciting announcement this week...we have invited three super talented ladies to join the team in January...Jessie Hurley from Canada, Cherylynn Moser from Oregon, and Cyndi Bundy from North Carolina. Be sure to give them a warm welcome! There will be a few changes made to the way we do our challenges on the blog, which should make it more inviting to our followers. We really want you to play along with us, so we're making it a little simpler for you to do just that! Stay tuned for more details on January 5th...our first posting with the new team members. If you haven't joined our fans on the Dreamweaver Stencils' Facebook page, go to the link and do so now. We will be offering a great stencil design as a prize to one lucky commenter on our exciting announcement on the Facebook page.

Ready for Even More RED?

Hmmm...noticing a theme here? Yep. I just posted a card for the Woodware UK with the same color scheme...and mostly the same papers as well! Lol. However, for this Woodware USA card, I featured the Woodware Teardrop Christmas Clear Magic set with a 3D effect. I layered two stamped and embossed in gold ornaments on the front of the card. The nice part is that when mailed, they flatten, and will pop back up when opened. I stamped and embossed one of the great sentiments that comes with this set as well, and added a sheer fluffy bow to finish it off! For more inspiration, visit the Woodware USA site.

Ready for More RED?

Happy Christmas to all of you! Haven't seen enough red yet this holiday season? Well, today's post should take care of that! The Woodware UK team's challenge this week was to create with the "Richness of Red". My version has a background of dotted swiss Bazzill cardstock in red, with a panel of Paper Pizazz plaid (in red), and the focal point features the Dreamweaver Stencils' "Oval Ornament". I embossed the outline on the Mercart Red aluminum using my embossing machine. Then I cut out the ornament and ran it through the embossing machine again...this time with the Dreamweaver Stencils' Southwest stencil. Because I placed the metal on the stencil color side up, I was able, afterwards, to sand away the color from the design rather than the background. I placed a portion of the Stampendous Jumbo Poinsettia sticker over the ornament, along with the bling of a few rhinestones, added a bow, and the Stampendous Christmas Greetings in Mirror Red. Seen enough red yet? Then hop around to the rest of the team's inspiring blog posts for more of the "Richness of Red"!

Stencils and Shaving Cream?

Today's post features some super simple cards that I created with a fun technique that I was playing with using Dreamweaver Stencils and the new Color Solutions alcohol inks. These new inks are highly saturated in color which leaves you the opportunity to have your color as in-you-face or subtle as you would like, depending on much you thin it out using the Color Solutions' Thinner/Cleaner. In the case of this technique, I used none of the thinner as the ink diluted slightly with the process. Have you ever done the "Shaving Cream Technique"? This creates a marbled effect on glossy cardstock (actually, any cardstock). I started by piling up shaving cream foam into a shallow pan (use the cheap stuff without moisturizers, and not gel...I usually buy the Barbisol brand). Place a few drops of the Color Solution inks over the foam, and use a chopstick or similar item to gently stir the color slightly, not necessarily blending. You want a pattern of colors in the foam. Now, normally, this is where you would place your cardstock down onto the foam, pull it away, and use a piece of cardboard, or an expired credit card, to scrape the excess off the card, leaving the color behind. This is where I tried something different. I used the foam as I would the Dreamweaver Stencils' embossing paste. I taped the Antler Snowflake* stencil to the cardstock using removable tape all around. Then I spread the foam across the stencil* with a palette knife, removing the excess, and removed the stencil*. I set aside the stenciled card to dry. When dry, I buffed off the film left behind, which left just the stenciled image with the swirls of color. The colors that I used for this process were the Iceberg Blue, Blue Velvet, and Citron. Since I had done some panels of cardstock with the swirl as well, I cut these into strips for borders on my cards, added a punched border, a machine-embossed Antler Snowflake* square, a Class A' Peel sentiment, and a few rhinestones for bling.

*For the set of cards, I also used the Gothic Snowflake, the Crystal Snowflake, and the Southwest Snowflake.

A Long Time Ago in a Hobby Lobby Far Away...

      As usual, the holiday season is just flying by! Here we are at week three of the Stampendous December Color Challenge...creating with pink, cream, gold, and/or brown. My creation this week is a set of three ornaments that spell J-O-Y (in case you couldn't figure that out by yourself). I bought these thick chipboard base letters at Hobby Lobby in Arizona when Laura Weed (Coordinator of all things Stampendous) and I were there for a Copic "Retreat" taught by our own Jenn Dove. There was nothing "retreat" about it, other than no husbands (except Jenn's cutie-pie hubby), we worked our alcohol ink-stained hands to the bone for that slave-driver...and had a blast at the same time! Anyway...back to the subject...we stopped at HL on our way home as I'd never been to a HL before. That store is HUGE! It's like Michael's on steroids! We bought so much stuff that it's a wonder that we managed to fit it in the back of my Scion tC with the luggage and all of our Copic pens.
     For these ornaments, I coated the outside edge with Versamark ink and embossed in Aged Gold Embossing Enamel. I traced and cut out the letters from soft pink patterned papers from Echo Park, Pebbles, and MME. I stamped the Cling Merry Magical and Cling Jumbo Merry Magical (which is a jumbo version of the Snow Swirl image) with Rich Cocoa Memento ink over the paper letters. I distressed them around the edges and adhered them to their respective chipboard counterparts. Then I really had some fun! I embossed with a mix of Winter Wonderland Embossing Powder and Multi Medium Crystal Glitter at the tops and bottoms of each letter, and added some Class A' Peel Dot Sparklers in pink, of course. Then I stamped the Cling Little Angels (so cute!) in Rich Cocoa, colored with Copic Markers, added Think Pink Fun Flock to their coats and hats, and a sprinkling of the Multi Medium Crystal Glitter on their wings. I carefully cut them out (there is a reason they call that "fussy cutting"!), and adhered them to the "O" along with a few punched snowflakes. Some Hemptique cord hangers were attached on the back to decorate the tree, but could easily be left off to add these cuties to any of your holiday decor.
     Now that I've shared this long story with you, I'll let you off to go visit the rest of the team that are playing along this week:

Stampendous Impressions 

Taylor Usry  

Pam Hornschu (me!) 

Melinda Gleissner 

Suzanne Czosek    

Kristine Reynolds

Janelle Stollfus

Jennifer Ingle
Wendy Price

     Be sure to leave them some love as you go. It makes them so happy. Oh, and me, too! Play along with us and link your creation(s) by January 5th, on the Stampendous Impressions' blog, or any of the team blogs where you see the "Inlinkz" icon. You could have the opportunity to win the Perfectly Clear Amore Frame:

     This week I'm once again offering blog candy for a random commenter (US only. Please leave email addy). Rather than another Christmas set, I thought I'd offer this fabulous Perfectly Clear Happy Messages:

     Oh, yeah, I almost forgot...I offered blog candy last week, too! Hee hee.  Want to know who won the Jumbo Cling Snowflakes set? It was:

MIRIAM PRANTNER!

 Congratulations! I'll be contacting you by email for your address. You will have "snow" much fun with this set!

Looking for Something?

If you are looking for either the Woodware UK post, or the Gourmet Rubber Stamps post, or the Dreamweaver Stencils' post...keep scrolling down. It's been a busy week in blogland!

A YUM-Colored Birthday Challenge

 The pic above was the inspiration for the birthday card the Gourmet Rubber Stamps gals were challenged to create this month. Definitely different colors than those we've been working with for the last couple of months! No holly berries and mistletoe here! The inspiration pic is like a breath of fresh air...a reminder that, yes, spring will return once again, even while we are snuggled under cozy afghans with steaming cups of cocoa in our hands. For my card, I featured the Lizzie Anne Designs' "Vintage Birthday" Cling set. I grabbed papers in the colors suggested, and one of these just happened to have a faint hot air balloon image on it, so off I went with it! I created a patchwork of the various papers and colors, stamped the balloons on one apricot panel, the birthday sentiment on another, and secondary sentiment on the creamy beige cardstock. A little pompom trim and brads in the deep blue-green shade finished if off. A different look than what I tend to go with, but I'm happy with it! Go visit the rest of the team to see what they have created in these yummy colors. Want to play along? Be sure to link your creation on the Gourmet Rubber Stamps Facebook page.

Dreamweaver Stencils' Sketch #13-Vintage Poinsettia

 Here we are at the final Dream Team sketch challenge for the year! This one was my design (as seen at left), so I know that I had plenty of time to think of how I would work this. Apparently not, as it was only a couple of days ago that I finally broke out the stencils, etc. to complete this. Lol. First, I needed to find a stencil that works well when either repeated three times in long thin strips, or can be cut into three sections like a triptych. I went with the latter concept, and chose to use the Poinsettia stencil. Following the technique for the "Double Glitter" Technique, I went with a slightly different approach:

1) Cut panel of cardstock. Cut panel of Double-Sided Adhesive to fit. Remove backing and adhere to panel.
2) Rub back of Poinsettia stencil with coconut soap. Brush away excess. Place stencil on adhesive panel.
3) Here's where I went a little different...instead of filling the stencil design with glitter, I filled it with some new Shabby White Embossing Enamel from Stampendous. I rubbed it into the adhesive thoroughly, brushed away all excess, removed the stencil carefully, and heated the powder to melt.
4) Once the image was cool, I poured Stampendous Copper Jewel Glitter over all the bare areas, rubbing into the adhesive thoroughly. Use a brush to remove all the excess.

The basic technique can be used with a variety of materials...glitter, embossing powder, flock, etc.

Once the panel was completed, I cut it into three strips, matted them, and adhered them to an embossed (with the Damask stencil) card. The sentiment was embossed on a partial Nestability die. Some Pebbles Glitter Candy Dots that happened to match the Mahogany Tinsel Embossing Powder melted on the 3" corsage pin attached to the Creative Impressions crinkle ribbon bow. Since this was my sketch design, I'm really curious to see what the rest of the Dream Team have created with the challenge. Why don't you play along as well? Link it on the Dream It Up!  blog while you visit over there for more inspiration. Oh, by the way, get ready for a big announcement coming from Dreamweaver Stencils in the very near future! Lots of exciting new happenings in our future! Come along for the ride!