Coffee Encouragement

Today's card is based on the sketch over at Card Patterns. Definitely a fun layout, and I thought it went well with the Mug Trio set. The mug was done with versamagic wheat, versamagic pink petunia, and then brilliance pearlescent orchid as the last layer - had to end with some shimmer! ;) I created the "coffee" with a colored pencil, and then went over it with glossy accents. The papers are BasicGrey Sugared, and I think the ruffled brown ribbon is May Arts. I promise this is cuter IRL than it looks here; I took a ton of pics, but just couldn't capture the richness of the pinks. Anyway, I'm already planning to package up some coffee and biscotti and pass this along to a friend for a little pick-me-up!

Our last tea party!

Hard to believe, but this is the last tea party of the smARTworks' Design Team year! I had the privilege of hosting this time around, and decided to keep things pretty simple: brown, white and 1 accent color - and some shimmer or sparkle in there somewhere.

I pulled out my Coffee Time set and started playing around. I ended up masking the larger cup, then stamping the small cup off to the side - that looks friendly, right? I painted the cups with Twinkling H2Os for the sparkle factor (I challenged myself NOT to use glimmer mist on this card, LOL!); I chose to use a bluish lavender as my accent color, and even attempted to do just a bit of shading on the cups. I then added the sentiment, trimmed it down and matted it (with the corners on the mat rounded). I added a brown panel across the bottom with the top edge scalloped (using my corner rounder punch), and then tied on some dotted ribbon (May Arts). Quite simple, but sometimes it's nice to take a break from patterned papers and embellishments... (BTW, the pic is much clearer if you click on it)

Check out what the other smART cookies have created for today's party: In the Works, Mama Dini's Stamperia, Dee's Studio, & Sweet Somethings! (And I heard a rumor that there might be some free rubber up for grabs somewhere...)

Great day!

Well. I had a great time at the crop yesterday. Nearly everyone else was scrapbooking while I was "the card girl." Works for me! :) It really was a ball, and I even won a very nice basket with cool alpha charms, ribbon, paper and other goodies.

Here's one card I made, utilizing the Mug Trio set. I actually only used the first two layers of the mug, though (SU brocade blue stamped off once, then bordering blue) and then paired it with papers from Making Memories. I split the sentiment up with my stamp-a-ma-jig, and was delighted to see how well it fit on the mug.

Back with more later!

You've Bean a Blessing

I mentioned smARTworks' new "Trios" line earlier this week, and here's my first finished product. The flowers are all beautiful, but I just love this mug set. Dina designed the images to start with the lightest color and darken progressively, but I wanted to see how it would look starting with the darkest image on the bottom. I love how it turned out! My initial mug is stamped with sepia (Versafine, same ink I used for the sentiment), then the second layer is wheat (Versamagic), and the final highlight is white (Technique Tuesday). I can see myself having a lot of fun playing with colors on this image :) Anyway, after I'd stamped my initial image, I noticed the Mojo33 sketch I'd jotted down earlier in the week, and figured that it worked pretty well with my mug. I layered it with papers from the BasicGrey Sugared pad, playing around until I came up with this combo that's feminine but not overly girly. The final touch was the three little embellishments on the side... and yes, those really are coffee beans. A bit corny perhaps, but I love it!

To Perk You Up

I squeezed in a bit of stamping time this afternoon, and made this quick card using today's sketch over on SCS. I'm still trying to use up some of the paper that I've accumulated, and I grabbed the DCWV glitter stack; I think the bright colors were a reaction to the gray, rainy day we were having :) I think everything is pretty straightforward - the coffee cup is Inque Boutique, and the sentiment is Stampendous. I'm not quite sure what happened with the photo and the coloring on the cup... it doesn't look all smeary like that IRL. Anyway, it was a fun card to make and perfect to send on to a friend.

Caffeine!! Caffeine!!

Since I already had my Fabriano notecards and watercolor crayons out yesterday, I made this second card later in the afternoon. This one uses Dawn Houser images (Inkadinkado) and are red rubber mounted with foam and a repositionable adhesive back. They work pretty well, but the index on this set is not accurately printed (I do, however, have another set that is spot on). My other beef is that there is quite a lot of extra rubber on the edges. I worked around it, though, and carefully inked up the mug and stamped onto a piece of a previously mucked up notecard. I added a bit of color with the watercolor crayons (prismacolor pencils obscure the fun words too much), carefully ripped the panel, then covered the edges with versamark and embossed with scented embossing powder (CHF). Mmmmmm... I added the sentiment to the bottom, and now it's ready to brighten someone's day!