Subtle Fresh Cuts

Another sympathy card, sorry if it bums you out! Maybe just imagine a different sentiment! I made this one for with one of my husband's male cousins in mind. I was going for a card that would be recieved well by a man, thus the distressing.

I used the 9th Anni-Verve-Sary sketch (see it here). I used the SCS Color Challenge 178 (using the retiring In-Colors with a neutral)for my color scheme. I'm pretty sure that Brown is a neutral, don't you think? I added the butterfly, as an afterthought and to qualify my card for the Meet the Verve Divas, Part 5. I might have moved away from my original intention to make it masculine.

One last thought, I used my blender pen to pick up the In-Color ink from the stamp pad lid and then applied it to the Fresh Cut image.

Here are the details for the card:

Stamps: Fresh Cuts, Brighter Tomorrow, Live Your Dream
Paper: River Rock, Close to Cocoa, Soft Sky, Very Vanilla
Ink: Close to Cocoa, River Rock, Soft Sky
Accessories: MM distressing tool, 1/4" circle punch, stampin' sponges, blender pen, stampin' dimensionals, SU brads, two way glue pen, mini glue dots, paper snips
Techniques: distressing

All products used are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

Bold Bleeding Hearts

Just one more sympathy card and I hope I don't have to do another for quite some time! But I love how this card turned out. I will have to do it again and change the sentiment.

I made this card using the Anni-Verve-Sary sketch number 8. I also submitted this card for consideration for the Flourished Featured Stamper Challenge. It's an ongoing challenge each week and you need to use a Flourishes image. I really love the bleeding heart image and I used my white Inkessentials pen to define the flower a bit. I also clear embossed the same flower image on the white panel, just for interest. It turned out pretty.

Here are the details on the card:

Stamps: Brighter Tomorrow, Spring Ephemerals (Flourishes)
Paper: Whisper White, Rose Red, BG Perhaps
Ink: Rose Red, Old Olive, Versamark
Accessories: SU brads, clear ep, heat tool, mat pack, corner rounder, 1/2" circle punch, Inkessentials white gel pen, stampin dimensionals, oval template
Techniques: embossing

All products are Stampin' Up unless otherwise posted.

One of my all time favorite stamps!

Do you have a stamp set that you just go to when you can't come up with something else? Or one you grab when everything else you try just doesn't look right? The Art of Life is the one I go for! I love this set.


I needed a load of sympathy cards and that was horrible! But I made the best of it - and here is what I came up with. I used the Anni-Verve-Sary sketch #7 and picked my colors to go with the SCS Color Challenge 178 (using the retiring In-Colors and neutrals). It is almost unbearable to me that SU retired River Rock. It is a perfect neutral and so I ordered plenty to sustain me for a while.

No really tricky techniques here. Since the In-Colors aren't available in markers, I used my blender pen to ink up the stems of the flowers in River Rock.

Here are the details of this card:

Stamps: The Art of Life, Brighter Tomorrow
Paper: Very Vanilla, Groovy Guava, River Rock, River Rock dsp
Ink: Groovy Guava, River Rock
Accessories: Very Vanilla Taffeta, Mat Pack, Paper Piercing Tool, Corner Rounder, Scallop Edge Punch, Stampin' Dimensionals, Blender Pen
Techniques: Paper piercing

All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted

Natural Sympathy

This card turned out better than I had hoped! I made this card for my husband's aunt whose husband just passed. He had been ill and she didn't tell the family just how ill he was. I'm not sure if she didn't want to face it herself or if she was just trying to spare others the grief. It's hard to know.

Anyway, if I owned any Copics, this would be a great set to work on! Alas, I do not and so I used my AquaPainter to pick up color out of the lids of the ink pads and colored in my image! This is the #4 Anni-Verve-Sary sketch, see here. The card is pretty straight forward. The only thing that might be questionable from the photo is that I sponged blush blossom ink around the outside edge of the Confetti White circle and then stamped the sentiment in Groovy Guava.

Here are the details for this card:

Stamps: Natural Beauty, So Very
Paper: Groovy Guava, Mellow Moss, Confetti White, Blush Blossom
Ink: Groovy Guava, Mellow Moss, Blush Blossom, Basic Brown
Accessories: Aquapainter, Sheer white ribbon, 1 3/8" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, sponge dauber, stampin' dimensionals
Techniques: watercoloring


All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

Sydney's Birthday Whimsy!!!

I made this card for my daycare provider's daughter. Several posts back, you can see the birthday invites that she and I worked on together! She's a really sweet girl. I will be sad when she becomes more interested in her own friends than the little girls at daycare. I know that day is coming. Oh well, by then, Sweet Pea will be making friends of her own.

For this card, I started with the Anni-Verve-Sary sketch #3, see here! I struggled with the scalloped piece that looks like the awning! I just couldn't find the right color or look. I ended up just going with a Whisper White piece with Kiwi Kiss ink sponged over the top. I also masked off the cake to make the candles shorter, because the candles on the stamp as it is were too long for the size of square that I wanted to use. It wasn't my favorite, but Sydney is not fussy at all!

Here are the details for this card:

Stamps: Birthday Whimsy
Paper: Rose Red, Whisper, White, Kiwi Kiss, Pretty in Pink dsp
Ink: Rose Red, Pretty in Pink, Kiwi Kiss, Only Orange
Accessories: Scallop Edge punch, 1 3/8" square punch, 1 1/4" square punch, pink grosgrain ribbon, stampin' dimensionals. stampin' sponge, blender pen, mini glue dots
Techniques: masking, sponging

All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

Dragonfly Verve Sketch #2

Does it ever happen to you? Does life just take over and you end up with zero control? (or what feels like zero control?)

Well, this time of year is one where our garden just starts exploding with fruits, vegetables and herbs! I find very little time for me to do relaxing creative things when I am in the kitchen snapping beans, shelling peas, preparing jars for beans and beets and all other veggies!

This last week has been especially uncomfortable with boiling water and pressure cookers and temperatures outside in the upper 80's! I don't mean to complain, I will be thrilled in the dead of winter when I am enjoying the fruits of my labor!

This card and 7 others have been waiting patiently for a week now to be uploaded and described. So here goes - This one I created for Twelve Days of Anni-Verve-Sary Sketches. I used sketch number 2 for this one. Here are the details with regard to the card!

Paper: Close to Cocoa, River Rock, Old Olive, Very Vanilla
Ink: Close to Cocoa, River Rock, Old Olive, Versamark pen
Stamps: Full of Life, Painted Dragonfly by Rubber Stampede
Accessories: Very Vanilla Taffeta ribbon, SU brads, crystal effects, Stampin' Dimensionals

All products are Stampin' Up! unless otherwise posted.

Verve Dreams Sketch 1

Sorry if I left any one you hanging! I posted the picture and then never got back to the details. Anyway, I got my new SU colors and had to play with them.

Verve is having a lot of fun for the next week of so, with their Anniversary celebration. I used this sketch from the first day of the celebration!

So back to the details about my card. I embossed the three flower grouping from Live Your Dream on the solid Pirouette Pink piece with clear ep (a little reminder from Kristina brought this to my mind). I used the rock and roll technique on the butterflies and sort of on the flowers. Okay, well not really! I inked the flowers up with Pirouette Pink and then used the corner of my Kiwi Kiss stampin' pad to ink over the leaves and stems. I squished the Red Riding Hood pad to get ink in the lid and then used a blender pen to apply that red to the edges of the pink flower. I also sponged Pirouette Pink around the edge of the image panel. I like the effect!

Everything else is self explanatory!

Paper: Pirouette Pink, Red Riding Hood, Whisper White, Kiwi Kiss, Bella DSP
Ink: Pirouette Pink, Red Riding Hood, Kiwi Kiss, Versamark, Chocolate Chip
Stamps: Live Your Dream
Accessories: Light Pink sheer Ribbon, Stampin' Dimensionals, Mini Glue Dots, Two-way Glue Pen
Tools: Scallop Edge Punch, Paper Piercing Tool, Heat Tool, Stamping Sponge