This month’s challenge with the Can You Handle the Pressure is Anything Goes with a Twist of Birds.

For my bird, I decided on a flamingo from Taylored Expressions’s Tickled Pink stamp, stencil and die set. My embossing folder is a larger Cuttlebug folder with some swirls, flowers, hearts, birds and a sun. I lightly sponged ink over the raised embossed areas, mounted my flamingo on an action wobbler, layered with black cardstock and adhered to a 5×7 card. Hmmmmm…..so the sun ended up on the bottom of the card so I very carefully lifted the layer off the card base and turned it around. Hmmmmm….now my flamingo was upside down. Sigh!!! popped that pink bird off very carefully and decided to add the “You’re Flamazing!” sentiment under the flamingo’s legs. Adhered everything down once more and completed my card for the day.

Lots of thunderstorms early this morning but thankfully no severe weather like other areas in the US are experiencing. Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Seasonal landscapes is the challenge with The Sisterhood of Crafters. The idea for my card came to me after watching a quick video on my Facebook page a few days ago. As you may know when posts are added to your FB feed things tend to get lost and could not find the post again.

My summery landscape scene portrays the hot weather that’s sure to arrive soon by blending DO Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Abandoned Coral and Ripe Persimmon inks over a masked circle die. Not to take anything away from my background, I chose to use silhouette die cuts in black cardstock. Penny Black’s Pasture Grass and Spellbinders Flutter Tree completes my card. No outside sentiment needed in my opinion. I think this will be part of my batch of cards for “Making Cards for Troops” group.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Anything Goes Embossing with a Twist of Butterflies is the challenge for the Can You Handle The Pressure team. For my embossed feature I used two embossing folders the clouds embossing folder is from Darice and Cuttlebug’s Stylized Flowers embossing folder. Both were partially embossed and lightly inked leaving a space for my Gina K Designs Sketched Flowers sentiment. I added two score lines to separate my cloud from my vines. The twist is a butterfly from Pretty Pink Posh’s Beautiful Butterfly stamp & die set. The butterfly was stamped on a gel press background that was unused from Day 3’s homework at Spring CardCamp.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Saturday was a Bonus Day at the Spring CardCamp with Kelly Taylor instructing Ghosting and Faux Letterpress which will give your a 2-for-1 card technique. And guess what? It finally worked!! I struggled with the letterpress but following Kelly’s directions gave me a much better result. Ink blend a panel with water reactive inks. Die cut image from 80 lb cardstock and then again from watercolor cardstock. Glue the two die cut laters together and keeping the watercolor layer on the top, spray with water, place on the inked panel and run through as embossed panel in your machine. The tip was to dry the smooshed together cardstocks with your heat tool then carefully peel off and it really worked. I did have one little section that pulled off a little color from my blended sheet but covered that up with the star embellishments.

Fun challenge and a fun two weeks at CardCamp. I guess school is officially out for summer!!

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time.

Take care and be safe.

Today’s Spring CardCamp class lesson was presented by GinaK to create a card using rainbow colors and die cuts. I opted for two die cuts from Sketched Flowers and using my various rainbow ink pads inked the leafy vines then stamped with versamark and clear heat embossed. The background continues with a rainbox of colors using the inked brushes over the square dance stencil, layered on a piece of black cardstock then mounted on my vibrant green card base. I was inspired by and CASE’d Cathy Zielske’s YouTube card from yesterday.

Fun challenge today. the second instructor was Zsoka Marko who created die cut background cards.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Day 9 classes at Spring CardCamp 2022 was led my Jennifer McGuire and we learned an in-lay diecutting technique which ends up with the image panel having no raised dies but flat and smooth. I made a woodgrained background by swiping GDK honey mustard and dark sage over my scored background then die cut one image at a time.

Yana Smakula continued the lesson and we went from flat to stacked and off set. I cut my frame and word dies from 4 different shades of light weight cardstock and off set them slightly for dimesion. The background is a combination of a GKD leaf stencil and one from Stamperia.

Two different looks but came together nicely.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Day 8 at Spring CardCamp 2022 was to create “realistic 3D flowers using die cut flowers. The lesson was taught by Caly Person and an alternate lesson by Dana Joy creating watercolored die cut flowers. So this was the only stand alone flower and leaf die in my stock of goodies and I opted for a more non-realistic grouping of flowers for my card. I like the background so I may try again but this time with flower stamps and dies.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Our class today at the Spring CardCamp 2022 was Faux Letterpress die cuts. Cut your die 3 times from heavy cardstock and once from vellum, glue together and ink the vellum layer in a pigment ink and run through your machine on emboss mode. Kristina Werner was the instructor on this class and our background was supposed to be water colored. Kristina used DO reinkers, however, as I do not own reinkers, I used the ink pads with water and a brush to achieve my background. If you look closely you can hopefully see my seashells faux letterpress. This was like following a Martha Stewart recipe…..looked good but didn’t turn out quite right. I do like my inked (water colored) background though.

Here’s my other attempt:

After die cutting the jungle frame 3 times from heavy cardstock and once from vellum, I inked the vellum in black soot distress ink. Well that made pretty much of a mess because my sandwich slid a little bit so I wiped off the black soot and cut another piece of vellum which I should have added to the back of my stack but decided to add to the top and the result gave me more of a raised embossed look. The other side which was watercolored didn’t really look that great so I added some more ink and water to this side. I like this look even though it didn’t fit the homework assignment.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.

Today’s lesson at Spring CardCamp 2022 was Color Blocking using die cut cards. I was able to create the card using the same die and colors as the presenter Keisha Charles. Used press n seal after die cutting to keep all the pieces in order then chosing certain ones to color and then glue in place. The large pink flower petals are popped up on foam squares…clever….to give extra dimension. It did get a little confusing when I took all of the petals for the same color to be ink blended then forgot where they belonged. I had to fit some of them back in the die for the proper location. LOL.

The second card in the class uses color blocking by cutting apart the coverplate die. Angles were not my friend even with a diagram from Keisha, I couldn’t get it quite right but it’s better than horrible!!!! I even used a scrap template! I dry embossed the pincushion die before cutting it apart for a little more detail.

It was a fun day in class.

Thanks for stopping in for a peek. I appreciate you and your time. Take care and be safe.