There was a mini VSN this weekend. I wasn’t home for the live postings, but I did managed to make a few cards before the deadline.

First up is my Guitar Queen. The challenge was to use a Beatles’ song as inspiration. I went with “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”….though really the only thing that translated was guitar! I went with a rocking look and bright colors. The layout is an old mojo sketch. The star was created with chipboard, white paint, pink craft ink, clear EP, and green dye ink – easy peasy! I stored much of my stamping supplies when I moved and I must have been in a very “minimalist” state of mind when I decided what would store and what would ship because I left almost all of my punches at home…boy do I miss my circle punches!! I would have added little circle mats to the brads, but making them now requires hand-cutting and I didn’t have time within the challenge limits.

Next up is my BlackJack card. This was a fun challenge – the idea was to create a card using the point system given and come up with a 21-point creation. I did it! This was a card that has been in my head since I saw the Fan Club April Inspiration. Again, I didn’t bring my cloud template so I made one. I always seem to think big when I made a cloud template, oh well. My sponge had a darker blue in it and I didn’t get it all out when I applied Bashful to the cardbase. I would also have added blue sky to the focal image panel. Ugh, sometimes time constraints really bug me!

Finally, my last VSN card uses strips of paper. I spent a lot of time with making the background, so the rest of the card is plain. I love the “plaid” background and had fun creating it! I only have one country-feel set – but it is a classic. I love my “On the Farm” set and will never get rid of it!

Thanks VSN Hostesses for some awesome challenges!

I made this card for my BIL. I don’t know many other techy people, so I definitely wanted to use this computer image. When I looked at the latest CAS challenge over at SCS (CAS08) and thought it would work perfectly.

The font for the binary lines isn’t very tech looking, but I thought it went with the whimsical lines of the computer. I was just glad that stamping all those was very easy!

First off I have to give a great big thanks to Joyclynn who sent me a whole set of bird stamps. They are the cutest things! She sent them a couple weeks ago and I really wanted to use them, but I just haven’t been in the mood to stamp. But I found out a friend of mine just moved into a new place and I wanted to send her a congrats card. So I had to use the new bird set! One of the images had a bird in a nest – which of course made me immediately think of the “new nest” sentiment. On the inside of the card I stamped the branch image from the bird set. The image is watercolored – just ink and a brush.

I haven’t stamped in what feels like forever, but is probably more realistically only a week. I’m determined to get back in the groove. I had a card I needed to make and I hoped that would spark some other ideas.

The first card is a thank you. I knew I wanted to do a pine tree for this recipient, and I needed the card to be a long card. The pine reminded me of the holidays, so I pulled out some old SU paper. I went with green and blue so it didn’t feel quite so holiday-ish. I went with white accents to balance the dark feeling from using a brown base.  Silly me, though, I knew the paper was Olive, and I thought I grabbed the Olive marker, but I got the Artichoke instead…so yes, my tree doesn’t “go” with the paper…but by the time it really bothered me, it was done! The square behind the tree is cheap chipboard (i.e., cereal box) covered with Cocoa paper and sponged with white ink.

When I was done I definitely wanted to keep stamping, so I checked out some challenges and decided to do both the Mojo Monday challenge from Julee, and the OCC stitching challenge. My daughter was invited to a birthday party this weekend, so I knew I wanted to do a girly birthday card.  When I looked at the Mojo sketch sideways, the optional triangle turned into a candle flame.  I recently appropriated an old pair of jeans into shorts for painting. I used the left over jean material and stitched a piece to Saffron cardstock. Then I stitched and sponged the edges of the Saffront layer. Since the cutting wasn’t too good on the jeans, I put everything on an angle.  I didn’t want to put accents at the bottom of the candle, like in the sketch, so instead I put eyelets throughout the candle. The flame is done with a teardrop punch which is then edged in red, sponged with orange, and stickled. I attached the flame with some wire. In retrospect, I should have used a brighter yellow or even pattern paper for the Saffron panel.