I’ve been sick most of this week and haven’t stamped. I spent yesterday and today making tags for Christmas presents. Tonight I decided to get some fun stamping in.

I created the following two cards for the Paper Smooches Draft challenge this week.

The first thing I thought when I looked at the sketch was Christmas lights.

I hand-drew the lines and added the lights. To get the halo effect, I used the back side of the bulb image and used a lighter shade of ink. Then I used Copics to color in the bulbs.

I wanted to create a non-Christmas card too, so I came up with this one.

I love this little squirrel! I’m really happy with the colors on this one too. I ended up with the dropsies on this card, but man am I lucky – the smudge happened under where the squirrel was going – I didn’t have to re-design or start over, whew!

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This card is for the latest Trend Watch at the Paper Smooches Sparks challenge blog (cameras).

I started the card last night but had to ‘sleep on it’ before finishing it. I finally decided to keep the card very simple so the focus stayed on the kitty (love him!). To add some interest I embossed the background with circles – reminiscent of camera flashes.

Oh, while I do love the kitty image, I did pick him on purpose – he had paws just in the right position (i.e., would be covered by the camera). To add the paws back in, I just stamped them again and cut them out and glued them on top (in the right orientation).

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I created this card for my niece. I wanted something colorful and fun.

I used the harlequin stamp from Potpourri to create the floor – which turned out so much better than I thought it would – so happy!

The jukebox is stamped, colored, cut-out, and popped-up.

I love the added texture the striped impression plates – makes it look like paneling (which is what I was going for). The serendipitous part is that I was trying to get the stripes all the way down to the floor, but I gauged wrong and ended up with baseboard – and I love that extra touch! Now I just hope I can do it again the next time, lol!

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I’m squeezing in a card just before the deadline for the Paper Smooches Sparks Picture Perfect challenge.

When I saw the picture, I was drawn to the tiered platter and all the different patterns. I used those as my inspiration for my card.

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I haven’t had a lot of time to stamp lately, but there are some challenges that I really enjoy playing so when it was time to do some stamping, I made sure I pulled up those challenges first.

I used the Paper Smooches Cool Shades challenge (PBJ) for my colors, and a Retro Sketch (#16) for the layout.

I recently purchased the Paper Smooches Sugar Rush stamp set and thought it would be perfect for these colors. The layout really lended itself to making a cascade of sugary treats with which to celebrate. You can’t tell in the photo, but all the bits have glitter on them.

This is my first time using the Gina K paper for coloring with Copics. My verdict is still out. There seems to be more streaky marks left (like the paper soaks it up before I can do my next stroke). I do like the weight and the brightness of the paper.

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May is always hectic for me – between Teacher Apprecation & Mother’s Day at the beginning of the month and end of school stuff at the end…I just don’t have a whole lot of time for fun stamping.

I needed to make a RAK card today and decided to pull up a challenge – the Paper Smooches Sparks challenge. They’ve changed their format and now they have different challenges every week. This week’s challenge is a color challenge (May21 Cool Shades). I interpreted the colors as light blue, medium blue, yellow-green, and orange.

I thought the “woohoo” sentiment was perfect for what I needed so I created the scene around the owl image. Things just kept jumping into the scene – definitely not my typical CAS style, lol. I love how even though the owl isn’t all that big, because he’s the only orange thing, he pops and draws your eye.

When coloring the owl I chose to do straight color instead of shading and did his feathers in a gradient of oranges.