A Tiny Craft - Halloween

 This month's challenge at A Tiny Craft is to make Artists' trading cards with a Halloween theme to them. Again I am making lunchbox cards for our local food bank for the kid's lunch program.  I chose halloween gnomes because how can you go wrong with gnomes??  Play along with us, will you?

SOS - pumpkin spice and everything nice

This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is to use something fall related on your project.  We had Canadian thanksgiving this weekend and I needed a card to bring to one of our dinners. This little pumpkin pie worked out great for the theme and in cuteness. Play along with us, will you?

 

SOS - musical notes

 

This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is to use musical notes on your project.  I am starting on my Christmas cards and was playing around with some embossing powder resist and some ink blending to see what colour combinations I could come up with.  I was pretty happy with how it came out.  Play along with us, will you?

A Tiny Craft - Fall/Autumn

 

This month's challenge at A Tiny Craft is to make an ATC for fall or autumn...what is more fall than orange and leaves??  Maybe pumpkins, I guess but I went for the leaves myself.  It is starting to feel like fall here and our leaves are starting to change.  School has started up again and the evenings and mornings are crisp.  As always my ATC cards get donated to the Harvest Manitoba breakfast program and these challenges make the cards I make so much more fun.  Play along with us, will you?

SOS - back to the books

 

This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is back to the books.  With school starting in our area this week, it is a fun and appropriate challenge. I masked off all of the books to make a rainbow pile as my stamp only had 5 books in the pile and there is no way that 5 books are ever enough.  Play along with us, will you?

Altenew Educator's course - Magical Marker Techniques

 This is my second to last course in the Altenew Educator program for level 2.  I am so excited that I am almost finished it and have had so much fun with it.  This class was the Magical Marker Techniques by Sara Naumann.  This first card was my favourite one of the class.  It was using alcohol spray on an embossed metal paper coloured with shades of green ink.  The technique was a new one for me and I am not sure if the effect worked the same as in the class but I do love the final effect on this paper.  I did it in several layers as I could not get the ink to reactivate the same as in the class but the splatter effect and almost patina look really worked for me anyway.

This card used two marker techniques in combination with each other - brayers and vellum colouring.  I loved the rainbow sunset look that I tried to mimic in the background of the card as well.  I found I had to add a piece of white card stock behind the vellum image as it was getting lost on the background.

These two cards were using markers with stencils and rulers to try and make interesting backgrounds.  I quite like the way they turned out.  I went with a gradient of markers to make the poinsettia card and use the stencils to fill in the flowers and tried to make it a "watercolour" effect with rubbing alcohol.  I didn't like it at first because it looked like the markers just ran into each other, but as it dried the card grew on me.  I did a lined stencil background with a grey marker to soften up the intensity of the very bright flowers.

For this final card I used the dies to make a stencil of the leaves and then traced them onto the card stock for a loose doodled looking design.  I am not good with freehand drawing and not a huge fan of my doodling so I was kind of skeptical of the what the end result would be.  I added a little gold washi tape and some sequins to try to pull in the fall colours into the card and I quite liked the end result.

Thanks for taking the time to look at the cards I made from the inspiration of this class and it's techniques.

SOS - Summer Lovin'

 This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is called Summer Lovin' and that is what we are doing here in my hometown...mostly because we don't want it to end.  We know here what comes next and it is winter which is soooo long and harsh and cold that one could only hope summer would last all year...but alas we have about a month more of nice weather and then the snow will fly.  I want to absorb every last minute of it.  What is more summery than a huge ice cream cone?  Play along with us, will you?

SOS- Wood you believe?

 

This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is to use wood on your project...real or paper (which is sort of wood anyway, isn't it?) will fly for this project.  I love this aged teal wood look paper...I think I have used the last of it up and it makes me sad, but I am glad that I am using up my stash.   Play along with us, will you?

A Tiny Craft - ATC challenge group - Anything goes

 Welcome to the inaugural post for me as part of the design team for A Tiny Craft ATC challenge blog.  I am excited to take on this challenge and learn all there is to making ATCs or Artist Trading Cards.  I am new to these little works of art and am already addicted to them.

I have never made artist trading cards before, but I am absolutely no stranger to making little projects.  I make inspirational lunch box cards for our local food bank here in Manitoba and to date have made them over 4500 of them to put into kids' take home weekend breakfast program here in our city.  They require over 1200 of them a week and since COVID-19 hit here the demand is even bigger as they do weekday breakfasts and weekend ones.  Each kid gets an inspirational message with their breakfast to know that people care about them.  I have decided that the majority of my ATC's that I make for this design team will be used for these lunchbox cards (unless of course they are inappropriate for little eyes if you know what I mean??) - so I am so looking forward to this challenge.

This first challenge is my favourite kind - anything goes....how can you resist on this??  They are pretty easy to make - rectangles at 2.5" by 3.5" or coins that are 2.5".  Will you play along with us?

SOS - let's get sketchy

 This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is to get sketchy.  Using a sketch is a great jumping off point to do a card and we are using the sketches from Craft with Sara to get our inspiration.

I chose sketch #003 and followed along with the basic design but not so much with the dimensions.  I love that you can alter a sketch to fit your project or style while still using it to get a basic image or design of what you want your card to end up resembling.  Play along with us, will you?

SOS - what's bugging you

 

This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is to use a bug of any sort on your project....nothing is much cuter than a little inch worm wishing you a happy birthday, so that is what I chose to do.  I was playing with my ink blending and masking for the background and some storybook colouring to finish it off.  Play along with us, will you/

Altenew Educators Course - Impressive Heat Embossing

 

I loved this Impressive Heat Embossing class from Altenew.  Heat embossing is one of my favourite techniques and I really enjoyed revisiting some techniques I haven't used in a while.

I forgot how much I liked making clear watermark backgrounds and this little camping scene was absolutely perfect for it.  The clear embossing powder gives it some texture and the repeating pattern was fun to do.

I liked the way this card turned out so much that I made 6 of them to try and stock up on my masculine cards.

I also learned that some of of my embossing powders stick way better than other ones.  The bright pink one on the bottom of this card refused to stick even after heating it up three times.  I covered up on the oopsie by adding some flowers to the bottom corner.

I love the look of the emboss resist on the tye dye looking paper.  I made this with several layers of colour burst.  This one and the cupcake one had multiples made because I always need masculine cards and never have enough in my stash.

Thanks for looking....only two classes to go and I have completed level 2...if you were ever thinking of taking this course, there is a wealth of knowledge available to you...just saying.

Altenew Educator Certification Class - Colour Your Day

 So, I just finished the card class from Altenew called Colour Your Day and it was an awesome class.  There were several uses of colour that were explained in the class that lead you to more colour balanced cards that are visually pleasing.  I truly loved the triad colour wheel lesson and decided that would be my focus card for this class.

I chose the green, orange and purple triad in the colour wheel and watercolored some flowers to get a few different of the triad of colours.  I love the way it turned out.  There is so much texture and dimension to it and the white background really makes the flower colours stand out more dramatically.

I also did a card for each of the other classes to complete the course.  I really like doing a card or two for each class to really cement the techniques being presented.  Sometimes it is new information for me and sometimes it is just a refresher from an older technique that I have forgotten about.  Either way each class has me making at least 6 cards and I am sure gathering a nice collection.

The 70/20/10 proportion for colour blocking is a new technique for me.  I found that I have generally done that naturally, but did not know that is was an actual thing.  Now that I am aware of it, I have gone back and looked at some of my past projects and realized I do it quite often....who knew?

Anyway, thanks for looking and stay tuned for my cards from the next completed class...

SOS - Christmas in July

 This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is Christmas in July.  It's a self-explanatory challenge of a Christmas project....easy peasy right?  I used up a complete kit for this challenge that I purchased last year.  I figured I may as well use the whole thing instead of just make one card....the kit was supposed to make 8 cards but I easily got 20 out of it.  These will be donated to our local nursing homes in a card making challenge that I am a part of in our city.  Not bad for a quick two hours of assembly.  Play along with us, will you?

SOS - Tropical delights

 This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is "tropical delights" - using any tropical item - palm trees, hula girls, hibiscus flowers, tiki huts, parrots, fruity tropical beverages etc...summery sunshine to you heart's content.  I chose to do a Hibiscus project with some alcohol inks and glittery paper for a bit of a different take on the traditional Hawaiian looking flower....more of a space galaxy feel to it.  Play along with us, will you?

SOS - fur babies

 This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is all about your fur babies.  Cats, dogs, rabbits, lizards or whatever you have or love can be your inspiration....I have a little mixed breed puppy named Penny that is a chihuahua, jack Russel, pug cross and she is 9 years old....she sure has been my pal the last little while and loves that everyone is here locked up tight for Covid lockdowns.  She is definitely someone who is benefitting from all of our super strict restrictions that we have in place, but she is sure missing visitors.  Play along with us, will you?

SOS - gnomes

 This week's challenge at Shopping our stash is all about gnomes - or other mystical creatures like unicorns and mermaids....I love gnomes.  They are everywhere in my house and I love them for card making too.   I have so many gnome supplies that it was hard to choose which to use.  We are locked down here and the kids are all doing at home learning, but the weather is finally nice so I thought I would blend the two.  Play along, will you?

SOS - Here fishy fishy

 This week's challenge at Shopping our Stash is to use a fish on your project - or something fishing related.  I love these layering fish from Altenew and I can't get enough of them...along with this water illusion stencil from My Favourite things and you have a fantastically fishy card.  Play along with us, will you?