Birthday Wishes

The Simon Says Stamp Challenge this week is "Anything Goes", so I've decided to post a birthday card that I recently made for a good friend of mine.

I always take great pleasure in creating special cards for special people in my life. Constructing a beautiful card with a particular person in mind is like putting a little bit of your heart into the project. The card itself becomes a gift.

Here is the card I made. Hope you like it. She did!

Until next time,

Holiday Card Boot Camp

My favourite time of year to make cards has to be Christmas. There are so many possibilities for designing cards! I love the colours of Christmas and the rubber stamps are so cute and/or pretty. During the past couple of years I have managed to make a huge variety of cards to send to my family and friends. It gives me a chance to try new techniques and materials. When I worked at The Cottage Scrapbook, the Christmas card classes were among my favourite classes to teach. Here are a few of the cards that I made for those card classes. Hope you like them.

I am very excited this year because I have signed up for The 2011 Holiday Boot Camp with Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner. These ladies are so talented and they have a fabulous line-up of guest instructors for these online classes. The first class is on November 7th. I can hardly wait!

Until next time,

Digital Stamps

I've just begun to explore the world of digital stamps. One of my favourite rubber stamp artists is Mo Manning. I was first introduced to her wonderfully whimsical artwork at the CreativFestival in Toronto in 2009. At that time, I purchased several of her incredibly cute stamps at the Stamping Bella booth. Thanks to Emily, I embarked on a whole new way of colouring my stamped images with Prismacolor Premier pencils and blending with odourless mineral spirits and a paper stump. I'm continuing to refine this technique to this day and am having just soooo much fun!

Simon's Challenge this week is to create a card inspired by a Nursery Rhyme or Fairy Tale. Here's my contribution to the competition. I used a digital stamp which I purchased from Mo's Digital Pencil Shop. You really must check out the wonderful images that are available from this site! (A little comment here - please make sure you purchase Mo's images. She puts a lot of heart and soul into her artwork and deserves to be paid for her work.) I coloured this image with Prismacolor Premier pencils and blended the colour with odourless mineral spirits. I really love this technique! I added a few little details with Viva Decor Paper Pens. Don't you think she's cute?

Until next time,

Simon's Hallowe'en Challenge

Wow! Can you believe there are only a couple of weeks until Hallowe'en? Definitely going to have to stock up on chocolate bars. LOL - Can't buy them too soon or there won't be any left by Hallowe'en!

Simon's Challenge this week is to make a Hallowe'en or Goth card. Well, here's my "Purr-fectly frightful" Hallowe'en card. It turned out so cute I don't want to give it away! I'll send it off to one of my cat loving friends who will truly appreciate it.

Until next time,

Sparkle and Bling

Birthday cards are just so much fun to make. Almost anything goes! I always keep a few cards on hand that can be given to almost anyone. I also just love to design cards to suit the person to whom I'm going to be giving the card. Here are a couple of cards that I designed for my sister-in-law's birthday. The cupcake card was made with Stampin' Up stamps and their cupcake punch. To add lots of texture to the icing on the cupcake I used some Perfect Puff and sprinkled it with Glamour Dust. I also used Glossy Accents on the candle and the cherry on top. I think this card fits this week's Sparkle and Bling challenge at Simon Says Stamp perfectly. I really love a little bit of glitter - it just punches up the whole card!

My sister-in-law just loves cats, so I made her another card with lots of kitties! I used Stamping Bella stamps for this one. It was great fun to colour and cut the multiple layers to create a dimensional effect. I used coloured pencils and odourless mineral spirits to achieve the watercolour look. This is definitely one of my favourite techniques.

Until next time,