American Thanksgiving

I didn't get around to posting my Thanksgiving cards when we celebrated this holiday in Canada, so in honour of our American friends I'm posting them now.

Until next time,

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,