Some more Mixed Media fun

Happy Sunday! It's been a rainy afternoon here today and the kids have been busy playing with their friends, so I decided to try another mixed media project. These are so much fun and messy :-)

I started out by selecting two different designer papers to create a background scene. I applied mod podge over my mixed media card stock, then added the papers and then another layer of mod podge. 

Added some gesso to lighten it up a bit.

The image (Hopeful from Whimsy's Wee Stamps collection) has been stamped onto xpress blending card, colored with copics and cut out. I adhered it onto the papers using mod podge. Then I heat embossed some Penny Black leaf stamps. There was a blank spot where it didn't stamp well, so I decided to add the pink diecut flower.  I also added some diecut clouds (Memory Box) and the sun (from Whimsy's sun, moon, star die set). Then painted another layer of mod podge onto the whole card and let it dry. I added some black embossing along the edge, but didn't like how it looked, so I decided to place it behind a frame to hide some of the embossing. Sentiment is from another set by Whimsy Stamps - just a note notables 6

I finished the card off by adding a little button with some twine.

 I am entering my card here:

Amusing-  Anything Goes
Get Inky! -  Die Cuts
Stampin' For The Weekend -  Buttons and Bows
Addicted to Stamps and More - Coloring
 Brown Sugar – Anything Goes

Thanks for stopping by!

Sweet & Sassy

I should really have been doing some cleaning, but I had a card idea on my mind, and so that took priority :-) There's more time to clean afterwards.

I used some stamps from Whimsy's latest rubber stamp release. Image stamp from the Elisabeth Bell collection - Miss Sunkissed, and sentiment from SC designs - Girl Talk.The image has been stamped on to copic blending card using memento tuxedo ink, and then colored using copic markers. I cut it out after coloring using cutterbee scissors. To stamp the words on the inside of the heart, I stamped the image a second time onto a post it note, cut out part of it to use as a mask.

I cut the sentiment out using part of Whimsy's Contest Ribbon die set. 
On the top part I used Whimsy's double scallop border die and some espresso card stock. Somehow it looks black in the photo, but it is just a dark brown. I embellished with a little button and twine, and a few sticky rhinestones.

I'd love to play along in a few challenges today:

 ABC Challenge -  J is for Just as you like it  

 Crafting from the Heart -Anything Goes

 Creative Card Crew  - Girly  

Crafty Catz - Anything Goes

Get Inky! -  Die Cuts 

Thanks so much for visiting!

 Hope you have a nice and sunny weekend! 

Playing with Mixed Media

I watched a few mixed media videos recently and wanted to give it a try.

 Here is what I came up with :-)

It was so much fun, now my hands are sticky from the mod podge, inky from gesso and distress inks and my desk a huge mess :-)

I started out by cutting a piece of mixed media card stock to the size of 4x 5.25 inches. Applied mod podge to it using a foam brush, then I added my torn designer paper scraps to the card, and then brushed mod podge over it again. Rubbed some gesso here and there onto the designer paper and more mod podge. Inked up the grass and some other background stamps using distress ink. A heating tool was  used to dry it, but the grass did end up smearing a little bit. The fairy (Whimsy Stamps - Flower Fairies) was stamped using stazon ink, and I used distress inks for coloring her in. I inked up the edges using versamark and sprinkled some gold embossing powder onto it for a golden edge. Sentiment (Whimsy - Lovely Spring Sliders)was stamped onto white card stock, distressed with inks, and then cut out using a whimsy stamps Slider 2 die. Finished it off with some twine and added a punched butterfly. 

I know this is a little different from my usual style, but I really want to try a few different techniques. 

Playing along in a few challenges:

4 Crafty Chicks - Embossing ( I heat embossed the gold around the edges)
Creative Knockouts- Anything Goes
Cute Card Thursday - Blue and Green
 Artistic Stampers - Embossing and Texture

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Whiff of Joy - Tag, you're it

Happy Tuesday and thanks for stopping by! Today is my turn to share something on the Whiff of Joy blog, and since it's a Tuesday it's "Tag you're it" day.

For "Tag you're it" day the Design Team member is to look around the web for a tag creation using whiff of joy products and then ask the designer's permission to use their creation for inspiration on the Whiff of Joy blog.

Below is my tag using a stamp from the Spring Secret Stamp kit, that is sadly no longer available now. But you can now pre-order the Summer stamp kit, which I am sure it just as adorable, although I haven't seen it yet. 

I colored the image using copic markers. The blue paper in the back is actually a basket style coffee filter, that I inked up using dye inks. You can read about the technique that I used HERE. Fun and very messy :-) After the ink dried on the filter, I stamped the music note onto the paper using gesso.

The circles were cut using a die from Whimsy stamps, as you can see I only used parts of the die on the right side and the top left. This time I stamped the music note image onto the white paper using very light turquoise ink. And sponged it a little bit using turquoise ink.

The sentiment was also cut into a tag, and tied onto my sparkly tinsel ribbon with some twine. Both the music note and sentiment are part of the spring stamp kit. I added some lace, glitter and a few rhinestones for some sparkle.

Of course I wanted to show you the gorgeous tag that inspired my creation. It was made by the amazingly talented Alice. I am sure many of you are familiar with her work, if not be sure to visit
 her blog. She created the tag below a few years ago. I simply fell in love with the sketch and of course her coloring is simply stunning.

I would love to play along in a few challenges as well:

Addicted to Stamps and More -   Anything goes 
Crafting By Designs -  Anything goes
Crafting for all Seasons - Ribbons and Lace
Simon Says Stamp - Animals

Have a great day and thanks for visiting!

PS: Don't forget - the Secret Stamp kit No. 2 is now available for pre-order!!

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Blossoms and Blooms for Penny Black

Good morning and happy Friday! I hope you have some fun things planned this Easter weekend. Hubby has to work as usual :-(  His days off are Mondays and Tuesdays. But at least he should be home by 3pm.

Since today is the 18th, it's time for our midmonth reminder at Penny Black and More. This month our theme is Blossoms and Blooms. I hope you'll join us if you haven't yet, and you can enter up to 3 times for more chances to win. As usual we have several fabulous sponsors giving away some fantastic prizes.

The main floral stamp on my card is from the set "Delicate Florals" by Penny Black, one of my new favorite stamp sets.

To make the paper in the background I tried a watercolor wash, then I stamped a background stamp (from Whimsy Stamps - Life Defined) onto the watercolor paper.  The fern and grass in the background are stamps from the set "Enjoy Life" by Penny Black.

Sentiment is from Flonzcraft, one of our sponsors this month. I embellished with twine and glitter.

Playing along in a few challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More -   Anything goes 

Crafting By Designs - Anything goes 

Fab 'n' Funky -  Flowers

  

Hope you have a fabulous day and 

a nice and sunny Easter. 

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Egg-cellent shaving cream

Happy Monday! I hope your week is of to a good start. We got a snow shower going on at the moment. 80 Degrees on Saturday, and now we're back in the 30's. Good thing it will only last for a couple of days. And hopefully this extreme weather change won't hurt my newly planted apple trees!

I had some time today to get inky today, and decided to use the shaving cream technique again. The new Easter Eggs Sentiment set from Whimsy Stamps was perfect for this technique. 

I started out by embossing the egg using versamark ink and white embossing powder. The little chicks and tiny egg were colored with markers, then I used a versamarker over those tiny colored image, so I could emboss those parts with clear embossing powder (to prevent my shaving cream mixture to ink them). 

If you are unfamiliar with the shaving cream technique, I did a tutorial on my blog a little while ago, you can find it HERE. 

 

I cut the egg out after using the shaving cream technique. I used my scissors to cut out the egg, but there is an egg die available matching the sentiment set. To create the other two eggs on my card, I simply traced the embossed egg, and cut them out using different colored card stock. This is where the egg die would have really come in handy :-)

The flowers that I added to my card were done using the new garden flowers die set. Grass was done with a MS punch, clouds were done using Memory Box dies. I wanted to add a little "cute" factor, so hubby suggested a little bee. I used one from a Penny Black stamp, and a butterfly punch for the butterfly.

The paper in the background was made using the same shaving cream mixture that I used for the egg. I embellished with some rhinestones and glitter, and some twine.

I'd love to play along in a few challenges:

The Pink Elephant - Easter
Dream Valley -  Easter

Sentimental Sundays -  Embossing (embossed easter egg)  
Stamping Sensations -Dies and/or Punches
Crazy 4 Challenges - Get their egg on

Have a great day!! 

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Winner of last Wordplay Saturday Challenge

Happy Weekend everyone! As I mentioned last month, I am taking a break from the Wordplay Saturday challenge over spring and summer. I want to thank everyone again for your support in my monthly challenge. It was always so nice to see many of you joining in!! I hope to be back with the challenges in September. Of course I will still continue blogging in the meantime.

Now for the winner of the March challenge,

random.org chose #30. That is

Kate T.

who entered this adorable card.

 

Congratulations Kate! Please email me your complete address at ellibelle_blog at yahoo dot com so I can send the prize out to you.

Have a fabulous weekend!!

Black and White Photography

I don't have a card to share today, but I have been falling in love with black and white photography, and decided to share a couple photos that I took today.

Below is a photo of my cat Fussy. We got her from the shelter in 2010. She is very shy, and it took her a long time to get used to us.

This is our ginger cat Thomas. He was also adopted from a shelter in 2010, about a month before Fussy. He is a very friendly cat, but scared of strangers. He thinks he is the master of the house :-)

This is another photo of Thomas.

Finally, I decided to take a photo of a flower.  This is a daffodil that hasn't opened up all the way yet.

Finally, this is a photo of my snowdrops. I took it about a week ago.

Thanks for visiting!

A windy challenge

Happy Thursday! I think it's been ages since I played in a daily SCS challenge. Although I do visit their forums, I rarely check out the challenge forums there anymore. Today I saw on twitter that their challenge was "got wind" and since I really wanted to make something I decided to play along there.

I saw an amazing card on pinterest a while ago, and really wanted to recreate the background. The designer used a stencil on her card. I do not have any stencils (yet), so I thought I'd try this background using a versamarker and some embossing powder.

I randomly drew lines with the versamarker over my white card stock, then used clear embossing powder to emboss. I then sponged on some broken china and peeled paint distress inks onto the card and wiped a black ink pad across the edges. The kite is from the set Take Flight by Whimsy Stamps. I used the matching kites die set to cut it out.
I thought it needed something extra so I added the glittered butterflies and some sticky rhinestones.

I am really not so sure I like how this turned out...might have to try this technique again sometimes and use thinner versamark lines.

Besides the challenge at SCS I am going to enter my card to a few more.

4 Krafty Girlz - Anything Goes
Southern Girls -  Earn your Stripes
 Artistic Stampers -  Embossing and Texture 
Just Inspirational Challenges -Embossing
Tuesday Throwdown - Weather Report (Wind)

Have a great day!!

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

More watercolor fun

I wanted to do some more watercoloring and since Easter is right around the corner I decided to make an Easter card. I started out by stamping the image (by Penny Black) onto watercolor paper using black stazon ink. Then I stamped it again onto a post-it note and cut this out to create a mask so I could watercolor the background without getting ink onto the image.

I used my husband's Grumbacher watercolor paints for painting. After covering up the image with my mask, I brushed clean water over the paper using a foam brush. Then I used an aquapainter to paint the backround. After it dried I removed the mask and then used the aquapainter to color in the image using the same paints. It's simple one layer card.I just added the ribbon and some glitter, then adhered it onto a watercolor card base. The sentiment is from an old SU easter stamp set. I stamped it using basic gray ink, wish I had just used black ink instead.

There are lots of Easter challenges going on at the moment so I am entering my card in several :-)

Creative Card Crew -Spring
Going Grey With Scrap-Creations - Easter
Crafty Sentiment Designs  - Easter
Artistic Inspirations - Anything Goes / Easter Animal
 Cards in Envy -  Easter A2 card 
Card Mania -  Easter
 Crafting from the Heart -  Anything Goes / Easter
 Crafty Boots -  Easter
Lexi's Creations - Easter 
My Craft Spot -  Happy Easter 

 Dream Valley -  Easter
Red Carpet Studio -  Hop- Easter Inspired Project

And that should be all for today. Thanks so much for visiting. I hope you have a great day with some sunshine in it too! 

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Puppy's new Friend

Happy Tuesday! Hope your week is off to a great start. The sun is out here today which makes me very happy :-)

I have a new card to share today using one of the new stamps from Whimsy's Crissy Armstrong collection - Puppy's new Friend. It's been stamped onto copic xpress blending card using memento tuxedo black ink, then colored using copic markers. 

My sketch was inspired by this week's Mojo Monday sketch, but I flipped it.

Blue designer paper is from MME. The kraft card stock was stamped with an old SU stamp from the set Looks Like Spring and some whimsy flourishes from the set Lavish Flourishes to create a little background on it. Sentiment is from a new Clear Photopolymer stamp set by Whimsy Simple Sentiments. I really love these new clear stamps from Whimsy, awesome quality, and I really like that you can read the words of the stamps exactly before stamping it. Somehow makes me wish all stamps that I have were photopolymer :-)

I embellished with some twine, a button and maybe a little too much glitter.

I am playing along in a few challenges:
Cutie Pie Challenge -  Cute with Dies & Punches 
MarkerPOP Challenge -  Spring
 Squigglefly -  Bright Spring Colors
Catered Crop - Put A Bird On It

  Challenges 4 Everybody - anything goes
The Squirrel & The Fox -  All Creatures Great & Small

Mojo Monday - sketch (I flipped it and only used one circle instead of 3)

  

Thanks for stopping by,

have a great day!

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Penny Black and More - April Challenge

Hello and thanks for visiting! Hope you're having a great weekend so far, and that April started off good for you!

 I have a new card to share today for our April Challenge at Penny Black and More. A pretty simple challenge this month, so everyone can play along...

Blossoms and Blooms.

As always, you don't have to use a Penny Black stamp, any stamp company would work, just no digistamps please.We have again several fabulous sponsors with lots of prizes to give away.

I used a new (to me) stamp from Penny Black From Me to You. I just loved this one when I first saw it, and finally was able to narrow down my order and ordered a few stamps. I did have to wait what seemed like an eternity to get it, because of a post office mess-up, but the wait was well worth it.

The color combo was inspired by a pin on my color combo pin board on Pinterest. Image has been colored using copic markers. I kept the card pretty clean and simple. Just added a flourish diecut (Whimsy Stamps), the sentiment and some twine. Of course there is some glitter too. The sentiment is from Whimsy's new clear photopolymer stamp set "simple sentiments". The "grass" was done using a Martha Stewart punch.

I am playing in a few other challenges too:
Addicted to Stamps and More -   CAS

 Top Tip Tuesday  -Cute
 A Creative Romance - Spring Flowers 

Crafty Catz -  Springtime 

Stampin' For The Weekend - Spring Colors 

Thanks so much for visiting.

 Hope you're having a fantastic Sunday! 

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Flowers everywhere

Had a little playtime today while the kids were playing with their friends, so I decided to play with some paints and inks. I made another flower-y card. Must be the spring that's in the air...

Some of you might recognize the flower/butterfly stamps used here. They are really old stamps from Stampin Up (Watercolor Garden). I thought they would work well for what I had in mind, and of course it's fun to dig out old stamps sometimes that have been neglected for a long time.

I started out by stamping the background (Whimsy Stamps - Life Defined) onto kraft card stock using Memento tuxedo black ink. Then simply using my index finger I applied some gesso here and there to soften the edges a little bit.

Next I heat embossed the flowers and butterflies using versamark ink and white embossing powder and colored them using SU pastels and inktense pencils. I sponged a little bit of broken china distress ink onto the background. (Something I probably should have done before coloring in the flowers.)

The sentiment is from Whimsy Stamps Mini Chalkboards, also heat embossed with white embossing powder onto black card stock. To finish off the card I did some sewing and added a few clear sticky rhinestones.

I am entering my card into the following challenges:

 Natalie and Amy's Challenge - M, P30  #19 Embossing
Simon Says Stamp - Birthday

Papertake Weekly W - Anything Goes

The Pink Elephant Monday Card Challenge - W, cards - Chalkboard
 

 And that is all for today. I will be back tomorrow with my Penny Black and More April challenge card.

Tweet Follow @ellibelle76

Watercolor Fun

I love the look of watercolors on cards, and decided to do a little watercolor wash card today. I really have no experience with watercolor washes, so I just played around with the color and this is what it turned into.

I started out with a piece of watercolor paper (4x5.25 inches). Brushed clean water onto it using a foam brush. Then I mixed some watercolor (I used my daughter's crayola paints) with some water and simply brushed some onto the wet paper using an aquapainter. Then I "flicked" some more color onto the paper. Sprinkled some regular table salt onto the paper to create a fun texture and this is what it turned into.

When the paper was somewhat dry, I stamped the flowers (Penny Black - Delicate Florals) using memento tuxedo black ink. Added a little bit of color using copics. I wish I had done more blending...

The sentiment is from Whimsy's Clear photopolymer set "Simple Sentiments", stamped using versafine onyx ink.

Playing along in a few challenge:

4 Krafty Girlz -  Anything Goes
A song in your He{ART}- Everything grows
Crafty Creations -  Blue and Yellow
Simon Says Stamp - Birthday 

 

Hope you have a great day! 

Follow @ellibelle76 Tweet

Best Sweet Friend

Hello and happy April :-)

 Hard to believe Spring has finally arrived after this long and bitter cold  winter! I thought it would never end! But spring did arrive, and we already had a few nice days. It's gotten chilly again yesterday, but I know that warmer weather will be here again soon.

Today I am showing you a card that I made with the Whimsy Stamps Facebook challenge in mind. I do hope you'll join us, as there is a fabulous prize up for grabs. You do have to use a whimy stamp product for this one, if you don't have any yet, why not check out some of the Digistamps Whimsy has in store?

I used some new Whimsy products on this card, along with an older sentiment. The fruits were all done using Whimsy's new Fruit Trio die set by SC Designs. The sentiment on the top right is from an older set (Retro Bottle caps sentiments). The friend sentiment in the middle of the card is from the new set Girl Talk also by SC designs for Whimsy.  

I am also playing along in a few other challenges:

Deep Ocean Challenge -For A Friend
Loves Rubber Stamps - Anything Goes
Papertake Weekly  - Anything Goes
Sweet Stamps -  Dies
Squigglefly -  Use Fruit 

Thanks so much for visting!! 

PS: I decided to finally use my twitter account (which I signed up for a couple of years ago), and would love for you to follow me.  Just click the logo below. I will be posting updates when I blog.