Starting from the beginning with sketches

Hi friends,
As I was eyeing all the beautiful cards on Pinterest, I came across Sweet Sunday Sketches. Actually, it was from Kristie Marcotte's blog and all her oodles of cards. She uses various sketches for video's and 6x6 paper pad cards. So, I found the Sweet Sunday Sketches via Pinterest. Wow, it was a little difficult to find Challenge #1, but I found it. They stopped at #300. I think I have all of their sketches on my Pinterest board labeled SKETCHES. Their last blog challenges us to start from the beginning. Well, that is what I am trying to do. I only have a few hours when my granddaughter naps, so I spend that time crafting. Here is SSSC01. The sample is from Karen Giron.

Here is my card. I used paper from Studio Calico called PRINTSHOP! The sentiment is from Crackerbox Palace. The flower dies are from Art Impressions. 

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. Have a great day and I hope I inspired you to try a few sketches. 

Joanie

Friends are special treasures

Hi blogger friends. Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. 2018 was very hectic, busy and sad.
In April we moved from St. Louis, MO to Gilbert, AZ to be near my one and only granddaughter. Yes, I am the Mon-Fri 6:30-4:00 pm babysitter. Needless to say, I currently don't have much time for my cards. My husband also retired in May, so now I am hanging around with him more.
 My Mother passed away in August and I am still mourning her loss. She was my best friend and my best critic of my scrapbooking and cardmaking.
My craft room is finally to my liking. I have reorganized it at least 4 times since I moved here.
I left behind a fabulous group of crafty women, who were like my sisters. So I guess I am mourning that loss, too.
Enter 2019. I promised myself to be more creative. I went through my 6 boxes of cards that I had made and shipped 2 big boxes to some friends. Another box of cards is going to my best girlfriend, with tons of tags, die cut and stamped images, etc. I sorted through my unfinished cards and got started on completing them. I made 6 new cards to go out to people who didn't know we had moved. Then I found a few bits and piece and threw together this card.

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. Have a blessed day!

Joan V.

Art Impressions Challenge 217 Flowers & Foliage

Well, it's been a while since I have posted, but I have been making cards like crazy and helping a few women with their card making skills. I have a darling set from Art Impressions called Howl-oween that I have been waiting to use. Since the Art Impressions challenge says flowers and foliage, I thought this would be a fun card to make. I just love this cute little guy. This is my first try at step cards and I just love them!

Thanks for stopping by my little blog.
Have a great day.
Joan V.

Repeat Impressions DCC45 ~ Add a Die-Cut.

Good day 

I am here today with a challenge from Repeat Impression- Add a Die-Cut. I have really been trying to keep busy with challenges, as they get me to use stamps that are very lonely on my shelf. I only have 3 Repeat Impression stamps, so I thought this is a great time to use what I have. My hubby is retiring next May, so I thought I could get his card made, (a year early)!

I used #2908 image (tree with Adirondack chair) and #2809-I sentiment (retirement).  I don't have any die cuts for this image, so I fall under the category of fussy cutting. LOL. I did 2 images and popped up one on my card. Hope this inspires you a little, to dig through your stamps and play.

 See my little tree popped up?

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by my little blog.

Joan V.

Lawn Fawnatics first challenge- Birthday

Hello my little blog readers

I am here today with Lawn Fawns - "Lawn Fawnatics" first blog challenge. With the theme of birthday, which I don't own any of the Lawn Fawn sets, I had to get creative. So, I went digging through my stamps and dies to see what I could create. I used the Blissful Botanicals stamps and die set and the Chit Chat stamp and die set. I did a random stamped background, colored with watercolor pencils and did a few extra pieces to pop up. I used glossy accents on the leaf spray, flowers and birds. (You really can't see the glossy accents on the popped up elements, but it is there.)

Thanks for stopping by my little blog.
Have a beautiful day.

Joan V.

(Not So) Moody Blues! challenge with Impression Obsession

Happy Spring

Once again, spring has arrived. It is absolutely beautiful here in the mid-west. Little frost browned petals are floating about, today. It is such a shame that we had a bad frost and freezing temperatures a few days ago and it totally browned all the white budded trees. Oh well, spring has sprung. 

I am back with another (sigh) hydrangea card for the (Not So) Moody Blues! Impression Obsession blog challenge. 

I have very few Impression Obsession stamp sets, so I chose my favorite Hydrangea Dies for this challenge. I love the look of this card. I first started by water coloring a piece of water color paper with CTMH Dutch Blue ink. I then used my Misti for the correct placement of my sentiment from the Gardening CL630 set. I first stamped the sentiment in Dutch Blue, then with Versamark Embossing Ink and used a clear embossing powder over the sentiment. I then cut a grassy border using DIE60-I in the same green as my flower stem and leaves. I didn't have enough shades of blue paper, so I dug into a stash of paint chip cards. It was a Sherwin-Williams collection with 4 shades of blue. I only used three of the shades. My main flower head was Something Borrowed and the darker petals were Blue Azores. The lighter blue petals are North Holland Blue. LOL, Wow, I didn't look at the color names until now. Guess they go with my CTMH Dutch Blue ink. Thanks for stopping by my little blog. 

MORE, Fun with Flowers and Impression Obsession

Hello, again. This is my second post for the day. I have been having so much fun with this challenge from Impression Obsession, Fun with Flowers. I love flowers and it seems that 50% of my stash must be flowers sets. Before I started inking up the images in this set, Spring Blooms CL68, I had an idea of what kind of card I wanted. Well,,,,,, the idea never got any further. I wanted to use the square images... Nope, didn't happen. But, what I did make with these stamps, I am pleased with the results. So, here is the result of a few hours in the girl cave.

Thanks for stopping my little blog, again. 

Joan V.

Fun with Flowers and Impression Obsession

Well, I 'm back again with a clean and simple card with my Spring Blooms CL68 stamp set from Impression Obsession. I am on a roll this week with cards for the Impression Obsession challenge of Fun with Flowers. This card is simple, but has some fussy cutting, that may require a little more time.

 I made a cluster of leaves and stamped a few flower to cut out. The sentiment is embossed. So simple . Thanks for stopping by my little blog.

Joan V

Another Hydrangea card

Another Sunday post

Just a quick follow-up from my earlier post today. Here is a second, simple card using watercolor paper, ink and the Impression Obsession Hydrangea stamp set. 

Thanks for stopping by my little blog.

Have a great day

Joan

Fun with Flowers and Impression Obsession Challenge

Oh, Hello

Well, I am finally trying to blog again. I was so inspired by the challenge at Impression Obsession Fun with Flowers. You see, I bought this gorgeous Hydrangea Cling stamp and die set last October and I finally got inspired to pull that set out of the package. 

I wanted a soft background and soft colors for my flower so I decided to use Royal Langnickel watercolor paper.  Here is a picture of my desk and some of the supplies.  After stamping my flower and leaves, I got a fine mist spritzer and finely misted until I got the look I wanted. I used the same watercolor paper, CTMH Outdoor Denim ink and Stormy Sky Distress Ink , to get similar and varying colors, so that I could die cut the tiny flowers. I just love the look of those tiny petals. 

A bit of black cardstock, some watermark ink, white embossing powder and POW, you have a beautiful sentiment banner. 

I really love this flower and die set. I made another card, but will post it later. Thanks for stopping by my little blog. 

Have a beautiful day.

Joan 

Beautiful Blooms

Happy day to you all. I just love flowers, whether they are real blooms or stamps. On a past "Make it Monday"on Papertrey Ink, called Colorful Card Corners , we were challenged to make a card with a corner focal point. LOVED this idea. I guess I never entered it, but I love this kind of card. I used Beautiful Blooms for my main flower. 

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. 

Joan

A Happy Day

I pulled out my Balloon Fun stamp set by Richard Garay to make this great masculine birthday card. The sentiment and background stamps are from a Recollection Color Splash stamp set. I used Stampin Up Real Red, Smokey Slate, Memento Tuxedo black and VersaMark watermark inks on this project.

Hello the old fashioned way

Well, it's been a while since I blogged. I have a darling card that I made using Richard Garay's Noteworthy sets, that I picked up from Hobby Lobby. I needed a masculine cards, so this is one that I came up with.

I've been watching Richard Garay during his live demo's. I have started to use some splatters and the twine on my cards. Love that special touch, even on masculine cards. Thanks for stopping by my little blog.
Have a blessed day.

Art Impressions Hippo

I have a cute little card to share with you today from a Freebie stamp that I got from Art Impressions. I have really been into the Watercolor Series, but I thought, what if I just water colored this little Hippo image onto water color paper. I just bought a few of the Marvy marker, which I sincerely love, to use with this watercoloring technique. I thought that I would enter this into the Ai  29 Again Challenge. Happy 29th Birthday, Art Impressions.

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. Have a great day.

Joan

Clay pot Watercolor

I went to our local Rubber Stamp Convention over the weekend and found some great stamps and I couldn't wait to use them. I was so inspired by Bonnie Krebs from Art Impressions. Her technique for watercoloring is so much fun. So, I decided to enter the anything goes challenge at Art Impressions. For this card I used the Clay Pot mini series, Flower set and Foliage set. I also used a stamp from Our Daily Bread Scripture Series 3 set.

Thanks for stopping by my little blog.
Have a great day.

Joan

Flip Flopping

Well, it's been quite a while since I have posted on my blog. I have a cute card that I made and thought that since it is almost summer, that it would be good to post.

I used Papertrey Ink flip flops and a sentiment from another company. Hope you are all ready for that warm summer weather.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day.

Joan

Be Your Own Kind .....

I have a quick post to share today. I made a birthday card for my fitness trainer using the You Got This stamp set from The Cat's Pajamas. I made the bunny into a girl bunny using pink and black paper pieced clothing.
I 
 I would have put a sweat band on bunny, but my trainer doesn't wear one.
 I used a piece of foil from a can of my husbands potato sticks for the mirror like background. LOL, yep, I love to recycle. But, it has the best thickness and texture. I fussy cut my embossed sentiment and popped it up. Pretty simple but I needed something special and personalized. By the way, she loved the card. 

I am entering this in The Cat's Pajamas challenge at

Thanks for stopping by my little blog. 

Joanie

Two more Graphic 45 cards

Wow, so I just couldn't stop, once I got started making cards from the August Cut Aparts paper. So to keep things short, here are two more cards I created.

Quite simple, but lovely enough to send to my friends.

My first CAS- Graphic 45 card

Ok, so the Graphic 45 bug hit me today. As I was browsing my local stamp/paper store ,The Checkered Cottage today, I came across the pattern directions to make this darling card. Sure, I could have gone home and cut the paper apart and then sat there and wondered " now what do I want to do with all these pieces?" Well, I came home with my Graphic 45 August paper and the pattern and got to work.

Here is just a sneak peek at the pattern. 

Here is my copy of the card. I used PTI Simple Sunflower for my flower embellishment. 

And the inside is my creation.

This was so easy and fun. Now I have extra bits and pieces to make a few more cards. These next ones, I will just wing it. 
Thanks for stopping by.

Joanie

Home....yep, there's no place like home...

I made a card for The Cat's Pajamas TCPTUES293 challenge. I don't have very many TCP sets, so I came up with a darling card from my newest collection. I used Take Flight stamp set and Birdhouses die set. I pulled a piece of paper from American Crafts- Amy Tangerine- Yes Please. I love using paper that has images in the corner. I do apologize for the picture. I got a new phone and didn't set up dropbox yet and now I am scrambling to get this posted.

Thanks for stopping by little blog.

Joanie