I'm thinking about Spring with flowers

As you can see, I'm ready for spring. I made three spring cards. Two of them are for Club Posh challenges and one is an old favorite that I made for a friend at work.

My friend Kathy lost her grandmother last week, so I had to make her an over-the-top card. This card has to be one of my favorite cards. Years ago I took a class with Marilyn Parke from the stamp company Parked on Rubber. I have been making this card for special occassions forever. It's such an elegant card and I wish I designed it myself! Kathy loved this card so much, she had her husband frame it for her. That was a huge compliment. The funny thing is, I didn't intentionally sign up to take the class. I thought I was signing up for a class on Magic Colored Pencils with Debbie Gunyon. I was dissapointed about the mistake for about two seconds. I'm sure I would have loved the class with Debbie, but I have since had chances to see her demonstrate her awesome technique.

The stamps are from Parked on Rubber & Me & Carrie Lou. I'm not sure what stamps are from each company, sorry. They are stamped with Glitter Gold Embossing Powder and embossed on vellum. The vase design is actually a blank vase that was stamped with a floral egg stamp. The images are colored with Tombo Markers on the front of the vellum. All images were cut out right next the embossing and layered into the vase. The centers of the flowers were accented with Swarvoski crystals that were applied with a toothpick and crystal lacquer.

My next card was inspired by Becca on her blog, Amazing Paper Grace. She did a video of her medallion technique on her blog and you can find it on the right hand side of her links. Here is her blog http://www.amazingpapergrace.com/ It is so wonderful what combinations she has come up with for her layers. I did this card for a Club Posh Challenge to create a weather themed card while uing a new tool with my favorite adhesive and my favorite punch. Here it is:

This card was made using her medallion technique straight off her video with an EK Success punch. Please check it out. I will warn you that her techique is addictive! LOL! My main image is the tree from an Inkadinkado Clear set. The flower is also from another clear set. The tree is stamped on a circle of watercolor paper with Onyx Versafine ink. It is the largest plain nestabilities circle. I colored it with a light wash of Twinkling H2O's. The flowers were stamped on the watercolor paper scraps with the Onyx ink & colored with H2O's. The card came together really quick. The papers are a 12"x12" stack that I picked up at JoAnns. I didn't keep the cover page, but I saw it there last weekend. I used foam tape to add the flowers & the medallion. I added three sizes of flat backed pearls to accent the card.

The last card was another Club Posh Challenge. I did it before a challenge was declared, but it was posted as a challenge today. It was posted as a technique that I had seen before, but hadn't tried. So, of course I had to finally try it. The technique is called thumping. It's really a fun, loose technique. I inked up my stamp with an Aqua Vivid inkpad. Then I took a blue Marvy Brushart marker and thumped it onto my stamp. I just tapped it all over the image. I did the same technique with two Posh Impressions stamps. I first did the oriental writing background and stamped it onto white glossy paper. Then I inked up the cherry blossom stamp and stamped it over top of the background. It is layere over two colors of paper that were punched with my new Martha Stewart Boarder punch. The word is stamped with Dark Blue Brilliance Ink. I was going for the textured look or I would have embossed it on that textured paper.

I'm still working out how to properly photograph my images. It's a work in progress. I'm loving working with my textured papers. It's my goal to use up my older papers before I use them, but I keep reaching for those textures. I am using some of my older papers as I go , so I guess I'm doing pretty good. Until next time, JIL