Let's Toast Father's Day

I picked up this cute set of Lawn Fawn stamps & dies last week, so couldn't wait to pull them out to make a card.  Here's what I made my husband for Father's Day using "Let's Toast":

 I love that the dies include the little slits for the toast to pop out of!  I bought the Pull tab add on, also - so you're going to see a lot more of this stamp set in the future.

You can find the stamp/die set, plus the pull tab add-on at The Crafter's Workshop in Stouffville!

Watercolour Weekend Scene

I loved putting this mix of stamp sets together - I was really happy to see that the smallest bicycle in the 5124 - WC Bicycle Set was the perfect scale to work with the 5013 - WC Door Set, allowing me to create a little scene today!

 I coloured the door with my N65 Cool Grey 5 Tombow marker, and stamped it slightly to the left of center.  Still using N65, I stamped the bicycle and the bricks from 5018 Cobblestone Set, using my stamp positioner to get everything just so.  I used 2 pots from the retired 3498 Series 6 Set 2, but the ones in the 4869 WC Small Container Set would work here.  With my dampened #4 paintbrush, I softened the lines on all the images, and pulled out the colour to create a few shadows.  From the 5009 WC Mini Flower Set, I used the tiny greenery stamp with 158 Dark Olive and the dotted floral stamp with 565 Deep Blue and  991 Light Ochre to add the flowers and foliage to the pots, bike basket and over the door.  I dabbed all of these lightly with my brush, as I didn't want to lose the definition of the images.

 Using my N95 Cool Grey 1 marker and a stamp from the 5019 - WC Wall Texture Set, I added the pale grey stones on either side of the door.  To keep them from looking repetitious, I flipped the stamp upside down for the second side, and didn't colour all of the stones.  I picked up 515 Light Blue from my palette with a fair bit of water to give an aqua-coloured wash to the stone wall.  After scribbling 856 Chinese Red and 969 Chocolate onto my palette, I coloured the door and bicycle in red and used the brown to create a wooden doorframe and pots.  I wanted everything to look well worn, so kept my brush strokes fairly streaky.  I used 565 to add shadows in and around all of the images. With the small grass from the WC Foliage Set 1 and the 158, I added grass in around the bike & bricks, and with the excess colour after painting them with my brush, I added a pale green wash to the ground.

 To finish, I used the 5062 Rounded Rectangle Double Stitched Die to cut out the image and used the smallest one in the set to cut out my sentiment (Hello! is from 5136 - WC Sentiment Set 2).  Both were matted with some brown cardstock and the sentiment was attached with 3D pop dots.  Be sure to visit the Ai blog on Saturday to see what Dot & Tricia have to show you this week.

HSN cards for Art Impressions

I was lucky enough to have a couple of my cards shown on the Home Shopping Network this week!  Art Impressions had several features on air on Tuesday, and I made a couple of cards featuring the 4926 Holiday Mansion stamp set, and the Garden Add-On:

 For my first card, I did a little paper piecing, stamping the house on some subtly patterned soft pink paper.  I stamped it again on some white cardstock, then coloured & cut out the roof and details before gluing them on.  I kept my colour palette fairly limited, to coordinate with the background paper.

 A closeup of the main image that I raised on pop dots over the oval mat.  I made the birds into robins!  Each of those little images come as a stamp, and there is a tiny die to cut out each one.  The house comes with dies that cut out the windows, shutters, and doors, so you can peek different images out of or behind each area.

My sunrise card was an idea that I had immediately when I knew I was using the Garden Add-on set (you buy the mansion stamp, and can add on Christmas/Easter/Halloween/Bday sets to change it up!)  I couldn't get ahold of a sunburst stencil or die for my quick turnaround, so I made my own stencil - scroll down and you'll see what I came up with.  It only took a few minutes to create with a ruler & exacto knife, then I used Distress Oxide inks to create the rays on my cardstock.  I cut the circle of the sun and the hillside using some stitched dies & patterned paper, and cut the clouds out of some fun paper as well.  This time I snuck the sentiment inside the door, so you can see it when you open it up.

Lot's of work, but so worth it - these were such fun to make!  You can see all of the Holiday Mansion collection HERE on the Ai website. Here is the creation of my sunburst:

Happy stamping!

Window Watercolour

I have been prepping for an upcoming watercolour class that I'm teaching on windows, and this is one of the samples that I've made to show.  It's not what we're creating, but a variation on the theme.  Here is WC Window Set #5014 from Art Impressions:

 Also used are WC Foliage Set 4, WC Mini Critter Set, WC Wishing Well Mini Set, WC Harvest Set, WC Mini Flower Set and Foliage Set 1.  All markers are Tombow Dual Brush Pens.

Watercolour Bicycle 2.0

I have another Art Impressions Watercolour bike to share today!  When I am painting images for my Watercolour Weekend posts, I often do more than one, switching up the colours a little, maybe positioning the images a little differently, or changing the flowers.  Here's my second card using WC Bicycle Set and WC Cats Set:

 I used pinks and a warmer blue shade in this one, and more of a warm brown kitty.