Freshly Made Bright Monsters

Wednesday!  Time for a new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.   Cindy tossed us a curve this week with a long and skinny card!   I don't usually make these, but the team held my hand and talked me through the measurements.  lol   I used my cute little monsters from Lawn Fawn because they just seemed to fit perfectly.   I colored them some bright colors with my Copics so that I could also play along with the challenge at MarkerPOP.  

I hope you'll come play along with us!   Try your hand at a different sized card along with us.  :)

Butterflies and Bokeh

I think I promised to share our second club project with the butterfly dies today.   I had a small group this time, so we focused on learning the watercolor background and bokeh technique.   I hope they enjoyed it.    I was totally inspired to do this after seeing my friend Jen Timko's gorgeous background.  I just loved the colors and tried a version.  I used a bit different ones from her, but I think it produced the same vibe.  I over bokehed mine.  I think I was just having too much fun with my daubers and forgot to stop!  lol   My background is Crushed Curry, Crisp Cantaloupe, and Calypso Coral.   Splitcoast just did a tutorial on this if you are interested in trying it for yourself.  :)

I'll see you again tomorrow with a Freshly Made Sketches card!

Monday Inspiration from Prickley Pear

If you love to color, today's Monday inspiration from Prickely Pear is for you!   I just love this cute image and it is so fun to color.  My plan is to keep practicing and eventually give my birds more texture.   It will be a great stamp to progress my coloring skills.  :)    I did love how this one turned out so much that I left my card simple to really highlight it.

Stamps:  DD0231 Happy Spring 3, HH0176 Singing Bluebirds

Be sure to check out the blog for more inspiration!

Cheering for Sunday Stamps

This Sunday I have the honor of being a guest over at Sunday Stamps!   They have an awesome sketch challenge and I really enjoyed creating with it.   I couldn't resist using the Cheerful Critters set again.   It is seriously the most adorable set that Stampin' Up! has released in a while.  I just love it!

See?  Awesome sketch!   You can layer it up as much as you wish, or keep it fairly simple like I did.  I am totally addicted to using my stitched dies, so I find myself grabbing those instead of adding layer after layer.   

Stampin' Up! Butterfly Basics

I thought I'd share one of the cards we made last weekend at my event.    I love these butterfly dies and we ended up using them on both of our projects.   :)   This one is my favorite!  I love the combo of Strawberry Slush with Rich Razzleberry.  

I'll share the second one on Tuesday and then see which is your favorite.   I'm off to watch The Little Mermaid with the family.

Spring Coffee Lovers Blog Hop

Today is Friday (Yay!) and lots of exciting things are going on.   We are going to Costco!  What?  That's not exciting?   Well, it is also the day season three of HOUSE OF CARDS is released!!!!!!!!!  No?  Still not exciting?   Well how about a Spring version of the Coffee Lovers Blog Hop?!  Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!     If there's anything I love more than Costco and Netflix, it's coffee and cards!    There's a ton of great sponsors and prizes, so go grab your coffee stamps and come play along!

Still struggling with my creativity, but I had an idea for a card right before I fell asleep last night.  I don't love how it turned out, so I'm totally making it again once I'm feeling more creative.   I hope I don't get yelled at by my fellow coffee lovers for spilling it!  Ha! 

Dancing with the Divas

It's Thursday, so I wanted to share a new card featuring the stamps from Two Paper Divas.  This sentiment stamp is called Learn to Dance and I love it!   To highlight it, I made a frame with distress inks and splattered it with water to mimic the look of rain.   I thought a shaker card with some "rain" aka clear sequins might work well with it.   I hope it all ties together and makes sense.  :) It's a fairly plain card, but I think that works well with the sentiment.

Freshly Made Adventure

It's Wednesday and time for a new sketch at Freshly Made Sketches!   Jen B is our hostess this week, so that means NO CIRCLES.  lol Her dislike of them has become a running joke behind the scenes and I had to chuckle when I saw her sketch.   Our team is great in that we can all joke around, but when someone needs support, everyone is there to offer a shoulder and a virtual hug.  I feel truly blessed to be a part of such a great group.

For the first two weeks this month, My Favorite Things gave away stamps/dies daily on Instagram.  My cousin Kelly and I got lucky and we won this cute little set and the matching die.  It came in the mail over the weekend, so I decided to try coloring her.  Like I said yseterday, I am enjoying coloring, but not really putting a card together.  That's why this one is so plain.  I probably should have sponged a background or something, but at least with this the focus is on the coloring. :)

This morning started early, so I'm off to drink some coffee and wake up!