New Cards & a Sketch

Didja miss me? Huh? Huh?

I've been busy. I started feeling a bit better on Wednesday, so I spent quite a bit of time stamping. Then we went to Kalamazoo yesterday for the whirlwind tour of gift opening with both sets of the grandparents and drove back last night. Yawn! Then it was up again today to go to the orthopedic surgeon for my husband's shoulder...why is it that men always want company when they go to the doctor, but women would just as soon go alone and men would just as soon let them?

I've just managed to take pictures of all the cards I've made over the past few days...you'll be startled to know I have done 5 cards in the past three days! Four on Wednesday and one yesterday morning before we went to Kalamazoo!

My old years' resolution is to get my design team obligations out of the way before the end of the month. I have a new set from Flourishes, plus a batch to finish from Starving Artistamps, and I also need to do a few Kitchen Sink things AND I still have new SU! stamps to work with and a swap to do and get in the mail for Controlfreaks using SU!'s A Beautiful Thing.

I'm delighted to say I got my Starving Artistamps batch completed and will be mailing off my cards tomorrow! And in the course of doing this, I came up with a sketch! I love using sketches myself and don't think I've seen anyone do a card quite like the one I'm going to show you at the end of the post. Let's start with the other ones, shall we?

Ingredients: Starving Artistamps Large Daisy (P18.04), Artful Inkables Friendship like Flowers (KSAI-106); Paper - SU! Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Summer Sun; Ink - SU! Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie,  Chocolate Chip; Other - Chocolate 1/4" grosgrain (retired), gold eyelet, 1 1/4" circl punch, dimensionals, Chocolate Chip Marker, Old Olive Marker, Pumpkin Pie Marker, Summer Sun Marker, Stampin' Sponge wedges, Color Spritzer Tool.

I really love this spray of daisies. I inked it up in Summer Sun ink, then used sponge wedges to add the Pumpkin and Chocolate inks. I used a marker to put the Old Olive color on the stem and then used the Color Spritzer tool to add the speckles all over the background.

And actually, this is the second copy of this image I did. Would you believe after I got it all stamped and looking PURDY, I dropped the sentiment stamp right on top of it and ended up messing it all up?!?!? ACK! ACK! Stampin' can be a heart-breaking job at times, I tell ya! I tried covering up the slight marks the sentiment stamp left by adding the speckles, then by putting the sentiment on a separate piece of cardstock as it is now, but it covered up too much of the main image in the position it had to be in and it just looked STOO-PID!!!! So I had to start over.

Luckily, this is one of those techniques that looks harder than it actually is, so redoing it wasn't THAT hard. Finally got it done, decided I was satisfied with it..er..I thought it was GOJUS! and moved on.

This is actually the last card I did, but it is not the sketch card, so I am showing this next:

Ingredients: Stamps - Starving Artistamps Artful Inkables Lily (KSAI-101), Harlequin Background (P25.01),  Thank You So Much (47.07); Paper - Almost Amethyst, Apricot Appeal, Certainly Celery, Whisper White; Ink - SU! Almost Amethyst, Apricot Appeal, Perfect Plum, Adirondack Pitch Black; Other - Ticket Corner Punch, Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon (retired), white satin ribbon, Almost Amethyst marker, American Traditional Designs Cut & Fold Template (PC-508) Large Wide Arrow. Stampin' Sponge wedges, Prismacolor pencils, Gamsol.

In searching for something interesting to do with this card, I came up with the idea of using this Cut & Fold Template from American Traditional Designs that I've had for YEARS. Doing this sort of paper cutting and folding was pretty popular a few years back and I think it adds just the right touch.

Because this lily image looks like something you'd see on a sympathy card and I don't have any With Sympathy sentiment from Starving Artistamps, I decided that omitting "So Much" on the thank you stamp would allow this to be a thank you card that could be used for sending out after a funeral, but it is certainly pretty enough to be used as an ordinary thank you. In fact...it's GOJUS!!! (YILM!)

Finally, here is the card and the sketch. I have all this Pearl Ex hanging around since Stampin' Up! discontinued it and I miss using it. So I decided it would look beautiful with this butterfly image:

Ingredients: Starving Artistamps Butterfly (P1.5), I Miss You (42.14), Cracked Grout Mosaic (P22.05); Paper - Vintage Violet, Confetti White, Ballet Blue; Ink - Vintage Violet, Regal Rose, Versamark; Other - Vintage Violet stitched grosgrain (retired), pink organdy (retired), silver brads, Pearl Ex.

Isn't it GOJUS!?!?!? And here's the sketch:

Please feel free to try this and link back here to this post by commenting! I can't wait to see what you've done with it!