Soft Spring & Color Blending

Have you tried to blend different colors together and ended up with a gray mess? Well it happens! To avoid this I try to stay with some colors that are either in the same (kind of) family. For example, red tones or blue/greens as I did on these two cards.

To make these two cards I first cut a circle out of some Eclipse masking paper and placed it on the white cardstock.

On the shades of reds I used Distress inks (not the Oxides, although they blend beautifully) starting with the lightest shade (Tattered Rose), then the medium (Abandoned Coral) and finally the darkest (Picked Raspberry).

On what I call the "blue/green" blends I used Twisted Citron for the lightest, Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire, again working from lightest to darkest.

After removing the masks I stamped the images from Stampin' Up's Soft Spring, which is a new Hostess set that is available this coming June (Yay!). I stamped the images in Versafine ink as I wanted it to be very black and Momento just doesn't get this black.

After cutting the rectangles out with a stitched rectangle die I mounted them onto the front of the cards with a piece of craft foam and finally added some Nuvo Crystal Gems.

What I love about this type of card is that you can very easily make a single layer card with a design like this. I didn't because I already had a couple pieces of white cardstock I wanted to use and I didn't want to fuss with finding the exact center to put the mask on. Hope you like them!
 

L O N G Year!!

So first of all I have to apologize for not being active on my blog for a very long time. Life happens, as you all know, and this past school year we have hosted a lovely young lady from South Korea who is finishing out her senior year at our school. Needless to say, my husband and I are not used to having a teenager in the house again!! She has been very active in school activities and graduates on June 15th and returns to Korea on the 21st of June. Being involved in someone else's life like this is rewarding in its own way but it also takes time. That time I've spent with her and at work have taken away from my time to make videos and post card creations.

I've still made cards... mostly when needed or when I just needed to sit and create! You know that feeling!! Anyway, recently Kelly Letevola posted a video using Picket Fence Studio's "Jungle Babies" stamp set and I was inspired. We have a dear friend who is having a baby this week and she is decorating her nursery with elephants, so this card just had to be made. So, I purchased the stamp set, ordered the matching dies, and what usually happens when a video like this is posted, the dies were out of stock! Ugh! So, not to worry, I can still do this.... so I created masks with masking paper, and since our friend is having a boy, of course the little "diaper" on the baby elephant had to be changed to blue. I also forgot to put the little bows on the parent's heads, and didn't have all the colors Kelly used (and I don't "Copic" as dark or as well) as she does. Anyway, here's the card: