Quixotic Cards had a challenge to use leaves somewhere in your creation. I was very excited, because when I was reorganizing all my craft stuff, I found a package of gorgeous iron-on leaves that I bought at Michaels when I worked there. I worked at Michaels in university! That package has been sitting, unopened, in my craft bin for years. 6 years? Something like that. So, I’m finally using them!

The colour inspiration came entirely from the diamond-patterned paper (Michaels brand!). I gave Tilda an orange dress, which was awkward to blend – I have one orange marker, and one yellow marker (YR04 and Y02 respectively), but I got a look I was happy with eventually.

For some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to put eyelets in the leaves (yes, I just bought a Crop-a-Dile). At first I was going to eyelet them to the paper, then I realised that I couldn’t get the Crop-a-dile that far in to the paper, so I put eyelets in all the leaves I wanted to use, then strung them on some vintage seam binding.

The seam binding is taped down (yay scor-tape!) but the leaves are still free, so you can slide around them a bit. The card layout was inspired by Sketch Saturday’s sketch #93.

The red piece was cut with a the largest Labels 7 Nestability, and was actually the leftover bit from another project. That project is now in the recycling bin, but I’m using the scraps!

One of my favourite parts of the patterned paper that I drew into the rest of the project was the touches of aquamarine. That’s why Tilda’s shoes are blue, and the reason for the blue gems. As it is March, Aquamarine’s month, that’s the prompt at Daring Cardmakers right now.

Simon Says Stamp wants to see ‘Girly’ or Mother’s Day cards, so I decided to pull out some very old photocopies and make this card:

The blouses are an interesting story. My mum is a big fan of the local antiques auction, and one night she bought a painting. I can’t even remember what the painting was of, but when we turned it over, there were all these pictures, obviously cut out of catalogues, stuck to the back! I peeled them off, with the idea of making something out of them. Then I thought that I could sell them to scrapbookers! This was about 6 years ago, so well before I got in to card making. I copied them all on to regular paper, with idea of selling the copies. I sold some of the originals on eBay, and never got around to doing anything with these, except lug them around for years.

So, because of that, I used Copic markers to colour on regular printer paper. They bled a bit more than cardstock does, and there was lots of ink on the paper underneath, but they turned out ok I think.

The lace is a lovely wide vintage one from my stash – I recently reorganized all my craft stuff, I didn’t even know I had it!

I can’t wait to copy some of these images on to cardstock, and try colouring them again. I’ve got full dresses, more blouses, people, girls, dolls…. lots!

I’ve been on a bit of a Local King kick lately – this build-a-sheep set is from there as well. I stamped the sheep heads directly on to my card base, trying to make a bit of a pattern out of them.

Then I stamped a sheep outline on to the dot paper, added head and legs, the applied Liquid Applique to the body. Heat that up and it goes nice and puffy! Add on some ribbon, and the mandatory sheep pun, and ewe are done!

This post features one of my very favourite stamp sets from Local King Rubber Stamps. It’s the one that caught my eye in their booth originally, and it’s one of the (very very) many sets I bought from them.

Googley-eyed fish! The set is actually called ‘Puffy Eye Goldfish‘.

I was inspired to make my card by this post from Crafty Makes. I just loved the idea of the frame becoming a pond.

I stamped the two smaller sizes inside the card, with some little green bubbles. I used Denim Distress Ink, and a pale blue Brilliance ink, so the lighter blue fish shimmers.

I do love stamping on patterned paper, I’m very happy with my stripey fish on the front! I used a bubbly Cuttlebug folder to emboss the frame, and oval Nestabilities to cut all the ovals.

That card was made last week, and today I made another in the same vein. My boyfriend and I were cleaning out our storage room and junk drawer today, and we found a product that is used at our work, which I have now worked into my card making:

Here, I stamped the big fish with black Staz-On ink on to some gel. What is gel? Think about going to the theatre: light plays a very big part in most theatre productions. I would say 99.9% of productions have a lighting designer. Gel is one of the things used to create the right mood or look on stage. It is thin, clear plastic (thinner than printer transparency, more like regular paper) that comes in hundreds of colours. As the boyfriend is a lighting guy, we had a few little pieces hanging around our storage room. Not worth saving to him, I grabbed them and put them on my craft desk! We think this blue is R65, so it definitely isn’t the darkest you can find. R65 has a 35% transmission rate, where something like R80 is 9%. 0% would be solid.

Anyway, I thought blue gel would make a great pond, so once I stamped the big fish, I stamped some little ones inside the card with Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink.

You can see how it changes the colour of the light in this photo.

I wanted to use this spotty paper, but found it too white, so I got out my one bottle of Glimmer Mist that I’ve never used, and spritzed away! I like the paper much better now that it isn’t stark white. And it has a bit of shimmer now!

I’ve got a few bits of this blue colour, and some pale orange that I’m excited to work with. I think I might need to get a few more colours of Staz-on ink!

It was great to use something that would have otherwise been thrown away!

I have finally gotten my desk together, and all my stamping supplies sorted after replacing my computer. I bought some more storage for all my stuff, and have spent the past few days organizing and sorting, and even throwing some stuff out!

Now that that is (mostly) done, I can get back to making! This card uses Papertake Weekly’s Sketch #35, and also fits the Simon Says Challenge of Vintage with Flowers. I stamped the green embossed background with a handwriting stamp, although it doesn’t show up too well in the photos. I pulled the pear paper and the stripe out of my scrap bin because they had the same green. I’d already cut the papers when I went to choose a stamp. I knew I wanted to use one of my many collage-y stamps, but I’d forgotten I had one with a pear in it!

That made choosing the stamp very easy. I used flowers with writing on to tie in with both the focal stamp, and the background I stamped. The collage is stamped in brown ink on some Martha Stewart vellum. There’s a tiny bit of adhesive on each corner, which I disguised with the flowers and pearls.

With all the cards I’m making, I still needed to make a Valentine’s Day card for my wonderful boyfriend of almost 5 years. I did it with him right here in the room, because he doesn’t know which cards I’m keeping, nor did he actually ever look over at my desk.

I used one of my favourite heart stamps (Heartlines by Impression Obsession), stamped in brown ink, then coloured in. I also used some of my new favourite paper, this amazing woodgrain by Bo Bunny. It was in the 10 / $1 section of my local scrapbook store. I almost passed it by, because the other side, the side that was on display, was an old wood gym floor with basketball markings. Turn it over, it’s the same wonderful floor, without the black lines!

I bought a lot of this paper for another project, and I have a lot left over, so I’ll be using it fairly often I think.

I used the sketch from Papertake Weekly #34 to get me going, and the card also qualifies for Simon Says Stamp, and Cute Card Thursday’s challenges this week – both are looking for Love-themed cards this week, oddly enough.

This little bear is one of the CHA relay digital stamps from The Greeting Farm. He is blue because my constant childhood companion was a homemade, stuffed blue bear called (very originally) Blue Bear. This is almost exactly how I imagined him looking when he came to life while I slept.

I had just bought the clock paper, and have had the word stickers for a long time, so the card is a great combination of old and new, digital and not.

I coloured the bear, then painted over him with clear Tim Holtz crackle paint. I did that before I cut out the image – the paper curled, as paper will, but trimming him after seemed to reduce a lot of the curl. So did a good taping down to the card.

These are the colours I used, and a mostly pre-blending photo (I’d already blended the legs when I remembered to take the picture!)

And for the record, here’s a picture of the real Blue Bear, modeling a baby sweater.