Case of Laurel Seabrook and an attempt at a new technique

I don't know if you've heard, but Arizona had quite a storm over the weekend past and we got lots of snow - even on the lower elevation mountains that surround the "Valley of the Sun".  They were magically beautiful!  

Laurel Seabrook made several cards with a new CTMH hostess set that has this cute bear!  I tried to copy - but I was also thinking I wanted to do a technique where you use the Hot Shot to emboss a template.  I did it with a cloud template - but it didn't really show up over the beautiful Carolina blue cardstock (lighter side).  Then, I decided to add Frosted Lace Stickles to the depressions of the clouds (i.e. inside).  That almost worked.  Not knowing how to adhere everything and not have all that adhesive showing, I came up with the stitched rectangle frame (new from CTMH).  The stitched hills are from the decorative borders set of thin cuts.  Got SNOW? is what everyone in AZ was asking each other over the weekend!  LOL

Superstition Mountains just East of Mesa, AZ  2/23/2019

CASE of one of Anna Wight's cards

Anna Wight is an artist that I MUCH admire!  I decided to try to case her card with this little chickadee (my favorite bird).  First, I die cut a branch with a small bird sitting on it.  I cut the bird off - since I planned to stamp the Chickadee.  Then I colored both the leaves and branches with my Shin Han alcohol markers.  I will probably turn it over and color both sides next time just to help get all the edges covered.  After it was dry (a minute) I went back over the leaves with a center vein. 

The Chickadee was stamped with Intense Black (hybrid) ink.  I am getting to prefer this one over Momento (can you believe it?!)  After it was dry I used watercolor pencils to add the golden and brown colors to the birdie.  I found one scrap of music paper in a basket (deep!) and used it for the background.  I have beautiful music stamps for backgrounds, but after checking Evernote, I realized that they are in MN.  So, going on, I used saddle brown CTMH ink to age the paper a bit, glued the branch and leaves directly to the design paper and popped the bird up on 3M adhesive foam tape.  The button and twine are "signature" embellishments of Anna's but she is much better than I am at getting the proportions right!  I'm blaming this one on my disabled hand!

The hand story - I've had increasing pain in my left hand.  No biggie, right?  Wrong.  I'm left handed.  So when I finally got fed up with it, I went to the doctor who took x-rays and sent me to Physical Therapy.  They did all sorts of measurements, declared me officially ambidextrous (praise God!) and put my left hand in a splint.  I can do most things, but I found it very hard to tie the little twine into anything!  So, no small bows or knots for me for awhile.  Next steps, joint injection with cortisone, then twice more maybe, then surgery.  (Ugh!)

Don't abuse your hands.  When they are tired, take a break.  Believe me - I totally underestimated how much I use them!

New Cactus stamps

I used this card to teach some techniques at our last Open Stamping day (Jan. 24th).  

1.  I used a piece of printer paper to do an un-even (hilly?) tear and use the paper to mask the card so I could add Cashmere ink with a dauber brush.

2.  I used another brush to add Canary yellow to the upper right hand corner (sun?) and carried it out across the card a bit.  

3.  I stamped the cacti with the new archival black CTMH ink.

4.  I colored both cacti with the lighter Shin-Han alcohol ink marker, and when that color was dry, I went over the spines of the sahuaro with the next darker green.  For the prickly pear, I made little doodle circles all over the cactus giving it a mottled look.  

5.  The flower was stamped in Raspberry (the May Arts ribbon is Raspberry and Green).

6.  I stamped a potted Aloe on the envelope and just colored the cactus - then stamped Just Saying Aloe.  Very fun!  

In Arizona (where I live most of the time) we can't really have too many cactus/desert plant stamps!  LOL

A "romantic" Valentine

This card was made with a Valentine stamp that I got but had never used!  I inked the large rose bouquet with the archival black ink from CTMH.  It's a new one - a hybrid ink of dye and alcohol ink.  It's good for watercoloring!  I must have messed around too long with the inked stamp before applying it to the paper because the inked image was pretty light!  I figured, well, let's play and see how it looks!  Golly - I like it!  I also used the new CTMH watercolor pencils.  They have a very pale pink that is dreamy.  I used it here, but mostly blended it in with the next darker pink so the only places you can really see it is on the outside edges of the largest rose.  Cardstock was Sweet Leaf and Pixie.  

Hope you had a nice Valentines Day.  

I'm taking a chance that my beloved won't look at my blog any time soon!  I made this for his valentine card.  I love kitties, he doesn't.  So I needed to make it a kitty card just to poke him!  He will scowl - but I'll probably get a kiss anyway!  I'm not sure you can tell but the card is stamped all on the white layer and then two kitties (last two) are fussy cut and popped up!  The sentiment was from a retired CTMH February word puzzle, and the hearts are from a current hostess set in the Seasonal Expressions catalog.  I used Raspberry ink and Pixie cardstock.  Wish me luck!

Thank you notes

This is a 3 1/2" x 3 3/4" card made with CTMH inks and cardstock.  The cone flower is from Technique Tuesday and is called Echinacea.  I've used this stamp a LOT - it's so pretty (and these are my favorite flowers!).  I used a glassine paper bag for the envelope for these cards - a little awkward and I'm betting the post office didn't love me.  I might make the next ones with my envelope maker thingie.