CASology #230 COLD

Hello friends and 2017! What a crazy year 2016 has been and looking forward to all that 2017 has in store. 

I've always wanted to do one of those best cards of the year retrospectives but didn't find the time this year. :(  Last year I created 125 cards with the most made in July and February. Among my resolutions this year is to craft more and visit crafty blogs more often. Let's hope the rest of my life cooperates to make this possible. 

My first card for 2017 is for the first CASology challenge of this year - COLD. 

Its definitely cold here in NJ and I just spent a couple days skiing with my family in PA. It snowed one of the days so I was inspired to create snow of my own using embossing paste and powder with the Simon Says Stamp stencils. I love mixing the embossing paste with the glittery powder to get a sparkly snowflake like shimmer. 

Embossing paste can be intimidating but once you get the hang of it, its easy to use and the effects are beautiful and can be CAS as well! Here's a shot after I lifted the stencil off (do this slow). It will look different after it dries.

Close-up after dried...it looks so pretty in real life.

Be sure to check out the COLD inspiration the rest of the team has for you this week. We have two new DT members - Janet and Rachel - so please stop by their blogs to say hello. 

Deidre Payne

Hannelie Bester

Hazel Hodgkins

Jacquie Southas

Janet Ribet 

Jen Wills

Joyce Mehrberg

Judy Marino

Kymona Tracey

Melissa Chipperfield

Rachel Bergfeld

Guest Designer:  Wendy

Sponsor:  Rubber Dance Stamps

Can't wait to see what you come up with. Don't be left out in the COLD...be sure to keep your creation clean and simple for a chance to win a prize by this week's sponsor Rubber Dance stamps. Thanks for stopping by! 

CASology #227 SPACE

Hello friends! Its time for a CASology challenge - SPACE. When I think of space, I think of white space which is a key element of clean and simple design. I try to add interest to white space using tone on tone layering or stamping, dry embossing, or adding texture. My new favorite way of adding texture is to use embossing paste with a stencil. Don't be intimidated by embossing paste. Its relatively easy to use and once you get the hang of using it, you'll turn to it again and again! 

For my card I temporarily adhered one of the PTI Modern Background stencils to white cardstock base (using painters tape) and masked off the portion of the stencil that I did not want to use. I wanted to create a modern looking 'snowflake'. On a little painters palette, I mixed a spoonful of Wendy Vecchi translucent embossing paste with a bit of Ranger Perfect pearls (Perfect Pearl color) and applied it to the area of my stencil to create this cool design. 

Slowly remove the stencil off the card so the design doesn't get smudged and set aside to dry. I stamped a simple holiday greeting underneath because the stenciled design reminded me of a snowflake. 

The Perfect Pearls add a gorgeous sheen to the paste and it brings a subtle color while still preserving overall white space. 

Also playing along at Paper Players this week with my "snowflake" design. 

Be sure to check out the other takes on SPACE this week at CASology - so fun varied! 

Ardyth Percy-Robb

Deidre Payne
Hannelie Bester
Hazel Hodgkins
Jacquie Southas
Jen Wills
Joyce Mehrberg
Judy Marino
Kymona Tracey
Melissa Chipperfield
Tracey McNeely

Guest Designer:  Jessica

Sponsor:  Pink & Main 

Hope you'll play along with this week for a chance to win a prize from Pink & Main. Be sure to check them out. Thanks for stopping by! 

CASology #211 DREAM

Can't believe its mid-August already. The summer is really flying by! And of course, its Tuesday and time for another CASology challenge! This week its DREAM.

Dreams immediately conjure up sky and cloud images for me so I used clouds as a backdrop for this great quote from PTI Building Blocks set.  For my clouds, I used Wendy Vecchi white embossing paste mixed with Ranger embossing glitter in Bridal Tinsel with the Memory Box clouds stencil. 

Glittered texture looks so pretty in real life. Here's a closeup - 

So what will DREAMS inspire you to create? And before you create, check out the gorgeous creations from the rest of the Design Team: 

Ardyth Percy-Robb

Deidre Payne
Hannelie Bester
Hazel Hodgkins
Jacquie Southas
Jen Wills
Joyce Mehrberg
Judy Marino
Kymona Tracey
Melissa Chipperfield
Tracey McNeely

Sponsor:  STAMPlorations

Thanks for popping in! 

CASology #198 STENCIL

This week's new CASology challenge is STENCIL and its a fun one to play along with because there are SO many stencil options around now. Check out the wide variety of stencils available at this week's sponsor STAMPlorations. 

For my card I used the STAMPlorations Happy Flowers stencil with embossing paste. I mixed Wendy Vecchi translucent embossing paste with Sparkle N Sprinkle Microfine Glitter in Teal Velveteen and Blue Raven Opaque Glitter (two separate batches). I used an art spatula to put the teal glitter paste on the flower portions of the stencil and the blue Raven on the stem parts. The result is a beautiful textured glitter and was super easy to create. The open areas of this particular stencil kept the design CAS. 

Hardest part was waiting for it to dry thoroughly before adding to my card base with the embossed sentiment banner. Don't let texture paste intimidate you. Mixing it with embossing powders or glitters as well as ink refills opens up a variety of color choices for your stencils. 

Check out the DT's takes on STENCIL. Look forward to seeing your creations! 

Ardyth Percy-Robb

Deidre Payne
Hannelie Bester
Hazel Hodgkins
Jacquie Southas
Jen Wills
Joyce Mehrberg
Judy Marino
Kymona Tracey
Melissa Chipperfield

Tracey McNeely

Have a good week! Thanks for stopping by! 

CASology:Glitter

It's Tuesday which means we have a new CASology cue card - GLITTER. I have a love-hate relationship with glitter. Its so pretty but also so messy! 

I remember my daughters made a craft in preschool which was made of paper, covered in glitter, and supposed to be hung from the ceiling or fixture. When it was suspended,  it would spin in the air. Can you see where this is going?? Although beautiful, it spread glitter everywhere when it spun! Seriously everywhere. Never again were my girls allowed to use glitter in their craft projects. 

For my CAS take on glitter, I wanted to incorporate it in a muted way so I went for a tone on tone, look. I used a Hero Arts  Large Lotus stencil with Wendy Vecchi translucent embossing paste on Smokey Shadow card stock. After letting the embossing paste dry for 3 minutes, I added Sparkle and Sprinkle glittered embossing powder in Ebony Spark to the top and applied heat. Wow. The embossing powder just melts into the paste and leaves a glittery finish. These pictures don't truly capture how cool it looks in real life - textured and sparkly. I heat embossed the sentiment in the same glitter embossing powder and Versamark. 

This is my take on a technique I learned from THIS video of Jennifer McGuire featuring embossing paste and embossing powder. 

Check out the fabulous GLITTER creations by the DT to see how glitter can be used in a clean and simple way. 

Ardyth Percy-Robb

Deidre Payne

Hannelie Bester

Hazel Hodgkins

Jacquie Southas

Jen Wills

Joyce Mehrberg

Judy Marino

Kymona Tracey

Melissa Chipperfield

Sherrie Mannion (HERE!)

Tracey McNeely

Guest Designer:  Sarah

and this week's sponsor  DeNami Design is offering a prize for our gallery winner. 

Look forward to seeing what you create in the gallery! Have a great week! 

Two Cards, Three Challenges

Hello friends -

Hope you are having a great week. Sharing two quick cards today.

First card uses Fancy That which I haven't been able to put away since PTI Anniversary challenges last week. Love this set. I heat embossed the medallion in white on white yardstick and then masked a triangle around the medallion image. I blended Tropical Teal onto the medallion concentrating the ink in the center and working my way lighter on the outside. Sentiment from Keep It Simple series.

One layer card with blending for the One Layer Simplicity challenge:You Blend this month and I stuck to only one bold color for this week's CASology cue card MONOCHROME.

Second card is for this week's Make It Monday challenge to use a cover plate as a stencil to use with embossing paste. I wanted to use a portion of the Mighty Oak cover plate. I colored white embossing paste with Simply Chartreuse reinker. I opted not to use the leaves as part of a tree as a thought a nice circle sentiment would fit nicely with the leaves. I punched a circle out of Summer Sunrise card stock and heat embossed a circular sentiment from Thank You Kindly in clear for a nice shine and tone-on-tone look. I mounted the panel on kraft card base after cutting it all down to a 4x4 square card. 

I didn't have enough embossing paste colored so I was trying to stretch what I had which made for a less than smooth finish on the leaves. But once it dried I actually liked the texture it left behind. Makes for a really cool and unique background. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Papertrey Ink January 2015 Blog Hop

Hello friends! It's PTI Blog Hop day.....I'm so excited to play along this month. Haven't been able to participate in a while.  This month's theme is hearts and to create a card beautiful both inside and out. 

After seeing THIS card by gorgeous Laura Bassen in a video, I was inspired to use embossing paste and reindeers in my stash that have never been used (also known as NBUS in the crafty world). Before watching this video, I'd been scared to death to use embossing paste. 

I colored embossing paste with the Pure Poppy and Raspberry Fizz reinkers and used a Heidi Swapp stencil to make a scattering of hearts falling to the bottom of the card. Since the stencil had a different scattering of shapes in each corner, I masked off the other shapes so that only the hearts were exposed. Then after I added the colored embossing paste to the stencil on top of my card panel, I realized I didn't have any of those cool palette knives Laura used in her video. Yikes! Talk about a chef not having their mise en place ready before starting to cook! I'm improvised with popsicle sticks.   Not the perfect tool but a good stand-in. As you can see below, the hearts aren't perfectly smooth which I'm completely blaming on the popsicle sticks. :)

The sentiment from Everyday Photo Finishers and stamped on a Hibiscus Burst diecut from that set. The white panel was matted with black for some contrast before adhering to the red card base.

I added some embossing paste hearts inside too with a sentiment from Words of Comfort. 

Sharing a card I made for my Uncle's 80th birthday today. I used the the three panel technique that Ashley used in this week's Make It Monday. Can't enter it as the new rules only allow one entry per person but thought I'd share it anyway. 

I cut an 8.5 x 11 piece of dark blue paper so I had a 5.5 inch panel and scored it so it fit into a larger envelope I had. For the front panel, I used Big Birthday Wishes for the celebrating and amazing years (heat embossed in silver) and die cut the 80 our of silver shimmer paper and used foam squares to give the numbers some dimension.  I used a border punch for the edge and created silver wine glass from Propose A Toast die cut which was heat embossed in Brown Sugar for the 'champagne and bubbles' and adhered it to the edge. 

For the other side I stamped circles from Sketched Shapes in a random way in a glimmery silver/black ink for some interest when the card is closed. Forgot to take a photo of the finished card closed before I gave it. 

On the inside, I included two pictures of us - one when I was one year old and the other at his daughter's wedding. The left side has a panel of white glimmer paper with lots of space for my personal note and stamped with another sentiment from Big Birthday Wishes. Love how it turned out! 

On the "stovefront", I made Italian Sausage Lasagna Soup the other day. Very delicious and easy to make. This one is a keeper and definitely one of those recipes that I can make and freeze. Next time I'll add a small dollop of ricotta cheese on top when serving for added lasagna flavor. 

Looking forward to seeing all the pretty cards everyone made for the Hop today! Thanks for stopping by!