My Father's Birthday!

This card is a month late (thus the HouseMouse stamp with the tortoise!)... But I hope he enjoys it, still. :)

Recently, my friend told me her art teacher in high school forbid them from smudging colored pencils when coloring... And that apparently art professors (at least at Cal Poly) don't smudge it, either. Not even with special solutions for smudging pencil! I thought it was a little weird, because Prismacolor pencils, smudged with Turpenoid, give a nice result... So, for this card I actually challenged myself to not use Turpenoid! Here's how it came out... :)

Not bad, hm? :) I actually think that it looks a bit brighter than it would have if I did it my usual way... This is a HouseMouse stamp, and I cut it out, every little grass leaf, (took me forever, but totally worth it!) and used a tape roller to glue it on the baby blue paper. The brown paper was Cuttlebugged and then I mounted the baby blue paper onto it. The white dots are pearl-looking like beads, just glued.. :) And of course, ribbon; and some Stickles for the sentiment. :)

And this.. is the inside!

These images are also colored without Turpenoid intervention, even though I was so tempted to smudge the color on the little lion's face! :) The writing is in Russian.. It's glittery, but you cannot see that in this photo. And the dots are Stickles, just to fill up the background somehow. :)

On this close-up, you can see that both the lion and the bird are embossed. Makes them pop a bit on the flowery background. :) Finally, the edges were cut with some shaped craft scissors.

And... That is it! :) I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

• Paper Pretties - embossing
• Anything Goes - emboss it
• Fairy Tale Challenge - everything goes

Products I used:

• Stamps: HouseMouse - Slow Pokes; Autumn Leaves - Mindy's Zoo
• Inks: Vintage Photo Distress; Versa color - royal blue; Memories - black
• Embossing: D'Vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder
• Denami clear embossing powder
• Prismacolor pencils
• Stickles glitter glue: cinnamon, waterfall, golden rod, turquoise
• Fiskars scissors - ripple

A (Late) Halloween Card

This is the second time I enter a card into challenges! Very exciting for me! :) 

I absolutely love House Mouse images, so when I accidentally found specifically a House Mouse challenge blog... I knew I had to make a card, and a design idea popped into my head a second later, so I got on it. The challenge was to make a Halloween-themed (or -colored) card and use a House Mouse stamp. And.. Here's the result: 

I don't have any pumpkin stamps, so I freehanded and painted the pumpkin with acrylics. It is mounted on the vellum, and the mouse (such a cutie!) is actually mounted onto the pumpkin. Hope he doesn't wake any time soon, or it will give him a big fright... :) The mouse was colored with Prismacolor pencils. The bow is there just for a little embellishment.

I am going to give this card to a friend, so I will also decorate the inside, and will update this post later. (No time to decorate it before the the challenge closes for this week...)

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
House Mouse challenge #81
Crazy4Challenges - square card
Lexi-s Creations, #26 - anything goes

Birthday Cupcake

No more wood-burning (at least not for a long while..), and meanwhile.. back to cards! :)

This one I made for a friend of mine who loves food and especially cakes. Thus, practically all of the stamps I used were cakes... Mmm, yummy! :)

I cut the light lime paper out with craft shaped scissors, cuttlebugged it, and used Stickles for the border. It is mounted on the black-gold paper, so the card doesn't look too flat. :) The cupcake, I stamped, colored with my Prismacolor pencils and the stamped the top again (Stamp-a-ma-jig aligns it perfectly!) and embossed it. (Can't tell it's embossed form this picture though...)

I did the same procedure with the little cakes, also added some Stickles. The skeleton is embossed, too. :) The hardest part was writing... I do not own a white pen (yet!), so the best I could do was paint all of the words with acrylic white paint.... Which was not too fast. But it worked! :)

Products I used:

• Birds and Swirls Cuttlebug embossing folder
• Studio G clear stamps (the skeleton); Inkadinkado Birthday Cupcake clear stamps
• Denami clear embossing powder
• Inks: Colorit black pigment; Vintage Photo Distress; Versa color: orchid, orange, fresh green, baby blue, royal blue; Color Box frost white