Choose Hope & An Announcement

Today's card uses one of the flowers and sentiments from Paper Makeup Stamps Faith Hope Love set. The flowers are all silhouette style and I wanted to highlight one to capture the idea of hope standing out. I decided the best way to do that was to stamp a row of flowers in amethyst with one slightly taller than the others. Then I colored the same stamp with markers, cut out the image and popped it up over its shadow. I like how the yellow gives a pop of color. I also used markers on the saying to make the word HOPE stand out too. I decided to add a simple ribbon on the corner and leave this a CAS card. Anything else I considered doing just took away from that yellow flower as being the focal point.

And now for a fun announcement! Paper Makeup Stamps has added seven new 'Makeup Artists' to their design team and I'm one of them. {squeal!} Anyone who checks out my blog will see that most of my creations use PMS. I've been a huge fan of their stamps AND their design team for a year now. I'm so honored to be chosen and I'm looking forward to working with Katie and her talented team at Paper Makeup Stamps. Here's the July 2010 team with the new members starred.

Senior Makeup Artists

Katie Cotton (owner)

Christi Thorsen (Events Coordinator)

Tangii Crain (DT coordinator)

Lisa Kind

Tina Hale

Paper Makeup Artists

**Andrea Vernagus**

**Anita Hovey**

**Bonnie Sharp**

Christi Snow

Danni Bindel

Dawn Mercedes Barrett

**Ginger Schwerin**

Lisa McKinney

Maria Gurnsey

**Michelle Van Patten (me!)**

Randee Elsing

Shaela Odd

**Sherry Campbell**

**Stephanie Zito**

Possibility

Ah, it feels so good to be back home and posting a card. {grin} We had a rushed last week of school and left for the airport right after the boys were dismissed from their last day on the 18th. Our flights were all crazy with delays and storms, but we made it to Missouri at 2:00 in the morning. We then spent a week at a fabulous family camp called Kamp Kaua'i run by Kanakuk Ministries. It's really more like spending a week at a resort than any kind of camp I've ever been too, but it's the people who run it that make it such a great experience. They are just so warm and friendly and eager to serve the families that come. The one sad thing is my camera died at the beginning of the week, so I have few photos from our vacation this year. But my head and heart are full of images and warm memories! And we got a new camera this weekend after we returned home, so I'm back in business now.

Anyhow, the stamp on this card is called Looking at You and it's by Stampavie. I just fell in love with this little girl watching a butterfly that has landed on her shoe. It so reminds me of my lazy summers when I was a girl (years ago, haha). I paper pieced her clothes and colored her skin and hair with a blender pen. She's also covered with sparkly spica pens. I wish that shimmer would show in photos.

I used the largest Labels Eleven nestie to frame her and a smaller one to make a template for sponging clouds. Those round bumps at the end are perfect for that! The sentiment is from Paper Makeup Stamps in their Celestial Possibilities kit. I love how the saying captures the ideas of imagination and dreams as she gazes at that butterfly.

Blessings,

Father's Day Free Digi

Paper Makeup Stamps is offering this free digi word art on their blog. That was just the push I needed to get my Father's Day cards made. :) And what's even better is a chance to win a $25 certificate towards more digi stamps at the PMS store. All you have to do to be in the drawing is make a card or scrapbook page with this freebie and link it back to the PMS blog. All the details can be found here.


My first card is for my boys to give to their Dad. Their favorite colors are green and blue, so my mind immediately went to the papers from the Celestial Possibilities Kit. I picked this paper that has a busier pattern with lots of both green and blue in it. I like how the patterns in the stripes vary all the way across. I chose to cut out the digi word art with a Labels 7 nesties die, b/c my hubby is a bookworm and is always encouraging our boys to read more. I sponged inside the frame with Old Olive and Baja Breeze to match the paper. The textured blue paper and star brads are also from the Celestial Possibilities kit.

My second card is for my own Dad. I chose to go Clean and Simple with his card. One of his favorite colors is brown and I chose these papers from the Basic Grey Archaic pad. My Dad is a bookworm too, so I again used the Labels 7 nesties die to cut out the word art. I lightly sponged around it with Creamy Caramel ink. Then I added some twill, b/c that seems more manly than ribbon {grin}, and a couple Karen Foster thumbtack brads.

Blessings,

Flower Smiles

Second Post of the Day - Please scroll down to see my Dino card too {grin}

Paper Makeup Stamps - June Release Party Challenge Use Flowers
Mercy's Tuesday Sketch Challenge - MTSC70

When I saw that the second June Release Challenge was to use flowers, I immediately wanted to play with my Celestial Possibilities kit again. I love the colors blue and green together and that is the color scheme of all the beautiful papers and ribbons in this kit. And there's this great little pack of blue paper flowers! AND I happened to have a print-out of this sketch challenge from Mercy's blog from a few weeks ago lying on my table. It was like this card made itself! {grin}

I embossed the If I had a Flower word art on some white cardstock with Not Quite Navy ink. If you have a versamark ink pad and clear embossing powder, you can emboss with any color of dye ink that you have. Just ink up your stamp in versamark first, then before stamping ink it up again in your dye color ink (Not Quite Navy in this case) and stamp on your paper. Quickly cover the image with clear embossing powder, heat and ta-da, you now have an embossed NQN image without needing a NQN craft pad. Isn't that neat?

After choosing which pretty papers from the kit to use as my layers, I sponged the edges of them with NQN. I like to do that to define the edges without having to double all my layers with a darker paper. Although, I think I went a little overboard with the sponging today, haha. It's hard to know when to stop sometimes. And I have some lighter Baja Breeze ink sponged around my word art too.

The flowers were also lightly sponged with NQN to give them a speckled look. And I used my two-way glue pen and dazzling diamonds glitter to give them a sparkled look too. {smile} The pearls that complete the flower centers were from my stash and not from the CP kit. But that pretty white satin ribbon is in there - love it!

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!



Stamps: If I Had a Flower by Paper Makeup Stamps
Paper: Whisper White, all other papers from Celestial Possibilities Kit
Ink: Versamark, Not Quite Navy, Baja Breeze
Accessories: Pearls, Dimensionals, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, all other accessories from Celestial Possibilities Kit

No Bones About It

Paper Makeup Stamps - PMSRPC0610 Sketch

Isn't this a great dinosaur stamp? He so reminds me of Rex from the Night at the Museum movies. {grin} He's from the Dino Essentials Set at Paper Makeup Stamps. I embossed him with black ink on Sahara Sand cardstock and colored him in with a white gel pen to really make his bones stand out. The punched edge is from a Martha Stewart icicle punch. I just liked how jagged it was, kind of like his pointy spine.

Then I had these great brads shaped like a bone, only they were a pewter color that blended right in with that Basic Grey paper. I really wanted white bones that would stand out against that dark background. So I covered the brad with white craft ink and white embossing powder and held it out with my pampered chef tongs to keep the embossing gun from burning my fingers off! Still wasn't white enough after the first coat, so I did it again and it was perfect! {doing a happy dance} Just be sure to give your brad some time to cool off before putting it on your card, KWIM, haha.

Here's a close-up of "Rex" I just {heart} how this card turned out!

Blessings,

Stamps: Dino Essentials by Paper Makeup Stamps
Paper: Indian Summer by Basic Grey, Bravo Burgundy, Sahara Sand, Whisper White, So Saffron
Ink: Color Box Black Pigment, Craft White
Accessories: Bone Brads, Martha Stewart Icicle Edge Punch, Black EP, White EP, White Gel Pen

Caffinated Cropper Customer Blog Hop

Caffinated Cropper is having a customer blog hop today! You should have arrived here from Emily's blog. If not, you'll want to go back to the beginning and start at Caffinated Cropper. Be sure to leave comments at every stop along the way and then again back at Caffinated Cropper because one lucky person is going to win a mini kit just for commenting! Woo-hoo!

My card uses items from the Birds of a Feather kit. Melody (my favorite Paper Makeup Stamps fairy) and the sentiment "With a Smile and a Song" are stamps that come with it. I colored Melody with prismacolor pencils and baby oil to match this beautiful designer paper from the Birds of a Feather packet. Her wings, belt, shoes and music notes are all sparkly from a clear spica glitter pen, you just can't see it in my photo well. I used the nestie Labels Four to cut out Melody and a second of the same shape in the darker paper so that I could add accents with the same corner shape on my card. The music notes were made with a Cuttlebug die. The little flower was one of the many, many accessories that come in this fantastic kit! The saying is emobossed in white to make it stand out and add texture.

Here's a close-up of Melody. {grin}

Thanks for stopping by. Next your off to see what the talented Christi Thorsen has created for you!

Blessings,