Monday, August 31, 2015

Oh Crab, Missed Your Birthday


We’ve got a brand new challenge at The Cat’s Pajamas today and it’s “Anything Goes!”  





That means it’s all up to you to create anything your little heart desires :)  I decided to give this cute Seas the Birthday set another whirl.   I think this little crabby guy is so sweet.  I stamped and coloured him up with Copics, adding his little birthday hat on his head.  I really love the red, soft aqua blue and kraft combination of colours together.  

For the background ocean layer, I first began by using the “O’s” from our Coolvetica Alphabet set with VersaMark ink to create the bubbles on the watercolour paper.  I embossed them in clear embossing powder and then added lots of random watercoloury wash overtop, adding some salt to the  page to give it some cool effects.   Once it was dry I used the Wave CutUps die to cut the top.  

For the sand I cut out a section of Kraft cardstock with our Wavy Stitched Border CutUps die and stamped the sentiment onto it colouring it in a bit with my Copics.  


A little sewing, a button and twine finish it off.  


Hope you can join us for the challenge!  Cards and projects are not required to use a Cat’s Pajamas Stamp or CutUps die but if you do the Cat Cash amount increases, so jump on in!  

Check out the TCP Blog to see who else from the Cat Pack is bringing you inspiration today!  



Friday, August 28, 2015

Golden Raspberries



It’s another lovely Friday and one of the last weekends of “summer” for us as the kids are starting to go back to school soon.  Our daughter starts second year University on Monday and the boys start school the following week.  We’ve tried to hang on to the last sweet days of summer rest.  Hopefully you’re enjoying the beauty around you right now.  

Today I’m bringing you a lovely fruit of summer in the new Power Poppy Berry It that Marcy released earlier this week.  Marcy’s fruit images are amoung my favourite things she’s ever drawn, so I was so excited to play with this one!  

I wanted to go a bit of a different route, and see what other colours I could colour them in and I found a lovely picture of a bowl of assorted raspberries that inspired these golden ones I did today.  



Just look at those golden-pinkish raspberries!  They are called Golden Raspberries and they’re actually supposed to be a little bit sweeter and more floral than red raspberries.  Did you know that raspberries are actually in the same Rosaceae family that roses are in?  That explains the thorny canes you run into when youre trying to clean them up.  



It is a straightforward design, I printed the image onto XPress It Blending cardstock and then used this fancy Spellbinders Die to trim it out.  I added the sentiment from another beautiful Power Poppy Set, Go Wild.  The sentiments were perfect, and one thing I appreciate so much about polymer stamps is that you can curve them, so I was able to curve the top sentiment to match the line of the die perfectly.  A little lace in the design, sewing, and some enamel dots do the accenting.  



Here’s the Copics I used to colour, it was fun giving some of the berries a little green like they has yet to ripen.  

Don’t forget...there’s just a few more days left to enter our Power & Spark Shabby & Chic Challenge!  



Here’s the rest of my Bloom Brigade Sistahs in action today!


Allison Cope
Christine Okken 
(you are here)
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan

Monday, August 24, 2015

Camouflaged Letters Tutorial



Hi Friends, and happy Monday.  Today I have a tutorial on the Power Poppy Blog on how to incorporate words or letters into your design with a raised camouflaged effect.  I have several examples of some fun ways to use it in your cardmaking.  Hope you can join me there!

Friday, August 21, 2015

Easy Breezy Coneflowers


Happy Friday Friends!  What’s on tap for your weekend?  We’ve got boys wanting to squeeze in the last bits of summer fun with their buddies before school starts in a few weeks.  How quickly the summer goes!  

Today I’m celebrating the end of summer vacations with some gorgeous flowers.  Coneflowers that are new from Power Poppy!  They are beautiful!  I remember when we lived in the States coneflowers were everywhere.  I had planted some here too, but they didn’t seem to thrive where I put them.   I’m going to have to try again because I really do love them!

I gave them some vibrant deep pink colouring to match this really deep pink card stock.  I love how their flower centers go from brown to orange to green, so I tried to capture that in the colouring.  

I’ll show you something fun I did with the background...


Do you have a Silhouette machine?  I recently bought some of the Sketch Pens that can be used in place of a blade to sketch a pattern rather than cut it.  Look how great it turned out in the white!  Such a neat effect.  That became my cardstock background.  I can’t wait to try some other patterns in the other colours I bought too.  It really can capture the intricate nature of a detailed pattern well.  

For fun I mimicked the pattern in the washi tape I found for the card too.  


Here’s a closeup including the stitched circle die to accent with a double bow and the tiny antique safety pin ribbon accent on the top left.  



Here’s the Copics I used today.  



Remember there’s still a couple of weeks for you to enter the Power & Spark -  Shabby & Chic Challenge!  

And here’s the Bloom Brigade team playing along today!  


Christine Okken (you are here)
Julie Koerber
Katie Sims
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan


Monday, August 17, 2015

No Waves, No Glory



Welcome to another round of The Cat’s Pajamas TCPTUES Challenge!  This week it’s an awesome inspiration shot from Nancy that I think is fantastic.  So many different directions you could go with this one!  



I chose to make an interactive card using our new favourite Surfing Bunny!  It’s called Stoked, and I created it to make our Bun Bun be able to catch a wave across the card.   I paired the set with our TCP Slider CutUps Die, to allow this little guy to Hang 10 across the waves.  All you need to do is pull the little tab along the left and voila, he’s cruising!  

I really played with the surfboard side of the inspiration photos, colouring in waves in the surf board, and adding waves from the Wave CutUps Die in layers and then the two toned letters in the sentiment, just like the one surfboard in the inspiration.  



The pull out is stamped in White Craft ink, and I’ve sponged around our Stitched Clouds CutUps die in Turquoise ink to create the sky.  



One last closeup of the little dude in his fancy shorts, and colourful Hawaiian Lei :)  No doubt, he’s pretty cool!  

So be sure to join is in this TCPTuesday Challenge!  By entering on the TCP Blog, you could win TCP Cat’s Cash!  


Stop by the TCP Blog to see all the TCP Inspiration today as well!  

Friday, August 14, 2015

Generously Shabby



Ready for some shabby romance?  I’ve designed another card for this month’s Shabby Chic Challenge at Power Poppy.  I decided to go with another no-line style colouring just because I think the softness of the technique really lends itself to this shabby style.  I used the gorgeous new polymer set So Grateful.  The dahlia arrangement here is just so pretty!  I stamped the image in Memento Desert Sand onto XPress It Blending Cardstock and then gave it some soft copic colouring.  Then I trimmed it out with a little border, spritzed it with some Mr. Huey’s Shine, and got ready to work on my background. 

I just LOVE the Tim Holtz Gothic stencil.  It’s my go to stencil for elegant looks.  I used embossing paste on the purple cardstock and then let it dry completely.  After it was dry I sponged some SU Almost Amethyst ink in different spots around the embossing paste to give it a aged look and curled up the edges.  

I placed a Spellbinders die cut in white underneath the the window I had cut out and then stamped the sentiment and sponged over some more of the stencil in ink softly over the sentiment.  



In this shot you can see the shine of the Spritz on the flowers.   Then, something I rarely do, I added some rolled paper roses to the design.  I think these are Verve dies.  Then I finished off with some pearls and lace and it has that vintage shabby appeal.  



Here’s a look at the challenge graphic again.  We sure hope you can join us in creating some thing Shabby & Chic and have your chance to win some Power Poppy goodies!  Here’s the girls playing along today...


Christine Okken
Julie Koerber
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker



Now here’s some FUN NEWS!  Tomorrow we’ll be showing off another NEW Digi image at Power Poppy.  It’s a beaut!


AND....as well on Saturday, we’ll also be playing along over on Passionate Paper Creations and ushering in a coloring contest. As a part of this promotion, the brand new Sunflower Power will be on sale for 24 hours only for $3!! You can use this image to enter the contest and two lucky winners will get a $25 gift certificate to the Power Poppy store! 

Monday, August 10, 2015

#shelfie



I’ve got another card to show off to you for the current TCPTUES Challenge with these great colours above that Nancy gave us.  You can see my card for last week HERE.



Today I have a really simple design with some of the fun beverage elements from our new set Lemons.  I made one regular lemonade, the pitcher full of pink lemonade and made the straws stripedy.    Then I just placed them on a “shelf” made from paper strips and put it all on paper layers.  




Here’s a bit closer look at the shelf and stitching.  Super simple, but still cute.  

Hope you can join with us in the challenge!  You have one week left to play and you can win Cat’s Cash and even be chosen as the Swanky Stamper of the month with an opportunity to play along with all our next release goodies!  

Check out the rest of the gals playing along at the TCP Blog!  

Friday, August 7, 2015

Shabby Sunflowers


We’re delighted to bring you another month long challenge at Power Poppy!  This month Cindy is our hostess and she’s challenging us to go Shabby & Chic!  



I was so excited to play with the new digital image from Power Poppy - Sunflower Power.  Oh my, I just love it so much!  I love sunflowers and their beautiful tilted faces and that gorgeous pop of yellow and brown.  They sing of summer!  I printed the image in a more sepia type tone to give the image a no-line colouring look.  It sure looks great on this type of image.  I used a stitched die to cut it out, allowing the smaller sunflower bloom to be “out of the box”, and then I coloured it all up with copies with a really loose style of colouring.  

Then to make it shabby, I distressed all my edges, including this great warm paper (it’s an old pack that I had in my stash).  Then I took a leaf die and some artichoke cardstock, cut and curled the edges to give them realism and tucked them behind the layers.  



I sponged up the sentiment in some sunny yellows, added some vintage style brads and a little butterfly and voila!  Shabby and chic :)  



Here’s the Copics I used. 




Here’s the Bloom Brigade in action with Shabby Chic, we hope you’ll join us in the challenge this month for your chance to win a Power Poppy set!  

Allison Cope
Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence
Stacy Morgan

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Super 12

So, our youngest is 12 now :)

That seems really hard to believe.  But in case I would have forgotten, this boy has told us every day for the past 10 days how many days it was until his birthday.  He’s so excited!  He’s headed to Junior High this fall, happy to finally be able to sit in the front seat and very excited to celebrate his day.

He is a gem.  He’s so opposite from me in so many ways, he’s a complete extrovert, will make a new friend everywhere he goes, is extremely talkative, tells great jokes, is really goofy, loves any kind of sport he can play, and he’s a born leader.  Those great things about him make him really easy to have fun with.  He’s really a super kid.  So here’s his 12 BD card.



I started with MFT’s Super Boy and our son’s favourite colour yellow.  I had to make it center stage, but paired it with this nice vibrant blue too.  Colored with Copics and trimmed out with a little white border.  Then I pulled out my other MFT super set, You’re Super and did the background blue on blue.  I kept it quite simple because lets face it, a 12 year old doesn’t necessarily full appreciate the card :)



I placed him on a stitched ring of white to give it that pop and added a couple of buttons to complete the Clean and Simple look. 

Here’s my boy on the eve of his birthday.  He made supper for us all.  Meatballs with Stroganoff gravy, garlic mashed potatoes and green beans.  He has really expressed a lot more interest in cooking this year so we enrolled him in a cooking class this summer.  What a hit!  He was over the moon about it and told me at least a dozen times a day how much fun he was having.  So, happily, I’m letting him cook more!  Here he is being comical in his apron, chef hat and all -  getting ready to fork his potatoes to see if they were ready.  (And supper was delicious by the way!) 



Thanks for stopping by to celebrate with us!  


Monday, August 3, 2015

All About the Water



Hello Kitty Cat friends!  Today we usher in a new TCPTUES Challenge, and this week its a colour challenge issued to us by Nancy with these great colours.  



When I saw the little sunburst in the new Country Fair CutUps dies I had a burst of inspiration to pair the sun with our Stitched Cloud CutUps dies and a beautiful heartfelt sentiment from the new Simply Stacked Sentiments set.  I really wanted it to have the feeling of a watercoloured sky so I used some deep blue reinker in the background on watercolor paper and let it smear around, adding a little salt to the pooling color to give it this abstract effect.  

I really like this sentiment set because it also includes pretty flourishes so you can really anchor or highlight your sentiment.  I embossed it over the watercoloring once it was completely dry.  


Now for some more fun....I have a design I made as a sample for another Dare to Get Dirty Challenge today, this one is for Stamper Robin...not our colours for this challenge, but new for the SCS DTGD Challenges today.  

It’s a pop up design made with TCP’s new Pop Up Cutable, and it has a squishy fishy surprise inside...



Here’s the simple PopUp design from the outside, I used the Simply Stacked Sentiments set on the outside of the design as well for this one and coloured in the letters with Copics, accenting with a couple of enamel dots and some wild wavy dp to really give it that waves theme.

Then once you open the design by pulling the ribbon tab....



Up pops this fun under the sea design using our new Seas the Birthday Set.  So cute!  I coloured these fun party seahorses and the octopus with Copics in some cool colours with a soft oceany background.  



Here’s a view from the top of the pop up design.  


And here’s a closeup of Mr. Octopus and the birthday sentiment.  I love how it turned out.  :)




Here’s the Copics I used for this design as well.  

Now I hope you can pop on over to see the rest of the Cat Pack showing off their colour inspired designs....




Christine Okken (you are here)
Deborah Anton
Jessica Rone
Lori Tecler
Nancy Thomas
Wendy McGaffey

Dare to Get Dirty 2015!


Have you seen what time of the year it is at Splitcoaststampers?  It’s Dare to Get Dirty!  It’s a week of challenges where girls from the Dirty Dozen past and present issue challenges for Fan Club Members at SCS.  There are numerous challenges every day and it’s a lot of fun.  

This year I’m not hosting any challenges, but I did volunteer to be a sample maker for several of them.  Today I have two designs to show you for two different challenges.  




This first challenge is for CathyMac over on SCS, and I pulled out the brand new set from The Cat’s Pajamas Shake, Rattle and Roll, just SO cute!  I stamped the little guy on Kraft card stock and then coloured him up with Prismacolor pencils, giving him a cute patterned paper pieced diaper to match the dp.  This is an older pack I dug out from Memory Box called Valise.  

For all the fun in the background I used the new Country Fair die to frame him up and give it the look of a celebration with the pennants.


Finished off simply with an embossed sentiment, enamel dots and some pretty seambinding.  


Now for the next design I have a sample for Benzi’s challenge...



I started with the very beautiful Simply Camelias Set from Power Poppy, stamped on Xpress It Blending Cardstock and coloured up using pointillism and my Copic markers.  I created some framing with my stitched rectangle dies and this dp from MME - On Trend...I love it’s gold shiny elements.  In the inset of the frame I used Power Poppy’s Big Scripts set stamping hello in Pool Party ink and then added some pointillism to give it that cohesive but dreamy look.  




Finishing details are some simple sequins to go with the gold in the design.  

And there you have it....two samples for Dare to Get Dirty!  I hope you can join in on the fun!  



Saturday, August 1, 2015

Bohemian Dahlias



Welcome to our August 1st Power Poppy Blog Hop!  We’re excited to say that all three new polymer sets in our Color Me Grateful Collection are now available in the store and we know you’re excited to get your hands on them :)  

I had a lovely time bringing this lovely little arrangement to life from the So Grateful set.  Isn’t that dahlia arrangement amazing?  I gave it some pretty vibrant colour with my Copics and when it all came together with the papers, I thought it had a real bohemian feel to it, which was fun.   The extras are all about the papers (various), ric rack, coloured lace, washi tape and some buttons.  



Here’s another look at the colouring and accents.  



Here’s the Copics I used....it was a sunny day picture as you can probably tell :) 



Be sure to hop along to the rest of the Bloom Brigade and their wonderful inspiration today!


Allison Cope
Christine Okken 
(you are here)
Cindy Lawrence
Julie Koerber
Kathy Jones
Katie Sims
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker