Spring is Coming for JAI #322

Hello  and a very happy Friday to you! This week has really flown. The Winter bugs are definitely in full flight and that has certainly put a bit of a damper on things but hopefully over the worst of it now. Just in time to enjoy a little ease from the chilly temperatures.

And also just in time for your weekend, we have a new challenge at Just Add Ink. This week, Rochelle has suggested beautiful colours for us all to use in our projects. Our lovely Team have put up fabulous cards to inspire you so I do hope you can pop on over and take a look.

Here are the colours:

And here is my card:

Truth be told,  I was a bit scared by these colours at first  -  I hadn't yet tried using the new Sweet Sugarplum ....but then I fell in love with the new Thoughtful  Branches stamp set and of course it's perfect colours for a cherry tree in blossom isn't? It was such fun to see that it goes so well with Chocolate Chip and I might just have to show this neglected colour some more love!!

There is a little gold in the embossing of the sentiments and a scattering of sentiments - hopefully it is ok as a neutral :-)

The "Spring "is the new Labeller Alphabet - stamped onto Vanilla card and then cut out and pieced together. Today is the 29th of July - so only 2 days and one month to go till Spring is here - yay!! 

We really have had a true "Winter" this year - cold, wet and blustery! Some in the Northern Hemisphere might say that without snow we have gotten off lightly - that's true! It is the wind that has made it seem tough - as a Radio announcer in (Wellington) NZ used to say: "it's a lazy wind - it goes straight through you!" 

This card is off to NZ - to a lovely friend in hospital who is having a harder time than expected post surgery (and she's a purple fan) so hopefully this will help cheer her a little too :-)

Card stock: Chocolate Chip, Sweet Sugarplum, Very Vanilla, Blushing Bride

Ink: Sweet Sugarplum, Chocolate Chip, Blushing Bride, Versamark

Stamps: Thoughtful Branches, Sunshine Sayings, Hearts A Flutter (Retired)

Accessories: Big Shot, Beautiful Branches Thinlits, Hearts a Flutter Framelits,  Gold EP, Subtles Enamel Shapes, Metallic Sequins Assortment, Dimensionals, Snail

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you can take a moment to pop over to Just Add Ink and see all the wonderful inspiration from our team and I look forward to seeing what you will create with these beautiful colours this week too!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan 

21st Birthday Pop Up

Hello, and happy Monday to you! The weekend went so quickly - both mornings the sun was shining before the clouds arrived but today we only just made it to 11 degrees Celsius and the wind chill factor made it seems so much colder. We did make it to the park though and Sally the Lab had a lot of fun - and managed to roll in the mud and earn herself a bath...

The card I have to show you today was made recently for another family milestone birthday.
Last month I shared a special 18th birthday card for a Cousin - today's card is for her sister. So it also needed to be special :-)

This might remind you of the card I made for last week's sketch challenge at Just Add Ink - yes, I used the same sketch layout. These black and white stripes are so striking aren't they?  Here, there is a classical and fun balloon party theme that gives no hint at all of ....

....the surprise Pop Up birthday party inside!!

This seemed the perfect time to bring out these fun Pop Up Thinlits. There is a black panel added to the inside of the card which enables the black and white stripe theme from the outside to continue on the inside - layers in the centre here do increase the bulkiness - so the panel is no bigger than it needs to be. The white side edges are secured under strips of designer paper and card stock and the balloon party is ready to roll :-)

Card stock: Melon Mambo, Basic Black, Pink Pirouette, Whisper White, Gold Foil

Designer Series Paper: Pop of Pink

Ink: Versamark, Pink Pirouette

Stamps: Balloon Celebration, Sunshine Sayings

Accessories: Big Shot, Large Numbers Framelits, Circle Framelits (Retired), Party Pop Up Thinlits, Triple Banner Punch, Balloon Bouquet Punch, Gold EP, Gold Metallic Thread, Brights Enamel Shapes

Non SU: Stitched Circle Dies (My Favourite Things)

Thanks for stopping by today!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

Pieced Rose for JAI #321

Hello and welcome! This past week we have been treated to some unseasonably warm weather - there even were a couple of days without rain! It has been really lovely and has confused the garden somewhat - the daffodils have even started to sprout :-) But Winter is set to return with a vengeance this weekend so will be a great excuse to spend a little time at the craft table.

And just in time for your weekend we have a new challenge at Just Add Ink. This week Patrice has suggested a fabulous technique for us all to use - to Just Add.............Paper Piecing.
The design team have showcased brilliantly different variations of this fun technique so I hope you can pop on over and take a look and be inspired to join us!

This was such a fun challenge as I'd been wanting to try paper piecing the smaller rose in the Rose Garden Thinlits. When I look at the roses I see when walking the streets with Sally the Lab, they are often darker in the centres and lighter toward the outer petals so that was my inspiration for the colours. The base card and rose frame is actually Night of Navy although sadly it almost looks black in the photo.
To give the petals something to rest on, I traced the outline onto some Whisper White card stock and cut it out and placed the frame over the top. Then I simply die cut the rose from the different card colours and kept the pieces - the trick is to pick the card up afterwards, holding the die and peel away the excess card. Then use your paper piercer to gently poke out the frame and your rose should come out intact making it easier to see which piece goes where :-)

For the background I started with a soft water colour wash and as it was drying, stamped some images from Timeless Textures. The slightly wet paper causes the ink to run a little - in some places more than others :-) 

Card stock: Night of Navy, Soft Sky, Tempting Turquoise

Ink: Versamark, Soft Sky, Tempting Turquoise, Night of Navy

Stamps: Sunshine Sayings, Timeless Textures

Accessories: Big Shot, Rose Garden Thinlits, Triple Banner Punch, Basic Rhinestones, Aqua Painter, Large Polka Dots EF
Non SU: Watercolour paper pad- 300gsm Eraldo di Paolo from Riot Art 

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you can take a moment to pop on over to Just Add Ink and see the fabulous cards our team have made to inspire you and I look forward to seeing what you will make with this fun technique too.

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan 

Touch of Pink for JAI #320

Happy Friday to you and welcome! This week has gone really fast....lovely to see friends from home and am also starting to do a bit of decluttering in preparation for moving in coming months....its a nuisance to have to move but at least we are relatively experienced at it and are blessed to have many lovely willing helpers. And stamp orders come in big, strong brown boxes which will be handy too :-)

This week at Just Add Ink, Tina has created a fabulous sketch for us to use in our projects and the design team have all enjoyed using it - you can see that in the beautiful the cards they've all put together -  so I hope you can take a moment to pop on over and take a look!

Here's the sketch:

 

And here's my card:

We have a lot of birthdays in July in our family...this is for the first of them, another favourite Aunt in Queensland :-)  She has long loved black and white and gold together and so this bold, striped DSP seemed the perfect background for a touch of pink :-) There is very little stamping on this card - just one pink swirl from Swirly Bird and the gold embossed sentiment, (quickly becoming a favourite script) from the Sunshine Sayings bundle. This all came together so easily - love it when that happens -and I am also loving those Enamel Shapes too just in case you hadn't noticed their frequency of late, so shiny :-)

It's a little hard to see, but the layers are all raised on dimensionals and the white circle is added off-centre to show a little more of the shiny gold :-)

Card stock: Melon Mambo, Pink Pirouette, Basic Black, Whisper White, Gold Foil
Designer Series Paper: Pop Of Pink
Inks: Pink Pirouette, Versamark
Stamps: Swirly Bird, Sunshine Sayings
Accessories: Big Shot, Botanical Builder Framelits, Circle Framelits (Retired), Triple Banner PunchMetallic and Subtles Enamel Shapes
Non SU: Stitched Circle Dies (My Favourite Things)

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you can take a moment to pop on over to Just Add Ink and see the inspiration from our fabulous team and I look forward to seeing what you will create with this lovely sketch this week too!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

Baby Sunshine

Hello and welcome! It is the last weekend of the Winter school holidays and today was the first sunny day we have seen for a while. The park where we regularly walk was full of life - children on the playground and parents bringing picnic lunches - and dogs rolling in the mud...yes, Sally too  - all glad to see sunshine!

Today's card is made for some lovely friends visiting from NZ who are expecting their first baby. It was such a delight to catch up especially as it has been quite a few years since the last time.
And it seemed the perfect time to look at putting these two stamp sets together :-) I was inspired by the cards in the Catalogue using the Sunshine Sayings set and so this is a rather rare CASE. I kept the general idea but changed colours and added layers and water colouring and of course the cute little Onesie :-)
 The heart and "love" are both die cut out of water colour paper and the latter was coloured using an Aquapainter before both received the almost magical Wink of Stella sparkle. For the little Onesie, I coloured the stripes using a Blender Pen.

And the water colouring theme is repeated on the inside.

(Hint: Stamp your words in Black Archival Ink before you start unless you have time to let it dry...otherwise they will still run with the water :-))

Card stock: Crumb Cake, Mint Macaron, Water Color Paper, Whisper White
Inks: So Saffron, Mint Macaron, Momento Tuxedo Black
Stamps: Sunshine Sayings, Made With Love
Accessories: Big Shot, Sunshine Wishes Thinlits, Baby's First Framelits, Metallic Sequins Assortment, Subtles Enamel Shapes, Aquapainter, Blender Pen, Wink of Stella

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you are enjoying your weekend :-)

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

Peace Branches for JAI #319

Happy Friday to you and welcome! We are half way through the mid winter school holidays here in Melbourne and I have been blessed with a catch up with an aunty and cousin visiting from New York and have some lovely friends from Nelson in NZ arriving  in the next week too. Hopefully the weather might improve so they can see something other than grey skies,  rain and puddles....the dog park is looking more like a lake!

And its time for a new challenge at Just Add Ink. This week,  Di has suggested a great photo for us all to use. It gives such an instant 'Christmas" feel and so is a great opportunity to get ahead on starting towards the busiest time of any card makers year :-) Our fabulous design team have all created gorgeous cards to inspire you so I hope you can take a moment to pop on over and take a look.

Here is the photo:

And here is my card:

With inspiration photos I find it easiest to go with what first jumps out at me from the photo - so in this case it was the wreath and how full it was with added elements, and also the elegant door it was hanging on. So I decided to use some DSP from the new Serene Scenery stack for my "door" element, and to create a wreath effect using the Flourish Thinlits which contain both the leaf and berry dies - so fabulous for Christmas :-)

"Peace" from the Christmas Greetings Thinlits is cut 3 times using white card stock and then the  top layer in gold. To create the "be with you", I masked a stamp in the Reason For the Season set and stamped directly onto the rustic looking DSP. It feels so strange to create a card using only one stamp but no more seemed to be needed :-)

Card stock: Island Indigo, Whisper White, Garden Green, Real Red, Gold Foil

Designer Series Paper: Serene Scenery Stack 

Ink: Island Indigo

Stamps: Reason For The Season

Accessories: Big Shot, Flourish Thinlits, Christmas Greetings Thinlits, Brights Enamel Shapes, White Perfect Accents (with stickers removed they are clear )previously

As previously mentioned. the dog park is looking more like a lake currently - it's only the first week of July and we already have had 3/4 of our average monthly rain....wonderful for the birds but not so great for dogs and people currently - bags not playing rugby here this weekend :-)

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you can take a moment to pop over to Just Add Ink and see what the rest of our talented team have made to inspire you and I look forward to seeing what you will create inspired by this gorgeous wreath image this week too!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan

Special Stickers for JAI #318

Happy Friday to you  - time is passing so quickly and it's hard to believe we are half way through another year already! The good news is of course that means we are also a third of the way through Winter - one of our coldest in a long time so we are all looking forward to Spring:-)

We have a really fun challenge at Just Add Ink this week from Tina who has suggested that we Just Add....S. Stencils, Stripes, Silver....so many fun options for you to chose from! Our talented design team have created gorgeous cards to inspire you with S themes so I hope you can take a moment to pop on over and take a look.

This card looks like an ordinary card....using the Number of Years stamp set and co- ordinating dies. But you might notice that there are 3 little holes behind the Vellum layer.....The Silver heart is a pressure Switch to turn on the special LED Sticker lights behind the Silver numbers on this Significant birthday card.... just a few special S items :-) 

 This fun idea was inspired by seeing a card and video from Caroline where she uses Sticker LED lights from Chibitronics (available here.) Caroline shows how to create the circuit using one light - to make it work for more than one light, you need to use more than one trail of copper tape....it's all do to with positives and negatives... Here is my "practice" circuit - I drew around the hillside and circle so as to be able to know where I could hide my circuit elements. The battery is under the card stock piece I am pressing to test the lights and is where on the real card, the silver heart is placed over. It looks messy and not stamped so well,  but it was the first practice - and it worked! As the copper tape that is under the piece of card touches the battery, the lights turn on :-)

If you would like more info on how to create these, I created a Pinterest board that has several video tutorials here and from these  I was able to work out how to create my circuit. This card is for a cousin who has just reached this milestone birthday and Miss S has always had a love of maths and science so it seemed the perfect addition to a special card for her  - I hope she likes it :-)

To create the hillside edge to the DSP layer, I used the Swirly Scribble Framelits. Because there is a battery involved that is about 2 Dimenionals in height,  the Foam Adhesive Strips were used to surround it  and then to support the other elements so that at first glance, they are all the same height, and there is "room" to depress the switch. A handheld circle punch creates holes large enough for the lights to be seen through the card stock layer and gives some hint that there is more to this than meets the eye :-)

Card stock: Whisper white, thick and standard, Melon Mambo, Silver Foil 

Designer Series paper: Brights Stack, Botanical Gardens Designer Vellum Stack

Ink: Melon Mambo

Stamps: Number of Years

Accessories: Big Shot, Large Numbers Framelits, Swirly Scribble Framelits, Circle Framelits,(retired) 1/8"circle handheld punch, Silver Enamel shapes, Foam Adhesive Strips

Non SU: Chibitronics Starter Kit - LED lights, Copper Tape, 9V battery

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you can take a moment to pop on over to Just Add Ink and see all the fabulous cards our design team have created to inspire you and I look forward to seeing what you will create inspired by the letter S this week too!

Happy stamping until next time,

Jan