Spotlight Designer

I just found out my card was selected by 365 days (Day 248) as the spotlight designer.  Excitement!  The catch is, there were only two cards entered for that day!!   LOL!!  Gail's was lovely, but she was selected as the spotlight designer for Day 240, so I was the only other option.  LOL!  Anyway, it's always cool to see your own creation "spotlighted" somewhere else.  Have a good day.

Patriotic Valentine

Sandy Allnock, of Operation Write Home, posted a "Veterans' Day Giveaway" this week.  In honor of Veterans Day, she is giving a couple of yards of a great patriotic striped ribbon to each of three winners. All you have to do is post a patriotic (red, white & blue) valentine card before next Sunday.   

Operation Write Home needs us to make and ship Valentines now, so they can get shipped overseas by the end of this year.  That way the Heroes will get them in time to send Valentines home to loved ones by mid-February.
 
The borders on this card were made with a "bubbles" corner rounder done along the edge.  The sentiment was created digitally, and punched with a 1" scallop punch.  The little red hearts are the punch-out "left overs" from a pop-up center-fold row of hearts.  The large red heart was made with the Stampin' Up! "movers and shapers" heart, and the creamy flourish heart was punched with the Stampin' Up! heart punch.  I had to add a bit of ribbon, since this card is for a "Sandy" challenge.

Fireworks Fizzles

This week One Stop Craft Challenge wants cards that are inspired by fireworks.  I love the inspirational picture they posted.  

However, my card efforts weren't very successful.  I wanted to do emboss resist to have bright, colorful snowflake "bursts" and then ink over in black.  However, the techniques just didn't work out like I'd hoped.  

First I sponged Distress inks onto the card base using a "stencil" of the Stampin' Up! snowflake punch-negative space.  Then I used a VersaMark pen to trace the colored flakes so I could emboss with clear embossing powder.  Finally, I did direct to paper with Memento Tuxedo Black dye ink over the whole thing.  Wiping off the embossed areas to show the colors really just showed that the embossing wasn't good enough.  
Then I tried using the stamp with Distress inks and clear embossing powder.  This made much more delicate "bursts" and when I sponged on dark inks it didn't get as dark as I'd imagined.  
Then I tried sponging on the Distress Inks thru a punched out snowflake negative again.  After creating all the colored bursts, I laid the stencil over each one and sponged on Distress embossing ink.  I used iridescent embossing powder for this one, but again the dark ink just made it look messy.  If anyone has a good idea for how to stamp/ink/emboss bright firework bursts and get the background black, please let me know.  

The finished card uses the second try, and I added a sparkly sheer ribbon along with the sentiment.

Fairy-boy with Dragonfly

The current Cute Card Thursday challenge is to do a card with angels or fairies.  I have this digital image of a darling little boy fairy, with a pet (or captured?) dragonfly. The uncolored image is by Ina Jane.  She's done several darling fairies, and I chose the boy since I have three sons.  The image came from www.SweetColoringPages.com, and I did the coloring in PhotoShop Elements.  The sentiment is by Gina K Designs.  Turns out the challenge closed before I got this posted.  Oh, well.  He's awful cute anyway.
 

Sending Hugs & Kisses

This card combines The Craft's Meow's  November sketch challenge, and last week's Mid-week Throwdown at Operation Write Home (a valentine).  This card uses Gina K Designs stamps, and various bits of ribbon scraps I had around.