Oceans Of Joy

A while back, I ordered a bunch of dies from Frantic Stamper. Today I pulled one out to actually use it.

Here's my card, then I'll explain:

I started by cutting the Fish Scales Card Panel out of three different colors of blue card stock. I stuck the mid-blue color to a white panel, then set to work to replace the fish scales into the piece.

By now, most of you know I like to work on a 4"x5 1/4" panel (the better to screw up and minimize card stock waste), and the cool thing about this die is it's less than my standard panel size, like it was meant to be!

I put in two rows of lighter and darker pieces, and left the rest the color of the border. This panel was originally in the other direction, with the dark blue at the top. Of course, I had no idea what I'd do with the panel, so it didn't matter, until I decided to make a fish card and was forced to turn the panel upside down. Why? Because in an ocean, the lighter colored water is shallower than darker colored water, so the darker blue needed to be at the bottom. But that's okay, since it looks less like fish scales and more like waves this way.

All I needed to add were a few fish and a sentiment, so I turned to my trusty Hero Arts Oceans of Joy set. I colored a few fish, cut them out, and added a sentiment. Done.

I really like this die, and I'll probably use it again very soon.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: Frantic Stamper Fish Scales Card Panel die, three colors of Simon Says Stamp card stock, SU Candy Dots - Brights, mini glue dots, and the following:

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Not Something You See Every Day

Normally, when one combines challenges, it's a sketch challenge plus a color challenge, or a sketch and a theme, but you generally cannot combine sketch challenges. Not only is it forbidden in most challenge blogs' rules, but it simply doesn't make sense.

Enter: the current Tuesday Morning Sketch challenge: Anything Goes, and their challenge (because Anything Goes isn't really a challenge, now, is it?) is to challenge yourself.

I combined that with two other challenges to make this:

My challenge to myself was to disappear another piece of paper with (gah) pink in it. I had a small piece of Japanese paper that I cut into two strips to make two cards. I followed the current Sketch Saturday sketch:

and my colors came from the current Just Us Girls challenge:

There's really not a lot to tell about this card, except that I got bold and combined gold and grey. The Gold & Silver combination seems to be all over Blogland lately, so I decided to give it a try. I used grey card stock for the layer and the small circle behind the sentiment, and the sentiment was stamped with Delicata Gold and clear-embossed:

You can also see the gold in the Japanese paper. When I buy this pretty paper, I generally get patterns with gold in them. It's what I do.

The sentiment is from the MFT set You've Got Mail set that I had to open to use.

That's one more piece of (gah) pink paper that has left my craft room. Some day I hope to be a (gah) pink-free zone. A girl can dream.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: miscellaneous piece of Japanese paper from The Heaplet, vat of clear embossing powder, and the following:

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A Swing and A Miss

No, there's no baseball here, but that title is a perfect explanation of what happened with this card. I'll explain in a moment.

Earlier today, while in the craft room annex (also known as the third bedroom), I found a Hero Arts stamp set and matching dies, just sitting on the desk. I can only think they were discovered in a round of unpacking and never got further than that particular horizontal surface.  I decided to use them so I could put them away.

This card started out with the current OWH sketch challenge:

I thought I'd use the butterfly from the "found" stamp set for the circle element in the sketch. 

For colors, I used in the current Simon Says Stamp Color Coordinates Recipe:

And this is what came out:

I stamped the butterfly in Memento Black and colored it with Copics, whose colors mostly followed the SSS recipe. I die-cut the colored butterfly, and another one out of vellum. I don't know what possessed me to want to do that, but it was the source of all The Trouble.

I hacked up an orange Hero Arts folded note card to make the strip across the card front, and put it onto a piece of white for a little contrast, and to match the sketch. I cut a remnant of white for the angled panel, held the butterfly over the spot I wanted to stick it so I knew where to stamp the sentiment, and stamped the sentiment.

Now, about that butterfly. Did I stick on the vellum layer with mini glue dots? Noooooo, I wasn't that smart. I thought I'd use a few drops of Glossy Accents. Please don't be like me -- that was so dumb. As soon as I stuck the vellum to the card stock, the glue squished and made quite a mess. Just look at this:

Do you see that blob? Yeah, that's dried Glossy Accents. I thought I'd cover it up with Wink of Stella, and you'd be so blinded by the shiny that you wouldn't see the blob, but I was wrong; it didn't work. Also, you can't send cards to OWH if you use glitter. That's the "miss" part of "swing and miss". Dang.

So if you don't look too closely at the flat vellum butterfly, it looks pretty much okay. I'm so sad I made this for OWH and now I can't send it to them. I suppose I could cover the whole thing with Versamark and emboss it to seal it, but ... that sounds like work. I think next time I'll think before I glue.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: SU black bling, black Sharpie, and the following:

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