Many Thanks

Another fall card for the Hero Arts Monthly Challenge...

The background is created with layers of glimmer mist. I then stamped the cling swirl background over the background using a brown ink.  I layered the stamped leaf over that and colored it with a frost paint. The edges were distressed with brown dye ink. Then colored around the edges of the leaves with a brown watercolor pencil to provide some shadowing. I finished it off with a few more leaves stamped, cut out, and sponged and added the thanks onto the leaves. Then the leaves were dangled using some twine.

Have a wonderful day!

Suzz

Fall Birthday

My BIL birthday is around Thanksgiving and I always need a fall masculine birthday card. When I finished this background I knew it was going to turn into his birthday card.

 I had a hard time cutting into the main image to put it on a card. I am entering this into the Hero Arts Monthly challenge and the Our Creative Corner Numbers challenge.  I started creating these die cut leaves for the OCC challenge by embossing with the folders that have a mix of numbers.  I sponged them and sprayed them with a mix of dye inks and chalkboard mists.

The background was created by glimmer misting a mix of colors onto white cardstock. After that had dried the die cut leaves were laid over the background and sponged around the edges to give the soft impression of the leaves. 

I finished off the background with the Hero Arts script stamped over the background and the Hero Arts Sentiment stamped on the front.

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzz

Manly Card

The Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week is to show men.  The layout of my card is from the sketch at Mojo Monday #208.

I decided to use the sketch like a grid card and try to put together 4 panels of manliness using Artistic Outpost stamps and 7 Gypsies paper.

The sets used include: Artistic Outpost - Steampunk, Huck Finn, Paris Exposition, and Loverly London. 
Lots of distressing with the sponge and Vintage Photo. Touches of watercolor pencils and stamped using Ranger Archival Black Ink. Finished off with a touch of white gel pen highlights.

It's Raining... It's Pouring..... More rain in the forecast for us today and tomorrow. 

Hope your day is seeing a little sunshine!

Suzz

CR84FN39 - Fall Anyone?

Time for some beautiful fall colors with  CR84FN39 colors.

I also created this project for the Hero Arts Monthly Contest  which is Autumn, Window Cards or a color challenge.  I liked the effect of the tree stamped on the window and in the background. It gives it a little spooky effect.

The front of the card is glimmer misted, sponged and a torn layer of a piece of text from a book. I think it looks like an old front of a house in Tuscany perhaps?

The frame is from Hero Arts and I was inspired to purchase it because of my friend Jacqueline who uses this frame so beautifully.

The stamps are all Hero Arts except the sentiment which is Memory Box.


The inspiration photos for CR84FN39:

For all the details on the challenge this week go to the CR84FN blog. 

The fabulous CR84FN Design Team:

Deborah Frings * Sue Lelli  * Andrea Matthews *  Stephanie Kraft * Suzanne Czosek (me)  *  Heather Jensen * Mona Pendleton  * Lisa Somerville *  Marie Oberg (Guest Designer)

Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz

A layout, a tag and an ATC

I have been sharing my Memory Box projects over on the Outside the Box Blog but haven't been sharing all of them here.So I thought I would do a little recap of my MB projects.

I created a layout which I hardly ever do.  The Valise papers are kraft background and Dave made these fantastic tag shapes which work so well with Layouts. They inspired me to create a Halloween layout.  The picture is of my youngest from awhile ago when she dressed up as a princess.

I have to say that is my favorite part of Halloween is the kids expressions when they get their loot and are running back to you to tell you what they got.  Look how happy she is. :)

The next is a simple wreath with a little glimmer mist.

I created it to hang on a gift or even a bottle as a tag.  I thought it was a fun little wreath. I added a thank you tag but it could have had anything on the tag.

Lastly one of my ATC's from the other day.  A scrap that I turned into a simple ATC.

This collage is one of my favorites and love coloring in the Peony.

Products: Memory Box Valise, Adore Peony Collage - G1433, Butterfly Twig - D1351, Maple Wreath - G1793, Index Card - G1781, Crow and Pumpkin - C1800, Vintage Halloween Words - G1802

Hope your are having a lovely Saturday. We are having a beautiful fall day.  I am off to work on some weeds. :) They always grow so much better than the plants.

Suzz

Music & Years

 

This card was designed with the Card Patterns Sketch # 133, the Color Throwdown #160 colors and the music is for the City Crafter Challenge of Music. 

The main circle was glimmer misted with pink chalkboard mist over a music mask.  I cut a circle from the background and mounted it on a brown circle. Sponged the edges with a hint of brown dye ink. 

The flowers, ribbon and sheet of music also received a coat of the same chalkboard mist. 

The bird is from Artistic Outpost - Birds of a Feather plate and the sentiment is from Verses Rubber Stamps - Music & Years - BB0412-F

Thanks for stopping by!  

Suzz

Scraps, Scraps and more Scraps

My scrap box is quite large and it doesn't contain pattern paper scraps... It actually contains backgrounds, images and other failed projects.  When I saw the challenges for Simon Says Stamp and Show an ATC and the City Crafter Challenge was music, I knew I was going into that large box of scraps and finding the pieces for my projects.

I am happy to say that I cleaned up the large box and sized it down to 4 large envelopes full of shapes and backgrounds.  I either used or discarded the rest. (Yeah!) and I ended up with around 15 ATC's.... Now I won't bore or torture you with all of the ATC's I created but I will share the ones that were amongst my favorites. :)

A few of them have the music incorporated to qualify for City Crafter. (I had at least 4 big scraps of music backgrounds.... Hmmm..... Maybe I should stop using those stamps so much!) I will share the music ones first:

I love this image (Artistic Outpost - Bluebird) and  it never got used. So I added the cracked glass effect and a leftover doily piece to create my ATC. The joy is from Authentique stickers.  

This Santa image was an extra from a project last fall.  I layered it over an embossed background of snowflakes (another Scrap) stamped the sentiment (Inkadinkado) and found the fun deer button which I glittered up for an accent.

An extra peacock image with the music in the background. Clear resist with dye ink sponged into the feathers and leaves. The sentiment is from Artistic Outpost - Think and Wonder and I think a great quote for a peacock! :)

Onto my other non music ATCs:

Love these girls and they are from the Birds of  Feather plate from Artistic Outpost.  They were for another project which they were bumped off from. So here they are with a remnant from an ATC project gone bad.

This image is from Lovely Day plate from Artistic Outpost. I tend to tilt at windmills quite a bit... and thought it would be a fun sentiment for the image, so I typed it up on the computer and printed it out. 

My western themed ATC.  Using two parts of two different cards that never made it to the blog.

You knew there had to be some butterflies and damask backgrounds lurking out there in my stash!!!  Hero Arts - Damask background and Wood Grain Background. The flowers are Memory Box and Hero Arts.

Last but not least the Santa from the Snowy Woods plate from Artistic Outpost.  I love the Santas on this plate and had stamped him quite awhile ago and never used him. 

This took me quite awhile to whittle through the pile of scraps but it felt really good to clean out my scrap box and sort it.  I still had about twenty more backgrounds I could have created but got tired of the little ATC and all the details!

I hope you enjoyed your ATC journey!  Thanks for stopping by...

Suzz

Poppy Poppy

On the way to making my CR84FN  card this week,  I created two more cards using the poppy stamps from Hero Arts.  Here are the other two cards created in my Poppy Series. :)

 

 The Hero Arts doily stamp is stamped using glimmer mist.  The Poppies are stamped using a dark gray ink and then colored using glimmer mists and watercolor pencil.  The sentiment is from Verses Rubber Stamps.

The second card was supposed to be a double pocket tag card.  But when I created the pockets I realized you couldn't see the poppies and decided to use a different design to show off the poppies.  They are pieced using Authentique papers. The background is a Hero Arts Friends Definition Stamp.

Hope your week is off to a great start! 

Suzz

Butterfly Tags

  I created this project for the Embellish Paint or Mist Color Trends Challenge,  Wee Memories - No Pattern Paper  and Creative Inspirations Paints - Charms.
I was playing around in my journal,  trying ideas and one of my ideas was stamping the Cocoa Bean Butterfly onto the Museum Tag. That inspired the idea of creating place card tags for my family.  I created five tags with the initial of each family member.  I looked around and found four little vases to attach the tags too. (Need to find one more for the last tag)
Recipe:

1. Stamp museum tag onto Valise papers using brown ink. Cut out.
2. Distress edges using distressing tool.
3. Smear light blue acrylic paint onto tag. Sponge edges with brown dye ink.
4. Die Cut Classic Tags from Valise Paper. 
5. Stamp Museum Tag over circle classic tag.
6. Distress Edges using distressing tool.
7. Smear blue acrylic paint over surface.
8. Stamp letter using brown ink, apply sticker or hand write the name on the tag. :)
9. Stamp Cocoa Bean Butterfly on Shrinky Dink using StaZon brown ink.
10. Cut out leaving a little extra on the top by the head to allow for a hole punch.
11. Punch hole.
12. Flip over and color on the backside of the butterfly using Copic markers.
13. Heat with heat gun or in oven following instructions on packaging.
14. Stamp Cocoa Bean Butterfly using brown ink onto Valise paper.
15. Cut out butterfly.
16. Color using watercolor pencils.
17. Sponge edges using brown dye ink.
18. Spritz Seam Binding Ribbon using blue glimmer mist.
19. Tie initial tag with butterfly using twine.
20. Attach the ribbon and tag to larger tag.
21. Spritz white paper flowers with blue glimmer mist. Attach to center of butterfly.

Here is a close up of one of the Shrinky Dink Butterflies:

Here is a picture of the four vases with tags:
I created all five in a production line. Very fun. I also created additional Shrinky Dink butterflies charms. I want to take and tie them into the flowers in the mini vases.

These little tags could have been created with the pumpkins stamps or snowflakes.  I can see a bunch of different place-settings.  The statice is from my garden and I pulled a bunch in and spritzed with the glimmer mist to give it a blue tint.

Have a wonderful day!

Suzz

CR84FN38 - Part II - Poppies

Come play along this week with the lovely  CR84FN38 colors.

The hot pink is a hard color for me to replicate with inks or pencils so I went into the glimmer mists to find a nice bright pink. The pink background  is created using  glimmer mist with Hero Arts lace background stamp on white cardstock. I sprayed the glimmer mist on my craft mat and dragged the stamp through the mist to ink it up.

The poppies are also Hero Arts and are stamped over the background and shaded using multiple shades of black and grey watercolor pencils. The background paper is Authentique.

The inspiration photos for CR84FN38:

For all the details on the challenge this week go to the CR84FN blog. 

The fabulous CR84FN Design Team:

Deborah Frings * Sue Lelli  * Andrea Matthews *  Stephanie Kraft * Suzanne Czosek (me)  *  Heather Jensen * Mona Pendleton  * Lisa Somerville *  Marie Oberg (Guest Designer)

Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz

True Love

A quick post for today. Just sharing a card I had created a long time ago that was published in the October Crafts N Things.  I love the sweet image of the older couple (Mo Manning)  enjoying their afternoon sitting on the bench.

Product info: Stamping Bella, Memory Box - Valise Papers, Spellbinders Dies.

Have a wonderful day!

Suzz

Keep A Song in Your Heart

I love the ruler image in the Artistic Outpost Whimsical Melange. When I was working with the ruler I thought wouldn't it be fun to create a background of rulers. I think it turned out pretty cool.

Recipe:

1. Stamp ruler multiple times using black archival ink on ivory cardstock.
2. Sponge with yellow, orange and brown dye inks. 
3. Distress edges using distressing tool. 
4. Piece together a staggered background.
5. Stamp little birds randomly on background using black ink. 
6. Stamp birds on ivory cardstock using black ink. Watercolor with green and reds. 
7. Punch hearts from music sheet and spray with red glimmer mist. 
8. Stamp sentiment on ivory cardstock using black ink. Sponge background with yellow and orange dye ink. 
9. Cut out sentiment and mount on black cardstock. 
10. Assemble. 

Products:

• Artistic Outpost - Whimsical Melange
• Artistic Outpost - Typography
• Artistic Outpost - Birds of a Feather
• Artistic Outpost - Songbirds
• Ranger Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Mustard Seed, Rusty Hinge
• Ranger Archival Ink - Black 

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzz

A Pair of Hearts

I have been wanting to create a playing card for awhile and when I saw the Moxie Fab World Challenge - Card Play and City Crafters Challenge - I Heart You I knew I had a perfect pair.

The Verses Rubber Stamps - Oh the Dances seemed to be the perfect verse to go with my pair of hearts. 

The cards were created by cutting out  2 1/2" x 3 1/2" rectangles of white cardstock. Stamp the number using black ink in both corners.  (Artistic Outpost Whimsical Melange) Sponge hearts using red dye ink.  The masks were created from Marvy Uchida Heart Punch and the heart cut out of a playing card. The edges were distressed with the distressing tool and with a sponging over the background.  I love the fact that the playing cards look a little worn and distressed but yet still a pair. I think this would be a cute anniversary card.

The background is Hero Arts Music Background stamped using black ink on white cardstock. Distressed to coordinate with the cards.  

Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz

 

Steampunk Love

 

I mixed some steampunk with a little love. Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week is Steampunk and the Fashionable stamping challenge is Tags.  I mixed them together to make a Valentines Tag. 

The little heart and clock is from the Artistic Outpost Oz Collage.  The banners and clock are from the Artistic Outpost Whimsical Melange plate. 

The background recipe for the tag and hearts: 

1. Spray yellow and pink glimmer mist on manilla tags. (2 different ones)
2. Emboss using embossing folders. I used a mix of the gears, bingo, and numbers folders. 
3. Smear embossed area with versamark watermark ink pad. 
4. Heat emboss using Aged Gold and Aged Silver embossing powders from Stampendous. 
5. Edge the hearts with black marker. Edge tag with black cardstock.

The banners received a similar treatment but instead of a embossing folder they were stamped with the clock face and heat embossed with gold embossing powder. 

Hope your week is off to a good start!

Suzz

CR84FN38 - You warm my Heart

The colors this week for CR84FN are so beautiful.... grey, black and hot pink. .I pulled out a sweet image to create a little easel card:

The image is from My Favorite Things - Pure Innocence.  The paper is from Memory Box. The die is Spellbinders. She is colored using Copics and highlighted with the white gel pen. Shadowed with watercolor pencils over the copics.

When you open it up:

The inspiration photos for CR84FN38:

For all the details on the challenge this week go to the CR84FN blog. 

The fabulous CR84FN Design Team:

Deborah Frings * Sue Lelli  * Andrea Matthews *  Stephanie Kraft * Suzanne Czosek (me)  *  Heather Jensen * Mona Pendleton  * Lisa Somerville

Our wonderful guest designer for September is Marie Oberg!

Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz

Whatever You Are

This sentiment is a great reminder of being yourself. I had so much fun pairing it up with the Lion and the Tin Man from the Oz collage plate. I thought how appropriate for them as they were all searching for what they really had within themselves. :)

The background and frame is from the Whimsical Melange Plate. The Lion and Tin Man are from the Oz Collage plate and the sentiment is from the Typography plate.

The background colors are a mix of dye inks blended and the images are colored using watercolor pencils. The colors were softened with distressing using a white acrylic paint. The seam binding was dyed with the same dye inks to coordinate.

Have a wonderful Friday!

Happy Bee-Day

 The Colourq challenge colors this week  had me stumped and I had to think about it for awhile.  I decided to pull out this adorable fairy with her bouquet of flowers and create a fun birthday card.

 The image is from Stamping Bella.  Colored with water color pencils. I died the doily and ribbon using glimmer mist to match the razzleberry color. The sentiment and bee are from Memory Box.

Here are the inspiration colors.

 Hope your Thursday is wonderful!

Suzz

Dahlia

Happy Wednesday!  I am loving my new Dahlia and created a second card for the City Crafter Challenge 1..2..3.. challenge (1 ribbon, 2 words, 3 butterflies) and Color Throwdown. The design started from the Moxie Fab World Square sketch challenge.

 The stamps are Stampendous: Jumbo Cling Dahlia, Sentiment. Paper is from Authentique. The butterflies are Marvy Uchida Punches.  The flower is watercolor pencils and waterbrush. The edges are sponged with Broken China.
 
The beautiful colors from Color Throwdown: 

Have a wonderful day!

Suzz

Thanks for being a Great Friend

The My Minds Eye blog has card layout challenge and the OCC challenge this week is to stamp on pattern paper.   Here is my take on both challenges:

The image is the jumbo cling Dahlia from Stampendous. Love it!  I stamped it over some beautiful Lost and Found II - Sunshine paper and colored the flower using watercolor pencils to add additional shading.  The letters are stickers and they were sponged and outlined in black ink.

Hope your week is going well. Weather here has shifted to very cool and fall like.

Thanks for stopping by...

Suzz

CR84FN37 - II - Tween Birthday

The CR84FN colors had me playing with my glimmer mists.  I pulled out the Stampers Anonymous Psychedelic Grunge set with the circles and stars and created a few tween cards.  The black really makes the teal and light blue pop off the page.

Here is my second card created in a grid format using the same elements but a white background to soften the effect. 

I am also including this in the Simon Says Stamp and Show Anything Goes challenge this week! (Lot's of fun going on over on their blog!)


The inspiration photos for CR84FN37:

For all the details on the challenge this week go to the CR84FN blog. 

The fabulous CR84FN Design Team:

Deborah Frings * Sue Lelli  * Andrea Matthews *  Stephanie Kraft * Suzanne Czosek (me)  *  Heather Jensen * Mona Pendleton  * Lisa Somerville 


Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz

Stampendous Monthly Challenge - To Infinity and Beyond!

Stampendous is hosting monthly challenges. Each month on the first Saturday, they will share a brand new challenge. The challenge will be open all month to play along. There will be a winner drawn  from all qualifying entries at the end of the month, for that month's prize. 

This month's Stampendous Saturday Challenge is a Sketch challenge.  The sketch was provided by Wendy Price. To play along and be eligible to win the Cling Jumbo Romantic Border make a card or project using the sketch and upload it to your blog or other online gallery (keyword: STM01), and add the direct link to the linky tool on the Stampendous blog. You have until Thursday, September 29th at 11:00 PM PST to play!

 

Here is the fun sketch: 

 

 Here is my take on the sketch:

The stamp set is Hot Rockets - SSC1030. The planets I created using a picture of the planets. I spent the majority of the time looking for papers and stamps to create the textures on the planets.

Be sure to head over to the Stampendous blog to check out all the details, see more inspiration from our designers, and to add your link to the linky tool!  

Also, stop by these blogs to see what my other Stampendous teammates have created with the sketch:

Wendy Price

Suzanne Czosek (Me)

Pam Hornschu

Kristine Reynolds

Lynn Mercurio

Taylor Usry

Piali Biswas

Wendy Jordan

Laura Davis

Cyndi Bundy

Krissy Fossmeyer

Melinda Gleissner

Geny Cassady

 

Have a lovely Saturday!  

Suzz

Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week is anything goes. They are having a special blog hop with lots of fabulous projects from the design team. 

This card uses the beautiful new stamps from Artistic Outpost Whimsical Melange blended with the images from Artistic Outpost Birds of a Feather plate and the Old Grist Mill.

I am working on some really fun projects that I can't share right now. :)   But enjoying the process. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzz

Happy Birthday

 

 Less is More is a recipe challenge where you can choose three of their previous challenges and combine them. I chose Week 22 - Shades of Blue, Week 7 - Masculine, Week 18 - Monochrome for my card. I used the sketch from Moxie Fab World Challenge - Vertical sketch.

 

Card Details:

Spray of glimmer mist across white cardstock fading out the ink. Cut the piece of the ink that gives the effect you want. Stamp the circles using versamark. Heat emboss using white embossing powder.  My son had the brilliant idea of the candles and I color coated them to coordinate.  :) 

I created this for teenage boy and I liked how it turned out and my teenage son liked the effect so I think it works for masculine. 

 

Here is the sketch for the Moxie Fab World Challenge:  (which I rotated)

Now onto the winner of the stamp from last week: 

Drumroll please....  The winner of the new Verses stamp and a few other goodies is Debby who said:

  

I absolutely love that quote and would love to use it!   on August 26  at 6:21PM. 

Debbie contact me via email and I will send you out your RAKs.  If I don't receive an email by Sept. 7th I will pick another winner. 

Hope you all are having a wonderful week! 

Suzz