The Other Side

I am back to share the other side of my new art journal.  I have been carrying my new book around jotting down ideas, sketches and doodles. 

 The background started with the same damask stencil and DecoArt Embossing Paste.  I added a layer of damask texture and waited for it to dry.  I then used gold glimmer mist to add a hint of color and followed that with brown glimmer mist in areas. 

I smeared the white paint over the surface to catch the damask edges and lighten the colors. The rest was stamping the images using Ranger Archival Ink.

The images are:  Darkroom Door - Fancy Flourish, Darkroom Door - Beauty, Darkroom Door - Butterfly Garden,     Darkroom Door - Arch, Darkroom Door - Home

I finished the edges with the same tissue tape.  I was thinking of stamping something in the Arch, but wanted to think about it. I may have to add something later when inspiration arises. Plus there is a lot of open space on the background. :) 


Have a lovely Tuesday!

Suzz

Embrace Happiness

Welcome to CR84FN55 a palette of beautiful springtime colors!

I created an ATC for a swap using a beautiful vintage image which I tinted with lavender to coordinate with the flowers.

The flowers are Hero Arts Real Wildflowers Cling and the paper is from the Prima Almanac Collection.  The sentiment is from the Flourishes set. The image is from the Graphic Fairy blog.

Here are the sweet colors:

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

For more inspiration the CR84FN Design Team:

Deborah Frings * Sue Lelli  * Andrea Matthews *  Suzanne Czosek (me)  *  Heather Jensen * Mona Pendleton  * Lisa Somerville * Shannon White* Pauline Pollington

Happy Sunday!  I hope it is a wonderful Memorial Day for all my U.S. friends!

Suzz

Lovely in Lace

Flourishes challenge this week to celebrate their new release is Lovely in Lace.  I have been creating a summer bouquet over the past four days.  I created this one for the Lovely in Lace challenge.

I used the lovely Sweet Peas set from flourishes for my flowers and butterflies.  The background is Hero Arts Lace Design Block.

Have a wonderful Friday!

Suzz

Life Without Love

Simon Says Stamp and Show Your tag challenge kicked off my project this morning. It inspired me to create a tag. 

 

I started with a piece of this fantastic paper from 7 Dots Studio.  I won this paper over at the Snazzy's Design Team blog and I love it!  It has a lovely heavy texture to it and the patterns are soft enough to be used as a lovely background. I stamped the Flourishes Raspberries across the front and the sentiment from the same Berry Sweet set. I added the house from the Artistic Outpost - The Outpost plate in the corner. 

I am enjoying having a week off of work.  The kids are on spring break. I am spending a lot of my time running the kids around.  We have a few plans as a family to take in some local activities this week in between hanging out with their friends. I am hoping to get in some more time to play with my inks too!  

Have a lovely day!

Suzz

Joy

Today I am posting on the Flourishes blog.    I used the beautiful Paperwhites set to create my card:

I used a fun technique with chalk to paint the flowers.  To see all the details head over to the Flourishes blog. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzz

Flourishes - Sweet Peas

I am sharing the card that is being posted over on the Flourishes blog today.

I share a fun technique using the beautiful Flourishes Sweet Peas set and canvas paper.  I had a lot of fun playing with the lovely flowers and my copics.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Suzz

Flourishes - The Name Game Challenge

The Flourishes blog challenged players to come up with new challenge ideas and you could win a chance to be the hostess of the challenge and one of the new stamp sets in the release. Well... I suggested a challenge idea and it was selected. Yeah!  Today is the day for my challenge over on the Flourishes blog. My challenge is called the Name Game.

 

How to Play: Simply use your monogram as the inspiration for your creation! So, if your name starts with an “J” – add jewels! What about “B” –add a bow! How about a “P” – use a punch! Just that simple! Just make sure you share your initials and the things you used on your creation that were name inspired! 

I created two cards using the new release Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.  

My initials were "S" - Stamping, "L" - Liquid Pearls, "C" - Coloring 

The set has this beautiful row of mistletoe. I thought since the set was all about mistletoe which led me to think of  love,  that I would create a heart shaped wreath of mistletoe. 
Recipe: 

1. Curve the row of mistletoe clear stamp on the acrylic block to create the right half of the heart.
2. Ink up with black ink and stamp on white cardstock. (This took a few times to get it right as it requires a little more pressure to get an even stamp if you curve the stamp.) 
3. Lay the acrylic block over the stamped image and reverse the stamp on the acrylic block following the lines of the stamped image. 
4. Ink up the stamp with black ink and stamp next to the image on cardstock. 
5. I also could have die cut a heart and lined up my stamp using the guideline of the punched image.
6. Color heart using watercolor pencils and waterbrush. 
7. Stamp additional mistletoe bunch using black ink. Color with watercolor pencil and waterbrush. 
8. Accent berries using white liquid pearls. 
9. Cut out heart and mistletoe accents. 
10. Shadow inside of heart with pink watercolor pencil. 
11. Stamp sentiment in center of heart using black ink. 
12. Die cut shapes from white and green cardstock. Sponge edges of white die cut using pink dye ink. 
13. Cut background paper (Memory Box - Yuletide) 
14. Round opposite corners. 
15. Tie ribbon and bows. 
16. Assemble Card.

The second card uses  "S" - Stamping, "L" - Layering, "C" - Coloring

The card was a simple stamping, coloring and accenting the berries with a touch of glitter. 

For all the details on the fun challenge go to the Flourishes blog.  For more fabulous inspiration visit the DT: 

Christine Okken
Stacy Morgan
Tammy Hershberger
Makiko Jones

Thanks for stopping by!

Suzz

Happy Birthday Marilyn!

Happy Birthday to Marilyn! This is for my wonderful MIL.  She has a wonderful green thumb and this card with all the beautiful flowers is perfect for her.

The challenge over at Flourishes was to create a card using a combination from their bingo board. I knew I was going to use their beautiful flowers so I added scallops and die cuts to the combo.

 

  

I just love this dress form as it can be decorated in so many ways. :)  The flowers are from the lovely Violets set from Flourishes. They are colored using watercolor pencils and highlighted with a little clear glitter. 

The butterflies are punched out using an Marvy Uchida punch on some more violets.  The background paper is Websters Pages and I added the Hero Arts Flourish to add a little pattern on the background. 

The distressing is Vintage Photo from Rangers Distress Inks. The frame is left over from one of my other projects where I used the newspaper and glimmer mist. 

I hope you have wonderful weekend planned. Thanks for stopping by.. 

Suzz

A Touch of Spring

I decided to use up a few scraps I have had on my desk and play in a couple of challenges. Wee Memories challenge #42 this week is to use up scraps and Flourishes challenge is The Winter Thaw Challenge .

Here is what I created:

Here is the inspiration photo from Flourishes:

It felt good to create a card using flowers and butterflies! LOL! The three backgrounds on the sentiment and card have one piece from pattern paper and two I created to look like the other one. (Frustrating as I only had one scrap of the PP and couldn't find any others so I had to create my own two backgrounds. :) Can you tell which is the pattern paper?

The rest is stamping, embossing and coloring using a variety of techniques. (copics, watercolor pencils)

Products: Verses QQ0830-D Spring, Hero Arts - DesignBlock Large Flower Pattern S5471, Hero Arts Antique Engravings, Old Letter Writing S4878

Hope your day is wonderful!

Suzz

Poppies

This was created for a few challenges: Simons Says Show your New Stamp, Flourishes FTTC99 which is to use flowers, and for the Mojo Monday sketch challenge 172.

Here is the sketch:

My new stamp is actually a retired Hero Arts Stamp and I was so happy to win it recently from Hero Arts. The hare image is Hero Arts - H1835 Mountain Hare.  The flowers on the bunny reminded me of the Poppy Patch set  from Flourishes and I think  they look lovely together. The background is Hero Arts K5191 Kanji Poem.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Suzz

Spring Flowers

 

Wishful thinking about spring flowers. :)  I stamped the lovely Flourishes Sweet Violet set and colored the flowers and leaves using the watercolor markers. The sentiment is from Verses - QQ0830-D - Spring.

The challenge for Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge is to use pearls. The City Crafters Challenge is to Stamp It. The design is courtesy of Card Patterns Sketch # 96.

Thanks for stopping by! 

Suzz

Flourishes Challenge FTTC95

Back again with another post to share a cute trinket box for the Flourishes Challenge to use a doily on your project.

The box is from Hobby Lobby and Paper Mache. It was painted using the Adirondack Snow Cap Dauber. Sponge on blue dye ink over the surface to accent with blue.

Stamp Jane's Countryside from Artistic Outpost using Versafine Black Onyx on white cardstock. Color using green and blue color pencils. Curve the Paris Exposition sentiment on clear block to follow the line of the doily. Stamp using StaZon Teal.

Have a wonderful Friday!

Suzz

Warm Winter Wishes Challenges

I saw the beautiful shades of blue at the Warm Winter Wishes Challenges at Flourishes. The challenge is to use shades of blue in a winter wishes. Well I have this beautiful poppy set from Flourishes and thought what a beautiful set to make winter flowers and send as a winter card to someone who is in the deep snowy winter like me.

Love this set of stamps they are beautiful and shades of blue they look gorgeous too!

Have a lovely Friday!

Suzz

Deborah's Card Exchange

This was my card I sent off to my friend Dawn for the card exchange. Deborah provides three challenges one is color, another sketch and last a theme.

The colors were various shades of green and purple. I immediately thought of my Flourishes violets stamp set. This is what I created with that in mind.

These were colored using my watercolor pencils and accented with stickles. The centers of the flowers are accented with these glittery pearls. I have had them for awhile but didn't have anywhere to use them. After I added the stickles they fit right in. :)

The background is a sizzix embossing folder. The die cuts are both nestabilities.

I laid the die cut over the image after I had stamped and colored and sponged around the frame to create the white border.

The white frame on the large die cut was traced around the outside of the die and hand cut.

I hope you have a lovely day. (Forecast here is for about 6 - 10 more inches of snow by end of tomorrow.) I guess that is why I keep creating spring flower cards. Trying to inspire mother nature to give up on the snow and start moving towards spring.

Have a lovely day!

Suzz

Poppies are so beautiful

I went away for the weekend to get my Copic Certification. Learned tons of information. All available online. :)

I got home and was very excited to practice and realized.... I don't have enough of the colors grouped together to do the proper shading.

So I will keep practicing with what I have and slowly build up my colors.

I took my class at a stamp store in Eau Claire Wisconsin Named: Picture This http://www.mmemorieslast.com/. Lovely store, class room and a scrapping retreat right behind it. If you are in the area... Worth the drive to check it out.

This all leads into me acquiring some new stamps.


I picked up this great background stamp from Cornish Heritage Farms... Scrapblock Newspaper Ads 6 x 6.

I new I wanted to ink it up and used the light grey dye ink to create my background. The circle is 5 1/2" and mounted on a 5" x 5" square black cardstock.

I stamped the Flourishes Poppy onto the stamped background using Versafine Ink and used my watercolor pencils to color in the flowers.

I attached the little charm from Plaid and this is what it says:
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Products:

• Cornish Heritage Farms - SB-119XUM Newspaper Ads
• Flourishes - Poppy Patch Set # 35
• Versafine - Black Onyx, Vintage Sepia
• Memento - London Fog
• Watercolor Pencils
• Inkadinkado - Bumblebee 99259-MM
• Plaid - Plenty of Flowers Charms
• Ranger Stickles

Thanks for stopping by...

Suzz