Peace, Love, Coffee and Color Burst

Welcome back!  I'm sharing with you today a card I made using some of my very favorite CAS-ual Fridays products!  I started with a background I created using some Ken Oliver Colorbursts and the Modern Petals stencil.  (I have a short photo tutorial here if you didn't catch it the first time around).  I love to get out my colorbursts and stencils and play and make a bunch at one time so when I'm ready to use them, they're ready for me!

Then of course... the coffee cup... I love the To Go Cup Fri-Dies available in the shop... the size is fantastic to be the star of the show on a card... and since coffee is the star of most of my mornings... it's perfect!  And that beautiful fox from the Foxy stamp set... perfect for my coffee wrap that I cut from Copic Friendly paper.

I love the 4 Petal Fri-Dies!!  Handy for all kinds of flowers... I cut these from red cardstock and covered them with some Wow Vintage Candy Cane embossing powder.  Added a few branches from the Casual Trees Fri-Dies and my favorite sentiment from Peace, Love and Coffee as well as the additional Peace sign... both stamped in Versamark on black cardstock and embossed with Wow Opaque Bright White powder.

I love how bold it is, yet somehow (to me anyway) it still evokes peaceful thoughts... I think it's that beautiful quiet fox....

I hope you enjoyed your stop!  And did you know now is a good time to get some of your favorite sets that you've been wanting but just haven't gotten yet?  There are some products in the shop that are retiring and are 25% off right now!  Once they're gone they are gone!  They're making room for some awesome new products so get what you've been wanting before it's too late and at a great price!

And here's this for you as well:

And you don't have to use mine!  Use the code for whichever Girl Friday inspires you!  

Come back again soon for more inspiration!

A Friend Knows The Song In Your Heart-CASual Fridays

Lisa here and today I'm sharing with you a card I made using the Big Treble and Treble Clef Fri-Die along with a couple additional sets. 

I started by creating a background using the Emboss/Resist method that Nora showed you in this post here.  I stamped some of the Treble Clef images from the Big Treble set along with some hearts from the Peace, Love and Coffee stamp set in a sort of random pattern in Versamark and heat embossed them using white embossing powder.  Then I ink blended my background with Squeezed Lemonade, Spiced Marmalade and Worn Lipstick Distress Oxides and lightly swiped over the top to wipe the ink off of the images.  I decided I wanted the Treble Clef images to stand out more so I added some additional color back to just those using my Zig Clean Color Real Watercolor Brush Pens-alternating in similar colors to what I used for the background.  Then I splattered some metallic watercolors over the top in pink and gold.

I fell in love with the background so I decided my sentiment should be on vellum to let as much of it show as possible.  I cut my frame from vellum using the Bubble Box Fri-Dies and heat embossed in black.  I have always loved this sentiment!!  CAS-ual Fridays has some of the best sentiments I've found anywhere!

I cut a Treble Clef die cut out of some foiled cardstock that was just the right color.  Along with some hearts from the Heartboard Fri-Die... I just used the one for the bottom left corner and saved the rest for a future card.   Finally I scattered some clear and pink sequins around.

I hope you enjoyed your visit here today!  Be sure to come back often for more inspiration!

I'm playing along with the current challenge over at Cupcake Inspiration:

And... should you decide to shop over at CAS-ual Fridays I have this for you!

A Day Filled With Happy with CAS-ual Fridays!

I'm up on the CAS-ual Fridays Blog today with my first post as a Design Team member for CAS-ual Fridays!  I just love to play with these products and am honored to be joining this team!

  Today I'm sharing with you a card that I think could be for anyone and for almost any occasion.  I started by choosing the papers I wanted for my A2 sized card.  I then cut three of my layers using one of my favorite sets, the Bubble Box Fri Dies... SO many different uses for this set!!  Here it was a great way to ground my layout and add some depth with popup tape.  I distressed the edges of my dark cardstock with a white core and used a cool embossing folder to add some interest to my larger white layer.

 I love this adorable Nate & Friday stamp set... these pups... LOVE them and I had to have the set because my dog Slim has a similar look.  He's not a Boston Terrier like Michele's pups (who inspired her for this set)... in fact... we don't know what he is...lol!  But he's got some browns in him so I added some extra color:

Oh my!  This is such an easy set to stamp and play with because you don't really have to even add any color, but I wanted to play with one of my favorite Copic coloring techniques on this set.  Basically you color in the image the way you wish... you don't worry so much about the perfect blend because when you get done coloring, you take a rag... in this case a loose terry wash cloth and dab some Colorless Blender onto it.

You want to be careful not to get the cloth too wet.  I dab it with the solution, gather it in a bunch and "tickle" the fibers a bit.  Then you hold the cloth down over the colored image for the count of three and lift.  If your cloth is too wet, some of your color will bleed.  Work in small sections and if you feel it needs more texture, let it dry completely and then go in again.  It's such a forgiving technique because you always have the option to add more color and try again!  And sometimes a little bleed can be cool!  "Perfect" isn't always best!

And then my sentiment!  I love to leave my cards open if I'm not making them to be used right away.  And I wanted my sentiment to fit on the smallest Bubble Box Die I used from the set.  So I used masking and a couple different stamp sets (along with my Misti) to build the sentiment I wanted.  Wishing You A Day Filled With is from Peace, Love and Coffee and the Happy is from the Celebrate set!

I added a few of the Jumping Jacks Fri-Dies cut from some pretty shimmery paper and scattered them around as well as a few clear sequins.  And there you have it... I could stamp the inside with a Happy Birthday for one of my boys or my nephew... or I could add some sort of inspirational or thinking of you sentiment for one of my girlfriends who loves dogs as much as I do!

Hope I've inspired you to try out some texturizing if you haven't ever done it before!  It really is fun!

I'm playing along with a couple of challenges with this one!  My colors were inspired by this challenge at Color My Heart Color Dare and I'm also playing along with Anything Goes over at the Outlawz Twisted Thursday!

See you again soon!

Cas-ual Fridays Challenge #203 Inspiration - Heat Embossing!

It's time for a new challenge over at CAS-ual Fridays!  I'm excited and honored to be joining the challenge for the first time as a DT member of the Friday Challenge Squad!  Love Michele and her products!

This time around we're challenging you to use Heat Embossing in your challenge project!  Here's what I've got for you today:

One of my first Cas-ual Fridays sets was the Peace Love and Coffee stamp set!  If you've followed me for any amount of time, you know I loves me some Coffee stamp and die sets and if you do too, this is the place to be!  Although looky here!  I used it on a non-coffee card!   I started by ink distressing my background using a mix of Distress Oxides and plain old Distress Inks in kind of a rainbow pattern.

After I was all ink blended, I stamped the different sized hearts and peace signs from the Peace Love and Coffee set using Versamark and heat embossed them.  First the large using some Stampendous Shabby White Embossing Powder.  It's a bit messy... and has glitter and because I didn't stamp all my images first I ended up with glitter all over my embossing pad and my stamps...lol!  It's ok though... it's not the first time and it won't be the last!  I stamped the smaller images and embossed them with some Gilded Embossing Powder from Brutus Monroe.  Then lastly for good measure, I used a paint brush to splatter some Heidi Swapp Gold Color Shine over the top.  It's just how I am! 

I cut this banner from black cardstock and then dragged the edges in some Versamark and used that yummy Shabby White embossing powder again and heated it... I added it first without the embossed bits, but it felt like it was missing something and I love how the edges make it seem like it belongs!  Then I used the adorable Love Ya Fri-Die cut from white glitter paper as my sentiment.  I tossed around a few sequins in clear and gold to finish it off!

I can't wait to see all of the different ways everyone uses Heat Embossing on their projects for this challenge!  Be sure to check out all of the inspiration projects and then get your Heat Gun going and join us!  You can check out all of the DT inspiration and join us on the Fridays Challenge Blog here!

Hope I've inspired you!  What are you playing for?  10 winning entries will be highlighted on the CAS-ual Fridays Blog the Thursday before a new challenge goes live!  We call it the Happy Hour!  In addition a $25 gift certificate goes to the overall winner.  AND if the chosen winner uses CAS-ual Fridays stamps and/or dies as the main focus for the card, the gift certificate increases to $50!

So what are you waiting for!  Nothing to lose and $50 of awesome stuff to gain!  Hope to see you over there!

Super Fun News!

Super excited to announce that I am lucky to be joining the Cas-ual Fridays Stamps Challenge Squad for the Friday Challenge!   I discovered Cas-ual Fridays products during one of the Coffee Lovers Blog Hops!  I love these stamps and dies, and have used some of my favorite sets and created a card (while on vacation) to celebrate!  Starting with the challenge that begins this coming Friday, July 6th, I'll be providing inspiration up on the Fridays Challenge Blog along with the rest of the awesome design team!  I am so looking forward to working with Michele and the rest of this oh so talented team!

Well, of course I used my favorite cup dies... the Coffee Cup Fri Die and the Peace, Love and Coffee stamp set along with one of my new favorite sets, the Garden Fri Dies!  My card colors were inspired by the current Calling All Sistahs Challenge over at Cas-ual Fridays!

Here's that Inspiration Photo (beautiful right??):

You have about a week left to play along with this one.  So, put your thinking cap on for this Calling All Sistahs challenge and then come back here this Friday to checkout the new Friday Challenge and see what we've created to inspire you!

Thanks for stopping!  See you again soon!