Sunflower Frame

 Good morning!!! It a holiday weekend and the weather is looking great for it. Memorial weekend marks the unofficial start of summer and the flowers in our yard are starting to see this.

I love flowers and sunflowers are one ion my favorites so when Design Bundles had this frame for free of course I had to use it.

It is made by layering 8 pieces of cardstock with either foam tape or wet glue. I used Pop Tone cardstock from CutCardStock for the main layers. The top Layer is Neenah Solar White to give it a bright white finish.

I love how the detail of the petals pop because of the different shades yellow and orange.

Fall Country Girl

Good morning! The weather is great at the moment, nice and sunny but at a great temperature! I am loving it - yes it gets cooler at night but who doesn't like that!

Fall is THE best season and my card today is fall themed - Sunflowers and western boots my favorites and I would love some boots like these.

Aren't they adorable? There are a few boot designs to choose from in the For My Cowboy Stamp Set from Maker Forte. I began with stamping one the floral boot onto stamping card using Eclipse Black Ink. 

Covering the first boot with masking paper I stamped 2 more boots on the paper and fussy cut these. 

Masking is how to achieve layered images. By covering the first boot and stamping the second one nearby I can make it look like the 2nd boot is behind the first.

Placing a mask over the 2nd boot I moved on to my background. The Layered Sunflower Stencil is perfect so the first layer I stamped in English Mustard Ink which is a great yellow.

The next layer is the shading on the petals using Red Leicester Ink. Grand Canyon Ink colors the flower center then the seed layer uses Ground Espresso Distress Ink.

Removing the masks leaves me with clean white stamping of the boots all ready to color.

You can see here how masking gives the impression of stacked images with the sunflower behind them.

Copic markers work great for the main color of the boots and fine liners for the floral design. These allow me to get into the smaller parts of the design.

My card needs a sentiment and 'Country Girl' is part of the stamp set. It fits well with the design in Eclipse Ink.

I love clean and simple cards however the white of this looked a little stark against the bright colors. using Grand Canyon again I ink blended the edges of the card.

To finish the design I chose a brown cardstock for my mat and a Side Folding A2 Card Base with wet glue so keeping the layers flat.

The colors just pop against the darker brown mat.

I hope you love the fall look of this card as much as I do and thank you for stopping by.

 

Sunflowers of Hope

 Good morning. It's been an exciting week so far! Sassy gave birth to five adorable puppies. Mama and babies are doing great and its fun to hear all the little squeaks coming from the pen.

My post today is inspiration for you today using The Sunflower Zentangle Stamp and the Sunflower Layered Stencil from Maker Forte. The stamp was used in the background and Stencil was inked over the top of this.

To show you the process I have a You Tube video explaining the steps I took.

I hope you found that informative and enjoyed seeing the card being designed. All products I used are linked in the video description.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you gained some inspiration from my post.

Retirement Good Luck.

 One of my hubby's colleagues is retiring next month so I was asked to make a card that everyone could sign.

I chose to make an 8x8in card which gave plenty of room for all the signatures. My Carnation Craft dies were perfect for the occasion

I chose to use Eminence from Equinox Bloom collection - I love sunflowers and the size of the vase was perfect for the 8x8in card

I printed and die cut the woven wicker to frame the flowers. My card base was matted with coordinating cardstock and paper.

I shaped the wicker to give it a more realistic look and adhered it with glue gel. I shaped the vase and floral display and again added it with glue gel.

 

The flowers were decoupaged to give further dimension. I die cut and stamped the sentiment. After I had added this I felt there was a lot of empty space on the card so I added coordinating matt enamel dots. I then remembered I had these little fluffy bumble bees from the Fine Splendor Carnation Craft collection - They worked perfectly to tie the card design together.

Thank you for stopping by, I would love for your to leave me a comment.

Stained Glass Windows

Good morning! The weather is great at the minute, still warm and we've had sunshine most days.

My post today is inspiration for Sunshine Bee Designs, I have used 3 of the images from the October release. They are 3 stained glass florals - Sunflower, Poppy and Echinacea (which I have colored to look like Black Eyed Susans)

I printed the flowers and colored with Copic markers, using Polychromo pencils to add some detail to them.

I then used a circle die to cut them out. I matted a piece of blue card with some digital paper and using the same die I had used for my flowers to cut circles from this.

This was then adhered to my card base with foam tape and the flower circles added into the 'holes' to frame them. A simple card that showcases the flowers perfectly

Thank you for stopping by, if you love what you see the flowers are available at the little paper tree along with lots of other paper crafting goodies. If you see something you like, using my code SHARON10 will get you a 10% discount!

Sunflower Fall Release and Blog Hop

 Good morning! We say goodbye to our house guests today, 8 dogs has been fun but I'm ready for a rest!

Joy Clair have an amazing September release starting today with a blog hop.

My inspiration card is using Thankful For You stamp collection I love sunflowers! Because of my style of card I have made 2 designs for this release my first uses the sentiment Hello Friend:

The second uses Thankful For You:

Both sentiments are part of the Thankful For You stamp collection. I started by printing 3 sunflower images. One of then I placed the Hello Friend sentiment. I also printed the Thankful For You sentiment. I then colored only one of the images. I die cut a circle from my colored image and put to one side keeping both the circle and the outer part of the sunflower. I matted a black card base with brown and yellow cardstock and then added my uncolored Hello Friend image. I then added wet glue to the back of the colored circle and lined it up on the uncolored image making a spotlight effect. I then added a few clear enamel dots to the card to finish my design.

My second card was made in the same way except I lined up the outer part of my colored sunflower and glued it in place. These were then trimmed and matted on yellow card. I wrapped a length of ribbon around a piece of yellow card and patterned paper and added this to a top folding card base. My Sunflower was adhered in place with foam tape. Thankful For You was matted with yellow card and foam tape glued this in place. A few yellow dots scattered on the uncolored portion of the card finished the design.

To enter the blog hop please leave a comment and answer the following question:

The line up for the blog hop is as follows you should have arrived here from Carol's Blog and will go next to visit Joy.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

You have until September 13th at 11:59 pm EST to post a comment and be to eligible to win one of the two $15.00 gift cards from Joy Clair Designs, valid for stamps and Digital Sets. Only one comment per person please.  Two randomly selected winners will be announced on Joy Clair Designs Blog on September 16th.  

Thank you for stopping by, head on over to the comments page to leave your comment and good luck with the blog hop 

The sun is shining - Happy Spring!

Following the snow storms last Thursday we have had a lovely few days of warm weather but they ended last night with thunder storms and its back to being seasonally cooler.

So my post today is showing summer flowers aren't far away. Prickley Pear Rubber Stamps have some great banner sets and I have used one set today for my flower "petals"

I used 6 different orange and yellow shades of ink to stamp out one of the banner stamps from the Spring Easter Banner set numerous times and then hand cut them all out - I do need to invest in the coordinating dies!!. I then Stenciled some yellow card and pale yellow design paper using one of the orange inks. The yellow card was die cut into a circle and stamped with Happy Spring sentiment from the same set of stamps. I glued the banners at various lengths around the circle making a sunflower.  

I matted an 8x8 inch card base with the same yellow card and the stenciled design paper before fixing my sunflower in place. 

The points of the banners were folded to raise them from the card giving dimension. A few coordinating enamel dots completed the card.

Thank you for stopping by, you can find more inspiration from me and my teamies on the Prickley Pear blog and their Facebook page.