Can it be Valentine's Day Time Already?

I made this card as a Valentine's Day card after I saw the challenge at the Addicted to CAS blog.  

The word "world" opend up some posibilities.  So I looked in my stamp sets and found this globe from the Stampin'  Up set, World Traveler.  The sentiment is also from a Stampin' Up set, Perfect Words.

The tone on tone stamping of the map background stamp was to give some depth.

I added a small heart covered with glossy accents.

Winter Birthdays

My family is huge. My husband and I both have lots of siblings and they have spouses and children.  But for some reason, January and February have the fewest birthdays. I do have a nephew with a birthday coming and colored this guy just for him.  

I used the sketch from the SimlyLessIsMore challenge for the layout.  

The image is from The Greeting Farm "Fuzzy Wuzzy" stamp set.

Back in the Saddle

My biggest problem in making cards for the men in my family is color.  It seems that on days like today when I'm looking for inspiration there is no color.  I wanted a masculine card that had color and I wasn't finding what I didn't know I wanted.  You know how that goes.  You're looking for something to jump start your creativity but don't know what you're looking for.

I decided to try a reflective technique.  I wish you could see it better in the photo.  in real life it looks just right.

  I stamped the ship in Memento black and then stamped it again on the plastic sheet of my stamp a ma jig in a blue green ink and before it dried, flipped in over and pressed it onto the cardstock with my finger tips.  It looked a little too crisp until I added the ocean colors.  I added some water color first and then, with an inking tool off my desk that had some blue green ink, without re-inking it.  I added some color to the sky the same way.

I added more color with copic markers; reds on the white parts and greys on the black parts.

I added the world map stamp on top with a light grey ink that I stamped off first.  I matted the stamped image on a piece grey card stock also stamped with the map set.  Then added them both on a red card front.