If At First You Don't Succeed

Let be the first one to say I am not an artist.  This is why I buy stamp sets and use my die cut machine.  I wanted a specific look for a birthday card I was making today to use with the Always Playing With Paper blog challenge.  



 After looking at all my stamps and not finding exactly what I wanted I headed to my computer and Cricut machine.  Not there either.  "How hard can it be to draw a birthday cake" I'm thinking to myself?

Hard! At least for those of us who are perspective challenged.   Round two of looking through my stamp sets and I found one that was almost what I was thinking so I sat down and started creating. 

I started with this stamp set from Stampin Up.  I'm not sure if it's still available, but it had the layer cake i was going for. I used my Mother's Day gift, a MISTI, and a piece of acetate to carefully position each stamp right on my card base.  Brave? Crazy is probably a better word.  I also made a mask with masking paper for each piece.

After, the cake was stamped, I covered it with the masks and got just a little crazier and added some background with another Stampin Up set, Gorgus Grunge.

Masking is one of those magic techniques.  It seems contrary to stamp the top image first and then stamp over it, but that is exactly how it works.  

The end result was a great masculine birthday card.

  

Is It Summer Yet?

Today the sun is shining. And while it might be short lived, I thought I would celebrate it today.  The Simon Says Stamp blog has a couple of regular challenges and the Work It Wednesday challenge goes right with that celebration.

 The theme is sunshine, and while I don't love the heat, (blame that on living in Southern Nevada as a kid) we've had a record number of rainy days in a row.  And while it isn't supposed to last, I'm going to pretend I don't know that and craft on.

When I saw the theme, I first thought of ink blending and my Time Holtz Rays stencil. 

So I went looking through my ever growing stash of stamps and found this cutie CCDesigns stamp.

I stamped the image and a mask and the put a layer of yellow ink down 2/3 of the card front.  I taped the stencil in place and added layers of ink in varing shades of yellows and a light orange.  I added some greenish blue to the bottom and then decided to pull out my prisma colored pencils.

I did't think to write down the colors I used, I just dumped out my (small) collection and picked up what I thought would work.  In the end I had a really cute card.  I added a sentiment from Simon Says Stamp's Color and Sunshine stamp set.

I left the sentiment pretty universal so I can use it for anything.

And there she is.  Isn't she the cutest little stamp!