Double D Challenge: Birthday

Hello and welcome to another Double D Challenge!  Our theme this time around is "Birthday".  One thing is a given --I can always use another birthday card!

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Our mood board shows many possibilities to inspire you.  We have humor, or watermelon colors, or spa-type girly stuff, or black and gold with a touch of pink.


As always, we'll have creative winners plus a prize for a random winner:

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For my card I went with the black and gold for a relatively simple card using a stamp that hasn't seen the light of day for a while -- a 2002 PSX birthday cake (no name on the block).  Embossed in gold, minimal coloring...

I made a loopy border and loopy flower to match the cake.

Hop over to Double D to say "hello" and be inspired by the variety of team samples.  I hope to see you in the gallery!  Have fun, and enjoy your day!

Stamps:  PSX cake (no name on stamp)  Paper:  Fabriano Artistico Bright White watercolor, Neenah Classic Crest Super Smooth Solar White, black, pink, gold mirror  Ink:  Versamark, Tombow markers for watercolor  Accessories:  Black rhinestone, Ranger Queen's Gold embossing powder  Dies:  Frantic Stamper Livermore Loop, Tutti Designs Celebrate Word Set, Sue Wilson String Flowers

CAS Watercolor Reminder: Bouquet of Flowers

Hello and welcome!  I'm back with a mid-month reminder for the CAS Watercolor Challenge.  You have until the 24th of this month to join in with your bouquet of flowers.

It's been my pleasure to guest design this month, especially considering watercolor is my favorite medium.

It's another special day because today is Bonnie's birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BONNIE!

Bonnie is one of the talented teamies at CAS Watercolor.  What a fun month it's been!  Bonnie will be surprised to see that the whole team has made birthday bouquets to celebrate her special day.

My bouquet for Bonnie is an older Penny Black stamp set called To You.  I used Spectrum Noir Sparkle watercolor pens for this one.  See the little heart by the sentiment?  That was formed by carefully positioning the sentiment so a curlicue in the sentiment joined up with a curlicue in the tail of the bouquet string.  I've used this stamp many times and that's the first time I noticed you could do that.  Cute!

The colors wanted to wash out in the photo, but I did the best I could to represent it.  Some days are like that.  In the picture below you can see some of the grainy specs that are actually sparkle.  These Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens are like watercoloring with colored Wink of Stella.  Love them!

That's all from my end of things!  Now, hop over to CAS Watercolor and have a look at all the pretty reminder cards the team has to share with you AND say "happy birthday" to Bonnie while you're there.  Remember, the 24th of this month will wrap things up.  Have a good day!

Twofer Card Challenge #18: Garden

Welcome to Twofer Card Challenge #18!  Our theme through July 24 is "Garden".

My samples are a child's birthday card and an encouragement card with the stamp in common from The Cat's Pajama's For Fox Sake.  Same stamp, two cards, two different occasions or purposes, each with a different layout/sketch.

It's an itty bitty garden, but we all have to start somewhere, right?  Our fox has bright hopes for the future.

In order to turn this into a child's birthday card I borrowed a sentiment stamp from a retired SU set, It's Your Birthday.  I may not have thought to combine these stamps, but that's what the Twofer Card Challenge does -- it gets you thinking about how you can stretch your stamps into more uses than they were, perhaps, originally intended.

Both cards are stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with Copics.  The birthday card is on hot press watercolor paper and the encouragement card (below) is on Neenah Classic Crest Super Smooth Solar White.  You can see the difference in the Copic colors and the whiteness of the paper.  Just having fun.  I like hot press watercolor paper for just about anything, really.

These cards probably don't require much more explanation, but I'll list details in the recipe below my signature.

Hop over to the Twofer Blog to see samples and welcome our new member, Cat Craig.  Hello and welcome,  Cat!  Our Loll will still be with us, working behind the scenes in an administrative capacity, but no longer sharing card samples, sniff sniff.  Girl has a lot of other things going on.

We're pleased to welcome Kathy and Robyn as guest designers for our Twofer Garden challenge, too.

Thank you, and have a happy day!

Dies for birthday card:  Taylored Expressions Stitched Rectangle Stacklets, Poppystamps Stitched Landscapes
Dies for encouragement card:  Spellbinders Long Classic Rectangles, Elizabeth Craft Bunch of Flowers 4, Impression Obsession Tiny Flowers, Impression Obsession Watering Can

Christmas in July Sale at Power Poppy

July 4th at 12:01 am. through Thursday, July 12:

Christmas in July SALE

30% OFF all Holiday Stamps, Digitals, and Dies 

Use discount code JOLLYJULY

Sale ends Thursday, July 12 at midnight central

In-stock products only

POWERPOPPY.COM

Over 30 classic clear stamp designs, including O Holy Night, Heaven and Nature Sing, Cozy Cupfuls, Christmas Corgis, and so many more!

Over 30 classic digital downloads, including Amaryllis, Ultimate Poinsettia, Mittens and Merriments and many more!


Enjoy and happy 4th!

CAS Watercolor Bouquet of Flowers

Special Event

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARNELL!!

Please join us in celebrating Darnell's Birthday!!

The team has made special cards for Darnell's birthday,
along with me as Guest Designer
and several Featured Designers (friends from their recent stamping retreat).

During the retreat, Darnell (Dolly to us) was up early one morning
and decided she wanted some frozen blueberries.
Somehow she spilled almost the whole, Costco-sized bag of
blueberries all over the floor.

Bonnie snapped these pictures.

See the swipe of blueberries in the right photo??  Dolly panicked and grabbed
a large piece of card stock to "smoosh" the blueberry juice.

Well, without Dolly knowing, the gals kept that piece of blueberry smoosh and cut it up.

Each Designer has used one piece in making Dolly's birthday cards.  Check out all of them on the CAS Watercolor Challenge -- Bouquet of Flowers.

Now, I wasn't at the retreat, but Loll emailed me a photo of that blueberry smoosh to print and use for my card.  My printer doesn't do well with colors and, sure enough, it came out with dirty pink smudges in some of the white space.  I disguised that by adding some orange speckles and then covering the whole piece with a Scor-Tape sheet and glitter.  The sparkle is spectacular in real life, and the blueberry smoosh somewhat resembles blobby tree branches.  You think?

Try as I might, I couldn't adequately capture the sparkle in the photo, boo hoo.  The bouquet is from Power Poppy's Countryside Bouquet clear stamp set, watercolored with Tombow markers.  Die cut "Celebrate" is Tutti Designs Celebrate Word Set.

I kept it as clean and simple as possible under the circumstances.  White space can be sparkly, can't it?

Inside I stamped a portion of the bouquet in blue ink with a sentiment from another Power Poppy set -- Pure Prairie Spirit.  I could have used the beautiful bouquet from that set, but, instead, wanted to feature the California Poppy -- state flower of Darnell's home state.

That's my story, friends!  Join us at CAS Watercolor Challenge with your beautiful bouquet of watercolored flowers.  The team has some gorgeous samples and we'd like to see yours, too.  I think it's going to be a very pretty gallery this month!  Enjoy your day!

Power Poppy Enchanted Garden Clear Stamp Release Day

After five days of Enchanted Garden previews, release day is finally here!  It's been a lot to take in, but I hope you've enjoyed it.  I've had a ball!  Today, the Power Poppy Bloom Brigade and Instant Gardeners are joined by the Ellen Hutson team for a big ol' hop with all kinds of different samples.

*** WE'VE GOT FUN PRIZES! ***

  

We are giving away $25 to the Ellen Hutson shop and $25 to the Power Poppy shop.  To enter for a chance to win, be sure to leave comments at each stop along the hop.  Two random & lucky commenters will win!  Comment before Sunday, July 7th at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be notified by email.

Gee, I just happen to have an extra Floribunda card...

I watercolored this one vividly with Tombow markers.  Notice the oval cutaway.  That's the space that was left after I cut the oval for yesterday's card. I gave it a gold edge and a gold heart and two of the awesome sentiments that come with the set.

Here's a list to everyone in the hop:

Allison Cope 

Adelina Starace 

Barbara Walker 

Christine Okken 

Ardyth Percy-Robb 

Julie Koerber 

Broni Holcombe 

Carly Tee Minner 

Kathy Jones 

Emily Midgett 

Stacy Morgan 

Kelly Griglione 

Jennifer Dove 

Sandy Allnock 

Leslie Miller (that's me)

Therese Calvird 

Nancy Sheads 

Rhea Weigand

What a fun way to wrap things up!

Treat yourself to a stop at the Power Poppy Blog, too.  See the entire Enchanted Garden Collection here.

Thank you so much for all the time you've spent with me this week.  Can you believe it's July already?  Sheesh!  Have a wonderful summer day!

Power Poppy Preview, Day 5: Floribunda

If you're a clear stamp kind of stamper and you love birds and blooms, Marcella has come through for you.  She's turned another one of her gorgeous digital sets into a clear stamp set.  Introducing Floribunda.

Okay... if you follow me regularly you probably recognize the image in the above graphic as the digital version (Hummingbird Paradise) which I colored when it was released on June 15.  Trust me, you get all that and more in the Floribunda clear set.

Today I gave it a little bit softer look, but still colorful, by watercoloring with Tombow markers.  As you can see, I isolated just a small part of the image by stamping the whole thing then cutting with an oval die.  I turned the oval upside down so the hummingbird would have a flower to enjoy.  It works!

In case you'd like to know, the die is by Marianne Designs, called Anja's Oval.  I adore anything with lattice, especially when it comes to flower stamps.

Marcella has packed this stamp set with beautiful sentiments that pair up perfectly for the card front and the inside.

I'm so smitten with this stamp set I didn't want to put it away.  The two cards pictured below were made with relatively little coloring.  The one is gold embossed on green with watercolored dahlias and hummer.  The other is stamped in blue on blue, then the background filled in with a white Prismacolor pencil.  I stamped the upper corner in blue again on watercolor paper and watercolored just the fuchsias with Tombow markers.  Fussy cut and glued in place.    The hummer comes as a separate stamp.  I watercolored him, too.  He's very easy to cut out by hand.

Why, yes, I have been busy!

Again, please visit the Power Poppy Blog for much, much more and do come back tomorrow for the big hop with some special friends.  Thank you so much for your visit today!

Power Poppy Preview, Day 4: Summer Berries

It's Summer Berries today, friends.  Enjoy a sneak peek at its fruity deliciousness:

I chose to color two of the smaller images today and I made the bird a Goldfinch, or some semblance thereof.  I used Copics, but I'm eager to do it again in watercolor.  I think this is the prettiest stamp!  At first I thought it was a small stamp, but, you know, it's really a very nice size.

I fussy cut the additional strawberry stamp and used it as an accent.  Hmmm... only one picture today.  Well, as I mentioned, I'll definitely be coloring this one again... plus the other main image... sigh...

So far we've seen berries and birds, flowers, treasures of the forest floor... tomorrow I'll be back with the final set in this release, but there's still another day to come when the sets go live with a big hop we're doing with friends.

Today, please see the Power Poppy Blog so you don't miss what Marcella has to say, plus she'll give you a link list to all the sweetness the team has to offer with the Summer Berries set.  Take care and have a delicious day!