Beautiful Bees Stamp Set

 This card is made with the awesome stamp set designed by Melanie Muenchinger for Gina K Designs called Beautiful Bees.  My sister is a bee keeper so I just had to have it.  This is the first card I made with this set and while I am not happy enough with it to give it away (the honeycomb is lined up very messily) I am very happy with the design of it.  I would like to try this again.  It may work better to stamp the honeycomb hexagons individually then cut them out.  That would allow me to space them more evenly.

I had a few very sloppy areas in the honeycomb-one of which is hidden by a sequin, then I decided to add 2 more sequins.  I tried covering up the other messy spot of the honeycomb with a sequin but it was too close to the other one and didn't look right.

I used Hero Arts Ombre dye ink in the color "Butter Bar to Orange Soda" as well as my trusty Gina K Designs Black Onyx dye ink.  The layers were cut with Gina K Designs Master Layouts 1 dies.

I will try to remember to post a picture when I finally get around to making a better version of this card.

Copic Jumpstart lesson 7

Ellen Hutson Mondo Hydrangea by Julie

     The lesson of the day was flowers.  I use to color each petal as individual shaded circles or ovals.  With the hydrangea however I looked at hydrangeas at the store and preferred the ones with yellow centers.  Initially I colored the two bottom ones and really liked them, but for class I experimented and colored another set identically, except I added the complementary color around the edges to shade, then went over them with the initial color.  Just a tiny bit of complementary color shows here and there around the edges and it also darkens the color.  I think I prefer it even though I really like the inital way I did them.  I guess I just need to continue to do them multiple ways since every way seems to be good.  (Sorry that the images on the left are blurry.  I'm not sure how that happened.  A light box is on my wish list but will probably take a year or two until I can afford one.)

Sparkle and Shine Challenge 13 Any Occasion Tags

     Here is my tiny (1.5 inch by 1 inch) tag that I submitted to the Sparkle and Shine Challenge (#13).

     I'm surprised that I was able to get so much stamped on it.  (That is a small set of scissors next to it.) I used the Pretty Peonies clear stamp set by Wplus9 for the floral details and the sentiment was from Fiskars All Year Greetings. I used a pencil eraser for the dots and did first and second generation stamping on those.  The inks were dye inks from memento and color box plus one hybrid ink from color theory.  I got a small box of these tags from my local pharmacy.

Case(E) this Sketch cards.

     I found a website that gives beautiful sketches for clean and simple cards.  I find clean and simple cards to look closest to high quality store bought cards and because this is what I am striving for in the cards I sent to Operation Write Home, I thought I would try a few of their sketches.  I did not participate in their challenges because these were older sketches.

I used Autumn Leaves-Elegant Flourishes and Fiskars Holiday Frolic (for the snowflakes) plus some blue gems.  I framed the design with blue card stock.