Friday, September 29, 2017

Mums the Word




Hello friends and happy Friday to you.  Autumn is creating some beautiful scenery in my corner of the world so I thought this new digital image from Marcy’s Instant Garden Autumn’s Opulence would be fun to colour.  It’s a beautiful remixed collection of chrysanthemums, oak leaves, asters, daisies and berries all rolled into one show-stopper design!  

My printer wasn’t cooperating with me, so I actually intended to print this one in a lighter black, and instead it printed out in rust.  But, with the fall colour palette, the outline colouring worked just fine.  

I haven’t used my Spellbinder dies in ages, so I pulled some of them out to frame up the bouquet, pairing it up with some autumn papers for a rich cozy feel.  



Just a button and twine to accent and the sentiment from Power Poppy’s polymer set Olive and Oak Expanded.  

Here’s a peek at a recent autumn walk we took.  I love this season.  



I used a whole rainbow of Copics to colour my design up shown below.  





Here’s the rest of my Bloom Brigade Bloomie friends in action today.

Allison Cope
Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence

Julie Koerber
Kathy Jones

and the Good Vibe Five at the Power Poppy Blog

Thanks for your visit!  


Friday, September 22, 2017

Marcy’s Tying the Knot Hop!



The Power Poppy Bloom Brigade and Instant Gardener gang is gathering together to celebrate a special occasion!  Marcy and Doug are getting married tomorrow!  These crazy kids are so full of love and life that we wanted to celebrate them with our own Tying the Knot Hop.  




My card takes its cues from Marcy and Doug’s wedding invitation which she illustrated for the big day (you can see in the graphic above). I love their woodland greenery theme, so I went through all of Marcy’s Power Poppy sets to find some of the beautiful leaves that would bring that woodland greenery to the card.  I pulled out several different sets, Peony Muse, Succulent Singles, Dahlia XL, and Tiger Lily XL for the leaves, adding Big Scripts and Dream Wedding for the sentiments inside and out.  




Each of the leaves is stamped on Copic XPress It Blending card stock, coloured with Copics, then trimmed out and arranged on an open circle so that I could inset the sentiments inside.  




I added some pretty clear and silver sequins so that it gave it some sparkle, and mimicked the Doug gears and sprockets from the wedding invite.  Mr & Mrs are silver embossed to match the sparkly silver paper it’s mounted on.  



Inside the card I created a masked border for the inked up leaves and then a silver embossed sentiment too.  



One of the things that doesn’t show up well in the earlier photos, is the sparkle I added to the outer layer using some sparkly spritz, so this photo above shows it a little better.  


To celebrate, all of us are writing or videoing our messages of love for Doug and Marcy, so here’s  my video wishes for Doug and Marcy below.  Ignore the distant siren in the background...and my untamed hair....and any other imperfections :)  it’s just a message from the heart.  





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Now we invite you to pop on by to see the rest of the Tying the Knot Hop!

You’re also invited to stop on by the Power Poppy Blog and leave your happy wishes for Doug and Marcy!  

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Friday, September 15, 2017

The Crunch of Leaves



Last week I was telling you how very warm it was here, and today I can tell you that it’s much more seasonable....almost cool outside.  Our leaves are beginning to turn colour and soon I’ll be able to crunch them as I walk - which is one of my favourite things about autumn.  I’m pulling out the warmer layers and enjoying the beauty.  

To celebrate this lovely season I’ve pulled out Power Poppy’s set, Feeling Fall and stamped it onto Kraft cardstock to go with our Power & Spark Challenge this month, Cozy Krafty Colouring.  

I pulled out some rich Copic colours for these whimsical boots so it has that cozy warm feel.  

I’ve been saving some paper just for a card like this.  You probably remember that in the spring the Bloom Brigade gathered for a fun weekend in St. Louis to meet up with our fearless leader Marcy and enjoy some girlfriend time.  Tosh was so sweet and brought all of us some chocolates wrapped in this gorgeous handmade paper.  I saved the paper because the metallic and autumn tones were so beautiful and I’ve just been waiting for a fall card to use it on. 




I’ve also added a little burlap, some twine and a button to accent it all.  It really speaks autumn to me.  

So, come on over and create with us in the Power & Spark Challenge this month, you’ve got 1/2 the month left to join in for your chance to win a $50 Shopping Spree in the Power Poppy store!  

Here’s some more inspiration from the Bloom Brigade

Allison Cope
Christine Okken

Cindy Lawrence
Julie Koerber
Katie Sims
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker



Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Ginger Baby



One of my former HS students from youth ministry,  now wife of one of our co-workers is having a baby any time in the next few weeks, and we celebrated last weekend with a baby shower.  It’s always so delightful to celebrate babies.  They know they’re having a girl, so it was easy to personalize this card for them.  I’m thinking that with the combination of their two genes they might have a little ginger haired girl, so I pulled out this sweet little digi image from Mo Manning, aptly called Baby Shower, making her a bit of a ginger-haired blondie.  I thought it would work perfectly for her.  

All coloured up with Copics.  Oh just look how cute her chubby little baby belly is!  Of course I had to add designer paper ruffles along the top to match her ruffly diaper cover.  




A little bit of striped grossgrain ribbon, and some pretty cupped flower sequins finish it off, with the addition of a sentiment from an older PaperTrey Ink set.  


Here’s the Copic I used below.  




Monday, September 11, 2017

Stripedy Birthday Cupcakes



How about something cheerful for your Monday evening?  A while back I coloured up a bunch of images that never made it into cards.  I found this one with the sweet cake stand of cupcakes from My Favorite Things set Sweet Birthday Wishes (retired I believe).  So,  I decided to put it into a cute birthday card in one of my favourite colour combinations.  It seems you can never have too many birthday cards.  And chocolate cupcakes are always a winner in my books.  



Using my MISTI Tool, I curved the sentiments to fit on the stitched oval shape, and capped it all of with a pretty satin bow.  I don’t use nearly as much ribbon as I used to, but this little touch seemed perfect.  



Friday, September 8, 2017

Pencil Me In Dahlias




Friday Greetings my friends, from smokin’ hot Alberta.  We’ve been in the in high 20’s - mid 30’s C (80’s and 90’s F) this week, and I am melting.  Good thing it usually cools off at night now, so sleep is a little easier than earlier in the summer.  School kicked off here this week and we only have one in grade school now.  Our daughter is in her last year of University, our middle son is working this year and our youngest is in grade 9.  We’re so grateful for good starts to the fall for them.  

Today I’m stopping back in with another Power Poppy creation for our Cozy Krafty Power and Spark Challenge.  Colouring on Kraft cardstock with Copics is always fun, but I especially love to colour on Kraft with pencils, so this one is all about the pop of pencils.  

It's a last hurrah to summer using our gorgeous Dahlia XL stamp set.  With its larger size I knew I could get into those petals with the pencils and give it some really fun vibrant colour.  

I started with a layer of white prismacolor pencil and then came back with some lovely magenta and purple pencils to give the centers definition.  



With such gorgeous petals I kept the details really simple, a few background strips of paper for a sense of movement, some enamel dots and then a bit of ric rack to ground the image.  



I have seen some really great entries so far in our Cozy Kraft Colouring Challenge, and I hope lots more of you join in.  You could win a $50 Shopping Spree to the Power Poppy store....and if you heard Marcy spill the beans this week - we have a new polymer release coming this month so there will be even more awesome stuff for you to choose from.  

For more inspiration pop on by the rest of the Bloom Brigade playing along today!

Allison Cope
Christine Okken

Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker

and Julie at the Power Poppy Blog with another Good Vibe Friday!


Friday, September 1, 2017

Cozy Krafty Sunflowers




Welcome to September friends! It’s a most beautiful month ahead with the hint of autumn coming.  This month I am your hostess for the Power and Spark Challenge at Power Poppy!  Its a fab fun challenge that runs all month long,  and if you enter to win, you could be chose for a $50 Shopping Spree at Power Poppy!  I love it because it gets your creativity moving in new directions each month.  

This month I chose the theme, Cozy Krafty Colouring.  With summer winding down in the Northern Hemisphere, let's get warm and cozy by creating with Kraft cardstock as our stamping and colouring layer.  




For my design today I couldn’t resist pulling out Power Poppy’s set In Praise of Sunflowers for a perfect summer to fall theme.  Sunflowers are some of my favourite blooms.  This spring my niece and my mom planted two rows of sunflowers in mom’s garden.  Mom thought they were more dwarf size.....nope, they are mammoth!  They tower over her garden right now at about 12 feet.  

For this design I stamped the pretty sunflowers randomly over the Kraft Cardstock and then gave them some warm colour with Copics.  I find that when you’re colouring on Kraft, you have to use more vibrant colours to get the saturation you’re looking for.  



After it was all coloured up, I used a woodgrain embossing folder and added to the rustic appeal with some texture.  A few finishing details include some twine, a wood veneer heart that I distressed with a little ink, and then a few enamel dots.  The card finishes the sentiment inside.  



Funny story, when I was aligning my stamps up to stamp the two part sentiment, I didn’t notice that I had the word “awesome” upside-down.  Oh my goodness, it looked terrible.  So, to the rescue a little strip of kraft to fix it up.  I like it better this way anyway!  Haven’t you always heard that in stamping, mistakes are “opportunities for embellishment”?  :)  



Here’s the Copics I used to make these sunflowers cozy.  

Be sure to join us this month in the Cozy Krafty Challenge.  I’ll look forward to seeing your designs!


Here are the rest of my Bloom Brigade Sisterhood playing along today....


Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence

Julie Koerber