Let a stencil be your guide!

Hi friends!

I hope everyone had a wonderful day!

I wanted to share a card with you that I made today

with a stenciled piece that I made almost a year ago!

February 27 to be exact :)

The colorful stenciled piece has been sitting in a bin on my desk

 under some other things and I found it today.

It was time to let this beauty make it's way onto a card!

No time like the present! ♥ 

The fun thing about this is ...... 

aside from being super simple and super clean (easy, one layer!)

is that it was made using a stencil from a notebook!

I found these little sprial notebooks in the .99c store

 and picked up a few with different ones seeing as how 

the cover is plastic (easy clean up!)

and they had super geometric designs (very cool!)

 Here's one of them:

 To create this simple card,

I first layered a piece of white cardstock under the notebook "stencil".

Using my distress ink cubes 

(wild honey, worn lipstick, crushed olive and broken china),

and my Ranger ink mini blending tool.

It's best to let these panels set after distressing (especially oxide inks!)

and mine definitely dried - for a year! LOL!

I ran it through my Cuttlebug with a die and created the shape,

added a sentiment from an MFT stamps set

 and set it to black cardstock to offset the colors. 

Here are a couple at a glance:

It's always fun to be creative when doing art!
These notebooks with the spiral paper drew me in with the shapes
and I instantly thought of stenciling!

What creative things have you found?
There are so many ways to be creative with DIY projects!
You can look around your home
and find all sorts of wonderful items to use in your crafty supplies.
 
Thanks for stopping by today!
Big hugs, bigger blessings! ♥
 ~Kelly

Day 5: Friends in any weather!

Hi friends!

It's the final day of my weekly blog series
 "5 days of ..."

The Alphabet Game!

It's been such a fun week
and I'm already excited for the next one ahead :)

Today's card is based on letter "H!"

 

 This was such a happy draw for me as I have quite a few stamp sets

with this letter

and almost all of them haven't seen ink.

This darling set is by Hello Bluebird stamps and it just touched my heart 

when I saw this various social media sites during release week!

I used a background panel to create the weathered look 

with distress/oxide inks and popped the images up on the card with foam. 

I stamped the sentiment on the completed background piece

and popped up a die cut to frame it in - 

then added coordinating sequins.

 

 This card is part of my #kindess cards

(as per kindness being my word of the year!)

Each of the cards during this week's release

 is being sent to someone in particular!

While this rainy day card is vibrant and bright and cheerful in color,

so is she - my friend :)

We have weathered a lot together, too!

Thanks for stopping by each day!

Remember there is a prize for one lucky commenter,

and each winner will be annoucned at the end of the weekly series:  July 27th.

Thank you for your KIND and sweet words, your encouragement,

and inspiring me with each of your creations as I visit your blogs, too!

Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥ 

~Kelly

DBC ~ You Make My Heart Melt!

 Hi friends!

I'm on the Drive By Crafts blog today with this card ~ You Make My Heart Melt ♥

I think this is probably one of my favorite cards of this year :)

I absolutely adore it ~ 

from the distress ink blending to the shimmery snow to the cute little kitties ...

it's just so cheerful :)

{and we can always use cheer and happiness} :)

Here's how I made this card from Products at Drive By Crafts online store:

I used the You Make My Heart Melt stamp from the My Favorite Things stamp selections and stamped those out with Brutus Monroe Raven ink.

Oh I love this ink!  So crisp and clean and spot on!

Then, I ran the images through the Cuttlebug with the matching die-namics ~

but remember, you don't need the dies - just fussy cut your images!

I colored the images and then set them aside to work on my background.

 

Since this card is going to a sweet friend,

I knew I wanted pinks and purples as a background.

The exact shades I wanted were Ranger Tim Holtz Picked Raspberry Distress Ink

and Ranger Archival Ink is Magestic Violet.

Using my mini blending tool, I blended both the raspberry and violet inks outward 

until the entire A2 size cardstock was covered and put it aside to set.

For the lake, I wanted to simulate the sparkle of the sun on the ice,

so I added clear Wink of Stella to the image - instant ice skating shimmer!

*A little tip!  I'm a little (okay - a lot!) heavy handed when it comes to blending,

so I hold a scrap piece of paper over the area as I've blended ...

keeps the ink off my fingers AND smudges off your paper! :)

For the frame, this part took a bit of creativity

 and thinking outside the box ... or outside the frame!

I used my My Favorite Things die-namic frame but discarded the actual die cut,

and used the outer area that looked like a window box frame.

So I basically kept the part you toss and tossed saved the part you keep!

I added Scrapbook Adhesives 3D foam to the under side of the white A2 size frame and inverted it and attached that to background to frame it out.
I repeated this with the kitties and the owl - popped up on 3d foam for dimension.

And lastly, I used my white embossing powder and heat gun to 

embossed the sentiment to the card and popped that up, 

too.

To create the water color movement in the ink,

I took a medium size paintbrush with plain water and flicked it onto the ink

background.  It breaks up the monotony of the background color.

 And that's my card .. I hope you enjoyed my rambling today :)

You can stop by the DBC blog and see more inspiration,

as well as take a little drive through the DBC store here or the blog here.

 

My time is almost up being on the Drive By Crafts Design Team ~

it's been a fun ride! 

Thanks for stopping by today!

Big hugs, bigger blessings ♥

~Kelly