Happy Birthday - Altenew Dahlia

If your a regular reader than you know I recently ordered some new Altenew stamps. One set was these Dahlias. I love the flowers themselves and these stamps of course because they are one of the most stunning flower I have ever seen. Ironically my mother doesn't care for them because she thinks they are just too perfect looking.

I played around a bit with using multiple colors. Seen here you have a orange, red, coral and yellow. Although I didn't care for the yellow that much so its not very prominent. Not sure how I feel about the color choices I made overall but didn't want to waste the card panel so I went ahead and made it into a card.

Certainly won't be giving this card to my mother for her birthday, since she not only doesn't like dahlias she doesn't like orange either, who knew.

Watercolor - Hello

This is another card I painted at the expo. On these stamps I decided to die cut them and kept the card fairly flat rather than pop it up. A strip of pp and a die cut Hello finish it off along with some enamel dots. Rather simple.

Sharing in your Sorrow

Well I had a ex coworker friend who lost both his brother and mother last week and needed a sympathy card. Funny how there are some cards you don't think too much about until you actually need one.

I wanted it to be quick and easy so I could pop it in the mail ASAP. I used my Papertrey Ink Halloween moon stamp with a bunch of different Tim Holtz Distress inks to come up with a color I was happy with. I also used some Stampin up flowers and a Stampscapes grass stamp to fill in the bottom since the Stampin Up stamps were just flowers on a stalk. Then I used my Stampin Up sympathy sentiment to finish the card along with a few enamel dots.

This was pretty fast to make and simple, and I was able to get it off to him lickety split.

Happy Birthday

While at the expo one of the fun things to do of course is go shopping. Most times I will buy things I need to stock up on and look for stamps I find that I am lacking. I did find these stamps from Altenew and while they are supposed to be coneflowers they remind me of a daisy. Although my friend thought they looked like sunflowers.

 

I really was on the sidelines about whether I wanted them or not and in the end you can see I purchased them. I still am not in love with them like the lovely Peony stamps but these will have a place in my collection I am just not sure how much I will actually use them. Guess that should be a goal for me to make sure they do get used.

 

Not the Prettiest

When I typically am headed to an expo I find if I pre-plan some pages and basically assemble when I am there it's a good use of my time and can easily get 8 pages done in a day, however this time I was sick so I started a few pages but was only able to complete about four before I was dragged down again with a cold.

Once I am home I only need to add a title, journaling and fill any anything that seems to be lacking.

I made this page of my kitty Houdini, I often look at her and see how blah looking she is, because of her grey tone but I have to say she is about the very lovingest (yes I know that's not a real word) cat one could have. She is pretty funny because one of the routines my dh has with her is that when she wants her evening meal she will give my hubby a head butt as a token of affection.

Make A Wish

Another panel I was able to paint at the expo. I love how simple and easy it is to just assemble once I'm home.

I also enjoy mixing two colors for the flowers, I am going to delve a little more into this to see how it works. In fact I just ordered some new Altenew stamps as an early birthday gift to myself. So those will surely get used once they arrive.

I must say Altenew stamps really are the perfect stamp for water coloring but this Penny Black stamp is another of my favorites. I try to look for stamps that have lots of open space because when there is a lot of detail it's easy to get it too muddled with paints, those are better suited for copics or some type of marker or colored pencil.

My father water colored and was quite good at it, he passed away years ago, but I often wonder what he would think of this stamping method.

Birthday Girl

Well I spent last week at the Scrapbook Expo with my friend and we always do the two nights. The first night is Make and Take and the second day/night is basically an all day crop.

Most of the Make and Takes are really not my style so I tend to just save the product and either reuse them or donate the supplies. I have learned over the years that I do not need my entire room and try to prepare and pack accordingly.

I usually have several things I can do throughout the day and normally I have stamps and copics but during this last expo have decided its a waste to do them because the lighting is too bad. I have a travel light but forgot it but still find when I am tired this is not the best thing to be doing.

What I do find that works, water coloring. It's low key easy enough to do when I am tired and I especially like to do it instead of the Make and Takes. I only need a few supplies to bring with me so its pretty much my go to anymore.

I just paint the panels and then finish them at home. This is the first one I painted. I really love that black and pink combo.

Birthday Banner

Well in the midst of trying to get my last two February cards done my dd asked if I could help her with a birthday banner for one of her co-workers. You know I'm not going to say no so using my Silhouette I cut out everything and then just had to assemble.

This was a great opportunity to use up some pp scraps. I did use a copic marker to outline the circles to give them a little contrast against the banner flags.

I also dug up some party hat stickers I had and lastly using the silhouette cut and assembled the birthday cake.

Then, after I hole punched the banner flags I connected them with some ribbon and I kept wanting to embellish this but you know that they say sometimes less is more so I left it be.

I thought it came out pretty cute.

Woofing You

Well now that I finished my February birthday cards I immediately needed a March birthday card for this week. Yikes!

Thinking of my friend who adores her dog I thought she might like the My Favorite Things Lucky Dog stamps. I paired MFTS with spellbinders scallop square and not that you can see it, but I gave the background a little bit of blue with white clouds then of course ended up covering most of it with the banner sentiment, go figure.