Happy Birthday Balloons

Balloons are such happy things! I’ve been having lots of fun with this Balloon Bundle die set from My Favorite Things (see this post for another use).

This card base was leftover from some of my watercolor experiments (so I’m not sure which watercolors I used!). The open cake is an old one from the late, lamented Stampa Barbara. The gemstones, I believe, are from Hero Arts.

Hope your day is as happy as these balloons!

Shop ’til You ….

…. Can’t stop making these adorable shopping bags from Hero Arts!

These are made using the Fancy Dies 3-D Shopping Bag.  As you can see, I couldn’t stop making them! The bag is open enough to let you add things, but not so puffy that it won’t easily slip into an envelope.  I love that you can put anything in these bags!

Check it out:

For the background, I did a soft watercolor wash using Hero Arts’ liquid pigment watercolors. The greenery was created from Spellbinders’ Fern Dies. The dots are Nuvo crystal drops.

For this card, I first stamped Hero Arts’ Floral Mandala Bold Print in Unicorn White onto the gray cardstock. The flowers are from Hero’s Coloring Layering bird CL866, and the stems are an older stamp from Art Impressions F3022.

This one is a particular favorite — I love the ombre bag and the balloons!

The paper for the bag was colored using Ranger Distress Oxides; the background is Lawn Fawn’s Quilted Backdrop die, and the balloons are from My Favorite Things,  the Bundles of Balloons card kit.

Thanks for stopping by!

Elephants on Parade!

Sometimes the best way to try new products and techniques is by making tags. These were fun and easy!

I started by playing with Hero Arts’ new liquid watercolors (check out the great video in the link) in Strawberry, Moss and Indigo (the only three colors I have, but see how nicely they mix and play together?) . These come in a dropper bottle and are highly pigmented.

I used the watercolors to create a large background sheet (which I cut into tags), but they are also great for coloring individual images. I dropped some watercolors into a paint tray, let them dry, and keep them handy on my desk. They re-activate with the touch of a damp or wet brush.

Once the paper was dry, I stamped and white embossed a portion of Hero Arts Bold Prints Floral Mandala background.

The larger pink elephant on the left is a punch from EK Success; the smaller elephant is a Hero Arts layering stamp (which has a matching die). The balloons on the large pink elephant is from Stampin’ Up!’s Balloon Builders set (if you can’t find it, there are several other great balloon stamps on the website!).

So much fun!

Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

Fabulous Finds Friday — Balloon Bonanza

I love dies for so many reasons, but mostly because they make cutting easy and I can often USE UP MY SCRAPS!!!

Which is exactly what I did to with this set of balloon dies (*Party Balloons QF176) from Cheery Lynn. I gathered a bunch of scraps and did some serial die cutting.  Here’s my Cheery Lynn balloon explosion:

And a group shot of a few of the cards:

Once you have the dies cut, these cards come together quickly. Great to have in a card emergency.

A few close-ups:

(Cuttlebug embossing folder)

*(Sorry, I could not find a direct link.)

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Happy Heart Balloon Bear

I know Valentine’s Day has come and gone, but I had to share this Valentine I made for a very special boy using this adorable balloon animal set, called Balloon Builders, from Stampin’ Up!

The set has various shapes that you mix and match to create designs. I played around a bit with the shapes to find the “formula.” (My first one was a bunny, but he came out a little creepy, so we went with the bear!)

I started with the largest balloon for the body then continued to build the bear. The main stamping was done in Stephanie Bernard’s ColorBox brown. The heart balloon was stamped in my old Marvy Matchables red.  The string, eyes, nose and inside the ear were hand drawn. Grass was added with watercolor pencils, then blended (I kind of made a mess of that….) and the sentiment (from the same set) was stamped in blue. The pierced panel is from the Richard Garay/Spellbinders Pierced Rectangles set. 

Oh, heck… here are two more cards I made for Valentine’s Day (but they can be used for other occasions, too!)

How sweet are those birds?

It’s the same die I used here, a Cath Edvalson design for Technique Tuesday. The paper is from Simple Stories and the sentiment from Stampin’ Up’s Bloomin’ Love set.

And this fast and easy card uses the Scribble Heart  Arrow die set from Simon Says Stamp. I cut a bunch from various brightly colored papers and glued them on this purple card stock (a discontinued color from Paper Source. You’ll see a lot of it because I bought a huge package when I found it on clearance!) The sequins are from Lawn Fawn, attached with Ranger Multi Medium. (I also used the inside of the hearts on other cards.)

These were so fast and easy I made a bunch (note the inside pieces, too) :

Thanks for stopping by!

Fabulous Finds Friday — Balloons!

On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I visited Viva Las Vegas stamps … and spent all my gambling money on rubber (better than throwing it away on the slots, right?)

I picked up a few *Banksy-inspired images, including this fun balloon girl:

I played around with it and black embossed the image. And looked at it and looked at it … then I found the Party Banner Cutting Plate (TE217) from Taylored Expressions all cut out and nowhere to go, just sittin’ on my desk. So I paired it with balloon girl … and, well, there we go.

Here’s another card using balloon girl:

The pretty blue embossing powder is from Ranger, the dry embossed cloud background from Darice. And there’s that Hero Arts enjoy sentiment again. The cardstock is from WorldWin.

Here’s a close up view of the embossed cloud:

Thanks for stopping by!

*Banksy is an English graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter.