Coffee card January 2023 swap!

Happy New Year! A little late for the greeting but it's my first post in 2023! 

I used my newly purchased stamp sets, both from Gina K Designs! Most of you know that I hate cold weather, and I tend to make cards which doesn't have "winter" theme much...But I really liked these sets, and after coloring, I like them even more! 😍

I did some ink blending for background scene. I splattered white watercolor paint to make a snowy scene in the end. For the front, it's hard to tell but I found this shiny white paper in my stash, to die cut the snow drifts, using Honey Bee Stamps die. I stamped snowmen and mug cup all in black first, but after placing them on the scene, I didn't like it, and changed the color to light grey to stamp snowmen and brown to stamp mug cups, and I love how they turned out, after coloring with Copics. I decided to make the winter scene card because the recipient lives in Florida. We don't see this scenery in our daily lives.😄

Thanks for stopping by my blog today! Hope you are having a relaxing long weekend! In some areas, I watched on the news about horrible weather... Stay safe!  Love, Eve  

Happy Easter #1

 Aloha~

I'm a bit ahead of time, making cards this year. 😊 This card is for my Godmother. This looks rather simple but to finish it, it took a lot of time, changing my mind, one after another. Only things I wanted to use was my new die of large cross and lilies. After arranging the die and the stamps, I realized that I needed to make a larger size card instead of regular 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card. First I cut Lawn Fawn's yellow shimmer card stock for the base. Then I cut the Lawn Fawn's white shimmer card stock on the front. Then I cut the cross from different kinds of gold papers. I chose this most glittery paper cut. Sometimes I can't tell which goes the best, and I had to cut them, and place them before choosing one. When I placed it on the white shimmer card stock, it didn't look right, and grabbed the Lawn Fawn's sun beam paper. But then, with the yellow shimmer card stock on the base, it didn't look nice.. so I started to make lilies. Sometimes when I get stuck and don't come up with the perfect solution, I just forget it and do something else. 😁 For this card making, I focused making lilies. These lilies look kinda natural but to make it natural, with "layering stamp set", that was a bit hard. Later, I thought to myself, maybe I should've water colored the outlined lilies.. lol.. I needed to mute it down after stamped some layers, so I used distress ink/picket fence all over the lilies. It worked quite nice! For pollens, I remember Jennifer McGuire used embossing powder, but it didn't work well for me in my head, but she inspired me to use something gold, and I used gold uniball pen to just make dots, and it worked great as I imaged in my head. I fussy cut two lilies. The sentiment stamp is from Vivid Jungle from Guam, USA, from like...20 years ago! Red rubber stamp rocks! 👍 I attached it with the foam tape for a dimension. When I was trying to come up with the idea of "muting" the lilies, I thought of "vellum". I didn't have to use it but I had it in my hand, and voila! I used it under the front paper, and it worked as I imagined how it looked. I'm really happy with this card although it took a long time to finish it!  

So, when I found the right thickness/color of vellum, I realized I had several different colors of vellum!! I think back in early 2000's, the vellum became a trend, and I "collected" different colors, and still have most of them, except the white I sometimes use. I bet some of you also still have those beautiful vellums in different colors in your stash! I should start using them! ... somehow... 😄

Thank you for stopping by my blog today. Have a nice week! Hugs, Eve