Feathery Birthday

How are you doing this beautiful Sunday morning? I can see a strange light phenomenon up in the sky, it's like a yellow light, not sure how to describe it - it... shines? Haven't seen that for ages. My neighbour kindly dragged me out for a run earlier, despite my kicking and screaming. Now that it's over I'm thankful she did it, although at the moment I wasn't a happy bunny, and still feel a bit hoarse from all the screaming... Happy I've got that unpleasantness out of the way and filled up on a cup gallon of coffee I'm starting to feel a bit better.  Ready to clean the house spend the rest of the day in the craft room.

I absolutely love feather stamps, so of course, I had to have the new Feathery set from STAMPlorations. I took it out for a test run today, trying some Copic blending with different colours. It looks easy when you see others do it on YouTube videos, but it's actually not that easy in real life, I'll tell you!

I was inspired by the colours over at Just Add Ink and the sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches. I'm also linking up with the Tag It theme at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge and Layer It Up at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge.

Card: 200 gsm white shimmer card, kraft card, scraps of yellow and turquoise card, Hobbycraft 190 gsm white card

Stamps: STAMPlorations Feathery and matching dies, Balloons and Banners

Ink and Colouring: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Distress Ink Vintage Photo, Copics

Other: STAMPlorations Manila Tags Nesting Dies, Happy Word die

Happy Bot Day

I love dedicating my Saturday mornings to crafting. I should be out running but sometimes I feel like it's more important to provide a work-out for my creative muscles. No comments about the fact that I still haven't managed to squeeze into most of my trousers after the Christmas binge. But crafting is cheaper than therapy and there is only so much a gal can take after a mad day at work on Friday. Why do all the big problems always creep out on a Friday evening right before you are supposed to go home?

Anyhow, this Saturday I started the day with a big stash of crafty goodness from STAMPlorations, a cup of hot coffee in my trusty Unicorn mug and haven't stopped since.

Now this is #thelife : #saturday #morning, my trusty #unicorn mug, #coffee and the most amazing #craftystash from the awesome @stamplorations . If you visit their store just to daydream of everything you want, you may recognize a lot of the stuff, but there are also a few sneak peaks of new stuff you will see soon. I can’t wait to share!!

A post shared by InvisiblePinkUni (@invisiblepinkuni) on Jan 27, 2018 at 12:28am PST

The first stamps out to play from the new stash are these super adorable Little Robots from the amazing Shery of STAMPlorations. I was inspired by the colours over at Color Throwdown, although I always feel like I'm really pushing the envelope when limiting my colour palette (I had to create a rainbow card after finishing this to recover, I'll show you that one another day...). I was also inspired by the "Use markers or pencils" theme over at CAS on Friday and Masked Magic theme over at Daring Cardmakers. Last but not least I'm linking up over at Shopping Our Stash where the theme is Birthday.

I started by stamping the two robots, masking the first before stamping the one behind it. Then I masked the other robot as well and masked a rectangle in the middle of the card. I inked Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide through the ARTplorations Dots All Over stencil. I coloured the robots with Faber Castell watercolour pencils. Last, I combined sentiments from a few stamp sets, stamping them in Hickory Smoke Distress Ink (I really have to buy the Hickory Smoke Distress Oxide as it I prefer Oxides to Inks for stamping...), I had to use a grey marker to fill in the sentiment as it didn't stamp as well as I wanted. 

Card: White 250 gsm card
Stamps: STAMPlorations Little Robots, Noteworthy 2, Bloomin' Spring Coffee Basket 
Ink and colouring: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Distress Oxide Spice Marmalade, Distress Ink Hickory Smoke, Faber Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils
Stencil: ARTplorations Dots All Over

STAMPlorations discount code: If you want to save 20% when shopping at the STAMPlorations store you can use the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. The code cannot be combined with other discount codes.

Instead of Texting...

I've had a thoroughly unproductive Sunday. And not in that good "I'm just sitting here under my blanket with a good book and a hot cup of coffee" unproductive, but in the "feeling really horrible for no apparent reason" (suspecting oncoming cold...) unproductive. There are so many different bugs going around at the moment, I already had one earlier in the year. I've seen unusually many people as part of work lately, so probably got exposed to a fair bit of nasties. I'll just try to take it easy and I'm sure I'll feel better soon. Luckily I managed a card this morning before it all kicked off!

Today's card is inspired by two inspiration images - one over at Lawn Fawnatics and one over at Inspired by All The Little Things. From the first image, I was inspired by the reds and the pinks, the hearts and the red bokeh image, which I translated into sequins. From the second, I was inspired by the colour scheme of pink, green and white and the little birds. I'm also linking up with Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the theme is Birds of a Feather.

Card: white shimmery card, Daler&Rowney 300 gsm watercolour paper, Neenah Solar white card, Lawn Fawn Let's Polka in the Dark patterned paper
Stamps: Lawn Fawn Love Letters and matching dies
Ink and Colouring: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress Markers Abandoned Coral, Festive Berries, Picked Raspberry, Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick, Copics
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangles Nesting Dies, red sequins from my stash

Twofer Feathers

Have you already played along with the most fun new challenge in craft-land, Darnell's Twofer challenge? If not, you may want to check it out! I'm not quite sure how Darnell finds the time to run a very active blog, leave the best comments in Blog-land and now also run her own challenge. Darnell, do you ever sleep? And everyone in the DT are crafty names you are sure to recognize, all super talented crafters, so it was a joy to pop over to see the inspiration for the first challenge. Anyhow, I love the idea of the twofer challenge - to use the same stamp/die to make two different cards for two different occasions. You might as well, when you have your stamps/dies out. The theme of the first Twofer challenge is Feathers.

I decided to do a sympathy card and a birthday card. The first one is a bit of a mixed media CAS one, with some cling wrap inking in blue in the background and added brown ink splatters. The background was created using Distress Inks which give a more translucent look than Oxides (I tried the Oxides first but didn't like the look for this, hence justifying owning both Distress Inks and Oxides - the right tool for the right place). The feathers are stamped, heat embossed and fussy cut. The layout for this card was inspired by Freshly Made Sketches and the colours by Color Throwdown.

My second card is a celebration of the new Distress Oxides I very recently received and many of them are NBUS. I inked up the feathers in rainbow colours and stamped away to my heart's content. The card I used is a slightly shimmery white card, it's really smooth so it took much longer than usual for the inks to dry. Luckily I didn't smudge them too much. I just added a very simple sentimen with white heat embossing and some die cut stitching around the edges. I'm linking this up over at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the theme is Birds of a Feather and Just Add Ink where the theme is Something new (the Distress Oxides) and they also have a fun blog hop.

Card: light grey card, white shimmer card, scraps of light blue, light brown and black card
Stamps: STAMPlorations Trendy Feathers 2 (out of stock), Blossom Overture
Ink: Tsukineko Versamark, Distress Oxides, Distress Ink Broken China, Vintage Photo
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Border dies, Papermania Seafoam White embossing powder, sequins from my stash

STAMPlorations discount code: If you want to save 20% when shopping at the STAMPlorations store you can use the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. The code cannot be combined with other discount codes.

January STAMPlorations CAS Challenge - Mid-Month Inspiration

 

Just a quick post with some mid-month inspiration for our STAMPlorations January CAS Challenge with the optional colour twist of silver. I have loved seeing the gorgeous creations in the gallery, thank you for sharing those. There are still a few more weeks to play along. 

After Christmas, there is always a great need for thank you cards, so after making one for the January Challenge, I thought I would make another one for the mid-month inspiration post. Again, I used the fabulous new Evolution stencil. I inked through the stencil with  Distress Inks. I then inked Versamark through the Dots All Over stencil and heat embossed in silver.  Last, I die cut the sentiment using the Thanks word die from silver glitter paper. 

I'm linking up over at CASology where the theme is Glimmer, Shopping Our Stash where the theme is Getting Sentimental (focus on a sentiment) and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where the theme is to Add a sentiment. 

Card: 250 gsm white card, silver glitter card

Stencils: Sanna Lippert designs Evolution, ARTplorations Dots All Over

Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Inks Twisted Citron, Mermaid Lagoon, Blueprint Sketch, Wilted Violet, Tsukineko Versamark

Dies: CUTplorations Thanks word die

Other: Papermania Silver embossing powder

STAMPlorations discount code: If you want to save 20% when shopping at the STAMPlorations store you can use the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. The code cannot be combined with other discount codes.

Feathered Heartfelt Thanks

I've been having a bit of a clear out of the craft room - selling some stamps and punches I no longer used (and in some cases had never used at all...).  I made some thank you cards to go with the stamps. I had some backgrounds from when I started practicing with Distress Oxides which weren't good enough to use as backgrounds but felt like I didn't want them to go to waste so I stamped some feathers and heat embossed them in white. I will have to say fussy cutting 18 feathers wasn't the best of ideas - in hindsight I should have picked a stamp with a matching die. But I love these gorgeous feathers, so it was worth the fuss(y cutting).

After I had all my feathers embossed and cut, I die cut a square mask to ink through to create the backgrounds. I used different combinations of Oxides and splattered some water to create those gorgeous water splatters. Then I added some of my new washi tape before attaching the feathers and stamping the sentiment in Versafine black.

I'm linking up with Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the theme is Birds of a Feather and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge where the theme is Add a Sentiment. I'm also linking up with CAS(E) This Sketch.

Card: 350 gsm white card, 

Stamps: Trendy Feathers 2, Fond Expressions 2
Ink: Tsukineko Versafine Onyx Black, Versamark, Distress Oxides Fossilised Amber, Broken China, Cracked Pistachio, Wilted Violet, Worn Lipstick
Other: Papermania Seafoam white embossing powder, Washi tape from my stash

STAMPlorations discount code: If you want to save 20% when shopping at the STAMPlorations store you can use the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. The code cannot be combined with other discount codes. 

Cling Wrap Distress Oxide Rainbow

I decided to treat myself to some of the new Distress Oxides colours - well, I realise they aren't really all that new anymore, but I just haven't gotten around to buying them. It was so much fun unwrapping them and of course, I immediately wanted to try them out.

Welcome to the family! #distressoxide #timholtz #crafting #handmade #ink

A post shared by InvisiblePinkUni (@invisiblepinkuni) on Jan 9, 2018 at 11:37am PST

I was playing around earlier with the cling wrap technique, inspired by the CAS Mix Up challenge. As I had some cling wrap on my desk I thought I might as well use my new inks to try it out. I used a very light grey card as the background for the inking. I inked a rainbow of Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry, Wilted Violet, Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon, Lucky Clover and Twisted Citron on cling wrap and spritzed generously with water before pressing the card against the cling wrap and scrunching it around to create the creases. I might be a bit biased as rainbow is my favourite colour, but I love the way it turned out. As the challenge is Cling Wrap + Stamping + Your Choice, my choice is die cutting.

When I saw the sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches I thought that would be the perfect way to highlight the pretty panel and not distract too much from it. I'm also linking up with Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers where T is for Technique (although without any snark this time... my sentiment stash is sadly lacking in Snark which I need to rectify!) and Shopping Our Stash where the theme is "Out with the old, in with the new". My old is my old STAMPlorations dies and stamps as well as those rhinestones which have been around for aaaages! The "something new" is the new (to me) technique. My stash was a bit low on Birthday cards, and this is a great versatile one.

Card: light grey card, black card, shimmering white card

Stamps: STAMPlorations Blossom Overture 

Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress Oxides Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry, Wilted Violet, Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon, Lucky Clover and Twisted Citron

Other: STAMPlorations Happy Word Die, adhesive rhinestones from my stash

Cling Wrap Tag Card

Are there any specific housework/DIY things you hate in particular? I have one thing, which is actually not a really big chore, but I have it tagging along on my to-do lists for months at a time - checking the tyre pressure on my car. It takes me less than 10 minutes to do, but I just can't make myself do it. Silly, isn't it? Well, today I felt like I have earned an adulting gold star as I finally dragged myself out into the driveway and I was able to (finally) tick the task off my to-do list for a while. Obviously, I rewarded myself with some chocolate, as you do.

In addition to some other adulting stuff, like preparing healthy meals for next week (tomato and olive stuffed aubergines and a mushroom stew, in case you were wondering) I did get some play-time in the craft room. I was super excited to try the Cling Wrap technique from this month's CAS Mix Up (there are instructional videos on the challenge website). I just love the inspiration from this challenge, it's so much fun to try some of the new (to me) techniques. My "your choice" for this card was die cutting

I created two panels, the one to the left in the picture using Distress Oxides and the one to the right using Distress Inks. I added Perfect Pearls to the water I used to spritz the inks to create the silvery, shiny pattern on the panels. I love the look!

I then used the largest of STAMPlorations Luggage Tags Nesting Dies to cut a tag from the panel I created with Distress Inks. I then die cut some flowers and leaves from coloured card using the Trendy Spring Blooms Dies. Last, I die cut a sentiment using Hugs Word die from a piece of grey card I had stamped using Flutter Zen Row and which was going to be part of another project but that never worked out. Waste not and all that...

I'm also linking up with Just Us Girls where Anything Goes and AAA Cards where the challenge is to be inspired by the quote "Let today be the start of something new" where my something new is of course the new technique I tried in this card.

Card: white shimmer card, 300 gsm Daler&Rowney card, scraps of yellow, green and grey card
Stamps: STAMPlorations Flutter Zen Row 
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress Ink Mustard Seed, Spun Sugar, Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries
Dies: CUTplorations Luggage Tags Nesting Dies, Trendy Spring Blooms Dies, Hugs Word Die
Other: Perfect Pearls

Floral Birthday Wishes

I've been busy crafting lately, but most of my efforts have gone into my new Bujo, which is going to be full of rainbow colours and unicorns (Hello, my name is Karola and I have a substance abuse issue when it comes to rainbow colours....). Last year I tried to have a dignified and mostly black and white design and I didn't like it, in fact, I disliked it so much that towards the end of the year I really struggled to even write in it at all. Therefore I'm going overboard with colours this year, and bought a bunch of unicorn and rainbow washi tape. I've already created some weekly spreads and reflected over my goals for 2018. If you follow my Instagram you may have seen the first page of my Bujo. The image is from the lovely "Keep Calm and Colour Unicorns" colouring book my other half got me for Christmas, and I can tell you I've been colouring a lot of unicorns lately. I just love the image! Oh, and you can find me as @invisiblepinkuni on Instagram in case you want to see what I'm up to.

#newyear new #bujo. This years theme is #unicorns and #rainbow ! #bulletjournal #welcome2018 #watercolour #colouring #colouringbook #cheaperthantherapy

A post shared by InvisiblePinkUni (@invisiblepinkuni) on Jan 2, 2018 at 12:03pm PST

Anyhow, on to today's main topic, which is a birthday card I made for my grandma who is turning a respectable 93 years old in a few week's time. I was inspired by the beautiful bright colours over at House Of Cards and the sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches. I'm also joining in with the Birthday theme over at CAS Watercolour and Anything Goes over at Seize the Birthday. I stamped the gorgeous STAMPlorations Bloomtangled ATC#2 stamp in Versamark and heat embossed in silver. Then I watercoloured the image with Distress Inks. I splattered some left-over ink on some white shimmer card (the shimmer is so subtle you can't see it in the image but it has a very light shimmer in real life). Last, I added the pink strip of card as per the sketch, and stamped and heat embossed the sentiment in silver. 

Card: White shimmer card, Daler&Rowney 250 gsm watercolour paper, scrap of pink card

Stamps: STAMPlorations Bloomtangled ATC#2, sentiment stamp is a really old one I have bought in a stamp shop back home in Finland many, many years ago...

Ink and colouring: Tsukineko Versamark, Tim Holtz Distress Ink Mustard Seed, Spun Sugar, Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries, Twisted Citron, Mowed Lawn, Shabby Shutters

Other: Papermania Silver Embossing Powder

STAMPlorations discount code: If you want to save 20% when shopping at the STAMPlorations store you can use the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. The code cannot be combined with other discount codes.

January STAMPlorations CAS Challenge - Anything Goes With Silver

I hope you have had a great start to the new year. I'm still recovering from Christmas, and judging by how hard it's to do up my trousers at the moment I am predicting a long and painful recovery. Did I mention I'm wearing a skirt right now? And eating leftover chocolate... Hi, my name is Karola and I have a chocolate abuse problem. Anyhow, maybe I can distract myself from stuffing my face by crafting? It's time for the January STAMPlorations CAS challenge! This time our optional colour twist is Silver. You can use any products you want, and remember that the colour twist is optional. The only rules are that you have to create a CAS card, and you have to link to the challenge graphic to be eligible for the prizes.

I was happy to move on from Christmas card production and use some light pastel colours for the new year. I used one of the fabulous new stencils from Sanna Lippert called Evolution. I inked through the stencil with Mustard Seed, Cracked Pistachio and Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide which blend so beautifully even on the cardstock I used which I have to admit is not the smoothest one. I then spritzed some water with a watercolour brush to oxidise the inks in splatters. I then stamped the sentiment from For the Birds and added some grungy borders from Mixed Media Elements in Versamark and heat embossed them in silver. 

Card: 250 gsm white card

Stamps: STAMPlorations For the Birds, Mixed Media Elements

Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Mustard Seed, Cracked Pistachio, Worn Lipstick, Tsukineko Versamark

Stencil: Sanna Lippert designs Evolution

Other: Papermania Silver embossing powder

STAMPlorations discount code: If you want to save 20% when shopping at the STAMPlorations store you can use the code STAMPGIRLKAROLA at checkout. The discount applies to all normal priced and discounted stamps, stencils and dies. The code cannot be combined with other discount codes.