My Cards and Tags: W Plus 9 "Fish More" Stamps

This week's theme at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog is "Pets Corner."  In full disclosure here, I am NOT a pet person!  I care about animals and their well-being, but every pet encounter in my youth was disastrous or traumatic (devil Chihuahuas, ornery parakeets, allergy-attack-inducing cats, etc.) and I've never quite grown out of that.  So I went with a fish-theme (ok, fish lures- it was as close as I could go) for this week's project.

I started by cutting tags out of Strathmore Mixed Media paper using Mama Elephant's Bowtiful die and Reverse Confetti's Thanks die.  I stamped them with Ranger Jet Black Archival and some images from Paper Artsy and Simon Says Stamp.  The horizontal lines are from a stamp in one of my Concord & 9th sets.

I watercolored some sections and smeared on some Distress Ink with a sponge.

Next up I glued on a die-cut circle shape from Simon Says Stamp and covered some parts of the tags with white acrylic paint.

I stamped and fussy-cut these darling fish lures from a W Plus 9 stamp set and added them on, along with the sentiment.

I finished them off with a simple bit of white embroidery floss to go through the hole at the top.

These are the supplies I used on these tags, which you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

W Plus 9 Fish More stamp set	reverse confetti cuts thanks tag die set	Mama Elephant Bowtiful tag die set	Simon Says Stamp Circle Loops Die Set	Sizzix Big Shot
Paper Artsy Eclectica3 EKD02 Stamp Set	Paper Artsy Eclectica 3 EEG 18	Simon Says Stamp Tiny Alphabet Background Stamp	Fiskars Acrylic Blocks	Loew Cornell WATERCOLOR CAKES 24 Paints
Tim Holtz Distress Mini Ink Pad SALTY OCEAN	Mustard Seed - Distress Ink	Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad WILTED VIOLET	Picked Raspberry - Distress Ink	Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad LUCKY CLOVER Ranger
Tim Holtz Distress Twisted Citron Ink Pad	Ranger Non Stick Craft Sheet	Iris Embroidery Floss Pack Pastel colors	ranger archival jet black ink pad	Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink in Garden Patina
Ranger Archival Ink, Vibrant Fuchsia	Ranger Archival Ink, Vivid Chartreuse

I know that there are many pet fans out there, so I can't wait to see how you pay homage.  Be sure to upload your genius works to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win a $50 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store!

My Cards and Tags: Using Reverse Confetti's Happy Pretty Panel

You know I love me some Reverse Confetti and Simon Says Stamp always has a great variety of their products.  I am always looking for fun new sketches to try, so I decided to give Reverse Confetti's January sketch a go.  Here's what resulted:

For this card, I used Reverse Confetti's Happy Pretty Panel, a "For You" sentiment from the Whole Lotta Love stamp set, beautiful blue patterned paper from the Fright Night collection, one of the Swirlies dies, and the circle garland die (straightened out and going vertically).  I used white paint and acrylic paints and outlined some of the circles using Simon Says Stamp's Scribble Flowers set.  The paper is all from my bottomless "stash," which is endless and hoarder-esque. The background paper is from Prima's Epiphany line, but the others are mere nameless scraps.

Hope your weekend is full of of happy things and thanks, as always, for taking the time to visit my little corner of the blogging universe.
 

My Other Creations: Girl Collage Using Impression Obsession's "She Was Tired" Stamp

I've been wanting to improve my drawing skills for quite awhile now and finally got down to practicing!  So while this is just an early sketching attempt with plenty o' errors, I wanted to be courageous in sharing my progress since this week's Simon Says Stamp theme is "Spread Your Wings."

I started by consulting some books on how to draw faces, then roughed out the basics:

Next I whipped out my watercolors and painted in some general tones.

I stenciled blue and purple onto the background using Tim Holtz's Latticework stencil, and smeared and painted streaks down to blend things together.  I added more color to the face and background with alcohol markers and chalk.

I finished it out by adding some circles stamped with flowers and one of my all-time favorite sentiment stamps from Impression Obsession.

Here are the supplies I used that you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

Tim Holtz Latticework Stencil	Loew Cornell WATERCOLOR CAKES 24 Paints	Tim Holtz Idea-ology TISSUE TAPE SYMPHONY Music Self Adhesive Vintage Paper	My Favorite Things Sketched Blooms Stamp Set	She Was Tired stamp by Impression Obsession
Ranger Archival Jet Black Ink Pad	Salty Ocean - Distress Ink	Shaded Lilac - Distress Ink	Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad BLUEPRINT SKETCH Ranger	Dina Wakley Ranger WHITE Media Heavy Body Acrylic Paints
Spectrum Noir Markers: Turquoise	Spectrum Noir Markers: Pale Hues	Spectrum Noir Markers: Pink	Spectrum Noir Markers: Blues	Spectrum Noir Markers: Warm Grays
Spectrum Noir Markers: Cool Grays	Tim Holtz Distress Twisted Citron Ink Pad

I am excited to see how you interpret our "Spread Your Wings" theme!  Be sure to upload your creations to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win a $50 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store!