If I Had 100 Hearts

Hi friends. It's a dark and rainy day here in North Carolina and I thought I share a few cards made with The Layered Rainbow Love Stencil from A Colorful Life Designs. Here is the image from Mary Kay's website (the owner and operator of A Colorful Life Designs*:

There are 3 layers to color - so you receive 3 separate stencils which could be used each on its own. *Also, AnitaFan10 for 10% off your entire order (excluding bundles).

All the stencils were ink blended with Distress Inks.

The cute bears and sentiments from all these cards are by MFT Stamps, Stacey Yacula's Joyful Heart Bears. Discontinued at the MFT site, but available in other shops. I have the stamp and the coordinating die which I love, especially for images with strings!

All the images were stamped onto Ranger Ink Tim Holtz's Distress Watercolor Cardstock with Altenew's Obsidian Black Ink and watercolored with my Daniel Smith 238 Color Dot Cards. I love these cards for all the color selections, especially all the browns from which to choose! The dot cards work out so well for traveling and lunchtime coloring at the office, too.

These next cards used A Colorful Life Designs' Heart Wreath Stencil:

Lots of options with this stencil, but I went with a monochromatic design. I love the sentiment: "Your Heart and My Heart are Very Old Friends" also from the same MFT Stamp set.

I left off all the bling and kept it simple.

I wanted to copy a description from the website at A Colorful Life Designs:

"Express yourself creatively by making a beautiful card, scrapbook page or other paper craft with this stencil. Each stencil is designed and laser cut by the A Colorful Life Designs team in Dallas, Texas. Our stencils are made of 7.5 mil Mylar, a thin plastic sheet that is flexible-yet-strong and oh-so-easy to clean. Use your stencils over and over again with inks, texture pastes, sprays, glitter gels, and other coloring mediums. 

Each order is shipped via the U.S. Postal Service. 

Thanks for supporting our small, woman-owned business!"

Thank you for joining me today. Stay warm and dry wherever you are~

I'd like to submit to the following challenges:

 NBUS - both stencils

Stencil Fun Challenge - Anything Goes

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

New Design Team!

There's a new challenge in town all about flowers called Beautiful Blossoms!

 

As a member of the design team for this new challenge I was given an inspirational board for an optional jumping off point. Love the blues and browns:

I knew I wanted to make a home decor piece. I had an idea of a vintage brownish background with pretty blue flowers. This is a piece I made years ago - completely inspired from Vicky Papaioannou, a YouTube artist I follow faithfully for her art journaling style. I thought I would do a 2023 updated version of it.

It's hard for me to tell you what I used to create my home decor piece for I just kept adding and adding, taking away and adding until I was happy with the colors. I kind of think that is how mixed media works. At the end of my blog I will just post the products I used, with the links, if you are interested in trying this yourself!

My base is a canvas covered with print which I purchased from Michael's years ago. I have a whole bag of them all different sizes. They were about $.50 each, so I couldn't resist! On my original, I had added the Tim Holtz tissue paper printed with music and butterflies, but for today's work it was already there.

I did cover all the sides with the same mixed media, but the back is open and didn't need be done.

The flowers were covered with the Milky Way Stencil from A Colorful Life Designs and Lawn Fawn Stencil Paste Gold - you can see some of the texture here:

Lots of finger painting and fussy cutting!

We have had a very concerning medical diagnosis in the family over Christmas this year and I felt the word for the year is "hope".

Please come, visit and play along with the new challenge - Anything Goes Flowers!

Here are the products I used in no particular order:

1) Penny Black Stamp: Divine

2) A Colorful Life Designs Stencil - Milky Way (AnitaFan10 for 10% off your entire order! (excluding bundles))

3) Ranger Ink Distress Ink and Stain: Uncharted Mariner

4) Ranger Ink: Distress Crayons Peacock Feathers and Mermaid Lagoon (Set #1)

5) Ranger Ink: Dylusions Paint: White, Green, Yellow

6) Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens

7) Ranger Ink: Diane Wakely Media Kraft Paper

8) Lawn Fawn Stencil Paste Gold 

9) Krylon All Purpose Spray Adhesive   (for beads)

10) Ranger Ink Distress Collage Medium

11) Trinity Stamps - Found My Marbles, Tiny Bead Mix (Retired)

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

A New Stamp Set

Happy New Year friends! Big Squishy Hugs to you!

A Colorful Life Design's January 2023 Release included a new stamp set. This is the second one for the shop and it's a really good one. Called Oodles there are so many scenarios for these sentiments:

Before I go further, please use my discount code AnitaFan10 (10% off your entire order, excluding bundles) if you wish to purchase from A Colorful Life Designs.  Mary Kay de la Fuente is the one woman who runs the company, designs and creates each stencil. Let's support small USA businesses! There are hundreds of styles...something for everyone.

For the card below I used no line watercoloring with Penny Black's Gentle Thoughts stamp set. "Forever Besties" from the Oodles Stamp Set seemed a perfect sentiment.

For the following card I stamped and white heat embossed the Big Squishy Hugs sentiment over and over to create my own background. The stamp is from StampinBella Curvy Girl Boy Mom.  All watercolored with Daniel Smith's 238 Dot Watercolor cards. I am a lunchtime colorer and these cards make it so easy to carry back and forth to work. The rectangle is cut with Wonky Stitch Rectangles by Pretty Pink Posh.

Love You So Much was perfect with this Penny Black stamp called Love You. Again, watercolored and the decorative border was created with Whimsy Stamps' Festive Edger Die Set for these next 2 cards. I picked them up over the holidays when there were great sales.

The Multi Dots stencil was perfect (IMO) for the background on my popcorn card. Just ink-blended a soft blue through the stencil.

I used Waffle Flower's Popcorn Die-n-Stencil for the popcorn box and the cute popcorn-eating kitten is from C.C. Designs called Cat Kinda Day. Of course, the sentiment is from our new Oodles stamp set!

BoHo Heart Stencil has very thin lines and Pixie Spray is highly recommended.

Here I offset the BoHo Heart Stencil and used a pretty pretty pink for ink blending. And our Oodles sentiment!

Heart Surround is such a beautiful stencil:

Here I used it with a beautiful blue (ink-blended) and added a white heart frame. Of course, our Oodles stamp sentiment! The cool border is from Spellbinders called Fluted Classic Rectangles. I love texture around the edges of my cards!

Thank you for joining me today and check out all the new stencils at A Colorful Life Designs! I will be submitting to the following challenges:

1) NBUS

2) Penny Black Saturday Challenge

3) Lil Patch of Crafty Friends Challenge

4) A Place to Start

5) 613 Avenue Create

6) Stencil Fun Challenge

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Happy Birthday Paper Dragonfly

Happy Birthday to Paper Dragonfly Creative Challenge! One year old and It's Party Time!

To create my card, I used a base from my stash that was bright and colorful. I don't even remember how I had created it, but I love the bright colors and splashes. Can you see the embossed design along the edges? This was created with Spellbinders' Fluted Classic Rectangles Dies. I almost always edge my cards in some way for a bit of interest.

The image is Party Pals Stamps and Dies from a company no longer in business -  Reverse Confetti. It is really a shame because their designs are were so unique. I stamped them onto Ranger Ink Tim Holtz' Distress Watercolor Paper with Altenew's Obsidian Black Pigment Ink While still wet it was sprinkled with Altenew's Crystal Crisp Clear Embossing Powder and then heat set.

I used 2 of the Penny Black Stitched Circles to create a circle frame with a design.

The Celebrate sentiment comes from an old Simon Says Stamp set. I do love the simple font of it.

Here you can see the colorful background:

I love this little flying kitty!

The inside sentiment is from Spellbinder's It's Party Time Stamp Set.

Thank you for joining me and please stop by and post some of your creativity at The Paper Dragonfly Challenge!

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

Paper Funday New Year

It's January 2023 and time for a new Paper Funday Challenge!

I choose Sabrina from our sponsor, LeAnn's World 101 for my digital image. It reminded me of Samantha from Bewitched. Anyone else remember that show? The iconic image of Samantha flying through the sky is so similar! 

The digital image was printed with a laser printer onto Ranger Ink's Tim Holtz  Distress Watercolor Paper.

I watercolor at lunchtime in the office and use the 238 dot set of Daniel Smith's Watercolor. So easy and lightweight to pack and carry around.

The sentiment inside is from a fun fun stamp set from Spellbinders called It's Party Time.

I hope you all get a chance to come and play with us at The Paper Funday Challenge this month!
*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.