Skipping Along ...

Hello, my Stamplings!

How's it going? Did you finish that book by the pool? Taste the best watermelon ever over at your neighbor's yesterday? Take off your sandals and walk barefoot across the grass right after it stopped raining? Or while it was raining?

Since I've had to hang up my running shoes for a while (oh, stop, you're going to bust my stitches!), me and Hammy went to town on some of those UCBs and some of those newly-gifted NBUSes, and some of those challenges we love. 

Perhaps you'd like an iced tea or a lovely crisp pinot grigio?

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What we have here is a glossy background from the UCB (unfinished card bits) box. I made this by swiping the colors from DI (or maybe SU) ink cubes across an acrylic block, spritzing it with water, and turning it upside down on a glossy card for just a few seconds. When it's carefully lifted, you get a fun organic pattern. Then you get addicted and make a bunch of them, cuz no two are alike, and they end up as UCBs.

Except for the U, the die elements I used are from a Spellbinders die called "Sing It Loud 2," given to me by my friend Sheila. I thought this previously languishing background worked well with the rock 'n roll vibe. Last, I attached the panel to a black card base, which you can hardly see because of the shadows. Thank you, Sheila!

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Nothing UCB on this card, but a couple of NBUSes were happily used. The schpark was the cool Stick Frames die from Memory Box which came from my friend Bonnie. It was Hammy's idea to go with a Christmas card since we are light years behind on our resolution to make lots of Ccs all throughout the year. Cough.

The dark card panel looks like a lovely flannel gray, but it snot. It's pitch black, but all the shininess of the gold mirri card and white glitter card played havoc with the black. The NBUS "Noel" is from Winnie & Walter. The schparkling exploding white tinsel ropes are also from Memory Box.

Thank you, Bonnie!

Challenges

• HLS July Christmas Challenge: Anything goes ~ twist: dies.
• Merry Monday Christmas Challenge: Christmas in July. I used Challenge #212, which was gold, black, and white.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground

...part dew:

Having used the die to make the stick frames in the Christmas card, I thought I would see if I could emboss with the same die. After wards, I cut out the "windows" and made a shaker. 

I know the sequints look a bit odd, but the truth is the two middle points under those sequints didn't make a very good impression. It bothered me more and more as the process evolved, but, of course, there comes a time in the making of a shaker card when you are not going to give up and start over come hell nor high water. You just aren't.

So there I was with it all done and it's a really cute shaker, if you don't mind my saying so, but those two bare spots were like, well, like pimples on the night of the prom. You know how you put on too much liquid Maybelline to cover them up and that only made them more noticeable? That's how I now feel about my odd-looking sequints. Oh, well. At least now you know the reason I stuck them there and you won't think they operated on the wrong end of me!

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Last, but not least, I simply HAD to make this goofy fun card to play along in a couple of challenges. Here's the deal:

Over at TIME OUT Challenges, the theme is "CASE with your own twist." The very talented artist we are to CASE is my friend Cornelia and this is her card:

Cornelia is so great with the critter cards! Well, any cards really, but especially the critter cards.

Hammy and I mulled some wine, er, I mean mulled over some various options on ways we could CASE Cornelia. We noticed that another great challenge going on right now is the "one-layer-colored-card" theme happening at Less Is More (in collaboration with AAA Cards).

So what happened was, we decided to use the wild and wonderful wasabi green color of Cornelia's bird as our OLC rather than for our bird. Next, we had to go through the Bird Drawers and decide on which one to use. Gunther the buck-toothed goose got the nod.

For the sediment we chose this fun NBUS stamp from Dylusions, inked in black and embossed in clear. (Thank you, Brenda!) I also did an old-timey technique of running a black ink cube around the edges of the card to keep the viewer's eyes from following the wild green off into infinity. I finished off with some orange coloring, shadows under Gunther's skipping webbed feet, and, of course, googly eyes.

A closeup of the sediment:

Wouldn't it be inspiring to have that saying hanging just inside your front door so you saw it last thing you left the house and first thing you came home? Even if you're past the age of skipping, you're not too old to remember how it felt!

Challenges

• AAA Cards: Colored card base in collaboration with LIM.
• Less Is More: One-layer colored card base in collaboration with AAA.
• TIME OUT Challenges: CASEing Cornelia.

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