I WON Blog Candy from Christine Creations!

I am feeling truly blessed. One of my favorite blogs, Christine Creations, offered this very special blog candy when she reached 400,000 unique visitors to her blog. Congratulations to Christine on reaching this milestone! And congratulations to me for winning this amazing collection:

Please stop by Christine Creations and enjoy all the inspiration. Christine is a talented colorist, working in Copics, watercolor, and colored pencil. I learned a lot from her when I was refreshing my rusty coloring skills. Christine is a talented member of the Flourishes design team. Thanks to Flourishes for enriching this blog candy! I love their stamps; they are famed for their beautiful florals but they have other interesting sets, take a look! In particular, the Moments in Time set and A Guiding Light have been near the top of my Flourishes wishlist and now they are mine!!! If you are in need of Father's Day inspiration, take a look at A Guiding Light.

Christine is responsible for many of my Flourishes purchases; just take a look at what she has done with my all-time favorite Sunflower stamp set by Flourishes here, here, and here!

This is what I created with the Flourishes Sunflower stamp set, combining it with their innovative Seeds of Friendship set in this wall hanging for my sister's birthday:

You can read more about my Sunflower Seeds wall hanging HERE.

Thanks so much to Christine, and to her sons who drew my number out of the hat!
;-)

Ace of Rabbit!

Ever since I saw this wonderful Alice stamp set by Stampendous, I wanted to make an Ace of Hearts card with the White Rabbit holding the heart! I finally had some time to make it happen and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.  This is my second entry for our Stampendous sponsored challenge on The Altered Alice to show us your Sunday best with a splendidly dressed project!

I began by stamping the White Rabbit and Alice on scraps of Kraft card stock and then coloring them in with Prismacolor pencils. I love this look as the pencils are thickly pigmented and fairly opaque. I trimmed out Alice, leaving a margin of the Kraft showing all the way around, and I trimmed the White Rabbit and chomped the corners for the middle of my playing card. I love it that this stamp set includes the card corner stamp, the A with the heart underneath! I sponged the edges of everything with Fired Brick Distress Ink. I tucked a real playing card behind just for fun and to create some interesting angles.

I cut a Spellbinders Fancy Tag and sponged it with Antique Linen and Fired Brick Distress Ink, and stamped the beautifully lettered stamp from the set that says "Sorry I'm late. . . " and threaded some red ribbon through.

For the card base, I made my own patterned paper on Kraft by stamping most of the fun small images in this set, alternating the heart and Queen of Hearts mini playing card in Lady Bug Red Memento ink and the cute Cheshire Cat and the pocket watch in London Fog Memento. I stamped the tile floor stamp across the bottom in Tuxedo Black Memento ink. I embossed a strip of black with a Cuttlebug border embossing folder with the card suits, which I colored with Copics and sponged with Fired Brick Distress Ink. I mounted Alice, the cards, and the fancy tag with dimensional foam tape. I finished it up with criss-crossed ribbon and a multi-loop bow.

Be sure to hop on over to The Altered Alice and see all the amazing entries in this month's contest. There is still time - show us your Sunday best with a "splendidly dressed" card, using ribbon, lace, frills, however you interpret your Sunday best! Stampendous is going to one of these fabulous Wonderland stamp sets to each of THREE WINNERS, so get busy and enter the April contest at The Altered Alice! And check out the Stampendous blog and website!

I hope you enjoyed my Ace of Rabbit playing card! I'd love to hear your comments!

Your Sunday Best!

The challenge this month at The Altered Alice is to show us your Sunday best - ribbons, pleats, frills, lace; however you choose to interpret the challenge! The challenge is derived from this passage:

"After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!'"-- Chapter 2; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Altered Alice design team is showing off the brand new Wonderland Perfectly Clear™ Stamps from our sponsor, Stampendous (Website | Blog). This Alice is all dressed up from her shining shoes to the top of her hat, not to mention her frilly parasol! We will have THREE winners this month, and they will each receive the same Wonderland stamp set the design team is using!

I really enjoyed coloring Alice with Copic markers. I tried to make it look like she is wearing an organdy pinafore, so you see the folds of the dress through the sheer white fabric. I trimmed the Alice out, then began on the card base. I stamped a large lace doily stamp (Stampin' Up!) on ivory card stock with Versamark ink, then I used Stampendous White Detail embossing powder to heat emboss the doily. The raised embossing makes the lace look almost real! I stamped it before I folded the card, so it wraps around the back; I really like how that turned out

Then I used a Ranger Ink Blending Tool with various shades of Distress ink to make the doily stand out, creating a vivid background for the gorgeous Stampendous Alice image. I added blue gingham ribbon to create a ground for the figure, glued on with Fast Grab Tacky Glue. I cut a small slit in the fold to tie a red ribbon all the way around the card front.

All in all, I am pleased with how this card turned out, but if I had it to do over again I would start with white card stock instead of ivory; the warmly colored card base shifted the sponged blue into a teal. I have another item I hope to share next week using more of the images in this charming Wonderland set!

You still have time to enter, so hop on over to The Altered Alice and show us your Sunday best! Enter by Friday, April 27, for a chance to win this wonderful stamp set! There are some AMAZING entries this month, so be sure to take a look at all the wonderful submissions!

Please leave a comment, I love hearing from you!