SAS4K DT Card: For the Boys - Super Kid & Summer Monkey

Hey, everyone! This is going to be a shorter post than my usual... wait, who just yelled "woohoo!"???  Shush!  As I was saying... short post. I'll fill you in later on my buzy week, but I have about 30 minutes to get this done, so to the point I go...

It's time for a new challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids! This challenge is all about cards FOR THE BOYS. Snips, snails, puppy dog tails...  or in my case a cape and the ol' undies-over-tights outfit and a monkey splish-splashing his way into summer. LOL Our sponsors this week are Karen's Doodles - offering 3 digis, Bugaboo Stamps - 7 digis, and the Stamp Shoppe - a $15 gift certificate.

My first card is a Karen's Doodle image.

I colored first and then fussed forever to find patterned papers. I finally came up with creating the black and white rays in Word. This is third attempt at coloring black and I really like how his outfit came out, at least the real life version (the pic is a little lighter than it looks IRL). Not perfect, but better than I expected, which is always a nice surprise. LOL Elements on this one are Star Nestabilities, EK Success Sticko glitter star and dot stickers, Christmas Red Stickles and a sentiment done on the computer. And my ever-present foam dots.

My second card was not what I started with for this challenge. A last-minute disaster as I was taking photographs on Wednesday involving a cup of tea and a rather large furry doofus I might have mentioned recently who has taken to popping her head out from under the craft table at random moments during my crafting. So... I had to color up a new Bugaboo image and create a whole new card at the last minute! Here's my second card...

I know, I just did a Christmas/winter card with a snowflake, crying over missing the best bits of winter. Ah, well, blame that on my Gemini horoscope as well. haha  If I had to do it over again, I might make the image bigger, but it still is cute! Elements for this one are a Bugaboo image (love this monkey!), an EK Success beachy border punch, I think the wave border punch is also EK Success, more of those EK Success Sticko dots, a blue foot paperclip from the Walmart office supply aisle, papers from DCWV, foam dots (for the image and under the sentiment (which was done in Word) and the painted wooden umbrella from my stash.

I will say I've been experimenting with my coloring a bit more and had a lot of fun with both these images this week. If your mojo isn't chomping at the bit to get started yet, click on over to the SAS4K blog and see what my teamies were up to and get your creative juices flowin'!

Th-Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks!  See you soon and 'til then...

Happy crafting!

Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Mother's & Father's Day - Bears and Roses

Good morning!  Sorry I'm a little late to the party this morning but Blogger is, well... the software gremlins are up and about today. Need to add some anti-glitchy gremlin spray to my shopping list. =)

It's the first Saturday of the month... time for another great challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids! This fortnight our challenge is Mother's and Father's Day cards for kids to give to their parents. And we have FOUR terrific prizes from our sponsors:

* 5 digis of your choice from  Whimsy Stamps *

* Digi Doodle Shop is offering a $10 gift voucher *

* $15 towards a purchase at the Crop Stop *

* 5 quid to spend at Cuddly Buddly *

Prizes are picked randomly, so anyone can win! And better yet, you can send in your cards to be donated to children in one of seven hospitals. See here for more details!

Digi Doodle Shop and Cuddly Buddly generously offered the DT some images... I knew right away when I saw this little guy that I wanted to paper piece him. And I knew just what papers I was going to use...

Except for the dark blue cardstock, this card is entirely digital papers and paper-piecing! I used Summertime Designs' Fathers and Fedoras Kit and Vintage Oreos. She has some fabulous, fabulous kits... and free! I used several prints from the Fathers kit for the layers and for my bear's little hat and coat. I still don't like my fur coloring yet, so I used the lighter and darker damask papers in her Oreos set, tweaked just a bit for color temperature in Word, for the bear's fur and the Hedgehog's prickles.

 I started by printing my digi on white cardstock for the base layer before printing all my designer papers out on 20-lb printer paper and running them back through to print my bear image over them. I layered them up one at a time starting with the bear's fur; since the paper is so thin, there's not as much dimension as using cardstock and burnishing it in the style of Mariska (LOVE!), but it still adds a little something in person.  I used a black pen to add in some more spiky detail on the hedgie and colored his face, hands and feet with Copics, too.  I added some Copics grays on the bear fur and his little plaid outfit in an attempt to achieve a little more dimension. Plus (of course!) I popped him them up on foam dots. I admit my addictions. LOL

My sentiment was created Word, using the old style Word Art and filling the "Dad" with one of the digi papers. The finishing touch on my clean and simple card were two gray screw-head brads I picked up at Michael's. I see this morning that my teamie Karen had similar ideas with paper piecing and used similar brads. Great minds! LOL 

  

For my Digi Doodle card, I looked through the website a few times to let something 'speak' to me. Lots of images were shouting, so it was a hard decision! I finally settled on this lovely floral heart.

I colored my image with Copics, sticking with the R30s for the roses to get a coral color that would match my digi papers, which this time are from Nitwit Collections - Thimbles and Threads. I spent some time burnishing my floral heart image with a large-balled stylus so it would have that great dimensional curviness when I popped it up on foam dots.

 Again, I went thin and printed on basic printer paper, except I printed a bit of the quilted coral on cardstock to punch my Martha Stewart butterflies. I kept seeing these teeny tiny beauties on other cards, so I finally located a punch and bought it. I keep resisting the urge to punch butterflies out of everything I see. LOL I took some light orange and yellow pearls which I touched up with R35 Copics to more closely match my papers.  

To finish, I added some peachy-pink sheer wired ribbon. I had it the way I liked it for about 60 seconds, before a nosy dog peeked up from under the craft table, knocking it out of my hands. The bow went wonky and I ended up fussing and faffing about with that darn bow forEVER. So much so that looking at it now, I see I forgot to add the tails. No wonder it doesn't look right. LOL  Well, I can always give up bows like my friend Squirrel (although between you and me, I think she's a right bit harder on herself than she needs to be). I added one of the punched butterflies with some pearls to the bow as my last touch. The finished card isn't exactly what I pictured, but it's pretty... and each card is a learning experience for the next one. (Bows with tails, Christy... bows with tails.)

 

My teamies have whipped up some fantastic creations of their own... click on over to the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge blog and get inspired!



See you soon, and until then... happy crafting!
Christy