SAS4K DT Card: Anything Goes for Kids - Sweet Spring Birthday Girl

Happy Saturday to you, my crafty friends!

I cannot tell you how glad I am to have survived to the weekend. Too bad it's only two days before it's back to the trenches. There has been so much going on at work lately that my boss is getting stressed out not having enough time to feel like he is on top of everything. Late yesterday I managed to capture him for enough time to plot out the next two weeks' schedule so I can cancel meetings and reschedule service so he has some time to work on the projects. Hopefully next week we'll be surfing the wave instead of being tumbled under it as it crashes into shore. LOL

Earlier this week I finished a card that I thought would be for today's post... and realized I'd used the wrong images! Apparently my boss's mental disorganization this week was catching. LOL So I got my hands on the really sweet images from Sylvia Zet's Wee Stamps, one of our two generous sponsors for our Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge... (it's an easy one!)... ANYTHING GOES! Yep, whip up any kind of card for a kid and you can enter it as the SAS4K challenge from now until June 1st! Randomly picked winners will get 3 digital stamps of their choice from Wee Stamps or Karen's Doodles, our fantastic sponsors for this challenge!

Even better... this challenge we will be linking up with Paper-Crafting Journey (my other DT!) so you'll be able to enter your creation in both challenges and have twice the fun! The PCJ challenge goes live Thursday, May 24... but you'll be able to backlink as long as you've also entered it in SAS4K, so you don't have to wait to post your cards at SAS4K! =)

On to my card for SAS4K... this is Suzi with Bunny...

Isn't she totally sweet? I love Sylvia Zet's images, but the hair has always put me off. LOL There are stamp images like Wee Stamps, Mo Manning and Make It Crafty that I love, but that I just haven't felt ready to tackle yet. My coloring is getting better and I'm hoping to have some time to practice lots and lots this summer when I can be outside while the pups play, the kitty lounges in the sun and I can color while ignoring the growing grass and the weedy edge of the backyard. LOL Since I was a bit hurried this time, I'm not altogether happy with her hair, but she'll do. And that face is so sweet, it distracts you from her hair. LOL

I colored her with a combination of Copics and ProMarkers. I tried my hand at one of my favorite Coops Tricks... shading darker on one side of the image and barely or not at all on the other side to get some depth. It lightened up a bit on my photo, so she doesn't quite pop off the page, but I like the effect and it does look better on the actual card, so I'll be practicing and borrowing that technique again. (thanks, Coops!)

I used Liquid Pearls to color the flowers in her basket. I got a little carried away and the white center dots spread a bit more than I would have liked, but I love the colors and the bit of shine.

I even did a BOW on this card, can you believe it? I used a pale greenish-yellow ribbon on my card and paired it with a Martha Stewart border punch... I can't remember its name right now, but I love the art deco shell design. A little elegance.

The papers are from the Spring Fling DCWV line... I picked up the 180-page pack of combined Spring Fling and Summer Days for less than 10 bucks. Not that I needed more papers. (Has anyone created a Paper-Addicts Anonymous group yet? I seriously need an intervention. LOL)  Paper hoarding aside, I love the rose design and found the perfect little WOC rose to match in my stash. The sentiment was done on the computer and I used one end of a Nestie Labels Eighteen to create a tag. The image panel was popped up on foam dots. (can't do a card without those!) Some Kaiser pearls, a little Distress Inking in Spun Sugar, Scattered Straw and Shabby Shutters on my edges and done!

My teamies over at SAS4K have created some really wonderful cards using not only Wee Stamp images but a few great Karen's Doodles, too, so get on over to the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge post today! Can't wait to see what fantastic kids cards you create... and even better, you can choose to donate them to kids in hospital by following the guidelines here.

Zoe just ran away with the cat's jingle ball, so I'm off to get it back before the silly creature swallows it... in the meantime, happy crafting and I'll see you all soon!

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