dinosaur baby congratulations card

I’ve had a difficult time being inspired to make cards recently,** but one day while I was searching my photo collection in Lightroom (for something completely different), I came across a photo of a card I made back in 2015. Isn’t it fun when you come across something you’ve made (and forgotten about), and you are impressed with yourself?! Haha!!

I’d been wanting to make a congratulatory card for a good friend who recently had a baby, and seeing that card from 2015 was the perfect hit of inspiration. I got out my Lawn Fawn stamps and made this one:

I decided to use the same masking technique to create a patterned strip: I stamped the adorable dinosaurs from “Rawrsome” in different colors of pigment ink. It didn’t look full enough with just the dinosaurs, so I found a small heart and a tiny star in two other Lawn Fawn sets to fill in the gaps.

I used the same circle+banner as a focal point, but I wanted to take it up another notch. So I colored a mama and baby dinosaur with coordinating Copic colors to embellish the sentiment.

**Perhaps not just recently– cards have always been really hard for me to make!!

supplies:
stamps: Lawn Fawn “Rawrsome” with tiny star from “Upon a Star” and tiny heart from “Loveable Legends”
sentiment: Hero Arts (very old set)
inks: Stampabilities, Hampton Arts, Studio G, Ranger Inkssentials Big & Bossy
Copic markers
Zing white embossing powder
Fiskars 1.5″ circle punch
Colorbok white metal dots
craft foam, ATG adhesive

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Mermaid friends birthday card

Recently I was able to celebrate a birthday in-person with a friend (in person! outdoors! physically distanced!) and I wanted to give her a special card. I pulled out my Lawn Fawn “Mermaid for You” stamps and created this little scene! I stamped and colored everything with Copic markers, then hand-cut all of the images that are in the top layer.

I have very little experience coloring people (meaning skin and hair), so what I’ve done here is pretty basic. I was recalling a lesson from Sandy Allnock’s Copic Jumpstart as I tried to approximate what my friend and I look like! You know, if we had mermaid tails and long flowing hair. Haha!

I created the scene on two layers: the background has seaweed and coral stamped on it in colored ink, and a seahorse and a little school of fishes. I used a Copic marker to fill in the aqua water around them all. The top layer, which is popped up with foam, has a square window cut out of it, and I had my mermaids extend outside the border for a fun look.

I added some tiny shells and starfish to draw the eye to the sentiment (which is from my favorite tiny Hero Arts set from years and years ago) and pull it all together!

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V’s dinosaur art

The other day, I gave my daughter a few stamped sheets of Lawn Fawn Rawrsome dinosaurs (and volcanoes) as well as some Paper Smooches Space Cadet aliens (and planets), and she went to town! She carefully colored them with colored pencils and detail-cut them out to create this sweet little art piece of a party under the night sky:

She added some sequins as sparkly stars in the sky:

I loved it so much that we put it in a frame to display in her bedroom! I love framing my kids’ artwork so that they can see it in places of honor around the house.

We’re entering this project into the Simon Says Stamp Kids’ Summer Vacation Challenge for 2020!

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B’s dino birthday card

My 6-year old son designed and constructed this birthday card for his good friend all by himself! I stamped several images for him with the Lawn Fawn “Rawrsome” set onto plain white cardstock (his friend loves dinosaurs!), and he colored and cut them out himself. He arranged them and adhered them to the card front before writing his message inside.

He has lately loved sunsets, so notice that there is a sunset in the sky, as well as a pterodactyl silhouetted against the setting sun!

We are entering his creation into the Simon Says Stamp Kids’ Summer Vacation Challenge for 2020!

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Copic underwater class lessons 1 and 2 (and a card)

I am enrolled in Sandy Allnock’s (self-paced) Underwater Scenes Copic mini-course at art-classes.com, and back in the fall while I was off my feet recovering from ankle surgery, I completed the first lesson (the shallows):

I LOVED it (and I was so impressed at what I’d made), but then I got busy with other things and didn’t come back to the class until just a few days ago.  I wanted to make a special birthday card for a dear friend, and I had an idea in mind, but I needed to do the second lesson!

While my kids played outside, I sat at the dining room table where I could keep an eye on them, and I worked through lesson 2 (the surface).  I have to admit, at first I was pretty intimidated by the thought of creating realistic water surface and bubbles, but Sandy makes it so straightforward and approachable in the class! I made two small attempts– the second one in a more “tropical” set of colors…

…and when I was finished, I just kinda sat there in shock for a bit after I saw what I’d made, haha!!

As you can see in the photo above showing my in-progress work, I was making these with a card design in mind.  After I finished my water, I trimmed the two strips into vertical panels.  I colored one of the cute mermaids from Lawn Fawn’s “Mermaid for You” set (also with my Copics and white gel pen accents) and added her (with foam) to make it look like she was joyfully leaping above the wave.

On the inside, I added my sentiment.  I didn’t have the phrase I wanted in the set, so I hand-wrote “mermazing” in the style of Lawn Fawn’s script, and I used some other sentiment stamps to add “You’re” and “Happy Birthday” above and below!

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