Creative Blog Hop

I am honored to have been nominated to participate in the Creative Blog Hop by Michele Ferguson of I Card Everyone. Thank you for the nomination, Michele, I'm thrilled to be here sharing a bit more about me and my passion for papercrafting.

Let me tell you a bit about the Creative Blog Hop: it is an ongoing blog hop designed that works on a nominating system, where I nominate three other designers who I admire and inspire me. The idea is to learn a bit about other creative bloggers by answering four questions.

Question 1: What am I working on right now?
Right now I am beginning work on the September release at My Favorite Things (MFT), and you're going to love what's coming your way. I'm also working on sketch and creative challenges at MFT and keeping up with work and family.  As a school based speech therapist, I have time off during the summer months which just came to a close, so I'll be juggling work on top of design work for MFT and a busy family.

Lately, I've been drawn to the trendy watercolor medium with its many technic variations and even put together a video tutorial that you can see here.

Question 2: How does my work differ from others in my genre?
My work differs from others in that I try and make my designs somewhat unique, adding my own little bit of fun. I admire the work of many and often times use their designs as inspiration, or simply try out new technics that I've seen used. 

Early on I was more of a copy and share papercrafter. As I've gained experience, confidence and found my own style, so to speak, I look to the work of others to inspire me rather than a design to copy. I think the more you do, the more you're able to move away from the 'blueprint' and that's really liberating, and FUN!

Question 3: Why do I create what I do?
I create what I do because I LOVE creating things that require my mind and hands to work together. Seeing a project come to completion as you'd imagined, or sometimes even better than you'd imagined, is a thrill. And then there's this awesome papercrafting community of generous, fun, loving people that continually provide inspiration and encouragement that make it a win-win for me.

Ok, so the challenge (I'm a realist) -  keeping a balance in life that allows your craft to continue to be a source of happiness and inspiration in your life without taking away from other integral parts of your life. But that's life!

Question 4: How does my creative process work?
I've finally realized that I do actually have a creative process, and it does often involve a measure of procrastination (I know, the shock!). For me, it's a matter of putting things down on paper, a schedule of commitments for monthly releases for MFT, for example. From there, I start collecting inspiration - Pinterest, Google images and Instagram, to name a few. I also love catalogs as a source of inspiration. Once my creative cup is overflowing, I start putting my ideas into motion through paper and ink.

While creating, I often just go with the flow and allow myself to stray from the game plan. This sometimes means pulling apart a layer, stamping an image over and over until it's just right and even walking away from the table for a bit when things just aren't going well. Finally, I like to start with a clean area to work, so putting things away, wiping things off and taking out the garbage is also part of my creative process.


And now for the nominations! I am thrilled to have had the following three papercrafting superstars accept my nomination:

Lisa Henke - My Little Creative Escape
I first knew Lisa when we worked together for My Favorite Things and have continued my admiration for this lady every since. She's not only sweet, happy and sporting the cutest Jamberry nails around, but she's got a great ability to combine patterns, colors and just the right amount of embellishments. When I look at her work, I often think to myself - now, if I put those things together, it would never look as good as Lisa's!

Tammy Hershberger - Stamp Happy
Tammy has got to be one of the most prolific and generous stampers I know, continually stopping in to see what I've been up to and leaving me love. You'd swear she took hours and hours to complete her neat, tidy and packed full of wow designs! I admire her passion for papercrafting and am inspired by her to get into my craft room and pick up more challenges!

Laurie Willison - Soapbox Creations
Laurie is the epitome of clean and simple WOW, and I am continually inspired by her gorgeous designs. As we well know, CAS is NOT easy to pull off, and Laurie makes it looks effortless. She reminds me that often times less is more, and when I'm feeling frustrated, I often think of Laurie's designs because they're like a breath of fresh air.

I hereby pass the baton to these three inspirational ladies who I admire and adore! I can't wait to see what they have to tell us next Monday, September 8th. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I hope you've enjoyed getting to know more about me.

-Amy

MFT Creative Challenge - Watercolor

Welcome to the August Creative Challenge with My Favorite Things. This month, our focus is on watercolor, and the team is on hand to show you ways to achieve the look with stamps, stencils, and inks.


I've used a watercolor technic using MFT dye inks (Razzle Berry, Red Hot & Orange Fizz) that you can see HERE. Instead of applying the misted dye inks directly to watercolor paper, I applied the misted inks that I pressed into my craft mat to a background stamp first and then onto paper. For a cleaner look, I stamped off once and then onto my watercolor paper.

I love the 'watercolor' look of the alphabet letters from the Typewriter Text Background stamp, a little blurred but still legible. And those sweet frames from Geek is Chic Glasses  layered perfectly, don't you think?

My second card utilizes the negative cut of the Red Delicious Die-namics from the same piece of watercolor stamped paper, don't want to be wasteful!

The negative space is backed with Red Hot card stock that I stamped with 'teachers rule' from School Days.

I then added High-Rise Lowercase letters to pull in some of that yummy Razzle Berry color and then topped off my apple with a fun embossing paste leaf that I created by making a 'stencil' with the leaf die from Red Delicious and coloring my paste with Blu Raspberry reinker.

And there you have my take on this month's Creative Challenge, watercolor, using MFT dye inks in combination with a background stamp. I hope you get a chance to give it a whirl, and remember to just keep experimenting with it until you get the results you're aiming for!
-Amy

MFT products used on today's cards:

BG Typewriter Text Background	LLD Document It - School Days	LLD Journal It - Head of the Class	Die-namics High-Rise Alphabet Lowercase
Die-namics Geek Is Chic Glasses	Die-namics Red Delicious	Die-namics Blueprints 13	Die-namics Blueprints 15
Stencil Small Brick Wall	Heavyweight Card Stock Lemon Drop	Heavyweight Card Stock Blu Raspberry	Heavyweight Card Stock Red Hot
Heavyweight Card Stock Orange Fizz	Heavyweight Card Stock Razzle Berry	Heavyweight Card Stock Black Licorice	Premium Dye Ink Pad Red Hot
Premium Dye Ink Pad Orange Fizz	Premium Dye Ink Pad Razzle Berry	Pigment Ink Pad Sweet Tooth	Premium Dye Ink Refill Blu Raspberry

InLinkz.com

Watercolor Background + Video Tutorial

I've got a CAS card using a fun (and simple) watercolor background technic to share with you today using MFT dye inks and even tried my hand at an accompanying video tutorial (go easy on me) for step by step instructions. I used the same technic on a card I shared during Release Countdown that you can see HERE.

 

My background uses Razzle Berry, Red Hot and Orange Fizz dye ink, watercolor paper, craft mat and water mister (any spray bottle will do).

After my background dried, I die cut it using the Die-namics Stripes Cover Up plate and then placed the cut out stripes onto a Primitive White A2 card base.

Wanting to keep the watercolored stripes center stage, I kept embellishments to a minimum with a single Ampersand Die-namics and the words 'you' and 'me' from Office Space. I used gold embossing powder for the words and on-purpose sprinkled extra powder here and there to pull in that gold color.

Here's a peek at the video tutorial which can also be viewed on YouTube.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll give this technic a whirl!
-Amy

Premium Dye Ink Pad Razzle Berry	Premium Dye Ink Pad Red Hot	Premium Dye Ink Pad Orange Fizz
Die-namics Ampersand	Die-namics Stripes Cover-Up	DC Office Space
Heavyweight Card Stock Primitive White

InLinkz.com

Wednesday Stamp Club Sketch #190

I've got a quick and cute card for this week's Wednesday Stamp Club sketch for My Favorite Things. You'll find complete WSC details at the MFT Blog along with the original sketch. Remember folks, you can win a voucher worth up to $20 just for playing along and linking your project HERE.

My card is going out to a special young boy who won a writing contest, and since the theme of his composition featured Batman, I thought I'd add a little batty theme to his card.

The new Spooky Scene Die-namics bat was perfectly sized for the Lemon Drop Fishtail Flag strip. I background stamped the congrats stamp from Spotlight Sentiments in Lemon Drop ink and then added a pops of Blu Raspberry behind the Stitchable Dot Circle and star from Blueprints 18.

I finished off the inside of the card with stamps from Happy Everything in Steel Blue and Lemon Drop inks with a tiny star from Blueprints 18. 

Thanks for stopping by for this week's WSC sketch card. I hope I've inspired you to play along!
-Amy

Die-namics Spooky Scene	Die-namics Stitchable Dot Circle STAX	Die-namics Blueprints 16	Die-namics Blueprints 18
Die-namics Fishtail Flags STAX	DC Happy Everything	Hybrid Ink Pad Lemon Drop	Hybrid Ink Pad Steel Grey
Heavyweight Card Stock Lemon Drop	Heavyweight Card Stock Steel Grey	Heavyweight Card Stock Blu Raspberry	Heavyweight Card Stock Black Licorice
Heavyweight Card Stock Primitive White

InLinkz.com