Springtime Smiles

Hello All,

good to see that you were feeling inspired to use your eye shadows for card making! I would really love to see your CASEs for this technique in our Inspiration CASE Playground.

Today's card uses a mixture of STAMPlorations stamp sets which are: Boxed Blooms, Blossom Overture, Mixed Media Grunge, Mini Mixed Media Backgrounds and The bee's Knees: Small Birds.

This card started off as an Easter card project which never got properly underway. I simply run out of time and turned it into a card capturing the essence of Spring. Daffodils are still in boom around here and they looked especially pretty in the Easter sunshine. I always love seeing their bright and cheerful yellow popping up as an early sign of Spring. I used Promarkers to colour mine. I then masked them off and stamped the backdrop using one of the stamps from the Mixed Media Grunge set, our current Stamp Club set, in orange turning the stamp as I went along. I removed the mask and and continued into stamping a border using the same stamp. I added some extra texture using the dots from the Mini Mixed Media Backgrounds set before black embossing the word smile (Boxed Blooms) and stamping the sending you a (Blossom Overture) into place. I added a doodled border, used my warm grey Tinge Alcohol Marker to add a shadow and popped little birdie from the Small Birds set on to finish. I decided to layer on a dark blue base card as it best enhanced the cheerfulness; black was too stark, kraft drained the colour, and orange, green and yellow didn't work either. Guess that blue sky we've had of late wanted to be included too. :-)

My next card is the one I intended to post on Good Friday, but as you know my husband had other ideas ...

I used stamps from the Blossom Overture set, coloured with alcohol markers layered on a texture base card. I purposefully layered my panel off center to add some subtle interest.
If you feel inspired to CASE any of today's card, you can link up here where you'll also find more inspiration plus when you leave a comment you'll be entered into a random prize draw the winner of which will receive a $15 gift certificate or 2 ARTplorations stencils of their choice.

Here are the new April release stamps for you to have a quick look at, we will be introducing each set with a week long blog hop starting 20th April ...

if you can't wait until then you might want to pop over to the shop now .... Shery has extended the 10% off offer on these sets until 12th April plus you'll get free international shipping too and if you area STAMP CLUB member you can also claim your 15% discount on top!

Well that's it from me for today.
Have a lovely weekend!
hugs
Monika xxx


the sets I used: