Charming Blossom Fairy Charlotte

I did it again - four challenges met with one card! This card is for this week's Cupcake Craft, Spoon Full of Sugar, Whiff of Joy and Cute Card Thursday challenges. I try to do the Cupcake Craft and Cute Card Thursday challenges most weeks. This is my first time to submit a card for the Spoon Full of Sugar and Whiff of Joy challenges.

The theme for this week's Cupcake Craft challenge is Fairies. I chose to use one of my favorite stamps from Whiff of Joy - Blossom Fairy Charlotte. She is colored with Prismacolor pencils blended with mineral spirits. I added some stickles to her wings.

The Spoon Full of Sugar challenge this week is a sketch, which is shown below. I followed it pretty closely. I used my Nestabilities to cut the circle and also the image and mat. I ran the green circle through my Big Kick with my Floral Fantasy Cuttlebug folder, then inked the edges and raised areas with Lime Pastel Chalk Ink. I used flowers with gem centers for the embellishments where buttons are shown on the sketch. Since my DP is swirly, I didn't use the swirl stamp/embellishment shown. Instead of a stamped or printed sentiment, I chose chipboard word, which was coated with a shiny silver metal. I used my Alcohol Ink to color that because I didn't like the shine.

For the Whiff of Joy challenge you are required to use a Whiff of Joy image - which of course I did. :) This week's them is charms. I used a siver heart charm tied with a ribbon.

Finally, this week's Cute Card Thursday challenge is called "nip and a punch". The objective was to use punches and/or die cuts. I used lots - Nestabilities dies, a border punch and daisy punches in two different sizes. I rarely make a card anymore without using some sort of punch or die, so it was pretty easy to meet that challenge.

Supplies
Stamp: Blossom Fairy Charlotte (Whiff of Joy)
Inks: Tuxedo Black (Memento); Lime Pastel and Lavendar Chalk Inks (Colorbox); Adirondak Alcohol Inks - Lettuce, Wild Plum, Eggplant (Ranger)
Paper: Lavender cardstock (unknown); pink cardstock (unknown); green cardstock (Archiver's); DP (Paper Studio - Hobby Lobby)
Embellishments: Circle, Scalloped Circle, Square and Scalloped Square Nestabilities (Spellbinder); border punch (Fiskars); metal word (ColorBok); Floral Fantasy embossing folder (Cuttlebug); daisy punches (Marvy); heart charm (unknown); gems (unknown); ribbon (unknown); Stickles
Technique: Prismacolor pencils blended with mineral spirits
Finished Card Size: 6" square

Nature Does Not Hurry - An ATC

Here's is something a little different from me. Well, actually if you know me and my past work, you would not think this is so different. My style seems to have changed a bit lately, but there was a time when most of my work was distressed, shabby, grungy, collage-y, etc. That was before I discovered mice, hedgehogs and little kids with no faces. :) It was kind of fun to do something like this again.

This is also different for me because it's an ATC. I rarely do ATCs. I don't collect them or trade them really. I do like to do them to try techniques, etc. I also do swaps for them from time to time and sometimes use the ones I get as focal points for cards. This one I made for a bee theme swap that my friend Chris is hosting. The only thing I knew when I signed up for the swap was that I love that bee stamp I used and that I wanted to use it. I had no other ideas at all. I figured the rest of it out today when I saw this week's Simon Says Stamp Challenge.

The challenge this week is "Let's craft with Tim." The objective was to create something using Tim Holtz products or something inspired by his style. Well, I LOVE Tim Holtz so I came up with an idea pretty easily.

The background for the image was created with Adirondak Alcohol Inks on glossy cardstock. I also used two different colors of Distress Ink on the quote. It probably would have been a little more "Tim -like" if I had torn the quote and made it more distressed looking. I thought I was going to do something different and already had the quotes punched out, so I just left it that way. The image is a collage of three different stamps and is kind of "grungy" looking, which is very much inspired by Tim Holtz's style, even though they are not his stamp designs. I stamped the bees and flower first, then masked them before stamping the background. Finally I added the little antique copper photo turn as an embellishment. Since there was so much other stuff going on, I didn't really want to get crazy with the embellishments and I thought that kept with the overall distressed look of the design.

It was really fun doing this style again. As much fun as I'm having with the "cute" things I've been doing lately, I don't think I'll ever stop liking this look either. I guess I'm just "eclectic". :) Now I need to go make five more of these so I can get them in the mail. Be sure to check out the Simon Says Stamp Challenge blog to see how others were inspired by Tim.

Supplies
Stamps: Bee (Magenta); Daisy (Club Scrap); Italian Poetry (Hero Arts); quote is computer generated
Ink: Timber Brown (StazOn); Adirondak Alcohol Inks - Butterscotch, Latte, Lettuce, Copper Metalic Mixative (Ranger); Tim Holtz Distress Inks - Antique Linen, Vintage Photo
Paper: green cardstock; white cardstock; white glossy cardstock
Embellishments: antique copper photo turn and brad (unknown)
Techniques: Alcohol Ink background; distressing; masking