AAA Cards - For The Boys!!!

First of all, I hope that you had fun with our Birthday Bash and blog hop - and thank you so much for all the wonderful comments that you left on my blog and those of my fellow teamies -they were veyr much appreciated!

This week at AAA Cards, we are focusing on masculine cards:

The timing of this challenge fell perfectly in my calendar since I needed to make a Birthday card for my 16 year old nephew - and I definitely wanted it to be masculine! Here is what I came up with:

The background was created using a Simon Says Stamp stencil and a circle mask with some Distress Inks. I kept the colours very neutral - if I were to do it again though, I would probably use more vibrant colours. The images are all rub-ons (remember those?) that I have had in my stash forever. I think that they are absolutely perfect for a 16 year old boy!

So now it's your turn to have some fun and create a masculine card!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Jill

Happy Birthday AAA Cards!

YAY!!!! It's finally here -our fabulous 1st anniversary blog hop! We are celebrating by having a Birthday theme for our challenge this week and also by giving out tons of great prizes - so make sure you play along with us this week and leave lots of comments on the DT member pages to maximize your chances of winning!

So now onto my card(s) for the week... I decided to use products from one of our wonderful sponsors, Simon Says Stamp. I started with the Simon Says Stamp Birthday Farm Animals set and did some stamping with masks and my MISTI to create the image. I coloured using Copics (still learning!) and then I decided that I wanted to make it into a one-layer inlaid die cut card. I used my Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles to create a frame, and then I used an older set from Simon Says Stamp to stamp the celebrate and the star around the frame. 

When I started the first card, I decided to stamp everything twice since I was convinced that I would mess up at some point and I did not want to start over. I was very surprised when I finished that I hadn't messed up! I had two almost identical card fronts but I wanted to make two very different cards so decided to turn the second card front into a shaker card. I masked the animals and used the Simon Says Stamp Stars and Dots stencil to creeate the background with some silver Viva Ferro. I then used the same stitched rectangle dies to crate the frame. I used clear sequins (and a few blue stars) because I didn't want to distract from the image. I really like how both cards turned out :)

For the final card, I decided to incorporate the new Baby Party Animals stamps with the Birthday Farm Animals for a twist. The Baby Party Animals are part of the fabulous new release from Simon Says Stamp - there is a lot of great products in this release that have made their way onto my "most wanted" list. For this card, I used the baby pigs, the banner and the balloon. One thing that I would like to point out is that the different baby animals have the same body shape so if you don't like the arm orientation on the animal you want to stamp, you can "borrow" the arms from another animal. On my card, I wanted the baby pigs to each be holding up their "outside" arms - so the piglet on the left was stamped true but the piglet on the right was masked and stamped with baby rabbit arms (again made easier with the MISTI!).

I coloured the image and die cut using the Simon Says Stamp Postage die. The background was created using the Birthday greeting from the Baby Farm Animals set - stamped repeatedly tone on tone.

So that's it for my Birthday cards! Now it's onto the next stop on the hop - the amazing Jenny Colacicco or if you want to go back to the beginning - link here to AAA Cards!

So join in the fun with us as we celebrate 1!!!!

Thanks for visiting!
Jill

White and Ombre

A quick card to share - I needed to make a thank you card for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who hosted the "after-party" for my husband's 50th a couple of weekends ago. I was inspired by a couple of challenges: CAS on Sunday where the theme is white and CAS-Ology where they are focusing on ombre. 

I started by stamping the ombre "thanks" ( Altenew) in SSS Cobblestone ink - I love that the stamp itself is designed to give the ombre effect - how easy is that! I then die cut the MFT Wild Greenery a couple of times from white cardstock layered with Stick-It. This was my first time using Stick-It and I was pretty impressed. For the most part, the dies cut all the way through (this is issue that I always have with BeCreative sheets). The only hard part was separating the adhesive backing from the die cuts. I added the die cuts around the sentiment and then die-cut the whole panel with a MFT stitched rectangle die. I mounted the card front onto the card base with a layer of fun foam for some dimension. Finally, I die cut some SSS butterflies in vellum and then coloured the backside with 3 different shades of Copics to create some ombre butterflies

I will link this card up to:

CAS-Ology:

   

and 

CAS on Sunday for the WHITE challenge.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Jill

There's A Hole In My Card!!

It's time for another fun challenge at AAA Cards - and the theme for this fortnight is "There's a hole in my card". It is a technique game where you are encouraged to keep it CAS and add a hole as one of the design features. 

Sounds pretty easy right? Well this was a challenge that I actually found to be more difficult than it should have been - and I'm still not entirely happy with the final result... I started out by combing through my dies (I have a lot of dies!) and chose one that I thought would be fun and easy to work with - the SC camera. I also found an old HA/SC greeting of "oh snap!" that (after being cut apart and stacked vertically) would work perfectly in the camera lens opening. It was the rest of the card where I struggled - trust me - this card has been taken apart and put back together more times than I care to admit. I finally ended up using some black washi tape, a strip of patterned paper, and some MME enamel dots to pull it all together.

And here is the inside of the card (I need a few of these types of cards!):

Now this challenge should not have been that difficult since I have created many cards with holes in them so it gave me good personal insight. I learned that I am just not that good with technique games, and that my preference is really word and picture challenges... probably the engineer in me needing stricter guidelines on the creative process:)  I'm interested in whether other people find this as well - or whether it's just me (I'm betting on the latter!).

So now it's your turn to join in the challenge - link up HERE and be sure to check out the amazing cards of the rest of the DT - really great stuff - I especially love Jane's giraffe (so cute!).

Thanks for stopping by!
Jill

New AAA Challenge - Springtime

I am actually writing this from Copenhagen where the sun is shining and the temperature is amazing - a perfect Spring day! We are here for the weekend to celebrate my husband's 50th Birthday - he is an identical twin so together they have a combined age of 100 - how could we not come here to celebrate with him?! 

In the spirit of Springtime celebrations, AAA Cards this week is challenging you to create some Spring themed cards:

Here is what I came up with:

I actually made this card last Easter Sunday - and it was snowing outside!!! I started out with a lot of inlaid die cutting - the silver frame is from Simon Says Stamp, Hello is from Studio Calico, and the flowers are from Clearly Besotted. I wanted to keep the base of the card flat but then layer the flowers to make them stand out (literally and figuratively!). The background was sponged with Tumbled Glass and a small amount of Broken China and then splattered with a small amount of Calico White (snow!). For the flower, I stamped it multiple times on patterned paper. I then fussy cut and layered the petals with clear foam adhesive - as shown below:

I will link this card to a few places:

• Virginia's View where we are being challenged to use layers and dimension
• Simon Says Wednesday Challenge where the theme is April Flowers Bring May Flowers
• The Card Concept Color Challenge

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Jill

Dino-Mite

It is another busy Birthday time of year for my family so I needed to make a few cards. This one is for my dad who is turning the big seven-oh on Friday. He has a good sense of humour so I thought that he might appreciate this dinosaur asking him how old he is :) The stamps are from the CB Dino-Mite set - a fabulous set for all kinds of cards - the last one I made with this set was for my seven year old nephew! 

I started out by stamping the dinosaur and the speech bubble in black ink - and then I took out my Copics... Copic colouring is still a work in progress for me but I`m quite happy with how the dino came out. I then stamped the dino and the greeting on some masking paper and fussy cut them out so that I could cover my images while I worked on the background. I used a Crafter`s Workshop Numbers Collage stencil over the masked images and sponged some neutral colour Distress Inks to create the background.

This card started out as a one-layer card but I found the background to be "too much" so I cut it out with a Stitched Rectangle die and mounted it on a white card base with some foam. I tied a bit of multi-coloured Hemptique twine around the top of the card for a finishing touch.

I will link this card to a few challenges:

• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where they are celebrating Birthdays
• CAS on Sunday where we are being challenged to use numbers
• Happy Little Stampers where we are being challenged to stencil

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Jill

Butterflies

I really wanted to do the optional twist in the current TIME OUT Challenge - a CAS card using black, white and one other colour. I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to do when my order from Altenew showed up on my doorstep - and I saw the Bejeweled stamp set. Here is what I came up with:

Instead of the normal black on white, I decided to do white on black. I started off by stamping the two butterflies and the CB greeting in Versamark and heat embossing with white powder. I then pulled out my white chalk pencil to do some shading. My intention wasn't to create a chalkboard style card - but that's kind of how it ended up. I added some blue shimmer cardstock behind the black panel. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I will link it up to:

• TIME OUT - CAS with the twist of black, white and one other colour
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where anything goes
• Addicted To Stamps And More Make Your Mark Challenge (I used chalk)

I was about to put everything away when I saw that my stamps were all still mounted on my press and I decided to do another card. The challenge this week at Inkspirational is all about neon so I stamped the butterflies in Versafine Onyx, and pulled out my Dylusions sprays. I used a small brush to "paint" the butterflies with the bight coloured sprays and when they were dry, I added a layer of Wink of Stella.

I will link this card up to Inkspirational.


Thanks so much for stopping by!
Jill