One Year Anniversary Blog Hop - Crafty Gals Corner GD

Crafty Gals Corner is a challenge blog that's near and dear to my heart because it's one of the first Design Teams I ever got involved with! This month, they are celebrating their one-year anniversary and they've got a super fun blog hop going on with TONS of prizes!! 

Christmas 2015 has left the building (...well... kinda... I STILL haven't mailed out my cards. :o ) so it's on to my most FAVORITE kind of cards - Valentine's Day cards!! woot!!

I decided to work with this fleepin' adorable image from East Wind called Lovely Winter Couple. 

I love the expressiveness of their glances and it just reminded me of my sisters and I frolicking in the winter... so that's who this is going to go to! Probably my youngest sister because she doesn't read my blog (Hi Allison!). 

I colored it up with my Spectrum Noir markers (BP1, BP3, BP5, TB1, TB2, TB3, GB7, GB5, GB1, CY1, TN2, TN1, FS4, FS2, FS1) and the background is made by rubbing on three shades of blue gelatos and blending slightly with a wet paintbrush. 

I sorta want to just squeeeeeze their little cheeks! 

I'm sending my card over to the following challenges: 

Simon Says Stamp Monday - Winter Wonderland 

Through The Craftroom Door - Anything Goes 

Clear it Out Challenge - Anything Goes

Please follow the blog hop schedule below and if you get lost, just hop on back here :)

Amy

Becca

Erika

Jeanie

Judy

Lena

Lisa

Rae Ann

Samantha 

Crafty Gals Corner

Our 8 AMAZING sponsors this week are:

(Listed in alphabetical order)

DeeDee's Digi's

Prize: TEN (10) Pre-selected Digital Sets!

Di's Digi's

Prize: $12 Gift Certificate

Karleigh Sue

Prize: 4 Digital Images

My Besties

Etsy /  Scrapbook Stamp Society

Prize: 3 of the Digital Images the DT used

STAMPlorations

Prize: $10 Gift Certificate

Stitchy Bear Digital Outlet

Prize: $10 Gift Certificate
The East Wind

Prize: 3 Digital Images

The Stamping Boutique

Prize: 2 Digital Images/ 3 Digital Images if you use TSB or Glitterbabe image

Thanks for popping by and I can't wait to see the blogosphere saturated in pink, glitter, and red!

A Vintage Shaker Card - Crafty Gals Corner Guest Designing

First of all - MERRY CHRISTMAS! Or whatever holiday it is that you're celebrating this month. I can't believe that it's sooooo close to happening.

I'm heading out for a 5 1/2 hour car ride and can't wait to see my little nieces and nephews, my siblings, and my parents!!

But first - my design for Crafty Gals Corner this week. I've been guest designing with them all month and the great thing is that it's Anything Goes all month long so you can post whatever you want!

I was working with a silhouetted digi image - Silhouette Butterfly Flowers - from Bugaboo. I've wanted to try out printing on vellum and decided to make a little shaker card. 

The glitter in the shaker is very subtle when it's all put together, since it's behind heavy weight vellum. 

Here's how it's made: 

First - I used a Spellbinders die and painted over a gold metallic paper with some silver Perfect Pearls to give it a patina finish. 

Next, since I wanted my shaker to be mostly flat, I positioned a bunch of sequins/chunky glitter together in a pile on a piece of off-white paper. 

Lastly - glue all the way around the edges, ensuring a tight seal to make sure none of your shaker bits escape. 

Here's what it looks like all put together with the rest of the stuff I decided to add to the card! I added a sentiment from Verve's Big Wish set - which is filled with awesome birthday sentiments.

Isn't it vintagey and gorgeous?! I just adore the glimmers of metallic and the subtlety of the shaker bits behind the vellum. Proof that when you just glue a whole bunch of flowers on things, it all works out. 

Really - that should be my life's motto: Having a rough day? Just glue a bunch of flowers on it. Boyfriend being mean? Just glue a bunch of flowers on him. That new recipe didn't turn out? Just glue a bunch of flowers on it. 

Bugaboo Stamps

Make sure you all visit Crafty Gals Corner to enter the challenge. Bugaboo has graciously decided they are going to give away 7 images to the winner!

I'm also sending this over to the following challenges:

Seize the Birthday - ATG with option of red and white

 Mixed Media Monthly - Silver and Gold

Digi Galore - Monochrome with a hint of color

Thanks for stopping by!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner (just kidding, you won stamping stuff)

The Coffee Lover's Blog Hop is now slumbering away - resting for its springtime revival - but that just means we get to do the fun part of drawing prizes!

But FIRST - a poem

Oh the weather outside is frightful,

But I've got some prizes delightful,

And since you've come here to know -

Here you go, here you go, here you go! 

Why? because I can. And it's what popped into my head while I was typing... #sorrynotsorry

I was giving away two prizes on my blog - 

The first prize:

My very own STAMPlorations Big Grins by Becca Cruger 

Caffeinated Christmas stamp set

And the winner!

Drumrolllllll please: 

Jennifer Scull!  

The other prize I was giving away was a gift basket filled with cocoa-themed goodies in honor of National Cocoa Day. 

Aaaaaand the winner is:

Coni Longley!

Now, I could have stopped there, but then I thought, "Self, it's CHRISTMAS!" So I decided to draw two more winners, who both receive my Caffeinated Christmas stamp set. 

Bev Buenker

and Lisa from Life of a BZScrapper

Congratulations winners - please email me at 

bexcruger at gmail dot com 

with your addresses and I will pop your prizes into the mail!

Quick, Simple, and Impressive Christmas Cards with Gelatos

So there I was. December 15. And not one Christmas card in the mail. 

Every. Year.

Sigh... someday I'll get better about procraftinating. Anywho, on this particular day, I wrote out my what turned out to be measly stack of Christmas cards and then panicked. Because it was December 15. And I needed a whole lot more.

BEHOLD! The 5-minute Christmas card.

Seriously - I did 12 of these cards and it took me roughly an hour. But the thing is... I still think they are kinda impressive-looking. 

This card started out for two reasons. Number one, STAMPlorations wants me to remind you that we have a reeeeeeeeeallllly cool challenge. If you've uploaded a holiday card to your blog (any holiday) come link it up at STAMPlorations too for another chance to win. OR if you are looking for a sketch inspiration, you can just use that instead. 

As you can see, I did not choose to use the sketch, but went with the theme instead. We've got really great prizes, and you can use ANY stamp so get over there already!

The second reason for this card, though, was a genius blog post written by the uber-talented Miss Jenn Shurkus.

As a mixed media inclined card maker, I have a tendency to layer and fuss and layer some more, then cry, then layer again and VIOLA! Finished. Jenn said something in her post that really stuck out to me - Clear the clutter from your desk and only give yourself a small amount of product to work with. 

So this card had very minimal products - cardstock, 5 sticks of gelatos, glue, and the HOLIDAY SKETCHES: Christmas Candles stamp set.


Now gelatos are reallllllly good for making impressive cards in an easy way. Here's how I did mine. 

Step one: Stamp your stuff

Easy enough - right?

Step two: Scribble on your Gelatos

The trick to gelatos, I think, is scribbling them on in a small, circular fashion. It seems to help them blend better. I also have found that either gessoing your paper OR using Copic cardstock helps the gelatos to blend soooooo much better. Don't worry about getting things perfect... The end result is going to be a little impressionistic and that's great! Just scribble away, and have fun. 

Step three: Smudge to blend

Ooooooo! As you can see, colors are going outside the line, there's reds in the yellow, there's reds in the gray, there's green in the red. That's Ok! The end result looks fab anyway! 

So now I have a smallish stack of Christmas cards and can feel a little better about myself. :) 

I'm going to send this card over to the following challenges:

Craft Stamper Magazine - Take a Technique (and stamping)

Fashionable Stamping Challenge - Make your own background 

Color Throwdown - Any Christmas Card, any colors

Artistic Stamping - Christmas Creation

Thanks for popping by! Be sure to stop by the STAMPlorations blog to check out what the rest of the designers made!

Crafty Gals Corner - Anything Goes - Guest Designer!

Hullo Friends! I'm continuing my guest design gig for the month of December over at Crafty Gals Corner. Today, I've got a vintage-inspired ornament card to share with you. 

Crafty Gals Corner is sponsored by Eureka Stamps who is giving away 3 digi images to the winner of our challenge. 

I worked with their Pointed Ornament Stamp. I don't use a ton of digi stamps in my work, but I do use them occasionally and really like their versatility. For example, the ornament was sent in one size and because it was digital, I was able to resize it in 3 different ways and change the color.  Viola! 

I stamped a sentiment from a Close to My Heart winter set and paired the ornaments with some vintage patterned paper. I added some wooden chippies that I had painted white and glittered up and brushed some Wink of Stella over the ornaments to make them all sparkly! 

All of my colors were taken from Dragonfly Journeys Holiday Hues Challenge - it's such an interesting combo of colors! And my layout came from Retro Sketches.

I'm also going to enter it at Sparkle N Sprinkle - Anything Goes .
 

Head on over and play at Crafty Gals Corner! 

Thanks for popping by!

Happy National Cocoa Day!

It's National Cocoa Day! For at least... another 55 minutes. Hehe I do love to procrastinate!

I was scurrying just as quick as I could to link up a card, and I have to say

 I LOVE what I was able to pump out! 

The Coffee Lovers Blog Hop is in full swing, but today we are paying homage to our friends who may think java boasts a little too much bitterness and like something a little sweeter - hot cocoa!

I adoooooore hot cocoa! Right now I have a stash of salted caramel hot chocolate K-cups just waiting to be savored on holiday mornings.

For my card, I used a freebie digital image by STAMPlorations, which you can nab HERE. 

 

I colored it up with my Spectrum Noir Markers (DS1, DS4, DS6, DS7, TN2, TN3) and decided to make some "whipped cream" with my Claudine Helmuth Blank Canvas acrylic paint. It creates such great texture 

I used the current color scheme from Cupcake Inspirations challenge. 

I love the blue and red color pairing - it's so merry and wintry without being traditionally

red and green 

Isn't it adorable?! The sentiment is from a set that I actually designed all by myself for STAMPlorations - It's called Caffeinated Christmas.

 

Coffee, tea, hot cocoa - this stamp set covers all the bases! 

I added a bunch of embellies to my card, and included some sequins because JUGS challenge told me to do it. I always forget about my sequin stash, so THANK YOU Just Us Girls for making me pull them out. 

So that's my card! I started going through and doing some commenting and want to thank everyone who has left me a comment thus far.

**GIVEAWAY ALERT**

In honor of National Cocoa Day, I have a cocoa-themed gift basket that is going to go to one lucky person. In order to win it, you must be located in the US (sorry international shipping charges are crazy for a package this heavy but I am doing a giveaway of my stamp set on my last post that is open internationally).

You must be a follower of my blog and leave me a 

comment telling me your favorite Christmas cookie. 

Thanks for popping by! Have a happy National Cocoa Day! 

Coffee Lover's Blog Hop - Winter Style

Let the caffeine lovers' quarterly frolicking commence. I'm sure most of you will instantaneously know what I am referring to, but just in case you've been living under a rock, every quarter the Coffee Loving Papercrafters host a blog hop that spans the depths of the interwebs.

And I looooooove playing along with them!! 

For my card this time around, I decided to play around with my new watercolors. Since it's the holiday version, red and green seemed apropos. 

I just added some water to my paper, then added some color and let it flow where it may. 

Next I inked up some adorable mugs from the STAMPlorations Sketchy Coffee Cups set and did the whole watercolor business again. 

I used the Winnie and Walter Joy die and added a sentiment from my a set I designed alllll by myself... STAMPlorations Big Grins by Becca Cruger Caffeinated Christmas.

I tried out a couple of different color schemes and patterns. 

I added some gold floss behind the letters on one just for some visual interest. 

Oh so jolly and merry!!

This card was straight up inspired by the image over at Time Out Challenges.I loved the vibrant greens and reds and I incorporated a polkadotted word die

I'm also going to link it up to:
Simon Says Stamp - Work it Wednesday Holiday Card

Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge - Anything Goes

GIVEAWAY ALERT:

Speaking of jolly things, over the course of the hop I'm going to be doing three different giveaways. And the first one starts right now!! 

I'm giving away one of my Caffeinated Christmas stamp sets!!!!

This giveaway is open to everyone, even international bloggers. All you have to do is follow my blog and leave me a comment with your favorite holiday book, movie, or play.