OSAT Blog Hop: Happily Every After

Hey Every body! I'm so glad you could stop by today because it's the second Thursday of the month and you know what that means, right?!

It means it's time for the OSAT Blog Hop to go live and this month we've got 18 talented stampers from around the world sharing gorgeous cards and projects for you to "ooh," and, "ahh" over!

Our theme this month is Happily Ever After. Of course my mind went straight to "wedding" but I just didn't feel like making a wedding card. So, I started thinking about what "Happily Ever After" means to me... It means forever and ever I suppose which made me instantly think of my amazing parents. In April they will be celebrating 44 years of marriage! That is a really long time! Practically forever. I got a hold of my dad and asked him if I could make him an anniversary card to give to my mom. He loved the idea so here's what I made for him...

I used Pool Party cardstock for the base and mat and decorated the mat using a stencil and White Craft Ink. I wanted a subtle background so I was happy with how it came out. Then I embossed a piece of white cardstock and tore it to give it a rough edge. I used gorgeous vellum pieces from the Sweet Soiree Accessories Pack to decorate my card. I added color to them using my Blends alcohol markers. The numbers are from the same accessories pack. The sentiment is cut from a card from the Memories & More Petals Passion pack.

I added some enamel dots to finish my card off and was so thrilled at easily this card came together thanks to the card packs that I used.

For my project I decided to make a gift box. An anniversary sure seems like a great time to give someone a beautiful gift and beautiful packaging makes a gift even more exciting to receive. I used many of the same elements that I did on my card and kept the color schemes very similar so that both my card and box would coordinate.

I added some rhinestones to finish off this box and was again surprised at how easily it came together because of all of the gorgeous pieces from the accessory packs I used.

Well, that's all for me today folks! Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you'll continue on this hop by clicking the Next button below and heading over to my lovely friend, Jenny Hall! You can also get to her blog by using the Blog Roll list below the Next button. I hope you have an amazing day and that you will enjoy the rest of the hop!

-Maria Willis

BLOG ROLL:

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Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Art Inspiration

Hello, hello, hello everybody! In case you can't already tell I am so excited to share today's post and blog hop with you. Today I am hopping with the Creating Kindness Design Team and, as always, we have both a blog and a video hop for you today. Our theme is Art Inspiration and it is seriously one of the best and most inspiring challenges that I have ever participated in. All of us have selected one piece of art and created our work based off of that piece. After you check out my card and video today I hope you'll click the next button and continue the hop to see all of the amazing art pieces my team mates have dreamed up. 

Here's the watercolor piece that I had so much fun creating after I finally settled on just one inspiration piece. That was seriously the hardest part of this challenge. I found so many inspiring pieces that it took me quite a while to pick just one. 

Originally, I had planned to use street art as my inspiration. There is so much amazing street art out there and it's a realm that many aren't familiar with. So, I wanted to share street art since I really do love it. And then... I stumbled across this gorgeous piece by Maud Durland. She is not an artist that I had been familiar with but WOWZA!! Check her out if you have time because she is amazing! Here's a link to her site: Maud Durland's Website  Needless to say, when I saw these tulips they took my breath away and I knew that this would be my inspiration piece.

I decided to use one of the flowers from the Remarkable You stamp set and I heat embossed the image multiple times in gold. Yes, before you ask, this required some serious masking. I stamped multiple flowers onto post-it notes and fussy cut them out. I stamped and embossed my flower images starting at the bottom of my card to make it look like the flowers were right in front of me. Every time a flower got embossed, it got masked off with a post-it note flower so that I could stamp another flower "behind" it without overlapping my images. Let me know if you have any questions about this process. You can see the result in this close-up below as some of the flowers appear to be "in the front."

I absolutely love watercoloring flowers. I think that my favorite color combination is Daffodil Delight and Melon Mambo. These two colors blend together to make the most fabulous, vibrant colors. Every single flower on this card, no matter how different they all look, was painted with only these two colors. If you're interested in seeing how I blend the colors I hope you'll watch the video tutorial that I've made. You'll find it at the end of my post.

In Maud's painting she has some greens towards the bottom but no sky. This is where I decided to deviate a bit. This flower image is large and I was worried that if I crowded the flowers together the beautiful details of each flower could get lost in the next. That meant leaving some space between the flowers which of course needed to be painted as well. The lower part of the card including the stems of the flowers was painted in a combination of Tempting Turquoise, Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy. Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy are my favorite greens to mix when watercoloring and the addition of Tempting Turquoise added some depth and tied the greenery into the blue sky.

If you've never watercolored before it may seem a bit daunting but it can really be easy if you just know a couple of things before you start. I've made this Watercoloring Tips & Tutorial video in hopes that it might help someone who is hoping to start watercoloring and just needed a little nudge.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave me a comment below! If you watercolor something gorgeous I would love to see it! Shoot me an email at mariawillis@hotmail. com 

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. It's always a pleasure to have you. I hope you will continue on this hop by clicking the next button below. If you do you'll be heading over to my talented friend Jenny Hall!

Have an awesome day! See you all soon.

Maria.

BLOG ROLL:

Need more stamps now? Never fear! I've got you covered!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Texture

Hello and welcome to this month's Creating Kindness (Around the World) Blog and Video hop (yes, we really have a video hop on YouTube)! If this is your first time to my blog, my name is Maria Willis, and I'm a Stampin' Up Demonstrator from a small mountain town called Boulder Creek, CA in the United States. I'm so glad to have you here. Today our theme is "Texture" and our design team has done our best to bring you some creative ways of adding texture to your own crafting projects.

For my card I decided to use Stampin' Ups! new Embossing Paste. It's great for adding texture to any project. I decided to keep my card simple to let the medallion pattern and vibrant colors take the spotlight. On this card I used a color combination of Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay. 

I used Basic Black cardstock in hopes of having the colors boldly pop off of the page and I like the way it turned out. After applying the paste and letting it dry I used sponge daubers  to apply color. The sponge daubers allowed me to apply the color lightly or heavily as I pleased. It also turns out that black is a good color to use as a background for this embossing paste as it provides a very forgiving background.

What you cannot see in my photos is how sparkly these cards are in real life. After sponging them with color I painted them with Clear Wink of Stella. They are so sparkly and pretty! If you're interested in seeing what they look like when the Wink of Stella catches the light I hope you'll check out my video.  In my video I've got some tips for keeping your background and edges clean as well as how to care for your embossing paste tools. I also show the full process of how to make these cards with measurements included and helpful tips along the way.  Here's a link to the tutorial video:

If you watched the video you saw that the card I featured today is actually the second card  that I made using this technique. The first card was more of an experiment that started with spritzing color onto the embossing paste (it worked but the color faded over the course of the week). Once I realized that the color was going to fade with the spritzing technique I decided to try with sponge daubers and I was able to get much more saturated color with this technique. The Clear Wink of Stella is a fun addition but not just because it sparkles. In the video you can see that the solution in the Wink of Stella helps to drag the ink color around blending the colors seamlessly.  Here's a look at both of the cards. My original card was done with Lemon Lime Twist and Island Indigo inks.   The colors aren't all that different but the Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay card is a lot more vibrant.

If you're interested in creating texture on a project without using embossing paste then check out my post from yesterday. Here's a link and a sneak peek... just click HERE.

That's it for today folks! I hope you'll keep on hopping along with us to see the amazing ideas the rest of the design team has to share. Next you'll be heading over to Satomi Wellard in Japan!

Thanks for stopping by and have an amazing day! 

Maria.

BLOG ROLL:

PRODUCT SUPPLY LIST:

Need more stamps now? Never fear! I've got you covered!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

OSAT Blog Hop: Birthdays Bash!

Hey Everybody! Welcome to my blog and guess what?! It's One Stamp At a Time blog hop day and this month our theme is Birthday Bash!! That means we've got 18 stampers from all over who have made some amazing birthday cards and projects to share with you today! If you are starting the hop here...Welcome to my blog, it's so nice to have you! If you've hopped here from Melissa Davies' blog then thanks for stopping by! After you check out my projects don't forget to click the next button at the bottom of my page to continue the hop and see everyone's amazing projects!

Now, let's get to it! My card and my project are all one big project this month because I made a set of six cards with custom envelopes and a fun little box to package it all up in. I used one of my favorite sets from Stampin' Ups! annual catalog, Birthday Fiesta. This set is wacky-amazing and makes me grin like nothing else! I hope you'll get a kick out of the fun llamapaca and cactus stamps featured on my card set today... Here's a shot of the gift box I made to package my card set in.

And here's what the set looks like when it's nestled in the box with some festive tissue...

I don't know if these are llamas or alpacas so I call them the "llamapacas!" This "Fiesta like there's no mañana" sentiment is one of my favorites! We should all Fiesta like there's no tomorrow a few times in our lives.

The cactus stamp and flowers from this set are so fun! Here I've paired them with the Thoughtful Banners stamp set and coordinating Punch to make these fun little notecards. When the new catalog first came out I thought I could get along without the Thoughtful Banners set. Boy am I glad I rethought that because since I purchased it I have been using it non-stop!

My little cards are not a standard card size so I made six of these colorful, perfectly sized envelopes to go along with my cards (so easy to do with the Envelope Punch Board). This Festive Birthday DSP is so colorful and happy! The envelope on the left looks exactly like a blanket that I got in Mexico when I was in high school!

Here are a couple close ups of my cards so that you can see the details... I used the streamer framelits with this llamapaca card.

And, on this card I used the confetti from the framelits... or, maybe they are small cactus flowers? I dunno, but on this card I'm calling it birthday confetti!

Here's one of my cactus cards...

And, another cactus card but this time with a different sentiment. Did you notice that the sentiments are curved to follow the curve of the banner? One word: Photopolymer! Photopolymer stamps bend and this allows you to shape them just the way you like which of course gives you endless possibilities!

That's it for today. I hope you liked my card set, envelopes and box today. If you have a minute please leave me a comment below and let me know what you thought. Be sure to click the next button below to continue on to Pam Staples' blog! She's always got something fantastic to share!

Have an amazing day and come back soon!

-Maria

BLOG ROLL:

Megan Thompson

Anna Smith

Alisa Tilsner

Rick Adkins

Sara Levin

Renee Ondrajka

Melissa Davies 

Maria Willis: You are Here!

Pam Staples: NEXT ON THE HOP!

Tina Rackley Riddle

Justin Krieger

Dena Rekow

Andrea Tracy-Tucker

Kelly Acheson

Kim Smith

Lori Mueller

Marisa Gunn

Jeanna Bohanan

SUPPLY LIST:

Need more stamps now? Never fear! I've got you covered!

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you! 

-Maria

OSAT Blog Hop: May Flowers

Hey, hey! It's One Stamp at a Time Blog Hop time and that means we have a lot of fantastic creations in store for you today! This month we have 15 talented artists who have each designed both a card and project for this month's May Flowers themed hop. You may be starting the hop here at my blog or you may have come from Melissa Davies blog (isn't she fantastic?!). Either way I hope you'll continue the whole hop and see everyone's creations. Just click the next button at the bottom of my post!

For my CARD I used the Helping Me Grow stamp set along with the Timeless Textures set. Helping Me Grow is my favorite flower set right now and I find it so easy to use as every single flower in this set is lovely. First I made the card with the So Saffron flower. Then I thought how pretty this card would be in different colors and gifted as a set so I made the same card in Pink Pirouette, Soft Sky, and, Wisteria Wonder. 

Here it is in So Saffron...

...and Soft Sky...

...and Pink Pirouette...

...and Wisteria Wonder.

For my PROJECT I decided to make a gift box to put my cards in. I used the same design for the front of the boxes (I made two sets to give away) but added some twine and a tag I made using the Lots of Labels Framelits.

Here's a close up of the tag I made. I love how it came out! I grunged it up a bit with two different stamps from the Timeless Textures set. The sentiment is pieced together from two stamps from Helping Me Grow. I really love the fonts in this stamp set.

Here's one last shot of my gift box with the cards in the background. I did stamp flowers on all of my envelopes too. They look rustic and lovely. 

I hope you liked my cards and project for today because I sure had fun making them! For more fantastic May Flower projects please keep on hopping with us. Next up is the talented Anna Smith!

Thanks for stopping by my blog today it was so nice to have you!

-Maria

BLOG ROLL:

Tina Rackley Riddle 

Renee Ondrajka 

Lori Schaefer Mueller

Sara Levin

Melissa Davies

Maria Willis: YOU ARE HERE!

Anna Smith: NEXT

Wynne Grob  

Marisa Gunn 

Elizabeth Jeanne

Megan Thompson 

Justin Krieger

Dena Rekow  

Kim Smith 

Alisa Pilsner

Andrea Tracy-Tucker

Need supplies now? Never fear! I've got you covered!

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. I'm looking forward to hearing from you!