Sweet Pea Stamps Blog Hop - Tuesday, Jan 26th

Welcome to the first day of the Sweet Pea Stamps Blog Hop... and welcome to my blog!!! The Sweet Pea Design Team Members have some beautiful art to show you on this hop. I am the 3rd stop along the hop for today; hopefully, you've already visited Mag's blog and Connie's blog. If you haven't, be sure to go back and check them out... there is a prize to be won here!!!! A gift certificate to spend at Sweet Pea Stamps!!! You don't want to miss a chance to win that! In order to win you must visit all of the blogs on the hop and post a comment at each blog. And I'm not the last blog on this hop for today. I'll direct you to the next Design Team Member's Blog at the end of this posting.
A winner will be selected from those of you hopping along with us on Tuesday, and another winner will be selected if you hop along with us on Thursday and post a comment to all of the participating blogs on that day too!!! Two chances to win!!! What more can you ask for?? For more info about this blog hop visit the Sweet Pea Design Team Blog.
And be sure to check out this enchanting image at the Sweet Pea Stamp website. She is the Haiti Relief Image and will be available Jan 29th. 50% of stamp sales of this image will go to Doctors' Without Borders.


And now ... let's get on with the Blog Hop...

It is my pleasure to work with 'Black Rose Fairy'. She is one of the images from the Ching-Chou Kuik Fantasy Art Collection on sheet #7, and is available on Sweet Pea Plate #29. I couldn't stop at just one card, so I've made 5. Each of the images was painted with Twinkling H2O's and after the paint was dry I added some highlights with a sakura glitter pen.
For this card I cut the image out using a nestabilities die and my Cuttlebug machine. I used the next size larger in the same nestabilities dies to cut and emboss a piece of gold card stock, mounting the image onto it. I looked through my tons of decorative card stock packs and found the multi-colored paisley and the gold embossed green pieces. I cut and ripped each on a diagonal and then attached to the rust-colored card. Once all the pieces were attached to the card it looked 'unfinished', so I got out my fabric flowers and chose 3 coordinating colors attaching them to the card with a large gold brad. I think this may be my favorite of the 5 cards I made for this blog hop. Check out the rest and let me know which is your favorite....

I trimmed the upper half of the image for this card, but left the vines that are part of the bottom of the image.
I cut a piece of core 'dinations card stock slightly smaller than the light blue card. Core 'dinations card stock is a type of card stock that has a color core, rather than white. You can tear or sand this card stock to achieve some unique results. I ran the piece through the cuttlebug with an embossing folder and then sanded the raised areas to get the tone on tone look shown. Before attaching the embossed piece to the blue card I punched 2 rectangular holes in the left side and slipped a silver ribbon through to simulate a bow. Then using a thin silver thread I attached a silver charm to the center of the bow. I ran my image through a xyron and attached her to the lower right of the card. The card still looked bare to me, so after rummaging through my stash I found a large silver leaf and attached it across the top of the card.
There are many ways to work with this image. For this card I used a nestabilities die to cut and emboss the image in my Cuttlebug. I then mounted it onto a piece of background paper that a friend had given me. That piece was also embossed with a cuttlebug folder. I edged the layer with a silver krylon pen before attaching to a piece of decorative card stock that was also edged with the silver krylon pen. The purple card was punched with decorative photo corners and the matted image slipped into the corners. She didn't seem quite finished so I took a silver star bead, ran some purple wire through it and strung some small seed beads to the ends of the wire, curling the wire on each end so the beads would not fall off.

Here is an easy card to make with the Black Rose Fairy, or any of the fairies that are available at Sweet Pea Stamps.
I trimmed the image, leaving none of the background. Starting with a piece of lavendar card stock slightly smaller than the dark blue card, I ran the piece through the cuttlebug with the script embossing folder. But before I did that I rubbed my adirondack denim dye ink pad onto the embossing folder so that the 'unraised' areas of the piece would look shaded. I used a 'ticket' style corner punch on the piece and then attached a wine colored ribbon down the center of the card vertically. After attaching that piece to the dark blue card I attached the image in the center and added some silver peel offs in the corners and edges of the card. That was just the little extra that the card needed!

Here's another very simple card made with this wonderful image...
After trimming the image I mounted her onto a piece of decorative card stock that had been cut and embossed with a nestabilities oval die in my cuttlebug. I cut a piece of purple card stock slightly smaller than the orchid card and ran it through the cuttlebug with one of my cuttlebug embossing folders. Then I used a decorative corner punch on the piece. Before putting all the layers together and attaching to the card, I edged the 2 layers with a turquoise marvy metallic marker. I also used the sakura glitter pen to add highlights to the embossed areas of the purple card stock. After attaching all to the card I punched a couple of rectangular holes in the center near the bottom and slipped a purple multi-colored ribbon through to simulate a bow. Can you tell I'm drawn to purples and blues??

Be sure to leave a comment on my blog so you are eligible for the gift certificate drawing that will be held at Sweet Pea Stamps. And now it is time for you to move on to our next Design Team Member, Jennifer.... so hop on over to Jennifer's blog.
Thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to visit the Sweet Pea Stamps Blog on Thursday, Jan 28 for the 2nd day of the blog hop.