TGIF...come on and do the Glue Arts Blog Hop!

Welcome new visitors to my lilypad! As you hop from blog to blog on the Glue Arts blog hop,  you increase your chances to win a Glue Glider™ Pro and a cartridge of your choice by leaving a comment on each one of the design team members’ blogs. Be sure to sign up as a follower of these great blogs for tips and inspiration using your favorite adhesives and craft products.

If you would like to start at the beginning of the hop, click here to visit Kris Swain’s blog. From there, you can follow the links to visit each of our blogs. Get inspired by the talented ladies on the New Glue Arts Design Team and keep track of who the 4 new design team members are. You can have an added chance to win a Pro, cartridge and some Extreme Adhesive squares by emailing those 4 names to gluegirl@gluearts.com. Be sure to leave your comments by Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010. All winners will be announced on Monday.

Now for a little bit of creativity using my Glue Arts adhesives... 

You may remember my Glue Arts Wall Display layout for CHA. Well, I had one of the embossed canvas squares left over and used it as inspiration for this get well card for a friend.  For most of the layers, I used my Glue Glider™ Pro with high tac adhesive. I even used that on the leafy diecut. Here’s a Tip: place a piece of scrap paper under the diecut, run glue glider with high tac adhesive cartridge over top and apply to project. Throw away scrap sheet so you don’t transfer excess adhesive to project.
Butterfly stamps are from K&Co Que Sera Sera clear stamp set. Corner rounder & oval scallop punches and leaves and floral fusion dies are all from Stampin’ Up!®. Embossed image is an embossing folder from Cuttlebug. Adhesive pearls are Recollections line from Michaels.

Be sure to sign up to follow my blog for more exciting project inspirations and crafty goodness! Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment.
Hop on over to the talented Linda Albrecht's blog,
the final stop on the Glue Arts blog hop.

2-2-2!

Do you know that my favorite number is 2. It is my birth date and I have just always loved that number. When I logged on to do a new post for today, I saw that I had 222 posts as of August 2nd. Pretty amazing, isn’t it!?? So I am now looking forward to hitting post 2,222...have some work cut out for me!

I am going to catch you up on some hybrid card inspirations using some of my digi desgins sold on MyGrafico.com. One of my favorite illustrative sets is the Hip & Happy set. I use this cross all the time. Most crosses have a rigid, stiffness to them, which reminds me nothing of the Jesus I know and love —
a compassionate and loving God that gave his own life for me. He surrounds me with his love and guidance so I tried to achieve that in my artistic interpretation of the cross. On this first example, I used it to create a sympathy card for our friends who just lost their father/grandfather just a few days after my aunt passed away. I typeset the verse and printed out the cross in b&w. I added a touch of soft pink on the swirls and heart as a soft accent. For the background, I used a flower and design element in black to create the hand stamped background. It is from one of my favorite new stamp sets called Que Sera Sera by K&Company. It is an eclectic mix of designs and verses. I used the same stamp to handcut a lavender floral accent that I raised up with a rhinestone accent.

Working with the same color combination of pink and black I also created this hybrid card for my cousin’s daughter’s Baptism. I just love digital brushes & Photoshop. I used my Mod Twist Garden brushes to create the background, which nicely complimented the lines in the cross illustration. This card was 90% digi, cut out and mounted onto card stock layers. Pretty easy. See below for another modified version of this same card art. That is the cool thing with using digital stamps, art and brushes, you can set up the art, print & experiment with lots of variations of the same design so no cards have to be the same!

I called this version Hip & Girly Baptism Card. The gold, pink and black made it just a bit fancier, yet it still has that girly style to it. You can also dress up hybrid cards by adding brads, ribbons, diecut borders, etc. For this, I kept it simple and classic.

Things Aren’t Always Black & White

...Or Are They?

Just as in life, there are always some grey areas, and this card uses a clean and classic design playing on high contrast b&w colors with a grey pinstripe patterned paper from Doodlebug Designs as a neutral background. The punch and verse are both from Stampin Up!®.

The graphic is a digi stamp design from my Hip & Happy set, available for purchase on www.mygrafico.com.

Also using digi art from the Hip & Happy set, this next birthday card introduces aqua as an accent color to make the designs pop. I used the swirled element in this set colorized in white to create the black & white border strip. That is the exciting thing about working with the editable eps files in Illustrator...you can colorize them to what you want them to be or simply print in b&w or shades of grey added, as shown here for equally fun results.

A close up view of the border and digi art.

Border and Celebrate You verse from Stampin’ Up!®

Working on Samples

If it isn’t enough work creating the sets, I had to get busy showing samples of how to use them. There just aren't enough hours in the day it seems. One minute I am consulting on Prom Decor, the next giving boyfriend advice, next cleaning (which I try to avoid until it is time to evict the dust bunnies), then it’s writing, designing and creating. I know you can all relate to me! Right? I am well behind on cards for friends and family too, but here are some sneak peek photos of some cards I just posted to my mygrafico albums. For all the details on what sets I used, you can check there. These range from fairly simple to more complex hybrid . I will be posting more ideas today and tomorrow in the gallery. Happy Friday!

Some More Sassiness!

This is a continuation of some of the cards created with the Sassy Collection from Me & My Big Ideas that I posted a couple weeks ago. I love the bright colors. I combined some Stampin' Up stamps to create these fast and fun card creations.

Oh, Baby!

When we got the joyous news that my cousin and his wife were expecting a baby, there was one more reason to play with my new alphabet set and polka-dot ribbon from Stampin’ Up! Now you will be seeing more baby related projects since I have babies on my mind. 

For this congratulations card, I used the new Jumble Alphabet stamps with Lavendar Lace and Bermuda Bay marker as inks. The unique color combination includes: Bermuda Bay, Apricot Appeal, Whisper White, Lovely Lace and Certainly Celery cardstock. The rattle was created layering 1-1/4", 1-3/8" and scallop circle punches with crystal effects applied to top layer with a sprinkling of Dazzling Diamonds glitter from some sparkle. I used dimensionals to add dimension to top layer. Adorn with  Fresh Favorites 1 buttons and a knotted bow from Bermuda Bay 1/2" Polka-Dot Grosgrain Ribbon. You can purchase the supplies for this project on my SU website.