Online Card Classes Simply Watercolor Day 4

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I don’t usually take online card classes, but I’ve always been impressed with the classes that Online Card Classes has offered. Kristina Werner is teaching their latest class called Simply Watercolor. I decided to take this class because watercolor has never been simple to me, and I knew that Kristina was a wonderful teacher (she’s incredibly talented, too!) I have to admit that I’m pretty behind on the homework, but I’m truly enjoying just watching the videos and seeing Kristina at work using watercolors. Just to show you are awesome she is, she is using all different price point watercolors. It is just amazing to see what she creates with an 8 dollar set of Crayola paints.

Day 4’s lesson was about Landscapes & Nature. Here’s the card I created after viewing this lesson…

OCC Simply Watercolor Landscapes & Nature assignment by My Empty Nest Creations

I forgot to mention that no stamps or dies are used on any of the cards in this class. Everything is hand painted, hand drawn and hand lettered. Sometimes I get stuck making a card because I don’t have just the right stamps. I never even think about hand lettering a greeting or hand painting a scene. This class has definitely made me think outside my box, and I’m truly loving it!

You should definitely check it out 🙂

Computer Signature

8Dec2017

Loving the “Loose” Watercolor Look

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I see so many beautiful watercolor cards on Instagram, and I’m in awe of these card makers’ talents. I’m just not one of those free flowing card makers. I tend to stay within my comfort box. I love the look, but I struggle to achieve it. Kristina Werner’s blog post today gave me some inspiration—watercolor smooshing. I can handle that. All you do is put some color (I used Distress Inks) on a piece of acetate, wet it and flip it over onto a piece of watercolor paper and smoosh it around. It leaves you with a very free flowing colored background.

Here’s my finished card using Mermaid Lagoon and Tumbled Glass Distress Inks on a piece of Tim Holtz watercolor paper. I white heat embossed some snowflakes from Hampton Arts Snowflakes stamp set, and using Avery Elle’s Peace, Love & Joy die set, I cut the words out of Colorbok’s white glitter paper (I love it when I can use something that’s been in my stash for many, many years 🙂 I decided on only using peace & joy from my die cuts. After gluing them onto my watercolor base, I knew that I needed to balance the glitter out a bit, so I backed my base with a piece of the white glitter paper (unfortunately, the photos don’t really show it well). All that was left was to attached it to a Neenah Solar White 110# A2 card base…easy, peasy.

I really loved trying this “new to me” technique. Maybe this is just what I needed to get me to move out of my comfort box and give some other techniques a try, too. I’m off to check out Instagram, Pinterest and You Tube to get some more inspiration. Thanks for stopping by!

17Nov2017

Non-Traditional Christmas Colors for the Latest Freshly Made Sketches Challenge

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

It’s been quite a while since I joined in on a card challenge. I’ve been busy making my Christmas cards for this year. Since they are almost finished, I thought I’d create a card for one of my favorite card challenge sites, Freshly Made Sketches.

Here is the latest sketch…

and here is my entry.

Any holiday card that I’ve made usually has red and green on it, so I decided to leave my Christmas comfort zone and do something a little less traditional. How about light blue and light green? I really like that color combo, so I went for it.

I started with Ellen Hutson’s Mondo Poinsettia stamp set. I gold heat embossed the images onto Bristol paper, and water colored them with Peeled Paint and Broken China Distress Oxides. I really love the Distress Oxides. They stamp beautifully, and they are wonderful as watercolors. After the leaves and flowers had dried, I cut them out with the matching dies and put them aside.

My Merry Christmas sentiment is from WPlus9 Hand Lettered Holiday stamp set. I just love the pairing of the script and capital letters. I cut Merry out of some silver metallic card stock and heat embossed Christmas with silver embossing powder onto a velum strip. Once that was done, I needed to do a little something with my card base. Plain white just wasn’t going to be right. I decided to do a little light stenciling using the Broken China ink and a Gina Marie Designs stencil. All that was left was to put the card together. I adhered the velum strip just between the two flower groupings and popped up the flowers with some foam tape. The final touch was to add a few sequins and some Nuvo gold drops on the flower centers.

I hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by. Happy Holidays!

3Jan2017

My First Valentine of 2017

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Edited to Add A Slight Modification…

As you can see, I made some slight changes to my original version of this card. The only thing that I changed is the size of the dashed flight path lines. In the original version, I felt that they kind of overshadowed the background a little too much. That’s the beauty of this creative outlet…I can make any change that I think improves the card by just making a new one!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I’m going to use the typical excuse…the holidays got in the way of my creating. Because I’ve had so little crafting time, I’ve kind of lost my mojo. It’s been a little difficult getting back to it, but I did have fun creating this cutie.

As soon as I saw the stamp and die set Fly By from Avery Elle, I knew I had to get it. The airplane and little puff formations are so adorable!

This card is pretty simple, and I have to admit that I’m still struggling with trying to add a little more something to it. My daughter convinced me to post it just like it is. Sometimes simple is truly best.

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The base is Neenah Solar White 110#. I used a small cloud Silhouette cut file to create the sky background by placing a few clouds over white card stock and ink blending the background with Mermaid Lagoon Distress Ink. I stamped the airplane and several heart shaped puffs and cut them out with the coordinating dies. I drew a curvy path in light pencil and used a black marker to highlight the path. The airplane was colored with Copic markers, and mounted with foam dots. The heart shaped puffs were mounted with the same foam dots.

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For the inside, I drew another curvy path and connected it to the “love you” stamp. I placed a few cut out heart puffs along the path, too.

I hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by!

8Nov2016

CAS(E) Sketch #197

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

I’m so happy that I’ve gotten involved in a few card sketch challenges. It has really sparked my creative juices.

Here’s the latest sketch from the CAS(E) This Sketch Challenge…

I have to admit, I struggled with this sketch initially. It took a couple of “trial and error” cards to figure out what I really wanted to do. I think where I kept getting stuck was the uphill slant on the design.

Here’s what I decided on…

I started with an A2 white card stock base. I roughly masked off the bottom portion and stamped the Hero Arts Tiny Star background stamp with Versamark ink. I heat embossed with Recollections gold embossing powder. Then I did some ink blending for the sky using Chipped Sapphire and Blueprint Sketch Distress Inks. I was careful to be light handed near the bottom portion to give the idea of a slight glow from the lighted windows. I then die cut the houses using the Tim Holtz Townscape On the Edge die. I cut the houses apart and backed 5 of them with light yellow card stock. I glued them on the diagonal to represent a hill and then covered them with a basket weave embossed (We R Memory Keepers embossing folder) kraft piece. In order to match the greeting to the sky, I ink blended a piece of white card stock. After making sure it was completely dry, I stamped the words from the Waffle Flower Merry stamp set in Versamark and heat embossed with the gold embossing powder. As a final touch, I used my clear Wink of Stella marker on each of the windows.

I hope you like it!

5Nov2016

My First Holiday Card for 2016

Posted in Cards by My Empty Nest Creations

Freshly Made Sketches #261

I have just found another card sketch blog that I really like. It’s called Freshly Made Sketches. You should definitely check it out here.

This is their latest sketch…

and here is my take on it…

This one was very simple to make and would be very easy to mass produce for the holidays. I love the less traditional colors with the kraft card base. All I did was cut the Christmas trees on my Silhouette Cameo (my own design) and rolled them through my paper crimper tool. I wasn’t quite sure how big to make the horizontal paper pieces until I placed the trees on the card. I decided that the thicker size looked better than the narrower size from the sketch. The plaid paper is from an old 6×6 Basic Grey Lauderdale pad. (I just love it when I can use some of my older stash.) I popped the trees up with some fun foam to give it a little bit of dimension. The stamped greetings are from Waffle Flower’s Merry stamp set.

I hope you like it!