ethaschuette.com

That is the title for my ATCs that I made for a “Flourishes Flowers” spring ATC swap. Where I live, spring has weird colors, mysterious, often there is moisture in the air which is unusual for “these woods”. Light and shadow play tricks on your eyes while you are trying to see the first greens and blossoms come up with the fresh spring morning. There are always pink, white and green in a variety of shades present.
I used the “Gesso Batik” technique from the October/November 08 issue of the Technique Junkies Newsletter on watercolor paper and am pretty happy with the “feel” of my ATC:

Letters were cut from shimmer card stock with the cricut Storybook cartridge at shadow/0.5 inches.

Without so many words, want to follow me along how I did it? ok just watch

And how did you spend your Saturday?

Stamps used were the bleeding heart flowers from Spring Ephemerals and the Lily-of-the-Valley with a leaf from the Peony set from Flourishes .

At least in the stmaping world yesterday At release party at Gina K. when “Framed Friends” was released one of the wonderful DT members had shown a memory game with this set, I so HAD to do it!! Did I mention, I won this stamp set hehe..

I used copics to color the pieces and held on to a purposely limited palette. The pieces were sandwiched together with two layers of “leftover recycled something heavier” and PTI white card stock. SU glue stick works really well there. The tin is from one of those chocolated DH likes to eat Writing with JustRite letters.

Today’s SC213 on splitcoast inspired me to do this:

Very odd colors for me but I think they work. I started out in blues and those didn’t appeal, hehe. The stamps are from the Happiness plate from Artistic Outpost. One of my favorite collection, beautiful stamps! Paper is by Heidi Grace (2007). I used colored pencil under shimmerz (Marigold, Golden Wheat) for coloring the butterfly which is popped up over the main image. See:

What a weird title, no?
Today is the last time that you will see some stuff from me on the DRSdesigns blog, check out today’s new challenge game (you can also win something again just for leaving a comment) !!. The 6 months of this DT position just ran away like wildfire!! I had such a great time, loved the stamps, loved the people Many of the team took the opportunity to renew their term but I had already made new plans, otherwise I would have stayed for another round of fun They ARE looking for a few guest designers for this year, go check the details here , you will NOT be disappointed!! Such a great company to work with.
Going on to other things, I had some time yesterday to play with my new rubber and polymer from Firecrackerdesigns by Pamela. I used the Clearly Calendar Set together with Clearly Greetings and a touch of a border and the month from Calendar Journal Frame to make this card:

I only used the left side of the flourish frame because this year Valentine’s falls on a Saturday and I did not want to obstruct the day with the heart with flourishes!
I layered my calendar page on some panels made with the Paper Studio Multi Punch. Thanks to Pamela again who filmed a nice introduction and tutorial for this type of punch, you can view it here . I too had a bit of an issue making a square, it doesn’t quite come out. I made a beautiful 6 inch circle, which was too large for my card. But see, if you cut the circle into a square and use the leftover pieces layered, you get the best of both worlds LOL. Its a bit crooked as I didn’t plan this but quickly chopped away at my piece to see what happens. I like what happened!
I totally love these calendar stamps, oh the possibilities! You’ll probably see me using these lots more in the future.
Why old? Oh, because I loved being on Pamela’s designer team as well and will always come back to her stamps on a regular basis!
And the future? I’m always seeing a good future and hopefully soon I’ll have some cool news to share
Current? I got three cards published in the new Just Weddings magazine by Scott publications. I don’t really tell often when this happens, you can hear my toot on this page .

Yesterday’s Ways_To_Use it on SCS was cool, the challenge was to DO something with your designer paper on hand, spruce it up somehow. I went to the corner in my room that had painfully neglected DP and started digging, found some beautiful DP from Papertrey Ink. I saw what I wanted to use and started digging in the stamps, turns out the pack called “Chocolate Remix” had a butterfly pattern that fit SO well with the “Butterfly Kisses” stamp set, I just had to try this out.

this card started out as a fancy schmancy multi layer thing which I hated, took everything off and ended up simple and nice The stamp set has a small solid butterfly that I used to stamp lavender moon ink into the small butterflies on the paper. It also has a outline butterfly that fit around the larger one on the paper, I stamped that with versamark and clear embossed, quite yumm! Here is a side by side comparison of the before and after:

Sweet, isn’t it? The chocolate brown will fit with many other colors, lots of possibilities. Of course the large butterfly stamp seems like the same that’s on the paper, I never even realized that, I don’t think they were released together (stamps and paper). This was a fun exercise to do, I’ll never look at my DPs the same again I got a kick out of tying the brown ribbon around the butterfly body and ‘sewing’ some antennae with it……

And here I am, still playing with my cricut! It feels a bit handicapped as I am waiting for the software and feel limited by the cartrige possiblities because I know how I would want to change stuff! Here is another fun example using the branch option on the Home Decor cart. I cut it at 4.25 and also cut the shadow for it.

That makes a nice frame for a card, doesn’t it? I can see it in reversed colors with a white shadow for a winter/snow scene! The beautiful bird on a flower branch and the sentiment stamps can be found in the Birds of a Feather set from Clear Artistic Stamps.
I used pink shimmerz on the flowers, pencil for birds and leaves. Some flower centers have swarovski centers and the outside branch has some gold hotfix pearl berries A bit closer?

Happy Thursday!

Now after yesterday’s Bridal Party for Sarah little Josh for the first time heard about the upcoming wedding of Sarah and Thomas on February 14! He was a bit upset that he had to hear this through the grapevine but that feeling vanished quickly and he gathered some flowers and sent a card:

You can se he lives rather remote, that’s probably why the news didn’t get to him sooner

I used the little flowers from yesterday’s release moments in Lace and you can find Josh in the Hop into Spring set. I also had to try out my new toy and used Plantin Schoolbook to make the grasses and the blast behind the sentiment, fun fun!