I seem to have become a card making fool. These are four cards I designed for a class to be held at EASY AS CAT SOUP in Anderson SC, The class will be 10:30 AM Sat. Sept 20. These are the four card designs I will teach. The papers are from Graphic 45 Come With Me collection. They can be used for almost any occasion. Birthdays, Graduations, Job change, Retirement are all starting points in life's journeys. Of course travel itself is cause for celebration.  And then, we all start new journeys each year as we celebrate another year of life.
I hope you enjoy the card designs. Perhaps I will see you in the class.

I've scheduled a new class with Easy as Cat Soup in Anderson SC. on Aug 2, 10:30 to 1:30  I will do three cards using the exquisite papers from Graphic 45 Botnaical Tea collection. The cards are pictured here  int he June post. They are the ones that use the cut outs and some layered die cuts. Participants will only need to bring their basic tools, including their personal paper cutter, good scissors - detail scissors recommended and adhesive such as tape or glue. All other materials and special tools are supplied.
I hope the class will be a big success like the one I did last month.
I particularly enjoyed doing these cards because they include some special techniques that are actually easy but add a lot to the final result.

I've been really inspired by some of the gorgeous new papers put out by Graphic 45. I've been working with Botanical Tea and Couture in partcular. Here are a few of the cards I made with these papers for inspiration

 I made this one for a friend whose birthday is coming on Monday. I hope she likes it. She is a fan of the Roaring 20's so I think there is a good chance it will please her

I made this one just because the image appealed to me. Some matting, 'fussy cut the bird and butterfly, d some 'glitz' and it's done. It didn't take a lot of time even with the detailed cutting. It was fun

      

These two were from the small Couture pad. I had some beautiful Marble paper scraps  for background and I was very pleased with the results. Another friend has her birthday later this month and I will send one of them to her.Haven't decided which one yet.

Today was the day I taught my class at Easy as Cat Soup. What a great day! Eight of the nicest ladies you can imagine came to the class. We had a couple of beginners and it was great fun to see them start to relax and enjoy themselves as they created their cards. I always tell my classes that I love it when they do their own thing with my basic designs and these gals did just that. It was a roomful of wonderful creative energy

I showed Micki some of the cards I made with the Graphic 45 Botanical Tea papers. (Pictures are in a previous post.)  She LOVED them. So, now we are going to schedule a class with those cards and I will also do some card designs with their new Come Away With Me papers. See the papers here. We will schedule a class with those cards, probably for Sept.

The Botanical Tea Card class is tentatively scheduled for Aug 2.

At some point there will also be a series of technique classes. More about that as the plans come together.

I am excited to be teaching again. Can you tell?

I've been playing with some new stamps, new uses for old techniques and some new toys. The result? Seveal new cards to send to friends for various occasions

I had a birthday recently and among the wonderful gifts I received were some interesting stamps. Since I particularly love watercolour I was pleased that the sunflower set lent itself to using that medium,
Here are two of the cards that I created with the new stamps.

 

As anyone who knows me will tell you,  I am very fond of flowers. The more old fashioned, the better I love them. So, one of the sets I recently purchased features poppies. Here is what I did with that. Again, the medium is watercolour. In both cases, the watercolours were a combination of Winsor Newton pan waterclours and Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils. I used the Inktense to get the deeper tones. I could do it with tube watercolours but didn't want to mess with those just now. The cats would have loved it but the result might have been disasterous

I hope you like it. I thought it came out rather well..In fact I am going to have a hard time sending it on to the

person for whom I intended it.

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. Since I have been experimenting with watercolour, it seemed that I should see what I could do with it as a background. For the first card, I was looking for a graded multicolour background that wouldn't get muddy with the colours mixing. I used Winsor Newton pan watercolours here. The effect I wanted was that of a bird perching on a piling in the water, on a foggy evening just at sunset

For the second card, I used the washes from the pan that I mixed the colours in for the first card. The bird and the flowers were done using Peerless Watercolour papers.

I am particularly fond of Grapic 45 Scrapbook papers. I use them a lot in altered book  and other projects. I thought that the Botanical Tea papers were really beautiful and made several cards using them.

This one used the Crafter'sworkshop Chicken  wire die cut. I love the look

Here the card has a window with the Stampin' Up Hexagon embossing folder background

Another use of the Hexagon folder                                                     And here, just some layering

It's been fun doing these.  I hope you like them.

I took the cards to Micki today so she can put them on the website for the store. The class is scheduled for Sat June 28 at 10:30 AM. All papers and most of the ephemera is included in the class. Participants may bring ribbon and other elements they may wish to include, but all they really need is their basic art kit.
Below is the final card in the group.

As always in my classes, the designs I provide are just starting points. Particiapants can duplicate them or  'make them their own" by modifiying the designs to fit their personal tastes for the needs they have for their cards.

I've decided to return to teaching card and mixed media classes. I'll start with a card class at Easy as Cat Soup in Anderson SC. These pictures are 5 of the 6 cards I have planned. The 6th needs to be redone because my cats decided they liked the first version. There is a variety of formats and sizes. The papers and most of the ephemera are from the RUBY ROCK-IT Nostalgia paper pack, augmented by Bazzil card stock. These cards are not difficult or particularly time consuming. The paper pack contains enough extra material for the participants to make more than one of a design and/or for them to adlib to make additional cards of their own design.