I Really Like You. Like Really

February 4, 2018March 11, 2018 Happy Ink Designs8 Comments

Hello fellow crafters!! Hope everyone is refreshed and ready to take on a brand new week. I know I am. I took a couple of weeks off to prepare for my notary exam and I just took the test last week so I’m back to share a new card with you! If you’d like to see the adorable “Down On the Farm” card I made for the last challenge I did, click here.

The theme this week at Always Fun Challenges is Anything Goes. I’m not really sure what category this card would fall under. It’s not necessarily a Valentine’s Day card because it doesn’t say anything about Valentine’s. It’s not really a love card… Would it be a “like” card?? I don’t know. It’s a happy card though. I was super excited to use SSS’s January card kit so that’s exactly what I did!! This is definitely one of my favorite card kits. It had some really great elements to it. I LOVE the stamp set. As I said in my video, I love that there’s a couple of images that you can use for a sentiment or you could use to make a background. I chose to make a background with the ‘xoxo’ stamp.

I started out with some Tim Holtz watercolor paper and die cut my heart. Then after heat embossing my sentiment, I used a couple distress oxide inks to do some ink blending. When I was done with the heart, I quickly cut out another heart from vellum in the next heart size up. I moved on to the background which was super easy. I just picked out a nice gray ink and stamped the ‘xoxo’ image over and over.

I also used the gorgeous Distress Glitter Dust (also in the kit) to make a strip of glitter for the front of my card. Cut out a few little hearts, some SN clear glitter pen and a little glossy accents and we have a card!!

I love the little block words that also come in this stamp set. I thought this sentiment was super cute. There’s all kinds of possibilities.

I made this for the Always Fun Challenges blog and I’m also entering it into the SSS Flickr Challenge and the SSS Wednesday Challenge.

We’d love for you to join us this week for Anything Goes over at the AFC blog. Just click here and I’ll take you right to where you need to go.

If you’re more of a visual person, like myself, below you’ll find a video so you can see exactly how I made it.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. I’ll see y’all next week!!

Misty

(Affiliate links used when possible at no cost to you)

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Happy Halloween!!

October 29, 2017October 29, 2017 Happy Ink Designs6 Comments

Happy (early) Halloween!! I’m so excited to announce this weeks’ theme for the Always Fun Challenges blog. Have you figured it out yet?? It’s HALLOWEEN!!! I LOVE Halloween!! I’ve been working all month on getting our road closed to traffic on Halloween. Which, I’ve learned, requires an encroachment permit. That means I had to get signatures from every house on our entire street!! The good news is, the City has agreed to close it!! WOOHOO!! The population of Fort Bragg is a little less than 7,300 and we handed out candy to a little less than 1,300 kids last year… That’s just crazy!! No one knows why the entire town comes to this street for Halloween, but they do. And we LOVE IT!! It was just getting too dangerous to have vehicles driving up and down with that many kids. At some points while I was handing out candy last year, I looked up and the line was out into the middle of the street!! I wish I would have taken pictures, but we’re always soooo busy!! They start coming at about 4pm!! Here are a couple pix that I did manage to get from last year.

Speaking of Halloween, let’s talk about this card I made.

If you can’t tell by looking at this, I was greatly inspired by Vicky Papaioannou’s “Glowing Moon Technique” card. She does this background MUCH better than I, but I still had a lot of fun making this one. The card came together pretty easy. First I made the distress oxide background, and then I created the moon and placed my Silhouette witch (design ID #65963) over the top and lastly I added my sentiment. As you know, if you’ve read any of my posts or watched any of my videos lately, quick and easy are about all I have time for these days.

I added some Shimmer Spray to top it off. Can you see it? It looks really cool in person. Pictures just don’t show the cool details sometimes.

If you’d like to join us this week, just make something Halloween related and click here to add it to our challenge or go to the Always Fun Challenges blog and add it there. Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope everyone has a Spooktacular Halloween!!!

Amazon, Simon Says Stamp, Scrapbook.com, Blitsy Disclaimer:

These are affiliate links. What that means is at no cost to you, I will receive a small commission if you purchase something from the links I’ve provided. That small commission will help me maintain my blog and youtube channel while still providing the links to all the products that I use. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it. And if you have any questions on any of these products, please feel free to ask!! I’ll always give you my honest opinion.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Hello Friend

October 22, 2017October 25, 2017 Happy Ink Designs4 Comments

Hi guys!! I’m back with another card and a new theme for this week over at Always Fun Challenges. The theme this week is Black and White. How fun is that? You can do just about anything with B & W!! I started off thinking I was going to be making a Halloween card, since Halloween is right around the corner, but at the last minute, I decided to go with a ‘Friend’ card. If you’d like to see what I made for last week’s challenge, click here.

You can never have too many of these kinds of cards and I really wanted to use this embossing folder again, so this is what I came up with.

I had a little bit of a rocky go with the background, which you can see in my video below, but in the end, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. And I LOVE the little flower die that was included in last month’s card kit for Simon Says Stamp. It was the perfect addition.

Well, it’s family night at the Elam Residence so I’ll leave you with a video and a list of all the products I used. Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see y’all next week!!

Amazon, Simon Says Stamp, Scrapbook.com, Blitsy Disclaimer:

These are affiliate links. What that means is at no cost to you, I will receive a small commission if you purchase something from the links I’ve provided. That small commission will help me maintain my blog and youtube channel while still providing the links to all the products that I use. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it. And if you have any questions on any of these products, please feel free to ask!! I’ll always give you my honest opinion.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Quick and Easy Monochrome

October 15, 2017October 15, 2017 Happy Ink Designs2 Comments

Hello crafters!! Welcome back!! Last weeks card had so much going on, that I’ve decided to keep it nice and simple this week. (To see my card for last weeks’ theme, click here.) Well, I didn’t really decide. Amy at Always Fun Challenges decided because the theme this week is “Monochrome”. Here’s my take on that.

I’ve never made a monochome card before. I think I say that every week, but keep in mind I’ve only been making cards for 2 years now. There’s a lot of things I haven’t done yet and a lot of stamp sets I’ve never used yet. But don’t fret, all in due time, my friends. Wow, I can’t believe it’s already been 2 years since I fell head over heals in love with this beautiful hobby. And I don’t see myself growing tired of it any time soon. Which is good, since I’m DEEPLY invested at this point. I think my hubby would kill me…

Back to the card. This was so easy and so quick to make that I plan on making several more in several different colors with several different sentiments. Just to have some cards on hand. I envy the people that have boxes of pre-made cards ready to go at a moments notice.

The measurements for the paper are:

Cardbase: 4.25″ x 5.5″, next layer (darkest purple) is 4″ x 5.25″ and the card front is 3.75″ x 5″.

If you’d like to join us at Always Fun Challenges, just follow this link and add your project!! Simple as that. I love seeing all the GORGEOUS entries each week. Thanks so much for stopping by and I’ll see you guys next week!!

Disclosure: Please note that links to merchants mentioned within this post might be using an affiliate link which means that – at zero cost to you – I might earn a commission if you buy something through that affiliate link. That said, I never recommend anything I don’t personally use and find to be a valuable asset to my business. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Lots of Layers Featuring SSS Feb. Card Kit

October 8, 2017October 7, 2017 Happy Ink Designs3 Comments

Hi guys!! Happy Belated World Cardmaking Day!!! It was October 7th, for those that may not have known. I just found out about 4 days ago, but unfortunately we were at an out of town football game so I didn’t get to craft at all. That’s ok, I’ll make up for it this coming week. The theme this week at Always Fun Challenges is Lots of Layers. This is why I love being on this design team. It makes me try things I normally wouldn’t try. I don’t work with many layers very often so this was a little out of my league, but I did the best I could.

I mainly used everything from the February 2017 Simon Says Stamp card kit. All the papers and sentiment are from that kit. I wasn’t sure where to even start so I used a sketch to help get me going. As you can see, this card was very easy to put together. Here is the sketch I used.

Once I had this, the rest was a piece of cake!!

For the circles, the smallest circle I used was 1 3/4″. The next one up was 2 1/8″ (craft cardstock). The bigger set of circles start at a little over 2 1/2″ and the biggest circle I used is 3″. The strip of pink card stock is 2″ wide.

The banners: Smallest is 1/2″ x 2″

Biggest: 1/2″ x 2 3/8″

Thank you so much for stopping by!!

Misty

Disclosure: Please note that links to merchants mentioned within this post might be using an affiliate link which means that – at zero cost to you – I might earn a commission if you buy something through that affiliate link. That said, I never recommend anything I don’t personally use and find to be a valuable asset to my business. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Well Hello There… Distress Oxides again

October 1, 2017October 1, 2017 Happy Ink Designs7 Comments

Hi again!! I’m back with some more distress oxide backgrounds. I just can’t get enough of these!! I want to take an entire day and just play. In a perfect world, I’d actually have time to do that, but until then, I’ll settle with experimenting as I go. I had a lot of fun playing around with these last week too, I actually ended up making a few cards which is always nice. Seems like I just don’t have all that much time to make cards these days. These boys keep me on my toes!! You can check out my last week’s cards by clicking here.

This card was SUPER easy and super quick. The theme this week at Always Fun Challenges is Dies and/or Punches. I’m going to try and keep this post short and sweet as I am in the middle of yet another Birthday sleepover weekend. This time for my son’s BFF that is living with us. Hey! My Birthday is tomorrow (Oct. 2), maybe I should have a sleepover too!!!! That could be kinda fun, if I had some crafty friends that lived close by. We could craft the night away!!

I have to show you how cute these boys are. I just love them with all I got. This is everyone singing Happy Birthday to Bub. Mine is the one on the far right and Bubby is his BFF.

Here’s a recent one that I absolutely love. My friend had just made this shirt for me so we were showing some Jr Cubs spirit. This was right before a game. I shared this on my IG, but I love it so much, I thought I’d share it here too.

And one more of my card…

I am TOTALLY late to the show, but my crafty friend, Darnell is currently running her NBUS challenge so I’m also entering this into her 10 day long challenge. This is one that I’m sure everyone can enjoy. NBUS stands for Never Before Used Schtuff and if you guys are anything like me, you could participate in this every day for a month and still not get thru all of your NBUS… Please check out her blog for all the details and follow her!! She’s hilarious and she does this challenge a few times a year. It’s the perfect push to use those products that you’ve never used before.

Anyway, below is a very simple video and below that is a list of the products that I used. Thank you so much for stopping by!! And I’ll see y’all next week ~

Disclosure: Please note that links to merchants mentioned within this post might be using an affiliate link which means that – at zero cost to you – I might earn a commission if you buy something through that affiliate link. That said, I never recommend anything I don’t personally use and find to be a valuable asset to my business. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Playing with Oxide Inks

September 24, 2017September 27, 2017 Happy Ink Designs3 Comments

Hi friends!! I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend. I had a crazy weekend, but I did find a little time on Sunday to play with the few distress oxide inks that I own. I will say that after playing with these, I’ve gone ahead and ordered 7 more!! I keep hearing people say how easy they are to blend and they are NOT exaggerating!! These inks are AWESOME!!! I’ve added a process video at the end of this post so you can see for yourself.

So in case you’re wondering what the theme is this week at Always Fun Challenges, it’s “Anything Goes”. My favorite!! I had so much fun playing with these inks, that I didn’t stop at just one card. I made three!!! Which is kinda crazy considering I didn’t even have a card made yet as of Saturday, the day I’m supposed to turn my project in (like I said, it’s been a crazy busy weekend).

I watched a video by Jennifer McGuire where she used stencils and oxide inks and it looked like a lot of fun so I gave it a whirl. This is my version. I only have 6 oxide inks at the moment so I started out using Cracked Pistachio and Broken China. I spritzed some water on my stencil and placed it on top of my blended background and left it alone for a couple of minutes. When I pulled the stencil off, I ooh’d and awed for a couple of seconds and then started on another one.

Once I got the feel for how these inks blend, I added in some Faded Jeans. I absolutely LOVE how they turned out. This next one I did, I used a more delicate stencil so I was a little worried that it wouldn’t turn out as good. I made this stencil with my Silhouette Cameo awhile back and I think this was my first time using it. The top part doesn’t pop as much as the rest of it, but I’m ok with that. While less of the surface reacted to the water, I still love it. It just has a more delicate look, is all.

I saved my favorite one for last. I made this stencil with my Silhouette as well and even though I covered up a lot of the background with the vellum, you can still see the awesome reaction to water!! I am in love with distress oxide inks. Not only do they blend so seamlessly, but they have such a cool reaction to water!! All distress inks do, but this is just sooo cool. I can’t wait to get more colors now. I added some vellum behind my sentiment, added a few clear Nuvo drops and tied some twine around the bottom and voila!! Card complete.

Thanks for stopping by!! Below is a process video where you can see for yourself how smooth these inks blend. Below that is a list of all the products I used. Until next time…

Misty

Disclosure: Please note that links to merchants mentioned within this post might be using an affiliate link which means that – at zero cost to you – I might earn a commission if you buy something through that affiliate link. That said, I never recommend anything I don’t personally use and find to be a valuable asset to my business. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

So Much To Be Thankful For

September 17, 2017September 19, 2017 Happy Ink Designs8 Comments

Hello crafty friends!! Thanks for stopping by to check out my project for the Always Fun Challenges blog this week. As summer passes us by once again and we head into another wonderful season, I just want to let you all know that I am extremely grateful for each and every one of you. Some of you may read this and carry on with your day and some of you may leave me a sweet comment, letting me know you’ve been by. Some may even watch my video at the end of this post. No matter who you are and which category you fall under, I appreciate you. Most of you don’t know me personally so the fact that you take even a moment of your already precious time to read this post, means so much to me. I’ve never been much of a writer so I really didn’t think this blog thing was going to be for me, but the more I write and the more people I meet along this crafty journey of mine, the more I realize how much I enjoy blogging. It’s all about the people I meet along the way, that make this so important to me. So without getting too sappy on ya, just know that I appreciate you.

Getting back to the theme for this week, which is Fall Colors, I decided to make a card of gratitude. I really enjoy this time of year, I love the change in temperature, I love the change in colors around me, I love bundling up and feeling the crispness of the air on my face. This time of year always makes me stop and think about all the wonderful blessings I have in my life. Without a doubt, I have “So Much To Be Thankful For”. This sentiment is perfect for the way I was feeling while I was making this card.

If you’d like to join us this week with some fall colors, head over to the Always Fun Challenges blog and share with us!! There’s a new theme each week that starts every Monday. You can share up to 3 projects each week, using whatever supplies you have on hand. We have a very talented design team and gorgeous entries each week. Take a peek for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.

I’m also entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Flickr Challenge. The theme is Emboss Like a Boss. I love the title of this one. Click on the link to be taken to their flickr page where you can find the rules on how to participate.

Thank you so much for stopping by. If you’d like to see how I made this card, just click on the video below. Just below that is a list of all the products that I used.

Challenges:

Always Fun Challenges – Fall Colors

Simon Says Stamp Flickr Challenge #80 – Emboss Like a Boss

Until next time,

Misty

Disclosure: Please note that links to merchants mentioned within this post might be using an affiliate link which means that – at zero cost to you – I might earn a commission if you buy something through that affiliate link. That said, I never recommend anything I don’t personally use and find to be a valuable asset to my business. Any time you use an affiliate link, I greatly appreciate it.

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Build a Scene with Purple Onion Designs

September 11, 2017February 21, 2018 Happy Ink Designs4 Comments

Hi guys!! Happy Monday to you all. Hope everyone had a good weekend. We had our 2nd football game out of town on Saturday and unfortunately we didn’t win… Makes for a looong trip home, that’s for sure.

For this card, I used images by Purple Onion Designs. Tell me this isn’t the cutest fox and frog you’ve ever seen!! I absolutely LOVE all of Stacey Yacula’s images. They are just so stinkin adorable. All of them! The theme this week at Always Fun Challenges is Create a Scene. This background image makes it so easy to create a scene without even trying.

All I did was mask the “free spirits” image and then stamped the background and colored it. That was it!! I used copics and my polychromos colored pencils. I’ll add which copics I used as soon as I can. I didn’t have time to upload a video for this one, but I’m not sure I even should. It really was that easy. I may still add it to my YouTube channel, who knows. I’m kind of a rebel like that…

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you’ll head over to the Always Fun Challenges blog and join us each week for a new theme. There’s so much inspiration over there, you just gotta check it out.

Until next time,

Misty

Copics for dirt road: E41, E42, E43, E44

Cardmaking · Challenges · Handmade Greeting Cards

Back To School

August 27, 2017August 28, 2017 Happy Ink Designs5 Comments

Hi guys!! Hope all you parents are getting back into the swing of a routine. We started school last Wednesday and I think we’re finally getting our groove back. It’s amazing how every year, we seem to forget how to cope with back to school!!! We struggle with the getting up early, getting lunches made, early bedtime routine, as if we didn’t just do it the year before!! This year is particularly crazy because my husband is coaching football and I took over as the Vice President of the football league (first year even on the board so I have no idea what I’m doing). I’m here to tell you, it’s a lot more work than I thought it was going to be!! That on top of everything else in our lives is making me a little crazy. So school and football basically start at the same time. We’ve had Jayden’s best friend, Bubby and his Mom staying with us for a couple of weeks now so it’s been nice having another Mom here to help us function.

Speaking of “Back to School”, that is the theme this week at Always Fun Challenges. So bust out your back to school stamps and get crafty with them!! I don’t really have any school/teacher related stamp sets so this was the closest I could get. I absolutely LOVE these little birds from the Stacking Animals set from Simon Says Stamp. They work for so many different occasions.

Look how CUTE they are!!! And the glasses from the Geek is Chic die (by MFT) fit perfect on the biggest bird. I just can’t get over how cute they are. I added some Spectrum Noir Sparkle to the glasses and then topped them off with glossy accents.

This will go live after our hectic weekend, but right now I’m desperately trying to get my house clean for Jayden’s Birthday sleepover that we’re having Saturday night (so when you see this, that would have been last night). We just realized 2 days ago that we have to do it this weekend. My son’s Birthday is next week but next weekend is Labor Day weekend and I’m doing a 2 day craft fair, then we have football games every Saturday night from now until November. Our next home game isn’t until September 23rd. And I just realized all of this 2 days ago… Way to go, Misty!! My hubby is at the high school football game right now with Jayden and 6 of his friends so I’m taking advantage of this childless moment to CLEAN!!!

Thank you so much for stopping by. You guys always leave the sweetest messages for me. I really appreciate it. If you have time, head over to the Always Fun Challenges blog and check out last weeks participants. We have some beautiful entries. If you have some crafty time, I encourage you to join us this week for some Back to School fun! As always, AFC is open to anyone and everyone who’d like to participate. We have a fun, new theme each week.

Copics:

Blue Bird: BG10, BG11, BG13 Beak: YR12, YR21

Orange Bird: YR01, YR04, YR07 Beak: YR21, Y32

If you’d like to see how I made this card, just click on the video below. You’ll also find a list of all of the products I used below that.

Have a great week!!