Tomorrow, October 6, 2012 is World Card Making Day! Plan now to stop everything and sit down and make a card (or two or three!) tomorrow.  If you make two, you can keep your masterpiece and still have one to send to someone! Just think how thrilled someone would be to actually receive a REAL card in the mail from you! Or take advantage of the day to start on your Christmas cards!  Plan a design today and then you'll be ready to go tomorrow for World Card Making Day!

This card looks beautiful in person.  I'm not sure the photograph does it justice. I used the Gently Falling stamp set of leaves.  It's two-step stamping:  stamp the leaf, then stamp over it with the outline stamp.  If you want it perfect, you can use the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig….but usually I just eyeball it and come close enough, as I did on this card. To make the multi-colored fall leaves, I used Stampin' Write Markers of various colors and then spritzed with some water very lightly to blend the colors. Then I over-stamped with the outline stamp of each leaf with Soft Suede. And I even sponged a little bit of color in between the leaves.

You could use this card for a masculine birthday card, Thanksgiving, or fall.

For some extra jazz, I spritzed the leaf part of the card with the Gold Glow Smooch Spritz.  You'll be able to see that gold spritz in the photo below.  The key to using the Smooch Spritz is to confidently push the spray button!  Don't try to do it lightly or half-heartedly or you will get big blobs of gold.  Just spray boldly and a fine mist will come out!  Use a box of some kind to catch the overspray, just in case.

Depending on your browser, you might be able to click the photo above and enlarge it. Then you'll be able to see the gold shimmer.

Happy World Card Making Day Tomorrow!

It's fall, for two days now!  Not that we can tell here in Houston, TX and we won't have colored leaves until December. But just to KNOW that it is fall makes me feel cooler and looking forward to all the things that are autumn.

This card was made with one of the leaf sets I have….Gently Falling. It's a two-step stamping set which means you can stamp the solid image of the leaf and then stamp over it with the outline image to define it….or just leave the solid image! Or you might want to just stamp the outline image and color in…or use it as a background as I did on the Gumball Green card base.

To give the look of fall leaves, I used several Stampin' Write Markers to ink the stamps. I would start with the lightest color of marker I was using on that stamp and ink up parts of the stamp.  Then I would progress with darker and darker colors of green or brown, for example.  This gives a multi-colored effect.  Either breathe heavily on the stamp to remoisten the ink or spritz it with a little water from a distance. That helps to blend the colors on your stamp.

Just because some packages of card stock were still not put away, I thought they looked good together and decided to use them….Gumball Green, Rich Razzleberry, and Very Vanilla….and some Soft Suede ink plus a little More Mustard and Tangerine Tango markers.

The little greeting is from Teeny Tiny Wishes (such a useful set!!), punched out with the Word Window Punch and layered on the Modern Label Punch. I almost didn't put a greeting so I could add an appropriate one later when I needed a card, but "Just for You" will do for a lot of occasions! I recommend purchasing the wood-mount version of Teeny Tiny Wishes since the stamps are so tiny.

It's fall so lets start enjoying the colors and the mood of autumn! The Stampin' Up! Holiday Catalog also has many stamp and paper choices as well as inspiration to get you in a fall-ish mood! If you need a Holiday Catalog, just email me at Karen@KarenStamps.com

We have lots of pretty periwinkles blooming in our backyard right now as well as some cute, delicate little pink flowers, Gaura, back by the fence.

So if you ever wondered where we stampers get our inspiration and ideas sometimes, these pretty flowers made me think of making a card with little pink and white flowers. As I looked over my stamps ets, the Fabulous Florets stamp set seemed to be the winner! I stamped some stems (in different directions as much as I could), then I stamped a few of the small and large flowers right on the card.  I also stamped flowers on Whisper White scrap paper with Black Stazon, colored some of them pink with Primrose Petals and left some white. With my trusty Paper Snips (they make detailed cutting SO much easier!) I cut out several flowers and played around with them on my card front until I was settled on a design. Once they were glued down with Stampin' Dimensionals, I added a little glitter with Dazzling Details.

Here's a tip:  Glue down the card front to the card base BEFORE adding the Dazzling Details or you will forget about the wet Dazzling Details and press your hand right into your glitter!

And maybe here you can see some of the Dazzling Details glitter!

Look out in your yard and see what catches your eye (or maybe your neighbor's yard!) and see what card or scrapbook page comes from that inspiration!

For all your stamping supplies, please visit my Stampin' Up! Online Store!