21st Century Pillow Book

Hello! Welcome to my blog. If you're new, my name is Alison. If you're not, thanks for coming back! Today I am sharing a card that I created for the Coffee Lover's Blog Hop . This is such a fun hop with a ton of participants and sponsors, so I am excited to be joining in. My card features stamps from Ink Road . I just had to use the Inked Girl "Alison." Yup, she was named after me. Lara (the owner of Ink Road) has the coolest naming contests all the time. It is so cool to have a product named after you! I colored her up with Zig Clean Color Markers. My background was done with one of the stamps from my favorite Ink Road set, called Mug Life . I stamped all of the coffee cups with Iced Spruce Distress Oxide. Then, I applied some of the same ink to my palette, and used a brush and water to add shading to the cups. I love this tonal effect. I stamped a sentiment from the same Mug Life stamp set with VersaMark ink on to a piece of gray cardstock that I di...

Happy April! It's the beginning of a wonderful month for many reasons. One of which is because it is new release month at Doodles Paper Playground ! There are SIX new Sparkle Blends that are available, starting today and they are perfect for Spring! The card I am sharing features Cafe Au Lait.  So if you follow me, you know I am crazy about Gina K 's Wreath Builder Templates . I use them all the time, and I decided to experiment way beyond flowers. I used my favorite stamp set from Ink Road Stamps, called " Mug Life " and this is what I came up with. A kaleidoscope of coffee! I stamped the images with VersaFine Clair ink in Nocturne, and colored everything with my Zig Clean Color Markers.  Here's a good look at what's inside the Cafe Au Lait Sparkle Blend. You can see the soft coffee and milk colors, with different sizes and textures of sequins and gems. There are beads in the Blend too, but I opted to keep them out of this shaker. Would you look at tho...

Greetings! So, Valentine's Day was 9 days ago at the time of this post, but I never had a chance to share the cards I made for my family. I am not a fan of V-Day, and I usually wait until the last minute to make cards for it. Besides the chocolate, it's just not my thing. And really, I prefer the day after Valentine's Day when the chocolate is on sale. ;)  Anyway, I made a card for my husband, and each of my children. Here's the card for my hubs.  I used the amazing and funny " As You Wish " stamp set from Ink Road Stamps for his card. Did you know I named this set? I started off with a monoprint that I made ages ago with a Electric Pink Radiant Neon and Golden Glitz Delicata reinkers from Imagine . As I was designing this card, I thought that the monoprint needed a little something more, so I used a Tim Holtz stencil with Barn Door Distress Oxide, to give it a bit of a sun ray effect.  Then I stamped the Princess and Robin with VersaFine Clair ink on...

Greetings! Today I am sharing one of the newest Sparkle Blends from Doodles Paper Playground with you, and it has quickly become a favorite of mine. It's called " Cozy ", and it has such a fantastic color combination! I'll give you a close up below, but first....let's take a look at my card.  If you follow me on social media at all, you'll know that one of my favorite stamp companies is Ink Road Stamps.  Ink Road has fabulous, snarky, trendy, and amazing stamps, all wrapped up into one fantastic company. One of my most used stamp sets from them is called Mug Life . I thought that the travel cup was perfect for a shaker, so I decided to stamp it 3 times.  I cut out the wrapper area with an X-Acto knife, and painted the cups with my Koi Watercolors. The stamps were all inked with VersaFine Clair ink in Nocturne. Now, check out those fabulous colors n the Cozy Sparkle Blend! It's like a muted rainbow, and it's really quite refreshing. I am over the...

Hello! It's time for a new shaker card, and I used the "Star Spangled" Sparkle Blend from Doodles Paper Playground this time. This Blend has white, shades of pink, turquoise, silver, and some touches of red in it. There are lots of different sized sequins, gems, plus big, bold stars! It's a beautiful Blend and this color palette is easy to work with. I have mentioned before that when I make backgrounds with Distress Inks, Oxides, Alcohol Inks, etc, I like to make a lot of them all at once. I can sit for quite a while just making large backgrounds that I can cut down for card panels or die cut into smaller things at a later date. Not only is it fun to just make a bunch at once, but it saves me time when I go back to make finished cards later. Such is the case with this background. I used a few colors of Distress Oxides, applied them to my craft mat, sprayed them with water, and then dunked my cardstock into the wet inks. After it had dried, I used a rectangular st...

Hello! Today I have a card that is meant to inspire the folks that really aren't into shaker cards and a ton of shine. Yes, yes....I have heard that there are people out there that may not want to make shakers, and that's ok! You don't need to use Sparkle Blends from Doodles Paper Playground to only make shakers or sequin-heavy cards. My project today is actually a little light on the sequins. But I think it's just enough to be impactful and elegant. I had an idea to swipe VersaMark ink down the side of my card and to emboss it with metallic embossing powder to eventually play off of the sequins that I would add to the card later. I knew that the new Bells are Ringing Sparkle Blend would be perfect for this card, because it is pretty neutral in it's color palette. I though that doing this with a more geometric stamp set would be fun, so I chose the fabulous Full Circle stamp set from Ink Road Stamps . I swiped the side of my card with VersaMark ink and hea...

Hiya! My latest card features stamps from The Ink Road. I really love this company. I love the snarky sentiments, the encouraging words, the fun designs, the unique sets, and the owner Lara is pretty incredible. I was inspired not only by the Mug Life and Snarks and Recreation stamp sets that I used, but also by Imagine's August Color of the Month , which is Lavender. *At the time that I wrote this post, The Ink Road's website was down for inventory, which is why I didn't give specific links to the stamp sets. I will add them when the site is back to normal. I started off by stamping the sentiment (from the Snarks and Recreation stamp set) on to white cardstock with VersaMark ink, and then I heat embossed it with Amethyst Embossing Powder from Stampendous. Then I die cut it with a Fitted Frame from Set B. Next, I inked the edges with Pretty Petunia VersaMagic ink . I love the soft, chalky finish this ink gives. It's always been one of my favorite ink lines. N...

Hello! It's time for a new card, and I am featuring not only lots of beautiful sequins from Doodles Paper Playground , but a new (for me) stamp set from The Ink Road   called Full Circle . Doodles Paper Playground has released 6 brand new Sparkle Blends yesterday and as I was looking at them, I just couldn't decide which to use first. So I decided to use them all! Sort of. Here's what I did. I started off by choosing the circle images from Full Circle that I wanted to use. Then, I picked a different Memento Ink color from Imagine for each circle, creating a rainbow. After stamping them all, I used a 1" circle punch to cut them out. I arranged the circles on my card and popped up the orange and blue with foam tape for dimension. Then I began to choose my sequins. I picked through my entire collection of Sparkle Blends, though I did try to focus on using the new release as much as possible. The large orange, large holographic blue, and all of the small glitter s...