Sunny Shades By Jessica Shier

Hello Ai Fans!

I have birthdays on my mind so I thought that this Sunny Shades stamp would be loads of fun to color. I'm turning another year older, soon, and I'm feeling the pains of last year when I loaded my husbands cake full of candles. Ha! What goes around comes around!?

I first stamped these cool gals on a piece of Neenah 80lb card panel and colored them in using Copic Markers. I have the colors I used listed below. After using the color blender to add the highlights to the dark background I painted gold stripes with Liquid pearls. 

I love how that background shines! Using the Rounded Rectangle Stitched die (Second to larges) and a Big Shot I cut 4 Neenah 110lb panels then the pattern paper with the blue splatter. I glued all those frames together which made a nice hefty stack and attached those to a card base. 

I used the same round rectangle die to die cut the colored girl friends image and glue that to the inside. The sentiment was created with a dark coral pink color and die cut using the Hexagon Stitched Die set that I cut in half to create a more banner look. 

For the inside I used one of the pieces left over from cutting out the border frames and stamped the inside sentiment with the overflowing candles on the cake. I bet my cake will look just like that one! Haha!!

Copic Markers Used:

C7, C5, C3, C1

W6, W3, W0

E74, E51, E43, E35, E31

E18, E04, E00

R14, YR04, YR02, YR00

Y18, Y02

BG13, BG11, BG000

V25, V22, RV95

O Blender

Thank you for joining me today! 

Happy Stamping! 

CELEBRATE! NEW Holiday Mansion Sets Available! PLUS Challenge 250 House or Cottage!

Hello, Ai Fans!

Time to PARTY! Celebrate with us as we release TWO new additions our Holiday Mansion line! Create a festive birthday card with our HM Birthday Set, and decorate your home's yard with our HM Garden Set! Each set includes clear stamps and matching dies of small images, perfect to pair with our Holiday Mansion! These sets are available now at artimpressions.com, so grab yours today!

Jil is here with a beautiful tutorial, let's take a look!

Hello Ai fans!

 I made a stair step card featuring the NEW HM Garden Set that goes with the Holiday Mansion set. The card base is really easy to make. Let me show you how!

The images were stamped onto Spetrum Noir Ultra Smooth paper with My Favorite Things Extreme Black Ink.  The images from the HM Garden Set were die cut using the matching dies from the set. The house from the Holiday Mansion set was fussy cut.

The stair step card base is simple to make.  Here is a template with pen markings on it so you can see the cut marks as well as the score marks.  The trimmer shown is a Fiskars trimmer but you could use a metal ruler and a craft knife. The card base is cut to 4 1/4" x 9". It needs to be cut in from 1" on each side starting 1" up to the 6 1/2" point.

Here is a close up view of where to start at the 1" point.

Here is a close up view of where to stop at the 6 1/2" point.

The blue pen marks show where to score the card.  Score both outside areas at 1", 2" and 61/2".  Score the inside area at 51/2".

This is the finished card from the side.

These are the patterned paper pieces.  The paper is the BoBunny Early Bird 6"x6" paper pack. The side and bottom piece are cut at 3/4"x4". The middle piece is cut at 17/8"x41/4".  They were all edged with a Pilot Silver Medium Point Marker. 

The panels were added to the card base before the colored house was added to the card with foam tape.  The colored images were added to the finished card.  

Copic Markers Used:
Blues - B0000, B000, B02
Browns - E30, E31, E33
Greens - YG61, YG63, YG67
Greys - C0, C1, C3, C5, C7
Pinks - R81, R83, R85
Yellows - Y32, Y35

Thanks for stopping by and Have a Great Day!

Thanks, Jil! Your step card is the perfect shape for our Holiday Mansion set!

It's a new release, which means we have a new challenge! This challenge theme is "House or Cottage" - so show us how you use homey imagery in your cards!

 Here are the Challenge Rules:

✻ Please make a new card or creation. You can make any crafty item you wish; this is not limited to cards!

✻ Limit two submissions per person. You will receive extra votes if you use Art Impressions stamps!

✻ The Ai Challenge is open to everyone, international submissions are welcome!

✻ Include a link back to the Ai Blog or grab our button on the top right of our sidebar!

✻ Share the Ai love by clicking and commenting your fellow crafters.

✻ Make sure to get your link up by Wednesday, February 27 at 5:00 p.m. PST to enter your creations.

✻ Good luck and happy stamping!

Inlinkz Link Party

It's time to announce the winners of last week's Stripes and Circles challenge!

Top Spot goes to...

Natasa!

Congrats! We love how clean and striking your card looks with such vibrant coloring agains gentle plaids! Our Old Guys Club image looks great inside a stitched circle! Email annelise@artimpressions.com with your address to claim your prize pack!

Honorable Mentions to go...

Amy Marshall!

Kathy A!

Congrats, you two! Amy, your Fairy Spinner card looks fabulous amidst polkadots and stripes! Such cheery coloring! And Kathy, we adore this wintery card you made with our exclusive Snowman freebie. Super cute! Be sure to email annelise@artimpressions.com with your address and select a stamp of your choice for a prize!

One more thing before we go!

We are excited to announce our partnership with Hedgehog Hollow as the featured company in their April kit! Hedgehog Hollow offers a monthly subscription of crafty goodness paired with amazing inspiration, and Art Impressions will be highlighted in two months. Inside the kit you will receive over $45 in product, including EXCLUSIVE Ai Critter Cubbies stamps and dies! The Ai product in this kit will not be available for sale anywhere else!

You will receive:

* Over $45+ in product; with EXCLUSIVE Art Impressions Designs

* Exclusive coupon codes for a discount at Art Impressions, Ellen Hutson, and Tonic Studios USA

* At least FOUR full video tutorials on projects to make with your box, plus over 10 inspiration posts with instructions for using your box supplies

How it works: This kit is available as a one-time purchase, but if you sign up for a 3, 6 or 12-month subscription, you will receive other monthly kits of exclusive crafty products, as well as an extra bonus in your first kit! Please note that this pre-ordered kit will ship on April 1st.

Pre-orders are open now, so head over to Hedgehog Hollow to claim yours today! Hurry, pre-orders end on February 21, 2019!

Happy Stamping!

Hi Valentine! - By Crystal Schneider

Hi AI Fans!

Happy Valentine's day!

 I have been enjoying making lots of Valentine's day cards this year. This week I had fun playing with this adorable squirrel set Nuts About You. 

It's a really flat card I used a Oval Double Stitched die and stamped my image onto the oval. I wanted the squirrels to look like they are floating in the sky so I cut a piece of paper with some waves and moved it around the background and inked it in blue in.  

To add a little bit of detail I stamped "Hi VALENTINE!" in red ink and "THERE'S NUTTIN' BETTER THAN BEING WITH YOU!" in black ink.

TO finish the card I used two different sizes of the Rectangle Double Stitched dies and die cut some pattern paper and layered it all with some foam tape. Then adhered it to a 5 1/2" X 4 1/4" card base.

Spectrum Noir Markers:

DR3, DR6, DR7, MB2, MB4 

Happy Stamping!

NEW VIDEO! Illustrated Letters Watercolor

Hello Ai Fans!

It's our favorite day of the week, Watercolor Wednesday! We could hardly contain ourselves and this adorable new video by our co-owner and sole artist, Bonnie Krebs! She created beautiful illustrated alphas using our WC Serif Letter Set and coordinating animals. For this instructional, she uses one of our WC Cats Set images with the capital serif C for a framed design. You could easily create this design with any other letters for monograms and coordinating animals. like our WC Bunnies Set and WC Critter Sets shown for the B and D examples!

We hope you LOVE this tutorial as much as we do! Hop over to this video on YouTube to share the love with a "thumbs up" and a comment! We always love to hear from you!

Wishing you a very happy Watercolor Wednesday!

View on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HHkbtWZXOjM

Front Porch Circlet by Niccole Kulig

Hello Ai Fans and Welcome!!

Happy Wednesday! Today I am sharing another Circlet card since it is the last day of Stripes and Circles challenge.

I used the Circle Double Stitch Dies for all my circles. I used a different pattern paper for each page. I also colored the middle circle of each set with my Marine Green Copic. I then die cut all of the shapes that are included with the Front Porch Circlet stamp and die set.

From here I glued all of the layers together. 

I made a flat 6x6 base to attach my card to.  All in all I used four different pattern papers for all of my layers.  In the picture above you can see the dimension to the different layers of the three circles.

I made a hinge with the three layers and glued them together so that it could open like a top folding card against the flat 6x6 card base.

I hope you  enjoy the card as much as I did making it.  They are really easy to put together with the coordinating stamp and die set.  These Circlets are very versatile and can be used in so many ways; I hope you grab yourself some.

Thank you so much for stopping by.

Markers used:

Copic YG99 - Marine Green

Marvy No. 6 - Brown

Marvy No. 15 - Olive Green

Marvy No. 17 - Steel Blue

Marvy No. 40 - Brownish Grey

Marvy No. 43 - Brilliant Yellow

Marvy No. 45 - Sepia

Marvy No. 89 - Persimmon

Until next time … Hugs & inky fingers!

Pasture Circlet MTF Shaker Card by Jil Lebel

Hello Ai fans!

I am super excited about the new circlet release.  All four of the new designs are just stunning!   The Pasture Circlet MTF is my favorite because of the horses.  I first got on a horse when I was three and my parents say that I was hooked from there.  I grew up riding and showing horses.  When I colored these two, I had two specific horses in mind.  The lighter horse is a Palomino named Cotton Candy and the darker on is a Bay named Shadow Bay.  I hope you get as much pleasure from coloring these images as I have.

All three of the images were stamped onto Spetrum Noir Ultra Smooth paper with My Favorite Things Extreme Black Ink and colored with Copic markers.  The colors used are listed at the end of this post. All three of the images were cut from the paper using the coordinating dies that come with the stamps as well as the Circle Double Stitched Dies. The card was assembled using the Carta Bella Spring Market 6"x6" paper pack.  The Simon Says Stamp Painted Thanks die was cut with two different brown papers.
The top layer was created by cutting the MTF layer into a white side folding A2 card base.  The pattern papers were attached to the card front.  The colored MTF piece was attached right over the cut out with wet adhesive.

A piece of acetate was attached to the back of the second layer of the MTF using wet adhesive.  Once it was dry, two layers of foam tape was added behind the white layer of the piece.  To make the foam tape bend, just pull of both protective layers as you apply it.  Be sure not to leave any gaps in the foam tape or your filling may spill out.  Confetti was added to the center of the image and it was added over top of the last colored layer of the MTF.  Both layers were added to the decorative papers and then attached to the inside of the card being sure they were lined up with the front window. 

Copic Markers Used:
Fence - E30, E31, E33, E35
Grass - YG61, YG63, YG67
Trail - E30, E31, E31
Barn - E13, E15, E19
Roof - C00, C1, C3
Sky - B000, B00
Horses - E31, E33 and E23, E25, E27, E29

Thanks for stopping by and Have a Great Day!

Love You Mower! by Carol Hintermeier

Hello Ai Friends!

The set I've used for my two cards today is called Born to Ride.  It actually has two other images included that I featured in my card on THIS post.

Both cards are very similar in design, however, the second one has a few more details.  Both were super easy to make too!  I used alcohol markers on both (listed below) to color the images, including the grass.  For this first card I stamped a mask to use a cloud stencil with Distress Oxide ink.

For the second card I paper pieced his shirt from some plaid paper.  I used a light gray marker to add shadows for a bit of dimension.  I die cut a sun and some clouds, popping up a few of the clouds with foam dots.

For me, masculine cards can be a struggle.  This stamp set makes it so easy to make a card for that special guy.  Thank you so much for stopping by!  Have a great crafty week.

Copics (**=Spectrum Noir markers)

Cap, shoes: B34, B97

Shirt: Y15, (**CT1, 2, 4)

Shorts: W3, W5, W7, (**AG1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Tractor:  YG06, YG17, YG67, R39, 29, 27, 17

Seat, gloves:  E25, E47, E15, E33, E53

Tires:  N5, N9

Wheels: N2, N4, N5, N9

Metal parts: N2, N4, N5

Skin: E30, E53, E02

Grass:  YG03, YG06, YG09, G05