Curlicue Heart by Sharon Harnist

With the holidays almost over and Valentine’s Day / Spring weddings on the  horizon, it’s time to start thinking ahead! So today I have a sweet love-themed card to share with you.  This is Pink Ink’s generously-sized beautiful Curlicue Heart stamp. It measures approximately 2.75” wide x 2.50” tall.  I have gold heat embossed it onto a white  Inchie Arts 3-inch Art Square and watercolored the image with Peerless Watercolors. To give the image a homespun quilted look, I used a square stitched die to emboss stitch lines into the Art Square, then layered it onto a pinked-edge dark pink square die cut.  The image was then layered onto a white card base embossed with hearts.  Gold thread was wrapped up and placed behind the image, to resemble a bird’s nest.  Wishing you all much love in 2016!  Pink Ink products used, available online through Ellen Hutson LLC: Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Curlicue Heart Or check Pink Ink's website to find a local store near you that carries our stamps, or to order wholesale.

Just The Right Tag

12/20/2015

In some ways it's been a little harder to feel the Christmas spirit this year.  Probably due to the grim news and blustery politics of late.  On the other hand, I am feeling warm and fuzzy about having my son home for Christmas...it's been a very long time since he's celebrated with us.  His birthday is just two days before Christmas, so it has always been a "twofer" holiday for our family.  He's been enjoying cooking for our little family and is plotting the main dish (Chicken Jardiniere) for his birthday dinner.  We've also been making batches of Chez Noel cookies, one of my mom's delicious, old timey recipes. (You can find it at the end of the blog post). As the holiday draws near, nothing helps to get me in the mood like dragging out the wrapping paper rolls, ribbon spools, scotch tape and scissors!  I put on my favorite Christmas tunes and I am off and running. I am one of those types that loves to wrap presents.  I even volunteer to wrap other people's presents!  However, my downfall are those tedious Christmas tags.  For some reason, after wrapping everything I dread scrounging about for an appropriate tag.  This year, all I had left were the mismatched, leftover, weird and wonky ones.  So...what's a crafty person to do?  Devote 3 hours to making a big batch of tags (36 in fact!) and I didn't cut into a single new sheet of paper, just used snippets and scraps from the "red & green" bag.  I put all of my favorite Pink Ink Itty Bitty stamps and old scalloped punches to work, reeled out several yards of pretty twisty colored twine and voila!  Tags.  Plenty of them.  Pretty ones.  That match.    Stringing tags by my favorite window, listening to The Eddie Higgins Trio Here's a close up of some of my favorites And here is the whole batch! So now I'm done with the tags and the cookies and the wrappings and am ready for our birthday/Christmas dinner...finally feeling the "spirit" that had eluded me.   And this is my wish for you, that you are able to connect with whatever small and simple things that bring you peace and joy at Christmastime.     And now... Lois Johnson's Chez Noel Cookies                                      Oven Temp. 350 degrees Shortbread Base Layer: 3/4 cup butter at room temp. 1 1/2 cups sifted flower 3 Tbsp. sugar Mix and press into 15 1/2 x 10 1/2" sheet pan.  Bake 15 - 20 minutes Pecan Topping: 1 lb. box dark brown sugar 3 egg whites 1 cup chopped pecans 1/2 tsp. vanilla Beat egg whites until still and fold into mixture of remaining ingredients.  Spread on top of first baked mixture.  Bake until brown - about 15 - 20 minutes more. Enjoy!

My Little Factory

12/12/2015

Every Christmas I debate with myself over making a batch of homemade cards.  I mean, with a whole stamp company at my disposal you'd think I would delight in the task, but time is precious in December, and finding the hours to make 25 + cards by hand can be difficult.  But this year in particular, it seems as if peace is a very precious thing as well and to sooth my soul I wanted to make a card to sort of "wish the world" a Merry Christmas.  So I used Pink Ink's "Angel On High", "Peace On Earth" AND "Peace & Love" stamps to get my message across.  I knew I wanted a pretty, soft subtle card this year.  I just haven't been in the mood for boisterous Santa Clauses and sweet candy canes.  Instead I chose a palette of soft sage green with muted gold metallic accents.  To create my "factory" I first color the images...adding a touch of gold metallic paint to the angel's dress ribbon, then I cut the images and all background papers to size.  I measured and cut 2 lengths of olive green organdy ribbon (4.5 inches each) for each card.  Next, I attached my angels to gold metallic card stock "mats" and placed four squares of foam tape on the back corners of each angel with gold backing unit (leaving paper covers on).   Angel cards all in a row, with ribbon, envelopes and adhesives...what fun! At this point I attached the smaller green paper piece to the center of the larger one.  I then ran my tape runner around all four sides of the back of the larger piece and wrapped the ribbon pieces diagonally around each corner, pressing firmly on to the adhesive.  (You could also tape the ribbon ends down with regular scotch tape for extra security). Now the two separate pieces are assembled; sticking down the larger papers on the center of my card and attaching the matted angel to the center of the green papers.    The last part of my little assembly line was dotting each card with 8-9 dabs of Stickles platinum glitter glue and (after dry) using a metallic gold prisma pencil (#PC950) to add "star shines" around each glitter dot.    I added glittery stars with Stickles platinum, accented with prisma pencil "shinys".   And on the inside - Pink Ink's "Peace & Love" stamp along with my own greeting Homemade cards take time and thought, but I cherish all those on my "list" and want them to receive something pretty, made by my hands, and to wish them peace this Christmas.

Baby Hats

10/12/2015 Hello! I have a fun card I made today with some adorable new stamps from Pink Ink Stamp Company! Their new spring release is available now! I wanted to use something that wasn't super springy, since it ummm... isn't even the first day of winter yet :) So I chose the cute little baby hats! Baby's are born all year, so you could quite possibly need a baby card in December! So when I first saw this stamp, I thought it was adorable, but wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I studied it for a few minutes and then I thought "wouldn't they be cute all randomly stamped to created a background! So that is what I did here. I stamped them with waterproof black ink onto watercolor paper, and watercolored them with my Zig Clean Color brushes.  I cut a little off the bottom edge and added a pink stitched scalloped border, then layered that over some pale blue card stock. I stamped the sentiment on a stitched banner flag and then layered it onto a bigger one cut from the same paper as the blue underneath.  Thanks so much for stopping by! All of the supplies I used on this card are listed and linked below! Hugs, Kay :) Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Welcome Little One Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Baby Hats My Favorite Things Die-namics, Blueprints 20 ZIG Clean Color Real Brush Marker, Set of 60

Peace Love Joy

25/11/2015

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  I hope your day tomorrow is full of family, friends and love...and of course wonderful food. Have you seen the fabulous new release?  You can check out all of the new release gorgeous goodness HERE.  For today's post I used the new stamp called Curl Heart.  You can find this stamp locally in Colorado at Simple Pleasures Stamps and Scrapbooking or on-line at Ellen Hutson  I colored the stamp with Copic markers and the background was done with dye inks and a foam blending tool.  The stamp is the perfect size to experiment with all kinds of different colors.  I chose more colors along the pink/reds line so I could use this as either a Christmas card (who says everything needs to be red and green) or a Valentine's day card.  And we could all use a reminder to have peace, show love and be joyful all year round! Thanks for visiting today and may all of your holiday season be full of love, peace and joy. Shelby

Peace On Earth

18/11/2015 Hello! I have a new card to share with you today using a gorgeous Pink Ink stamp image! Angels are such a classic Christmas image and I just love them! I watercolored this pretty stamp with Distress markers on Master's Touch watercolor paper from Hobby Lobby. I cut the image out with an oval die and glued it to a peach colored card base. I added the stitched blue frame over it with foam tape. And a few PPP sequins made her shine! You can find this beautiful stamp at Ellen Hutson or stop by the Pink Ink Website to see a list of all the retailers! Thanks so much for stopping by! Kay :)

Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Angel On High

Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Peace On Earth

Must Be Santa by Sharon Harnist

Hello Pink Ink Fans -- Sharon here today.  Whether we are ready for it or not,  Christmas is just around the corner!  And with the stores already decked out  in holiday cheer, I can't help but get in the Christmas spirit when I see all the  pretty decorations!  And now you will probably be humming this song, just like I  was when creating this card! Isn't this Pink Ink Must Be Santa #6109H image the sweetest?!!  And with my rekindled love of watercolor, I couldn't wait to stamp it onto and an Inchie Arts 3-inch white Art Square and color it up!  I black heat embossed the image and then used Peerless watercolors to color it.  The matboard Art Square holds up very nicely to watercolor -- no warping and the colors blend very nicely! After the watercolors dried, I added White Wink of Stella to the white parts of Santa's suit, hat, mustache, and boot cuffs -- hopefully you can see the pretty shimmer in the darkened photo above. To finish the card, I layered the watercolored Art Square onto a Taylored Expressions Postage Stamp die cut from Bazzill Licorice Twist cardstock, tied Peppermint twine around the bottom, and popped the image up on foam pape. The card front was also watercolored using a brick stencil on watercolor paper. Thanks so much for joining me today!  ~ Sharon Pink Ink products used, available online through retailer Ellen Hutson LLC: Pink Ink Wood Mount Stamp, Must Be Santa Or check Pink Ink's website to find a local store near you that carries our stamps, or to order wholesale.