Good morning crafty friends~ Here's a couple of cards I made using Crafty Secrets Garden Creative Scraps for their August Linky Party.

I enjoy anything that has to do with gardening and their Creative Scraps are just filled with oodles of lovely vintage images! Thanks so much for visiting! Blessings~ Birgit

Summer Lovin

What speaks most about summer to me is seeing beautiful flowers in the garden. This card makes me think of our clematis vine growing up the trellis and the bright yellow flowers are so happy!

I'm entering this card into the Simon Says Summer challenge. Thanks for looking! Blessings~ Birgit

Backgrounds using Embossing Paste

I had an opportunity to get down and dirty with this weeks PTI challenge, to create a background using embossing paste. I've seen this done on so many people's blogs and love the results they achieve. What I discovered, is that this technique is so outside of my box!
This was my first time trying embossing paste. I'll confess that I've had a jar of it sitting in my craft cupboard for many, many months and have never used it! So, when I opened it up I felt like a kid getting ready to make mud pies. And that's exactly what I did! Let me explain... I don't have any re-inkers but I do have some Tim Holtz distress bottles with the sponge on top. You know, the kind you squeeze and a little bit comes out on your craft mat? Well, I squoze and squoze that bottle and no ink was dropping onto my craft mat. So I squoze harder and yep! The top popped right off the bottle spilling almost the entire bottle onto my craft mat and everywhere else! I was about ready to call it quits and skip the challenge but decided to give it one more try, this time being very careful how hard I squeezed the bottle.
Here's my completed card:

Not the best card on the block but it will have to suffice. I'm not so sure I'm going to jump back in to this technique any time soon. I might just keep admiring other peoples creations using embossing paste. Thanks so much for looking! Blessings~ Birgit

Falling into Fall

Hello paper crafting friends! I've been enjoying blog hopping lately and My Favorite Things just recently had their monthly release festivities and it was filled with lots of fall goodness! It really got me in the mood to make some fall cards, so this card is meeting both of their challenges. MFT's Sketch Challenge as well as their Color Palette Challenge.
Here's my card:

I love the pop of navy blue with the fall colors in the color challenge.
I used MFT's Thankful Leaves and coordinating Fall Leaves Die-namics to create this. The Happy Thanksgiving sentiment is an oldie from SU! Thanks so much for visiting! Blessings~ Birgit

My Own Rendition

Good morning paper peeps! Anyone who visits my blog probably knows that I am a big, I mean B-I-G fan of Papertrey Ink products. They've recently started coming out with kits called "Make-it Market". I believe they're released monthly and are just filled with paper-playing, awesome goodness! I've yet to purchase a kit as they are a bit above my budget though I drool and ooh and aah at every release. Betsy Veldman is a paper crafting genius when it comes to putting these kits together. You can find her kits HERE on the PTI website.
At any rate, one of the kits that Betsy came out with was called Beautiful Brushstrokes. It is all about achieving a water color look using stamps. Let me add here that once the kits are sold, they're gone. And let me tell you, they sell out quick! So, I loved the inspiration from Betsy's Beautiful Brushstrokes kit and sat down one day to create my own version of some of her inspired cards from the kit. You can find all of her cards Here on her blog. I'm not claiming these designs as my own, they are complete copy cats of hers but I still wanted to share them with you so that if you are on a tight budget like me, you can see that you can still achieve similar looks using the supplies you already have. That being said, here's my cards.

This card was stamped in a water color fashion using Ruby Rose and Happiness In Bloom. The border was hand cut and a light watercolor wash was added to the background. I found a sheet of scrapbooking paper that had a bit of a watercolor look to it that coordinated perfectly, so you'll see that used in a couple of cards. A strip of washi tape was added to the bottom and since I didn't have any "Rainstones" that are included in the kit, I used clear Glossy Accents instead to create the look of dew drops.

Not bad, I think!

My next card was fun to create because I got to make my own stamped background paper. The kit comes with pre-printed papers that coordinate with everything in the set. The striped background paper is simply done using one of the brush strokes from Watercolor Wonder.

This card uses a set from Simon Says Stamp called "Favorite Flowers". A hand stamped border along the bottom with a strip of washi tape finish it off perfectly!

This is one of my favorite cards of the bunch! The base of the card is hand stamped using Watercolor Wonder. The roses are from a Mother's Day set from SSS. Washi tape, a button and string finish this card off.

This pretty card was made using the Daydreamer set from PTI. Here you can see the pre-printed scrapbooking paper I used. I sprayed a very light spray of homemade cherry glimmer mist to give it more interest. Some Glossy Accents dew drops finish this card off nicely.

This last card uses a set called Morning Glory from Sweet N' Sassy stamps that I colored using a water coloring technique. A piece of jute string adds a nice finishing touch!

So that's it for my Make-it Market "Beautiful Brushstrokes" inspired cards. See what you can find in your stash to create some pretty water colored cards today! Thanks for visiting! Blessings~ Birgit