Picket Fence Studios February Guest Designer

Hello everyone and Happy Valentine's Day!  

     I'm excited to be February's Guest Designer for Picket Fence Studios, celebrating their new release today.  I hope you'll follow the theme for the day and "LOVE" all that you see.

     For my first card, I was inspired by my mom and dad, who recently adopted two kittens from a local animal rescue program.  Picket Fence's Rescued is my Favorite Breed set, was perfect for such an occasion.  I'll be sending this to the veterinarian who has dedicated her life to rescuing cats and kittens and adopting them out.

     I stamped the puppy and kitten in black, brown and white and used my ScanNCut to quickly cut them out for me.  I placed them, willy nilly  around the card, in line with my cover plate die I used for interest.  After embossing my sentiment with Wow's Opaque White Fine Detail powder, I popped it up and placed a popped up kitten and puppy at the end.  I thought the veterinarian would appreciate the whimsical nature of the card.

  

     My second card was inspired by my grandma, who used to grow cats and kittens in her flower beds.  I think those were her favorite things to plant.  I used the Gingham background stamp on a die cut piece of kraft card stock, embossing it with the same white detail powder as above, to make my latticework.  I then used Gina K's Amalgam ink to stamp the blooms from Succulent Blossoms on to green card stock.  I then used Prismacolor pencil shades of green, purple and brown to complete the realistic look of the plants.  I embossed my sentiment, from the Let’s Shake Our Tail Feathers set, and cut it out with my new Cut-Align from My Sweet Petunia.  I adhered the lattice piece with the florals on a white card base.  I think my grandma would have loved this card.  I think I'll send it to my mom, to bring her some good memories.

     My last card, and probably my favorite, uses the Let’s Shake Our Tail Feathers and Shop Hard sets.  This design immediately struck my brain when I first saw the peacock feathers.  I thought I would change things up a bit, though.  Typically, I think I should have made the fan of feathers very colorful…just like a beautiful peacock is colored.  But with this card, I decided to make the woman’s outfit the colors of the peacock, using my Life ChangingBlender Brushes.  I accomplished this by stamping and cutting out my girl, twice.  I blended the ink on one girl, cut out her outfit and bow and glued them on the other girl. Instead of inking my feathers with colors, I embossed them with Brutus Monroe’s Gilded embossing powder, sideways on my white card stock.  I then placed my girl to the right of the feathers, so it looks as if the fan of feathers is actually her tail.  I embossed the sentiment with white embossing powder and cut it out with my Cut-Align.  Along the right side of my white card stock, I used gold metallic washi tape and black card stock to create a border.  This brought the feathers and black ink of the girl, together.  I adhered all this onto my white card base.  I think it turned out real lovely! 

     I hope you have enjoyed my projects.  Thank you to Picket Fence Studios, Lydia Fiedler, whom I bugged for hours, and my Stamp Junkies fellow admins for putting up with my blogging technical woes (and choice words).

     All Picket Fence products I used are linked below.  They are affiliate links, which provide me with a small percentage of the sales, but does not change the price for the customer.

     Thanks for joining me!  Marci