December 1, 2009

Wow! I can't believe it's the first of December already. My husband was telling me last night that there are only three more shopping weekends until Christmas, good thing that I'm almost finished my shopping.

I was able to get some great deals last week at Walmart on black Friday. I usually do not do black Friday shopping, but my daughter and I went to Toys R Us to stand in line for the Zhu Zhu pets on Thanksgiving evening. After getting there 1 1/2 hours early, and seeing that the line was all the way around the back and side of the building, we decided to leave.

We were headed home when we decided to stop at Walmart. I got some great deals at Walmart, but I'm still not able to find any Zhu Zhu pet accessories. I still need the fun house and I was hoping to get the garage. I'm hoping I will find them before Christmas and I refuse to pay the outrageous prices that the eBay sellers and Craig's list sellers are charging for them. Wish me luck in trying to find some Zhu Zhu accessories!

For my card today I wanted to show how I sponged the background on the card that I made for last week's CAS challenge- the challenge was to use sponging on our cards. This is the card that I made for last week's challenge. I'm going to make that same card again and this time I'll take some pictures as I go along.

The first thing I did was to stamp my tree image.

Then I needed to stamp my image again and cut it out along the snow line of the image to create a mask for my sponging technique.

In this picture shown below you can see why I needed the mask. I wanted to keep the snow white and I didn't want any color along the bottom of my image. I started my sponging using Bashful Blue ink and a cut wedge from a SU sponge.

To create the clouds on my card I took a scrap piece of card stock and I punched out a scalloped circle. I used the scallop circle as a mask while I continued sponging.

In this picture below you can see how I used the scallop circle a little better. I held the scallop circle in one hand while I continued sponging with the other. Be sure to keep the scallop circle in one place while you are sponging. For this step I used Brocade Blue ink.

Continue moving the scallop circle wherever you'd like. When I was sponging over top of the scallop circle I tried to sponge just along the edge, you don't want to go too much above or below the circle. I also found that my sponging looked much better if I used smaller amounts of ink on my sponge and tapped using lighter dabbing motions.

Here is my finished cloud sponging and then I decided to use my VersaMark ink pad and Iridescent ice embossing powder along the bottom for the snow.

And below is a picture of my finished card. I trimmed my image before mounting it on Night of Navy card stock. I also added some snowflakes using a small snowflake stamp and my sentiment is from SU's Warmest Regards stamp set.

Thanks so much for looking!