random reflections

Color Hues #28

A new Color Hues Challenge is live. Nancy chose Red and Kraft for this round.

It’s not a color combo I typically use for Christmas, but I love the way this ended up.

It’s really past time to start thinking about Christmas cards so I used this opportunity to create one using two dies I’ve never put to use. I purchased Altenew’s “Poinsettia 3D Die Set” last year at the end of the season after all my Christmas cards were made. The Waffle Flower “Triple Line Diamond Panel” die is newer, but it’s been in the stash for a couple of months.

I die cut the “Triple Line Diamond” panel from Kraft cardstock (Papertrey Ink) and added it to the card base. It needed a festive touch, so I die cut a second panel from gold and inlaid the tiny squares. Sadly, the poinsettia covers up quite a few of them. The bonus is that I’m left with a lovely gold panel you’re likely to see soon.

The poinsettia was die cut from red cardstock (Concord and 9th) and splattered with gold watercolors from Gansi Tambi’s “Starry Colors.” I added some dimensional tape under some of the bracts of the poinsettia.

The sentiment from The Greetery’s “Sentiment Suite: Christmas” was gold embossed and die cut with one of the “Sentiment Suite Basic” dies. Instead of using the tiny die from the poinsettia set for the center, I chose some gold pearls from The Paper Studio.

I hope you'll hop over to the Color Hues Challenge and join in the fun, checking out the cards made by my awesome Design Team members and our Guest Designer, Ma-Mi.

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 Tracey

 

 

Celebrate!

There are two celebratory challenges running right now, and I pulled out a die I've never used to create a couple of birthday cards for them. AAA Card Challenges is celebrating their 200th challenge (Congrats! That's a lot of challenges!), and Seize the Birthday is asking for cakes! I was happy to oblige.

I wanted to use pink with chocolate cake for one of my cards but also die cut some portions of the cakes in metallic and shimmer papers, being unsure of what I'd want in the way of decorations. In the end I had enough pieces to create two cards--one definitely feminine and another that could work for both men and women. 

I started with a pre-embossed piece I found in my collection of ready-to-use pieces and die cut it with one of the tags in Gina K's "Tag Trio." It turned out to be a perfect size for the cake, but I ended up deciding it required a 5X7 format which I don't typically make. 

You can see the white embossed pattern on the tag. I have no idea what I used to create that piece, but I'd like to locate it. The fun cake is My Favorite Things "Birthday Cake" die, and although I've never used it before, it must already be retired as I couldn't find it on the MFT site. 

For the second cake, I chose one of The Greetery's "Crimped Frames." I love the gold and silver with the chocolate cake.

The only change for the second card was to emboss the sentiment from Papertrey Ink's "Banner Sentiments" in gold.

On both cards, I inlaid the circles on one layer of the cake. On the pink card, I used the same pink shimmer paper as the other "frosting" layers. On this card, I had some white shimmer circles and liked those better than either of the glittery decorations.

It's always a good idea to have a few birthday cards in my stash. And I'm quite sure I'll find just the right recipients for these. I'm also sending these cards to the October NBUS Challenge. I'm so relieved to have finally gotten around to using this fun die. It certainly won't be the last time!

 

 

A Christmas Poinsettia

Along with Halloween cards, I finished a few Christmas cards last weekend as well. There's now a small stash, but it certainly needs to grow by leaps and bounds by the end of next month! This card was made with two challenges in mind. One of my favorite challenges (which I've neglected recently) is The Flower Challenge. They are celebrating their 5th birthday, and I wanted to be sure to celebrate with them. The challenge calls for Using a Shape. The second challenge is a Christmas challenge. I ought to participate in these all year long, but I seem to wait until the time is drawing near. The CAS Christmas Challenge calls for Red & Gray.

It's a color combination I like, so I set out to create a Christmas card with a flower, on a shape, using red and gray. I'm pretty happy with the outcome:

The poinsettia is one of my favorites, Altenew's "Modern Poinsettia." I watercolored it with The Stamp Market watercolors. I struggle with those sometimes, but I slowed down and finished this over two days, letting the previous coats dry completely. After finishing it, I splattered it with white ink.

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the "Braided Circle" die from Pinkfresh Studio was cut from light gray cardstock which looks more cream in the photo than it does IRL. 

The circle and poinsettia were layered onto a dark gray card base. I used a few small pieces of dimensional tape behind the leaves of the poinsettia. According to Google, poinsettias do not have petals, just leaves which are different colors given the amount of light they've had. Technically, they're called bracts. The flowers are actually the small centers of the poinsettia which I colored in a yellow green. They are one of two favorite holiday flowers, the other being cyclamens which are available all year, but were always a Christmas gift from my father when he was alive.

The sentiment, embossed in silver, is from a Colorado Craft set I ordered at the end of last year and have never used, "Slimline Poinsettias." I've yet to stamp or color the beautiful flowers in that set, but I used all three of the accompanying sentiments this weekend while I was crafting Christmas cards. I think you'll see them on lots of cards. The fonts are really lovely, and they're universal holiday greetings. The final touch was to add a few silver pearls from Trinity Stamps.

Hocus Pocus

Saturday was World Cardmaking Day, and although there were no posts from me here or on Instagram, I was busy crafting on Saturday and Sunday. Many of the cards I finished may end up with blog reading friends, so I won't post those until they've been received. Some others were Halloween cards, and I'm not sure who's getting what. I do know who's getting this Halloween card, and I'm pretty sure she isn't reading my blog regularly. I'm entering it in two Halloween challenges today, though, so I'll take my chances.

For once, I didn't have anything other than the ink blending background in mind when I began. I used Wilted Violet, Twisted Citron, Carved Pumpkin and Spiced Marmalade for the ink blending, adding in some Black Soot around the edges.  Once that was done, I decided I wanted to add the Pretty Pink Posh "Spider Web" stencil to the mix, and added some more Distress Oxide inks over the top.

When that was finished, I started looking through my Halloween stamps and dies. I recently purchased a set from The Stamp Market, "Happy Halloween," and used the witch's hat, the spider, and the sentiment from that set.

The three ghosts are from a Poppy Stamps die set I purchased years ago. I popped the largest of the ghosts and the spider up with dimensional tape after drawing a line with a permanent marker for the spider to crawl down.

I love the glow of the ink blended background. I'm entering this in two challenges: Just Us Girls:  Halloween, and The Paper Players:  Spooky.

Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt: Final Link-up

I don't often post twice in one day, but today the new Color Hues Challenge went up, and it's also the final link-up to the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt, kindly hosted by Mary-Lou. You can find my previous link-ups here and here. I managed to find all the items on the list as well as two of the alternates. No excuse for not having a photo of a local landmark; it just fell off my radar.

So here are the final photos.

A Breakfast of Champions 

Not sure this qualifies as a breakfast of a champion, but it's reliably my breakfast of choice: a No-carb egg bake that I make, cut in squares, and freeze with a selection of fruit.

Favorite Time of Day

I love evening, especially when we're near the water and can capture the sunset. I'm quite sure we regularly have lovely sunsets in Rochester, but to capture them I need to be in the right place at the right time, which rarely happens. This was taken at Big Twin Lake in Michigan in August.

Head in the Clouds (and in the water!)

Window Views

I had several window views, but decided on this one: the view from my craft room looking out at our front yard.

Your Marie Kondo Moment

Sadly, I neglected to take a Before photo, but I'm proud to say that this photo was taken just this week, and the drawer was organized in early August. I think I finally came up with a system that works! Needless to say, there were a few items that left the house all together, and a few put away to see how often we really need them (Haven't pulled any out yet.)

Your Best Doodle Art

I have a tiny sketchbook where I randomly choose things to draw and watercolor. I've gone through and created a frame on each page with a credit card which gives you an idea of its size.

An Exit

I'm quite sure if I'd been more attentive, I could have found a more creative response to this prompt, but it didn't happen. I was alert enough to capture this in Traverse City, Michigan during the last day of our trip in August.

Decades of Sharing

Interestingly, this was the most difficult prompt for me. I can only be sure that these items are from the 80's because all three moved with us from our previous house. We've lived in this house for 36 years now. (That seems totally amazing to me.)

And finally, my most beautiful landscape of the season. In fact, it's not my favorite photo from the summer, but it's one of the few that truly quality as a landscape--a result I'll chalk up to the pandemic, and not much travel this summer. The cloud photo above might suffice as well. This view of Seneca Lake from the Boundary Breaks Winery was the last capture for the scavenger hunt, taken just last Saturday.

Thanks, again, Mary-Lou for compiling the list and encouraging me to be on the lookout for opportunities to capture a slice of our lives.

 

 

 

 

Color Hues #27

We have the perfect color combo for the first of October's Color Hues Challenge:  Orange and Green. There's still a lot of green on the trees here, but each day we see a bit more color. I know there are lots of folks who are not a fan of orange, but it ranks up there in my top five color choices.

 I recently acquired The Greetery's "Botanic-cut: Ginkgo" dies, and couldn't wait to put them to use. I also used the new Greetery sentiment set: "Everyday Labels." I love the font and the art-deco appeal of these sentiments. 

After die cutting the Gingko leaves, I used Spiced Marmalade, Carved Pumpkin, and Bundled Sage Distress Oxide inks to blend color onto the stems and leaves. I followed up with some Polychromos colored pencils for some detail.

I die cut the largest of the "Crimped Frames" (also The Greetery) from black cardstock, embossed the sentiment in gold, and added the Ginkgo leaves.

I added three small gold pearls as a final accent after adding the framed piece with dimensional adhesive to a black card base.

I hope you'll hop over to the Color Hues Challenge and join in the fun, checking out the cards made by my awesome Design Team members and the two Guest Designers, Jacinda and Marcia - the winners of the birthday challenge.

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

Tracey

 

Celebrate: Autumn Challenges

I'm back with another CAS Autumn themed card. 

More leaves, this time from Papertrey Ink's "Lovely Leaves" which has not had anywhere near enough love! I smooshed Distress Inks in Crushed Olive, Dried Marigold, and Spiced Marmelade on my glass mat, added a spritz of water and then laid down a piece of watercolor paper. Once it dried, I gold embossed the leaves and fussy cut them out.

The colors weren't quite as bright as I wanted so I used a small paintbrush and added a bit more of the oranges to the leaves.  I used my well-loved "Crimped Frames" from The Greetery to die cut a piece of Gina K's Asparagus cardstock. It's become my favorite green. The sentiment from Pretty Pink Posh was embossed in gold in the lower right corner and I arranged the leaves in the upper right corner, leaving plenty of open space. I added thin gold bow and attached it to a cream card base. 

This is my first entry to the Addicted to CAS Challenge: Autumn, and my second entry into the Inspired By . . . Colorful Fall Challenge.

A Perfect Saturday

Yesterday we made a trip to the Finger Lakes. It was clear and quite chilly when we left the house around 7:00. Our first stop was at the Mennonite market in Seneca Falls where we picked up our favorite brand of bacon, some pork chops, green beans, two blocks of cheese, and a 50# bag of bird seed. We had packed a cooler for the meats and cheese and headed to Ithaca to the Farmer's Market.

On our way we stopped at Taughannock Falls to take a few photos. I have a new phone and wanted to try the camera. Most of these photos have had no editing other than being cropped to an appropriate size to print if I ever want to do that. It's quite a bit better than my previous one which was three generations old.

It was our first trip to the Ithaca market since the pandemic began, and like many things, was a bit diminished. My biggest disappointment was the disappearance of my favorite bakery. Nonetheless, there were still gorgeous vegetables and flowers, and I did find a delicious cranberry orange scone for a mid-morning snack.

The market sits right at the end of Cayuga Lake, and the rowers were out in force on this beautiful morning. Both Cornell and Ithaca College have rowing teams as does the high school so I'm not sure who was out practicing.

In addition to the sunflowers at the market, we found these on one of the rural roads we travel on the Finger Lakes.

The primary reason for the trip was to pick up our fall allotment of wine at Boundary Breaks where we are members of the wine club. Not only do they make wonderful wine, the views are among the best on Seneca Lake.

Although some of the grapes have been picked, there are still many left on the vines waiting for just the right time to harvest.

We arrived right at lunch time and enjoyed a wine tasting while we sat overlooking the lake.

But that was not the end of the day! After arriving home around 2:00, we had just enough time to rest up before heading off to our granddaughter, Skylar's, 10th birthday dinner. Skylar asked for a pajama party, but we were all assured it was an optional requirement. Even Ella, the seven year old, decided against it.

As always there was a piñata to break open.

Then there were gifts to open and a delicious dinner ordered from Skylar's favorite Korean restaurant. (The dumplings are amazing!) And finally cake.

If you've made it this far, thanks for hanging in there. I thought I'd share her birthday card as well. One night in August the girls arrived for dinner and needed to head home earlier than usual since they had been allowed to stay up late the night before to catch fireflies in a jar. I had recently purchased a couple of fun stamps and dies from The Greetery so knew exactly what I wanted to create.

Shaker cards are usually a hit and this one was so much fun to make.

I originally had three fireflies inside the jar, but the sequins kept getting stuck on their vellum wings, so I took the card apart and redid the stamping inside, moving all but one firefly to the outside of the jar.

The sentiment is just perfect for a new fifth grader. Skylar had expressed an interest in Copic markers from watching some You Tube videos. I was pretty sure she didn't want Copics, so I did some research while we were in Wisconsin. But instead of guessing what might work, I gave her another card last night with a promise of art supplies.

Today Skylar came over to play with my art supplies for a couple of hours. She tried out the Copics, the Tomboys, some watercolor markers, and some pan watercolors. In the end we ordered a set of alcohol markers that are less fussy than Copics and less expensive so she was able to get a good selection of colors. I gave her a few stamp sets, an ink pad, and a sketch book from my stash so she'll have some things to play with when the markers arrive later this week.

It's been quite the lovely weekend! Hope yours was good as well.

 

 

 

 

Autumn Wishes

Getting back into the craft room has taken me longer than I hoped. Earlier this week I finished a very important birthday card which I'll be sharing later this week. Today, however, I finally had time to make a card for several challenges all focused on fall colors. While we were in Wisconsin, an order from The Greetery arrived, and in that order was the "Curio: Autumn" collection of dies. I pulled it out this morning and die cut quite a collection of the leaves and other fall items. I pulled out my Altenew 36 pan watercolor set and painted them in a variety of colors. Today, you'll see just three leaves, but I have an envelope with others that I hope you'll also be seeing soon.

The design of this card comes from last week's Freshly Made Sketches. It was designed by Cécile whose card designs are among my very favorites. I had hoped to get this card made in time to enter it in her challenge, but there was no way I could manage that. But I'm happy to adapt it here. The three squares were die cut with Ellen Hutson's "Essential Dies: Squares." Her Essential shape dies are among my most used dies. I adhered two of them directly to the card, and added dimensional tape to the third. The colorful leaves are from the Curio set and the sentiment from a very old Papertrey Ink set "Friendship Jar: Fall Fillers." (Another good investment!)

I'm entering this into four challenges all focusing on fall colors:  Inspired By: Colorful Fall, The Paper Players: CAS Fall Fun, and a second entry into Addicted to CAS: Leaf, and CAS Mix-up: Autumn Colors and Watercolor.

 

Color Hues #26: Purple and Pink

Time is flying by and it's already the middle of September! I need it to slow down a bit, or find a way to add a few more hours to my day! Before we get to the new challenge, be sure to stop by the Color Hues Challenge site to see the winners of the first birthday party challenge! We had a wonderful gallery of cards, and it was not an easy task to choose the winners and runners-up.

The new Color Hues Challenge is Purple and Pink!

Purple and pink go together so well, I thought I'd have no trouble getting a card created. I first did a watercolored floral, but in the end, I decided the colors blended together so much it was hard to separate them. Then I acquired a couple of the Spellbinders "Large Die of the Month" dies, and found that they took care of the problem nicely. I ended up making two cards, one a CAS card (and the one I posted on the Color Hues site) and a more elaborate one which you'll see here. 

This card is a mini-slimline and uses dies from both Spellbinder sets: "Slimline Card Creator" and "Hex Kaleidoscope. To create the beautiful hexagon designs, I die cut each of three dies from three colors of card stock - two shades of purple and one pink. Once you line up the hexagons, you get this gorgeous design.

The "Slimline Card Creator" comes with a set of dies in different sizes and in two designs--one simple stitched rectangle, and the scalloped border I used here. I added a simple gold gem to the centers. 

Once again, I found the perfect sentiment in The Ton's "Easy Expressions: Birthday" set. There's a bit of dimensional tape in the center to balance the dimension of the three die cuts.

My second card is a true slimline card and I used the more ornate background die from the "Hex Kaleidoscope" set.

Again, I chose the same design for the hexagon embellishments, but instead of using three of them, I used the center hexagon for my sentiment.

The sentiment from The Greetery's "Opposites Attract" was gold embossed on white card and adhered with dimensional tape. I tucked three large gold gems around the sentiment, and small ones in the center of the hexagons.

One thing I like about the "Just a Note" sentiment is that it can serve as a lead-in to many inside sentiments from "Thinking of You" to "Wishing You a Happy Birthday" as does the sentiment "Just for You" on the first card. It's good to have some flexibility for the cards in my stash.

As always, I hope you'll join in the fun, and take a look at the wonderful creations from the Design Team and Guest Designer, Janet. 

Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

 Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

Tracey

I'm throwing one of these cards in the ring at Happy Little Stampers-Dies: Anything Goes, and in the gallery at Darnell's NBUS gallery.