random reflections

October 5 in 5: Milwaukee Art Museum

Like last month, I'm cutting it close to get my 5 photos in 5 minutes posted for Sandie's monthly meme: 5 in 5. And like last month, I have had several opportunities to create a post, but didn't get to it. Today, however, I had another opportunity. It's a gorgeous fall day in Wisconsin, and our grandson, Caleb, had a day off from school so we went to Milwaukee for the day. One of  our stops was the fabulous Milwaukee Art Museum. In addition to a stunning building and wonderful collections, they also have the "Kohl's Art Generation Studio." It a hands-on studio that provides art activities for families. Today's activity was print making. After creating his etching, the volunteer helped Caleb create a print. It took less than 5 minutes. 

After the art museum, we found a great pizza place that was within walking distance to Boswell Book Company. It's a great independent book store. I've been getting their emails for a while now, and thanks to them, Sarah and I spent a delightful evening last night listening to Ann Patchett who is on a book tour for her new novel The Dutch House. I'd never been to the book store so it was a perfect opportunity. I managed to restrain myself but Caleb came home with a new book as well as one for Hannah.

 

Time Out: Encouraging

It's been awhile since I posted two days in a row! But I have a card for the current challenge at Time Out which is "Encouraging."

I often need these cards, and I love the little wreath from Altenew's "Weekend Doodles."

I colored the wreath in fall colors and die cut it, adding it with some dimensional tape to a card of Fresh Snow Linen after adding a strip of patterned paper from the "Winter Woods" collection--all Papertrey Ink.

Another Clean and Simple card added to the stash!

 

 

Halloween is Coming!

Typically, I'd wait until Halloween to share this year's cards, but the Simon Says Wednesday challenge is Halloween and I know for a fact, none of my grandchildren read my blog!

Luckily this year, I get to hand deliver cards to all five of them---though not on the same day. First off, for Hannah. All the supplies are from Papertrey Ink with the exception of the sentiment which is a sticker from Michael's.

 

The only embellishment was to glitter the stars and the witch's boots with the Nuvo Clear Glitter pen which doesn't show in the photograph.

All the rest of the cards are very similar. I used the "Caught in the Web" die, "To Die For Sentiments: Halloween" and "Ghosts and Ghoulies" from Ink to Paper. Caleb's (below) didn't get any glitter, but it does have a fuzzy spider with black eyes and eight legs. 

The rest all feature glitter in one form or another. This one has a glittery purple card base and the letters of the sentiment were covered with glitter.

This time it's the web that's die cut from silver glitter paper.

There's a fifth card with a black glittery web, but somehow I don't have a photo of it, and it's already in a sealed envelope.  Here, however, are the goodie bags for the little girls. Caleb and Hannah's are already packed for our trip to Wisconsin.

Here's hoping the weather cooperates for all the little trick & treaters!

 

 

 

Woodblock Wednesday

It's been a week since I posted. I have lots to share, but haven't had the energy to get blog posts organized. But I did pull out a favorite wood block stamp for the current Addicted to CAS challenge: Plaid.

It's one of my favorite stamps to paper piece, and typically works as a get well or encouragement card for either guys or women. This plaid from my stash seems more feminine that many I have. The stamp itself is a Memory Box stamp, and the sentiment comes from an old Papertrey Ink set, "Chair-ished." I added a bit of colored pencil under the chair to ground it. The card is a premade one from Paper Source. Fortunately, I don't have anyone right this minute in need of a get well card, but it's good to have one on hand.

After many beautiful sunny days (quite unusual for Rochester!) today is gray and rainy. It's a good day to edit photos (I'm almost done with our trip photos) and write blog posts. 

Woodblock Wednesday

While I was surfing around some card blogs, I happened on Amy Tsuruta's blog and discovered she's started a "Woodblock Wednesday" routine. There's no link-up or challenge, but here's what she wrote when she posted the first edition:

So, I decided to start a new blog feature, Woodblock Wednesday.  I have so many wood stamps that just don't get the love that they deserve.  They double up as decor!

Some of mine function as decor as well. I have a printer's drawer that hangs in my craft room and is filled with small wooden stamps, mostly sentiments. I also have several drawers of wooden stamps in a storage unit Tracy built for me years and years ago. I've donated a lot of my wooden stamps to charity, but I still have plenty to play along with the Woodblock Wednesday idea. I won't promise to post one every Wednesday, but I am going to make an effort to pull one out more frequently. Here's #1:

I've been stamping for over 20 years, and when I first started collecting stamps, they were all wood mounted or unmounted stamps. This stamp, "Pumpkin Harvest" by Annette Watkins is one of the early stamps I purchased, and I still love it. Perfect for fall. After coloring it with Copic markers, I fussy cut around the image and mounted it on a piece of fun foam.

After stamping the sentiment from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday" (not a woodblock), I scored three lines above and below the focal point to frame it. This was a lot of fun to color, and I have a lot of fall birthdays for which I need cards. 

The current challenge at AAA Birthday is a Color Palette Challenge, using fall colors. I love the inspiration photo of the gummies.

The challenge asks for at least two of the colors, but I think I have them all covered with this card, although my greens are bit more muted. 

Start With a Song

Pink Fresh Studio has become one of my favorite stamp companies. They hosted two challenges yesterday for World Cardmaking Day. I managed to finish a card for the first challenge: favorite technique.

One of my favorite techniques is to color images, and I'm also a fan of watercolor backgrounds which I don't do often enough. I combined both with this stamp set from Pink Fresh: "Aviary." I love the whimsical images in this set.

After watercoloring the background on Tim Holtz watercolor paper, I die cut it with a Spellbinders rectangle die and stamped the sentiment (also from "Aviary.") 

The individual images were also watercolored and die cut with the accompanying dies. Before I adhered the background to the Soft Stone card, I dry embossed a slightly larger Spellbinders rectangle to create a subtle frame. 

The final step was to arrange the three images. I used a bit of dimensional tape under the cute bird. 

We're off after church to the Finger Lakes with a friend for lunch and to pick up our fall order of wine from Boundary Breaks. Hoping it doesn't rain.

World Cardmaking Day

It's World Cardmaking Day, and I've had a bit of time to create a couple of cards. I'm hoping I'll have time to finish at least one more that needs to get in the mail later today. But for now here's a card for the current challenge at The Flower Challenge: Clean and Simple. Right up my alley.

In August, I was lucky enough to attend an Altenew Open House in Syracuse. We had the opportunity to play with the September release, so the image from the now released "Flower Garden" was stamped on a piece of white cardstock then. All it needed was a bit of coloring and a sentiment (also from Altenew).

I added the front panel to a card made from Papertrey Ink's "Lilac Grace," and called it done. It's almost a one layer card!

I don't often do partial coloring, but I really like it here, and think I'll do more of it in the future.

The second card is also for a challenge: Inspired By: A Truckload of Fall. 

 

As soon as I saw the image, I knew I'd play along this week. I had the perfect stamp set and it had been awhile since I pulled it out: "Little Pickup" by Honeybee Stamps. 

After coloring the image with Copics, I die cut the piece with a "Stitched Rectangle," and then die cut a slightly larger "Stitched Rectangle" from a piece of patterned paper by Sunny Studio. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "Scene It: Celebrations" set. All was then adhered to a kraft card. Not quite sure which guy will get this card this fall. If it was a bit more CAS I could enter it in another current challenge for masculine cards. I didn't think of that while I was creating it!

Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt

It's the last day of September and time for the final link-up to the Summer Photography Scavenger Hunt. Many thanks to Mary-Lou for hosting this fun event again! When I posted in August, I had just three items on the list to find:  #15 A broken chair/bench/stool #16 An out of season treat being enjoyed and #20 A favorite seasonal scent. I did come up with all three, and I also have a few extras to share. You can find my previous posts here and here.

The broken stool should have been one of the easiest to photograph since it was leaning against the side of our house. I walk by it repeatedly, but it almost never catches my eye.

I had an idea for an out of season treat being enjoyed, but ended up taking a photo of the hot chili I ordered on our way up to Mt. Rainier this month. It was raining and cold. I think of chili as a winter meal, but it was much appreciated on this mid-September day.

As I stepped off the porch at the Presbyterian Home at Chautauqua Institute in August, I was taken by the beautiful scent of this lily. I have lilies in my yard, but nothing that smells as wonderful as this did. It's beautiful as well.

As we were traveling, I came upon several more hand-written signs (#14) which I thought I'd share:

Both of these were outside shops in Bend, Oregon

These were at my nephew's wedding. I got a photo of them before they were moved to the appropriate places. 

It depends on your point of view whether this is a funny bumper sticker or not, but I couldn't resist taking a photograph of it. I know the owner of the card. It's a magnetic bumper sticker so it can easily be removed if need be.

And last, a delightful series of menus outside a restaurant in Ashland, Oregon in rainbow colors (#13)

Needless to say, being away for three weeks means being busier than usual with meetings and appointments to say nothing of a bit of jet lag. I hadn't even uploaded my photos from the trip until tonight. There were 773 of them after deleting some from my phone. There will be many more deleted once I get to editing them. I frequently take duplicates in case one isn't quite right, so that alone will eliminate quite a few. However, you can expect a few photo-heavy posts coming soon. I designated several places as photo walks for my 2019 intention. I'll never get to 52 (my goal was one a week) but I do have more than one a week from the trip.

September Five in Five: Hoh Rain Forest

On the fifth, I intentionally took a group of photos for this post at The Bledsoe Reserve on Bainbridge Island. My ability to connect my external hard drive to my laptop has been a pain in the neck on this trip. I'm quite annoyed that Apple decided not to include a USB port on the MacAir, and I haven't had much luck using my USB adaptor. The process of uploading photos is incredibly slow, and trying to access them with Lightroom is equally problematic. A trip to the Apple store when we return is on the books! So . . . in order to get this posted, I needed to look through my iPhone photos for photos taken within the five minute time frame. Fortunately, I found some interesting ones I took on the Olympic Peninsula at the Hoh Rain Forest. 

I handed Tracy my phone for this one of me among the trees. It gives you a good sense of the size of the trees. There's nothing like this on the east coast!

The moss hanging from these trees is typical of many of the forested areas where we've hiked on this trip. We saw them in the Rainier National Park as well as The Trail of Cedars in the North Cascades National Park.

I'm linking this up with Sandie who kindly hosts this monthly meme.

Card Concept Challenge

There's a lovely new photo inspiration at The Card Concept.

In need of multiple thank you notes earlier this month, I pulled out some butterflies I had embossed and die cut earlier, and colored them with Copic markers. I added a thin strip of black cardstock to a premade card from Paper Source and added the butterfly to the center. 

Then I stamped the sentiment from Papertrey Ink's "Never Enough Thanks" in black in. I love this font and wish I had other sentiments that used it.

This is clearly a quick Clean and Simple design---right up my alley.