random reflections

Home Sweet Home

The current challenge at The Paper Players is  a Clean and Simple one with "House" as the theme, and I have the perfect card to share.

I made this card for a housing warming party at my nephew's beautiful new home, but didn't have time to share it. 

Those cute houses are actually in the Pinkfresh Studio "Our Home to Yours" stamp set which was designed as a Christmas stamp. In bright primary colors, however, the houses work perfectly for any time of the year.

The sentiment, stamped in black, is from the Simon Says "Home Sweet Home" set. I trimmed the panel down so I could add some black and white patterned paper from My Favorite Things. Then it was all added to a bright green pre-made Memory Box card.

I'm also sending this off to Addicted To Stamps and More where the challenge is "Any Occasion."

 

 

Color Hues #41

Cindy has chosen a unique color combination for this round of the Color Hues Challenge.

Like last month, it took me awhile to come up with an idea.

But when I was looking through my stencils, I came across The Greetery's "Always in Bloom" stencil set and knew it would work perfectly. I ended up stenciling just a portion of the whole design, but I'm quite happy with this very cheery card! 

There is an accompanying stamp set with this that I didn't purchase so I added the details some ink blending and then with colored pencils. I think it came out just fine, and I wouldn't have used the layering stamps in the set. 

Turns out that all the products are from The Greetery. I die cut the panel with the Postal Frame, which I've owned for quite some time and never used before. I love the stitching inside the postal border. The sentiment is from a favorite set, "Birthday Blooms." The die cut for the sentiment is so perfect. I added a some foam behind the main panel and some narrow dimensional tape on the sentiment for a bit of interest. The final touch were a few red AMuse pearls which I've owned for years. I liked them so much I bought several packs of them, and it's proved to be a good purchase.

Hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our two Guest Designers, Kim and Marcia have come up with . . . and join in the fun!

Flowers for My Sister-in-law

When I saw the challenge for Just Us Girls go up, I knew I'd make a floral card for my sister-in-law who had major surgery today. She came through it well, and actually went home this evening. Knowing her, that's what she'd want to do. I think I would have opted for a night of nursing care before leaving. I also thought I had plenty of time to enter the card in the challenge. I finished it yesterday, and realized tonight that the challenge ends tomorrow! So another late entry into a challenge. 

The challenge is Flowers. Perfect for this time of year, and perfect for an encouragement card.

Some time ago, I stamped a bunch of florals from Pinkfresh Studio's Beautiful Blooms on watercolor paper and on Neenah for Copic coloring. The other night I pulled out my Zig watercolor pens and a waterbrush and colored a variety of them. It's another one of the stamp sets that has been on my table for weeks, so I was happy to finally put it in use. I included two of the flower sprigs on this card.

On an Enchanted Evening card base, I added the Pinkfresh Studio Floral Grid coverplate which I had backed with a piece of white cardstock and cut down so there would be a blue border. 

The sentiment is also from Pinkfresh Studio. It's called Perfect Sentiments and you stamp a group of them all at once, and one die cuts them all out. Perfect, indeed! I did a group of gold embossed, one of which you see here as well as a group of black sentiments so I have a ready stash of them for cards. It's another NBUS! I'm finally making progress on getting all these stamps and dies in use.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy watercoloring with Zig markers. I expect to put them into heavy use in the next few weeks!

In addition to Just Us Girls, I'm sending this off to the May Pinkfresh Challenge which is "Anything Spring," and I'll be adding it to NBUS. I'm hoping to flood the gallery at NBUS in the next few months!

 

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day in the States, and I have one last card to share. 

While we were in Hawaii, I got an order from The Greetery which included the earlier released Bontani-cut Strawberries. The Postal Frame was also in that order. A friend had die cut a few of them for me, and I knew they'd be a useful addition to my collection of frames.

With the exception of the tiny sentiment, everything is die cut. I die cut the strawberries and leaves from colored cardstock and added some shading with blending brushes and Distress Oxide inks. 

I added a small yellow pearl to the center of the sweet little blossoms. The berry basket is from The Greetery as well--one of their Market Baskets, and the patterned paper insert for the basket was from my scrap file. 

I'm entering this in the current TicTacToe Challenge, where I used the bottom row across: Die Cut, Leaves, Pearls.

I'm also sending this to NBUS since I've never used my strawberries dies before.

 

 

 

 

 

Cards to Share

This blog post has been a long time coming. I intended to get these cards posted in two separate posts early this week. My desktop computer, however, has been giving me problems for the last several weeks. Apps weren’t syncing the way they should, and one of the photo editing apps I use wasn’t working at all. Tracy is very good with computers, but even he has been baffled by the problems. Finally today, he cleared the whole computer and reinstalled everything.

Here are four of the Mother’s Day cards I made.  Two of them ended up in the mail. We had planned brunch here on Sunday, but on Tuesday evening Matt and two of the girls tested positive for Covid, and when we tested the next morning, I was also positive. With both vaccinations and both boosters, it tells you just how contagious the new variant is. I would have never tested for Covid as the symptoms seemed like a bad day for allergies. Tracy, Betsy, and Skylar all continue to test negative. So random, really. Ella was the sickest, and it was her symptoms that prompted the testing. Everyone is doing fine now. 

All four cards were created with Pinkfresh Studio’s Washi tape and die sets. The sunflowers were part of a fundraiser for Ukraine early in the war. All the proceeds were donated to those serving mothers and children uprooted by the fighting.

The oval die is Pinkfresh Studio's "Braided Tag" and I embossed the sentiments from Papertrey Ink's "Simple Stems" in gold. The Washi tape is also edged in gold. 

 

 

This card uses the same Washi tape, but I arranged the floral on a Pinkfresh Studio "Braided Circle." The sentiment is from Pink and Main's "Special Day."

Finally, the gold edges of the Washi tape show up here in the close-up. It's really beautiful in person.

I used the Pinkfresh "Into the Meadow" Washi tape for the next two cards.

I already had a die cut panel of the Pinkfresh "Floral Grid" coverplate and I trimmed it down and layered it on a white card base. After adhering the florals with dimensional tape, I added tiny pink gems to the centers of the florals. The sentiment from Pinkfresh's "Always Uplifting" was stamped on one of the PFS "Basic Frames"

The next card turned out to be my favorite. I laid the white die cut "Geo Tiles" coverplate on the bright pink cardstock and immediately thought of an elaborate trestle. 

After arranging the florals, I die us a Reverse Confetti "Lacy Scalloped Circle" and stamped the sentiment from The Stamp Market's "Fresh Cut" stamp set.

I'm entering this card in The Card Concept Challenge: How Does Your Garden Grow.

 

 

Color Hues #40

Hard to believe there have been 40 challenges now at the Color Hues Challenge! Carol has chosen the colors for the next round:

It's a lovely color combination, but I struggled this time to come up with an idea for a card. I finally settled on a design from an old favorite from Simon Says, "Be Kind," and pulled out my Polychromos colored pencils. I used some Stonehenge paper made for colored pencils for the leaves, and then discovered a pad of colored Stonehenge that had the perfect shade of tan.

The blue card base is actually a lighter blue than it appears in the photo. Try as I might I couldn't get the color quite right; so strange since all the rest of the colors are quite accurate. After coloring the image, I die cut it and the tan mat with Pinkfresh Studio's "Mini Slimline Essentials." The sentiment is from Sugar Peas "Everyday Sentiments" and is die cut with My Favorite Things "Itty Bitty Strips," which is proving to be a very handy set of dies.

The Design Team and our Guest Designer, Shawna, have a wide variety of wonderful cards to showcase this color combination, so hop over to take a look. And please join in!

 

 

 

 

Signs of Spring

There are finally enough signs of spring here to take hope, although today is once again breezy and rainy. I made this bright floral easel card a week ago, thinking I had plenty of time for the two challenges in mind. But actually, the Tic Tac Toe challenge closes today at noon, so I'm just sneaking it in at the last minute.

I chose the middle row across: Floral Bouquet, Spring, and Word Die for my inspiration. The Seize the Birthday inspiration is clear!

I don't have a lot of success with layering stamps, but layering stencils work just fine, so this wonderful bouquet of flowers called "Spring Mix" was a sure purchase for me during the last Greetery release. I used an assortment of Pinkfresh Studio inks to blend the colors. Then there is a set of stamps to use to create the centers of each flower. The possibilities are endless and there will be another of these cards to share very soon. The sentiment was die cut with a Pinkfresh Studio die. When Betsy did the intro video for this set, she created an easel card. I hadn't made one in years, and it was so easy that I'm sure that will show up again as well.

This card went in the mail yesterday to a good friend who's celebrating her 70th birthday. She's one of two friends who planned a trip to New York City for my 70th birthday. We're not going to NYC for their birthdays but we've scheduled a lunch in early May to plan some kind of get-away.

 

 

Happy Easter!

It's a cold one this year, but there's much to celebrate. After visiting the girls this morning, we attended in-person Easter services at church for the first time in two years. The beautiful music with timpani and brass is always so special, and just didn't have the same impact the past two years when viewing it on YouTube! This afternoon we're off to my nephew's to celebrate Easter with Tracy's family. His cousin and her daughter are joining us this year so there'll be eleven of us for a late lunch.

Here are the Easter cards I made for the five grandchildren. I'm only showing three of the five, two were duplicates. They went in the mail last week to Caleb and Hannah in Wisconsin.

These Easter chicks were featured on Simon Says last year. I'm not sure if they were part of a kit originally, but I purchased the chickie die cut and large yellow pom-poms separately. 

The hearts were cut from Sunny Studio patterned paper and adhered to mini-slimline envelopes which I stenciled with one of three stencils from The Trinity Stamps "Lots of Dots."

The HAPPY die cut and shadow are from Reverse Confetti as well as the Easter stamp.

All five grandchildren are very likely to have plenty of candy in their Easter baskets, and they certainly do not need any little toys, so I put some money in the slimline envelope. I know that at least some of them are saving money for something special, and none of them will be disappointed with some cash.

Lastly, I made a special Easter card for my mother-in-law. I spent an afternoon with two crafty friends this week, and one of them kindly loaned me several stamp and die sets to play with. The Greetery Botani-cuts are always wonderful, and I was delighted to have time to play with the Lily and the Palm dies. I die cut multiples of them, so I'll be able to create some other cards as well.

Stargazer Lilies are my very favorite so that's what I started with. I used a new shader tool by Waffle Flower to add some Flamingo Kitsch Distress Ink to each petal and then used colored pencils for some detail. I opted to cut the palms and leaves from two shades of green cardstock.

Although you can't tell from the photographs, the sentiment from Papertrey Ink was embossed in gold. The design of the card is a copy of one Keeway created for the release of these dies, and uses two Crimped Frames from The Greetery. 

If you celebrate, I hope you have a blessed Easter!

Color Hues #39

Tracey has chose great spring colors for this round of the Color Hues Challenge. 

The day my Spellbinders "Bouquet of Flowers" arrived, I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this challenge.

I started with pre-made Memory Box card in a lovely shade of purple, and pulled out Memory Box's pad "Vibrant Violet Collection." I chose three hues of purple from the pad as well as scraps of New Leaf and Green Parakeet from Papertrey Ink and set about die cutting groups of florals and leaves. The colors in this closer look appear darker than they do in real life.

I used a heavy piece of vellum for the floral wrap and some metallic gold for the bow. I already had the die cut oval in my stash and arranged the florals in the wrap, added the bow and adhered it to the oval. When I laid the oval on the purple card base, it definitely needed something else, so I pulled out one of Simon Says "A2 Thin Frames" and die cut it with the same gold paper as the bow.

Before gluing all the components on the card base, I gold embossed the greeting from The Greeetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthdays." 

I'm sure you'll find lots of inspiration from the Design Team on the Color Hues blog, so hop on over and please join the card making party!

I'm entering this in the Happy Little Stampers: Dies where the challenge is Anything Goes.

 

 

On Trend: Alcohol Ink and Foiling

We've been home from a fabulous trip to Hawaii and San Francisco for about four days now, and I'm still adjusting to the differences in time as well as the environment. All but one of our days were warm and sunny. Everything was green and flowers were gorgeous both in Hawaii and San Fran. Here, not so much. There have been snow flurries two days, and the daffodils are just starting to bloom. It's supposed to warm up again, but only for a few days. I am spoiled!

It will take awhile to edit all the photos we took, but eventually I'll have a few posts about the trip. I did post a few photos every day on Instagram, so you can hop over there for a preview if you'd like.

I finally got to the crafting desk this afternoon will a challenge from Just Us Girls on my mind. It's Trend Week there and they are looking for foiling on alcohol inked backgrounds. I knew I had a small stash of alcohol ink backgrounds, but wasn't at all sure whether the Glimmer Foiling machine would like alcohol inks. It took two tries, but the second one worked beautifully.

I die cut the alcohol ink piece with an Ellen Hutson Essential Squares die and then a slightly larger one with gold mirror cardstock. The foiling plate for the sentiment was one that arrived with my Glimmer machine and is a NBUS! You can see the glimmer a bit better here:

I decided it didn't need a lot of embellishment, but I like the three shiny gold pearls on the righthand corner.

This is going, of course, to the Just Us Girls Challenge, but also to Addicted To Stamps and More (Make Your Mark) and the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge (Happy Birthday.) And off to the April NBUS Challenge as well.