random reflections

Celebrate!

There are three current challenges all looking for flowers. Two of them are also CAS challenges, and I've got a card for them: The Flower Challenge, AAA Birthday, and CAS on Friday.

This fabulous die cut is from Altenew--Spring Rose. The roses here are just gorgeous right now. Although we have many different flowers in our yard, we do not have any roses. As soon as Tracy finishes staining our fence, we plant to put in one or more climbing roses. To create this rose, I watercolored a panel in pinks and greens. I lightly penciled in where the rose and leaves would be and it came out pretty well. 

Then I die cut the rose again in the center of my white panel as well as the watercolored piece and inlaid them onto the white panel. After stamping the sentiment form Pretty Pink Posh's "Everyday Greetings," I added some dimensional foam to the back and adhered it to a white card.

Hope your weekend is off to a good start. We're having friends here for dinner tomorrow night. Entertaining was one of the things I missed the most during the pandemic. Hopefully, it will be nice enough to spend some time on the patio.

 

Color Hues #20

It's hard to believe, but we're already at the 20th challenge for Color Hues. Sheri chose Aqua and Black for this round.

It's not the first time that I've ended up making two cards for the challenge. Although I liked the first card, it really "wasn't me." Meaning, of course, not Clean and Simple enough. So here's card #2, much more to my liking.

I knew right off that I wanted to use an older set by Papertrey Ink called "Life is Beautiful." I thought the black butterfly against an aqua background would be striking. (And you'll see that the first card I made has the same main elements, but different products.) I die cut the open butterfly die twice, once with black shimmer cardstock and once with gold. I off set the two of them and adhered them to a piece of aqua shimmer paper cut with The Greetery's "Crimped Frames." You can see the shimmer better here:

Then I layered the aqua layer onto a larger Nordic frame in black shimmer before adding it all to a white cardbase. 

The sentiment is from Pink and Main's "Special Day," embossed in gold and die cut with The Greetery's "Pretext Banners"--possibly the best banner set I've found.

Here's the first card I made. This time I started with the "Cover Plate: Butterfly" die from Papertrey, die cutting it from the same black shimmer paper I used above. 

After adding it to a piece of the aqua shimmer paper, I colored the insides of the butterfly wings with a Copic marker to give them some contrast. 

The sentiment from Taylored Expressions was embossed in white and added with a thin strip of dimensional tape.

Finally, I added some aqua and silver sequins. It's a bit busier than the card above, but I'm quite sure I'll find a recipient who will enjoy it.

Hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what our Guest Designer, Trina, and the rest of the Design Team has come up with . . . and join in the fun!

 Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 

 

No Stamping!

It's been well over a week since I've blogged. Last week was the busiest week I've had since the pandemic lockdown ended, and I've been fully vaccinated. Then at the end of the week, I started having intense pain from my shoulder to my elbow on my right arm. It turns out I have an impinged nerve in my neck, and it totally took me out of commission for two full days. Following surgery about 10 years ago, I had my first experience with nerve pain and (fortunately) had forgotten how debilitating it is. Luckily, I saw a doctor before the weekend, and the medication has begun to do its work. The last couple of days the pain has been intermittent, so I'm back in the craft room, and out and about.

Just Us Girls has an interesting challenge this week: No Stamping. My three granddaughters all made me special hand-painted plates, and I wanted to send each of them their own thank you note. I had previously die cut a huge selection of letters in bright colors with Papertrey Ink's Block Alphabet, and managed to find the right letters for three separate cards.

To add some interest, I scored a series of lines across the middle of the cards, and then adhered the letters. 

They needed just a "little something" and the tiny heart stickers did the trick!

A Little Bit of History and A Card

A conversation on the Color Hues DT Facebook page prompted me to look at the Stats page of my blog this morning. It turns out June 5th was the 16th anniversary of my blog, and as of this morning, I had written exactly 2400 posts. Quite a surprise, I have to admit! Starting a blog was not my idea. During his first visit, my future son-in-law talked me into setting up a blog. Actually, he set up the blog, and I’ve been going along merrily ever since. I’ve paid little attention to the technical aspects of the blog, and still fight with it every time I want to change some of the sidebar items. I think it may be time to be a bit more proactive about my technical skills.

Then out of curiosity, I started scrolling through the early archives of my blog. Although I started stamping and making cards about 25 years ago, the first papercrafting I shared on the blog were scrapbook pages. 

In March 2007 I took my first online photography course through Big Picture Scrapbooking—Photography 101 with Barbara Carroll—without a doubt the best online course I ever took. Following that I started sharing more photography and entering a variety of photo and scrapbook challenges I found online.

Finally, in January of 2009, I actually posted a photo of cards I had made for a charity project, but it wasn’t until February of that year that I started sharing individual cards when I started purchasing stamps from Papertrey Ink online and following their blog. The first online card challenge I entered was in March of that year. My card style has definitely changed over the years—lots less patterned paper now, and much more CAS. But there are stamps I used that year, that I still own and use today. No wonder I have such a big collection!

It was quite a stroll down memory lane: lots of travel posts, posts about teaching (the joys and frustrations), and gratitude posts where I find the same things listed year after year—a testimony to my blessed life!

Interestingly enough, just yesterday I put together six cards after finding a series of already stamped and colored images in one of my reorganization projects (more to come on that.) One of those images was stamped with one of the wooden stamps that I purchased on my very first trip to a stamp store. The company has long gone out of business, although you can still find their stamps on Ebay and Amazon. I love this little girl with her hands full of flowers.

The stamp was made by the Delafield Stamp Company. There were no acrylic stamps when I started, and I must say stamping is much easier with clear stamps and a stamping platform like the MISTI. 

The image was colored with colored pencils, and the sentiment is from a well-used and older Papertrey Ink set, "Wishes Come True." I die cut it with the Hero Arts "Rounded Rectangles" and then cut a narrow frame from Blueberry Sky paper and added it all to a cardbase of Spring Rain. The Papertrey Ink cardstocks have been my favorite for many years.

Thanks for taking a little trip down memory lane with me. Enjoy your weekend!

Spots or Dots

"Spots or Dots"---that's the challenge this week at Just Us Girls.

It's been awhile since I've joined in at JUGS, and in my continued effort to use stamps that I haven't played with, I came upon The Stamp Market's "Dotted Background" stamp. I had already started playing around with The Stamp Market's "Party Pieces," and ended up with a birthday card for Tracy's cousin.

It's a mini-slimline card which is becoming one of my favorite designs, and worked well with this little stamped and die cut birthday cake. The chocolate cake with blue decorative icing is sitting on a silver cake stand. I used some dimensional tape on the white frosting as well as on the die cut sentiment.

I added some glitter to the candles, and "painted" the flames with a gold paint pen. The sentiment is from Pinkfresh Studio's "Happy Birthday Sentiments." I love the font and the die works perfectly every time. After cutting down the dotted background, I added it to a layer of Blueberry Sky paper from Papertrey Ink which matches the blue stamped images. 

I'm also adding this to the June NBUS Challenge which already has some great cards in the gallery. Darnell, who hosts the site, is correct that it's a great place to scroll through the gallery for design ideas. 

 

A Nautical Birthday

I was in need of a masculine birthday card and was inspired this morning by two challenges: The Card Concept: Anchors Aweigh! and The Paper Players Tic Tac Toe Challenge.

It's easy to see the photo inspiration in my card, and not hard to find the diagonal blue, red, white on the tic tac toe board.

I already had this W+9, "Dockside" stamp set laying on my desk with another project in mind, and I had just received The Greetery's "Crimped Circles," part of an order that was placed with a generous birthday gift certificate. And that was really all I needed.

It's easy to see the crimped edge on the circles, but not so easy to see that the navy cardstock has a raised dotted pattern to it that adds a bit of texture.

I love the rope-like font of the "Happy" that mimics the red stamped circle, and the little bar with the anchor and stars seemed like the perfect stamped embellishment. As always, The Card Concept asks you to identify the style of your card, and as usual, this one fits the Clean and Simple category.

Color Hues #19

The weeks fly by and here we are with another great color combination for the Color Hues Challenge. This round it's Blue and Brown.

I cased myself for this challenge and returned to a design I used last September. I love the closed and open leaves of Altenew's "Leaf Canopy" set.

To color the closed leaves, I added two shades of Pinkfresh Studio blue inks directly to the stamps, spritzed them with water and stamped them onto a piece of Altenew's watercolor paper. Once that had dried, I overstamped with the open leaves in Dark Chocolate ink from Papertrey Ink.

I stamped the sentiment from the same set in Dark Chocolate, and use my favorite Gina K "Master Layout" dies to cut a thin border of Dark Chocolate cardstock before adding it all to a Blueberry Sky (also Papertrey Ink) card base.

As always, I hope you'll pop over to the Color Hues Challenge and check out the great cards by the Design Team and our Guest Designer, Michel.

   Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

And please come join the fun!

Wishing You

This card was designed with three challenges in mind. First, Fusion with the interesting title of "Laugh Decor," which I didn't understand until I saw the inspiration photo:

The title for the challenge clearly comes from the quote on the wall. I decided to combine both the photo inspiration and the sketch this time around.

The second challenge, The Great Coverup, is a new one to me. Papertrey Ink has started a new series where the emphasis is on technique or using a particular product. The current challenge is to use only white cardstock in creating your card. All the color on this card was created with ink blending.

The last challenge is the Less Is More Challenge which asks you to use a favorite technique. That was easy---die cutting is very definitely one of my favorite techniques, and this card clearly relies on die cutting.

Now that we have the inspirational challenges out of the way, here's the card:

I used the inspiration photo for the color scheme of the florals, looking at the vase of flowers on the desk as well as the pink chair, and pink pot with a green plant.

Rather than use a strip of patterned paper or cardstock for the right-hand strip in the Fusion sketch, I opted to score a series of lines, making this a much more CAS design. The beautiful die cut flowers were ink blended with a trio of Pinkfresh Studio inks. Many card makers swear by Distress Oxide Inks for blending, and although I own a few pinks I wasn't happy with the shading or the hues I could achieve, so I moved to the Pinkfresh trio and was much happier. The dies are from the new Papertrey Ink Blooms II dies which arrived last week. The leaves were ink blending with two Distress Oxide inks. 

The sentiment came from a Pinkfresh Studio stamp set called "Folk Hummingbird" and was stamped in green to match the leaves in the floral arrangement.

Although it took me a lot longer than I anticipated to get the flowers inked, I'm quite happy with the outcome, and will likely recreate this design with other colors in the future. 

I'm also popping this in the NBUS Challenge gallery since the dies are definitely products that have never been used before. I am proud of myself, however, to pulling them out relatively quickly after receiving them. (We all know I have a large basket of unused stamps that I've owned for way too long!)

 

 

Welcome to Our Neighborhood

Once again two challenges showed up just as I needed to make a card to welcome new neighbors to our street. We live on a dead-end street and there are only 28 homes on the street. Most were build in the early 1930's and are a very diverse group architecturally as well as in size. Years ago, a freeway was scheduled to be built near one end of the street, and in anticipation five homes were destroyed. Then the freeway went in another direction, so shortly before we moved on the street two very large homes were built in that space at the top of the hill. I would have been furious if I had been one of the homeowners who had to give up their property, and then discovered it was unnecessary. One of the joys of living on this street is the location (near so many places) and yet feeling somewhat remote from the city. 

The first challenge is a sketch challenge from Freshly Made Sketches. It's not how I typically start a card, but this sketch was right up my alley.

The second challenge is Just Add Ink where they're looking for a slimline card. Two challenges made to work together!

I also had the perfect stamp set that was part of a Simon Says Card Kit awhile ago, "Home Sweet Home."

Knowing I was going to color the images with Copic markers, I started with a piece of X-Press Blending cardstock, Before stamping the street scene, I stenciled some clouds in using My Favorite Things Cloud stencil. I added the sun from the Simon Says set and colored the scene. 

I die cut the focal panel with Lawn Fawn's "Slimline with Flaps" die and then added a narrow border of Blueberry Sky and True Black before adding it all to a white slimline card base. And here's the inside sentiment:

Our new neighbors have two young children, and I hope they enjoy raising their family here as much as we did.

I'm also throwing this in the gallery at the Wednesday Simon Says Challenge: Anything Goes.

Inspired By: Hello Baby Flowers

Not often, but occasionally, card challenges align with real life events. That was certainly true this week. The Inspired By: Hello Baby Flowers could be interpreted two ways---a baby card or baby flowers. I have both!

We have a new grand-niece born in Oregon. Her grandparents flew out there this week, and I sent this mini-slimline card with them.

It gave me a chance to used several never-used products: The Greetery's "Bold Alphabet," The Ton's "Ditsy Bits," and Trinity Stamps "Slimline Mini Envelope Builder" (the scalloped and stitched rectangle.) I have my friend, Michelle, to thank for the tiny flower stamps and the die cut set, both of which she shared when we stamped together. I tried them at her house, and later ordered them for myself. 

I love the detail on the alphabet and tucking the tiny flowers in among the letters of the baby's name seemed a perfect embellishment, along with three tiny pale pink pearls.

The sentiment from Papertrey Ink's "Boutique Borders: Baby" set was stamped and then die cut with one of The Greetery's "Pretext Banner" dies--quickly becoming a favorite!

Sadly, given the distance between us and the new baby, it's likely going to be awhile before we get to hold the new bundle of joy. We've seen lots of photos, though, and she was a cutie from Day 1!

Given all the new products used on this card, I'll be adding it to the very large gallery at NBUS.