random reflections

Project 64: Bittersweet

The weeks are flying by, and I feel lucky to be keeping up with Project 64, even if it seems a bit harried at time.

I found some beautiful leaves this week on our walk that are a great match, and I think our homemade salsa is as well.

 

 

 

Fall Birthday Cards

We have lots of friends and family with fall birthdays. Here are two cards ready to go. The first one is for two challenges. The CR84FN color challenge and the CPS Sketch Challenge. Here's the lovely fall color combination at CR84Fn:

And the sketch at CPS:

Here's what I came up with:

I made two of the following card, both for men with fall birthdays. I absolutely love this tree die by Memory Box. I hope you can see in the close-up the beautiful shimmer of the brown and gold cardstock.

Supplies
Leaves:
Cardstock: Autumn collection (American Craft)
Patterned Paper: "Sunshine" (My Minds Eye)
Dies: Nested Maple Leaves & Nested Eyelet Rectangles (Lifestyle Crafts) & Foliage (Spellbinders)
Distress Inks (Tim Holtz)
Stamps:  Birthday Basics (Papertrey Ink)
Tree:
Cardstock: Fine Linen and Bazzil Shimmer
Patterned Paper:  from the scrap drawer
Twine and Button:  Papertrey In
Die: Memory Box

A Trio of Get Well Wishes

I've been inspired each time Sian posts her LSNED tags created with her Slice. I like my Slice, but am more apt to use a metal die cut or the Silhouette when I 'm creating. But I decided I needed to get back to the Slice. I needed a few get well cards for friends and family so I chose a 6X6 paper pad, got out my Slice and decided to see what I could create in a hour or so. I have to say I don't have Sian's skill as grouping embellishments to create miniature works of art, but I had a lot of fun, and was reminded of how versatile the Slice can be.

The tags and all the elements were cut with the Vintage Findings Design card (my favorite, although I don't have any of the newer ones.) The patterned papers are all from Six By Six Vanity Fair pad by My Mind's Eye. Their two-sided paper pads are just the best! The stamps are both from Unity ("Stitched Greetings" & the August Kit of the Month), and all the cardstock is Papertrey Ink (Spring Moss, Ripe Avocado, & Ocean Tides.)

Look Who's Here!!!

While we were away, Betsy delivered Skylar by C-section. Both mom and baby are doing great. Betsy and Skylar went home on Saturday, and Betsy called us yesterday morning to say she was ready for visitors. To say we're delighted is putting it mildly. Matt had sent us a couple of photos while we were at my brother's so we knew she was a cutie, but we are smitten.

One Day Old

Mom and Skylar

 

  She never woke up the whole time we were there. She slept four hours straight last night. I think she's going to be as good a baby as she is cute!

Papertrey Ink September Blog Hop

I've missed the last couple Papertry Blog Hops and I almost didn't get anything made for this month although I've been thinking about it since I saw the inspiration post.

I knew right away that I wanted to mimic the strips somehow, but I don't own the right inks. So I took a thin die from the pumpkin die (LifeStyle Crafts) and cut strips of Sweet Blush, Smoky Shadow, Hawaiian Shores, Summer Sunrise, and Harvest Gold and created a pattern that runs both vertically and horizontally. Then to mimic what appears to be a rectangular pattern on the right, I stamped my sentiment (Star Prints) and die cut it with Spellbinder's Classic Rectangles. I hand cut the border for the sentiment, popped up the focal image and adhered it to a Hawaiian Shores card.

Another birthday card for the stash!

A Birthday Duo

We'll be driving home today from my brother's. I'll be anxious to see what kind of progress has been made on the kitchen while we've been away. I nearly finished editing photos from our walks here, but Tracy and I decided to get our Alaska photo book finished while we were here and that took care of yesterday. Whew! Those photos are finally edited, and the book is ordered. I think I'm going to like it a lot, and although it took us the better part of a day working together on it, it is considerably faster than scrapping all those photos. I'll still be doing some scrapbook pages, but I'm excited to have something to share much more quickly.

Before we left I needed a couple of birthday cards. The first one is a "lift" of one I saw on the Papercraft site (not the blog). The very day I saw it, my Studio Calico kit arrived with the perfect stamp.

The inside sentiment was generated on the computer and says "I missed your birthday!"

This was another super simple card that I made with a tag that was laying on my desk for another project and didn't get used. I changed the ribbon and stamped a sentiment and it was done!

Supplies:
Oh, Snap:
Cardstock:  Select White, True Black, & Hawaiian Shores (PTI)
Stamps:  Studio Calico

Birthday Tag:
Cardstock:  Paper Source card
Patterned Paper:  Six by Six "Vanity Fair" (MME)
Slice: Vintage Findings design card (Making Memories)
Border Punch:  Martha Stewart
Ribbon from stash

Project 64: Sepia

I feel like I'm constantly behind again. There's so much going on. So here I am, linking up to Project 64 at the end of the week again.

Once again the wrapper for the crayon is a different color than the actual crayon. I see shades of sepia here in these artifical flowers I bought to hang on my kitchen door once the kitchen in complete!

And in the woodgrain of my desk chair:

But my favorite from the week is Rocky, my niece Stephanie's dog. We've been visiting since Tuesday and have had a lovely time. I'll have photos later today or tomorrow of some lovely walks we've taken this week on two historic sites in Hyde Park.

 

Summer Scavenger Hunt 2011

Rinda threw out a photographic scavenger hunt challenge for the summer, and I've had a lot of fun trying to find all the items on it. I still have a couple of days, but I must admit I don't hold out much hope for seeing a pirate or a unicycle before Friday. Here are the 19/21 I found:

1. A rooster 2. A town meeting  3. A castle 4. My self-portrait  5. A forest  6. My country's flag  7. A painted mailbox  8. A wooden bridge  9. A roadside memorial  10. A campfire  11. Mt. Hope Cemetery (resting place of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas) 12. Rain on the train window in Alaska  13. A tripod of handwritten messages  14. A glass and steel building (Vancouver Airport)  15. A woman sketching  16. A festival (The Clothesline Art Festival)  17. A museum (Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver)  18. A beehive  19. Graffiti art

Thanks, Rinda, it was great fun, and I look forward to another one!

SMASH Update

Sadly, I've been known to create more than one project that rarely, if ever, got used. I thought I'd share an update on my DIY SMASH notebook, which I use several times a week. It's turned out to be quite a wonderful resource.

I added a pocket to the inside front cover where I stick clippings and ideas if I don't have time to get them in the right place, or I'm unsure how I want to "file" them.

As I'm reading blogs, I jot down ideas and sketch out cards or layouts I might want to make. I have a whole page now of color combinations to try, and a list of card sentiments I loved.

These are cards I liked from a Stampin Up catalog I received at CKC this year. I don't do a lot of clipping any more, but I'm much more likely to see it here than in the notebooks I have created in the past for such things. Most of my inspiration comes from the internet now, and I keep it organized in Evernote or on Vi.Sualize.us. I'm thinking of dismantling my notebooks, but it's a big project which needs to wait until the first of the year. Way too much going on here right now.

Photo tips from blogs. Often I "save" the whole blog post to an Evernote notebook, but if it's just a short reminder I add it here.

A book site I want to investigate, and some music I want to check out.

And a couple of things that were on my Wish List at the time. I can cross one out now as I received something very similar from another company from Scrap-Mart. It's interesting to me that a project I resisited for quite some time has turned out to be one of the most useful of the last several years.

 

 

Christmas Card Class

Saturday, my friend and I drove to Buffalo to take a Memory Box Christmas card class. The class is taught by the store owner, but the card designs are Dave Brethaeur's, the owner and designer of Memory Box. I always like his stamps and designs, and we usually learn a technique or two while we're there. We completed (for the most part) six cards in about an hour and a half. Dave has created some terrific new dies, and we learned some tricks for cutting a stamped image precisely. That alone was worth the trip, although Dave's dies have some great little additions that you can mark with a pencil and line up for exact placement.

All the coloring on the cards was done with colored pencils. The star is one of the dies, and the background is a Memory Box patterned paper.

Now that I've taken a photo of this, I'm wondering if I assembled it incorrectly. Whatever, I don't like the orientation of the bird, so I'll be taking this one apart and putting it back together.

It's impossible to tell, but the cardstock is a beautiful, shimmery brown. The polar bear was punched from a 12X12 sheet of patterned paper, and distressed around the edges.

Also hard to tell from the photo is the fact that the ribbon on this card is a thick velvet, and that beautiful border is a die cut.

 

I liked the addition of the rhinestones to the ornament. Just the right amount of bling.

I love the way this one was created. We die cut the leaves from the stamped and die cut journaling card, and put a green piece of paper behind it. The antlers were die cut from the same shimmery brown paper we used in the earlier card. Then the stamped and die cut reindeer was "popped up" on the card. Here's a close-up:

After our class, we met my niece, Grace, at a new restaurant called Mezza for lunch. The food was wonderful, and we had a lovely time. I totally forgot to take photos!!