random reflections

Happy St. Patrick's Day Birthday

Today is Tracy's birthday, and we had lots of fun celebrating tonight. I thought I'd share Tracy's birthday card first since I'm linking it to the new (and timely) Addicted to CAS challenge: Lucky!

It's another inlaid die with a shamrock sticker I found at Michael's.

Both the die cut and the sentiment underneath are from Simon Says, "Happy." Papertrey's New Leaf card stock is the perfect color for St. Patrick's Day, and I'm always drawn to a bright green and black combination.

When I went to set the table I was surprised to find I had no green placemats. The last couple of years we haven't been home for Tracy's birthday, but I found great bright green ones on sale at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

 

I found some lucky gold coins at Michaels. Skylar gathered them all up after dinner and put them in the toy box! 

Matt, Betsy, and Skylar came for dinner. After we ate, we did Face Time with Sarah, Adam, and Caleb on the iPad. Technology is just the best!

Skylar and Caleb started showing one another their cars. It went on for quite some time.

Afterwards we had dessert. Tracy had banana cream pie (his favorite) but I also bought some cupcakes for the rest of us so we'd have something to put birthday candles on. I was holding the cupcakes for the blowing out of candles so there are no photos of the event.

And opened up gifts.

 

Initially Skylar wanted no photos on the way out.

But she relented, and Grandma was grateful!

Watercolor: Part 2

I'm back with another card created with my gelatos and some watercolor paper. And another entry to Virginia' Water Color Challenge which closes today.

This time I die cut the sentiment from the watercolor background. I used the "Wonderful Words: Hello" stamp and die by Papertrey Ink.

I also die cut the Slide Frame (Papertrey) and adhered both to a pre-embossed card by Lasting Impressions I've had in my stash for years and years. I loved the cards, and still have several versions of them. I punched two hearts from the watercolor paper and added some Doodlebug pearls.

Today is my sweet husband's birthday, and I'll be back tonight to share his card, and hopefully, some photos of our family dinner as well. 

Watercolor: Part 1

The use of watercolor for card backgrounds has been really hot for several weeks now. I finally sat down on Friday night with some watercolor paper and played around. After seeing a video today by Julie Ebersole, I would do this differently next time, but I'm pretty happy with some of the samples I created. There's also a new challenge for watercolor by Virginia Lu that I've been wanting to play along with. 

I started out with some Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor paper and my gelatos. I've hardly played around with them at all, and although it's hard to see in the photographs, the gelatos create a wonderful sheen to the watercolor background.

After stamping the sentiment from Papertrey's "Stylish Sentiments: Birthday," I die cut some stars from a scrap of gold metallic paper with the Simon Says "Holiday Shapes" and "Large Holiday Shapes" to use as confetti. I rounded the top edges and adhered it to a Memory Box card I've had in my stash for a long time.

This is the first of two cards I made today, and I have a couple more watercolor backgrounds to play with and a lot more ideas to try!

Retro Sketch 105

It's been awhile since I've had the chance to play around with some of the many card challenges. One of my favorites is Retro Sketch, and every week I think I'll find time to get a card done. Tonight I was playing around with a couple of the Simon Says card kits, and made this card based on the Retro Sketch challenge.

Only when I finished, did I realize the linky for the challenge closes in just three hours. I have to say trying to get a decent photo when it's dark outside is the real challenge here!

The cardstock (Bazzil) and patterned paper (Basic Grey "Fresh Cuts") are both from the February 2014 Simon Says card kit, but I couldn't get any of the stamps from that kit to work with the sketch. I pulled out one of my favorite WPlus9 sets, "Fresh Cut Florals" for the sentiment, and an old Hero Arts set "Big and Small Flowers" for the flower and leaves. I added a tiny pearl heart by Hero Arts as well. There are lots of April birthdays on my calendar, so I'm happy to have one card ready to go.

Zoom In, Zoom Out: Week 11

March is typically a very fickle month, weather-wise, in western New York, and this year is no exception. On Tuesday it was near 60°, and we were finally able to get a nice long walk outside. Yesterday this is what happened.

Here's my Zoom In, Zoom Out for Week 11:

We had 18-20" of snow. You can see that it comes up over my knees.

 

Really, I've had enough! It was only 15° today, and although it's supposed to be warmer tomorrow it will be another week or more before the sidewalks are clear enough to walk outside again. The roads today were still terrible. Matt has a new job with a wonderful landscape company. They plow during the winter, and Matt was out from 11 o'clock Wednesday morning until 8 o'clock Thursday morning with just a couple of breaks. Spring officially begins on March 20th, just a week away. Let's hope it looks a lot more like spring by then!

With Sympathy

One of my dearest friends passed away late last week. She was just 58 years old, and lost a two-year battle with a brain tumor. Although she and her husband had lived here for over 20 years, her funeral and burial was in New Jersey where all of her family lives. Five of us drove down for the calling hours on Sunday, and back home on Monday following the service. I was so glad I was able to go. She has three wonderful siblings, including an identical twin. Yesterday I had a chance to make some cards to send to each of them and her husband.

 

The first two were made using a technique (Inlaid Die Cuts) featured on Day One of the Online Card Class: One Layer Cards. It's a technique I've used before, but like always, I learned some good tricks which made them much easier. 

I used Simon Say's woodgrain card stock for the tree ("Arbosecllo Tree" by Memory Box) and inlaid it on Papertrey's Select White cardstock. The sentiment is from Papertrey's "Birds of a Feather."

The next card uses a die I've had for awhile, but never used. I love how it came out.

I die cut the Morning Glory Vine by Memory Box with Memory Box's Parsley cardstock and inlaid it on a Paper Source embossed flat card. The inlaid lavender paper and the lighter green for the leaves came from my scrap folder.  The sentiment is from Papertrey's "Sending You" set.

I had die cuts left over and decided to use them to make another card. It's identical except it's not inlaid, and the greens are reversed.

Marie was a gardener and a plant lover so these die cuts would appeal to her. On this card I used the white tree I cut from the Select White on Card #1. It ended up being one of my favorites.

I love the white tree against the Soft Stone cardstock by Papertrey Ink. The sentiment is the same one I used for the first card. I'm entering this card to the current CASEology challenge: Roots.

I ended up with one extra sympathy card. This one uses another die I've had for awhile but never used. It's the "Leaf Column Outline" by Simon Says, and the sentiment comes from "With Sympathy" by Papertrey Ink.

I didn't do any stamping on the inside because I'll be writing notes to each person. As Tracy pointed out, this is the first of our friends our age (actually younger) who has passed away. We are grateful that she didn't suffer, and was never in any significant pain, but it still feels unbelieveable.

 

One Photo & Twenty Words

Abi at Creating Dreams has been hosting a monthly meme for a while, challenging you to find a photo and tell about it in twenty words. I loved this photo of Skylar from Matt's birthday and thought I'd play along this month.

Project Life 2014 & OLW Wrap-up for February

My Project Life album was started last August, so this is the first yearly title page I’ve created. It was inspired by this page, but there was not a lot of similarity by the time I finished.

All by two of the cards for this layout were created with Bazzill Orange Peel cardstock. I started with the Live Simply quote which I downloaded from the “Sunny Vegan” blog, and that determined the color scheme. The top left card includes a Papertrey Ink Stitched Heart die, patterned paper by Basic Grey, and a flair from a Cocoa Daisy kit that Tracy gave me for Christmas. “Life is good” was created with a Kara Dudley digital brush and two wood veneer hearts, also from a Cocoa Daisy kit. The photo was taken by Tracy’s mom when we were in Florida, and the Evalicious tag seemed perfect.

 The second row includes a Midnight Edition card with a wood veneer arrow, my favorite typewriter die by Savvy, some cool Washi tape and a wood veneer camera, and the last card is a letter press card from a Cocoa Daisy kit.

 The card documenting my One Little Word for 2014 was inspired by cards I pinned here and here. The watercolor “paper” was cut down from a Cocoa Daisy 4X3 card. I’m not sure where the vellum arrow came from, and the “Happiness is Where You Find It” flair has been in my stash for a long time. I like the clean look of this page, and would like to figure out how to recreate it on a regular basis. 

This notebook turned out to be a good purchase. I’ve been writing down intentions for every month, and keeping notes on how I do. I’ve used it to take notes from my online class “A Simple Year,” and have added quotes, and pasted in some inspiration pieces. The notebook title is proving to be true: write it down, and it’s more likely to happen.

I also bought this cute planner at Target, and use it to jot down the activities of the day. Since I’m always working on my Project Life a month behind, it’s a good reference.

In February, I purged and organized our guest room. That included a three section bookcase with cupboards that yielded another three bags for the craft consignment shop, and some more books for the library book store. Another bag of clothes went off to Goodwill after cleaning the closet.

My goal was to read four books each month. I only managed three this month. Our book group book, The Monuments Men, took much longer than I anticipated. All the members of our book group (four couples) agreed the book was interesting, but would have been better as a long New Yorker profile instead of a book. Much of it seemed repetitive and there isn’t a lot of action.  The book group went to see the movie as well, and we all enjoyed it. The movie very different from the book, so much so that none of the characters even have the same names. Although the book dragged in parts, I was very glad I’d read it before seeing the movie because I knew so much of the back story that wasn’t told.

I also finished Louise Penney’s A Rule Against Murder, the fourth in a series of Armand Gamache mysteries. I absolutely love these mysteries, and am amazed that I’m not any further along in the series. Number five is on my list for March.

Humans of New York was the last book I read. It’s a book of street photography taken in New York City. It’s been on the best seller list for weeks, and I finally snagged a copy from the library. The portraits are wonderful, but it’s the captions full of humor and pathos that make the book worth perusing.

It’s been so wintery here that it’s absolutely unsafe to walk outside. The sidewalks are covered with ice and snow, and the city can barely keep up with keeping the roads clear, let alone the sidewalks. I hate the treadmill, but I wrote down a goal of walking 20 miles this month, and managed to get in 21.5. If I hadn’t written it down, I’m quite sure I would have found a variety of excuses not to go to the gym.

I hoped to finish both the December and January Project Life pages, but only December was completed. I did get 19 cards created and sent most of them to friends and family. There was lots of entertaining in February, the unexpected trip to Florida, and the usual volunteer commitments as well as the annual Church Leadership Development Day. All in all, it felt like a productive month.

Zoom In, Zoom Out: Week 10

More flowers for this week's ZIZO, Helene's wonderful meme, but this time it's tulips from the grocery store. We did a lot of entertaining over the weeken; we hosted both our book group and our duplicate bridge group. Tracy did a last minute grocery shopping for me, and I asked him to pick up some spring flowers. He brought home this beautiful red and yellow tulips. Today was sunny, and nearly 40°, but over the weekend it was near zero. The tulips were a breath of fresh air, and of course, we've continued to enjoy them all week.

I used the red shade in the middle window in the kitchen as a backdrop. The shades in the side windows were pulled up all the way so there was enough light. I'm hoping to soon find some outside venues for Zoom In, Zoom Out!

Two Cards, Two Challenges

The Hero Arts blog is having a big birthday celebration with a five category challenge for birthday cards. I recently purchased the Hero Arts "Five Line" Background stamp and made two masculine birthday cards from one piece of paper embossed in gold. I'm entering both into the "metallic birthday card" challenge.

The first is a simple card made by punching two tags from the Tag Sale #5 one in chocolate brown and one from the stamped piece embossed in gold. I added some American Craft Thickers for the sentiment and a simple gold brad to connect the tags. I'm also linking this to the new Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Tag It!

For the second card, I cut a strip of the stamped piece and adhered it to a Hero Arts kraft card. I embossed a tag from Papertrey's 2012 Birthday Tags in gold for the sentiment. Here's a closer look:

My brother-in-law and my niece's husband both celebrate their birthdays this month, so now I'm all set for both occasions.