random reflections

Shake It Valentine

Once I saw the Virginia's View Challenge for shaker cards, I knew I wanted to make a shaker valentine for Skylar this year, but didn't have anything specific in mind when I started. For once, that turned out quite well.

I started by tinting some transluscent embossing paste with a drop of Raspberry Fizz (PTI) reinker and using the "Falling Hearts" stencil by Simon Says. It makes an almost sparkling background.

As I was looking through my dies for a heart I spotted this new one, "Surely Stitched Heart" which I received in my last order from Simon Says. I wasn't sure I could make a shaker heart with such a thin die, but by die cutting the heart twice, and then a third time from fun foam, it went together surprisingly well, and I love how it looks. I filled it with a bunch of sparkly hearts and sequins, perfect for a little girl who loves pink and fancy things. I decided to leave the sentiment for the inside. The heart and mat are Hibiscus Burst by Papertrey Ink.

Here's a closer look at the stenciled background.

I'm linking up to two Simon Says Challenges as well:  Monday's "Red and Pink,"

and Work It Wednesday "Something New." I've never used this die before.

 

Some Valentine Challenges

I'm jumping around with the Papertrey Ink Anniversary Challenges. Today I finally finished all the valentines I need, so you'll be seeing quite a few cards in the next few days. The first one I made today fits today's (#5) challenge at Papertrey Ink:  create a card with a new stamp set. "Circle Scribbles" arrived in my mailbox late last week. It had been out of stock for awhile, and when it came back in again, I decided not to wait. I actually used it for the card I made yesterday for the first anniversary challenge as well, but I think it still counts! I created a stamped background similar to one I saw in a Stampington magazine at Barnes and Noble when I was browsing through some periodicals last week.

Here's a better look at the card:

I started with a Classic Kraft card, and randomly stamped two of the circles in white. I then added some red hearts from two Simon Says stamp sets. The die cut sentiment is from "Wet Paint" (PTI), and the rest of the sentiment is from the Winnie & Walter set "The Big, the Bold, and The Happy."

This card also qualifies for the Addicted to CAS challenge:  Hugs and Kisses.

And Fusion's challenge "Heartful:"

 

Papertrey Ink Anniversary Challenge #1

The first of the Papertrey anniversary challenges required that you choose a color combination and a sketch from a wonderful selection you could download. Here are the ones I chose:

I knew pretty much what I wanted to do with this, but it did prove to be a challenge. The first attempt when in the trash, and once I got the main image watercolored, stamped, and splattered, finding a die cut word for the card proved to be pretty difficult. I have six die cut rejects in my little drawer to use for another project. 

 

I first tried stamping and then watercoloring the "Scribble Circles" by Papertrey Ink. That was a failure, so the second time I watercolored the circles first ( by smooshing some color from the ink pads on my craft mat and picking up the color with a water brush) and then stamping on top. None of my Papertrey Ink dies seemed to work for the sentiment, so I used one from Penny Black's "Hooray" collection, and once again, doubled it up so it popped up a bit. It's already getting dark here so the photo is not the best. The card itself is really aqua (more like you see at left of the card).

This project took far too long so it's all that's getting done today. Soon we're off to dinner at friends' despite another winter storm warning. I'm guessing we've gotten another two inches already, and it's suppose to snow through tomorrow. Really? I've had enough.

 

 

LOVE

It's Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary, and every day a new challenge is posted. I thought I'd see if I could combine one of their challenges with another Valentine. This is the second challenge---to CASE a card by Maile Belle's. That's pretty easy, as her clean and simple style is a favorite of mine. This is the card I chose to CASE.

I don't own that stamp set, but I do own the Papertrey Ink "Wonderful Words: Love" die and mini-stamp set which worked out perfectly.

I layered the three dies in the same configuration as Maille's stamped sentiment, but doubled the die I layered on top to make it stand out a bit more. The three colors are Raspberry Fizz, Hibiscus Pink, and Harvest Gold. The enamel dots are MME, and I added one of the hearts from the die.

While my desk is cluttered with Valentine supplies, I'm off to try to get another one done before I have to truck off to the gym.

Valentines

Valentine's Day was my father's favorite holiday. Thinking about it now, it seems just a bit odd, since he was a very undemonstrative father. I could easily count the number of times he told me he loved me, but I was knew I was loved. He gave gifts on Valentine's Day. When I was living at home, and even in college, he usually bought me a new outfit. He was a shopper, and he had excellent taste. I can only think of one time when he purchased an outfit that was totally inappropriate for me. I called to tell him, and he laughed, and said he thought it might be. All this to say, I still love Valentine's Day. This year I'm making more cards than usual since I have several friends who could use some Valentine's Day cheer as well as all the family. 

I've been working on them for a couple days now. The family ones won't show up here until later since some of them actually do read my blog. But here's one for a friend.

I cut the heart with a My Favorite Things die after watercoloring a piece of Tim Holtz watercolor paper. The Sending die from Simon Says is one of my favorites, and I love it cut from gold paper against the ombre watercolored heart. The sentiment stamped on the vellum banner (Simon Says die) is from the accompanying "Sending and Wishing" stamp set. It's going to get a lot of use! Both the heart and the banner were layered on a Stitched Rectangle from Papertrey Ink.

I'm quite happy with this card and am linking up to three heart related challenges:

Addicted to CAS:  Hugs and Kisses

Fusion-"Heartful" - see the photo below:

 

And Simon Says Monday Challenge: the Letter H (in this case, Heart)

There will be more valentines coming . . .

Week 5 Pairs: During and After

The initial forecast for Rochester was that the heavy snows crossing the Midwest would travel south of us, so we were rather surprised to discover Sunday evening that it was expected to move north and come right through here. Indeed, it did. It's not the heaviest snowstorm recorded here, but it closed the schools, and many businesses as well. Tracy and I stayed at home all day Monday. I only ventured out to take a few photos.

This is what it looked like during the day. This is my neighbor who was snow-blowing his driveway for the second time.

And this was the scene early Tuesday morning after the storm.

And I'll share one other photo, one I took Monday night after the snow had stopped, and Tracy went out to clear our driveway. The icicles were amazing.

I'm linking up with Helena's wonderful meme: Pairs. 

A Card Set & CASe This Sketch Challenge

A friend of mine was laid up for several months last year with a shattered wrist. She just got to the point where she could drive and get around pretty easily in November. Then early this month, she broke her heel! She's been told she can't put any weight on it for three months. She has a wonderful attitude, but when a mutual friend asked her what she needed she requested some thank you notes. In addition to sending over some meals, I thought I could contribute to the thank-you notes as well. I started with this sketch on CASe This Sketch.

I chose to score the horizontal lines rather than use a patterned paper.

The typewriter die is one of my favorites from Savvy, and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "Live, Love, Life."

Project Life

There's a great quote that a friend and I keep reminding one another of:  "You can do anything, but you can't do everything." And it's so true. Nonetheless, there are SO many things I want to learn, and I keep adding projects and even new hobbies to the list. This summer I decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and try to learn how to draw. It's something I've always wanted to know how to do, but I had no art instruction growing up, and therefore, little to no experience. There'll be more about this in a later post, but sketching and online sketching classes have consumed a lot of my time since July. All this to say, that I'm very behind in creating my Project Life pages. Like 8 months behind. Fortunately, I keep a daily journal, and my photos are pretty well-organized in Lightroom, so it's not hard to recap the month. Just time consuming.

May was particularly time consuming, since I had over 100 hundred printed photos from Matt and Betsy's wedding reception held on Memorial Day weekend. I ended up cropping some of the 4X6 photos to fit in the 4X3 windows which actually improved several of them. So here's a long, photo-heavy post with the May Project Life pages.

 

The photo of our church in the page above was the HDR project, and it came out great. I should have printed it on better paper for the album, but everything else was being printed on Epson Premier Presentation Matte paper. It's so much less expensive that the pearl photo paper I love from both Ilford and Canon, and usually works out just fine for Project Life. This was a fantastic class, and I learned a lot!

The photos with Betsy's mom are so poignant. Sally felt good the day of the reception, and little did any of us know that within a month and a half, she'd be gone.  

 

One advantage, I suppose, of falling behind is finding some new product that works out perfectly. I recently picked up a pack of Heidi Swapp overlays that I just love on this page.

I scanned and resized the invitation so I could include it.

The cute typewriter on this card was a brush from a One Little Bird digital kit. The rest of the pages are just photo pages added to the back of the May spreads.

That spread finished my first Project Life album. I started the project in August 2013, and the album ends with May 2014. I have no problem with that which surprises the obsessive-compulsive streak in me to be orderly.

I'm hoping to get a good start on June today. We are truly snowed in. The big blizzard that's crossing the country appeared to be going south of us, but turned north, and we've been getting steady snow for hours now. It's beautiful, but like many people, I cancelled the appointment I had for this afternoon. All the schools are closed, and I'm guessing we have at least a foot of snow already--no end in sight. Maybe scrapping spring/summer photos will cheer me up!