random reflections

2016 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt & A Challenge

Today is the first day for links to Rinda's 2016 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt. It's a favorite summer activity for me, and usually by this time, I have quite a few of the items checked off. Not so much this year, but I do have three.

The first one is #8:  A drawing, art project, artistic photograph, greeting card . . . created by you. I've actually made quite a few cards since the beginning of June, but here's my most recent one, and an entry to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.

I used a new-to-me Simon Says stamp set called "Spring Flowers," embossed in white and watercolored with my Zig Clean Color markers. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "Painted Petals," white embossed on a scrap of black cardstock.

I added a few rainstones from Papertrey Ink, and mounted the watercolor piece onto some Raspberry Fizz cardstock and then onto a white card base. 

Next for the scavenger hunt is #10: a bicycle. We took our first bike ride of the season last week, riding 12.5 miles on the Erie Canal path from the Brighton town park to the Pittsford Dairy where we indulged in homemade ice cream cones. I had black walnut, and it was delicious!

Check out my very cool basket which was a gift from Sarah last year. It's made byt the Nantucket Basket Company, and I love the shape of it. I also have a new seat this year, also a gift from Sarah. Much more comfortable than my old one.

Last for June, is #20:  Someone laughing.

Our friends, Pete and Arlene, were here for dinner Monday night. I wish you could hear Arlene's laugh. It's positively infectious! I'm not sure what the story was, but there was lots of laughing, and I quickly got in a few shots.

You can check out the other scavenger hunt posts right here.

SNAP: Strawberries

I think strawberries might be my favorite fruit, at least when they're fresh from the farm market. Years ago we used to pick our own, but the local farm stand has fresh strawberries from their fields every day, so I'm willing to pay a little extra for not having to do the work. I'm pretty sure my knees thank me. On Saturday I bought four quarts and froze three of them. It was so easy, I went to the farm market at Brighton High School on Sunday and bought four more quarts to freeze. I thought they'd make a good SNAP collection, red being my favorite color.

It's a "steps in the process" SNAP:  cleaning the fruit, drying it on paper towels, then slicing the strawberries and sprinkling them with super fine sugar. Finally, they are vacuumed sealed and popped into the freezer. There are seven bags in there. Not too sure how long they'll last! The farmer at the market on Sunday said the dry, hot weather we've been having has shortened the season. I'm hoping to buy two more fresh quarts near the weekend, before Sarah, Adam, and Caleb arrive, but if not, we can still indulge in strawberry shortcake.

I'm linking up with Helena and her wonderful meme of three or four linked photos: SNAP.

5 in 5: June Edition

We've spent a lot of time in the yard and on the patio the last few days. Tracy's done a lot of transplanting, and clearing out in our overgrown shade garden, and it's looking really nice. I'm the mulcher, and I have about half of it done. Today is too hot and humid to be outside for long. We got a little (much needed) rain overnight, but it didn't cool things down at all, and the humidity is worse than ever. When I saw Sandi's post for 5 in 5 this morning, I knew that taking some photos in the yard would be a good solution to getting this meme done before the calendar turns to July this coming weekend. Where does the time go? 

If you're standing in the middle of our patio looking to the back property line, this is the right-hand side of our garden. You can see beyond it the lower yard, which Tracy has just started to clean out. Shade loving plants are the ones that do well here:  Japanese ferns, ferns, hostas, astilbe, some hydrangeas, and some peonies to the right where there is more sun.

This is the left side, many of the same plants, and our fountain which I should have turned on before I started taking photos.

To the side of our house in the lower yard, I have a perennial/annual bed. Last year some animal ate every one of my lupines. I was so sad, but replaced them this year, and we are spraying our anti-deer spray regularly. This is the latest bloom, although we've had several of different colors already.

Next to the house along the patio we have a bed with five large geraniums. I love that they bloom all summer, so no matter how my potted flowers are doing at any moment, there is always some good color. This year we have three of these beauties, and two solid pink ones the same color as the darker pink in this flower.

Last, a Martha Washington geranium in a pot on the patio. I brought it back from a garden store in Evanston, IL when we were helping Sarah get plants for her patio. I loved the colors, and was afraid I wouldn't find one locally. But, in fact, I saw one just the other day when I was buying some strawberries at the farm market.

I'm linking these up with Sandi's 5 in 5 meme where you take as many photos as you'd like in 5 minutes, and choose 5 of them. I think I took 16 photos this morning. It was a snap, snap, snap event!

 

Challenge: Use Patterned Paper

I have two bins of 6X6 paper pads, and I do use them for both card making and scrapbooking (although it's been far too long since I've worked on Project Life), but they aren't my go-to supply like they used to be. The folks at Simon Says feel the same way and this week's Monday Challenge is to use patterned papers. Both my cards today use the patterned papers that came with one of Papertrey Ink's Mini-Market kits. This one is "Still Life: Summer." I love the colors, and hope they'll issue a refill pack soon, as I've come close to depleting the papers.

I mounted a sheet of the patterned paper on a card base of Raspberry Fizz, and added a strip of Washi tape down the side. The diecuts come already printed in the kit, so it makes for a quick and easy card. The sentiment, from "Scripted" was embossed in white on a scrap of black cardstock. 

Although it didn't photograph well, I added some Wink of Stella to the fruits, and die cut a black shadow for the diecut word.

Here's another card, also from the kit, with just a strip of patterned paper. This time I used a preprinted tag from the kit as well as the colored raffia.

The patterned paper was added to some white cardstock, then die cut with a Simon Says "Stitched Rectangle" (could be the most used die cut set in the house). Then all was mounted on bright green cardstock. I used a new-to-me Distress Stickles, Clear Rock Candy on the peaches, which photographed much better than the Wink of Stella.

Linking up with Simon Says "Monday Challenge."

SNAP: Eastman Vibes

Once a month during the summer, the Eastman Museum hosts a concert in their beautiful gardens. Last Wednesday was the first one. The group was from Louisiana playing cajun tunes, so it was a lively event. In the first photo, you can see the band on the right, and members of the audience dancing on the left. We arrived just as the gates were suppose to open, but judging from the crowd that had already chosen their spots, it must have opened early. We were lucky, though, to run into friends as we came in, and enjoyed their company as well as the music.

All the photos were taken with my iPhone so there aren't any close-ups of the band. I did try to get photos from different perspectives which give you a sense of the crowd and the beautiful grounds at the Eastman Museum. You can purchase a meal from a food truck at the museum, or bring your own, which is always our choice. A bottle of wine is also encouraged, and we are happy to oblige. It makes for a very pleasant evening.

Linking up with Helena, as always, the gracious hostess of SNAP!

CASology: Congratulations

This week's challenge at CASology is perfectly timed for high school graduations. Today is the graduation ceremony for Brighton High School (our local school), and I needed to make a card for one of the graduates. Brighton's colors are navy and gold so that determined the color combination. I originally bought Papertrey Ink's "Retro Style Graduation" because I wanted some of the stamps for the addition set, "Retro Style Birthday," but I was grateful to have the set for this card which came together pretty quickly.

Everything except the numbers came from the stamps and dies for "Retro Style Graduation." Stamping the die cuts is so much easier now that I have figured out the best way to use my MISTI. Papertrey Ink's die are usually solid dies so they can be a bit more challenging (to me, anyway) to place correctly on the stamped image. The MISTI solves it perfectly. The numbers were all die cut twice from the Headline Alphabet in navy (WPlus9) and twice in Summer Sunrise and then layered to create a shadow effect. 

Brighton's graduation ceremony used to be held at the Eastman Theater, quite an elegant setting. Now it's at the Rochester Institute of Technology's field house, which I don't think I'd like as much.

I'm linking to CASology's challenge for Congratulations.

Happy Father's Day

It's Father's Day, and I made cards for three of the "very best" dads I know:  my husband, my son, and my son-in-law. All three of them spend as much time with their kids as they can, have great relationships with their children, and are loving, caring parents. The best there is, truly.

I started with Avery Elle's sentiment set, "Handwritten Notes," and then add "DAD" die cut and stamped with Papertrey's "Headline" alphabet. I die cut the sentiment with a Simon Says "Stitched Circle" die and mounted it on a piece of black cardstock that I scored three times on the top and the bottom.

We had a nice Face Time chat with Adam, Sarah, and Caleb, and we spent some time with Matt and his family this morning after church. Betsy's niece is an accomplished Irish dancer and her troupe was performing at the Brighton Farmer's Market. Ella was entranced.

I love this photo of Nadia with her gorgeous hair flying behind her as she danced. The fast foot work is amazing!

It was almost 90° at noon when they were dancing so they stayed as close to the shade as they could.

This ought to be my Memorandum Monday post (my first Irish dancing performance, but surely not my last!), but by then Father's Day will be over. We're actually celebrating Father's Day again tomorrow with a combined Father's Day and Graduation party at Betsy's father's house. Hope you've had a great weekend!

SNAP: Stairs

Helena set up a wonderful meme for this year:  three or four related photos. I'm really enjoying participating each week, and usually have several photos from the previous week to link together. There were no particular photographic events last week, so I looked to a list I made early on of possible subjects. One of several subjects I often choose to photograph is stairs, so I looked back over the last few month, and relatively quickly came up with:

The top two photos were taken in March at the Art Institute in Chicago, the bottom left in New Orleans in April, and the one on the bottom right at the Eastman Museum here in Rochester in February.

 

Sending Sunshine

CASology's challenge this past week was "Sunshine." As soon as I saw it I knew I had some stamp sets that hadn't seen much use that would be perfect for the challenge. This afternoon was the first opportunity I've had to sit down to play with them.

I pulled out two stamp sets, one from Papertrey Ink and one from Simon Says (last year's August card kit which included a stamp set and a die.) 

I used both stamp sets to stamp the background circle ("Hello, Sunshine" Papertrey Ink), and the HELLO ("Flip Flop Season" Simon Says), and added some Copic marker to the sentiment. The die cut is also from Simon Says. It's all mounted on a pre-embossed square card by Lasting Impressions that's been in my stash for years.

The inside sentiment is also from "Hello Sunshine," and I added a punched shape (that's been in my stash as long as the card!)

I'm always in need of encouragement cards, so I'm happy to add this to my card box. And I'm happy to say we're enjoying days of ample sunshine here!

 

Addicted to CAS: Petals

A last minute post and entry for the Addicted to CAS challenge, Petals.

I have several new floral stamps and was determined to get another card made for this challenge. I won't even begin to tell you how many mistakes I made before I finally got a grip on the process and finished the card. It was just one of those days. But I'm pretty happy with the final result, and it's good to have a birthday card on hand.

The new-to-me stamp set is Papertrey Ink's 2016 Anniversary set. You can only purchase it with points, so it took awhile to accumulate the ones I needed. One of the draws of this set for me, was the unique sentiment which allows you to insert the smaller sentiment into the larger one. I also like the multi-step stamping, and the stamps in this set are clearly marked in the order in which you stamp them. Ought to be easy-peasy, but I didn't separate the die cuts correctly the first time, and got totally confused. There are a pile of die cuts in the garbage, and in the end I only used one of them anyway. The cardstock is Amethyst Allure, a new favorite. 

The card needed a "little something," so I made three score lines in the middle to add just a touch of dimension. Although this certainly isn't as CAS as some of my cards, I think it qualifies for the challenge. 

Hope you have a great weekend!