random reflections

Crafty Friends and CASe This Sketch

The February Simon Says Card kit arrived on Thursday. Thanks to the fourth cancellation of a volunteer commitment in one week, I had time to play again. By bedtime, I had created three cards. I’m waiting until today to post the first of them, in hopes it has reached its recipient. Since it’s for a sketch challenge I need to get it posted.

When I first saw this design at CASe This Sketch it appeared too challenging, but once I laid eyes on the design team’s creations I decided I give it a try.

Initially I thought I’d use some patterned paper for the background, but once I die cut and stamped the seven pieces, I realized it would be far too busy. I am a fan of white on white and with the bright colors I think it works. I did move the sentiment to the left-hand corner where it fit perfectly.

I added a few matte enamel dots as a finishing touch. It’s a fun stamp set, and perfect for sending off to some crafty friends of mine. Here's a closer look.

This is such an unusual design, and the DT for this challenge came up with some brilliant ideas. You can check them out right here.

 

 

The Card Concept: Rustic Blooms

I'm back with a card for another challenge---this time The Card Concept: Rustic Blooms.

These beautiful pink flowers reminded me of the Simon Says "Floral Bliss" bouquet I used not long ago. This time I watercolored the whole image in pinks and reds.

When I finished, I decided to add a few dark pink splatters. I've been known to ruin an entire card trying this technique, but this time I pulled it off. I die cut the Tim Holtz watercolor panel with Simon Says "Stitched Rectangle," and adhered it to a Raspberry Fizz card (PTI).

The sentiment is from Papertrey's "It's the Thought." Finally, a few white pearls finished it off.

One of the challenges in entering a card at The Card Concept is deciding which category the card falls in. Nine out of ten times my cards usually land in the "Clean and Simple" category. Not so much this time. I'm guessing the best bet is "Classy and Elegant." If you have time to check them out, I'd love to know how you'd categorize this one. 

Celebrate! A Time Out Challenge

The current challenge at Time Out uses this quote:

It's one of my favorite quotes, and the perfect inspiration for a birthday card I needed to make for one of my favorite young ladies who will soon be 16. I've used the "Celebrate It" for my inspiration.

I've had this stunning image from Concord and 9th ("Happy Day") for a long time, but this is the first time I've used it. I stamped it in black on Tim Holtz watercolor card and got out my Daniel Smith watercolors. 

I have an iridescent silver which I mixed with the bright pink which gives it a pretty glimmer. I added some Glitter Glue to the frosting as well.

I die cut the image with one of the Simon Says "Stitched Rectangles" and mounted it on a piece of sparkly textured cardstock I found in my stash. (I have no idea where it came from!) The final touch was to add a few sequins. We're going to be out of town for the birthday party, but I'm leaving the card with her mom. I hope she likes it.

You'll find other celebratory cards right here at the Time Out Challenges blog.

 

Janurary 2018 Papertrey Ink Blog Hop (And Make It Monday)

Very unusual, but this is the second post of the day because today is the monthly blog hop hosted by Papertrey Ink. I wasn't sure I'd find the time to participate, but then a meeting I had yesterday had to be rescheduled, and the afternoon opened up. I have two cards to share. Only one can be posted for the blog hop, but the other I'll post for the Make It Monday challenge which was to create a shadow sentiment. Both cards started, however, with the gorgeous inspiration piece posted for the blog hop.

For the first card, I focused on the pink floral arrangements on the table. I was also influenced by the design Lizzie Jones used on her card for Make It Monday.

I chose "Gran's Garden" for the card. It's a stamp set I don't use often enough. The frame for the sentiment is an old favorite, "Fillable Frames 10," and the sentiment is from another favorite and well-used set "Birthday Bash Sentiments.:

Here you can see the shadow sentiment. I tried a variety of things before I settled on second generation stamping to create the shadow. If you're unfamiliar with that term it means I stamped the original sentiment, then moved the stamp just a bit, and stamped it again without cleaning off the stamp. You can also see the embossed background created with the Papertrey Ink "Rustic Burlap" Impression Plate.

I thought this would be the only card I created, and that I would post it on both challenges, but still having some time to play, I pulled out a stamp set I purchased on a whim. It's a $5 set meant to work with a larger set of paper doll kinds of stamps called "Dress Up Dolls: Birthday." I thought the images would go well with a variety of animal stamp sets I use when creating cards for my grandchildren. The new technique for me was to create a background of randomly stamped images. I've seen a variety of these recently, most often on Yana Smakula's blog.

She suggested that solid images would work best for this technique, but I'm pretty happy with the way the outline images worked here. It makes for a bit cleaner look, which I always like. Rather than a large center-stage sentiment, I opted to die cut the balloons from the set for the focal image.

I did take Yana's suggestion to assign each stamp a given color which I took from the inspiration photo, as well as the birthday party theme shown in the inspiration piece. Since there were so many tiny images I laid out the stamps on the ink pads I used. I took the photo after dark with my iPhone, but thought I'd share it.

I chose four Copic markers to color the balloons, but decided they needed a coating of Glitter Glue as well. Glitter Glue always darkens the colors so the darker pink ended up looking more red that I would have liked. I mounted the balloons with dimensional adhesive, and finally decided to add a sentiment to the focal image. It came from the "Initial Sentiments: Birthday" set.

It's a bit easier to see the glitter here as well as the glitter added to the sentiment banner with a Spectrum Noir clear glitter pen. 

So I'll post the top card to the Make It Monday challenge, and this one to today's blog hop. It was a lot of fun to try a couple new techniques, and I was delighted to have an afternoon to play! 

 

Take Three Thursday: Sledding

I'm joining in again with Mary-Lou's Take Three Thursday meme:

In an effort to notice more of the ordinary in my life, I have decided to share what I have noticed this week in Take Three Thursday.   The idea is to take photos that are linked some how; by theme, by colour, by date, by moment,  by points of view. 

We had a couple beautiful sunny days over the weekend. It wasn't warm enough for serious snow melt, but definitely warm enough for sledding. Colgate Divinity School sits atop a hill at the end of our street. It has the perfect hill for sledding, steep enough to get good speed, but a long flat yard at the bottom to avoid any disasters. Matt brought Skyar (6) and  Ella (3) up for an hour or two of sledding, and I walked down to join them. I didn't have any intention of sledding myself, but they were having so much fun, I ended up going down with Skylar before I walked home. Sadly (or luckily), Matt didn't manage to get a photo of the two of us going down the hill.

They brought three sleds--two plastic ones, and one large inflatable one. Here's Skylar ready to take off down the hill.

And much to our surprise, Ella wanted to go down on her own. She loved it!

Somehow I never ended up with a photo of the two of them going down the hill on the big inflatable sled. Coming up the hill is the hardest part. Ella managed a couple of times with Skylar's help, but finally needed Dad to help her out.

Matt and Sarah spent time sliding down this hill when they were kids. It's fun to watch the next generation enjoying it as well!

Winter Cards

I needed two cards---one for a young lady (18) who had just had a heart transplant (very successful, thankfully) and another for a winter birthday. I thought I'd pull out a new die (MFT's "Solid Birch Trees") and a new stamp (PTI's "Background Basics: Birch"). It's a perfect combination for a winter-themed card.

I die cut the trees from white cardstock and stamped them with the background stamp in Soft Stone. The little red bird is an older die from Memory Box, "Goldfinch." Finding the right sentiments took the longest time. I originally thought I'd stamp a message on the right side of the card, but ended up liking these two Papertrey Ink dies from "Swoosh" better which I die cut from True Black.

 

The last touch was to had a tiny drop of black Nuvo Crystak Drops for the eye of the bird. It's nice when a design works well for two such different occasions. 

 

 

 

The Flower Challenge: Spotlight Stamping

The Flower Challenge is new to me, and so is the current challenge: spotlight stamping where you selectively color just part of an image. I needed an encouragement card, and thought this would be a good time to try it out.

I chose one of my favorite stamp sets from the Simon Says Card Kits. "Floral Bliss" from the June 2017 kit has such a gorgeous floral bouquet. I stamped it with India Ink Black on Tim Holtz watercolor paper and got out my Inktense watercolor pencils.

The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's "It's the Thought." I chose to color the three main flowers and the two sprays above in pinks with orange accents. I thought a bit more orange was in order so I color just the centers of the daisies.  The final touch was to add three black pearls by Amuse.

I'm quite sure I wouldn't have give this technique any thought without the challenge, but I'm quite happy with it in the end. Check out how others approached the challenge right here. 

 

Time Out Challenge: Thankful

I've had more than the usual amount of time to create this weekend. The photos at the end of the post will explain it pretty well. Along with some birthday cards and Valentines which I can't post for awhile, I have a set of thank you cards to enter at the Time Out Challenge: Thankful. It's their 100th challenge which is quite an accomplishment.

I pulled out two oldies---Papertrey's "Brushed Off" and Winnie and Walter's "The Big, The Bold, and You." Just by changing the colors of the ink I came up with three quite different feeling cards. I used Hero Art's Ombre pads, which I do have a bit of trouble with. Some look a lot more ombre than others.

I did add a strip of washi tape down the side of one of the cards.

On Friday, our temperature reached 50°. We'd seen warmer temps on Thursday as well, and almost all the snow had melted by the end of the day on Friday.

About 8:00 Friday night, the snow began and didn't let up until mid-day on Saturday. Tracy was down and out with some kind of bug, so Matt came over in the afternoon to snow plow our driveway and sidewalks. He took a yardstick and measured 13 1/2 inches in our front yard.

Needless to say, I was home for the day---and most of today as well. Hope it's warmer and less snowy where you are! Off to check out the inspiration at Time Out Challenges.

 

Take Three Thursday

Unexpectedly, I'm joining in with Mary-Lou this week for her Take Three Thursdays. Here's Mary-Lou's explanation of her weekly meme:

In an effort to notice more of the ordinary in my life, I have decided to share what I have noticed this week in Take Three Thursday.   The idea is to take photos that are linked some how; by theme, by colour, by date, by moment,  by points of view. 

When I read Mary-Lou's post this morning, I didn't think I had any photos that fit the meme. But it is SO nice today (over 40° warmer than it's been recently) that I decided to take a walk. I had to walk in the street most of the way because the sidewalks are still covered with icy patches, deep puddles, and some crusty snow. The first thing that caught my eye was the reflection in this puddle:

And then these branches caught my eye:

And finally another reflection:

Sadly this warm weather is not supposed to last. Another storm and cold front is headed our way. I hope it's not too bad because we have plans every night from today through Sunday.

One Little Word 2018

It takes me a long time to think about and choose a word to accompany me during the new year. This year, my word “appeared” in November and the more I thought and wrote about it, the more it seemed like a good fit. One thing I wanted from this year’s One Little Word was that it would incorporate the last three OLWs that have provided good guidance, and in some cases, been transformative. They are SIMPLIFY (2014 & 2015), MINDFUL (2016) and CHOOSE JOY/GRATITUDE (2017). This year’s word . . .

. . . seems to meet that criteria.

This definition captures what I hope NOURISH will do during 2018: “to cause to develop or grow stronger; to foster the development of; promote; to support and encourage. As I thought about “nourish” and how it might guide me, I divided my intentions into three areas:

Mind

• Morning reading time
• Sketching
• Classes: Sketching Now: Watercolor, Linda.com: Lightroom 6, Holstee*, Craftsy
• Improve photography: work on the photographic journal (a Christmas gift), CY365
• Continue to declutter and purge
• Create two travel photo books (for some reason this continues to be an intellectual and creative challenge!)

 Body

• Healthy diet: focus on anti-inflammatory/whole foods
• Regular exercise routine (3/week minimum) & daily stretching
• Rest; maintaining a balanced schedule

Soul

• Every day, find a way to give something to someone: thanks to God, lend a helping hand, thank someone for kindness, give $5 to the needy, give a compliment
• Quality time with family and friends
• Spiritual direction
• Daily prayer/meditation practice
• Daily journaling/Morning and Evening Reflections
• Volunteering
• Contemplative Photography
• Catch up with Project Life
• Card Making

I think it’s easy to see how NOURISH incorporates the concepts of simplifying, becoming more mindful, and expressing gratitude. I know there will be days when the daily meditation and journaling will fall by the wayside. But I do believe that by having them written down as an intention, they are much more likely to happen.

*I've joined Holstee this year. If you look through the site you'll see that they have a series of themes--one for each month. I've used their journals on reflection and intention already and find them very helpful. Before I joined, I subscribed to their daily reflections. It didn't take long for me to appreciate the wisdom being delivered to my inbox every morning. I can also highly recommend Jessica Swift's 100 Uplifting Days. I'm on Day 99, and I will miss them! I can't tell you how often during the last 99 days just the right message showed up in my email with a piece of beautiful mixed media art and an inspiring quote.

I found the graphic for nourish on the internet and there was no attribution attached to it. It's such a perfect fit!