random reflections

Seize the Birthday

Another quick post for an entry to Seize the Birthday Challenge. This round is "Anything Goes." Although today was sunny and bit warmer, the last couple of dreary, gray days I've been concentrating on bright and cheerful colors for my cards. This one certainly filled the bill.

I often forget about my stencils, but I pulled a polka-dot one from Simon Says out and inked it up with Orange Zest ink on Orange Zest cardstock. I love the tone on tone look, and it makes a subtle background for the focal point. From Neenah Solar White, I die cut the two outer shapes (one cuts, one embosses) from Papertrey's "Shape Shifters Circle 1" die and stamped the sentiment from Simon Says "Birthday Flowers" set. After stamping and die cutting the "Corner Adorner" (February) from Papertrey Ink, I adhered that with some dimensions tape.

Finally I used some fun foam to mount my piece onto a card also made from Orange Zest. I'm not sure the recipient of the card will need a bright and cheery card since she lives in Denver, CO where they get a LOT more sunshine that we do, but I'm pretty sure she'll be glad to get some happy mail.

Addicted to CAS: Gold

A quick post to link up to the Addicted to CAS challenge blog. This week's code word is GOLD. 

This card is for a friend's 70th birthday. Simple, and I hope CAS enough for this challenge.

I love the gold embossed papers in MME's "Yes, Please," paper pack. This one seemed perfect for a square card so I die cut it with a "Stitched Square" from Simon Says. The sentiment and focal point were stamped, embossed in gold, and then die cut with Papertrey Ink's "Splits: Best Wishes." One of the things I love about the series of "Splits" stamp sets is that the sentiments are interchangeable. I used some dimensional tape to adhere it to the patterned paper, which was then adhered to a white square card.

I added some of my favorite AMuse black pearls as a final embellishment.

Hope you've had a good weekend. Mine was busier than usual until today when I had a lot of (needed) crafting time. 

 

Take Three Thursday: Helleborus

It's been a few weeks since I joined Mary-Lou in her Take Three Thursday meme. Although we've had warmer temperatures, and some sunny days, not much is blooming in our yard. The helleborus are an exception, but they are planted off our patio and it's only been warm enough one day to sit out there. In addition, the blooms hang downward so it's hard to see how lovely they are. Last year, Maggie posted a photo of some floating in a bowl, so thanks to her, we have some on our living room table which we've enjoyed all week. 

It's not often that I overbook myself, but today is one of those days. When I leave here for my discussion group at noon, I won't return until after 9:00 this evening. It's a gray, rainy day so I guess being cooped up inside at meetings and with tutoring isn't interfering with any outdoor activities.

April 2018 Papertrey Ink Blog Hop

It's the 25th of April, and time for the April blog hop at Papertrey Ink. Here's the inspiration piece:

I only own one tea cup stamp set from Papertrey, and it didn't speak to me this month, so I looked for inspiration at the colors and the beautiful flowers. That took me to an old favorite, one that hasn't been used in awhile, "Delightful Dahlias." I started by arranging two of the flowers and leaves and masked and stamped them on Bristol paper with Versamark ink, stopping to emboss each one in gold (from the edge of the teacups in the painting). Then I painted them with a combination of Zig Watercolor pens and SAI watercolor pens from Japan that were a gift two or three years ago. 

In looking at the inspiration piece again today, I see that the pink I chose isn't quite the same tone as those on the teacups. I should have paid better attention and gone to my other watercolors to find the "right" pink. Nonetheless, I like the pink I chose with the aqua, so there it is. 

After embossing the sentiment (from another much older set, Fillable Frames #4), I die cut the piece with a stitched rectangle, and mounted it on a card of Soft Stone. I added some gold sequins from a Simon Says mix, "Sparkle and Shine."

I'm also linking up with the Less is More challenge this week, "Bring Something Back." This card brought back two stamps sets that have been in my collection for a long time.

 And unusually, I'm linking up to a third challenge, the Simon Says "Work It Wednesday" which is celebrating mothers.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Betsy!

Today is Betsy's birthday, and we celebrated with her family and some close friends at a Korean restaurant. I knew it was one of their favorite restaurants but I had never been there. Skylar's favorite dish is the pickled radishes which I have to admit are pretty good. The fried dumplings were also excellent as well as the shrimp and rice dish I had. We had a great time. Here are the three little girls helping Mama blow out the candles. The cake was large enough for at least four more families, so Pam is taking the left-overs to the refugee center tomorrow. The students there will make short work of it!

I made Betsy's card with new sets from Papertrey Ink called "Butterfly Blooms" and "A Bit More Butterfly Blooms." The card is one of several I've made recently with these butterflies so you'll be seeing more of them in the week(s) to come. This might be my favorite though.

I stamped the two butterflies on Neenah Solar White and colored them with Copic markers. Once I prepared the Select White card base, I added a piece of patterned paper from Paper Studio's "Petals and Blooms" paper pack that I picked up at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago. In my stash I found a gorgeous piece of black embossed paper which I die cut with a stitched oval and used as the focal point for the butterflies. Here's a closer look at the embossed paper.

I've had the pretty flower sequins for a long time, too. I think they might have come from Impress stamps, but I can't really remember for sure. 

The sentiment was stamped on a banner die cut with an old Spellbinders die, and comes from Papertrey's $5 "Ways to Say: Birthday" mini-set. I'll be back tomorrow with a card for the Papertrey Ink blog hop.

 

#100DayProject: Week 3

The past week was especially busy, so I had to fit in the project in littler pieces. My first card to share represents several days of experimenting with two new stamps sets (loaned to me by a friend) as well as with two new techniques.

Both stamp sets are relatively new ones from Papertrey Ink: "Vogue Vases" and "Simple Stems." You'll eventually see more of the vases and the flowers as I stamped a few extras of both. The techniques were both from Betsy Veldman of the Papertrey Ink Design Team: creating translucent vases, and adding detail to the flowers with pens. I've owned a set of Staedtler Triplus Fineliners for years. I think I bought them at the Princeton book store when Sarah and Adam lived there 11 years ago. They worked perfectly for this and made so much difference in how the flowers looked. On the yellow flower, I used the finer tip of a Tombow marker since I didn't have a good contrasting pen for that color. The sentiment is from the Simple Stems set.

The translucent vases are created by stamping them on vellum in a relatively dark color (I used Tropical Teal as did Betsy), and then overstamping with watermark ink and embossing with clear embossing powder. A stamp positioner like the MISTI is invaluable for techniques like this.

I also went back to color blending again as well as watercoloring a lot of flowers from an old set by Simon Says, "Artful Flowers." I've always loved this set, but have never had much luck with it. A video by Nichol Sporh was the inspiration for these cards---you'll see I duplicated much of her design on the first card.

The new die cutting technique I played with last week came in handy for die cutting the stems and the flowers for these cards. I'm much happier with these than with any earlier attempts using this set. 

One funny thing about this project is that I started it to work through the many techniques I'd pinned on my boards for Design and Techniques. What I'm finding is that I'm constantly adding to my list of things to try every week, so I am quite sure I won't run out of ideas before the challenge ends. 

I'll be back later today with another post to celebrate a special birthday. Off now to take a walk before the rain moves in later today. We've been blessed with three glorious days of warmer temperatures and sunshine, and I don't want to waste a minute of it!

Spring???

There is finally hope of spring here. It was 60° today, and the forecast is for temperatures 50° or more for the next 10 days. The annual Lilac Festival is scheduled to begin in just a month so it's a good thing. We walked through the park this afternoon, and even the magnolia buds are still small and tight. There are buds on the lilac bushes as well, but it's going to take a long stretch of sunshine and warm temperatures for them to be at peak for the festival.

 

I have two spring inspired cards to share today, both were done with the same image from "Showers and Flowers" one of two stamp sets included in the March Simon Says card kit. Both were colored with colored pencils, the first with Prismacolor and the second with Lyra colored pencils which I've had in my collection for a long time.

 

 

After stamping and coloring the image, I die cut it with a "Stitched Rectangle," and mounted on a slightly larger die cut of Sunshine and then on a card made from Green Apple (Simon Says).

 

The next card is one I referenced in Tuesday's post about the #100DayProject. This time I used a piece of Strathmore Toned Gray paper. I've seen several cards made with this paper and colored pencils and wanted to try it out. I'm not thrilled with the results, and have plans to try this again soon. Nonetheless, I made a card with it.

 

 

This was also die cut with Stitched Rectangles before adding to a card made from Raspberry Fizz (PTI). I added a few rainstones (also from PTI).

 

I have more free time on my calendar this week than usual so I'm hoping to get a lot of crafting done. After being a year behind with my Project Life album, I'm now done to just two months (February and March) to do. I'd like to get a few cards made as well and, of course, keep up with the #100DayProject. 

#100DayProject: Week 2

Today marks the end of the second week of the #100DayProject, and I'm trying to do a weekly update as I work through the project. I've already shared two of the cards here and here.

I'll share a couple more today, and have a couple cards to post later for specific events. I tried some block watercolor smooching---a limited success, as well as some colored pencil work on gray toned paper---also a limited success in my opinion although I did make a card with it. Whether it gets sent or not is another matter. The first card for today is one using some of the block watercoloring effort. To do this, you add Distress Inks to an acrylic block, mist it with some water, and smoosh it onto some watercolor paper and weight it down for a few minutes. I watched Jennifer McGuire's video here, and thought it looked pretty easy. None of mine came out as nice as hers, but I haven't given up yet either. What I did this time, was die cut a circle from one of the attempts, and used it to create a background for another technique I tried at a friend's house on Saturday---using Nuevo drops as an embellishment.

I die cut a stitched frame from Simon Says "Stitched Circles" and mounted it on a card made from Simon Says "Sunshine" cardstock. I love that bright color, especially when we've had one cold, gray day after another for the last week. I scored three lines down the middle of the card before adhering the circle which I stamped with a sentiment from Papertrey's "Penned Elegance," surely a new favorite of mine! I'm also in love with "Butterfly Blooms," by Papertrey and you'll be seeing several more cards made with that set in the near future. This time the only color added to the die cut butterfly was a variety of Nuevo drops which are dimensional.

As a final touch I added a few black pearls from Amuse. I have a little stack of watercolored smooched papers on my desk so may be able to use them eventually.

My grandson missed a whole week of school last week with some kind of stomach "bug." By Thursday, I was feeling really bad for him and decided to make a card with a stamp set I bought with grandchildren in mind, but had never used. 

I love these cute little monsters from Your Next Stamps, "Silly Monsters," set. I stamped them on Neenah Solar White cardstock, my go-to paper for coloring with Copic markers, colored them, and fussy cut them. I embossed the sentiment on a piece of shimmery black cardstock, and then popped up the three monsters around the circle.

These guys definitely needed googly eyes and, fortunately, I found a little stash of them in my supplies.

Yesterday I worked on a new die cutting technique and have a pile of lovely butterflies to use on cards as a result. I didn't worry about trying to get the card(s) done as well. Tonight will probably be similar as it was a very busy day, so I'm hoping to do some stamping and die cutting with a stamp set a friend loaned me for a week or so. Although not all the results of my experiments were totally satisfying, I learned from each of them. It's likely I'll put them to the test again before the 100 days run out.

 

 

April Five in Five: Ice Storm

Saturday night before we went to bed, Tracy brought in the basket of violas I had purchased earlier in the day. An ice storm was predicted for Sunday, and when I saw the basket of flowers sitting next to the snow shovel, I just had to take a photo.

There were a couple of positives that came out of it all: we didn't lose power, and I finally had a subject for this month's Five in Five meme hosted by Sandie.

Yesterday as we were getting ready to go to the belated Easter celebration at my brother-in-law's I hopped out of the car with my iPhone and took a bunch of photos of the ice-encrusted plants and stone wall.

These photos are a far cry from the ones Honoré posted a day or so ago from Washington, D.C.  We aren't expected to see temperatures much above the high 40's all week so I think flowering trees and beautiful tulips are still in our distant future.

Make It Monday: Stitched Stems & Inspired By the Little Things

Michelle Leon is up at Papertrey Ink this week with the Make It Monday challenge. She demonstrated how to make stitched stems for your florals, and created a whole series of great cards. One card is up on the Papertrey blog, but at the end of the video she shows you several other gorgeous samples.

Mine is rather last minute. The challenge closes in just a few hours, and we spent most of the day at my brother-in-law's for the Walker family Easter celebration. On Easter, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were on their way home from Florida. But, I wanted to be sure to give this a try since it certainly fits into my #100DayProject. So, a new technique and a much older die set that I haven't used in several years.

The older die I used was the "Bitty Button Stacks" to create the flowers, adding some Nuevo drops to the centers. The leaves are die cut with the Memory Box "Tender Leaves" die from Simply Chartreuse cardstock. I stitched the stems onto a piece of Fresh Snow Linen die cut with the "Mix and Mat: Confetti" die. That was adhered to a piece of Bitty Big patterned paper and then to a Fresh Snow Linen card. The banner and sentiment are from Simon Says "Tilted Banners" set. 

I had to photograph this after dark, so the shadows are a bit intense. It's impossible to see in the photographs, but I used the new Ranger Detail Blending Tools to add ink to the edges of each flower to add some dimension. It is visible in real life, and I really like the small blending tools. 

I'm linking this up to the Inspired by Little Things challenge as well. Seems like a great fit. Here's the inspiration photo: