random reflections

Walking in the Park

We live just a short walk from one of the nicest parks in the county. It's especially beautiful in the spring. During a normal year (which this is definitely not), there would have been a 10 day long Lilac Festival. But the truth of the matter is, had it occurred, none of the lilacs would have been in bloom, and it would have been nasty and cold. May's weather has been bizarre. We walked in the snow twice, and this past week it was 90°. But . . . the park is now in full bloom. Earlier in the week the lilacs were at their peak. The park was too crowded for our tastes, so we walked among the lilacs and stayed off the sidewalks. It was easy to stay a good social distance apart. 

We're at the park every year, and yet, I don't think I've ever come across this variety ("Sensation"). It's one of the most beautiful in the park.

Later in the week, many of the lilacs had started to fade, but there was still lots of beauty to be seen. Only about 50% of the rhododendrons are in bloom, but this one is gorgeous.

I think there is only one of these trees in the park, and it's the first time I've seen it in bloom. It's called a Goldenchain tree---perfect name!

Most of the magnolias have come and gone, but this beauty was still there.

This is always one of my favorite spots in the park. The azaleas are in full bloom.

These rhododendrons are beautiful, too.

And this is our parting view as we walk down a set of steps to the street that takes us back to our neighborhood.

I hope this tour makes up for some of my bitter complaining this spring when all the beauty seemed out of our grasp. It certainly lifts my spirits!

 

 

Going Around in Circles

The Monday Simon Says Challenge is Going Around in Circles. One of my projects for the Online Card Class Spring Card Camp 2 was to create some watercolor washes. This one was done with Tombow markers which I never would have used for this technique. (That's why I love these classes. All kinds of little tidbits and new ideas are introduced.) Once it was done, it was very vibrant, and I wanted something to tone it down a bit. I found this circle coverplate by Papertrey Ink, and I love how it turned out.

I know just who it's going to. A friend of mine is scheduled for a bone marrow transplant next month, and I'm thinking this might brighten up one of the many days he has to spend in the hospital.

The sentiment from Simon Says "Hello Darling" set was stamped on Gina K Melon cardstock and cut out with a circle die, then backed with a slightly larger black circle. Off to link up with the challenge:

 

Color Throwdown 2

After rarely playing along with the Color Throwdown Challenge, I have a card for the second week in a row. When I saw the color combination, I knew I'd try to do something. Like last week, the combo spoke to me.

So today when I sat down to do some coloring for the #100DayProject, I picked out three turquoise Copic markers and stamped a butterfly from "Beautiful Butterflies," the stamp set in the June Simon Say Card Kit. It's a wonderful set, and this is the second card I've created with it this week. I'm posting nearly every day on Instagram as part of the #100DayProject, but eventually, most of the cards will show up here as well.

I found the turquoise paper behind the heart in one of my folders of precut papers. I have no idea where that circle die came from---I certainly can't find it today. I have done a couple big purges since the beginning of the year, but I don't think I've given away any dies. The heart was cut with a nested set of heart dies by My Favorite Things. 

Both the white panel and the butterfly are adhered with dimensional foam/tape. The sentiment is another from Taylored Expressions "Simple Strips." I love that you can stamp, emboss, and then die cut a whole group of sentiments at one time. I keep them in a little bag and can pull them out when needed. 

Hope your weekend is a good one! As usual, during this stay-at-home time, ours will be pretty quiet. Tracy is doing a lot of yard work. He's taken down four straggly trees along our property line in preparation for extending the fence he started last year. A nearly dead hedge along the edge of the patio also went to the curb today. Things are looking brighter--literally. I have a few more flowers to plant, but most of my to-do list is inside. 

Color Throw Down

I follow The Color Throw Down challenge and often intend to create a card for it, but it rarely happens. By the time the challenge shows up in my Feedly account, the end date is just five days away. You would think that during this stay-at-home time, five days would be plenty of time to get a card made. It just doesn't happen, but today after I finished my earlier post, I worked on my #100DayProject. I deliberately chose the colors yellow, gray, and white for this week's Color Throw Down challenge. Three colors, I might add, that I really love together. So I was not totally surprised when I check the date for this week's challenge to discover it ends tomorrow, so here is a second post in one day---a rarity to be sure.

Day 18 of the Spring Card Camp 2 was about ink swiping backgrounds. Being a CAS fan, most of the backgrounds were a bit busy for my tastes. But Seeka created a series for part 2 of the lesson that I loved, and this is one of the designs I particularly liked. I swiped down the side of Bristol cardstock with two ink cubes in gray and two ink cubes in yellow from Pinkfresh Studios.  It's easier to see the ombre effect in this photo:

Then I used a Y35 Copic marker to add just a touch of dimension to the leaves. After die cutting the panel with a stitched rectangle die, I mounted it on Simon Says Smoke cardstock. 

The beautiful vine is from Simon Says' "Stronger Together" set and the sentiment from Simon Says "Sketched Flowers." Both sets were part of the Simon Says Card Kit series, and have wonderful images and great sentiments. 

Off to link this up before the challenge closes!

An Almost Double Birthday

This weekend my niece's two children both celebrated their birthdays--one day apart. On Friday, Finn turned five, and on Saturday, Rowen turned three. I love making birthday cards for kids. Finn's card was inspired by Sandie's photo prompt, "Digits" for the 30 Day Photo Challenge. It's an almost perfect entry for AAA Cards Birthday Challenge. Finn turned five and the AAA Card Challenge just turned six.

I've used this number border by Papertrey Ink many times, but I think this is my favorite card so far. The green and orange seem to work wonderfully together.

All the numbers except the five are "empty." I stacked three orange 5's before inlaying them in the border so it stands out both in color and dimension.

The sentiment is from My Favorite Things, "Bitty Birthday Wishes" and the arrow on the banner points to the inside where it says, "For the Birthday Boy."

Rowan's card is another entry to the AAA Birthday Challenge: Wings. The previous entries were cards with butterflies as the focal image. This is a more imaginative entry--a unicorn with wings.

The stamped and die cut images are from My Favorite Things "Fairy Tale" set and the sentiment is from the same set I used for Finn's card. 

The glittery stars were stenciled with Nuvo Silver Gem Glimmer Paste and the Altenew "Milky Way" stencil. Lots of sparkly dimension.

Too coordinate with the sparkly stars, I embossed the greeting in silver on black cardstock. 

Wonderful Birthday

This card was sent to a good friend for her birthday. It's now safe to post it and I'm linking it to the current CASology challenge: Plant. 

I love this cluster of flowers from Simon Says "Stronger Together" set. I embossed it in white on watercolor paper and used Altenew's 36 pan watercolors to color it. 

Simon Says Cream cardstock is a great match for watercolor paper which is rarely a true white. After die cutting the watercolored piece with a Stitched Rectangle die, I added a thin border of Simon Says Green Leaf cardstock and then attached it to the card with dimensional tape.

The sentiment is from a favorite Papertrey Ink set, Wishes Come True. A simple design with satisfying white space.

Clean and Simple Flower

A quick post to enter a card into Addicted to CAS's current challenge, "Flower," which ends later today. Purchasing and planting flowers has definitely put a dent in my crafting time, but the warm weather is finally here to stay, and since we'll be spending lots of time outdoors in our yard this summer, the flowers and herbs I've planted will surely improve the stay-at-home situation.

The "white space" this time is a lovely dark gray which matched the border of the stamp. I colored both the border and the rose with Copic markers and then did some simple layering with a pink paper. Since I have many more cards than usual because of my daily coloring for the #100DayProject, I've started leaving sentiments off the cards if they can be used for more than one occasion. I'm thinking this card has multiple possibilities.

The stamp is an older Papertrey Ink stamp, "Botanical Blocks." Another benefit of the #100DayProject is I'm pulling out older stamp sets and using some sets that have seen little or, sometimes no, love.

It will be a strange Memorial Day weekend. We're usually with family for a big picnic, but not this year. There's some rain forecast, but it appears to be off and on, so I'm hoping for a good mix of crafting time, and time on the patio.

Fun with Letter Substitutions

I think I've enjoyed Spring Card Camp 2 even more than the first Spring Card Camp. I have several lessons from both camps still to try. This afternoon I created three cards I'll share later from Day 6, but today I want to share two cards I created from Channin Pellitier's lesson on letter substitution for Day 10. It didn't take me long to find just the right image to replace a letter in a sentiment. This cute bear holding a heart seemed perfect to replace the "U" in HUGS.

In talking to Sarah this week, I found out that Hannah no longer wishes to share a card with Caleb. She came out of her room after rest time the other day clutching the rainbow card, and announced, "MY rainbow card." So this time they'll each get a card of their own. I've had this darling bear stamp from Ellen Hutson for over a year, and have never put it to use. In addition to the heart, I have a whole collection of cute items the bear can hold, so I know this isn't the last time you'll see him.

He was just the right height to pair with The Stamp Market's "Skinny Upper Alpha" dies which I cut from black fun foam---a technique I saw Laurie Willison use awhile ago. It give the letters a bit of dimension as well as some texture IRL.

The accompanying sentiments are from Papertrey Ink's "Big Hugs." Both patterned papers came from The Stamp Market's 6X6 "Color Crush" paper pad.

I'm linking up these card to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge, Animals, and recently revived NBUS (Never Before Used Stuff) Challenge. I should have linked an earlier post this month to that challenge as well. Between the #100DayChallenge and the card camps, I'm getting around to using some products I've had for awhile.

 

Vellum Overlays

One of the lessons at the Online Card Class Spring Card Camp 2 was on creating vellum overlays. I loved the three cards Caly Person created and set off to create some myself. I have to admit I'm lukewarm about the results. I find vellum difficult to work with, and tried a variety of adhesive sprays and techniques, none of which worked quite the way I would have liked. In retrospect, I should have used a product called Stick-it which I own, but for some reason never considered. More than one attempt hit the circular file. Nonetheless, I ended up with four cards--some of which I like better than others. The first card incorporates an Altenew flower that I created after seeing a video Erum Tasneem posted a week or so ago. It's a loose watercolor technique that used watercolor markers. Here's a look at the flowers that I posted on Instagram.

And here's the first of the vellum cards. 

The Bold Border die from Papertrey Ink is called Wave, and I've used it to great effect by cutting it from black and layering it on a white card. It's OK on this card, and it was one of the few where I didn't have a lot of trouble with adhesive.

Next up is the first card I created. I used another Papertrey Ink die, this one is the Butterfly cover plate. It's perfect for Caly's technique, but I didn't think the butterflies offered a lot of contrast over the ink-blended background. I added some shimmer to the middle butterfly and some sequins as well. It is, however, another good entry for the AAA Birthday challenge: Wings. 

The next card presented the worst of the adhesive problems. I die cut the border frame by Ink to Paper from dotted vellum. I decided the border was too wide, so I used a rectangle die from Spellbinders to cut it down a bit, and ended up with a smaller frame you'll see in the next card.

The flower was another one I colored with watercolors for the #100DayProject. I die cut all of them and have them in a small bag to use as needed. The sentiment from Pretty Pink Posh was white embossed. It's a pleasing CAS design despite the difficulties.

The last card uses the smaller vellum frame and some more of the watercolored flowers. Of the four, it's my favorite, but the least like any Caly presented during the lesson.

The flowers are from a Simon Says set, Spring Flowers. I have had two of their spring flower sets forever, and had never used them before. I knew I'd like them. Why it's taken so long to get them out is beyond me! The sentiment is from Pretty Pink Posh as well.

 

 

 

Colorful Butterflies

My #100DayChallenge is proving to be very productive, so I have lots of images now to use for cards. This week I spent some time putting together some, so the blog will be more active than usual in the next week or so. I hoped to get this post up several days ago, but trying to keep up with both the #100DayChallenge and two Online Card Classes my days go by even faster than usual. Given the stay-at-home orders, I guess that's a good thing.

This coloring piece was lots of fun. It's a preprinted (on watercolor paper) design by Suzy Plantamura and sold by Simon Says Stamps. I've received several of these in the monthly card kits. For this one I used my Zig Clean Color markers.

I really love the gorgeous colors, and wish I had another one of these to paint. Sadly, they come in packs of ten different designs, some of which I really like, and others I'd be unlikely to use. 

I'm linking this up to AAA Birthday where the challenge is "Wings" and to Seize the Birthday without the optional twist.