random reflections

Two Cards, Two Challenges

After nearly a week of dealing with surgery on my right thumb and a nasty and exceedingly itchy rash on my back (caused ironically by a new anti-itch lotion), I'm more or less back to normal. At least back in the craft room. I have a couple of cards to share for some current challenges. First up, one for the Inspired By Challenge. It's another weekly challenge, so often comes and goes before I get my act together. Earlier this month, I made two cards to send to blogging friends that meet this week's theme: Tweet Messages. Since I think both friends have received the cards, I can post them now. 

This is a new stamp set (for me) from My Favorite Things (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite stamp companies), called "Winter Songbird."

These were fun to watercolor, and the sentiment came from the same set. Pretty quick, and definitely CAS.

I used my favorite Hero Arts Rounded Rectangle Infinity dies to cut the first two layers, and then added them to an Asparagus (Gina K) card base. 

The next card is a soft floral birthday card. It's for the new Fusion Card Challenge: Flowers.

The pretty, soft floral arrangement is my inspiration.

This beautiful floral arrangement is from Altenew's "Bergenia Builder. I stamped it in a soft gray ink, and quickly colored it with Copic markers, adding some detail to the floral centers with a Staedtler Fineliner.

I simply trimmed this panel down with my paper cutter and added it to a gray card base.

The sentiment is from an all-time favorite from Papertrey Ink - "Signature Greetings."

Off to catch up on my homework for Liz Steel's Sketchbook Design class. It's been absolutely wonderful; worth twice what I paid for it. 

 

 

 

The Reading Life

Before January slips away, I wanted to write a blog post about my reading life. I’d hoped to get it posted early last week but was sidelined last week with an inexplicable rash and horrible itch on my back, and then by surgery on my thumb to remove a piece of rattan that had lodged itself in my right thumb. Everything seems to be improving, but not quickly enough for me! 

I’ve always been a reader, and I spend a minimum of an hour every day reading, and often more. My goal for 2020 was the same as in 2019: 50 Books. Thanks to the pandemic, I read 70 books. Last year when I started The Unread Shelf Project i was inspired to start a new kind of book journal. I’ve always kept track of the books I read online—first with Shelfari, and when that site closed, I moved what I could to Goodreads. For the last two years, I also registered my goal on Goodreads, and I love that they send you a summary at the end of the year.

This year, thanks to my journal, I know a lot more about my reading life. The split between fiction (36) and nonfiction (34) surprised me as I think I usually read more nonfiction than fiction. I also kept a list of the books I acquired in 2020, quite a few more than usual since the library was closed for the first 5-6 months of the pandemic. I’m heavily into borrowing from the library, not only because they are open, but because they offer curbside pickup.

 

This year I decided I needed a new format for the tracking. Interestingly, the woman who runs The Unread Shelf Project decided to abandon her tracking this year, and decided just to keep a list with a few sentences about each book she reads. I really liked the information about the books I read, and although I sometimes got off track, in general it's been easy to maintain. These photos were taken before last week, when I finished two more books while I was sidelined.

I’m always interested to see bloggers’ picks of their favorite books of the year, so I thought I’d post mine here. When I looked through the list of books to pick out my favorites, I ended up with six fiction titles and six nonfiction titles—-totally unrelated to the amazing split in my overall reading. Here they are:

Fiction

Apeirgon was, without a doubt, the most inventive and creative book I read all year. I absolutely loved it, but Sarah couldn't get into it at all. Another blogger was trying to list to the book, and asked if I thought she was missing something. I highly recommended she get a printed copy---the formatting, photographs, and drawings are essential to understanding the text. The novel that will stay with me the longest, though, was Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing which traces eight generations of two sisters in Ghana (one who is sold into slavery and one who married an Englishman.) It was absolutely powerful— its language and its story. I also loved her novel, Transcendent Kingdom.

Nonfiction

The way I choose favorite books is based on the amount of time I continue to think about the book after completing it. All of these have stuck with me, and some more than others. A good friend recommended Caste and it's the most important book I read in 2020. All of us in my wonderful study group who have read it, continue to reference it again and again. Aside from the content, Isabel Wilkerson's writing is superb.

Although I have friends who read many more books each year than I do, I've set a goal for 2021 that I'm not sure I can meet: 60 books. Although we’re lucky to have appointments in mid-February to get COVID vaccinations (should vaccine be available,) I’m not sure when it will really be safe to move about. Everything I read, says keep doing what you’re doing even after the vaccine. In that case, 60 books is doable. If things improve, I’ll be happy with whatever I read.

 

 

Three Shades of Blue

I woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday and while trying to put myself back to sleep, I came up with a card idea for this week's Just Us Girls Challenge: three shades of blue.

I'd like to tell you that I executed that card design with no difficulty, but if you could see my original idea there'd be little resemblance to the final card. 

This is a pretty odd angle for taking a photograph, but getting a clear photo of the six scored lines turned out to be almost as difficult as constructing the card. I started with a much older Papertrey Ink stamp "Ombre Builders." It includes seven stamps with different patterns. I started out with the triangles, obviously not what I ended up with. You will eventually see two other cards I also created with the triangles. When that attempt failed, I turned to the tiny squares. I masked off thirds and stamped the squares with three shades of blue, then trimmed around the panel and mounted it on a strip of Enchanted Evening cardstock. It definitely needed the scored lines on both sides. Finally I stamped the sentiment from Altenew's "Bergenia Builder" which was laying on my desk for another project.

The final step was to trim the whole panel down and add it to a card base of Enchanted Evening. My goal in yesterday's crafting time was to create some cards appropriate for males. I think this one would work for either men or women. One of the other cards I made yesterday went in the mail this morning to my BIL, and now I have two more in the stash.

 

 

Watercolor Challenges

There are more card challenges on the internet than you can count, and I keep coming up with new ones that I want to try. Recently, I found a series of challenges by Happy Little Stampers. One thing I like about all their challenges is they run for a month. Their watercolor challenge for January is "Anything Goes." The CAS Mix-Up Challenge is for "Splatters" combined with one other mixed media element, in this case, watercolor.

I actually have two cards to share. A weekend or so ago, I sat down with a pile of already colored, die cut, and stamped elements to create a group of Thinking of You cards which I badly needed. Both of the focal images for these cards were already stamped, splattered, and watercolored. I just needed to add sentiments and assemble the cards.

The flowers are from the Waffle Flower "Bouquet Builder" set, and watercolored with Zig Clean Color Markers

After watercoloring the flowers, I added some black, purple, and green splatters. The sentiment is an old favorite from Papertrey Ink, "Penned Elegance." I added the panel to a Plum Pudding card base.

The next card features a botanical from the same Waffle Flower set.

This was watercolored with Altenew's 36 pan watercolor set, and highlighted with some Polychromos colored pencils.

The sentiment was die cut and assembled by a friend who gave me an envelope with a variety of the die cut sentiments from Papertrey Ink's "Frame It Out: Wishes." I love the modern font. The card base for this card is Gina K's Asparagus cardstock which has become a favorite. 

I'll be linking these up with:

 

Color Hues #10

Times flies, and here we are with the tenth Color Hues challenge:

One of my intentions for this year, is to make sure I'm using all the stamps and dies I have accumulated since the pandemic started! One of the dies is the "Altenew Circled Greetings." I have all four of them, but today I used "Thanks." I'll start with the card I posted on the Color Hues Challenge post.

You can see that the die creates a wonderful focal point for an A2 card. I backed the open circle with a piece of cream cardstock on which I'd stamped with another new purchase, My Favorite Things "Peacock Pattern Background" in Dark Indigo ink.

I used a stamp from W+9's "Hand Lettered Thanks" for the small sentiment strip, and bordered it with a bit of the dark navy cardstock. The front panel was then added to a cream colored card base which is perfect for writing a thank you note.

The second card is very similar, but I chose to dry emboss a series of narrow score lines on the cream card base before adding the navy panel which I trimmed down to expose a narrow cream border.

This time I chose a brighter hue of navy cardstock that has a subtle texture to it.

I added a few sequins and pearls from Lucy's Cards: "Pearl Necklace" collection.

Hop over to the Color Hues blog to see what the rest of the Design Team and our Guest Designer, Julie,  have come up with . . . and join in the fun!

 Nancy

Hannelie

Cindy

Julie

Sheri

Kristie

Lindsey

 

Warm Wishes

The stamped images for this card have been lying on my desk since before Christmas. I realized sometime in December that I owned no snowmen stamps and ordered a couple sets from My Favorite Things during a sale. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these cute snowmen and MFT provided not one, but two, challenges that fit this card. First, the MFT Birthday Challenge which is Winter Wonderland, and the MFT Outside the Box Challenge: Winter Scenes. Everything I used for this card also goes to the NBUS Challenge.

I've been immersed in a Sketchbook Design course with Liz Steel. Her courses are always loaded with content, and this has been no exception. But I've started a new sketchbook, and have a few pages started. I've found all my fountain pens, and although I thought I had them all working again, I've discovered that most of them are going to require a thorough cleaning before I can count on them. All that to say, stamping and card making has taken a backseat in my schedule.

It's not often that a card comes out just the way I imagined it, but this one comes pretty close.

I constructed the box with Spring Rain cardstock. I don't own the Outside the Box snow drift dies, but created my own with the Ellen Hutson "Landscapes" die. When I purchased those, I thought they might work for a variety of cards and so far, they've been great. I used some Distress Oxide ink to create a bit of blue sky on the back side of the box.

All the stamped images were colored with Copic markers and then die cut. Before adding them to the snow drifts, I added the stitched panel with the sentiment (also from the "Toasty Greetings" set). 

Here you can see that the card folds so that it fits into an A2 envelope. You can also see the stitched side panels. I'm off to link up with these challenges:

 

Just Us Girls: Trend Week

I had every intention of joining Just Us Girls last week where the challenge was "Hello," but the weekly challenges frequently get away from me. This week's challenge is to Use a Stencil.

It definitely is a trending technique, and I'm glad to be joining in this week with a card that also uses a large HELLO sentiment.

I love Altenew's "Flowing Drops" stencil and used Distress Oxides inks to create the blue/green background. I trimmed the sides enough so the Hawaiian Shores card base would create a narrow border. 

The sentiment is from The Stamp Market's "Paper Hugs" set. I die cut it with white and layered it on the shadow die cut with Hawaiian Shores, and popped it up with some dimensional tape.

I'm also entering this in the Happy Little Stampers Stencil Challenge. I just recently happened up the Happy Little Stampers who seem to have monthly challenges for a variety of techniques/products. I'm much more likely to be on time with monthly challenges! 

 

Time Out Challenge

Time Out has more than one meaning this afternoon after the assault on the Capitol yesterday. The horrific event will be haunting us for months (and years), and there are many, many questions that need to be answered. Although I do try to stay away from discussing political events on this blog, but this can't be ignored. I'm not one that watches television during the day, so I actually discovered what was happening in Washington when an international blogging friend emailed me to be sure we were safe---knowing that we were miles away. As it turns out there were demonstrations in other cities, but fortunately, not here.

But the Time Out I'm referring to is a card challenge:

Last night after the Congress was able to resume and as I was listening to their discussions of the objections to the Electoral College votes, I decided I needed to find something to do at the same time. This My Favorite Things "City Block Background" had already been stamped, and I decided to do some spotlight coloring. Needing a masculine birthday card, I thought this might be a fun, albeit a bit unusual, one.

I picked just a few of the buildings in the center of the panel to color with Copic markers.  After finishing the coloring, I used one of Simon Says "Stitched Rectangles" to die cut the panel, and added it to a very thin border of Honey Nut cardstock. The brown card base is one I've had in my stash for years.

Trying to decide on a sentiment was the next problem. I have a box of pre-stamped and die cut sentiments, and found that this one, "Penned Elegance" by Papertrey Ink, worked quite well.

I backed the sentiment with thin strips of dimensional tape to lift it up and give it some space from the black and white background. I ended up making a second version (nearly identical) this morning. I think the card's charming, and I hope my buddies do too. 

Just a note: some photos haven't been showing recently. According to Typepad, it's an error on their end and should repair itself with time. If not, I'll be sending them a message and they will retrieve it. So annoying.

The Flower Challenge: Embossing

I'll bet I'm not alone when I say that watching my friend heat emboss a sentiment on a card over 25 years ago was the impetus to hop in the car and go to the local stamp store to buy some supplies. I still have a couple of the wooden stamps I bought that day, and just replaced my heat gun in May when a friend gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday. It's been a favorite technique ever since so The Flower Challenge had me looking through the cards I hadn't posted. This card which has already been received by my friend (so can now be shared) has both heat embossing in gold, and dry embossing along the bottom portion of the card.

The beautiful magnolias are from Altenew's "Magnolias for You" set. I embossed them in gold on Bristol and watercolored them with the Altenew 36 pan watercolor set. 

I had to fussy cut the flowers and leaves since I don't own the dies, and then arranged them at the top of the white panel. The sentiment, also gold embossed, is from The Greetery's "Sentiment Suite: Birthday" set which gets a lot of use. I decided the card was just too CAS (is that possible?), so added three lines of dry embossing with my stylus on the bottom portion. That was added that to a top folded card in Lovely Lady (PTI.)

I'm in the midst of trying to keep up with two online classes, so crafting time has been at a premium. Today's personal challenge is to get two masculine birthday cards created.

One Little Word for 2021

This is the 11th year I've chosen a word to guide my intentions for the year. Most of them have served me well--some better than others. This year nothing came quickly to mind, but before I went hunting for a word (which I've needed to do occasionally in the past), EXPLORE popped out at me, and I knew immediately it was the word for me this year.

Exploration is curiosity put into action. Don Walsh

This quote pretty well defines what I'm hoping for by choosing this word. Let's hope by the end of 2021, the first definition in the dictionary also holds true:

1. travel in or through (an unfamiliar country or area) to learn about or familiarize oneself with it.

There are so many things (and places) I want to explore. Some of the things I want to explore from home are prayer practices, new card making techniques, journal writing, sketching and sketchbook design, photography (more intentional, using my Canon and Sony cameras as well as my iPhone), and writing a Rule of Life. The books I chose for the photograph above cover some of those topics. Missing from the pile is The Adventures of Seeing which I loaned to a church friend over a year ago. I've have sent an email to see if I can retrieve it to use for a potential photography project. Heart Talk and Life's Companion are for exploring more intentional and meaningful journaling, and Note to Self is about writing a Rule of Life. I've also found information about that on Tsh Oxenreider's site. An Illustrated Life has been on my shelf (and perused) for several years. That and Liz Steel's new class "Sketchbook Design" will help me explore sketching again. The book on the bottom is a new journal I've invested in that provides a two-page spread for organizing your day, writing your morning and evening gratitudes and summarizing the day. At the end of each week, there's a reflection page that includes a habit tracker. I've been looking for several years for the "perfect" journal. This may not be it, but it's the closest I've found. The drawback is that it's a three month journal and costs more than most year-long ones. If it works, it will be worth it to me. By the end of March I should have a good idea. 

My biggest take-away from last year's OLW, COMMIT, was that setting monthly intentions from a broader list worked much better for me. Eventually I got to more of the items on my lists than I had in the past, Each month will include a reading goal, an organizational/purging goal, and a group of habits to track. For January, it's 1) establish a morning routine of reading (firmly in place,) journaling, and meditation/prayer; 2) complete four books including one from The Unread Shelf Project--a project from 2020 that I'm continuing; 3) begin a weekly sketchbook page reflecting joys and gratitude, and 4) begin to work my way through my stamp/die collection, actually using them before deciding which ones to keep and which ones to give away or donate. I'm guessing that February's goals will look much the same with different books, perhaps a change in habits to track, and once the sketchbook class has ended, a new creative goal. I'm feeling pretty flexible and willing to change things up until they feel right. 

So here's to 2021. I'm guessing the next few months will be difficult ones. Observing safety routines will be more important than ever as others get frustrated and give up on the isolation requirements. A vaccine for folks my age may be available by March, and I hope that's not an overly optimistic prediction. And I'm hoping my OLW project will help keep me entertained and busy here at home!